Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on December 25, 2019

JERSEY CITY, NJ The Anti-Defamation League has called for embattled school board trustee Joan Terrell-Paige to resign from her position following "her anti-Semitic, inflammatory, and deeply-hurtful comments."

Terrell-Paige said in a long, since-deleted Facebook post said "Where was all this faith and hope when black homeowners were threatened, intimidated, and harassed by I WANT TO BUY YOUR HOUSE brutes of the Jewish community?"

Terrell-Paige made the comments just days after a mass shooting in Jersey City's Greenville neighborhood left six people dead, including Joseph Seals, a longtime city police detective.

The ADL said in a statement it "wholeheartedly rejects and condemns" Terrell-Paige's comments in the strongest possible terms."

The anti-hate organization said that Terrell-Paige's "lack of remorse or self-reflection following the incident has rendered her unfit to continue to serve on the Board of Education a body entrusted with modeling our shared values of diversity, tolerance, and inclusion for students in our local Jersey City public schools."

Terrell-Paige also said that the Jewish "brutes" waved bags of money at black homeowners in Ward F, according to a report on NorthJersey.com, which showed a screenshot of the comments.

"By insinuating that Jewish 'brutes' have taken Jersey City, waving 'bags of money' to force people out of their homes, Ms. Terrell-Paige has invoked deeply painful anti-Semitic stereotypes related to wealth, greed, and control. She has also drawn gross generalization about the Jewish community based on the actions of a few."

The ADL also claims that Terrell-Paige has "also brazenly suggested" that the victims of the shooting "were somehow responsible for being targeted, and that the attack was therefore somehow justified. It is hard to understand how reprehensible, and how harmful, this is to a community still reeling from the attacks. There is absolutely no excuse for domestic terrorism, and this is a message that we would expect every Jersey City School Board member to make abundantly clear to our young people."

Besides the ADL, Gov. Phil Murphy, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, and Jersey City Board of Education President Sudhan Thomas have all called for Terrell-Paige to resign from the board.

Fulop said in a tweet Tuesday morning that he was "saddened" by Terrell Paige's comments.

"Her comments don't represent Jersey City or the sentiment in the community at all," Fulop said. "The African-American community in Greenville has been nothing short of amazing over the last week helping neighbors."

One of the suspects in the mass shooting, David Anderson, 47, appeared to have a connection to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, a law enforcement official told The New York Times. The Southern Poverty Law Center has called the movement a hate group. The movement has no connection to mainstream Judaism.

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Email: daniel.hubbard@patch.com

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Anti-Defamation League Wants Jersey City School Trustee To ...

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