Riots in Ferguson, USA -- A Quiet Murder in Miami
Riots in Ferguson, USA -- A Quiet Murder in Miami

Bloody riots continue in Ferguson, Mo, after the killing of a black teenager, but all is quiet in Miami after the murder of a visiting rabbi.

Obama is on the case. Eric Holder has been dispatched to the St. Louis suburb to personally take charge of the investigation as to what led to the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who prior to being shot was caught in the act of strong-arming a convenience store worker. This is on tape and has been broadcast widely.

Dozens of arrests have been made during the nearly two weeks of violent unrest and looting.

Windows have been smashed. Businesses are padlocked. Schools are closed. A city is burning. The president has asked for calm from both sides, from the rioters and from the police, which places those who break the law and those who protect the law on the same footing.

From outside of town in New York, where he doubles as Gotham’s mayor, Al Sharpton quickly got dressed and arrived on the Ferguson scene promptly.

A grand jury is scheduled to begin hearings.

The officer has been identified, but remains in seclusion, perhaps for his safety. We don’t know his side of the story. We don’t know what happened.

That’s for Holder and his 50 lawyers to find out, plus the grand jury, in addition to multiple probes underway from local, county and state authorities.

When a group of Black Panthers intimidated white voters in Philadelphia, Holder saw no reason to intervene or investigate.

Today in Ferguson people on the street and even people in high places are calling for the police officer’s blood. On this, The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley: “The real difficulty, speaking [for myself] as a black man, is not about being shot by police, but being shot by other black men. This is about black behavior.”

 A week before Ferguson, Missouri, something else happened…

From Miami, there is still no word on who shot and killed Rabbi Joseph Raksin. The Brooklyn rabbi, 60, father of six children, a leader at New York’s Crown Heights Orthodox Community, was murdered in broad daylight as he was walking to Sabbath services in the neighborhood of Miami-Dade’s Congregation Torah V’Emunah.

Two suspects remain at large. The rabbi’s kin insist that the killing was a hate crime. Police refuse to name it as such. They say it was a robbery gone bad – unlikely on the Sabbath when pious Jews carry no money; information well in hand among inner-city criminals.

At the time of the cold-blooded murder, swastikas appeared at the entrances to Torah V’Emunah. That could be a hint – one would imagine.

The Miami Herald reports: “It is not surprising, thus, that the murder of Rabbi Raksin has sent shudders through the Jewish community in South Florida. Local sensitivities have been heightened by the open displays of anti-Semitism around the world and here at home sparked by the fighting in Gaza.”

In response to the attack upon one of its own, Jews have not rioted.

There has been handwringing, letters to the editor, tears at Chabad-Lubavitch, but no marches, no protests, no demonstrations, no cries for blood. From among the neighborhood’s Jewish residents, there has been no looting, no smashing into shops and stores, no cars burned or overturned.

No Jewish leader the likes of Al Sharpton rushed to the scene with fiery speeches.

There will be no federal probe and there will be no grand jury and there is no disturbance across the land for the murder of a single Jewish person.

Obama, we are told, may have expressed a word of denunciation, but he has not sent his attorney general to investigate the rabbi’s wanton killing.

Holder is in Ferguson, Missouri. This, and only this, is what counts. Only this is important.

Holder and Obama are true to their druthers and proclivities. Race is the only thing and race is everything.

There were headlines for Rabbi Raksin for a day, perhaps two, but then all was forgotten.

The story dropped out of sight…along with American decency and justice.

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. New from the novelist, the anti-BDS thriller Compulsive. Website: www.jackengelhard.com