Jake Tapper: Jewish Community Fears Media Downplaying Attacks Because Killers Aren’t White Supremacists

CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper said Sunday that the Orthodox Jewish community believes the response to the recent wave of antisemitic attacks in New York City is inadequate because the suspects aren’t white supremacists.

A partial transcript is as follows: 

JAKE TAPPER:  It appears that many, if not most of these attacks, were allegedly carried out not by white supremacist, not by the alt-right, but people of color. What’s your response when members of the orthodox community say, and I’ve heard them say this and I’m sure you have too, that there would be more of an outrage if the attackers were white supremacists, and thus, fell more easily into a political narrative?

OREN SEGAL: I think again this is where investigations not only to bring perpetrators to justice who are carrying out these incidents, but to identify their motivations, right? In Jersey City, it was something beyond merely an African-American, right? It wasn’t representative of that community. It was someone who subscribed to a real antisemitic ideology. And so, when we’re thinking about the communities, we have to come together. That’s why at the ADL were are brining our “No Hate” educational programs to Brooklyn, doubling the amount of students that we are reaching out to because it starts at an early age to have an understanding and then to be allies for each other. So I don’t think we need to overstep and overanalyze what this means, but we have to get data and we have to understand the motivations before we jump to conclusions.