Murder Victim Relieved: Killer Just Anti-Zionist, Not Antisemitic

“Anti-Zionism is totally different – it just takes those tropes and replaces ‘Jewish’ with ‘Zionist’ and that makes it OK.”

Southfield, March 14 – A woman killed in a massacre at a synagogue issued a metaphorical exhalation today upon learning that the man who took her life in a shooting attack, a radicalized anti-Israel activist, targeted her house of worship not because he bore specific animus to Jews as Jews, necessarily, but because he associated the venue with support for Israel, and that somehow makes her death better.

Sharon Friedman, 50, succumbed to gunshot wounds yesterday that she suffered when Muhammad Shati, 30, entered Congregation Ohel Abraham Saturday morning in this Detroit suburb and opened fire. He killed four people and injured sixteen before taking his own life. Police discovered recent social media posts by Shati trafficking in anti-Zionist content and accusations, calling for violence against Zionist institutions and demanding changes in American foreign policy toward the Jewish State. Those discoveries led Friedman, whose soul departed her body Tuesday afternoon, to express relief that at least her killer didn’t target her for her Judaism.

“I have to say I’m a little less anxious now,” acknowledged the dead Friedman, who leaves behind a husband and four children. “It would have been much more problematic to find out he was just an antisemite. We’ve suffered so much at the hands of antisemites, and that’s such a dangerous ideology. At least it was merely an anti-Zionist attack. I was so worried there for a while.”

Friedman added that the disturbing implications of the attack targeting Jews per se, and not Zionists, would have given her nightmares if she were still capable of having them in her current moribund state. “Antisemitism takes you to all sorts of dark places. The violence, even just the threat of violence, all aimed at undermining Jewish security and sense of place in the world – I just didn’t want to have to go there. It’s a worldview that invokes and evokes so many evil things, so many corrupt and treacherous tropes about Jewish power, Jewish supremacy, and the need to limit Jewish political rights because they infringe on the rights of others. Anti-Zionism is totally different – it just takes those tropes and replaces ‘Jewish’ with ‘Zionist’ and that makes it OK.”

Community figures have yet to disclose whether, when paying respects to the Friedman family at the funeral or Shiva, they will attempt to console the widower, orphans, children-in-law, and bereaved sister by pointing out that at least she was killed by an anti-Zionist and not an antisemite.

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