Reuters correspondents on the edge of their seats to determine if murder of Jewish children is racist or "political"

Following the shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse France this morning which killed a rabbi and his two young children, another child, and left many others wounded, Reuters reports with a curious twist:

With the attacker still on the loose, police stepped up a manhunt in the city of a million people in southwestern France and prosecutors opened anti-terrorism investigations, although it was not clear whether the motive was political or racist.

How might the deliberate targeting and slaughter of Jewish children be other than racist?

Well, if the raison d'etre of the news agency for which you work is to rationalize all terror and hate crimes targeting Jews worldwide as an aggrieved and understandable response to perceived injustices committed by the Jewish state of Israel, it stands to reason that you will wait to see if perhaps an Arab, an Iranian-national, or a Muslim generally, was responsible for the attack.

If so, you can always seek to mitigate the despicable nature of the crime by claiming that the motive was political.

If you happen to have been born Jewish, like Jeffrey Heller or Maayan Lubell, you can also deceive yourself into believing that Jews are not being targeted for merely being Jewish, but for the political policies of successive Israeli governments.

This is an essential defense mechanism if you're going to work at Reuters.