The world didn't like the spectacle of three Israeli students, three innocent Jews, shot ten times and then abandoned in a field by their "partners in peace".
They didn't want to see the new face of anti-Semitism, the fact that tiny Israel is still plagued with pogroms and blood libels.
They didn't want to hear the story of a young Jewish woman, Shelly Dadon, who turned out to have been murdered by an Israeli Arab.
But they enjoyed the news of a Jewish gang - of three - which killed an Arab teen (even if the case is still under scrutiny and investigation and the leader seems to be mentally ill).
Because everybody knows (but doesn't want to admit), that the world gloats at the idea of Jewish assassins. This month brought the harvest of hate, the old Passover libels of Jews killing non Jews to make matzah. "Jewish bestiality", "Jewish barbarism".
A kind of catharsis, a purification if you will, of the Western conscience.
A few days later, Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem….All major Israel cities were again under a rocket offensive from Hamas-controlled Gaza. There were buildings damaged, schools and synagogues targetted, cities and towns terrorized.
But Israel as the most heavily bombed nation in the world never makes the headlines.
The front pages are all for the Israeli military operations and the Arab casualties. Look at Western television these days and you will see only Palestinian hospitals with dead and wounded.
70% of Israeli children in the Negev show symptoms of trauma, while thousands of children carry physical disabilities from Islamic bombs. But nobody cares.
There are children who want to constantly stay inside the bunkers, or in the secured rooms of their homes. There are children who don’t get out of bed anymore. Many people have had their hearing impaired because they live close to the siren. But nobody knows of them.
The conflict is embodied by an Arab mother in her niqab, Islamic veil, complaining about her son's fate, but proud of his martyrdom.
In Munich, 1972, the cowboy hats and the kefiyyehs of the Arab kidnappers, and their long hair similar to European university students, diverted attention from the simple reality: a band of terrorists slaughtered, one by one, 11 Israeli athletes. 11 Jews.
But the world loved seeing the Israeli reaction, the killing of the Palestinian butchers by Mossad agents.
And the world loved seeing the images of the Israeli agents killing al Mahbouh in a Dubai hotel. They didn't want to see what the Hamas operative had done to his Jewish victims.
The world breathed a sigh of relief when Dr. Baruch Goldstein killed over twenty Muslims in the Cave of Patriarchs. A Jewish doctor slaughtering Arabs in prayer.
The world had no time or emotion for Hevron's horrific trials of 1993. A girl raised there, Chava Waksberg, was murdered in February. The yeshiva student Erez Shmuel was murdered on his way to worship at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in May. The alley leading toward the tomb carries his name. Igor Gorgol was murdered in August.
On December 6, Muslim terrorists gunned down Mordechai Lapid, one of Goldstein's closest friends, as he was driving out through the town's gate. Dr. Goldstein rushed to his friend and tried to revive him for forty minutes, long after it was medically hopeless. Mordechai's son Shalom also died of his wounds that day. Aaron Gross was kidnapped and stabbed, waiting on a Hevron corner for his ride from yeshiva, and Dr. Goldstein identified the body in an Arab hospital, where he bled to death and was stabbed repeatedly.
Last week, the killing of an Arab teen and the airstrikes in Gaza gave the world the chance to remove from its conscience that moral ailment - those three young Jews kidnapped and shot at close range because they were Jews. The world needs Jewish killers. It needs blood libels such as Al Dura.
The world needs the figure of the Arab child as the iconic victim of Israel. It is an archaic form of anti-Semitism: Jews kill children, don’t they?
It is witchcraft, the representation of the Jew as the Master Criminal. As morally equivalent,to their persecutors, if not worse.
When the kidnapping of the Israeli teens was announced, candy was handed out in Ramallah in celebration. The global Western citizen was also present, with a big and hypocritical smile.