“You know, at the end of the day, what happened in Boulder was a horrific attack on a group of Jewish people that were peacefully protesting, and we are seeing that the actions of Israel are putting Jewish people in great danger. And the hate and the antisemitism that’s rising as a result of it is one that I have every intention of prioritizing and combating.”

Those words weren’t spoken by an anti-Israel activist at a campus rally. They were spoken by Colorado congressional candidate Melat Kiros while discussing the Boulder firebombing that targeted Jewish demonstrators.

At first glance, her remarks sound compassionate. She condemns antisemitism and pledges to combat it.

The Boulder victims quickly disappear from the moral center of the story. Instead, attention shifts to Israel’s military response. The implication is subtle but unmistakable: the way to protect Jews is not primarily by confronting antisemites, but by persuading Israel to react differently.

It’s an argument we’ve heard before.

For decades, society has worked to reject one of the most insidious forms of victim-blaming.

After a woman is raped, someone inevitably asks:

What was she wearing? Why was she walking alone? Had she been drinking?

Those questions rarely excuse the rapist outright. Instead, they accomplish something more subtle. They redirect our moral attention. The discussion quietly shifts from examining the criminal’s decision to examining the victim’s conduct.

The rapist becomes secondary and the victim becomes the subject of analysis.

That’s what makes victim-blaming so dangerous.

It rarely announces itself by saying the victim........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)