Report details 2014 attacks on Jews in US Midwest
Simon Wiesenthal Center focuses on Midwestern United States for first time following April shooting spree at two Jewish facilities near Kansas City.
The center annually looks at events targeting Jews around the world. The Wiesenthal Center report was released days after four people were killed in Paris in a Jewish supermarket by a gunman proclaiming he wanted to target Jews.
In Tuesday's report, the center focused on the US Midwest for the first time because of the April shootings in Kansas City. The new list was distributed to regional elected officials, police leaders and the heads of religious organizations, the Chicago Tribune reported.
"This past summer we saw an embrace of the genocidal approach ... on the streets in the Midwest," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the California-based Jewish human rights organization.
In the April 13 incident, white supremacist Frazier Glenn Cross killed a teenage boy and his grandfather outside a Jewish community center and then killed a woman outside a Jewish retirement home in Overland Park, Kansas.
Some other incidents took place in Chicago, including swastikas and anti-Semitic messages spray-painted on the garages of residents in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Rogers Park and the bullying of an eighth-grade Jewish student by a group of students who created an online game team called "Jew Incinerator Clan," the report said.
"The bottom line is Americans are ready to deal with hate speech and try to marginalize the bigots and racists," Rabbi Cooper said in a press conference, according to the Chicago Tribune.
"Dealing with racism, hatred and intolerance is a very difficult subject matter," he said. "And as we know, it pops up in uncomfortable ways. But today's list is a reminder that we need to be engaged — we cannot leave it just with police, and you can't legislate hate away. It comes back to the home, back to the teachers, it comes back to the peers.
"There are not just global incidents that are anti-Semitic. This can happen in your own neighborhood. We hope to raise awareness and empower the community to tell officials if you see or hear something."
Cooper also condemned the administrators of Twitter for not being more aggressive in weeding out accounts where hateful propaganda and racist rhetoric are spread, the Chicago Tribune reported. He said Facebook has been more responsible in blocking hate speech, but violent extremists are still able to use social media to lure people to their cause.
