Enabling Bad Behavior
Dear Editor:
I marched for civil and women’s rights back in the 70’s. As a Social Worker, I worked with mentally ill criminal offenders of all backgrounds, released on probation or parole. My goal was to help them help themselves by providing access to social services while still holding them accountable for their choices and behavior.
Yes, there is still racism in our society but it is far from and no longer institutionalized racism. If a community thinks their local police department needs better training or different methods for making an arrest, great. Organize committees to meet with local officials, newspapers, local leaders, and politicians for change. If you perceive Trump as divisive, organize a group to defeat him, come next election. Looting upscale stores and Whites tripping over themselves to enable and excuse these crimes will only serve to perpetuate this paternalistic, condescending victim status, not to mention more lawlessness, more loss of community stores.
Throwing decades more money into social services for Black communities will not solve anything. Demanding accountability for the statistically disproportionate amount of criminality, drug dealing, school drop outs, gangs, culture of lawlessness of inner city Black youths and adults, and acceptance of this as the norm, is the source of the problem. Not racism. Black leaders should lead by calling out the generation after generation of their own community for failing to adopt society’s values of getting ahead by hard work, education, and using low cost public housing to save and sacrifice and move ahead, as so many minorities of all “colors” and “visible” ethnic backgrounds have done, despite discrimination.
The clear choice is whether to continue to be a Black or White enabler of perpetual victim hood, or to say enough is enough. Stand up for being a conscientious law abiding citizen and effect change by calling for accountability from all.
Sincerely
Ruth Greenblum
The Challenge of These Turbulent Times
Dear Editor:
The past two weeks have been a terrible time in the USA. Violence, looting, burning and the killing of many people including police officers. The outcry of “Police Brutality” and the charges of racism against black Americans overshadows the truth. Nobody wants to hear that in the United States, more white citizens are shot dead by police than blacks. So far this year, 172 white people were killed by police, compared to 88 blacks. Across America an average of over 80 police officers are killed every year.
Not a single American is defending what happened to George Floyd. We all want justice and reform across America with police tactics and procedures. Regardless to this tragedy there is no excuse for what followed. The riots, burning, looting ,beatings, the killings that followed in no way honored the victim. It is a national disgrace that our local governments allowed our streets to be taken over by this chaos. The politicians sat back and watched as anarchy ruled.
Back in 1999 a Jewish man named Gidone Busch who lived in Borough Park was shot dead by police. They fired 12 shots at him in front of his house. He was mentally ill and had a hammer in his hand. Surely, there was a better way to subdue a sick man than shooting a barrage of bullets at him. Bruce Springstein didn’t write a song titled 12 bullets. There were some street demonstrations that followed right in his neighborhood. Only other Jewish people participated. No riots, no looting, no killing. They demanded justice. They got a bit rowdy at times, but that was it. I am Jewish and have witnessed antisemitism my entire life.
Not looking Jewish, I have had people think I was Italian and they stood there saying a barrage of insults and stereo types against Jews in front of my face. I even had an ignorant woman in North Carolina ask to feel my head to see what my horns felt like. Jewish people have lived with antisemitism in America a long time and will continue to do so. We don’t riot, we don’t kill, we don’t loot stores in our own neighborhoods. We don’t set police cars on fire. We have too much dignity for that and we respect law enforcement. What is happening now in America is just an excuse for the dangerous groups who want an end to Democracy and America. If we are not careful, they will succeed.
Sincerely
Elissa Maldonado
Who Gets a Pass…and Who Doesn’t?
Dear Editor:
What mainstream media omits, even before this virus, says much about their agenda ridden “reporting.” Silent or underreported:
- The ADL called on Egypt and Oman to remove antisemitic materials from their annual (state-supported) book fairs which have long featured The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The International Jew, both based on false conspiracy theory that Jews control the world.
- “Antisemitism and hatred of Jews is growing in Germany”, the mayor of Frankfurt warned. Antisemitism is from the far left to the far right, influenced by anti-Zionism which becomes antisemitism.”
- Somalia based, Islamic terrorists Al-Shabab continue suicide bombings. Sharia stonings, amputations, and beheadings are regular punishments.
- Palestinian Media Watch & Textbooks: Jews are barbaric; ‘phased plan’ to eliminate the Zionist cancer from Palestine; martyrdom and jihad against Israel as unqualified virtues.
- As Antisemitism Rises in the Netherlands, “Dutch Jews Fear Lack of Support From Police.”
Simon Weisenthal’s report: “Could a potentially cataclysmic killer like today’s COVID-19 virus fuse with anti-Semitic ideology in a deadly 21st century synthesis?”
- FBI: “Neo-Nazis encouraging one another to spread the virus to kill Jews and law enforcement. Coronavirus is “a cure for Jewishness.”
- Iraq TV: “Jewish-dominated America developed the coronavirus to kill off the world’s population…Jews control America, have a monopoly on laboratories that develop biological and nuclear weapons.”
- Iranian TV: “Zionist regime work on bioterrorism agents that only infect a certain ethnic group, the Palestinians…”
- Turkish politician: “Zionism is a five-thousand-year-old bacteria that has caused the suffering of people.” TV station: “Jews, Zionists engineered Corona virus as biological weapons…design the world, seize countries, neuter the world’s population.”
- Calif. State University Professor As’ad Abukhalil, “Israel will institute racist caging of infected Palestinians. Code Pink’s Ariel Gold, “Israel is culpable for every coronavirus death in Gaza.” (Fact: Israel is extending medical aid to the Palestinians).
Sincerely
Asher Steinschloss
