“Jews don’t give out candy…”
“Jews don’t give out candy…”

Naturally, I started getting these questions…as to where is my column to express shock, horror and indignation for the murderous attack against Muslims in New Zealand.

Well here it is.

I condemn, absolutely, and would have done so immediately, to join up with the rest of the heartbroken world…actually I had already started typing…but then something else happened.

In Israel, hours after New Zealand, a young Israeli, Gal Keidan, was murdered by a Palestinian Muslim terrorist, many more wounded, and I paused to wait for the same kind of world reaction…just waiting for the big wide world to wrap its loving arms around Israel at this, its own time of peril and grieving.

We Jews start counting our murdered dead from Six Million onwards. Well, I do.
But nothing like that for the Israeli victim…and if that’s because the numbers don’t equate…50 at the mosque…one at the Ariel Junction…please, don’t even try.

Don’t even try to play numbers with me. We Jews start counting our murdered dead from Six Million onwards. Well, I do.

The documentation here for accounts going back years and into synagogues where rabbis and worshippers were slaughtered…and Arafat and Abbas still got standing ovations at the UN.  

Followed by justifications on CNN, the BBC and The New York Times.  

But the lack of tearful world reaction for Gal Keidan did not stop me from going ahead with New Zealand, and I was ready to give it another go – when something else happened.

This time it happened in Gaza. Palestinian Arabs were celebrating the murder of the 19-year-old Gal Keidan…laughing, honking horns, waving flags and giving out candy.

I do not know when this started, but you will know a people by its customs.

So again I paused…if only to wonder if Jews in Israel, or anywhere, give out candy when Muslims lose life and limb. Do we justify?

There wasn’t much to ponder. The answer is NEVER.

I take it upon myself to speak for all Jews, everywhere, to say that no Jew would ever celebrate such a thing.

It is not done…not done among our people…and upon this we are entirely united.

We are not permitted to express joy at another’s misfortune…it is Biblical and Rabbinic…and even otherwise, it is simply not in our DNA or how we were raised, secular or religious.

So again, I went back to finish up my column on New Zealand, but my mood was different.

Agitation got the best of me.

Because while I was busy condemning the New Zealand atrocity a third and fourth time, I was troubled to find myself without the right frame of mind, I mean in order to condemn properly.

In prose, even outrage needs elegance…to be effective.

You need a sense of both cool-headed and hot-headed righteousness to make your case believable, and I do believe that this act of mass murder in New Zealand was unconscionable.

To believe otherwise is blasphemous.

Aren’t we all repelled by such acts of terrorism?

Apparently not.

They are still giving out candy in Gaza as I write.

I intend to be more forceful and coherent in expressing my horror for the loss of life in New Zealand.

Count on me being up to the task once the candy festivals in Gaza and elsewhere come to an end.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.

He is the author of the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal.” His latest is the newsroom drama “News Anchor Sweetheart.” His Inside Journalism thriller, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” is being prepared for the movies. Contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Website: www.jackengelhard.com