Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Millburn officials looking into anti-Semitic faxes
Municipal officials are looking into an anti-Semitic diatribe that was faxed to Town Hall on Monday.
The one-page fax sent to the municipality multiple times says that in Europe before World War II, the Hasidic Jewish group, Chabad, would "kidnap Christian peasant boys and slice off their penis[es]."
The text reads as follows:
"The impoverished Christians of Europe dearly loved their beautiful, innocent boys, but the religious Jews viciously mutilated them. The Hasidic Jews would then sing and dance joyously all night in their Yeshivas and synagogues."
The 79-word text was written in all capital letters.
Assistant Township Business Administrator Jimmy Homsi said he kept one of the printouts, which were located on a fax machine on the second floor of Town Hall when he arrived Tuesday morning, and he shredded the remaining printouts.
"We're looking into it where it came from, when and all that stuff," Homsi said. He declined to say whether the Millburn Police Department had been notified.
Two phone messages and an email to a Police Department spokesman were not returned on Tuesday.
Township Business Administrator Alex McDonald was not immediately available for comment.
The text bears a similarity to the centuries-old false allegation that Jews murder Christians, especially Christian children, something referred to as blood libel, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
It is not the first time such a fax has been sent to a local government, a spokesman for the ADL said.
The Miami Dade Attorney General's office received a similar fax in December 2016. In January 2016, village halls in the Rockland County, N.Y. municipalities of Wesly Hills and Pomona received similar messages via fax, said Joshua Cohen, regional director for the ADL's New Jersey office.
"Incidents like these are deeply disturbing," Cohen said. "No one should have to receive a fax or a phone call or an email, which in this case was an anti-Semitic diatribe.
"It's imperative that when individuals, or in this case Millburn Town Hall, receives a hate-filled rant like this, that they immediately contact law enforcement, make a report and work with law enforcement to identify the sender."
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