An elderly Muslim woman, Nazma Khanam, is brutally stabbed to death in New York, but it is not a hate crime. A few weeks earlier, in the same neighborhood, two Muslim Imams are singled out and executed in broad daylight, but it is not a hate crime. Three Muslim college students are murdered in North Carolina, but it is not a hate crime. Syrian families are obliterated by crude bombs made from explosives-filled barrels laced with metal fragments, nails and chlorine gas, but it is not a hate crime. Yemeni civilians are bombed in schools, hospitals, marketplaces, and their homes, but it not a hate crime. Innocent Palestinians are preparing for another winter living in the shell of their bombed out homes nervously awaiting the next political pretext that will send tons of explosive ordinance raining down upon them, but it won’t be a hate crime. President Obama is in Laos refusing to apologize for the two million tons of explosives, including two hundred and seventy million cluster bomblets, dropped on that country, but that was not a hate crime.

EVERY MURDER of an innocent human being, be that in Africa, Asia, Europe or the Americas, is a hate crime! Every act of profit-driven war is a hate crime! Instead of hating each other and then making pathetic excuses to justify translating that hatred into homicide, we need to start hating that part of us that rationalizes our hatred. Anyone unwilling to step back and do that is a hate criminal.