By Promoting False Narrative of Rising Anti-Semitism Due to Trump Victory, Media Created the Very Incentives for the JCC Hoaxers to Make Their Threats

Yup.

Police sources told Haaretz that the [Israeli-American teenaged JCC bomb hoaxer's] main goal appears to have been obtaining media coverage. He had been making bomb threats for at least two years, against a wide variety of targets in several different countries, and after every such threat, he would monitor the media. If the threat didn’t provoke much response, he would lose interest in that target and try again somewhere else. But if the threat did create a media stir, he'd start targeting similar institutions in the same general locale in the hope of producing a similar media buzz.

For most of the last two years–during which he threatened targets like shopping malls and airlines, as well as Jewish institutions in countries like Australia, New Zealand, and America–his threats produced little media coverage, so he didn't repeat them. But after Trump's election, he suddenly hit pay dirt. Threats against U.S. Jewish institutions fit right into the American Jewish community's loudly proclaimed narrative that the election had empowered right-wing anti-Semites, epitomized by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s ludicrous assertion that U.S. anti-Semitism was now at a level unseen since 1930s Germany. Moreover, such threats fit right into the broader left-wing narrative that Trump’s election had empowered white supremacists, racists and other right-wing hate groups.

Consequently, whereas anti-Semitic acts received little media coverage during President Barack Obama's tenure, they suddenly began receiving massive media attention following Trump's election–not just in America, but worldwide. The result, given the teen’s longstanding modus operandi, was inevitable: For the past few months, the Israeli police sources said, he has focused all his energy on threatening Jewish institutions in the U.S., because he knew that would create the media outcry he wanted.

There's more, too: Obama never pushed for an escalation in the investigation, even though most of this happened under his watch. Trump did, and pushed additional resources into the probe, and caught the guy.

posted by Ace at 03:20 PM

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