Thursday, August 18, 2011
Fury over Sharpton speaking at Crown Heights riot-anniversary forum
An East End synagogue has reignited bitterness over the 1991 Crown Heights race riots by inviting the Rev. Al Sharpton to a symposium marking the 20th anniversary of the bloody confrontations.
"It's just an absolute disgrace," said Norman Rosenbaum, whose brother Yankel was killed at the height of the mayhem. "His vile rhetoric incited the rioting."
What revived the nightmare was Sharpton's invitation to appear on a panel on the "State of Black-Jewish Relations: Twenty Years after Crown Heights."
The riots were touched off when 7-year-old Gavin Cato was struck and killed by a car in the motorcade of a Hasidic leader.
Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian-born Hasidic scholar who had nothing to do with the motorcade, was stabbed to death in the violence that followed.
Sharpton was criticized at the time for saying, in a eulogy for Gavin, that he wasn't killed by a car accident but by "the social accident of apartheid." He led 400 protesters, chanting "No justice, no peace" despite pleas by then-Mayor David Dinkins for calm.
Norman Rosenbaum said the title of the forum falsely implies the four nights of rioting were due to "ongoing problems between the Jewish community and the African-American community."
"It was just wanton criminal attacks," he said. "This is Crown Heights revisionist history," he said of the forum, scheduled for Sunday night.
He said Sharpton "did absolutely nothing then to improve black-Jewish relations -- and nothing since."
Community leader Isaac Abraham, who was invited to the forum, accused The Hampton Synagogue's Rabbi Marc Schneier of trying to gain attention by including Sharpton.
"To get some publicity for your phony West Hampton ethnic bullcrap, you invite the biggest race hustler who played a large part in those four nights of the pogrom," he wrote Schneier.
Yosef Lifish, the driver of the car that killed Cato, was cleared of charges and left for Israel. Sharpton flew to Tel Aviv later in 1991 in an attempt to slap Lifish with a civil suit.
When a passer-by at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport recognized Sharpton, she shouted, "Go to hell!"
"I am in hell already," Sharpton replied. "I am in Israel."
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/crown_hts_fury_38tR1JfphLH4X9An8W8VYL
"It's just an absolute disgrace," said Norman Rosenbaum, whose brother Yankel was killed at the height of the mayhem. "His vile rhetoric incited the rioting."
What revived the nightmare was Sharpton's invitation to appear on a panel on the "State of Black-Jewish Relations: Twenty Years after Crown Heights."
The riots were touched off when 7-year-old Gavin Cato was struck and killed by a car in the motorcade of a Hasidic leader.
Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian-born Hasidic scholar who had nothing to do with the motorcade, was stabbed to death in the violence that followed.
Sharpton was criticized at the time for saying, in a eulogy for Gavin, that he wasn't killed by a car accident but by "the social accident of apartheid." He led 400 protesters, chanting "No justice, no peace" despite pleas by then-Mayor David Dinkins for calm.
Norman Rosenbaum said the title of the forum falsely implies the four nights of rioting were due to "ongoing problems between the Jewish community and the African-American community."
"It was just wanton criminal attacks," he said. "This is Crown Heights revisionist history," he said of the forum, scheduled for Sunday night.
He said Sharpton "did absolutely nothing then to improve black-Jewish relations -- and nothing since."
Community leader Isaac Abraham, who was invited to the forum, accused The Hampton Synagogue's Rabbi Marc Schneier of trying to gain attention by including Sharpton.
"To get some publicity for your phony West Hampton ethnic bullcrap, you invite the biggest race hustler who played a large part in those four nights of the pogrom," he wrote Schneier.
Yosef Lifish, the driver of the car that killed Cato, was cleared of charges and left for Israel. Sharpton flew to Tel Aviv later in 1991 in an attempt to slap Lifish with a civil suit.
When a passer-by at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport recognized Sharpton, she shouted, "Go to hell!"
"I am in hell already," Sharpton replied. "I am in Israel."
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/crown_hts_fury_38tR1JfphLH4X9An8W8VYL
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