When "equality" becomes a killer

The west's core doctrine is a recipe for moral bankruptcy

Itamar Ben-Gvir

For years, the doctrine of “equality” has been synonymous with conscience and morality in the west. Anyone who dissents from this dogma is tarred and feathered as a knuckle-dragging troglodyte. In fact, this interpretation of “equality” dissolves morality as surely as acid dissolves limestone. This “equality” creates injustice and leads to bullying and intimidation. 

Worse still, it enables terrorism and mass murder. Worse again, this is being actively promoted by western politicians and “liberals”. Thus it dominates and poisons public discourse.

Israel’s controversial National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, provoked yet another tsunami of condemnation when, discussing on TV whether more stringent measures were needed to  curb the current surge of Palestinian Arab terrorism against Israelis, he declared: 

My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs. The right to life comes before freedom of movement.

Cue instant meltdown — and instant distortion and defamation. Most media sources quoted the first sentence but not the last. They thus decontextualised what Ben-Gvir had said, falsely and maliciously misrepresenting his observation as the quintessence of racism by placing Israeli interests above Palestinian Arab interests. 

Does one really need to point out that, however much one may revile a public figure, demonisation through distortion and malice turns such finger-pointers themselves into promoters of malicious hatred?