Don’t let a hate crime ruin the season

Don’t let a hate crime ruin the season

As Judaism and Christianity prepare to celebrate the Hanukkah and Christmas seasons, a local woman was targeted in a hate crime.

A Hanukkah flag was burned at the home of a family in the Westlake Village portion of Thousand Oaks. Worse, one of the victims was a Holocaust survivor.

While we can’t ignore a hate crime, we hope Jews and Christians won’t let it spoil the season. And despite the perpetrator’s perverse sense of timing, we shouldn’t be surprised. Ignorance and hatred exist today, just as they did in Hitler’s Germany six and seven decades ago.

The ugly face of prejudice never seems to die.

Our sympathies go out, of course, to the victims and the Jewish community. But people of all faiths feel like victims, too. When people are hated just because of their religious beliefs, everyone loses. To despise others because of religion shows a thorough lack of compassion, grace and faith.

We must resist the temptation to hate the perpertrator just because he’s full of hatred. This is, after all, the time of year to remember the brighter, not darker, side of life.

Whoever committed the crime deserves our prayers because of his limited intellect and profound insensitivity. He, too, is a victim because of the way he was raised.

We pity him.