One may wonder why so many people would bother to complain to B’nai Brith when the police are the ones empowered to prosecute illegal acts.
by Jeff Goodall
And, what criteria does B’nai Brith use to evaluate anti-Semitic and hateful acts? Is a full enquiry made in each case, or is simple receipt of a phone call sufficient to up the statistics?
It is an improvement of sorts to see that such ‘incidents’ are now being referred to as “hate” rather than hate-crimes, as for a crime to have been committed, it is first necessary that charges be laid and a conviction obtained.Then again, this still leaves us with B’nai Brith’s definitions of “hate” and “anti-Semitism”. The two are inextricably linked, and it has been suggested that while the term “anti-Semitic” used to mean someone who doesn’t like Jews, it is now used to refer to someone the Jews don’t like; it is used liberally as a general-purpose smear against anyone critical of Israel.