Yes, if she chose to walk alone through a bad part of town, if she chose to get drunk with strangers, if she met someone online and then invited him to come to her apartment and to get rough with her so she could live out some fantasy, yes, I would hold her accountable, in part, for getting raped.
And yes, when groups hate Jews or hate America, I ask, what did Jews do, what did America do, to bring on the hate, and then I would ask what we could do to reduce the hate.
REPORT: The next question from Groll was far more problematic.
The Swedish journalist asked the Israeli Ambassador: “Do the Jews themselves have any responsibility in the growing anti-Semitism that we see now?”
“My response?” Bachman said, “I told her ‘I reject this question completely.’”
“But she did not grab this chance to move on,” Bachman said. “She failed to grab this opportunity to retreat.”
Indeed, Groll kept shooting, “why?” when Bachman responded that “there is no place for such a question to be asked.”
As Groll began talking over Bachman, asking him to “tell me then, explore with me why is that a question of…” Bachman finally silenced her, by putting the situation in terms that she would be better able to understand.
He said, his voice becoming firmer and louder until Groll finally stopped talking: “To ask the question of whether a woman contributes to being raped is irrelevant altogether. I don’t think there is a provocation that the Jews are doing. They just exist.”
