Another suburban New York /New Jersey religious attack….
Five people where injured…
When he was caught, the intruder was still covered in the blood of his victims — five Hasidic Jews he had stabbed wildly with a machete at a rabbi’s home while candles on the Hanukkah menorah still burned.
But the toll might have been worse had those assembled not fought back, hitting the intruder with pieces of furniture, forcing him to retreat.
He had concealed his face with a scarf when he burst into the home in this Hasidic community in the New York suburbs at about 10 p.m. on Saturday, the police and witnesses said.
“At the beginning, he started wielding his machete back and forth, trying to hit everyone around,” said Josef Gluck, 32, who was at the home of the Hasidic rabbi, Chaim Rottenberg, for the celebration of the seventh night of Hanukkah.
Mr. Gluck said the assailant screamed at him, “Hey you, I’ll get you” during the attack.
In terror, people fled the living room. Mr. Gluck recalled dashing into the kitchen, scooping up a small child and then going down a back porch. Mr. Gluck returned, saw an older victim bleeding heavily and then tried to confront the attacker.
“I grabbed an old antique coffee table and I threw it at his face,” Mr. Gluck said.
The suspect, Grafton Thomas, 38, was later arrested in Harlem after police traced his license plate using a photo Mr. Gluck had taken of Mr. Thomas’s car as he fled the scene.
The police have not disclosed a motive, and much about Mr. Thomas remained a mystery on Sunday, including why he chose the rabbi’s house. But Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo referred to the rampage as an “act of domestic terrorism.”
Late on Sunday afternoon, two family friends of Mr. Thomas said he had struggled with mental illness, and they insisted that was at the root of the attack.
The violence further traumatized the Jewish community in the New York region, coming after a string of anti-Semitic incidents in recent weeks. It occurred less than a month after an anti-Semitic mass shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, N.J., left three people dead, including two Hasidic Jews….
image..theguardian
One parishioner was killed and another seriously injured Sunday when a gunman opened fire during a church service near Fort Worth, Texas. Another parishioner shot and killed the gunman seconds after the incident began, according to officials and a livestream video of the service.
Jeoff Williams of the Texas Department of Public Safety praised the “heroic parishioners” who stopped the gunman. Several parishioners quickly pulled their guns soon after the first shot was fired.
Two people were treated at the scene and released, officials said.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/west-freeway-church-of-christ-shooting-gunman-opens-fire-at-white-settlement-texas-church-today-live-updates-2019-12-29/
This stuff WILL continue…
It’s almost routine…
Which IS wrong….
This was more than a “violent rampage” which makes it sound like some sort of spontaneous event or act of mutual combat.
Jews have been targeted daily in the NYC area recently. This is far from isolated. These are acts of hate and domestic terrorism. Jews are being targeted in the U.S. these days like never before in American history and that should be scary for everyone.
These who flirt politically with anyone who justifies or tries to offer rationale for these attacks against Jews, whether on the alt-right or the extreme left need to be called out.
I don’t want to minimise anything that CG wrote above, but unfortunately there have been other times in American history where Jews were called out and targetted for their religion and ethnicity (and not, for example, for being Communists) — most notably in the 1930’s (before the Holocaust put explicit anti-Semitism beyond the Pale).
The most effective spokesman for anti-Semitism was Roman Catholic Father Charles Coughlin of Royal Oak, Mich., who broadcast a widely-heard weekly radio address, and organized a National Union for Social Justice with tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of members. In 1936, his candidate for President on the Union Party ticket was Sen, William Lemke (Non-Partisan League of North Dakota) who won nearly 2% of the vote, or just under 900,000 votes — which is about as many as Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party ever won.
The Ku Klux Klan, which revived in the 1920’s and 1930’s to draw a mass following, declared not only Negroes, but also Jews and Roman Catholics as their targets.
¶ But CG’s aside that “Jews are being targeted in the U.S. these days like never before in American history” may be right; Wikipedia’s article on the history of Jews in the U.S. says
“Antisemitism in America reached its peak during the interwar period. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, the antisemitic works of Henry Ford, and the radio speeches of Father Coughlin in the late 1930s indicated the strength of attacks on the Jewish community.
“Antisemitism in the United States has rarely turned into physical violence against Jews. Some more notable cases of such violence include the attack of Irish workers and police on the funeral procession of Rabbi Jacob Joseph in New York City in 1902, the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915, the murder of Alan Berg in 1984, and the Crown Heights riot of 1991.”
And for an example of particularly repellent anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in America today, see:
https://www.trunews.com/stream/jew-coup-seditious-jews-orchestrating-trump-impeachment-lynching
(96 minutes if you have the time and patience to see the whole thing, which I don’t)
Of course I was speaking about physical violence against Jews or in person confrontations involving harassment which seem to be happening daily on NYC subways lately. I am sure that overall, anti-Semitic attitudes have decreased but those who hold them feel emboldened to act out, which was first seen on the largest scale ever on an attack on Jews in the Pittsburgh terrorism attack by a white nationalist. (The recent Jersey City terrorist attack did not receive nearly as much attention in part because the terrorists were not white nationalists, but African-Americans, even as some on the left rush to declare it an act of right-wing terrorism.)
Of course the Al Sharpton inspired riots which caused the deaths of Jews in NYC in the early ’90s are worth remembering but were somewhat of an isolated incident. To this day, Sharpton remains totally unrepentant about the entire thing and has grown in esteem, both as a prominent media figure who has now made millions of dollars, and as an official party elder of sorts among mainstream Democrats. Shameful.
CG?
You ever heard of Meir Kahane?
Sure. Not considered a mainstream figure.
Yes….
There have been numerous attacks against Jew ….
But there have also been Bleck church attacks and those against Muslims also….
Congregants shot and killed a man who opened fire in a church near Fort Worth, Texas, on Sunday, killing the attacker, police said….
More…
The assailant has now been charged with a federal hate crime. According to evidence discovered, he had a long-history of anti-Semitism and had expressed admiration for Hitler and Nazis
And he’s also black. Not that such a fact should make a difference as to the reality of his actions, but people should keep these things in mind that sometimes not everything is “black and white.” Hatred of Jews certainly seems to unite both polar fringes of society and should be a reminder of the necessity of the State of Israel as a Jewish homeland.
People should also think twice before excusing issues of anti-Semitism related either directly to or those closely associated with Stephen Miller on the right or Bernie Sanders on the left just because they were born Jewish.
Hate and ignorance go hand in hand…
Let us NOT FORGET the attacks on schools and their teachers and students…Or….A hotel in Vegas….
The truth IS Domestic violence is aimed at EVERY American and is a far bigger threat then those that would fly here on a airplane…
And NO WALL will stop it…
It sounds like you are minimizing specific attacks against Jews.
No…..
As i said?
Hate IS HATE….
But i seek to remind everyone that it has NO bounds or limits….
The upstate attack killed no one
The church attack afterwards DID….
The number of school children and teachers killed is how much?
And yet?
Americans will NOT give up their guys and the President rants about illegals and takes money for a wall to keep our others that are NOT the problem ….
NO ONE should BE a VICTUM
Sure, you speak to the generic, but is that good enough these days? For any of us?
Yes, an attack on any American is an attack on us all. If only we could all believe that…
What has been happening lately are specific attacks on Jews and should be called by name.
The attack in El Paso was a specific attack on Latinos and should be called by name.
The AME church shootings in Charleston were a specific attack on African-Americans and should be called by name.
The Sikh Temple in Wisconsin..
etc. etc.
All of these things are horrific. What is making news, at least this week, are attacks on Jews (both large-scale and small scale) because they are increasingly tremendously for some reason in America. It would be good to know why so we can best figure out how to stop it.
The fact that no one was killed should not make it any less important. People fought back. Thankfully, the bad person did not have a gun. The next one might. (which means it might be a good idea for the good people to consider guns too as a protection method, as we saw worked this weekend in Texas)
The people who targeted a Jewish grocery store in Jersey City two weeks ago did have guns and did take lives.
Agreed….
There should NO ATTACKS
PERIOD
I’m glad we agree. But when communities are targeted, that needs to be pointed out. Resources need to be provided as needed, which would presently involve more police presence in the NYC areas where this is happening.
On Saturday night when this happened, I was also at a Hanukkah party at my brother’s home. He was wearing an irreverent Hanukkah sweater with a funny saying on it but said he would not wear it in public out of fear of anti-Semitism. My initial reaction was that he was being a bit over-dramatic but I think I was probably wrong now.
And after the Jersey City attack, an elected Democrat School Board member from the area called Jews “brutes” and said the murderers may have had a reason for their actions.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/18/joan-terrell-paige-nj-official-not-sorry-for-calli/
Many Democrats have spoken out against her, while others in the party defend her. It would be unlikely to get mentioned here if not for me, because some in the crowd here don’t like to hear anything at all critical about Democrats because Trump does stuff too.
No “wall” in America will stop societal problems.
There is a wall in Israel that is far more needed and works effectively. As well as an “Iron Dome.”
Yea …
Israel has a wall…
Problems still persist
They have the wall because of the problems. The problems would be greater without it. Not complicated.
Finally?
While it is not his fault Directly?
America is NOT well served by a President who embraced little acts of defiance and violence as a way to gain support for him politically…
Sworn to uphold and enforce the law?
Donald J. Trump has smiled as his efforts to walk over normality , laws, rules and regulations….
As the ‘leader’ of this 300 million + nation ?
He has turned his back on a sense of right and wrong for all of us…
Yeah, but he’s not the only one who has. That is all of our problem. Moral Relativism did not come into existence in November of 2016.
But it minimizes both this attack and anti-Trump activism in general to lump him in with a specific situation that truly has nothing to do with him.
Trump at least Tweeted against what happened. Has AOC?
Ms Ocasio-Cortez is media creature…
No one who recognize on the subway….
Donals J. Trump is the President…
While someone probably typed a contrite statement in his name ?
He DIES have his history of baiting violence …
AOC does not…
BTW?
It wasn’t AOC exonerating and hanging with a Navy Spec Op guy that his own sailors called evil and turned in…
A prime example of Trump’s embrace of lawlessness
Yes, Trump seems to be wrong in going against military protocol to cozy up to a guy who seems to have done a lot wrong.
And also Bernie Sanders should stay away from an anti-Semitic extremist like Linda Sarsour instead of welcoming and embracing her support.
Both things can be said.
Again?
No one should be subjected to this…
Trump was once a media creature too and he hadn’t even been elected to anything.
AOC is an elected official is very recognizable. She is only going to grow in prominence in your party.
Saying Trump may have *indirectly* inspired a white guy to attack Mexicans and Mexican-Americans may be somewhat fair game.
Saying (without corroborating evidence) that he inspired a black guy to attack Orthodox Jews is far less fair and only helps him by allowing his people to point to rhetorical excesses of his opponents.
The people who are being videotaped on NYC subways berating Jewish people minding their own business or physically attacking them on street corners hardly look like the typical MAGA crowd.
on AOC ?
Yea ….
But?
She’s made sure she works WITH Pelosi
And she’s gonna be primaried by someone from the middle of the party…
incumbent’s generally win though…
My thinking is that if a “leftist” loses to Trump, Buttigieg is immediately the 2024 Dem frontrunner.
If a “non-leftist” loses to Trump, AOC is immediately the 2024 Dem frontrunner.
If Biden gets elected, his VP is immediately the 2024 Dem frontrunner.
Buttigieg will NEVER. be the nominee without the black vote….
And it escapes him right now…
While some in the media get excited by him?
He’s really just small town , gay, vet mayor running in FOURTH place among Democrats…
That’s all….
A Biden VP would have an edge in seeking the post-Biden presidency, but although many Vice Presidents have run for their retiring boss’s job, only four (4) have gone on to win the Electoral College. Really only three should be compared since Jefferson was Adams’ VP because he was Adams’ opponent, rather than ally or future protègé, in 1796.
1796 John Adams (Fed.)
[1800 Thomas Jefferson (D-R)]
1836 Martin Van Buren (D)
1988 George H.W. Bush (R)
The dilemma that defeats other VP’s running for President is that it’s hard to show both loyalty to and independence from the sitting President. More often, the VP suffers from whatever opposition has grown towards their administration, while having to concede credit to the President for any popular achievements.
Hubert Humphrey suffered acutely from this in 1968.
Other recent unsuccessful VP’s have been Richard Nixon in 1960 and Al Gore in 2000.
Excellent point on the VP dealing with their old bosses actions and legacy…
But?
So far Biden is benefiting from Obama’s continued HIGH approval among Democrats
A Black guy sympathetic to Nazis?
Either totally deranged ,self loathing or both.
Unfortunately there are thousands of these disturbed type people roaming the streets every day.
It’s not anything too radical as far as I am concerned. Hate is hate. Farrakhan has spoken in glowing terms in the past about Hitler.
And there Farrakhan still was last year, up on the dais at Aretha Franklin’s funeral (which unless she personally requested him was a tremendous sign of d.i.s.r.e.s.p.e.t.)
Sitting next to Farrakhan was Sharpton, then Jesse Jackson, then Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton should have manned up and left the funeral rather than sit up there with Farrakhan, (let alone Sharpton.)
All Republicans should walk out of the room when Trump walks in.
Democrats are unlikely to walk out of a room for Trump too. He’s President. Farrakhan isn’t, which is difference number one.
As mentioned, Farrakhan to this day continues to be welcomed among many elected Democrats.
Anything to keep from talking about Republicans and Trump.
Slow day eh?
I talk about Trump and Republicans all the time.
Why do you never want to hear a critical word about your brethren?
The fact of the matter is that the subject of this thread and what happened Saturday in NY really has nothing to do with Trump. If a Trump angle emerges, that can be brought into the picture.
The Pittsburgh synagogue attack was done by a Trump fan, and that certainly received plenty of attention and I certainly mentioned that aspect myself many times.
Oh I couldn’t care less about you being “critical” of Democrats(I mean gee what a surprise!)
But making a big deal about Clinton not walking out of a funeral is a little trite ,even for you.
Any comment= big deal?
You must live a dramatic existence
Should Clinton have sat there with Farrakhan?
Shows he’s a nut too.
Farrakhan
Nonetheless, he has a lot of friends within one major party.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/anti-semitism-louis-farrakhan-democratic-party/
That’s all you got today?
I always have lots more.
Any requests?
Meanwhile, Conservative Evangelicals believe that all Jews are going to Hell?
Bother you?
Not too much. We don’t recognize hell as existing, so far more important to focus on how people want to treat Jews in this world above all else. I don’t believe all Evangelicals believe it and I don’t know if there is a political divide on that.
I have always talked about how it was a huge mistake for the Trump Administration to involve someone who is big on that theory such as Rev. Jeffers to speak at the Jerusalem Embassy event.
First, I can’t pretend to be an expert on what Evangelicals really believe, but it is my understanding that an overwhelming majority believe in heaven and hell. In fact, it is my understanding that almost all Christians who don’t self-identify as Evangelical believe in heaven and hell.
there are very few things that “All” evangelicals believe – especially when you consider that there are millions of evangelicals. But all evangelicals that I have known believe that accepting Jesus Christ as our savior is necessary for admission to heaven. And that excludes almost all Jews (and almost all Unitarians) from heaven.
I know that at least some evangelicals support Israel because it would hasten the apocalypse. Or at least that is what I have heard more than once when listening (very infrequently) to their TV sermon on a Sunday morning.
If CG welcomes the Evangelical “support” for Israel, good for him. But it is often important to know why someone supports something before you view them as your ally.
Well you have to get your priorities straight.
That Bill Clinton attended Aretha Franklins funeral and there were some people there that we all know he disagreed with but didn’t walk out and….
Nah this “whataboutism “ is just too damn silly to go on any further with…
Took a couple days off the blog as I had to say goodbye to my 14 yr old pup.
But yeah Bill Clinton nor storming out of Aretha Franklin’s funeral because Farrakhan waa there.
Jesus, the shit desperate people cling to.
Gee what a surprise reply.
Now does anyone here believe that if a significant portion of the Democrat party openly espoused adoctrine that all Jews were going to Hell,that such wouldn’t bother CG “too much?”
Happy New Year!
Well, the Jewish billionaires who have Wine Caves are certainly going to hell.
I looked up AOC’s Twitter account, and it says nothing about the Hanukkah attack. But she also tweeted that she’s going on holiday with her family.
What’s more interesting (although old news to some) is that at the last Hanukkah, she said that after some extensive genealogical research, she found that her mother’s side of the family descended from Jews who fled Spain for Puerto Rico after Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 expelled Jews and Muslims who would not convert to Roman Catholicism.
AOC is Catholic but she also considers herself a Jew. Unlike the Muslim members of the Squad, she had not (by the end of 2018) endorsed BDS (Boycott, Divest & Sanction Israel).
See:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/10/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-reveals-jewish-ancestry-hanukkah-celebration/
By the way, I agree with CG that Rev. Al Sharpton — as much of a media hog as Donald Trump — had no business holding a semi-political job in Obama’s White House or appearing near the spotlight at every event such as willing John Lewis well on his recovery. Sharpton may think himself the new Martin Luther King, Jr, destined to Lead His People, and rarely challenged as such by other minority leaders, but I could think of few people (e.g. Louis Farrakhan) less eligible for the role.
But I don’t think it’s just anti-Semitism (if at all) that motivates him. It’s self-justifying moral opportunism, especially if it involves black people against some other group. His reinforcing and expanding Tawana Brawley’s (perhaps understandable) lies led to one man’s suicide.
Any principled Democratic candidate should conspicuously reject an endorsement from Al Sharpton, rather than address his National Action Network’s convention in hopes of winning its support.
Some like to bring up Rev. Al as the black bogey man….
That’s fine….
It doesn’t really manner…
If you want the Democratic Presidential nomination?
You take the ride to NYC and go and see Rev. Al.
Then?
If you get the job?
You invited the Rev. to your house…
THAT IS what U do…
Donald J. Trump likewise invites HIS rightwingnuts who belong to groups that have support violence also..
Oh, Wait?
At least the Democrats hanging with Al haven’t egged on campaign supporters, and others, to commit violence acts like the Republican party leader , whose salary, we the taxpayer pay , does, eh?.
Jew-haters, right and left
¶ If you condemn anti-Semitism only when it comes from the team you oppose, you haven’t condemned a thing.
By Jeff Jacoby, [Boston] Globe Columnist,
Updated December 30, 2019, 5:21 p.m.
Twenty-three years ago, visiting Germany for the first time, I was startled to discover that synagogues and other Jewish sites were guarded round-the-clock by the police. To attend Sabbath services at the shul on Berlin’s Joachimstaler Strasse, I had to pass an armed guard and a metal detector. I was glad that in America such things were unknown.
In those days, I used to scoff when some American Jews, responding to opinion surveys, would claim that anti-Semitism in the United States was “a very serious problem.” Their paranoia, I thought, was groundless. After all, Jews have been embraced in America with a degree of tolerance and goodwill unparalleled in Jewish history.
I don’t think it’s groundless any more.
In a brutal attack Saturday night, a machete-wielding man burst into a Hanukkah celebration in the home of a Hasidic rabbi in Monsey, N.Y. Screaming “Hey, you, I’ll get you,” he stabbed and wounded five people, then tried to enter the synagogue next door. When the attacker wasn’t able to get in, he fled by car. A suspect, Grafton Thomas, was later arrested in Harlem, reportedly still covered in the victims’ blood. It was a terrible assault — but the most terrible thing about it is that it was only the latest in a barrage of violence against Jews in America.
In October 2018 a gunman murdered 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Last April, another shooter opened fire at a Chabad synagogue in Poway, Calif. For Jewish sites across the country, beefing up security has become an acute concern. At my synagogue, as at many others, an armed guard now stands watch during Sabbath services.
The drumbeat of anti-Semitic violence is increasing. Earlier this month, two assailants rampaged at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, killing three bystanders and a police officer. The bloodbath could have been unspeakably worse: According to Jersey City’s mayor, the killers’ real target was a yeshiva upstairs, where 50 small children could hear the gunfire.
The mayor of a New Jersey city says gunmen targeted the kosher market during a shooting that killed multiple people Tuesday.
“There was an attack on Jewish New Yorkers almost every day last week,” noted CNN on Sunday. In reality, there have been physical attacks on Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn for months — “a typhoon of violence,” Tablet magazine described it back in July, with “no evident organizing principle behind it aside from pure hostility against targets that are unmistakably Jewish.” To the consternation of many in New York’s Jewish neighborhoods, this “slow-rolling pogrom” triggered no sense of urgency on the part of New York authorities or the media.
Was that because the attackers weren’t white supremacists?
For the last several years, in the wake of proliferating online anti-Semitism from the “alt-right” and especially after the shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway, the conventional wisdom has been that the most dangerous Jew-hatred is a right-wing phenomenon, intimately bound up with white-supremacist fanaticism. The neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, chanting “Jews will not replace us,” epitomized that paradigm. So did Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh mass shooter, who declared that “all Jews must die” and railed against immigrants.
But anti-Semitism is equally a phenomenon of the left. In our hyperpolarized environment — as I can testify from personal experience — many liberals choose to denounce Jew-hatred only when it can be pinned on the right, while diehard conservatives prefer to focus on anti-Semitic tropes that crop up on the left. Immediately after the Jersey City murders, Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib was quick to pin the bloodshed on “white supremacy” — obviously unaware that one of the killers was a follower of Black Hebrew Israelites, a hate group.
When it comes to hating Jews, left and right make common ground. The far right spins deranged conspiracy theories about a Zionist Occupation Government that controls US foreign policy, while the far left paints AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, as a uniquely malignant force. “This absence of a dividing line between left and right when it comes to anti-Semitism,” observed Emory University’s renowned historian Deborah Lipstadt, “was evident when former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke clicked ‘like’ on Representative Ilhan Omar’s tweet claiming that American support of Israel is ‘all about the Benjamins baby.’”
If the long, bitter history of anti-Semitism teaches anything, it is that “the oldest hatred” can take any shape and adapt to any ideology. Nazis or Communists, Christians or Muslims, Trump backers or Trump foes, white extremists or black extremists — hostility to Jews grows in any soil. And if you condemn anti-Semitism only when it comes from the team you oppose, you haven’t condemned a thing.
Jew-hatred thrives where Jew-haters are tolerated: Therefore they must not be tolerated. For most of the postwar decades, a powerful taboo made anti-Semitism largely intolerable. But that taboo is breaking down, and Jews are again endangered. Even in America, where that was once unthinkable.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2019/12/30/opinion/jew-haters-right-left/
Dave, I don’t consider anyone who has racist beliefs or who believes in killing someone because of their beliefs or their identity to be a leftist. I consider that neo-fascist – which I consider far right.
But if you or other people consider that leftist, then of course I snd others here are critical of them. Why would you think otherwise?
I’m just reprinting the column by Jeff Jacoby, the token conservative columnist at the the liberal Boston Globe for information and discussion, not because I’d have posed the same challenge.
And like all (or most) of us here, I’d challenge any form of ethnic or religious attack, no matter whence it came, left, right, centre or off the spectrum.
As they say, the freedoms of the First Amendment are for those we disagree with (even strongly) just as much as those we agree with. Otherwise, they’re meaningless.
I’m always amazed at what conservatives believe liberals and progressives think.
One reason I don’t watch Fox News is that they will often misstate what liberals believe and then explain why that is wrong. Well – that is rather annoying to me and shows that they are often clueless. In other cases, I think they know they are distorting what we believe, but do so anyway.