First we saw the Boston tussle, then came last weekend’s spectacle in Chicago, and now we have this report out of South Florida.  Two incidents in two days (via CBS 4 Miami):

For the second time in as many days, messages of hate targeted members of South Florida’s Jewish community. Early Monday morning, spray painted swastikas and the word “Hamas” were discovered on the pillars in front of the Congregation Torah Ve’emunah... “It was the worst thing that one wants to see on his own place of worship,” said a member of the temple. A member of the community watch discovered the vandalism around 1 a.m. “As I was rolling by I noticed some coloring on the wall,” said Yona Lunger. “I back up again, looked again and I said ‘wow, it’s a swastika’. It’s very disturbing, very disturbing.” On Saturday, a family who lives along Meridian Avenue in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Miami Beach found their cars had been vandalized as they left to attend a service at their synagogue. “They wrote “Hamas” on the back of the car window and they wrote “Jew,’” said Joshua, who didn’t want us to publish his last name.

Why might a Jewish victim of anti-Semitic vandalism be wary about giving his name to the press?  Perhaps he saw these reports out of supposedly advanced Western societies:

An 18-year-old Jewish man claimed on Friday he had been punched in the face in an unprovoked attack while wearing a skull cap in the centre of Berlin, in what would be the second such incident in less than a week. Police had to step in to protect an Israeli tourist couple from protesters who charged at them shouting “Jew! We’ll get you”…One Facebook page created in the last week, entitled Jeunes Revolutionnaires Francais, or Young French Revolutionaries, posted the names, photographs and addresses of 32 French Jews encouraging members to target them. After the picture of one young man seen wearing a skullcap was put up, he was attacked in his home in the Paris suburbs on Thursday evening by a group of masked men with iron bars.The group, which picked up 2,000 followers and more than 1,500 “likes”, was taken down on Friday night after it was reported to the social network.

The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein says Facebook was warned about the group before its call to violence was acted upon, but only took the page down after someone was beaten with iron bars by masked thugs.  The social network also initially declined to delete a community group called “Death to zionst [sic] baby killer israeli Jews,” but eventually relented under pressure.  For the record, I’m generally not a fan of bans and boycotts, but violent threats and ethnic cleansing advocacy cross a bright line.  Bye:

Last week, pro-Hamas forces at the United Nations repeatedly accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against Gazans — a common refrain from conspiratorial and historically-illiterate Israel haters.  Jonah Goldberg eviscerated this slander in a recent column:

The Palestinian population has grown more than 100 percent since 1970. The population in the Gaza Strip has grown nearly threefold since 1990. The Palestinians themselves expect the population to double over the next two decades. “Genocide” is a loaded political term, but under any remotely reasonable definition, shouldn’t those numbers be going the other way? It’s just a hunch, but if the Israelis wanted to wipe out as many Palestinians as possible, never mind commit genocide, they probably wouldn’t issue warnings to Gazans (by phone and leaflet) to get out of harm’s way. Nor would Israel continue to allow hundreds of trucks of food and medical aid to enter Gaza even as hundreds of rockets leave Gaza.

The least “successful,” ahem, “genocide” in human history.  But still, why must Israel attack ‘civilian’ targets, leading to a ‘disproportionate’ body count?  Because Hamas intentionally runs its operations out of hospitals, schools and private homes — and urges its innocents to disregard Israeli warnings and serve as human shields.  The Jerusalem Post quotes a senior IDF source who explains how the terrorist organization’s tactics deliberately erase distinctions between “daily life” and “military infrastructure,” which he describes as “totally interwoven.”  On that score, here’s a handy “bomb-making at home” Hamas manual IDF forces have discovered upon raiding private residences:

Palestinian leaders and the international media (this example is particularly egregious) were quick to blame Israel for lethal explosions at a hospital and a refugee camp in Gaza today, but the IDF says both shells were Hamas misfires.  The Israeli military released a map depicting the points of impact of dozens of Hamas rockets landing within the Gaza strip.  According to the IDF, these payloads were intended for Israel’s civilians, but rained down on Gazans instead:

Hamas aims for Israel, but its rockets have hit Gaza over 100 times in 9 days. pic.twitter.com/O1fJ5YYF23

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 16, 2014

I’ll leave you with links to Israeli and American officials warning of an unfolding crisis in relations between our two countries.  Israeli leaders are livid with US Secretary of State John Kerry for undermining Egypt’s reasonable ceasefire effort, instead embracing a plan that is heavily slanted in Hamas’ favor. (The “Kerry ruined everything” assessment comes from Israel’s leading left-leaning newspaper).  Obama administration officials are furious with their Israeli counterparts for…criticizing the Obama administration.  You know who else is “fuming” at Kerry for scuttling the Egyptian deal?  Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.  Yes, Team Smart Power has managed to rankle both Netanyahu and Abbas by choosing to team up with representatives from Qatar and Turkey — whose leader just offered this magnanimous gesture to Jews in his country:

Erdogan asks Turkey Jews to condemn Israel, but says ‘won’t get hurt’ if they don’t http://t.co/rnrNCkwMua — Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) July 28, 2014

In a statement to the public earlier today, the Israeli Prime Minister reiterated that Israel’s current military campaign will not end until they’ve destroyed Hamas’ infiltration tunnels.