It can, and does happen, in Berkeley. Way too close for comfort.
Not the first time has it hit close to home. I was a university student in Southern California. I knew a youth pastor there that was actively involved in supporting Palestinian rights. Though i was very involved in anti-nuclear work at the time, and opposing US support for Central America militarism, for some reason i stayed away from the issue of the Middle East (like most liberals/progressives at the time). The pastor's friend, Alex Odeh, of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, later died, victim of a terrorist attack in Santa Ana. I very much regretted not becoming involved back then.
Now, also close to where i work and live, an act of political terror has taken place. Excerpt from press release and some thoughts about local terror support in the Bay Area.
Rabbi Lerner's Home Attacked by Right-Wing Zionists
Berkeley, Ca. May 3, 2010
Berkeley police today confirmed that the attack on Rabbi Lerner's home late Sunday, May 2nd or early morning Sunday May 3rd was in fact a crime and was being investigated.
The attackers used a powerful form of glue to attach posters to his door and around the property of his home attacking Lerner personally, and attacking liberals and progressives as being supporters of terrorism and "Islamo-fascism."
They posted a printed bumper sticker saying "fight terror--support Israel" next to a carcature of Judge Goldstone whose UN report on Israel's human rights violations in its attack on Gaza last year has been denounced as anti-Semitic and pro-terror by right wingers in Israel and the U.S.
The caricature has Goldstone talking about his being kept from his grandson's bar mitzvah, and the caricature of Rabbi Lerner responds by saying "any enemy of Israel is a friend of mine."
From Press Release from Tikkun. Read the whole thing here....
Just as an example of how openly anti-Palestinian extremists operate in the Bay Area, here is an example of a guest opinion column in the local Jewish Weekly.
Jews must stand by Jews — including the marginalized JDL
Monday, November 21, 2005 | by cinnamon stillwell
A deafening silence overcame the Jewish community this month after Jewish Defense League member Earl Krugel was murdered in an Arizona prison.
.....
But perhaps the JDL’s reputation as hardcore extremists is off the mark. ....
Beyond all the accusations of extremism, it appears the JDL’s real crime has always been standing up unequivocally for the Jewish people. They are Jews who refuse to be victims. They believe in armed self-defense as the best means of combating anti-Semitism. For this they are shunned by the mainstream Jewish community to this day.
......
If there’s anything the JDL can teach the Jewish community, it’s the principle that Jews must stand up for other Jews. Unfortunately, this has not been the case with Irv Rubin and Earl Krugel, whose deaths are being largely disregarded because of their unpopular politics.
Perhaps it’s time to right that wrong.
(emphasis added)
No, Stillwell, that is not JDL's "real crime". It's real crime here, the one Kruger was imprisoned for, was plotting to kill children and a US Congressman.
After being contacted by me, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, sent this response to Stillwell, which J Weekly printed to their credit.
The bizarre summation in Cinnamon Stillwell's Nov. 21 opinion piece on the Jewish Defense League that "the JDL's real crime has always been standing up unequivocally for the Jewish people" comes close to the aggressive stupidity of those who today deny the Holocaust.
In fact, the JDL is a racist hate group with a lengthy record of terrorist crimes — one of more than 700 we monitor at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Stillwell suggests the deaths in prison of JDL leader Irv Rubin and follower Earl Krugel involved some kind of nefarious conspiracy. Incredibly, she never mentions the reason they were imprisoned — they were principals in a plot to bomb a mosque and the offices of a California congressman. I guess this is what Stillwell means when she speaks adoringly of the "armed self-defense" that she claims is what the JDL is really all about.
By the way, lest Stillwell contend that I'm some kind of raving anti-Semite, let me state for the record that most of my father's side of the family died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Mark Potok | Montgomery, Ala.
Southern Poverty Law Center
At the time of Stillwell's rant, Stillwell was a regular on-line columnist at sfgate.com, the online website of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Perhaps anti-Palestinian hate is so mainstream, that you can easily keep a job at a major US media outlet and spew support for anti-Arab terror groups in your spare time. (i think Stillwell has since left sfgate, but it was long after she penned her support for the JDL, so that was not a factor)
Which makes this quite troubling. The Bay Area has many articulate people who are critical of Israeli policy. Many of them are quite familiar with threats of violence. This act of violence against Lerner's home may be just the beginning.
Let's continue to support peace and justice for all, without fear.
UPDATE:
More here at Tikkun website:
The vitriol has been particularly intense since April 29, when Alan Dershowitz published a hyperbolic screed against Lerner and the other rabbis who showed support for Goldstone. Dershowitz accused the rabbis of using the occasion of the controversy over Goldstone’s grandson’s bar mitzvah "to make virulently anti-Israel claims, including the blood libel that Israel deliberately targeted innocent Palestinian civilians without any military purpose" (as if the claim of a "military purpose" could ever justify attacks on innocent civilians). He went on to call them "bigoted ... rabbis for Hamas," building up to this ludicrous attack:
Not surprisingly, the worst of these rabbis (and that’s saying a lot), Michael Lerner, after attempting to politicize the bar mitzvah by offering his anti-Israel synagogue for the event, has decided to honor Richard Goldstone with Tikkun Magazine’s "Ethics Award." I guess all it takes to be honored by Tikkun is to pass Lerner’s litmus test of lying about Israel. That’s Lerner’s definition of "ethics."