Jews Get First Glimpse of Hate Crime

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5:23 PM, Aug 2, 2009 • By MICHAEL GOLDFARB

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This is kind of an amazing statement by Isabel Kershner writing in the New York Times:

Separately, in Tel Aviv on Sunday the police continued hunting for a gunman who fled after killing two Israelis and injured 10 others at a center for young gays and lesbians on Saturday night. The shock over the attack was felt far beyond the gay and lesbian community in Israel, jolting a society that largely values tolerance and has been little exposed to the specter of hate crimes.

Yes, what would the people who survived the Holocaust, the best efforts of their Arab neighbors to drive them into the sea, and daily acts of Islamic terrorism know about hate crimes? Apparently the murder of Jewish women and children on buses and in pizza parlors and at nightclubs counts not as a "hate crime," but as what? Legitimate resistance?

Is there any country in the world that has been more exposed to the specter of hate crimes than Israel?