When Inciting Murder Gets a Pass
(This is an expanded version of an article that appeared in the August 31 edition of The Jewish Press.)
The word “incitement” has legal significance in countries including Germany, Israel, and the United Kingdom. To call certain speech incitement, particularly in such countries, implies a desire for state action against the individual so described.
Claims of incitement often appear in commentary by Sarah Tuttle-Singer, new media editor for The Times of Israel. For example, in June 2016 Ashkenazi chief rabbi David Lau spoke supportively about rebuilding the Beit HaMikdash. Tuttle-Singer posted that “what Rabbi Lau says IS incitement.” (During the Nine Days that year, she posted a blog titled “I don’t want to rebuild the Temple.” On Tisha b’Av, Tuttle-Singer referred to “Palestinian yearning” and posted a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, who said “The martyrs were right” upon resigning from the PLO executive committee in 1993 over the Oslo Accords.)
This April, Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich said a person convicted of attacking a soldier “deserved a bullet, at the very least to the kneecap.” Tuttle-Singer wrote, “This is incitement,” referring again to incitement in August.
So why did she allow repeated incitement to murder on her Facebook page this year?
In a post on January 7, 2018, Tuttle-Singer called for an involuntary 72-hour psychiatric hold on President Trump. She commented in a subsequent thread, “I think it’s morally irresponsible not to question his mental fitness at this point.”
About an hour later, the next response on that thread was:
Wolff added shortly after:
“Tie him to a stake and burn the mother******… on live TV preferably!”
He commented elsewhere on the post:
“This guy needs to be taken out.”
Wolff — whose website notes him being “a voting member of the Grammys in four categories” — doesn’t think much of America in general. Here was another pair of comments:
What was Tuttle-Singer’s response to the above? Silence. She was also silent when Wolff commented on a post from August 17 of last year:
After Wolff’s first two statements on the January 7 post, Tuttle-Singer responded twice on the same thread to other people. It’s therefore beyond unlikely she didn’t see what he wrote. Tuttle-Singer even hat-tipped Wolff in a post on August 2.
Wolff’s desire to see America’s elected head of state murdered is part of a vicious climate. Compare what he wrote with recent news like the Oregon art gallery that depicted the president’s throat being slashed.
Sarah Tuttle-Singer turned a blind eye to brazen incitement and revealed a fundamental phoniness. Was it because she also wants to see President Trump “Jimmy Hoffa’d”?
