Pondering Profiling
ByA number of bloggers are discussing racial profiling at the moment. But what if the enemy is in disguise? Simon’s Brain ponders the imponderable!
What if the Hasidic guy was an Islamist in disguise? I knew the absurdity of what I was thinking but I also new I was onto something. The guy had a bag on the floor and a large rucksack on his back. I looked up to see his face. He was fairly dark skinned. I started wondering how dark Jewish people can be. I knew I was being stupid and ignorant and probably racist but the thoughts kept coming. Wouldn’t dressing as a Hasidic Jew be the perfect disguise? Who would ever stop you and check your bag? And what about all those mad clerics who believe in Zionist plots to take over the world? They’d have a field day when they saw the CCTV footage on the news. Oh brain, please, no more!
6 Comments
July 30th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
In Isreal a guy who blew up a bus was disguised as a religious Jew.
It happened there it can happen anyplace.
July 31st, 2005 at 2:43 am
Hassidic Isreali jews can be fairly dark skinned, though it is more unusual to see one in America than, say, in Israel.
July 31st, 2005 at 11:17 am
True. But Jews in general can be pretty dark-skinned, especially in the summer.
During my first year in Russia, when I learned to speak Russian by ear, very few Russians ever guessed I was from the UK. The nearest they got was France. But most thought I was from Georgia, Ukraine or one of the ‘stans!
August 1st, 2005 at 6:12 am
May 17, 2003 – A suicide bomber dressed as a religious Jew, and wearing an explosive belt, blew himself up in Hebron’s Gross Square, killing two Israeli civilians.
August 1st, 2005 at 11:29 am
Judaism is not an ethnicity per se. There are African Jews. There are Arab (Mizrahi) Jews. Westerners seem to think that all Jews look like Ashkenazis…but they don’t!
And don’t forget converts come in all colors…
August 1st, 2005 at 1:52 pm
And it’s also not easy to distinguish a Hassid from an ultraorthodox or orthodox “black-hatter”….