On the Jewish Journal website blog, in a blog post titled "Yesterday''s terrorist is today''s statesman, Another view of the Itamar murders,” writer Jordan Elgrably brings the classic bait and switch- taking a brutal murder and using it as an opportunity to talk about everything wrong with Israel from the founding of the State to its treatment of his Sephardic ancestors at the hands of Ashkenazim. He takes the murder out of context and justifies it using a post modern point of view that there are two sides to every story. As if we cannot simply condemn an act of violence without searching for a way to heap on ourselves guilt for perhaps creating the cause and bringing it on ourselves. It cannot be bad because in fact, we are worse.It is the same mentality of blaming the victim that was used for years to denigrate rape victims and justify racism. When someone would say that the woman was dressed like a “slut” or a black man was being “uppity”- they were saying that they (the victim) caused this horrible thing to happen to themselves. It is no different to look at the Fogel family, asleep in their beds and say that they dared to live somewhere that people would be prefer to be “Jew Free” and therefore they got what’s coming to them.In an inexplicable comparison, Elgrably states " ...if we want to deplore the deaths of innocent civilians, let us also remember that more than 1,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, many of them women and children, during the 2008-2009 Israeli attack (13 Israeli soldiers died).”The irony (which I assume is unintended- and an example of tremendous ignorance on the side of the writer and the Jewish Journal) is that the Fogel family left their home in Gaza (most likely against their better judgment) as part of the disengagement in 2005 in compliance with the government and its effort to create a lasting peace in the region. They endured both losing their home and watching it turn into a hotbed for Islamo-facist terrorism. The same war which Elgrably insists on bringing up only happened because Gazans chose not to use the opportunity to create a thriving economy or build their country. Instead they decided to fire bombs on innocent civilians until Israel was forced to respond.The Fogel Family''s real sin, it seems, was choosing to live in Itamar in the West Bank. They were “settlers.” According to many, this is reason enough to justify their murder. Does refusing to be ethnically cleansed from the West Bank along with Gaza really mean that every Jew who lives there deserves to die? Would this double standard hold up anywhere else or under any other circumstances? Lastly, do we really need to bring up everything that Israel has ever done wrong in the time of a national tragedy?This era of self flagellation has to end. If you would like to do something for the surviving Fogel children, go to www.obstacletopeace.weebly.com and buy a t-shirt or make a donation. All of the money goes directly to the children for their future.