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fauxkloreI have two comments on the Mumbai terrorist attacks:
1) To some extent, this validates one of my theories about travel in the developing world. The hotels attacked were the Taj and the Oberoi, not the low to mid range places I favor. If you are going to target Westerners, you target them in places where there are Westerners.
2) The news stories (and the State Department travel advisory) both talk a lot about the terrorists having targeting Americans (and Britons). But I only saw very little that mentioned the attack on the Chabad center. (The Washington Post did report this, but still went short of saying that the terrorists were also targeting Jews.) The State Department talked about hotels, a railroad station, a restaurant, a hospital "and other places." As an American Jew who has gone to many synagogues in unlikely places in the world (e.g. Shabbat in Nairobi), this seems like important information to me.
By the way, Mumbai is home to one of two significant Jewish populations in India (along with Cochin, in the south), though most of the Bene Israel have emigrated to Israel. And there are a lot of Israeli tourists in Israel. I even remember seeing store / restaurant signs in Hebrew on the commercial area in Agra outside the Taj Mahal.
1) To some extent, this validates one of my theories about travel in the developing world. The hotels attacked were the Taj and the Oberoi, not the low to mid range places I favor. If you are going to target Westerners, you target them in places where there are Westerners.
2) The news stories (and the State Department travel advisory) both talk a lot about the terrorists having targeting Americans (and Britons). But I only saw very little that mentioned the attack on the Chabad center. (The Washington Post did report this, but still went short of saying that the terrorists were also targeting Jews.) The State Department talked about hotels, a railroad station, a restaurant, a hospital "and other places." As an American Jew who has gone to many synagogues in unlikely places in the world (e.g. Shabbat in Nairobi), this seems like important information to me.
By the way, Mumbai is home to one of two significant Jewish populations in India (along with Cochin, in the south), though most of the Bene Israel have emigrated to Israel. And there are a lot of Israeli tourists in Israel. I even remember seeing store / restaurant signs in Hebrew on the commercial area in Agra outside the Taj Mahal.
