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Is antisemitism always delusional? The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter’s punishment could hinge on the answer.
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — To try to save his client from the death penalty, a lawyer defending the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter spent hours this week pressing a prominent psychiatrist on a question that has occupied many over time: Is hating Jews a manifestation of mental illness?
Robert Bowers was convicted last month of committing the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history when he attacked the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. His lawyers essentially conceded the charges, choosing instead to focus on trying to save him from the death penalty.
One way to do that would be to persuade jurors that the gunman’s intentions were clouded by mental illness. Such a determination by even a single juror would close the door to execution and bring to an immediate end to a trial that has at times been a vector of American Jewish fear and identity.
The government, on the other hand, is pressing for the death penalty and making the case that Bowers was animated by hate, not delusions, when he attacked the synagogue. In recent days, it called a star witness, Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who for decades has been a go-to expert witness in marquee trials.
Starting last Thursday, Dietz contended that Bowers is a garden-variety antisemite, and not suffering from schizophrenia, as the defense has argued.
On Tuesday, Michael Burt, one of the defense lawyers, sought to poke holes in Dietz’s argument that Bowers’ murderous antisemitism is consistent with rational — if evil — behavior, and instead sought to depict Bowers’ hatred of Jews as a manifestation of mental illness.
He reminded Dietz that decades ago, the psychiatrist assessed a man who believed plastic surgeons were committing genocide against Aryans by making Aryan and non-Aryan noses indistinguishable.
“You concluded in that case that that client suffered from a delusional disorder and as a result you thought he was insane,” Burt said. “Conspiracy theories and delusions are not exclusive; they can interact?” he asked.
Dietz agreed that conspiracy theories and delusions were not necessarily mutually exclusive, but that there had to be clues that an antisemite was suffering delusions in addition to being susceptible to antisemitic tropes.
“The difference is the presence or absence of a mental illness,” Dietz said. “The uniqueness of the belief system, its idiosyncratic nature, its personal nature are all clues that it springs from the mind … and not the external group.”
Bowers did not suffer those idiosyncratic characteristics, Dietz said. “He had no delusions based on any reasonable definition of delusions,” he said. “There’s a consensus in psychiatry that if one’s weirdo beliefs are shared by a large group, that’s not a delusion.”
Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist at UCLA’s medical school, has evaluated defendants including John Hinckley, who attempted to kill President Ronald Reagan; mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer; and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, among many others.
Burt kept Dietz on the stand for the most part of Monday and Tuesday. The defense lawyer veered between lengthy technical readings about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM-5-TR, to attempts to undermine Dietz’s credibility. Returning repeatedly to the psychiatrist’s IMDB entries, he challenged Dietz’s consultation on hundreds of episodes of “Law and Order” and his participation in true-crime documentaries, some with sensationalist titles.
But the most salient exchanges came as Burt interrogated Dietz about whether Bowers’ antisemitic beliefs reflected mental illness. The gunman said he targeted the Pittsburgh synagogue in part because one of its congregations was partnering with HIAS, the Jewish refugee aid group. In a social media post, Bowers said HIAS “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” in an articulation of the antisemitic “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
Dietz, who interviewed Bowers for 15 hours in May, testified on Monday that the defendant’s thinking could be traced to a number of late 20th-century writings that have underpinned white supremacist ideology, including the “White Genocide Manifesto” authored in 1985 by David Lane — the leader of a white supremacist group called The Order who killed Jewish radio host Alan Berg.
Burt asked Dietz whether there are circumstances in which antisemitic falsehoods can double as delusions. “Can you have a delusion that relates to false beliefs that relate to antisemitism?” he said.
“You could, but there has to be something idiosyncratic about it,” Dietz said. “The belief that Jews are the children of Satan has been idiomatic of the Christian identity movement since the 18th century. This is a lie that has been conveyed from generation to generation, that has been conveyed for centuries and is core to the view of some white supremacists.”
The defense argument that antisemitism signals mental illness has precedents. In the 1940s, Ezra Pound’s lawyer got the poet to dodge a capital treason trial by persuading U.S. authorities that Pound should be institutionalized, in part by depicting the virulent antisemitism that spurred him to propagandize on behalf of the Axis as driven by mental illness. (Pound spent his 13 years at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., befriending and encouraging American racists and fascists.)
Understanding of both hate and mental illness has evolved in the subsequent decades. Last year, after the rapper and designer Kanye West went on an extended spree of antisemitic comments, some connected his behavior to bipolar disorder, the mental illness that West has said he has. (West has said the condition causes him to become paranoid but also called it “dismissive” to question whether he has stopped taking his medication whenever he “speaks up.”) At the time, an array of mental health experts cautioned that mental illness should not be seen as an excuse for bigotry.
In Pittsburgh, the intersection between antisemitic beliefs and mental illness is now pivotal. The jury, which on June 16 convicted Bowers of 63 crimes related to the attack — including 22 capital crimes, two for each fatality — must now decide whether Bowers’ crimes merit the death penalty. Dietz was the second-to-last witness in this stage — after his testimony lawyers questioned the psychiatrist who first evaluated Bowers at the county jail two days after the massacre. Lawyers are set to deliver closing arguments on Wednesday for this phase of the trial, which started June 26.
A single juror persuaded by the defense’s arguments would end the trial, and Judge Robert Colville would sentence Bowers to life without parole. On the other hand, unanimous agreement that the crimes merit the death penalty would launch a second segment of the penalty phase, in which the jury would consider mitigating factors, including Bowers’ life hardships. That phase would also include testimony from those affected by the shooting, including relatives of the deceased and members of the tight-knit Pittsburgh Jewish community.
The victims of the attack were Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger. They worshipped at three congregations housed in the building at the time: Tree of Life, Dor Hadash and New Light.
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The post Is antisemitism always delusional? The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter’s punishment could hinge on the answer. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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How Do We Stop Pogroms and Riots in Amsterdam, Germany — and America?
Anti-Israel protesters face Dutch police during a banned demonstration in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Esther Verkaik
Jews hunted and beaten in the streets of Amsterdam, the same happens four days later in Berlin: both are connected to the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom of 1938.
Yet beyond the antisemitism, something strange is happening: police protection was mostly absent, most of those arrested have been released, and the mayor of Amsterdam has actually apologized for her earlier condemnation, now blaming the attack (at least partly) on the Jewish victims.
America is not immune from this disturbing trend, but we can stop it if we try. Here’s what you need to know.
Israel’s Maccabi football (soccer) team had just finished playing Amsterdam’s Ajax team, when the attack squads struck. As fans left the stadium, the attackers hunted, chased, and mercilessly beat any victims who couldn’t prove they weren’t Jewish.
Meticulously planned in advance by members of Amsterdam’s Muslim population, some were armed with clubs, or even small explosives. Four days later, the same happened after a football match in Berlin.
Israeli intelligence had warned Dutch authorities in advance but Holland did not take action. Numerous victims say that police were nowhere to be found for hours.
Some Dutch police habitually refuse to protect Jewish communities on the basis of “moral objections.” In a dark irony, some police even refuse to protect Holland’s Holocaust museum: making it a symbol not only of Holland’s dark and horrific past, but also of Holland’s dark and horrific present.
Police commanders apparently take these antisemitic “moral” objections seriously, thus legitimizing a horrific hatred that should not be tolerated in the slightest.
In a shocking turn of events, Amsterdam’s mayor apologized to Holland’s Muslim community for calling the pogrom a “pogrom” and (incorrectly) accused the Jewish victims of being “also violent.” Out of an unknown number of attackers, only 63 were arrested, and all but four were released.
The subsequent attack in Berlin followed an almost identical pattern. When police do not protect Jewish communities, when intelligence agencies ignore warnings, when perpetrators are not brought to justice, Europe sends a message loud and clear: we accept this. Despite superficial condemnations, Europe’s actions invite even more antisemitic and anti-Western violence.
This is nothing new.
I was in Chicago when thousands turned out to a “protest against Israeli policies,” waiving Nazi flags, shouting “death to Jews,” and burning papier-mâché Jews in effigy. Despite headlines, this was neither a “protest” nor was it against “Israeli policies” but rather a violent hate march against American Jews. The year was 2009.
I came with a small group of five counter-protesters until the police ordered us to leave, saying they could not protect us. While I understand the officers were just trying to keep us safe, their decision actually violated the very spirit of American democracy.
For example, in 1954, when hate mobs in Little Rock, Arkansas, tried to prevent Black students from attending public school (as ordered by the Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Board of Education) the local police were overwhelmed — so President Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne. Eisenhower understood that the law is the law, and civil rights are civil rights: not only for the loudest and most violent, but for everyone.
Flash forward to today, when Jewish students are forcibly blocked from entering school buildings on university campuses: a civil rights violation that, legally speaking, is almost identical to the one in 1954. Just like in Little Rock, just like in Amsterdam and Berlin and Chicago, the police are nowhere to be found.
But unlike Little Rock, neither the schools nor the White House did their civic or legal duty, and the violence has gotten progressively worse: because we, as a society, have allowed it.
How did it start?
Modern antisemitism became especially organized at the Durban conference in 2001. At this United Nations sponsored event, which included Nazi rhetoric and anti-Jewish attacks, the Palestinian government announced a long term strategy, later entitled the “diplomatic intifada.”
As part of this plan, Palestinian groups and their allies (such as Iran and Qatar) invested billions of dollars and decades of work into shaping opinions, education, and political lobbying in the West. Their efforts have been successful, in part because Western societies have allowed them to be.
What can be done?
There are some campuses where anti-Jewish violence has not succeeded, despite attempts. For example, when a small minority of Arab students at Israel’s Haifa University supported the October 7 massacre on social media, they were immediately subject to suspensions, mediation, and disciplinary actions (such as mandated community service). As a result, Haifa (both the city and the university) remains a bastion of Jewish-Arab coexistence, one of the most flourishing examples in Israel, even during this time of war.
When students became physically violent on certain American campuses, such as Vanderbilt and Dartmouth, university officials promptly called the police and pressed appropriate charges, leaving the campuses free and safe for all. Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier says that teaching real tolerance on an ongoing basis at the classroom level, combined with appropriate enforcement when necessary, has proved a winning combination on his campus.
In short, when we, as a society, refuse to tolerate hate crimes, they decrease. When we allow them, we invite more.
As far back as October 2023, presidential candidate Donald Trump stated that if elected, he would cancel student visas from foreign students who engage in antisemitic violence. Since becoming President-elect this month, Trump declared that campus antisemitism violates civil rights laws, and accordingly, universities that permit such violence will lose their academic accreditation with respect to Federal funding.
Europe and the United States already have appropriate laws that balance free speech with civil rights and basic human safety. When we properly enforce our laws, our societies reflect our values and flourish. When we fail, our societies deteriorate. The tide of anti-Jewish and anti-Western hate is not invincible, but it is up to us to take appropriate measures, to stand by our values, and to protect our world.
Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.
The post How Do We Stop Pogroms and Riots in Amsterdam, Germany — and America? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Senate Smacks Down Bernie Sanders-Backed Effort to Block Arms Sales to Israel
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to the media following a meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, US, July 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
The US Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted against an effort to implement a partial arms embargo on Israel, rebuffing three separate resolutions spearheaded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to deprive the Jewish state of weapons amid its ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.
Though lawmakers largely voted to preserve weapons sales to Israel, a total of 19 senators — 17 Democrats and two independents — supported at least one of the three measures to block weapons transfers to the Jewish state, indicating a growing partisan divide on the issue. Every Republican senator voted against the attempted arms embargo.
The Senate rejected S.J.Res.111, a measure to ban the sale of tank cartridges to Israel, by a margin of 79 to 18. The measure received support from Sanders as well as Sen. Angus King (ME), a fellow independent, and Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Dick Durbin (IL), Tim Kaine (VA), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Jeff Merkley (OR), Peter Welch (VT), Jon Ossoff (GA) Raphael Warnock (GA), Chris Murphy (CT), Tina Smith (MN), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Ben Ray Lujan (NM), Martin Heinrich (NM), Mazie Hirono (HI), Brian Schatz (HI), and Ed Markey (MA).
Other anti-Israel resolutions sponsored by Sanders, S.J. Res. 113 and S.J. Res. 115, which targeted sales of mortar rounds and precision-guided bombs, were rejected on the Senate floor by similar margins.
A quartet of lawmakers — Sanders, Merkley, Van Hollen, and Welch — announced their effort on Tuesday to limit the Jewish state’s access to much-needed arms, accusing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of recklessly endangering civilian lives in Gaza.
During his speech on the Senate floor, Sanders lambasted Israel for allegedly violating the “internationally-recognized human rights” of Palestinians and blocking “US humanitarian aid” from being distributed in Gaza. Thus, Sanders argued that it is “illegal for the United States government to provide Israel with more offensive weapons.”
Sanders also repudiated Israeli officials, stating that their “extremist government has not simply waged war against Hamas; it has waged an all out war against the Palestinian people.”
Ossoff, who is Jewish, accused the IDF of behaving with “reckless disregard” for the lives of Palestinian civilians. He slammed the Jewish state for supposedly failing to “provide safe passage for food and essential medical supplies” in Gaza and criticized Israel for engaging in “conduct” that allegedly undermined American interests. Lamenting the resolution’s failure, Ossoff stated that Israeli officials needed a “message” that the Jewish state must “have mercy for the innocent.”
Van Hollen urged the Biden administration to walk back the “blank check” afforded to Israel in the form of access to American weapons. The senator accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of refusing “compliance with American laws” by restricting “humanitarian assistance” in Gaza and refusing to follow “international humanitarian law” while using US weapons.
Van Hollen recently accused the Jewish state of “ethnic cleansing” during an appearance on the Zeteo” digital network.
The Biden administration urged senators to vote against the resolution, dashing hopes among progressives that the White House would capitulate to efforts to undermine Israel’s war against Hamas during the president’s final months in office. The White House stated that the weapons are both critical to Israel’s defense and are not slated for delivery for the next few years, “so the likelihood of them being used in this iteration of the Gaza context is very low.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who is Jewish, slammed members of his own party for voting to disarm Israel. “We’ve been at the forefront of every movement in this country when other minority groups needed help; we were the ones who stood up. And when we needed them, they abandoned us, period,” Moskowitz wrote in reaction to the votes.
Similarly, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) ripped into his colleagues for supporting the anti-Israel measures.
“This one I really don’t understand. It’s counterproductive to the safety of the communities. I don’t understand why we would want to prevent Israel from having the technology to have precision use of its munitions,” Cardin wrote.
Meanwhile, J Street, a progressive Zionist group that has been critical of Israel, lauded the Democratic senators who supported the “symbolic but deeply meaningful vote” which would have ended the “black check support” for the Jewish state’s war against terrorists.
“What the large number of supporting votes does indicate is growing concern over the direction that the far-right government of Israel is leading the country. It is a manifestation of deep discomfort over the extent of the human tragedy the Israeli government is inflicting on Gaza and the lack of any commitment by the Netanyahu government to a feasible post-conflict plan for governance and security that leads toward a resolution of the underlying political conflict,” J Street President Jeremy Ben Ami wrote.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties in Hamas-ruled Gaza, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. However, Hamas has in many cases prevented people from leaving, according to the Israeli military.
Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations, direct attacks, and store weapons.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said last month that Israel has delivered over 1 million tons of aid, including 700,000 tons of food, to Gaza since it launched its military operation a year ago. He also noted that Hamas terrorists often hijack and steal aid shipments while fellow Palestinians suffer.
The Israeli government has ramped up the supply of humanitarian aid into Gaza in recent weeks under pressure from the United States, which has expressed concern about the plight of civilians in the war-torn enclave.
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A Jewish Matriarch: Sarah Teaches Us That We Have the Power to Stay Young
A Torah scroll. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
When a famous person passes away, newspapers try to capture their life and accomplishments in an obituary. The greater the person’s achievements, the longer and more detailed the obituary.
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik noted that for Sarah, the matriarch and first lady of the Jewish people, we might expect a detailed account. Yet, she is remembered in this week’s parsha with one sentence: “These were the years of Sarah: a hundred years, twenty years, and seven years. These were the years of Sarah.”
Why does the Torah phrase Sarah’s age of death so unusually, dividing it into “a hundred years, twenty years, and seven years”? Why not simply say Sarah was 127?
The Midrash explains: at 100, Sarah was as beautiful as at 20; at age 20, she was as free of sin as at seven.
But this answer raises another question: the phrase “these were the years of Sarah” seems redundant. Rashi explains it means all her years were equally good. This phrase doesn’t just answer how old Sarah was, but reflects her essence. The Torah isn’t simply relating how many years the Matriarch Sarah lived, but who she was and how she lived. Sarah was 100, she was 20, she was seven.
In his words: “Sarah was a seven-year-old innocent child when she reached the age of twenty and a twenty-year-old lovely woman when she reached the ripe old age of a hundred. … The adult in Sarah did not destroy the child. Maturity did not do away with childhood. No matter how developed, no matter how capable and experienced a woman Sarah became, in the deep recesses of her personality there still existed an innocent child … This did not mean that her mind did not ripen with age, that she did not benefit by repeated events in her life or that her personality was not enriched by wisdom and life experience. However, Sarah still retained within her personality the young girl she once was.”
Rabbi Soloveitchik continues to say that the three traditional periods of life, namely childhood, youth, and adulthood, need not be mutually exclusive. Rather than replacing one with another, Sarah united them. She was simultaneously a child, a youth, and an adult.
Most of us move through life by replacing one stage with the next. Leaving childhood, we develop passion and idealism in youth but often lose our innocence. University campuses, where many great social movements began, illustrate this tension. They are spaces of youthful idealism, but also of lost purity. Similarly, in adulthood, as we gain wisdom and experience, the passion and idealism of youth often fade.
In one of my favorite Billy Joel songs, “Angry Young Man,” Billy Joel writes: “I believe I’ve passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage, I found that just surviving was a noble fight. I once believed in causes too, I had my pointless point of view, and life went on no matter who was right or wrong.” Winston Churchill captured this, saying, “Anyone who is young and not a liberal has no heart. Anyone who is old and not a conservative has no brain.”
I am not saying that we necessarily become more selfish as we age, but that a natural part of maturation is an exchange of idealism for wisdom and experience.
Imagine, though, if we could have it all. If we could be 100 years old with the wisdom of age, the passion of youth, and the innocence of childhood. That was Sarah.
Sarah maintained the purity of childhood and the idealism of youth throughout her life. As she grew older, gaining the wisdom of experience, she remained both innocent and passionate. This combination made her a transformative force.
Sarah’s example inspires us in two ways. First, young people entering the working world can strive to maintain their idealism. Professional aspirations or daily concerns need not extinguish passion for noble causes, like a love for Israel or other values. However, this depends on having the right mentors. Misguided teachers can corrupt youthful idealism, as seen when campus ideologies lead students to support unjust causes — like the “innocent” and “idealistic” support for Hamas and terrorism.
Second, combining childhood innocence with adult wisdom is vital in religious life. Rabbi Soloveitchik explained that the mitzvah of Torah study requires the ability to think conceptually and critically — not to accept things at face value, but to challenge and question, which a child is less capable of doing. On the other hand, says The Rav, when the Jew puts down the Sefer and picks up the Siddur, it is now the child who becomes the expert. Whereas Torah study requires self-confidence and self-assertion, prayer requires humility and self-negation. To pray means to surrender, to feel dependent on a greater force, something an adult with their highly developed mind and confident stature has a difficulty doing. Only an innocent child with his heightened sense of helplessness can come before God and pray in the ideal way Judaism demands.
To live fully as Jews, we must embrace both the innocence of childhood and the sophistication of adulthood. Sarah’s life teaches us not to replace one stage with another, but to integrate them. By doing so, we not only engage with all aspects of Judaism but also stay young at heart, carrying the qualities of every life stage into each moment.
Rabbi Mark Wildes is the founder and director of the Manhattan Jewish Experience (MJE), a vibrant community for young Jewish professionals, and the author of The 40 Day Challenge: Daily Jewish Insights to Prepare for the High Holidays and Beyond the Instant: Jewish Wisdom for Lasting Happiness in a Fast-Paced Social Media World.
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