We are certainly gratified by the apparent meeting of the minds between the Jewish and Black communities in Crown Heights. Although we are not as sanguine as some as to how far along the process is, anything that will serve to heal the terrible breach that was revealed in the pogroms there in 1991 against Jews by rampaging blacks is to the good. The apparent rapproachment between the families of Yankel Rosenbaum and Gavin Cato is certainly a good start. But we were dismayed at the take of some in the media.

The initial story in The New York Post on the Crown Heights developments began with “The families of the two innocent victims in the Crown Heights riots plan to meet for the first time today in a powerful gesture of peace 10 years after the bloody melee tore apart the city.” Gavin Cato was the victim of a tragic accident not the Crown Heights riots. Yankel Rosenbaum was the victim of the riots that followed the accident. These were riots that exposed a vicious hatred in the black community for things Jewish. Gavin Cato did not die because someone hated him and wanted to kill him!

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The word accident does not even appear in the Post story until the 15th paragraph!

As for The New York Times?:

For two days … and nights hundreds of black teenagers rampaged unchecked, burning police cars, looting, hurling bottles and beating people. Blacks and Jews clashed as the police stood by.”

Blacks and Jews clashed? No. Roving mobs targeted Jews for attack because they were Jews.

Incredibly, The Times illustrated its story with one picture of a sole black teenager being subdued by a phalanx of police officers with the caption “A man was taken into custody … after the first night of disturbances.” Another picture was of dozens of Hasidic looking men being restrained by police carrying the caption, “On August 20, 1991, the police tried to restrain residents of Crown Heights from clashing with a nearby group of black residents.”

The 1991 Crown Heights story was of a single black being subdued and the police restraining a mob of Jews?

But, you know, what else is new?

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