Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Anti-Arab
Neo-Nazi Set to Plead Guilty Today in MLK Terror Bomb Attempt
05 months ago
The man accused of planting a “weapon of mass destruction” on the parade route of a Martin Luther King Jr. unity parade in Spokane, Wash., last January is expected to plead guilty today in U.S. District Court.
Kevin William Harpham, a 36-year-old with past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the online Vanguard News Network, [...]
JDL Leader’s Shooting Trial to Resume Next Month in Michigan
01 year ago
by Alexander Zaitchik
in Anti-Arab
Was it road rage or self defense? Or maybe even a politically motivated act of violence?
That’s what a jury will decide when the trial of Jewish Defense League organizer Carl Mintz begins on Oct. 14.
Mintz, 27, a state chapter organizer for the JDL in Michigan, is charged in the shooting of a 20-year-old Arab-American named Faith Said. The prosecution’s first attempt at a conviction ended with a mistrial in August when three members of the jury refused to acquit Mintz.
According to local police reports, Said approached Mintz’s car after the two came to rest at a stoplight in Farmington Hills, Mich. Said got out of his car and walked toward Mintz, loudly criticizing him for tapping his brakes as he approached the light. Mintz then reached for his concealed handgun and shot Said in the arm. Mintz is claiming self-defense, but prosecutors note that the light had already turned green when Mintz opened fire and that he could have simply driven away.
At first, local news accounts failed to mention Said’s ethnicity. That changed when reporters discovered that Mintz was not only a state chapter organizer for the JDL but had posted video clips on YouTube in which he rants against socialists and Muslims, and declares Islam to be “the enemy.”
If convicted of the felony charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm, Mintz faces up to 10 years in prison. He faces another two years on weapons charges.
In the past, JDL members have not fared well in prison. In 2005, Earl Krugel, a key JDL member who was serving time for a 2001 plot to bomb a California mosque and the office of a Lebanese-American congressman, was killed at a federal prison in Phoenix when another inmate struck him on the head with a cement block. In 2002, JDL leader Irv Rubin died of an apparent suicide in federal detention while awaiting trial in connection with the same plot. His family and the JDL contend that he was murdered.
The JDL, which preaches a violent form of anti-Arab, Jewish nationalism, has maintained a relatively low profile in recent years. The group is still active, however, on both sides of the Atlantic. In London earlier this month, British JDL activists took to the streets together with the English Defence League in a counter-demonstration against a Muslim rally in support of Palestinians.
Strange Bedfellows See Affirmative Action in Beauty Contest
01 year ago
Does an ardent Jewish neo-conservative ever agree with an anti-Semite who despises neo-conservatives?
We didn’t think so, until the Miss USA contest showed that Muslim-bashing author Daniel Pipes and racist radio host James Edwards do indeed share some common ground. The men suggested on their respective blogs that 24-year-old Rima Fakih of Dearborn, Mich., captured the pageant crown on Sunday because of her Muslim religion (Pipes) or her Arab ethnicity (Edwards).
Edwards, the “Political Cesspool” host who has claimed that white women are physically superior, griped that he wasn’t surprised by Fakih’s win. “It’s pretty much a federal law now that beauty pageant winners have to be non-white,” he wrote in his Monday blog post, “and now that Arabs are the latest ‘oppressed minority,’ they’re finally getting their place at the top of the quota totem pole.”
Meanwhile, Pipes — whose resume includes posts at elite universities, a stint at the State Department, and a presidential appointment to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace — made a remarkably similar point. In an article titled “Affirmative Action in Beauty Contests?” posted on his website Sunday, Pipes posted the names (and photos) of six Muslim women who had won pageants in America and Europe over the past five years.
“They are all attractive,” he conceded, “but this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action. My suspicion is borne out by the selection of Anisah Rasheed as Miss A&T at North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University.” Pipes went on to quote from an article about Rasheed’s coronation that described her tiara sitting atop her hijab, the headscarf traditionally worn by Muslim women. (None of the other Muslim contest winners in Pipes’ article were pictured wearing the hijab.)
In an update posted Monday on his website, Pipes shared three non-critical responses from readers who wrote to him about the article. They included the following item, which Pipes presented without comment: “No surprise here. Affirmative action was first applied in beauty contests for black women to win in the 1980s, then it was the turn of Latin, brown skinned women, and now it’s Muslims. That’s why most people ignore these rigged ‘events.’ They are money losers and require controversy.”
Elsewhere, however, bloggers were taken aback by Pipes’ article. David Weigel, who writes the “Right Now” blog for The Washington Post, had this response: “Wow.” A spokeswoman for the Miss USA pageant told The Daily Beast, an online publication, that she didn’t believe Fakih’s victory had “anything to do with affirmative action.” (Actually, though she’s from a Shiite family, Fakih attended Catholic schools growing up and celebrates both Muslim and Christian faiths with her family, according to The Associated Press.)
Late Monday, Pipes posted another update dismissing the outcry provoked by his blog item. “Somebody doth protest too much,” he wrote.
Pipes’ post wasn’t the only one to suggest that Fakih benefited because of her religion. “I just wonder if this whole contest is rigged,” anti-Islam blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on Sunday. “I have a feeling that it is. Clearly, there is affirmative action for Muslim women in beauty pageants and other such ‘contests.’” In a blog post Tuesday, Schlussel called Fakih “Miss Hezbollah” and stated that “her family is chock full of top Hezbollah terrorists.”
We thank Hatewatch reader Mason Green for the tip that inspired this blog post.