Share |

Grim Kristallnacht anniversary in Brooklyn's Midwood

Article | November 11, 2011 - 8:01pm | By New Jewish Resistance

Burned-out cars in Midwood, Kristallnacht anniversary 2011

FlatbushScoop.com

Vandals torched three cars and scrawled hateful graffiti to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht this year in Brooklyn's heavily Jewish neighborhood of Midwood. In addition to gutting the parked cars on Ocean Parkway between avenues I and J, the hoodlums also scrawled swastikas, "KKK" and "fuck the Jews" on nearby pavement, benches and other vehicles. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said in a statement that the crimes represent "a truly hateful act of prejudice... That it took place on the anniversary of Kristallnacht leaves no doubt that this attack is a hate crime in every sense." (NBC New York, Daily News, Brooklyn Daily, Nov. 11)

We're glad de Blasio recalled the anniversary of the 1938 Nazi pogroms dubbed the "Night of Broken Glass," but we fear that for him this is just another workaday play to Jewish constituents—like his recent high-profile trip to Israel, or plugging of New York City employee pension fund investments in Israeli bonds.

Once again, the politicians make the requisite noises, while the radical left—which once proudly stood in the vanguard of anti-fascism—just repeats like a mantra that anti-Semitism doesn't exist, or is exaggerated, or is a ploy by Zionist propagandists. We pointed this out earlier this year, following a spate of Jew-hating spewings and attacks. More recently, we've pointed out the apparent tolerance of many in the Occupy Wall Street movement for Jew-haters among their ranks. We pointed it out after the 2009 Kristallnacht vandalism of the Dresden synagogue, and the wave of synagogue attacks in Crete a few months later. We pointed it out after Russian synagogues were attacked on the eve of Rosh Hashona in 2006, and after giant swastika flags were draped from a Los Angeles freeway overpass on that same Rosh Hashona.

Contrary to relentless propaganda of the Zionist right, anti-Semitism remains primarily a phenomenon of the right—even when it assumes populist or pseudo-left garb. But the world's progressive forces are themselves confused by this propaganda, and have almost entirely abdicated their responsibility to oppose it. They are therefore ceding the issue—indeed, the very mantle of anti-fascism—to conservatives and bourgeois politicians. By doing so, they are ultimately making a noose for their own necks.

No, this isn't random "vandalism." These are racist attacks, and part of a global pattern of resurgent fascism—of which the current ultra-reactionary posture of Zionism is also ironically an exponent.

View the discussion thread.

About the Author

New Jewish Resistance

News Service

Comments

Add New Comment

Grim Holocaust Remembrance Day in Williamsburg

by Bill Weinberg | April 10, 2013 - 5:34pm

From the New York Observer, April 9:

Several Jewish homes in Williamsburg were targeted in an incident on Monday in which religious objects attached to residents’ front doors were set on fire.

The burnings, which are being investigated by the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Department, took place on Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Hashoah, though police remain unsure of whether the day of religious observance was a factor in the crime.

“The Hate Crimes Task Force has been assigned to it and is treating it as a bias crime,” Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, told The New York Times. “The fact that they are all religious artifacts, we’re treating it as an anti-Semitic crime.”

The desecration took place at 85 Taylor Street, one of five buildings in the Taylor-Wythe Houses, a public housing community in Williamsburg. Police reported that 11 mezuzahs attached to apartment front doors were burned in the late afternoon on Monday.

According to the New York Daily News, the perpetrator began on the 13th floor of the building and burned mezuzahs on several floors on his way downstairs. Authorities said the mezuzahs were likely burned with a lighter or a blowtorch.

Stranger in Midwood

by Bill Weinberg | January 25, 2012 - 2:13pm

Anti-Semitic graffiti and even threatening phone messages apparently continue in Midwood, and the police have arrested a Chelsea man, David Haddad (himself apparently Jewish), on suspicion of spray-painting swastikas. (Daily News, Jan. 16) There has been no arrest in the car-torchings, and Gothamist reports that police now suspect it may have been an insurance scam—but local residents seem skeptical of this.

And now New Jersey...

by Bill Weinberg | January 12, 2012 - 7:11pm

From AP, Jan. 12:

RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Several Molotov cocktails and other incendiary devices were thrown at a northern New Jersey synagogue early Wednesday, igniting a fire in the second-floor bedroom of the rabbi's residence in an attack that is being treated as both a bias crime and attempted murder, police said.

Wednesday's attack on Congregation Beth El in Rutherford was the fourth bias incident within a month against a Jewish religious institution or center in northern New Jersey, police said. Within the last three weeks, a fire was intentionally set at a synagogue in Paramus and anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered at synagogues in Hackensack and Maywood.

Mosque attacked in Queens

by Bill Weinberg | January 2, 2012 - 4:17pm

On New Years Day, firebombs were thrown at a home, a bodega and the al-Khoei Foundation building,a Shi'ite mosque community center, In Jamaica, Queens. Some 80 worshippers were in the building at the time, although nobody was hurt. The mosque's door was damaged, while the targeted home was badly damaged. (AP, Jan. 2) Are the people who made the anti-Jewish attacks equal opportunity haters? Or could this be Zionist hoodlums in a "price tag" attack? Or could it be related to the current escalation of the Sunni-Shi'ite conflict in Iraq?

And in Midwood again...

by Bill Weinberg | November 20, 2011 - 10:31pm

From the Daily News, Nov. 16:

A message of hate has cropped up yet again in the city — this time, a bigot defaced a sign at a Brooklyn subway station so it read “Avenue Jew.”

The act of anti-Semitic vandalism happened at the Ave. J subway stop in Midwood and came just days after a shocking show of hate in the same neighborhood left several cars ablaze.

The anti-Semitic subway scrawler added an “E” and a “W” to the end of the “Avenue J” sign on the station platform.

State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) said he was contacted Wednesday by a constituent who saw the defaced sign and took a picture of it.

Police are investigating the hate-filled graffiti, and the sign has been removed.

No arrests have been made in the graffiti incident or last Friday’s wave of vandalism in Midwood that reduced three cars to charred wrecks and left vehicles, benches and sidewalks marred with anti-Semitic and Nazi-embracing messages.

Hikind said the reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the Friday hate spree has been upped to $56,000.

“Education and vigilance are our only weapons in fighting against this blatant hatred,” Hikind said. “We must send a message to those who perpetrate these vile acts that we will not tolerate their behavior.”

Anyone with information on either crime is encouraged to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers tipline at 800-577-TIPS.

It is, we hope, superfluous to mention that Dov Hikind is an odious freedom-hater.

Grim Kristallnacht anniversary in Queens too

by Bill Weinberg | November 12, 2011 - 3:36pm

Oh yeah, the Midwood attacks came days after swastikas were found painted on the facades of the Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst branches of the Queens public library, and on the door of Congregation Tifereth Israel synagogue in Jackson Heights.

MyFoxNewsNY in its coverage of the Queens attacks notes a new ADL survey finding that 15% of Americans—nearly 35 million adults—hold deeply anti-Semitic views. That's up three percent from 2009.

And "progressives" in the US habitually display more outrage at how the ADL and its ilk are supposedly inflating the threat of anti-Semitism than they do at the anti-Semitism itself.

Why is that?