Stories of impact from the frontlines of ADL’s work

 
February 5, 2013 0

Religious Accommodation for Sikh Corrections Officer

Last week, respond­ing to appeals by The Sikh Coali­tion and ADL, the Ari­zona Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions agreed to allow a reli­gious accom­mo­da­tion for Ikhbinder Bassin, a ten-year employee of the Depart­ment and an obser­vant Sikh. 

As part of his reli­gious oblig­a­tions, Mr. Bassin does not cut his hair (includ­ing facial hair) and wears a kara (a reli­giously man­dated steel bracelet).  Upon his entry into his posi­tion in 2003, Mr. Bassin was granted a waiver from depart­men­tal pol­icy that pro­hibits the wear­ing of bracelets (other than for med­ical pur­poses) and from shear­ing his hair.  How­ever, in Decem­ber of 2012, close to his 10th anniver­sary, when Mr. Bassin would appar­ently become eli­gi­ble for extended employee ben­e­fits, he was noti­fied by a com­pli­ance offi­cer that he was not in com­pli­ance with Ari­zona Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions pol­icy.  The com­pli­ance offi­cer advised Mr. Bassin that he must com­ply or face pos­si­ble ter­mi­na­tion or reas­sign­ment into a non-uniform position.

Act­ing on Mr. Bassin’s behalf, The Sikh Coali­tion noti­fied the Depart­ment that under fed­eral and state law, includ­ing the First Amend­ment, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Arizona’s Free Exer­cise of Reli­gion Act, ter­mi­nat­ing or demot­ing Mr. Bassin for his reli­gious beliefs would vio­late the Department’s oblig­a­tions under the law.

With time run­ning out, and lit­tle indi­ca­tion that his reli­gious accom­mo­da­tion would be granted, Mr. Bassin reached out to ADL and other orga­ni­za­tions to advo­cate that his reli­gious rights be accom­mo­dated.  Fol­low­ing a con­sul­ta­tion with The Sikh Coali­tion, ADL endorsed their efforts, address­ing a let­ter to a vari­ety of Ari­zona gov­ern­ment stake­hold­ers. The League noti­fied these gov­ern­ment offi­cials that we agreed with The Sikh Coalition’s legal analy­sis, and urged a reli­gious accom­mo­da­tion for Mr. Bassin.  ADL’s Ari­zona regional office also signed on to an inter­faith coali­tion let­ter sup­port­ing Mr. Bassin’s request.  These coali­tion efforts paid off.

By grant­ing Mr. Bassin the requested accom­mo­da­tion, the Ari­zona Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions demon­strated a wel­come respect for fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of reli­gious lib­erty. When sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions arise else­where, other Depart­ments should fol­low Arizona’s lead.

Tags: , , , , ,

January 17, 2013 1

Access ADL Blog: Our First Year

The Anti-Defamation League’s Access ADL blog was launched last Jan­u­ary to pro­vide inside access to the agency’s work and exper­tise on a vari­ety of top­ics, and to serve as a resource.

In our first year, we pub­lished nearly 250 blog posts, pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion and analy­sis on a range of issues, includ­ing online extrem­ism, anti-Semitism, extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism, the anti-immigration move­ment, anti-Israel activ­ity and much more.

In that time, Access ADL has become a trusted resource for news and infor­ma­tion. We thank the more than 100,000 unique vis­i­tors for their sup­port and inter­est in our work.

Below is the list of most viewed blog posts in Access ADL’s first year:

August 6, 2012 - ADL Con­nects Sus­pected Shooter at Wis­con­sin Sikh Tem­ple to White Suprema­cist Skin­head Group

Fol­low­ing the shoot­ing at a Wis­con­sin Sikh tem­ple, Access ADL pub­lished sev­eral exclu­sive images of the shooter, Wade Michael Page, and con­nected him to the white power music scene as well as to the to the Ham­mer­skins, a vio­lent racist skin­head group.

Wade Michael Page

Sep­tem­ber 14, 2012 - Anti-Muslim Chris­t­ian Activists Respon­si­ble For Inflam­ma­tory “Inno­cence of Mus­lims” Film

In response to the release of the anti-Islam film, Inno­cence of Mus­lims, which sparked con­sid­er­able out­rage and vio­lence across the Mid­dle East and Islamic world, Access ADL iden­ti­fied the key indi­vid­u­als involved in the film and their con­nec­tions to a net­work of anti-Muslim organizations.

Decem­ber 18, 2012 - Con­spir­acy The­o­rists Blame Jews For Sandy Hook Massacre

In the after­math of the Sandy Hook school shoot­ing in Con­necti­cut, Access ADL uncov­ered sev­eral con­spir­acy the­o­ries blam­ing Jews and Israel for the shoot­ing, and exposed the neo-Nazi ties of Mike Har­ris, who blamed Israel for the Sandy Hook shoot­ing dur­ing an inter­view on Iran’s Press TV.

Novem­ber 16, 2012 - Demon­stra­tors at Anti-Israel Ral­lies: “Gaza is the Real Holo­caust,” “Long live the Intifada!”

In response to Israel’s Oper­a­tion Pil­lar of Defense, Access ADL pub­lished daily updates on the anti-Israel ral­lies orga­nized in the U.S., expos­ing the extreme nar­ra­tives that marked the ral­lies, includ­ing the sup­port for ter­ror anti-Semitism.

May 21, 2012 - New Ara­bic Trans­la­tion of Tal­mud Pro­motes Anti-Semitic Narratives

Access ADL revealed the pres­ence of age-old anti-Semitic con­spir­a­cies in a newly released Ara­bic trans­la­tion of the Tal­mud – the first of its kind.

July 27, 2102 - Hezbol­lah on Your iPhone: There’s An App for ThatHezbollah's iTunes App

Access ADL broke the news about how Apple’s iTunes ser­vice was pro­vid­ing access to con­tent from Hezbollah’s satel­lite tele­vi­sion sta­tion, al-Manar, which sub­se­quently described ADL as being part of Israel’s war against Hezbollah.

August 17, 2012 - Pos­si­ble Extrem­ist Con­nec­tion to Louisiana Police Shootings

Access ADL pro­vided evi­dence sug­gest­ing that some of the peo­ple involved in the shoot­ing deaths of two Louisiana sheriff’s deputies in LaPlace were anti-government extremists.

Sep­tem­ber 5, 2012 - For­mer Youth for West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion Leader Pro­motes White Stu­dent Union at Towson

When a white suprema­cist tried to form a “White Stu­dent Union” at Tow­son Uni­ver­sity in Mary­land, Access ADL revealed the effort and exposed his affil­i­a­tions with far-right groups.

July 3, 2012 - Far­rakhan Leads Audi­ence in Anti-Semitic Tirade

Access ADL released a video of Nation of Islam leader Louis Far­rakhan lead­ing his audi­ence in Chicago in an anti-Semitic call and response.

March 26, 2012 - New Black Pan­ther Party Enflames Trayvon Mar­tin Incident

After an African-American teenager was shot and killed in Florida, Access ADL exposed efforts by the New Black Pan­ther Party (NBPP) to insert­ them­selves in one of the most high pro­file, racially charged issues of the year. The post also pro­vided back­ground on the NBPP, the largest orga­nized anti-Semitic and racist black mil­i­tant group in America.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 30, 2012 1

ADL Tracks Hackers Targeting Jewish Institutions For Electronic Jihad

The Moroc­can Ghosts, a polit­i­cally moti­vated hacker group tar­get­ing the web­sites of Jew­ish insti­tu­tions, launched a cyber-attack last week against a server that hosts approx­i­mately 50 Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tional web­sites, includ­ing syn­a­gogues in New Jer­sey and Connecticut.

The hack­ers defaced the tar­geted web­sites with their logo and an hour-long video deny­ing the Holo­caust. The Moroc­can Ghosts, which has report­edly hacked approx­i­mately 82 web­sites since March, had been promis­ing to launch attacks for sev­eral months.

The group cel­e­brated the attack in a state­ment posted to its Face­book page. The state­ment, trans­lated by the Anti-Defamation League, claimed that the attack was car­ried out against “one of the most sig­nif­i­cant and very extreme Zion­ist assem­blies that sup­port Israel in America.”

The state­ment also read: “…we posted on their wall a video that proves the ridicu­lous­ness of accus­ing the Ger­mans with the Holo­caust. It [the holo­caust] was a scam by the Jews to black­mail the Ger­mans and the west after the war and gain inter­na­tional sym­pa­thy to take over Pales­tin­ian lands… The truth is Holo­caust never happened…”

ADL noti­fied Face­book about the group’s activ­ity and sub­se­quently, the page was taken down. The group has since reestab­lished a new Face­book page, fea­tur­ing sim­i­lar con­tent and promis­ing to con­tinue to recre­ate new Face­book pages as needed.

A post on the groups Twit­ter feed warned that “War against the Zion­ist pigs is com­ing com­ing com­ing…,” Through its twit­ter feed, it also declared sup­port to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah, the Pales­tini­ans and the Arab and Islamic causes.

On one of the Moroc­can Ghosts’ YouTube chan­nels, the group describes itself as a Moroc­can patri­otic group that oper­ates under Morocco’s motto “God, the King, and the Home­land.” The group has been tar­get­ing per­ceived sup­port­ers of Israel, mostly but not exclu­sively, in the United States.

In addi­tion to its ani­mos­ity towards Israel, Zion­ists and Jews, the group claims to oppose the Polis­ario Front, a group work­ing for the inde­pen­dence of West­ern Sahara from Morocco.

This lat­est cyber-attack is part of a larger trend of polit­i­cally moti­vated hack­ings tar­get­ing the web­sites of per­ceived sup­port­ers of Israel. ADL’s regional offices can offer guid­ance to Jew­ish insti­tu­tions regard­ing online and dig­i­tal security.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Older Posts
Newer Entries