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Probably Not Good for the Jews
Sep. 25th, 2009 09:55 amIt appears that the Westboro "Baptist" "Church" plans to demonstrate in my neighborhood tomorrow. More specifically, they plan to demonstrate outside the synagogue nearest my home, which my wife is a member of.
There's a Yahoo! group for parents who live in this part of Brooklyn, and it's been a-flutter with discussion about what, if anything, should be done about it. The initial suggestion of a counter-demonstration was pretty much shot down by those who pointed out that the Phelps family (a term which suggests to me certain parallels with the "Manson family") is a bunch of attention whores and that a counter-demonstration might be pretty much what the villains are trying to provoke.
I'm currently thinking that some sort of MST3K-style ridicule might be more effective, but I can't really figure out how to pull that off.
In vaguely related thoughts, it occurs to me that the timing of the currently-unravelling terrorist plot(s) in the US might be related to the Jewish holidays, as was hypothesized about the timing of 9/11. As you may recall, rumors circulated after the fact that thousands of Jews had not shown up for work at the World Trade Center on the day of the attacks. Though not true, the fact is that the attacks happened exactly a week before the Jewish High Holy days. The theory was that the rumor had been prepared in advance by those associated with the terrorists, who had originally planned to attack on the holiday itself, when many Jews would in fact have not been at work. According to this theory, the attack was moved up a week because the planners believed that the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui put the plan in jeopardy. After the attacks, the slander supposedly went ahead anyway.
There are certain holes in this hypothesis, including the lack of conclusive evidence that Moussaoui was actually connected to the attacks.
But the FBI is reported to believe that Najibullah Zazi was driving to New York to take part in planned attacks, possibly similar to the bombings of mass transit in Europe. And the timing is very close to Yom Kippur (which is next Monday), a day on which most Jews won't be commuting to work.
Which has at least got me wondering.
There's a Yahoo! group for parents who live in this part of Brooklyn, and it's been a-flutter with discussion about what, if anything, should be done about it. The initial suggestion of a counter-demonstration was pretty much shot down by those who pointed out that the Phelps family (a term which suggests to me certain parallels with the "Manson family") is a bunch of attention whores and that a counter-demonstration might be pretty much what the villains are trying to provoke.
I'm currently thinking that some sort of MST3K-style ridicule might be more effective, but I can't really figure out how to pull that off.
In vaguely related thoughts, it occurs to me that the timing of the currently-unravelling terrorist plot(s) in the US might be related to the Jewish holidays, as was hypothesized about the timing of 9/11. As you may recall, rumors circulated after the fact that thousands of Jews had not shown up for work at the World Trade Center on the day of the attacks. Though not true, the fact is that the attacks happened exactly a week before the Jewish High Holy days. The theory was that the rumor had been prepared in advance by those associated with the terrorists, who had originally planned to attack on the holiday itself, when many Jews would in fact have not been at work. According to this theory, the attack was moved up a week because the planners believed that the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui put the plan in jeopardy. After the attacks, the slander supposedly went ahead anyway.
There are certain holes in this hypothesis, including the lack of conclusive evidence that Moussaoui was actually connected to the attacks.
But the FBI is reported to believe that Najibullah Zazi was driving to New York to take part in planned attacks, possibly similar to the bombings of mass transit in Europe. And the timing is very close to Yom Kippur (which is next Monday), a day on which most Jews won't be commuting to work.
Which has at least got me wondering.
