"Arbeit Macht Frei" sign stolen from Auschwitz

Wow. There's a replica already in place, but that's just really disturbing.

more hate crimes

News of two (actually, more, but I'll pass on two) arrived in my inbox today from the SPLC.

Coeur d'Alene's Human Rights Education Institute is the target of another hate crime. The staff found a swastika Thursday morning taped on the front door.

The sticker is just the latest in a series of incidents against the institute and staff that work there. A few months ago, the executive director found a noose on her front yard. Over the weekend, someone set off the building's alarm.

And,

A prominent member of a Canadian neo-Nazi group is wanted for attempted murder in connection with two bombings in Calgary.

Perhaps it was a practice bombing, though it may have been a case of rivalry among racists:

McKee, a slight man with a shaved head, has “Kill Jews” tattooed on his shins. He often acts as spokesman for the Aryan Guard, a racist gang whose “white pride” marches have caused a stir in Canada’s third-largest city. However, police say there’s no evidence that the bombings were hate crimes. “The victims in this case knew the offenders and share similar beliefs and values,” stated a news release from the City of Calgary.

Shooting.

I'm just hearing on the radio someone walked into the Holocaust Museum in Washington and open fired with a gun, probably a rifle. Possibly a white supremacist.

There's some links here.

The gunman is a white supremacists. He and a guard were shot. The guard has died.

more: The NYTimes has a copy of the bio he wrote for his own wikipedia page. Do note, "International bankers" means Jews. The Times also links to a post at TPM with his Ron Paul-style antisemitism.

Bomb plot

Surely you've heard by now about the plot to bomb two synagogues in New York.

CT murder

At Adam Holland: Suspected Wesleyan killer:"It's okay to kill Jews"

One note from the NYT article Adam links to:

Though her family was Jewish, Justin Bours, who shared an apartment with her this semester at Wesleyan, said she regarded herself as an agnostic, and was politically liberal.

Politically liberal would describe most Jews, but here it is implied she is different from other Jews because she is liberal.

Collective responsibility

In response to a wave of antisemitic attacks, EISCA has a post "Antisemitism and Jewish interchagability."

A key component of antisemitism is an inability - or refusal - to differentiate between Jews as a collective and Jews as individuals. This mental construct lumps all Jews together: Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews. European Jews and American Jews. Jewish tourists in Mumbai and Jews going to synagogue. Or going about their business just about anywhere, for that matter.

Call it a form of antisemitic synecdoche, or use of the ‘part for the whole’. Or call it a form of collective guilt.

I want to ask some of these people: If you target Jews in France and Sweden and Britian... Do you actually want us in Israel?

Defining combatant down

A Montreal man accused of firebombing a Jewish school was sentenced to four years in prison for what a judge described as a terrorist act.

Azim Ibragimov, 25, pleaded guilty earlier this year to firebombing the Skver-Toldos Orthodox Jewish Boys School in Outremont in 2006, and attempting to attack the Snowdon YM-YWHA the following year.

He also pleaded guilty to uttering threats in the form of letters that claimed the crimes were committed in the name of Islamic Jihad, a militant group that vows to destroy Israel and set up an Islamic Palestinian state.

Now, there's a meaningful question as to why someone intent on destroying Israel and setting up an Islamic Palestinian state would target a school in Montreal.

DC area antisemitism

The Jewish community of Rockville, Maryland was shaken up over the weekend, after unknown perpetrators spray-painted several swastikas early Saturday on homes in a predominantly Israeli neighborhood in the Washington, D.C. suburb... Several months ago, Israeli children were attacked in what residents say was an anti-Semitic assault.

Jewish or gangster? Is that like 'Gay or European'?

So a Jew was viciously beaten in France last month. French media (and, following their lead, worldwide media) reported it as a gang war, a somewhat complicated situation. It wasn't. How did the French media invent such a Jewish gang?

(Via Phoebe Maltz, who credits a commenter at her blog.)

Between bored kids and crazy people, it's a wonder we're still here

"I think it's just bored kids who know it's bad to vandalize," said Drew, the owner of a vandalized white Kia Spectra who did not give his last name.

Of course, Drew. It's always bored kids. Unless it's crazy people. But what's missing from that analysis?

philly hate crimes

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The latest in a series of wicked acts of vandalism - one aimed to harm toddlers at play outside a synagogue - has rallied neighbors in the city's Mount Airy section to step forward.

Rachel Gross, executive director of the Germantown Jewish Center, stood in a toddlers' playground at the synagogue at Lincoln Drive and West Ellet Street, and pointed to a half-dozen foot-wide holes dug in the sand.

Shards of glass had been hidden inside.

"Glass was buried all over," said Gross. "It was clearly intentional. There is no other conclusion than someone did it on purpose, and they did it to hurt children."

antisemitic vandalism in Florida

Just two days before Yom HaShoah -- Holocaust Remembrance Day -- vandals spray-painted a series of swastikas on a North Broward synagogue.

Rise in violent antisemitic attacks

Reported in Ha'aretz:

Despite an overall decline in anti-Semitic incidents around the world in 2007, the Tel Aviv University anti-Semitism research center recorded a 6.6 percent rise specifically in violent anti-Semitic attacks, including arson and the use of firearms with intent to kill.

The Tel Aviv University report, published Wednesday on Holocaust Remembrance Day, encompasses 632 incidents of violent anti-Semitic attacks. The report maintains that the number of severe violent attacks has risen threefold with 19 incidents in 2006, and 57 incidents in 2007.

Six hundred and thirty two violent attacks might not seem like a lot to some, but we should remember that reported violent attacks like that are the tip of the iceberg. The FBI Uniform Crime Reports lists a mere three cases of hate-motivated murders for 2006, yet this is hardly proof that the US lacks violent racism.

Synagogue Arson

From the NYT:

A Miami Beach synagogue was severely damaged by fire early Tuesday morning, and members said they suspected arson after discovering a small piece of the Torah on the lawn outside the charred building.

Hate Crime in Brooklyn

A Brooklyn rabbi said Tuesday that he was beaten by two men screaming "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) after a third man snatched his kippa off his head in a New York City subway station, CBS news reported.

According to various news sources, the one who stole the Rabbi's yarmulke was hit by a car while running away. Police have arrested him and charged him with hate crimes. The other two, who beat the Rabbi, have not been arrested.

Also, Deborah Lipstadt has a post on a wretched analogy by a deputy director for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The museum owns a painting which an Austrian woman is laying claim to. The painting was sold during the Holocaust, and the woman claims it was "under duress." The director makes the analogy to the Depression to suggest that the sale was made freely, minimizing to the extent of denying the experience of Jews trying to escape Nazi genocide. Lipstadt writes:

I would suggest that MFA Deputy Director Getchell learn a bit more about history before she makes any more such far fetched, if not, absurd analogies.

Meanwhile, Norm Geras recently noted another wretched analogy. Journalist Brian Keenan compared the destruction in Lebanon to the Holocuast. While the destruction in Lebanon was tragic, it hardly compares in any sense to the Nazi attempt to systematically destroy an entire people.

Why do I include these links in a post about an antisemitic assault in Brooklyn? Like any ideas that have been around so long, antisemitism and racism are deeply embedded in our society. Yet it isn't the case that stereotypes about Jews show up in crime dramas the way that stereotypes about blacks as criminals does. I think because of that, people have a hard time getting a handle on antisemitism. A lot of people, in fact, think it's a thing of the past. But it is deeply ingrained. Here are two examples of how Jewish history is misremembered and manipulated.

Firebombs thrown at Hillel staffer's house

Near Brown University.

In an attack early Saturday morning, improvised explosives were hurled at the off-campus apartment of Yossi Knafo, an emissary from the Jewish Agency for Israel employed by Brown/RISD Hillel. Knafo was home at the time but unharmed by the attack.

Police aren't yet saying that it was a hatecrime, but they are investigating it as a potential hatecrime. The Jewish Agency is apparently trying to push a reading of this as a terrorist act. I think it looks very much like a terrorist act and a hatecrime.

This article from the Brown Daily Herald, from which I took the headline, is filled with details. Thanks to Gilbert who mentioned it in comments at Engage.

Anti-Islamic arson in Tennessee

The Islamic Center of Columbia, Tennessee was set on fire this weekend, after it was spray painted with swastikas and white supremacist slogans. On a positive note, community leaders were quick to speak out in clear terms against Islamophobia, and

"This is the first hate crime we have observed here in Middle Tennessee," said A.K.M. Fakhruddin, former president of the Islamic Center of Nashville.

Three suspects, who may face federal hate crimes charges, have been arrested.

More hate crimes in Brooklyn

The NYT piece is a mess, so here's the news from The Brooklyn Eagle.

When police searched the apartment, they found a stockpile of weapons, including explosives and a crossbow. Police sent the bomb squad in, and building residents were evacuated for nearly a full day, from 3 a.m. Sunday to late evening, witnesses said. Remsen Street was also closed from early morning until nearly 8 p.m., and worshipers at Grace Church had to enter via a rectory building rather than via the main entrance.

According to the New York Post, Ivanov had been a closely watched subject in relation to the Sept. 24 hate graffiti – swastikas as well as racial slurs like “kill the Jews.” The graffiti was found spray-painted on the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue and the B’nai Avraham synagogue, both less than two blocks away from Ivanov’s home, as well as on several buildings on Columbia Place.

The graffiti appeared just after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a well-known Holocaust denier, gave a controversial lecture at Columbia University. The lecture was heavily protested and almost universally condemned by local and national Jewish leaders.

I'm curious about why the NYT piece is such a mess. It seems to be pushing a view of antisemitism as fringe craziness rather than a real threat. Here we have a story about someone amassing weapons and the likely intent of bombing synagogues, but they feel the need to quote a rabbi on who's Jewish?

I have a better idea of what bothered me about the reporting on the attack on the Q train recently. It was quite a feel good story, which made it a great alibi for journalists and readers to avoid challenging any of the assumptions they hold about Jews. Meanwhile, the vandalism of a cemetery in Chicago seems underreported. After recent vandalism of a cemetary in New Jersey, police were "initially reluctant to label the damage a hate crime." And Jews who talk about rising antisemitism get marginalized, ignored, or even banned from spaces of debate. In Tricia Rose's speech, which I highlighted from a WNYC radio show yesterday, she spoke of people with "an incredibly passionate rhetoric for the ideal of equality and no tolerance for the sacrifice that it takes to make it happen." Once again, thanks to Hassan Askari who joined the fight against antisemitic violence. But when will people join the fight against the racist logic that underlies such violence?