Posts Tagged ‘ADL’
 
May 22, 2013 0

In Vancouver, Washington, a Cluster of Luysters

Mem­bers of the Clark County, Wash­ing­ton, SWAT team arrested three men this past week, at least two of them known white suprema­cists, in con­nec­tion with a pos­si­ble hate crime at a Van­cou­ver bar in March 2013.  Arrested at their sep­a­rate res­i­dences were Brent Ward Luys­ter, Robert Arlen Luys­ter, and Don­ald H. McElfish.brent -luyster-tightrope 

The three men allegedly attacked a 45-year-old black man at a bar in Rose Vil­lage, punch­ing, kick­ing and beat­ing the vic­tim while using racial slurs and threat­en­ing to kill him.  Police have charged the three sus­pects with second-degree felony assault and racially moti­vated mali­cious harassment.

The two Luys­ter broth­ers have a long his­tory of white supremacy and crim­i­nal activ­ity, dat­ing back to at least 2000.  That sum­mer, as racist skin­heads, the two men (and two oth­ers) attacked an African-American man in a racially-motivated assault.  They pleaded guilty to assault charges in 2001.  Three years later, police arrested Brent W. Luys­ter again, this time for vio­lat­ing parole by asso­ci­at­ing with another white suprema­cist.  In July 2005, Van­cou­ver police arrested Brent W. Luys­ter and another white suprema­cist on alle­ga­tions of mali­cious harassment.

Brent W. and Robert A. Luys­ter have not, how­ever, been the only Luys­ters to have got­ten in trou­ble in this fash­ion.  In late 2004, another Brent Luys­ter, Brent D. Luys­ter (iden­ti­fi­able by the “white pride” tat­toos on his upper arms), briefly escaped from the Larch Cor­rec­tions Cen­ter in east­ern Clark County.  He may be the father of Brent W. and Robert.

In early 2005, Port­land, Ore­gon, police arrested a fourth white suprema­cist Luys­ter, Michael Lee Luys­ter, for not hav­ing a driver’s license while trans­port­ing a car­load of white suprema­cists to protest at a local com­mu­nity cen­ter.  Port­land is just south of Vancouver.

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May 22, 2013 2

State Department’s Religious Freedom Report Recognizes Severity Of Global Anti-Semitism

jewish-cemetery-desecration

Des­e­cra­tion of Jew­ish cemetery

On May 20, 2013, U.S. Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry released the State Department’s annual Inter­na­tional Reli­gious Free­dom Report for 2012, describ­ing the U.S. assess­ment of the sta­tus of reli­gious free­dom in every coun­try. The report cov­ers gov­ern­ment poli­cies vio­lat­ing reli­gious belief and prac­tices of groups, reli­gious denom­i­na­tions and indi­vid­u­als, and U.S. poli­cies to pro­mote reli­gious free­dom around the world.

This annual report demon­strates the Amer­i­can com­mit­ment to the fun­da­men­tal demo­c­ra­tic right to prac­tice one’s reli­gion with­out inter­fer­ence from gov­ern­ment and sig­ni­fies and under­scores the role gov­ern­ments must play in pro­tect­ing that right.  It shines a light on a num­ber of impor­tant issues specif­i­cally related to the per­se­cu­tion of reli­gious minori­ties, includ­ing gov­ern­ment spon­sored dis­crim­i­na­tion, reli­gious big­otry and hatred prop­a­gated by the media, and vio­lence directed at spe­cific reli­gious denominations.

While address­ing all forms of reli­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion, the U.S. government’s role in mon­i­tor­ing and com­bat­ting anti-Jewish expres­sions around the world is an impor­tant fea­ture of the report. It high­lights inci­dents of anti-Semitism on the gov­ern­men­tal level, in pol­i­tics and within the media, and doc­u­ments acts of van­dal­ism and vio­lence directed at Jews. These include:

Iran — The government’s con­tin­ued Holo­caust denial and prop­a­ga­tion of anti-Semitic stereo­types, includ­ing pro­nounce­ments by Pres­i­dent Ahmadine­jad regard­ing “Zionists…ruling the major world affairs” for some 400 years.

Egypt — Senior Mus­lim Broth­er­hood offi­cials, includ­ing Supreme Guide Mohamed Badei, fre­quently issue anti-Semitic state­ments, while the media airs anti-Semitic pro­gram­ming, includ­ing the TV series “Horse­man with­out a Horse” based on the noto­ri­ous anti-Semitic forgery “The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion.” The wide­spread hatred and vio­lence directed at Egypt’s Cop­tic Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity is also mentioned.

Venezuela — Anti-Semitism is quite preva­lent in the gov­ern­ment con­trolled media, par­tic­u­larly in opin­ion pieces and edi­to­r­ial car­toons. The recent pres­i­den­tial can­di­dacy of Hen­rique Capriles, a Catholic of Jew­ish descent, was a main focus of the media’s anti-Semitism. 

Chile - There has been an increase in the num­ber anti-Semitic pub­lic state­ments, par­tic­u­larly across social media plat­forms. Inci­dents of anti-Jewish van­dal­ism are on the rise, and a num­ber of phys­i­cal attacks against Jews were doc­u­mented, includ­ing an assault on a 14 year-old by a group of Neo-Nazis.

The State Department’s report also makes a num­ber of ref­er­ences to ADL’s work in high­light­ing and com­bat­ing global anti-Semitism, par­tic­u­larly in Europe. These include:

Aus­tria – ADL’s train­ing projects with the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion on Holo­caust education.

Greece – ADL’s state­ments call­ing on gov­ern­ment author­i­ties to do more to counter the anti-Semitic rhetoric and vio­lent actions of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn polit­i­cal party.

Hun­gary – ADL’s state­ments call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to enforce a new law that would hold mem­bers of par­lia­ment legally account­able for espous­ing hate­ful remarks. This law was in reac­tion to an anti-Semitic state­ment by a mem­ber of country’s neo-Nazi Job­bik party, who called on par­lia­ment to “assess how many MPs and gov­ern­ment mem­bers are of Jew­ish ori­gin and who present a national secu­rity risk to Hun­gary.” The report also cited ADL’s sur­vey on anti-Semitic atti­tudes in Hun­gary which showed a sig­nif­i­cant rise in the per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion har­bor­ing anti-Semitic attitudes.

Turkey – ADL’s state­ment crit­i­ciz­ing a cos­met­ics com­pany for fea­tur­ing Adolph Hitler in a sham­poo com­mer­cial that ran on state television.

The State Department’s Inter­na­tional Reli­gious Free­dom Report for 2012 can be found here.

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May 21, 2013 8

Detroit Religious Leaders Praise Farrakhan After Latest Anti-Semitic Outburst

Update: One day after Louis Far­rakhan deliv­ered an anti-Semitic speech at the Fel­low­ship Chapel in Detroit and was praised by Detroit reli­gious lead­ers, the NOI broad­cast what appears to be a pre-recorded anti-Jewish rant by Far­rakhan titled “Mak­ing Satan Known.”

Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Louis Far­rakhan was wel­comed and praised by reli­gious lead­ers after pro­mot­ing his anti-Semitic world­view at a Detroit church last week.farrakhan-detroit-fellowship-chapel

Dur­ing his visit to the city, Far­rakhan was invited by Rev. Wen­dell Anthony, who is also the Pres­i­dent of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, to address the Fel­low­ship Chapel on May 17. His speech, which was attended by U.S. Rep. John Cony­ers and Detroit City Coun­cilmem­ber JoAnn Wat­son among oth­ers, invoked the type of egre­gious anti-Semitism that has marked him as a hate­mon­ger for over three decades.

Far­rakhan referred to “Satanic Jews” and the “Syn­a­gogue of Satan” con­trol­ling America’s gov­ern­ment and other sec­tors, report­edly stat­ing that Pres­i­dent Barack Obama “sur­rounded him­self with Satan…members of the Jew­ish community.”

Far­rakhan also said that the Jew­ish peo­ple “have mas­tered the civ­i­liza­tion now, but they’ve mas­tered it in evil… Who’s the owner of Hol­ly­wood that cre­ates images and makes the peo­ple think that what is cre­ated on the screen is the way we should live? That’s Satan…Satan has devoured much of humanity.”

“The peo­ple that own Hol­ly­wood,” Far­rakhan added, are “the same peo­ple that con­trol your press, the same peo­ple that con­trol your media, the same peo­ple who are the pub­lish­ers the same peo­ple who are the dis­trib­u­tors, the same Syn­a­gogue of Satan, and they put you before the world in this dis­grace­ful matter.”

The NOI’s News­pa­per The Final Call also para­phrased this part of Farrakhan’s speech thusly: “Jesus was the last hope for the Jew­ish peo­ple, but they rejected him. They are now in con­trol of the media and the air­waves, gain­ing access to the ‘sacred ter­ri­tory’ which is the minds of the people.”

Instead of rais­ing their voices to pub­licly reject Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism, some of the lead­er­ship in atten­dance at Fel­low­ship Chapel pub­li­cally praised him. Accord­ing to The Final Call, Rev. Horace Sheffield, III of the New Des­tiny Bap­tist Church said, “We need some­one to give us direc­tion. I believe we have a leader here that can orga­nize us.”

Sheffield also added, “They want to silence peo­ple who tell us the truth, and we know why this is hap­pen­ing and who is doing it, but we need some help with how to over­come it.”

Rev. David Bul­lock of Greater St. Matthew Bap­tist Church stated that Farrakhan’s mes­sage was “impact­ful,” “timely,” and left him “inspired.”

Imam Mubarak Al-Mubarak of Warithud­din Mohammed Mosque said that “This mes­sage that the Min­is­ter gave today with respect to the Chris­tians and the pas­tors is the same mes­sage that the Mus­lims and imams of our asso­ci­a­tion need to hear.”  Imam Al-Mubarak con­tin­ued, “Many are afraid of truth, and the Min­is­ter is more dynamic, more impor­tant, and rel­e­vant than we could ever imagine.”

Farrakhan’s ser­mon at Fel­low­ship Chapel echoes his 52-week lec­ture series titled “The Time and What Must Be Done.” In Part 18 (May 11), Far­rakhan dis­cussed his the­ory that Jews con­trol the Pres­i­dent of the United States, say­ing that Jews will “con­tinue to press my brother as Pres­i­dent of the United States to do some­thing about me…President Obama, don’t lis­ten to these hye­nas and jack­als that are in high places. You would be wise to fol­low the dic­tates of your con­science, if it has not been taken by Satan.”

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