Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 6, 2020

(August 5, 2020 / JNS) Any hope that the ongoing campaign to isolate Jews from mainstream society in the United States was going to slow down as a result of campus shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was shattered in Boston on the first day of July.

Thats when approximately 300 radical leftists paraded through the cradle of liberty and shouted ugly epithets at the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), two progressive organizations which in a reasonable world would be regarded as allies by every decent liberal in the metro-Boston area. Outside the offices of the ADL, a protest leader yelled, F*** the ADL! to great acclaim.

The pretext for the rally was the prospect of Israel affirming sovereignty over parts of the West Bank, but it was patently evident that rally organizers were trying to transform anger over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 into hostility towards Israel and mainstream Jewish organizations in the United States.

The rally revealed that the ADL and JCRCs policies in support of the rights of immigrants and minorities, and protests against police brutality against African-Americans, wasnt enough for these demonstrators, who simply could not stand the fact that both the ADL and the JCRC advocate for the safety of the Jewish state in the Middle East.

Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicateby email and never missour top stories

The rally began on the steps of the Massachusetts Statehouse where Nino Brown, a fifth-grade teacher in Boston public schools, led the crowd in a chant that declared F*** your police state! America was never great! before referring to Israel as a parasitic entity.

Brown was speaking on behalf of a man who goes by the name Kazi Toure, a black radical who spent seven years in jail for his involvement with a terrorist organization that planted bombs in courthouses throughout the country during the late 1970s and early 1980s. During his talk, Brown relayed Toures support for African-Americans taking control of several states in the American South and seceding from the United States. Pretty dicey stuff for a teacher in Boston public schools.

Other speakers from the Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) community demonized Israel with false accusations of murder, forcible sterilization of Ethiopian Jews upon their arrival in Israel, and genocide against the Palestinians (whose population has grown by leaps and bounds since Israel took control of the Gaza Strip and West Bank in the Six-Day War).

In addition to demonizing Israel, the protesters railed against the ADL and the JCRC by depicting them as conduits for Israeli tactics of oppression into American society. The story protesters told about the ADL was that it brings Massachusetts police officers to Israel to learn tactics and tools of oppression that are then used on African-Americans in the Bay State. The story protesters told about the JCRC was that it brings lawmakers to Israel who promote stronger economic ties between Massachusetts and the Jewish state, thereby cementing the oppression endured by indigenous people in both the Middle East and North America.

The message was that by advocating for Israel, the ADL and the JCRC have disqualified themselves from the progressive community in the United States. You cannot support white supremacy in Palestine and on this continent, the displacement of indigenous people and the militarization of police who murder black and indigenous people and then claim to be a social justice organization in solidarity with people of color! one speaker yelled.

Standing in front of the JCRC building on High Street, speakers demanded that the ADL and the JCRC compensate African-Americans and Native Americans for the suffering theyve endured as a result of their investment in the infrastructure of white supremacism in the United States. Its a variant of the reparations argument, targeted not just at the United States, but Jews in particular.

The demand for reparations from the JCRC and the ADL is merely a pretext to recount stories of Jews behaving badly, which over the long haul will be used to isolate Jews from the larger societyjust as demands for divestment have been used to isolate Jews on campuses.

One thing weve learned from the BDS movement in America is that even if groups do not achieve their stated goals of divestment, they are able to fundamentally change how people think and talk about Israel, and ultimately, about Jews in the United States.

If the activists who organized the July 1 rally in Boston have their way, the same craziness that has taken root in higher education will spread like a weed into the wider community. The goal is to force Jews to look over their shoulder in mainstream American society.

America is better than this, but its going to take a whole lot of work to stop the process in its tracks.

Demands that the ADL and the JCRC pay reparations will not get much traction, but they will have an impact on how people in the progressive community think and talk about these organizations and their supporters going forward.

Want proof?

Just take a look at the atmosphere on college campuses before the COVID-19 shutdown.

Dexter Van Zile is Shillman Research Fellow for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).

Link:
Contagion of scapegoating spreads from higher education into the streets - JNS.org

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Contagion of scapegoating spreads from higher education into the streets – JNS.org
Tags:

Posted By admin on August 6, 2020

When you work at a newspaper, you expect to get a certain amount of hate mail. When Peter Hiller, a retired art teacher who is curator of the Jo Mora Trust Collection, wrotea recent opinion piece about the fate of a statue Mora made of Junipero Serra, Hiller expected some hate mail. It was a controversial opinion he argued that the statue of Serra, who terrorized Indigenous people in California, should remain out of public view. But he did not expect to receive an anti-Semitic attack that had absolutely nothing to do with the content of his opinion piece.

When Hiller sent me a photo of the mail he received, I was startled. Someone tore out the page with his story from theWeekly, and made a big black X through it. Then they highlighted his name in yellow, and drew a Jewish star, then highlighted that in yellow a resemblance to armbands Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Europe. It was unsigned, and there was no return address.

It was stunning, Hiller says. I almost felt like I wanted to drop it and get it away from me. It was like, wait a second, where is this coming from?

Its coming from a place of ancient hatred toward people just for who they are. And its coming from a deep well.The Anti-Defamation League tracks incidentsof anti-Jewish vandalism, harassment and assault, and their tracker shows on Aug. 3, a Jewish cemetery in Virginia vandalized with graffiti including a Nazi symbol; on July 30, a Jewish Zoom service in Dallas was disrupted by a chat that stated, Bomb Israel Kill All Jews; on July 29 in Thousand Oaks, California, a woman found a note on her car that read, Jewish Lifes (sic) Dont Matter.

It can be easy to think racially motivated hatred like this is something that happens in writing or online only. But on June 25, Monterey police arrested Daniel Birchell, a white man, for yelling racial slurs at a Black man. Police say Birchell approached the victim unprompted and began shouting, and when the victim started recording on a cell phone, Birchell slapped the phone out of his hand.

Yelling racial slurs at someone would be considered a hate crime, Acting Assistant Monterey Police Chief Mike Bruno says. You think its California, its a melting pot, and everyones tolerant then you realize, oh it does happen here.

On July 8, Birchell pleaded no contest to all charges against him, including a hate crime.

In 2018,a white couple shouted racist slurs and assaulted a Black man outside of Monterey Lanes,beating him until his jaw was fractured in multiple places. Also in 2018,a white man driving in Carmel used his vehicleto pin a Muslim man against a car, then drove off; the man and his family feared for their lives.

These are instances of real violence, but the hate communicated in writing can have a similar effect of intimidating people and making them fear for their physical safety. In Hillers case, he describes receiving the anti-Semitic markup as creepy. Whoever this person was had to either know me, or have done research about me, he says. They knew he was Jewish, and they knew his home address.

In Soledad in July, Erica Padilla-Chavez and Alejandro Chavez recoiledwhen their neighbor hung a Trump 2020 flag from an animal crate in front of their house. Given Trumps policies, and that Padilla-Chavez and Chavez are Latino in addition to being outspoken, progressive elected officials (on the Hartnell College board and Soledad City Council. respectively), it seemed clear in its intent.

All of these incidents aside, I think theres reason to be hopeful. That comes from reading this weeks cover stories (p. 24). While theres extremism and hatred in our community, its not as widespread as I mightve feared, and there are also initiatives to evolve. Padilla-Chavez and Chavez created the Monterey County Tolerance and Acceptance Fund building something positive out of something negative.

Chris Barrera, president of LULAC Salinas Council 2055, says it was their childrens idea to create the fund. Its human nature to lash out, he says. When instead one can step back, they realize they dont want to be part of the problem, they want to be part of the solution.

Read more:
It's sometimes hard to see, but there is hate in our community. - Monterey County Weekly

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on It’s sometimes hard to see, but there is hate in our community. – Monterey County Weekly
Tags:

Posted By admin on August 6, 2020

Loeffler has repeatedly criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and decried what she calls the politicization of sports, so much so that several WNBA players recently wore T-shirts asking voters to support one of her opponents, Democrat Raphael Warnock.

For expressing their political preferences, Loeffler accused the women of participating in cancel culture.

We come together around sports, but promoting a political agenda divides us rather than unites us, Kelly said in a statement responding to the players. The lives of every African American matter, and theres no place for racism in our country. But I oppose the BLM political organization due to its radical ideas and Marxist foundations, which include defunding the police and eroding the nuclear family.

Loeffler recently sat down to talk about the WNBA protests with Jack Posobiec of One America News Network. As Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have pointed out, Posobiec was a noted Pizzagate conspiracy theorist. For the uninitiated, Pizzagate was a theory that Democratic Party operatives were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of the basement of Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Northwest Washington, D.C. The conspiracy ended with a man driving up from Salisbury, North Carolina, with a .38caliber Colt revolver, an AR-15 rifle and a shotgun, and blasting the lock off a supply closet door at the restaurant where he believed kidnapped children were being kept.

From the interview and her previous statements, its clear Loeffler is attempting to walk a narrow tightrope. She has stated repeatedly that there is nothing controversial about the statement Black lives matter, and that of course, no one supports racism. Whether voters are picking up on that nuance, its hard to say. The Black Lives Matter movement enjoys wide popularity nationwide. But over the last week Loefflers campaign Twitter account has put out tweet after tweet railing against cancel culture, rioting in Portland, Oregon, and the Black Lives Matter movement. There is hardly a mention of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic that has claimed 160,000 lives.

Continued here:
Loeffler leans in to Trump's culture war in battle with WNBA - Roll Call

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Loeffler leans in to Trump’s culture war in battle with WNBA – Roll Call
Tags:

Posted By admin on August 6, 2020

Kris Kobach, the former Secretary of State of Kansas, has accepted donations from white nationalists, paid an individual who posted racist comments on a white nationalist website and allegedly employed three other white nationalists during his failed gubernatorial campaign in 2018.

He is also a leading contender in todays crowded Senate primary in Kansas, featuring no fewer than 11 Republican candidates jockeying to succeed retiring Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS). Kobachs presence in the race has put extremism experts on alert.

Its just a very consistent record that he takes these far-right, nativist, anti-immigration views, said David Neiwert, the author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, who kept a close eye on Kobachs trajectory when he worked as a correspondent for the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center. This is Kris Kobachs identity.

The Anti-Defamation League is similarly wary of Kobach, a 54-year-old immigration hardliner with degrees from Harvard, Yale and Oxford who currently writes a column for Breitbart.

Kris Kobach is an anti-immigrant bigot who spoke in 2015 at an event organized by a publisher that routinely elevates the writings of white supremacists, an ADL spokesperson told Jewish Insider, referring to Kobachs appearance at an event hosted by the Social Contract Press, founded by white nationalist John Tanton. He has also championed the baseless conspiracy theory about rampant voter fraud in the 2016 election, and has been credibly accused of promoting legislation that engages in racial profiling, including Arizonas controversial Show Me Your Papers law.

Kobachs campaign did not respond to requests for an interview.

Heading into Tuesdays primary, political scientists told JI that with little polling data available, its unclear who currently leads the Republican field, though Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) has emerged alongside Kobach as one of the stronger candidates in the race.

The best guess is that its some kind of coin flip, probably between Kobach and Marshall, said Patrick R. Miller, a professor in the department of political science at the University of Kansas.

Though Kobach has been gaining momentum, one of his weak spots is his poor fundraising, according to Miller. Kobach, who in 2004 unsuccessfully ran for Congress in Kansass 3rd congressional district, has raked in approximately $940,000, according to the Federal Election commission far less than Marshall, who has raised $2.7 million.

Still, Kobachs campaign has been buoyed by billionaire tech mogul Peter Thiel, who has pumped $850,000 into a super PAC supporting the insurgent candidate.

Kobach has also garnered unexpected support from a separate, Democratic-linked super PAC, which is spending millions of dollars to run ads that characterize Kobach as a more committed conservative than Marshall the subtext being that Democrats view Kobach as the weaker Republican candidate in the general election.

Some establishment Republicans seem to agree, experts say. Theyre definitely afraid Kobach will win the nomination, Burdett Loomis, a political scientist at the University of Kansas, told JI. If Kobach wins, the seat immediately turns into a tossup.

Marshall, for his part, has also benefited from some outside spending, though the GOP was initially skeptical of his candidacy: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly advocated for former senator and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to run for the seat, despite repeated rejections from Pompeo. Now, a McConnell-aligned super PAC is spending $1.2 million to boost Marshall.

He might be the rickety tank theyre reluctantly riding into battle, but its the only tank they have, Miller said of Marshall, 59, who has represented Kansass 1st congressional district since 2017.

Gavriela Geller, director of JCRB/AJC Kansas City, an organization that merged the regional office of the American Jewish Committee and the local Jewish Community Relations Bureau, said that Marshall has been receptive to meeting members of the Jewish community in Kansas and hearing their concerns.

We would hope that whoever wins the Senate seat will be similarly receptive to working with us and addressing the multiple sources of rising antisemitism in this country, including a troubling increase in white nationalist rhetoric and violence, which is of particular concern in our region, Geller told JI, noting that she could not endorse any candidate in the race because her organization is nonpartisan.

Despite pressure from some party leaders to endorse Marshall, President Donald Trump also appears set on staying out of the primary. Kobach, a Trump ally, had previously been considered for positions as Trumps immigration czar as well as secretary of homeland security.

Another Republican candidate, Bob Hamilton,a former plumbing company owner well-known in the state for ads that featured his name, has shifted the dynamics of the race in recent weeks by spending more than $2 million of his own money on advertising. Experts say that wont put him in the lead, but Hamiltons efforts to boost his profile could pull support away from the other candidates and give one of them an edge.

The competing ads have made for a confusing situation for Republican voters. People arent talking much about policy, said Loomis.

On the other side of the aisle, State Senator Barbara Bollier is running essentially uncontested for the Democratic nomination. She became known in the state for switching her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat at the end of 2018, and has built a reputation as a centrist candidate.

Shes proving to be a more credible candidate and a stronger candidate than people thought she would be, said Miller, and I think Republicans would be foolish to discount that.

A June 2 poll found Bollier in a statistical dead heat with Marshall, Kobach and Hamilton in hypothetical general election matchups.

A May 28 poll, however, found Marshall 11 points ahead of Bollier, and Bollier and Kobach tied. Bollier has stunned observers in the state, Miller said, by far outraising each of her Republican opponents in the race: Shes already raised $7.8 million, with more than $4 million still on hand.

But more surprising, perhaps, is the fact that Kobach has emerged as an ostensible frontrunner in Kansass packed Republican primary field. Its a Republican state, but historically it has not been a far-right Republican state, Loomis said.

When the votes are counted, Kansans will find out whether that formulation holds up.

Read the rest here:
Senate GOP primary comes down to the wire in Kansas - Jewish Insider

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Senate GOP primary comes down to the wire in Kansas – Jewish Insider
Tags:

Posted By admin on August 6, 2020

After an outcry from the states largest Jewish organizations, more than 20 Jewish interest groups, the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, the Anti-Defamation League and a deluge of thousands of public comments, an ethnic studies curriculum for high schools that many felt unfairly maligned Israel and erased American Jews has been overhauled to remove criticisms of the Jewish state.

Tye Gregory, executive director of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, said in a phone call Monday that although he was still combing through the more than 400-page document posted July 31 to the California Department of Education website, it appeared to be a much more positive curriculum for our community. JCRC has been following the revision process closely and meeting with state education officials.

We think that this draft meets all of the major objectives and addresses all of the concerns that we raised over the course of the past year, he said.

The revision comes as ethnic studies appears set to become a graduation requirement for the states more than 1.7 million high schoolers by the 2024-25 school year. Ethnic studies, the interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity with a focus on people of color, have been shown to improve grades for non-white students.

A state bill last year mandating an ethnic studies course as a graduation requirement earned overwhelming support in the Assembly. The California State University college system last month approved a similar requirement.

Though supported in theory by many Jewish organizations, including the 16-member Jewish caucus, the specific model curriculum released last summer produced by state curriculum writers and managed by an ad hoc, 18-person committee of social studies teachers and college professors came under heavy fire. It was faulted for, among other things, its sharp criticism of Israel; support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement; omission of any concerted discussion of antisemitism; and inclusion of a controversial rap lyric about Israelis using the press.

Jewish lawmakers shared deep concern in an open letter, charging that the curriculum was inaccurate and misleading in several respects and reflected an anti-Jewish bias.

Now, those same lawmakers say they are encouraged by the new version of the draft released in anticipation of a public meeting on Aug. 13, one postponed from April by the pandemic. Months still remain until a final version is approved.

At least initially, were certainly pleased that the most serious concerns that we had about the original draft have absolutely been put to rest, said state Sen. Ben Allen of Santa Monica, chair of the Jewish caucus. They followed through on that commitment.

The curriculum no longer names BDS as a social movement worthy of class study alongside Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and protests for environmental justice. Neither does it reference the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe, to describe the creation of Israel in a sample lesson on Arab immigration.

The most serious concerns that we had about the original draft have absolutely been put to rest.

A Palestinian rap lyric implying that Israel uses the press to manufacture public opinion was deleted. Also removed were controversial references to Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour in a course on Arab American studies.

BDS had been described in a glossary as a global social movement that currently aims to establish freedom for Palestinians living under apartheid conditions. In the second draft, the glossary was cut altogether. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not mentioned.

Not every ask was met. Gregory said the JCRC would like to see the diversity of the Jewish community, including Jews of color, reflected in the curriculum. The S.F.-based group Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, or JIMENA, lobbied for similar inclusion of Mizrachi Jews, and Jesse Gabriel, an Assembly member from the San Fernando Valley and vice chair of the Jewish caucus, said he believes Persian Jews should be discussed, as they make up large numbers in the state.

Still, many Jewish leaders thanked state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond for his efforts attributing the changes at least in part to his hearing their concerns.

We really appreciate and applaud the superintendent for his commitments, Gabriel said in a phone call with J. on Monday.

He made some very firm and unequivocal promises to us that there would be nothing anti-Israel or anti-Semitic in the draft, or anything that could be perceived as anti-Israel or anti-Semitic, Gabriel said. Based on the preliminary draft, that appears to be true.

The model will now undergo a review by the Instructional Quality Commission, the state body leading the Aug. 13 public meeting. Another monthlong public comment phase will take place in September, according to Scott Roark, CDE spokesperson. The State Board of Education is responsible for approving the final model and will take it up on March 17, 2021, Roark said. By law the curriculum must be approved by March 31 of next year.

Of the more than 32,000 public comments submitted to the CDE after the release of the first draft last summer, about 19,000 were summarized as expressing concerns with a lack of inclusion of Jewish Americans and anti-Semitism, and concerns with the inclusion of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The CDE summarized an additional 8,500 public comments as expressing support for the coverage of Arab Americans in the 2019 draft.

A group called Save CA Ethnic Studies spearheaded resolutions on several local school boards, including in San Francisco and Oakland, to affirm support for the curriculum as written, with minor revisions.

An organizer with Save CA Ethnic Studies who was on the advisory committee that oversaw the first draft told J. in an earlier interview that some in the group were surprised at how intensely polarizing the topic of BDS had become, and thought it was likely to remain a point of contention during the next phase.

The revision names antisemitism, which saw only glancing mention in the first draft, as a form of bigotry informed by white dominated culture, alongside Islamophobia. However, it does not focus on anti-Jewish bias, and does not include a lesson devoted solely to Jewish Americans, as some had hoped.

There is a proposed unit called Irish and Jewish Americans: Redefining White and American, which asks students to discuss parallels between language used to describeIrish and Jewish immigrants to those used in the early years of the UnitedStates to describe Native Americans.

Gregory said that while the idea of devoting a lesson to Jewish Americans had been raised with education officials, JCRC would not be lobbying to include such a course in the final version.

Its not realistic, he said. We dont think its going to happen in ethnic studies. We want to honor the four groups ethnic studies was built around.

The CDE said its primary goal in the revision was to focus on the four core groups traditionally taught in ethnic studies African Americans, Chicanos/Latinas, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans while also making the draft more user-friendly. Words like hxrstory and hxrstorically, for example, were struck and replaced with history and historically.

Gabriel said he would continue to follow the issue closely and is committed to seeing it through to the end. In his two years in the Legislature, he said, hes been struck by just how little is known about Jews and, consequently, how important it is to portray them accurately when given the chance.

Were a small community. People sometimes forget that, he said. There are a lot of things about our community that other people dont understand. Our history, fears, struggles, the traumas weve endured.

To the extent that people are going to learn about that in school, its important to make sure what theyre learning is factual, and historically accurate, he said. We have to get this right.

Here is the original post:
Revised ethnic studies curriculum mitigates Jewish bias concerns - The Jewish News of Northern California

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Revised ethnic studies curriculum mitigates Jewish bias concerns – The Jewish News of Northern California
Tags:

Posted By admin on August 6, 2020

A Beachwood police officer-involved shooting that took place more than one year ago continues to reverberate with city council and city officials.

Details surrounding the case have led to calls for the city to consider policing reforms, as well as for a former mayoral candidate to call for the resignation of the city council president.

The issue came to the fore after a screenshot was posted on Facebookon June 18 with a photo showing a Nissan Sentra with two bullet holes in the drivers side window. The photo dated June 27, 2019, depicted an officer-involved shooting at Beachwood Place in Beachwood.

In the incident, Beachwood police officer Blake G. Rogers fired two rounds from his service weapon into the drivers side of a vehicle as Jaquan Jones, now 20, of Cleveland, attempted to flee after a reported theft of a $59 baseball hat from Dillards in June 2019. Jones was injured in the shooting.

Rogers, 33, was immediately placed on paid administrative leave, pending a criminal investigation, per protocol.

His annual salary is $92,206.40, plus benefits,according to records obtained by the CJN. He remains on paid administrative leave more than a year later.

Mayor Martin S. Horwitz told the CJN Aug. 4 the paid administrative leave is in accordance with written police policy. No one was hired to replace Blake,according to the mayor.

Horwitz would not offer an opinion about what the footage shows, citing his role as final arbiter of any potential discipline Rogers might face.

He did say that he would support a policy change that represents a reversal for the city that of releasing dashcam and bodycam footage within seven days of officer-involved shootings.

Beachwood City Council will discuss the matter as one of several police reforms contemplated at its 6 p.m. Aug. 6 committee of the whole meeting. The next regular city council meeting will be at 7 p.m. Aug. 17.

The Aug. 6 meeting will be held by video conference via Zoom (beachwoodohio.com for more information) and live streamed on the city of Beachwood website at beachwoodohio.com and can be viewed on Spectrum Channel 1020 and AT&T U-Verse Channel 99.

Horwitz said his change in position came as a result of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolisat the hands of a former Minneapolis police officer.

This is a difficult policy to create because there are still certain rights that need to be preserved dealing with privacy as defined in the Ohio Revised Code, he wrote in an email to the CJN. It will be my recommendation to city council as we discuss this further that we adopt this as a policy moving forward.

Horwitz wrote the decision breaks with past city practice, which redacted critical footage reserved for investigatory purposes.

When Rogers first saw the suspect at Beachwood Place in June 2019, he called to him throughanopen window of his cruiser.

I yelled You better stop or Im going tof****** (expletive) Taseyou, Rogers wrote in an incident report.

He subsequently left his cruiser and approached Jones, who got intoa stolen car.

The suspect then reached down with both hands towards his floorboard in what appeared to be an attempt to conceal something or pick something up, Rogers wrote. Due to the suspects actions, the potential that he may be armed, and his clear and continuing efforts to resist arrest I drew my service weapon and ordered the suspect to exit the vehicle multiple times at gunpoint.

Rogers wrote he noticed a family in close proximity and hesitated to fire because ofitspresence as the suspect accelerated and backed out.

I was scared that I was going to be run over and dragged underneath the rear of the vehicle and killed, Rogers wrote. When the suspect moved forward he still appeared to be driving towards me and in a path to run me over. I felt overwhelmingly terrified that I was about to be run over by the suspect and killed.

Rogers shot at the drivers side window as Jones was driving away.

Rogers then ran to his patrol car and realized his body camera malfunctioned and was not recording, he wrote.Only then did he also realize thecar Jones was drivingran over his foot.

The pursuit that followed was immediately publicized, with Dillards security photos of the suspect released to the media.Police searched for him in South Euclid and were unable to apprehend him.

Jones was arrested July 25, 2019, on an unrelated drug investigation. Charges from Beachwood police included felonious assault on a police officer, two counts of failure to comply with signals of a police officer, receiving stolen property and petty theft.

The indictment referred to Jonesas having a firearm at the time of the Beachwood incident. His case is pending in Cuyahoga County Court ofCommon Pleas.

While police pursued thecarthrough the streets of Beachwood and South Euclid on June 27, 2019, Rogers wrote that he prepared to hand over his equipment and uniform and was placed on paid administrative leave, pending his investigation.

As a member of the Fraternal Order of Police, Rogers is represented in the criminal investigation by Kimberly Kendall Corral, senior associate at Patituce & Associates LLC.

Corral told the CJN Aug. 4 Rogers wants a thorough, transparent investigation, is available and cooperative, and that he wants to return to work,although he may be eligible for light duty based on the injury to tendonsin his footin the incident.

Its taking an uncharacteristically long time to review this case, she said.

Corral said the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigationsin Richfieldfinished its review in fall 2019.

The Ohio Attorney Generals Office declined to release the bureaus findings, citing the material as trial preparation documents.

Police use of force investigations are typically first handled by a municipal prosecutor to determine whether a misdemeanor or felony took place.

Following the conclusion of the BCIs review, Beachwood sent encrypted files to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutors Office in April, Saleh Awadallah, supervisor of the homicide major trial unit for the county, told the CJN Aug. 5.

Awadallah saidhewas unable to open the files and asked BCI to deliver them in a different format. Uponviewing the files on the flash drives, he saw no determination as to whether a crime had taken place and sent the flash drives to Beachwood for determination. He has not heard about the case since.

After Cleveland TV station WOIO broadcast stories last week, the incident sparked anger on social media.

HEY Beachwood Ohio Were going to need some answers, Marc Wilson, owner of EverythingbyFace Salon & Spa in University Heights, wrote in an Aug. 2 Facebook post. This is not OK.

Wilson is organizing a group to make sure the city officials responsible or complicit for allowing it to be handled this way are held accountable, he wrote on Facebook.

Sydney Eisenberg, commenting on Facebook to councilman Alec Isaacson, pressed him for answers in response to a post he made about ideas for police reform.

Did any of you immediately ask to see the footage? Eisenberg wrote. And if not, what did each of you do upon learning there were serious questions that needed to be answered? You are an elected official and when you see something that might not be right, you have a duty to ask questions, act and say something.

Mitchel Luxenburg, who ran for mayor in 2017 and is a formerBeachwoodschool boardpresident, criticizedcouncil president James Pasch, who is regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of Cleveland,on Facebook Aug. 5.

Luxenburg quoted Paschs June 3 op-ed on Cleveland.com, called The Privilege of Breathing, which also ran on the ADLs website.

Luxenburg quoted Paschs op-ed, So I will shout from the rooftops that while I will never know what it feels like to be Black in America, I stand with all Black Americans, arm-in-arm, in the continued fight for a more just society.

Luxenburg called on Pasch to resign because he said Paschs behavior as an elected official is not consistent with his public rhetoric.

Pasch

Pasch, who was not council president at the time of the shooting, said he had not seen the post.

The release of the police dash-camand body cam-footage and the investigation were handled by the mayor and police chief, Pasch wrote in an Aug. 5 email to the CJN. The video shows that the incident is horrible and was avoidable. In my opinion, the use of unjust deadly force cannot result in a second chance.

As the only council member who was not in office when the incident occurred, Mike Burkons said he first learned of concerns regarding the shooting on June 18.

He has been outspoken in expressing the need for transparency and release of documents and footage regarding the shooting. In email correspondence to council, the mayor and the citys law department, he has called for release of BCI findings.

The longer a city chooses to withhold the footage and allows those questions to be asked without being refuted, Burkons wrote the CJN, the more that narrative takes hold and the more damage is done to public trust.

The CJN will continue to follow this story.

Read more here:
Shooting leads to calls for police reforms in Beachwood - Cleveland Jewish News

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Shooting leads to calls for police reforms in Beachwood – Cleveland Jewish News
Tags:

Posted By admin on August 6, 2020

Never forget.

Its a sentiment thats deeply woven into post-World War II Jewish culture, a phrase as familiar to students in suburban Hebrew schools as it is to congregants in city synagogues and retirees on the tennis courts in Boca.

Those two words are a reminder and a call to action, imploring Jewish people to remember the tragedy of the Holocaust and the stories of the six million Jews who died, so that it may never be repeated again.

And yet 75 years after V-E Day, when Germany ultimately surrendered to end the war, we are witnessing an unprecedented spike in acts of anti-Semitism. Last year, according to Anti-Defamation League (ADL), there were 2,100 documented anti-Semitic incidents, the highest number since the organization began its tracking 40 years ago.

In Philadelphia, we are watching history unfold this very week as the chorus of voices calling for the resignation of the head of our chapter of the NAACP grows louder, in the wake of that leaders anti-Semitic online posts.

It is why the educational work of Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation (PHRF), and the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza it developed and oversees at the corner of 16th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, continues to be more imperative than ever.

And it is with this lens that guests joined PHRF and The Citizen last week for a Zoom chat with Dr. Robert Watson and Citizen co-founder Larry Platt, with introductory remarks by PHRF Executive Director Eszter Kutas and David Adelman, who chairs PHRFs board and sits on The Citizens board, as well.

Watson is Distinguished Professor of American History at Lynn University, and the author of more than 40 books. His latest, The Nazi Titanic, has done what Platt says all journalists dream of doing: unearthed something previously unknown to the masses. That something is the tragic fate of the German ocean liner SS Cap Arcona which, in the final days of the Third Reich, was packed with thousands of concentration camp survivors and mistakenly bombed by the British Royal Air Force.

You found a story that none of us knew existed, in an area where I thought there were no more new stories, Platt said to kick off the discussion.

Watson went on to explain his accidental discovery of a letter that set his research journey in motion.

I think every paleontologist dreams of putting a shovel in the ground to start a garden, and pulling up a new dinosaur, he said, by way of analogy. As an historian, I think Ive found a couple of good stories in my career, but nothing like this. Ive always said that quite simply theres more we dont know about history than we do know about history.

Watson had intended to write a book about the last week of World War II in Europe. Im such a nerdy historian, he said with a laugh. His goal was to develop one story of love, and one story of loss. Thats what really humanizes such a momentous event, he explained.

But while he was doing his archival research, he came across a letter from a major in the British army, who wrote that of all the horrors of World War II, nothing will compare to watching thousands and thousands of Holocaust survivors all die at the end of the war when we were signing a surrender.

Watson was flabbergasted.

I got the letter and I went What is this? Ive never heard of this. He called The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C., The National WWII Museum in New Orleans; he emailed Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and Imperial War Museum in London. Nobody knew anything of it. He spent days in archives, and ultimately found another letter, this one from a British general who was the one on the beach when everybody aboard this ship, dubbed The Nazi Titanic, died.

Bolstered by his discoveries, Watson switched gears and dove headfirst into further research, putting pressure on himself to bring the book the life as quickly as possible, while the last Holocaust survivors are still alive. The resulting tome explores questions of politics and policy, heart and humanity.

As the event wound down and audience members shared their questions and comments for Watson, at least three revealed that they had relatives whod survived the Nazi Titanic. Floored, Watson encouraged them to reach out, as it became readily apparent that history is always being unearthed, that there is so much more to learn and to share, and that we must all do our part to keep history alive.

For the words never forget [] to really have resonance, we have to re-teach every generation, Watson said. Thats just what he did.

To learn more about PHRF, read our previous coverage here, and visit the Horwitz-Wasserman Memorial Plaza. And be sure to stay tuned for information about The Citizens upcoming events, which will resume with gusto in September.

Want more? Check out recaps of our other recent virtual book club events.

Read more here:
Author Robert Watson discusses his fascinating new book, "The Nazi Titanic," at our virtual book club - The Philadelphia Citizen

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Author Robert Watson discusses his fascinating new book, "The Nazi Titanic," at our virtual book club – The Philadelphia Citizen
Tags:

Posted By admin on August 6, 2020

WASHINGTON Having railed for months against protesters he depicts as violent Marxist anarchists, Sen. Ted Cruz led a hearing Tuesday that exposed a deep schism between Republicans impatient with unrest in U.S. cities and Democrats who see heavy-handed police tactics as a far bigger threat.

As the Texan painted Democrats as antifa sympathizers, they hit back, condemning him for stoking irrational fears and giving cover to a president with an authoritarian streak.

Cruz called the hearing to put a spotlight on the antifa and the Black Lives Matter movements, groups that President Donald Trump blames for endangering law enforcement in the guise of protesting racism and police brutality.

But this was as much a political skirmish as a fact-finding hearing about those groups.

Cruz repeatedly accused Democrats of demonizing federal law enforcement as storm troopers and Gestapo.

Elected Democrats want to ignore the violence of antifa. They want to ignore the violence on the left and they just scream `white supremacist, white supremacist, " he insisted.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat whose hometown of Portland has been the epicenter of clashes between protesters and police for two months, decried the presidents enablers an obvious reference to Cruz who pump up anxiety about mobs and anarchists while offering little concern about the heavily armed secret police who snatched Portlanders off the streets.

I agree theres a serious danger to American constitutional rights at this moment in history, Wyden said, and its caused to a great extent by the president and his enablers who are calling peaceful protesters anarchists and terrorists, and sending paramilitary forces into American cities.

Protests erupted nationwide after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd, a black suspect who died after an officer pinned his neck to the ground with a knee.

Tensions quickly escalated and on June 1, federal police used tear gas, flash bangs and other tactics to clear Lafayette Square Park outside the White House, where thousands had gathered to protest police brutality and racism. Trump then strode through the park, posing for photos outside historic St. Johns Church while holding a Bible.

Accusing mayors in Portland and other cities of weakness, Trump has threatened to send in troops, and has deployed camouflage-uniformed federal officers from the Bureau of Prisons and Department of Homeland Security.

There was no anarchist violence in Lafayette Square. The only ones using force were federal law enforcement, said Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary subcommittee that Cruz chairs. If this subcommittee wants to protect Americans right to peacefully assemble, we should be focused on preventing federal officers from beating up protesters, tear gassing them, and shooting them in the face.

She called the hearing an effort to deflect attention from systemic racial injustice. President Trump is deliberately trying to undermine the massive protests for racial justice by dismissing them as anarchists.

The culture clash persisted throughout the three-hour hearing.

Cruz and allied witnesses promoted a vision of America and its police agencies under siege by anti-government radicals.

Democrats and their witnesses blamed right-wing provocateurs and an overly aggressive federal response for violence.

Cruz displayed video showing protesters attacking law enforcement.

Democrats countered with footage of protesters being beaten without provocation by officers, or detained by camouflage-clad federal agents driving unmarked cars.

Throughout, the Texan needled his adversaries.

Not a single Democratic senator condemned antifa. Not a one of them condemned antifas violence and terrorism, Cruz said as the hearing neared the end.

By then, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the deputy Democratic leader, among others, had offered condolences for police injured or killed in the line of duty, and explicitly denounced any form of violence by protesters: Neither violence or vandalism are acceptable in the exercise of ones constitutional rights.

Hirono took umbrage at Cruzs insinuations and dressed him down for posturing and poor listening skills.

No one is condoning any violence, she said. I dont think you listen. How many times have I had to say that we all should be denouncing violent extremists? You arent listening.

I hope that we dont have to listen to any more of your rhetorical speeches, she said. Im leaving.

For several months, Cruz has been at the forefront of the GOP effort to discredit antifa and Black Lives Matter. In July, he introduced a bill to let business owners and others sue local governments for property damage if they fail to stop riots.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, another Oregon Democrat, displayed a photo of right-wing militia dressed in camouflage and below it, a photo of federal agents in nearly identical gear, echoing complaints from protesters and local officials about unidentifiable, unaccountable federal forces.

These features -- officers with no identity attacking protesters, sweeping some into unmarked vans, are the features of secret police tactics from around the world. I never thought an American president would bringing such tactics to the streets of America. But Trump has, he said. Using secret police tactics against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters doesnt make him a defender of law and order. It makes him a violent suppressor.

Cruz defended the use of unmarked vehicles, noting that during some riots, marked police vehicles have been firebombed.

We have no secret police, testified Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security.

The top federal prosecutor in Dallas, Erin Nealy Cox, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas and head of a Justice Department task force on anti-government violence, was among the witnesses.

She recalled the June 2019 shooting at the Dallas federal courthouse, and the July 2016 killing of five police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas.

Unlike the lawful protesters whose demonstrations they undermine, these anti-government extremists aim to tear down the rule of law in America, she said. They are drowning out the voices of the protesters that this country wants to hear.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., lauded law enforcement for the restraint shown at protests, given they cant always tell at a glance who is peaceful and who are the disruptors and the destroyers that show up.

But Michael German, a fellow at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, testified that Trump and others focused on antifa see a threat where none exists.

Misinformation about antifa spread by white supremacist trolls has diverted law enforcement resources and encouraged armed vigilante groups to patrol streets, he told senators, and the Trump administration has amplified this misinformation.

Not one homicide has been attributed to anti-fascists in 25 years, he noted.

But a witness invited by Cruz, Kyle Shideler, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based conservative think tank, described antifa as a shadowy network of cells and chapters dedicated to vandalism and assault, intent on overthrowing the Constitution.

The fact that antifa uses an elaborate but non-hierarchical structure thats hard to understand or penetrate is no excuse for law enforcement to ignore the threat, he warned.

Hirono objected to Shidelers presence, noting that major conservative gatherings have shunned the center because its founder has demonized Muslims, and it has been labeled an anti-Muslim hate group.

We reject this claim, Shideler said when Cruz offered him time to rebut. We are particularly proud of our work trying to understand the ideology of jihadist terrorism. He accused groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League that apply the hate group label of engaging in antifa-like tactics to discredit opponents.

Andy Ngo, a conservative journalist from Portland who has devoted himself to documenting antifa, called it a violent insurrectionary group. He recounted an assault and urge lawmakers to take action.

Portland is the canary in the coal mine for America, he said. Look to my city to see what happens when a group like antifa is left unchecked.

Washington correspondent Paul Cobler contributed to this report.

Here is the original post:
Cruzs antifa hearing erupts in sniping as Dems accuse him of giving Trump cover for abusive tactics - The Dallas Morning News

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Cruzs antifa hearing erupts in sniping as Dems accuse him of giving Trump cover for abusive tactics – The Dallas Morning News
Tags:

Posted By admin on August 6, 2020

Its the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. When Japan signed the instruments of surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, it was the last of a series of notable events that took place that year.

The first was the liberation, on Jan. 27, 1945, of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany, imperial Japans Axis ally.

Post-Holocaust, the fervent credo of a Jewish community that witnessed approximately six million of its numbers perish in under five years half of all European Jews and more than a third of Jews worldwide has been Never again!

And yet

Oct. 27, 2018: A man armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh cut down 11 congregants in the worst killing of Jews in American history.

Dec. 10, 2019: A gunman in a kosher deli in Jersey City, N.J., killed, among others, two Orthodox Jews.

Dec. 28, 2019: A man wielding a machete in a rabbis home in Monsey, N.Y., wounded five during a Hanukkah celebration.

In Halle, Germany, in mid-October 2019, only an impassable synagogue door prevented a Yom Kippur bloodbath by a man armed with a machine gun and a video camera to stream the intended massacre for the world. In his online manifesto, he stated: If I fail and die but kill a single Jew, it was worth it. After all, if every White Man kills just one, we win.

Almost 90 per cent of American Jews currently deem anti-Semitism to be a scourge in the United States, with some hesitant to display openly their religious and cultural affiliation. A European Union survey showed the same percentage of Jews expressing the belief that anti-Semitism has very recently increased in their respective countries.

Anti-Semitism has been on the rise globally, with the last few years witnessing a surge in anti-Semitic assaults and the rhetoric that inspires them. The antagonism is coming from the far right, the far left and Islamists.

The word Semitic is derived from the biblical name Shem, one of Noahs three sons. The Shemitic peoples are found throughout the Middle East, with the largest constituent group being Arabs. But anti-Semitism has always applied only to Jews within the larger Semitic population group.

The animus towards Jews has its roots in the first century of the Common Era (a major contributor being early Christians hostility towards their parent religion for refusing to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah).

The term anti-Semitism, though, appears only in the second half of the 19th century. It was coined in Germany (Antisemitismus) in the 1879 work Der Sieg des Judenthums ber das Germanenthum (The Victory of Judaism Over Germanism) by journalist Wilhelm Marr.

Against the backdrop of a burgeoning focus on nationalism in Europe, Marr sought to target explicitly the ethnicity of Jews over and above their religious and cultural identity. Antisemitismus would come to supplant the previous, much cruder, German term Judenhass (Jew hatred).

Following the Second World War, the expression of overt anti-Semitism was limited somewhat to the fringes of political and social discourse. But for the past few decades, European Jews have been keeping a wary and worried eye on it.

Across continental Europe, right-wing parties that have long voiced anti-Semitic rhetoric have lately been growing stronger.

In 2015, French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, born to Holocaust survivors, was asked whether Europe had again become inhospitable for Jews. We should not leave, he said. But maybe for our children or grandchildren there will be no choice.

In 2017, anti-Semitism began its latest easily visible upsurge, with Germany, France, the United States and Canada witnessing a troubling climb in violent anti-Semitic episodes the next year. Bnai Brith Canada recorded 2,041 anti-Semitic incidents across the country (11 per cent of them violent), a 16.5 per cent increase from 2017.

In Britain, anti-Semitism has permeated the left-wing Labour Party under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, prompting a number of its Members of Parliament to denounce and depart the party. In the lead-up to the 2019 general election, Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Ephraim Mirvis castigated Corbyn and Labour. A new poison sanctioned from the very top has taken root in the Labour Party, he said.

The Jewish community, of course, has seen and experienced this poison many times.

From the first accusation of deicide in the second century (due to the false claim that it was Jews who were responsible for the death of Jesus), the blood libel, the pogroms, the dissemination of the forged document commonly called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the Nazi attempt to carry out Die Endlsung (The Final Solution), it has infused most of the last two millennia.

The poison has always surged to the surface in times of social, political and economic uncertainty such as our current global context, now made much worse by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the fact that health authorities the world over unanimously agree that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in China, anti-Semites have found a way to blame the pandemic itself on Jews.

Subsequent to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, anti-Semitism also took the form of claims on the American far right that powerful Jewish actors (supposedly led by billionaire George Soros) were inciting and guiding the Black Lives Matter protests for their own perverse purposes. This is a white-supremacist trope that dates back to the time of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Read more: How Donald Trump will try to scapegoat George Soros to win re-election

Still, it was specifically in 2017 that the most recent spike in anti-Semitic violence started. This has naturally made analysts search for a particular fount of the poison in that year. At least with respect to overt far-right anti-Semitism, they may have found the source: the start of the presidency of Donald Trump.

Correlation is, of course, not causation, but Trump has unabashedly practised the politics of hate and division, openly courting white nationalists and stoking the resentments of the far right.

This animus has also been directed against Muslims and non-white people in general, but it was the chant of Jews will not replace us that echoed chillingly through the night during the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.

While anti-Semitism undeniably has its left-wing instigators, particularly in Europe, the Anti-Defamation Leagues 2019 figures illustrate graphically that it is the far right currently animating animosity against Jews in the United States.

Admittedly, Trumps Middle East policies have greatly favoured Israel. But they are due primarily to his need to please his white conservative Christian base, who see full Jewish control and settlement of the biblical land of Israel as part of their apocalyptic road map.

Although Trump has himself employed anti-Semitic tropes, he is, in reality, not an anti-Semite. He is actually a philo-Semite in this case a poisonous one. That is, he believes all of the toxic stereotypes about Jews Jews are greedy, Jews are bent on domination, Jews are egocentric but he sees those traits as admirable.

But philo-Semitism can so easily be inverted and weaponized against Jews. Wealthy and good with money becomes avaricious and grasping. Ambitious and organized morphs into scheming, devious and domineering. Hence the sardonic Jewish adage: A philo-Semite is an anti-Semite who likes Jews.

Which might also call to mind another well-worn maxim: With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Read the original post:
Anti-Semitism is on the rise, 75 years after the end of the Holocaust and Second World War - The Conversation CA

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Anti-Semitism is on the rise, 75 years after the end of the Holocaust and Second World War – The Conversation CA
Tags:

Posted By admin on August 4, 2020

Image by Gage Skidmore/flickr

Former Phoenix City Councilwoman Kate Gallego at the 2019 Legislative Forecast Luncheon hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona.

WASHINGTON (JTA) When Kate Gallego was growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she dreamed of moving to the big city and making an impact.

To prepare, she played video games.

So there was a computer game Sim City where you could map out cities, and I loved that, Gallego said in an interview this week with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. You have the right mix of libraries and educational institutions and places for people to work, and you also have enough clean water and ability to pick up trash and recycling so that it is to a certain extent well balanced. You cant have a city that just does one thing.

Did her virtual cities include synagogues?

Absolutely, Gallego said. You have to serve the whole person.

Decades later, Gallego not only lives in Phoenix but is its mayor. Yet rather than tackling a wide range of challenges in the city, the fifth largest in the United States, the 38-year-old Jewish Democrat is now focused primarily on one: the COVID-19 pandemic that has ravaged Phoenix and required her to engage in delicate open negotiations with both Arizonas Republican governor and the Trump administration.

In June, Gov. Doug Ducey barred cities from imposing requirements to wear face masks, rendering Gallegos mandate moot at a crucial moment, as cases began to rise and President Trump held a rally in the city. She joined Regina Romero, the Democratic mayor of Arizonas second-largest city, Tucson, in pushing back against Duceys decision. He not only reversed his order, but now says Arizonans likely will be wearing masks through the end of the year.

Then, earlier this month, Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, was recording more than 2,000 new cases a day, and nearly a quarter of tests were coming back positive. Sick residents were spending hours in 115-degree temperatures waiting to be screened for the virus. Yet the federal support for more testing that Gallego had been requesting for months had not materialized. After she aired her concerns publicly, the Federal Emergency Management Administration opened a surge testing site that she wanted, even as Arizona Republican leaders accused her of lying.

In both cases, Gallego advocated firmly and openly for her city, locally and during a series of appearances on national news shows. But in a state thats about evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, she got her way in part by making a point of not engaging in the partisan warfare that has characterized the response to the pandemic in some places, said Paul Rockower, the director of the Phoenix Jewish Community Relations Council.

Shes been out in front, shes been advocating for good health policy procedures and protocols, Rockower said in an interview. But shes not one whos going to go out and be radical. You dont get anywhere in Arizona being a bomb thrower. You have to really be prudent.

Gallegos July 12 appearance on Face the Nation was typical. Asked about her frustrations in obtaining federal assistance, she glided past the potshot taken at her by the White House and instead said she was grateful to the federal government for coming through.

The term they used for me was out of tune, she said. But the good news is they did finally decide that they are going to be bringing that federal testing to our community, and it cannot come a moment too soon.

Gallego also did not make a point of forcing the participants at a Trump rally in June to wear masks.

We decided to start with education and just explaining why mask-wearing is important, and why the city required it, the mayor said. And so at the time the president came, we had not issued any citations and it felt too political to start with a political event.

Helen Holden, a Phoenix lawyer who is involved with the National Council of Jewish Women, said Gallego has done a really good job of bringing some disparate elements together.

Gallego says thats in part because of her Jewish identity.

Our faith saying that every person has value and dignity is really important, and has driven how Ive approached COVID, she said.

Image by twitter

Kate Gallego

Her Jewish identity has also shaped some of the reaction shes faced, and the way Gallego has worked with other executives to respond.

Theres been some pushback using Nazi terminology against really all elected officials, but Jewish ones in particular, she said. Ive been able to talk to some of my fellow Jewish mayors about how they are responding, and weve also looked at, like for example, Gov. [Jared] Polis from Colorado, who has spoken quite eloquently about how inappropriate it is to use comparisons to the Holocaust.

Gallego has lived in Phoenix since 2004, when she moved there after graduating from Harvard with a degree in environmental studies to be with her then-boyfriend, Ruben Gallego. (She also has an MBA from the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School.) She arrived at the same time as another Harvard graduate, Pete Buttigieg, but while he eventually returned to his hometown, South Bend, Indiana, Gallego planted roots in the city.

She and Ruben Gallego, who was later elected to Congress, married in 2010. (Until then, her name was Kate Widland.) In 2013, after a period working in urban development, she was elected to the Phoenix City Council at 32, where she lobbied for civic improvements of the type she once constructed in Sim City, including a light rail system that would allow for sustainable growth in the fast-expanding city.

She and Gallego divorced in 2016 while she was pregnant with their son, Michael, and her parents moved 400 miles west from Albuquerque to join her and share in his care. After the mayor of Phoenix won a congressional seat in 2018, Gallego engaged in a bitter race to replace him, and Michael joined her frequently on the campaign trail. She was elected in March 2019 on a platform that included investing in sustainable growth, including public transportation, and preparing the citys finances for a recession that would come much sooner and more precipitously than anyone could have imagined.

Gallego is Phoenixs third Jewish mayor she said it was a point of pride that Emil Ganz was the first in the late 19th century and she is deeply committed to its Jewish community, which numbers about 100,000.

Paul Eckstein, an amateur historian of Jewish Arizona, gave a lecture a year or so ago on The Jewish Connection To Modern Arizona Politics at the local Jewish heritage center. He was surprised to see Gallego turn up. He was even more surprised when she contacted him a few months later.

She borrowed my materials, Eckstein said, so she could include the information in her own speeches to the Jewish community.

Gallego is proud of the Phoenix Jewish community for joining other communities in organizing the distribution of personal protective gear and testing, and in pushing back against anti-Chinese racism. (The Jewish Community Relations Council joined a national Jewish initiative speaking out against racism at the beginning of the pandemic.)

The Jewish community has been amazing in advancing conversations about equity and fighting racism, but also helping me in fighting COVID, she said.

Gallegos rabbi, John Linder of Temple Solel in suburban Phoenix, said her openness to others is clear in their conversations.

She might not be able to say, You know, the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Eruvin, where youve got Hillel and Shammai and elu and elu, Linder said, referring to a classic Jewish text in which the ancient rabbis concluded that two positions should be considered equally divine Torah. But the point is she recognizes from Jewish tradition that there are multiple truths.

That approach will be key if Gallego chooses to pursue a further political career in Arizona, where Democrats have enjoyed unusual electoral success lately but which remains a purple state overall. She is earning the national profile that helped propel Buttigieg to be among the frontrunners in the Democratic presidential primaries, and her national news appearances are already generating some resentment at home.

But rather than looking ahead, Gallego is maintaining a laser-sharp focus on what Phoenix needs to weather the pandemic.

Thats smart, said Ron Ober, a lobbyist who ran a campaign for Dennis DeConcini, a three-term Arizona senator.

People who are successful in running for future political offices, it usually happens because they do a good job, and not because they make plans, he said. People who make plans in politics are destined to potentially be disappointed.

Does Gallego see a future where she can put her negotiating skills to use in a bigger arena? Right now, shes focused on winning reelection shes up for a full four-year term this fall, and she faces two determined competitors as well as COVID-19 rates that, while falling, remain among the highest in the country.

I have my dream job now, she said.

The post The pandemic put Kate Gallego, Phoenixs Jewish mayor, in the spotlight. Shes walking a tightrope in a swing state. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The pandemic put Phoenixs Jewish mayor in the spotlight. Shes walking a tightrope.

See the rest here:

The pandemic put Phoenixs Jewish mayor in the spotlight. Shes walking a tightrope. - Forward

Category: Jewish Heritage Month | Comments Off on The pandemic put Phoenixs Jewish mayor in the spotlight. Shes walking a tightrope. – Forward
Tags: