Recently a Gazan mother of six was imprisoned for 23 days, and possibly tortured, by Hamas before being released. Meanwhile, Ahed Tamimi, a young West Bank Palestinian who was arrested after physically assaulting two IDF soldiers, is serving an eight-month sentence in an Israeli jail. Bassam Tawil contrasts the two cases:

Tamimi has, since [her arrest], become a symbol of the Palestinian “struggle” against Israel. She is glorified by many in the mainstream media in the West and by advocates of Palestinian human rights around the world, who have turned her into an icon. Tamimi has won all this fame and glory because she and her family members have long been staging skirmishes with Israeli soldiers in their village of Nabi Saleh. The teenager and her parents have made it a habit to invite journalists—or anyone carrying a camera—to document their provocative actions against the soldiers.

Abu Ghayyath, however, the woman from the Gaza Strip, has been less fortunate than the golden girl from the West Bank. Unlike Tamimi’s arrest, [hers] did not spark an international outcry. . . . Had Abu Ghayyath been arrested by Israel, her name would have appeared on the front pages of the New York Times and in the broadcasts of the BBC and CNN. The only ones who picked up her ordeal and demanded her release, however, were a few Palestinian women’s groups and, of course, her family. Predictably, only a handful of Palestinians—and no Westerners—dared to denounce Hamas for arresting the woman.

Even after Abu Ghayyath’s release, it remains unclear why Hamas’s security forces arrested her in the first place. Some Palestinians speculated that she could have been taken into custody because of her affiliation with Hamas’s rivals in Fatah, the secular faction headed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmud Abbas. Others believe she may have been arrested because of her activities on behalf of women’s rights in the Gaza Strip.

This is yet another reminder of the dangerous double standard of the international community. Where are all those who claim to be “pro-Palestinian” and are spewing hatred against Israel and Jews on college campuses in the U.S. and Canada? If they really want to help the Palestinians, let them stand up and shout about the rights of women and gays living under Hamas’s repressive regime, and journalists who are being harassed and arrested by Mahmud Abbas’s security forces. Yelling lies about Israel and Jews does not make one “pro-Palestinian.” It only makes one an Israel-hater. Hating Israel does not [protect the] the human rights [of] Palestinians living under Hamas and Fatah. Instead, it serves as a distraction and even facilitates Fatah and Hamas in suppressing public freedoms and human rights.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.