Uncategorized
911 dispatcher and rabbi take the stand on first day of Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — When Shannon Basa-Sabol was asked to recount the events of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in court on Tuesday, what stood out was her memory of the death of Bernice Simon.
Basa-Sabol, a 911 dispatcher, took the stand for close to an hour, describing the ins and outs of her job.
But when the crowded courtroom heard a recording of Simon’s 911 call from the Tree of Life Congregation, Basa-Sabol paused and began to sniffle. She described telling Simon to stay quiet, then hearing multiple gunshots over the phone.
“Are you still with me?” Basa-Sabol said on the recording of the call. “Bernice, can you hear me?”
Speaking on the witness stand on Tuesday, Basa-Sabol said she had realized Simon no longer had “sufficient breathing for life.”
“I was hearing her being shot,” she said.
Basa-Sabol was the first witness in the trial of Robert Bowers, the man accused of murdering 11 Jews in their Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. For months, survivors, relatives of victims and the Jewish community of Pittsburgh have anticipated the trial, which began Tuesday, hoping for closure while worrying that the proceedings would retraumatize people, even as no one doubted the culpability of the accused.
As the prosecution and defense gave their opening statements, it was clear that the trial would air graphic details from the attack. But while lawyers and witnesses recounted the events of the day, the courthouse was also the scene of embraces, tears of comfort, discussions of Jewish tradition and even laughter as those who lived through the tragedy connected with and supported one another.
Defendants’ families were in the courtroom and monitoring via videolink elsewhere in the Joseph Weis Federal Courthouse in downtown Pittsburgh. Social workers and psychologists were on hand to help them through the proceedings. Reporters were asked not to conduct interviews in the building.
At a break, Tim Matson, a policeman injured in an exchange of fire with the suspect, sought out Andrea Wedner, who was shot and whose mother, Rose Mallinger, was killed. They hugged.
Maggie Feinstein, the director of the 10/27 Healing Partnership, which provides post-traumatic therapy for the community, watched closely over the nine or so family members in the courtroom, and handed them tissues.
“Today marked the beginning of a very difficult and painful trial that is the direct result of an incredibly terrible action by one person,” Feinstein wrote in an email after the court was adjourned. “It represented an important step in the process of justice, because these court proceedings are a way for our society to take up the burden of remembering and telling the truth about what happened on October 27, 2018.”
On the witness stand, Jeffrey Myers, the rabbi of Tree of Life Congregation, cried as he described how he recited the Shema, thinking he was about to die.
“I thought about the history of my people, how we’ve been persecuted and hunted and slaughtered for centuries,” he said. “And about how all of them must have felt in the moments before their death, and what they did was recite Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 4, ‘Hear, O, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
The defendant is accused of murdering 11 people and wounding six at three congregations that met in the same building — Tree of Life, Or L’Simcha and Dor Hadash. He faces 63 charges, 22 of which are death penalty charges that relate specifically to allegations that he targeted Jews: 11 counts of obstruction in free exercise of religious belief resulting in death, and 11 counts of hate crimes resulting in death. Prosecutors previously rejected a guilty plea so that they could pursue the death penalty — a punishment that families of victims and congregational leaders have debated.
Jury selection began last month and took three weeks, culminating in the selection of 18 jurors and alternates — 11 men and seven women.
In their opening statements, prosecutors and defense lawyers alike warned that the trial would revisit the attack in horrific detail. Judge Robert Colville emphasized the presumption of innocence, telling the jury that Bowers had a “clean slate” unless the prosecution was able to persuade them otherwise.
He warned jurors to avoid reading about the case in the media, and not to discuss it with friends or even with each other. And he added what he acknowledged was a recent and novel caution: “Persons, entities or even foreign governments may seek to manipulate your opinions,” instructing them not to click through if they saw messages relating to the trial pooping up on their computer.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Song Soo’s 31-minute statement, delivered in a steady tone that only occasionally fluttered with emotion, set forth her case in vivid terms: A community that had come together for decades in love and caring for each other, and for Jewish tradition, was shattered by a gunman determined to murder Jews.
“In the Tree of Life synagogue, the words ‘Tree of Life’ are written in Hebrew high above the bookstand that holds the Torah, the holiest book in the Jewish faith,” she said. “The Tree of Life synagogue had anchored the corner of Wilkins and Shady for decades. As they did every Saturday men and women of the Jewish faith made their way to the synagogue to observe Shabbat.”
She noted that the Torah portion that week, Vayera, “was from the Book of Genesis and was about welcoming strangers.” She went on to describe the warmth of those who were killed and dwelled on Cecil and David Rosenthal, men in their 50s with developmental disabilities who loved to greet congregants.
“In many ways, they were like children, childlike because of their mental disabilities, trusting and pure,” Soo said, adding that fellow congregants would help them “tie a shoe lace, tuck in a shirt, find a page in a prayer book.”
“That morning David Rosenthal stood at the front of the chapel helping to lead the opening prayer” he had memorized, she said. “His devotion to the faith made up for the fact that he could not actually read the prayer book.”
Then, she described the carnage, referring to the defendant’s alleged statements of hate on Gab, a social media platform friendly to right-wing extremists. He allegedly condemned HIAS, the Jewish refugee aid group that partnered with Dor Hadash.
“That same morning the defendant was making his own preparations to destroy, to kill and defile,” Soo said. “He hated Jews, he called them ‘the children of Satan … the most bloodthirsty, evil demons who ever walked the face of the earth.’”
She read out the Gab entry Bowers allegedly posted while he was parked outside the synagogue complex. “HIAS likes to bring in invaders that like to kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch our people get slaughtered, screw your optics, I’m going in.”
“And the defendant did go in,” Soo said. She described some of the congregants’ deaths in detail, and concluded by reading out the 11 names of the murdered: Cecil and David Rosenthal, couple Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Rose Malinger, Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger.
The defendant, clad in a green sweater over an open-collared light blue shirt, stared ahead and scribbled notes. He never looked at Soo, who spoke at a podium to his right.
In her opening statement, Bowers’ lead attorney, Judy Clarke, said the defense would not contest the events, or Bowers’ responsibility for them. Clarke is known as “the attorney for the damned” for her determination to keep her clients from execution. She has defended the Unabomber, the Boston Marathon bomber and one of the conspirators who planned the 9/11 attacks.
“This senseless act, the loss and devastation, were caused by Robert Bowers,” she said. “There is no disagreement, there is no dispute and there will be no doubt as to who shot the 11 congregants. On Oct. 27, 2018, Robert Bowers, the man seated at that table, loaded with ammunition and firearms entered the synagogue.”
Clarke suggested that her defense would focus on whether the defendant’s motives met the standards required by the government’s charges, particularly regarding the 22 death penalty charges.
“We can at least do our best to uphold the rule of law by figuring out, to the best of our ability, what were Mr. Bowers’ motives and intent,” she said. She argued that her client’s statements, which focused on his deluded belief that Jews were intent on replacing white people, do not make clear that his intent met the standards enshrined in federal law.
“These statements are outrageous,” she said. “The fact that they were made raises more questions than they may answer.”
Carol Janssen, another employee from a 911 call center, testified, and in the afternoon, for a number of hours, Eric Olshan, a Jewish U.S. Attorney, asked Myers to guide the jurors through a tour of a physical scale model of the synagogue that was brought into the courtroom. Myers described the building, its congregations and the fundamentals of Judaism to an attentive jury.
Shabbat ends “when three stars are in the sky,” said Myers, who wore a black suit and white kippah and delivered his testimony in measured tones. He wore a kippah because “it reminds me that I’m in God’s presence wherever I go.”
Myers occasionally smiled at the jury when he cracked a joke, eliciting laughter, as when he recalled what a SWAT team advised him when they reached him in the synagogue: “Rabbi, run your ass off.”
And, as the defendant stared at him, Myers memorialized his murdered congregants, affectionately recalling their self-appointed roles during Sabbath services. He remembered one of the victims, Cecil Rosenthal, who always beat him to the synagogue so he could be in place to greet all comers. “I would say to him jokingly, ‘Cecil did you sleep here again?’”
David Rosenthal, he said, sang prayers “loudly,” while Rose Mallinger routinely led the prayer for peace, “that all people can live together in freedom and peace.”
As he recalled the moments of the shooting, Myers said, he felt he would not be angry at God, “because it was not God who did this. I was prepared to meet my fate.” He sobbed.
The scheduled Torah reading from Genesis 12, he said, narrates how Abraham welcomes three strangers.
“I was going to talk about the Jewish imperative to welcome all guests whoever they may be,” he said. “But I never gave that sermon.”
The defense declined to cross-examine the rabbi.
—
The post 911 dispatcher and rabbi take the stand on first day of Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
The data is in: For many in the Northeast, Christmas isn’t Christmas without Chinese food
It’s not just a myth that Jews head to Chinese restaurants on Christmas. It’s science!
Sort of. A new report from the financial services company Coventry Direct claims to have quantified the trend. The report analyzed search data for “Chinese food near me” during the week of Christmas from 2020 to 2024, and found that the Northeast dominated the results.
The top five states included Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and New Hampshire, while New York, which is home to the largest Jewish population in the country, came in seventh place. Under the assumption that Jews are overrepresented in the Northeast, the study confirms that Coventry Direct is not peer-reviewed.
The study also analyzed Google search trends over the past year to find the top-searched Chinese food dish in each state. While Szechuan chicken was the most popular dish, taking first place in eight states, New York’s most searched item was Buddha’s Delight, a — IYKYK — vegetarian stew.
The Jewish Christmas tradition was famously referenced during Elena Kagan’s United States Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 2010 when she was asked where she was on Christmas day:
“You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant,” replied Kagan.
In recent years around Christmas, social media has also been flooded with images of a sign where the seemingly fictional “Chinese Restaurant Association” of America thanks its Jewish diners for their patronage.
“The Chinese Restaurant Association of the United States would like to extend our thanks to the Jewish people,” the sign reads. “We do not completely understand your dietary customs … but we are proud and grateful that your GOD insist you eat our food on Christmas.”
Two men enjoy Chinese cuisine prepared by Chinese chefs within the guidelines of kosher food preparation at a restaurant. (Getty Images)
But the now-ubiquitous tradition of Jews eating Chinese food on Christmas traces back to the early 20th century, when Jewish immigrants began carving out distinctly American rituals of their own. If for no other reasons, Chinese restaurants were more likely to be open on Christmas.
A classic 1993 study on the tradition, “New York Jews and Chinese Food: The Social Construction of an Ethnic Pattern,” by Gaye Tuchman and Harry Levine, traced the Jewish affinity for Chinese food to a few factors: Chinese restaurants at the time “welcomed everyone,” offered flavors familiar to an Eastern European Jewish palate and were considered a “sophisticated” dining experience for new-ish, Jewish Americans stepping outside their comfort zones.
While Chinese restaurants do not typically offer kosher fare, Tuchman and Levine also argued that Chinese restaurants were viewed as “safe treyf” because Chinese cuisine rarely mixes milk and meat and ingredients like pork and shrimp are chopped into hard-to-identify pieces.
To celebrate the longstanding tradition, a comedy club in New York’s East Village is set to host “Kosher Chinese: The Comedy Show,” with patrons enjoying kosher dumplings and an “unapologetically alternative holiday spirit we all secretly love.” In San Francisco, the 33rd Annual Kung Pao Kosher Comedy show kicks off tonight, and runs through Friday, Dec. 26.
From Massachusetts to Ohio, Jewish delis have also planned their own Chinese-inspired menus to mark the tradition.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post The data is in: For many in the Northeast, Christmas isn’t Christmas without Chinese food appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
StopAntisemitism names Tucker Carlson ‘Antisemite of the Year’ as 2024 winner Candace Owens ramps up anti-Jewish rhetoric
(JTA) — The activist group StopAntisemitism has awarded the conservative personality Tucker Carlson its ignominious honor of “Antisemite of the Year,” citing his frequent invocation of classic antisemitic stereotypes.
The announcement comes as Carlson sits at the center of controversy on the American right about whether extremists should be welcomed in the Republican Party. It also marks the second year in a row that StopAntisemitism has selected a right-wing figure for its accolade, after years of awarding the mantle to mostly left-wing figures.
“Carlson mainstreams antisemitism by platforming and praising Holocaust revisionists and Nazi apologists, while hiding behind irony and plausible deniability,” the group said in a statement. “By legitimizing extremist voices and weaponizing conspiratorial imagery at massive scale, he has helped drag antisemitic ideas back into the mainstream.”
A watchdog presence with more than 300,000 followers on X, StopAntisemitism regularly mobilizes against activists and social media posts. The group has faced criticism for what some perceive as an inordinate focus on Muslim personalities, pro-Palestinian actions and non-prominent individuals. Its defenders deny that, pointing out that StopAntisemitism also regularly spotlights neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers on the right.
Its finalists for Antisemite of the Year included pro-Palestinian celebrities Ms. Rachel, Cynthia Nixon and Marcia Cross; mixed-martial-arts athlete and Holocaust denier Bryce Mitchell; two personalities associated with left-wing network The Young Turks; and social media personalities on both the far left (Guy Christensen) and far right (Stew Peters).
Carlson received the accolade on Sunday night, at the end of a weekend in which he was a keynote speaker at the convention of Turning Point USA, the young-conservatives group founded by Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated this fall. In its announcement, StopAntisemitism noted Carlson’s speech at Kirk’s memorial service, in which he described the murder of Jesus in a way that both his critics and fans interpreted as implying that Jews or Israelis had been behind Kirk’s assassination.
At the convention, the Jewish pundit Ben Shapiro continued his campaign against Carlson and Carlson declared himself to free of the anti-Jewish animus that he has long been criticized as propagating.
“Let me just affirm one final time. Not only am I not an antisemite — and I would say so if I was — I’m not an antisemite for a very specific reason,” Carlson said in his speech. “Not because it’s unpopular or my donors don’t like it. I don’t have any donors. I’m not an antisemite because anti-semitism is immoral in my religion. It is immoral to hate people for how they were born.”
It was the same explanation that Vice President JD Vance offered earlier this month when he said in an NBC News interview that he believed antisemitism is wrong.
In his own speech to Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, Vance again refrained from criticizing extremists in the Republican Party, saying that he opposes “purity tests” for inclusion in the conservative movement. He also said he believed that antisemitism in the United States was being fueled by “a real backlash” against U.S. aid to Israel..
As the convention was underway, last year’s “Antisemite of the Year,” the right-wing streamer Candace Owens, embarked on a four-hour broadcast eviscerating Shapiro; amplifying antisemitic theories, including that Jews controlled the slave trade; and promoting a classic work of antisemitism by August Rohling, a German Catholic who believed in the blood libel and argued that the Talmud is a secret guide used by Jews for nefarious purposes. Rohling died in 1931.
The post StopAntisemitism names Tucker Carlson ‘Antisemite of the Year’ as 2024 winner Candace Owens ramps up anti-Jewish rhetoric appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Senior Hamas Official Vows Terror Group Will Never Disarm, Rejects Foreign Pressure
Hamas official Osama Hamdan speaks during a press conference, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Beirut, Lebanon, June 4, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Hamas has once again rejected calls to disarm, warning against “foreign interference in Palestinian affairs” as the terrorist group’s senior officials met with Turkish leaders to discuss the next phase of the US-backed peace plan for Gaza.
In an interview with the Yemeni news outlet Al-Masirah on Tuesday, Hamas Political Bureau member Osama Hamdan reiterated that the Islamist group will never hand over its weapons to foreign powers.
“The resistance rejects any foreign attempt to disarm us or seize the weapons the occupation failed to take,” the terrorist leader said. “The idea of surrendering our arms is one the resistance will never accept.”
“In the second phase of the Gaza agreement, the guarantees must be clearer, and the commitments more detailed,” Hamdan continued. “The Zionist enemy does not abide by the agreement. Israel’s failure to open the [humanitarian] crossings signals its intention to resume aggression against the Gaza Strip.”
On Wednesday, senior Hamas officials met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara to discuss the ongoing ceasefire and coordinate the next steps in advancing the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan to end the two-year conflict.
“The Americans want to impose hegemony on the region, with the Zionist entity [Israel] as its foundation,” Hamdan said during the interview. “Disarming the resistance would give Israel absolute control over the entire region.”
“The resistance is capable of continuing the fight, and I am confident the outcome of this conflict will be the demise of this entity,” he continued.
According to media reports, Hamas officials told Turkish counterparts they had fulfilled their ceasefire commitments, but accused Israel of violating the deal while blocking progress to the next phase of the agreement.
Since the start of the ceasefire in October, both sides have repeatedly accused each other of violations. Israel has carried out several operations targeting terrorist operatives as the Palestinian group ramps up efforts to reassert control over the war-torn enclave.
According to the US-backed peace plan, the second phase is expected to establish an interim administrative authority — a so-called “technocratic government” — deploy an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to take over security in Gaza, and begin the demilitarization of Hamas.
However, efforts to advance the ceasefire deal have stalled, with no agreement on crucial next steps, including the start of reconstruction in the enclave and the deployment of the ISF.
Turkey, a longtime backer of Hamas, has been trying to expand its role in Gaza’s post-war reconstruction efforts, which experts warn could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.
While Turkey insists on participating in the ISF, Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected any Turkish involvement in post-war Gaza.
Turkey has even sought to shield Hamas from disarmament by pushing for the terrorist group to hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority or place them in secure international storage, rather than requiring it to disarm.
Israeli officials have rejected these options as unacceptable, arguing they would allow the terrorist group to maintain its influence in Gaza, which Hamas has ruled for nearly two decades.
Under phase one of Trump’s peace plan, Hamas was required to release all remaining hostages, both living and deceased, who were kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during the group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In exchange, Israel freed thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including many serving life sentences for terrorism, and partially withdrew its military forces in Gaza to a newly drawn “Yellow Line,” roughly dividing the enclave between east and west.
According to the ceasefire plan, the Israeli army is required to withdraw further as the disarmament process unfolds. However, Israel has made clear that it will not pull back until Hamas disarms and other conditions are met.
Currently, the Israeli military controls 53 percent of Gaza’s territory, and Hamas has moved to reestablish control over the other 47 percent. However, the vast majority of the Gazan population is located in the Hamas-controlled half, where the Islamist group has been imposing a brutal crackdown.
Since the ceasefire took effect two months ago, Hamas has targeted Palestinians who it labeled as “lawbreakers and collaborators with Israel,” sparking widespread clashes and violence as the group moves to seize weapons and eliminate any opposition.