TERROR ON THE AIRLINE?: Was Thursday's LAX shooting terrorism, a hate crime, or neither? Really, who cares? It was a tragedy in which a crazy man shot and killed two innocent people. Yes, it appears that since the shooter was a man of Middle Eastern descent who both slammed Israel to co-workers and demanded that a neighbor take down their American flag after 9/11, it can't quite be a coincidence that he chose El Al employees to shoot at. The killer apparently has no known links to either Al-Qaida or any of the Palestininian terrorist organizations, bringing up the question of whether it was simply an anti-Semitic killing. But is this shooting a bigger tragedy because the killer was allegedly motivated by anti-Semitism, as opposed to something else? This is the fallacy of thinking related to "hate crimes"- no hate crimes law would've prevented this double-murder, because since the killer was clearly not deterred by the fact that murder is illegal, why would he be deterred by a hate crimes law? Of course, the killer was thankfully shot by security guards, so the idea of punishment is now superfluous.
Posted by Stephen Silver at July 7, 2002 10:32 AMi think you should hurt the man who wrote this everyone should care who did it and what it was for. so pooh on you lol hahahaha i'm white your not
Posted by: krystal and liz at May 16, 2005 11:42 AM