https://themilitant.com/2019/12/21/murders-at-jersey-city-deli-were-anti-semitic-assault/
Murders at Jersey City deli were anti-Semitic assault
article
BY JOANNE KUNIANSKY
Vol. 83/No. 48
December 30, 2019
ISAAC WOLNER/ARUTZ SHEVA 7 Above, Jersey City Kosher Supermarket, after
two anti-Semitic attackers killed Moshe Deutsch, Leah Mindel Ferencz and
Douglas
Miguel Rodríguez, from left in the inset. figure
Above, Jersey City Kosher Supermarket, after two anti-Semitic attackers
killed Moshe Deutsch, Leah Mindel Ferencz and Douglas Miguel Rodríguez,
from left
in the inset.
ISAAC WOLNER/ARUTZ SHEVA 7 Above, Jersey City Kosher Supermarket, after
two anti-Semitic attackers killed Moshe Deutsch, Leah Mindel Ferencz and
Douglas
Miguel Rodríguez, from left in the inset. figure end
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — A murderous attack targeting Jews at the Jersey City
Kosher Supermarket left three people dead Dec. 10. Despite the fact that
killers
David Anderson and Francine Graham charged directly into the deli,
opening fire before they went in the door, much of the press coverage
initially refused
to recognize the anti-Semitic character of the attack.
Thousands attended the funerals of Leah Mindel Ferencz, Moshe Deutsch
and Douglas Miguel Rodríguez, the three people killed. Hundreds joined
an interfaith
vigil at Temple Beth-El the day after the murders in Jersey City and a
vigil at New Jersey City University Dec. 12.
Cops and FBI agents engaged the two African American shooters in an
hourslong gun battle, which ended when the police rammed an armored
vehicle into the
supermarket and found both killers dead.
All 43 Jersey City schools were locked down, affecting 30,000 students.
“It was scary,” Tetri Boodhoo, a worker at the Walmart store in
Secaucus, told
this worker-correspondent. Her daughter was locked inside the James
Ferris High School until 6 p.m.
In the last few years some 100 Jewish families, largely from the Satmar
Hasidim, have left Brooklyn, New York, for the Greenville neighborhood
in Jersey
City, seeking less expensive housing in the predominantly Black
neighborhood.
The JC Kosher Supermarket opened by Moishe Ferencz and his wife, Leah,
had become a community hub. Douglas Miguel Rodríguez, from Ecuador,
worked there.
Moshe Deutsch, the other victim of the shooting, was a 24-year-old
rabbinical student.
The morning after the killing Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop condemned
the attack, saying it was aimed at Jews. But despite the explicit
targeting of a
kosher deli next to a synagogue the state’s attorney general, Gurbir
Grewal, took several days to acknowledge the attack was anti-Semitic.
Anderson, one
of the shooters, also espoused the views of the Black Hebrew
Israelites, a sect that thinks its members are the “true Israelites,”
and believes Jews are
impostors, spewing anti-Semitism. The Black Hebrew Israelites
organization denied any connection to the killings.
The boarded-up shop front where the shooting took place is lined with
flowers, candles and messages, including some in Spanish, from well-wishers.
SWP: ‘Combat anti-Semitism’
Lea Sherman, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from New
Jersey, joined the vigil the day after the killing and issued a
statement condemning
the attack. “The overwhelming majority of working people of all
nationalities and religious beliefs oppose Jew-hatred,” the statement
said. “But if every
expression of anti-Semitism isn’t answered and combated, that opposition
can and will be pushed back.”
Sherman returned to Greenville Dec. 15 and visited the family of Leah
Mindel Ferencz.
The conduct of those who came to offer their condolences and solidarity
stood in contrast to comments by Joan Terrell, a Jersey City Board of
Education
Trustee. She claimed the murderous attack was justifiable, saying
“brutes of the Jewish community” were forcing Blacks to move out of the
neighborhood.
Terrell urged people to “explore” the “message,” the Jew-hating killers
“were sending.”
Describing the slayings in a tweet, Democratic Congresswoman Rashida
Tlaib wrote, “White supremacy kills.” She deleted the comment when the
identity of
the shooters was revealed, leaving no statement against the anti-Semitic
attacks.
The day after the killings the White House issued an executive order
against anti-Semitism. It instructed universities that receive
government funding
to enforce Title VI against “discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism as
vigorously as against all other forms of discrimination,” and prohibited
any infringement
of First Amendment rights.
In response to the executive order the New York Times’ editors
complained that “the larger threat to American Jews goes beyond college
students. … Violent
anti-Semitism is being fomented most significantly by white nationalists
and the far right.” But no anti-Semitic violence is “more significant”
than any
other — they all deal blows to working people and help prepare the
ground for the ultra-right, regardless of who carries them out.
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