Semitic

A Jewish supporter of Councilman Joseph Bartenfelder's candidacy for county executive says she's been the target of a flier that claims Bartenfelder and one of his chief supporters are anti-Semites. Ruth Goldstein, who lives in the Midfield community in Pikesville, said she received a small, cream-colored envelope in the mail Tuesday that looked like an invitation to an event. "I felt like I had been violated," said Goldstein during a phone interview Wednesday. After getting a copy of one of the fliers, Bartenfelder e-mailed a statement to reporters Wednesday evening.

It takes little effort to find severe problems with the character of Richard Wagner, the man who was born two centuries ago and, as he was the first to acknowledge, became one of history's greatest composers. It's much harder to dismiss his music, which is receiving extra attention around the world during this bicentennial year. Locally, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is taking a close look at Wagner over the next few months. The focus starts this week with a program featuring, in concert form, Act 1 from "Die Walkure," the second of four operas that comprise "The Ring of the Nibelung," the epic filled with heroic and villainous mortals, giants, troubled gods, Valkyries on horseback, horned helmets, a mighty sword and, of course, a magical ring.

CAIRO, Egypt - A prominent Saudi editor disavowed yesterday an article that appeared recently in his newspaper, Al Riyadh, that repeated the century-old fiction that Jews use the blood of Christians and Muslims to make holiday foods. The article proved a possible embarrassment to the ruling establishment, which is beginning to shake loose from the criticism it received after the Sept. 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Saudi Arabia also had begun to emerge as a peacemaker with its plan for ending Israeli-Palestinian violence.

It is always reprehensible to mock anyone's religious beliefs, and it is even worse when the mockery is expected to result in violence, injury or death ("Obama defends free speech," Sept. 27). The freedom of speech exercised in the notorious anti-Islamic video "The Innocence of Muslims" is a case in point. It is tantamount to falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, which is impossible to defend as free speech. Yet in some of the Muslim countries where the outcry against the video has been loudest, the notorious anti-Semitic libel known as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is freely sold and published.

WARSAW, Poland -- The Polish media reported at length yesterday, though two weeks after the event, anti-Semitic exchanges that marred a rally in the presidential election campaign.The Warsaw daily Gazeta Wyborcza, which supports Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki's candidacy in the election Nov. 25, printed a detailed account of a campaign meeting he held last month in Plock, his birthplace, at which voters argued over his ethnic origin.The state-run television network followed up by broadcasting substantial excerpts from the meeting.

Let me put this as clearly as possible: There is no secret Jewish agenda to take over the world. Jews do not control the U.S. government, the international banking industry and the media. And there is no Jewish conspiracy to manipulate black American leaders, undercut black institutions and oppress black citizens in general.To believe otherwise is rank bigotry. In fact, such anti-Semitic nonsense does not even merit discussion by reasonable people -- any more than the racist lie that blacks are genetically inferior to whites.

NEW YORK -- Anti-Semitism has been slowly declining over the last 28 years, but one in five adult Americans still holds deeply prejudicial views of Jews, the Anti-Defamation League reported yesterday as it released a survey of race relations in the United States.The poll by the Boston firm of Marttila and Kiley conducted for the ADL of B'nai B'rith showed that anti-Semitism is most prevalent among people who are over 65 years of age, have a high school education or less and are blue-collar workers.

Edward Primoff has drawn harsh criticism from his political opponents for years, but the Carroll County property rights advocate is so incensed by comments he called libelous and anti-Semitic in a letter published in the Jan. 31 Mount Airy Gazette that he's considering legal recourse, he said. The letter, written by South Carroll community leader and longtime Primoff antagonist Nimrod Davis, says, "one carpetbagger filled his bag with gelt and came north to Carroll County from Howard County.

IT SAYS quite a bit about Russia's unpredictable politics that ultranationalist demagogue Vladimir Zhirinovsky is the parliament's deputy speaker. It says more about Mr. Zhirinovsky himself that although his Jewish relatives perished in Hitler's inferno, he is an anti-Semite who just months ago refused to rise to honor Holocaust victims in parliament. Because his father's first name was Volf, it was long rumored that Mr. Zhirinovsky was partly Jewish. He kept denying it, but has finally admitted his father was Volf Isaakovich Edelshtein, a Polish Jew who ended up in Kazakhstan.

IN RECENT weeks Howard University has been branded a "citadel of hate," a "breeding ground for a new generation of anti-Semites" and a "bastion of bigotry."Such charges stem from the appearance of controversial speakers, notably Khalid Abdul Muhammad, who gained widespread notoriety as a result of the virulently anti-Semitic tone of a speech he gave at Kean College in New Jersey in November.The charges also reflect outrage over the nationally publicized statements by two Howard students who vilified and caricatured Jews, as well as the erroneous claim that the university had canceled a scheduled speech by a prominent historian who is Jewish.

Al Eisner, in his letter, "Egyptian election is tragic" (June 29), has substituted opinion for fact when he calls the Muslim Brotherhood "a virulent anti-Semitic organization. " Anti-Zionist, yes; but he provides no evidence whatsoever that it is anti-Semitic. Mr. Eisner shows no compassion for the Egyptian people who suffered for so many years under the brutal dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Instead, his concern is only for Israel and what Egypt's new government might mean for Egyptian/Israel relations and also for U.S./Israel relations.

Police at the University of Maryland, College Park are investigating "two incidents of bias and hate," President Wallace Loh said in a Wednesday e-mail to the campus. Loh said an elevator in an academic building was vandalized with anti-Semitic messages and that a campus facilities supervisor found a noose hanging in a space that was being renovated. A spokesman for the campus police said investigators believe the incidents, one discovered Saturday and the other Monday, are unconnected.

I am disgusted by the anti-Semitism exhibited in the Aug. 8 "Get Fuzzy" comic strip in which the character Rob says, "Bucky ... that's the dumbest thing you've said since you told Satchel that 'Religious fighting' means 'Jew jitsu.'" How can you print that? Would you have printed it if he had said "Jesus jitsu" or "Hindu jitsu" or any other religious reference? Of course there's a play on words going on here and "Jew" is cute instead of "ju," but associating "Jew" with "religious fighting" is unsavory, prejudiced, and entirely out of place.

Top administrators at Loyola Blakefield, the Jesuit boys school in Towson, are investigating anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled on the locker of a Jewish ninth-grader. The message was discovered late Wednesday and the school maintenance department removed it early Thursday, said Rob Robinson, a spokesman for Loyola Blakefield. Robinson would not describe the graffiti other than to say it included the word "Jew. " "It was very clear," Robinson said. He said the school is interviewing students to determine who is responsible, but police have not been notified.

A Jewish supporter of Councilman Joseph Bartenfelder's candidacy for county executive says she's been the target of a flier that claims Bartenfelder and one of his chief supporters are anti-Semites. Ruth Goldstein, who lives in the Midfield community in Pikesville, said she received a small, cream-colored envelope in the mail Tuesday that looked like an invitation to an event. "I felt like I had been violated," said Goldstein during a phone interview Wednesday. After getting a copy of one of the fliers, Bartenfelder e-mailed a statement to reporters Wednesday evening.

A Maryland senator and delegate are the targets of a flier that attacks them as "bagel brain Jews" for their support of pending firearms legislation in the General Assembly and accuses them of pursuing "racist policies to destroy your gun rights." Sen. Brian E. Frosh, a Montgomery County Democrat, said the flier - with the headline "Bagel Brain Jews Want Your Bullets and Your Guns" - was mailed to his home and to those of others in his precinct. Underneath the headline are pictures of Frosh and Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg, the Senate and House sponsors of a bill that would tighten requirements for ownership and sales of firearms.

With controversial black professor Tony Martin due to speak in Baltimore tonight and fresh charges of anti-Semitism in the air, business has been good at Pyramid Books.Tim Wilson, part owner of the Afrocentric bookstore in Mondawmin Mall, said yesterday he was sold out of Dr. Martin's "The Jewish Onslaught" -- the Wellesley College professor's tale of what he believes is a Jewish conspiracy against him -- and hunting for more copies.Sales of the Martin book and the Nation of Islam's "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews," which have been condemned by Jewish organizations as anti-Semitic, have "doubled, if not tripled," Mr. Wilson said, as protests have stimulated interest in them.

The murder of a guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington last week was a tragedy. But it's also a reminder of anti-Semitism's return. The museum is a memorial to, and tells the story of, the greatest spasm of anti-Semitic violence ever. By murdering 6 million Jews in so ferociously focused a way, the Holocaust made plain the consequences of a hatred that has been widely felt, and frequently articulated, for some two millennia. That hatred had often erupted in the mass killings of Jews - by the Crusaders in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, by the pogromists in Eastern Europe, and in many other places at many other times.

James von Brunn, the 88-year-old Annapolis resident suspected of killing a security guard Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, was no stranger to groups that track the world of racially motivated hatred. The Anti-Defamation League labeled him "a longtime white supremacist and anti-Semite" who self-published a book espousing racist beliefs and posted to Web sites that deny the Holocaust occurred. "Time to FLUSH all 'Holocaust' Memorials," read one of his posts in 2004, according to the league.