You know people are seriously suffering from self-pity when a story like this one comes along.
AMSTERDAM — As mourners marched on Friday to commemorate the death of a Moroccan man during an alleged bag snatch, multicultural institute Forum urged Moroccan immigrants in Amsterdam to stop portraying themselves as victims.
Forum spokesman Halim el Madkouri said Moroccans are not victims and should stop blaming the rest of Dutch society for everything, newspaper De Volkskrant reported.
His comments came after El B. was killed on Monday night after he and an accomplice allegedly stole a bag from a woman's car. The motorist reversed her car to try and reclaim the bag, but collided with the mens' scooter and crushed the victim up against a tree.
Outrage erupted in Amsterdam East around the scene of El B.'s death as many people from the immigrant community claimed that the 43-year-old woman killed the 19-year-old on purpose. They claim it was evidence that Moroccans are victims of serious injustice in the Netherlands.
Gee, do you think the fact that El B.'s instigation of a purse-snatching just might have had something to do with the unfortunate manner in which he met his end? What's all this nonsense about "serious injustice" then? One would think Moroccan criminals were owed special consideration in light of their ethnicity or something, listening to these complaints.
More on the death of Moroccan purse-snatcher Ali El Bejjati can be found here. I think what we have here is a case of an immigrant community bent on doing its utmost to further alienate the majority in its host nation; there's just no other way for me to interpret the absurd overreaction to the death of a hoodlum who'd still be alive today had he not been bent on violating another citizen's rights.
"Gee, do you think the fact that El B.'s instigation of a purse-snatching just might have had something to do with the unfortunate manner in which he met his end? What's all this nonsense about "serious injustice" then?"
I would have thought that the death penalty is a penalty which doesn't fit the crime, there is in injustice in that. Merely because someone commits a crime doesn't mean the victim can give up any due care responsibilities that they have.
"One would think Moroccan criminals were owed special consideration in light of their ethnicity or something, listening to these complaints."
Well they do, because they are an ethnic minority so they will suffer disproportionally from any prejudice that exists in a society, which the majorities will not.
The problem with predjudice is that it is not always declared. Geert Wilders would most likely respond to this crime differently if the roles were reversed, but I'm sure he would deny that predjudice is his motivator.
Posted by: Factory | January 22, 2005 at 08:18 PM
"I would have thought that the death penalty is a penalty which doesn't fit the crime, there is in injustice in that."
I don't see that there's anything ethnically unfair about this particular "injustice", as it isn't as if she's had her purse snatched by multiple people and only decided to ram down the Moroccan thief.
Besides, I firmly believe that a person should have the right to use all force necessary to secure his life and property from thieves, and if that means the occasional crook ends up dead, I don't see anything wrong with it; that'll teach the criminally minded to think twice before acting on their desires. We aren't talking about state-inflicted punishment here, so notions of proportionality of crime and punishment aren't at all fitting; if some punk who went into a record store to steal records got fatally shot in the back as he was running out, I wouldn't call it "murder" either.
Posted by: Abiola Lapite | January 22, 2005 at 08:23 PM
"Well they do, because they are an ethnic minority so they will suffer disproportionally from any prejudice that exists in a society, which the majorities will not."
That is all the more reason for them to go out of their way to keep their noses out of crime, as the blunt reality is that a prejudiced majority will *not* cut them slack on crime if they choose to participate in it, whatever they might wish to the contrary.
Posted by: Abiola Lapite | January 22, 2005 at 08:25 PM