Anti-Semitic Vandalism in Brooklyn Sparks Community Outrage

In the early morning hours of Friday November 11th, vandals set fire to several parked cars and scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti on nearby benches in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Midwood in Brooklyn in what the police said was a hate crime.

The arson took place along Ocean Parkway between Avenue I and Avenue J in what is commonly referred to as the Flatbush section, where three cars; a BMW, a Lexus and a Jaguar, were set ablaze. In addition, the epithet “KKK” was scrawled on the side of a red van, the police said, and swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs could be found on benches.

“The violence – I’m calling it violence when you blow up three cars – adds a sickening dimension to this type of anti-Semitism,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who lives two blocks away and represents the 48th assembly district. He said he regularly walked past the benches with his 90-year-old mother to Sabbath services. “We walk down Ocean Parkway every single week,” Mr. Hikind said. “All I could think about was my mother sitting on a bench with a swastika. She survived Auschwitz.” Mr. Hikind said that this area of Brooklyn, including Midwood and Borough Park, contains one of the largest concentrations of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel.

The Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force is involved in the investigation and Mr. Hikind said the police promised to increase their presence in the neighborhood. “The fact that this most recent attack came on the heels of the 73rd anniversary of Kristallnacht may or may not be a coincidence,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement in response the episode in Brooklyn. “Either way, this kind of hateful act has no place in the freest city in the freest country in the world.”

“Somebody had to have seen something,” remarked Hikind. “Even the tiniest detail that may seem irrelevant could prove to be a vital piece of information to the investigation. It is simply impossible that three cars were set on fire in the middle of a residential neighborhood and nobody saw anything. To the cowards who did this, who are responsible for this vicious and depraved anti-Semitic act, I say, ‘we will hunt you down and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law for this hate crime.’”

Since Friday, the reward for credible information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for this heinous crime has increased by $25,000. The monies were put together by both Mr. David Ben-Horeen, publisher of The Jewish Voice, as well as other leaders of the community, and $1000 by NYC council member David Greenfield. The reward now stands at $30,000.

As of Sunday afternoon police had made no arrests. The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said dozens of empty beer bottles were found at the scene. He said they would be tested for fingerprints and DNA samples. Police in the 66th Precinct bolstered patrols in the neighborhood; especially at the scene of the attack.

Separately, the police said Friday that they had arrested a man accused of scrawling swastikas in five incidents last week in Jackson Heights, Queens. The man, Franco Rodriguez, 40, spray painted the symbols on the doors of several local libraries and a Catholic church, the police said.

On Sunday, November 13th, about 100 Midwood residents along with elected officials staged a peaceful protest march on Ocean Parkway past the four public benches from which the 16 swastikas had been removed after the pre-dawn attack Friday. Carrying an Israeli flag, the marchers were led by Mr. Hikind, State Senator Eric Adams, Rabbi Chaim Gruber, New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel and other community leaders. “There was a time when vandals used magic markers to express hate; now they’re using gasoline,” Adams said.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer condemned the vandalism during an unrelated event on Sunday. “It’s disgraceful and they should throw the book at the people who did it,” Schumer said. “Sometimes vandals think they’re pranks, sometimes they’re more malicious than that. Either way they cause great harm.”

Protesters noted the attack occurred one day after the 73rd anniversary of Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany on Nov. 9-10, 1938, when synagogues were set on fire and the windows of Jewish-owned shops were broken. Sunday’s march also included about 25 people from the Occupy Wall Street movement in Manhattan, which put out a statement condemning the vandalism. The mix of people who showed up for the march “shows that we stand together against hatred. And it makes residents here feel better,” Hikind said.

The NYPD has established special hotlines for tips. Anyone with information concerning Friday’s incident is urged to call 718-265-7327 or718-265-7387. All calls will be kept confidential.

By: Fern Sidman at the NoisyRoom

Obama and Crimes Against Humanity

by Ken Blackwell - Editor’s Note: Mr. Blackwell served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission from 1991 - 1993.

This is a tale of two worldviews. It begins not unlike the opening paragraph of Dickens’ immortal work, A Tale of Two Cities. Schoolchildren once memorized these famous opening lines, back when schoolchildren memorized anything.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

President Obama at his Hundred Day White House séance proclaimed waterboarding to be torture. His was a clear, unambiguous, declarative statement. In making that statement, he opened up former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney to criminal prosecutions, here and before an international criminal court. And not just these men, but possibly hundreds of others, including members of Congress from his own party.

Cliff May, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, takes a different approach to the question of whether waterboarding is torture or not. May was badgered by The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. May’s answer is not as yes/no, as on/off as President Obama’s. May said it depends. May’s answer was morenuanced. Liberals used to like nuance, but that was when John Kerry was nuancing. Here’s how it went:

Jon Stewart: But answer my question: Is waterboarding torture? Yes or no?
Cliff May: Defining torture is not easy. A simple legal definition is that it “shocks the conscience.” Cutting off Daniel Pearl’s head on videotape — that shocks my conscience. Sending a child out as a suicide bomber — that shocks my conscience. People jumping off the World Trade Towers because they’d rather die that way than by burning — that shocks my conscience. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 atrocities, gagging for a few minutes and, as a result, providing information that saves lives, then going back to his cell for dinner and a movie — no, my conscience is not shocked by that.

Are our consciences shocked by subjecting KSM to waterboarding? Apparently, this  enhanced interrogation technique didn’t shock the consciences of members of Congress who were briefed on its planned use. Some of us need to re-play those tapes of cell phone calls by people trapped in the World Trade Towers.

The question keeps coming back to whether we extend all the rights of American citizens to captured terrorists. And the question also comes back to whether the terrorists are to be accorded all the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

Increasingly, our courts are saying terrorists are to be given constitutional protections, here, in Afghanistan, and at Gitmo. Geneva is another matter. This treaty binds nations to humane treatment of prisoners of war. In order to be counted as a prisoner of war, you must be in uniform (John McCain was, Nathan Hale was not), you must be subject to military discipline, and you must be taking part in a war conducted by competent authority.

The Geneva Convention also governs respect for medical treatment of prisoners and wounded soldiers. Take Al Qaeda in Iraq, for example. When one of their IEDs went off in 2003 near Baghdad and killed and wounded a number of American soldiers, a U.S. Army medical HUMVEE raced to the scene. Waiting for the medics to arrive, the terrorists set off a second IED. It had been planted there specifically to target the medical help. Inside the HUMVEE, an American female nurse was burned beyond recognition.

The purpose of the Geneva Convention was to give warring nations a strong, positive incentive to behave according to international norms and not to engage in conduct that “shocks the conscience.” When we give Al Qaeda or Taliban terrorists prisoner of war status and Geneva Convention coverage—without demanding anything of them in return—we abandon one of the great achievements of the Geneva Convention.

Of course, some humans are not accorded human rights. Our courts have seen to that. President Obama named Justice Stephen Breyer as his ideal jurist. In 2000, Justice Breyer wrote the majority opinion inCarhart v. Stenberg. That was the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional Nebraska’s law against partial-birth abortion. Justice Breyer’s opinion is worth quoting at length. He described various techniques of late-term abortion that do not shock his conscience. Nor do these techniques--unlike waterboarding, unlike slapping, unlike sleep deprivation--shock President Obama’s conscience, or the consciences of our liberal rulers.

During a pregnancy’s second trimester (12 to 24 weeks), the most common abortion procedure is “dilation and evacuation” (D&E), which involves dilation of the cervix, removal of at least some fetal tissue using nonvacuum surgical instruments, and (after the 15th week) the potential need for instrumental dismemberment of the fetus or the collapse of fetal parts to facilitate evacuation from the uterus. When such dismemberment is necessary, it typically occurs as the doctor pulls a portion of the fetus through the cervix into the birth canal. The risks of mortality and complication that accompany D&E are significantly lower than those accompanying induced labor procedures (the next safest mid-second-trimester procedures). A variation of D&E, known as “intact D&E,” is used after 16 weeks. It involves removing the fetus from the uterus through the cervix “intact,” i.e., in one pass rather than several passes. The intact D&E proceeds in one of two ways, depending on whether the fetus presents head first or feet first. The feet-first method is known as “dilation and extraction” (D&X). D&X is ordinarily associated with the term “partial birth abortion.”

A little translation may be required: “at least some fetal tissue” translates to the unborn child’s arm, a leg, or maybe her head. “Dismemberment of the fetus with nonvaccuum surgical instruments” means cutting off her arms or legs with razor-sharp implements while the child, still alive, is capable of feeling excruciating pain.

Rest assured, this is not torture. It doesn’t meet the legal definition of torture because under the rule of Roe v. Wade, the unborn child does not meet the legal definition of a person.

Terrorists were once defined—like pirates and slave traders—as hostis humani generis, enemies of all mankind. As such, they received no due process rights. They had no right to counsel. They received no protections under international agreements. When seized on the high seas by the Royal Navy, they could be promptly hanged upon determination that they were engaged in the proscribed activities.

It would have shocked the consciences of our ancestors, however, to dismember even such low characters as pirates, to cut off their arms and legs, and to let them bleed profusely to death. The most inhuman of humans in the nineteenth century could not have been treated as the least of humans are treated in our enlightened United States, by order of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Our new president abhors torture, unless it is the torture of the unborn. In that case, it is not torture at all, but simply inducing fetal demise. This great international uproar over what is and is not torture has been generated because of the treatment of three known mass murderers. The slaughter of innocents in their thousands elicits no international outrage. This is part of what Justice Breyer sees as evolving international standards of decency.

In my opinion, the Obama Administration’s abortion agenda is indeed a crime against humanity.

This weekend, President Obama will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Notre Dame. There, he will be honored, among other things, for his brave stand against torture. He has appointed Kathleen Sebelius to head our nation’s health system. She is a disciple of the most notorious late-term abortionist in the county, a dismemberer, by his own count, of 60,000 fetuses. The President and Secretary Sebelius want to force us all to pay for abortion-on-demand. They want to force doctors and nurses to take part in killing unborn children. They will doubtless tell us our consciences should not be shocked. They’re only inducing fetal demise. Heaven help us all. And Heaven help Notre Dame.

(In Sweden they now say it's okay to have an abortion if you don't get the gender baby you desire.  Does this scare you?  If it doesn’t it should!!)

Posted:  Marion’s Place

Related Resources:

• Obama, Notre Dame and Pro-Life
• Official Stop Obama at Notre Dame Site
• Keyes, priest arrested at Notre Dame protest
• Obama on Abortion and the Right to Life
• The Candidates
• The West Coast Plot: An "Inconvenient Truth"
• Cheney Says: Obama Endangers the Nation