#Chabad of Poway Synagogue Shooting

[rapturousrot]

On April 30, 2019, 19-year-old John T. Earnest was arraigned on one count of murder with a hate-crime special circumstance and gun allegations and three counts of attempted murder with hate crime and gun allegations for a shooting committed at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California three days prior. He was also charged with one count of arson of a house of worship resulting from a fire set to the Dar-ul-Arqam mosque in Escondido on March 24.

Earnest fired eight to 10 rounds with a semi-automatic rifle he purchased the day before, and the gun malfunctioned. He was chased out of the synagogue by two congregation members, one an off-duty Border Patrol agent, who fired at Earnest’s vehicle, as he drove off. He was apprehended wearing a tactical vest holding five 10-round magazines. During the shooting, he also wore a camera mounted to a helmet that malfunctioned, and he was unable to livestream the attack.

A readiness hearing is scheduled for May 30, followed by a preliminary hearing set for July 8.

[bezrat-ha-shem]

Prosecutors add 109 hate crime charges in synagogue shooting, including murder of Lori Gilbert-Kaye, charge for attempted murder of 53; no decision yet on requesting death penalty

[lorilovesowls]

Lori Gilbert-Kay went to Synagogue on Saturday to celebrate the last day of Passover. She never came home. Lori was murdered simply because she was Jewish. Today, we mourn with Lori's family and friends and wish those injured in this despicable antisemitic attack a speedy recovery. Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet. May Lori's memory be a blessing.

All the hate in this world is so heartbreaking. 😥

[glassheartedboy]

Statistics

I stutter my words when I am nervous so I stick to numbers

like 

what are the odds I make it to and back from shavuot services still breathing

and

from one to ten how long should I watch the windows 

and 

how do you explain any of this to a ten year old

and

When the people who want you dead comprise a larger number of people than your own community does

which of those is an infinity

@glassheartedboy

[carminavulcana]

On the last day of Passover, a deadly shooting at the Poway Chabad House synagogue had left One person dead and two others injured.

Lori Gilbert Kaye was killed as shielded the Rabbi was, at that moment, giving his sermon on the last day of Passover. He is also injured, but alive. Lori's loss is felt deeply around the world - may her memory be a blessing.

Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet.

Dear Jewish friends, I am here for you if you need to talk. I am so sorry that this has happened to you and I can only promise you that I will stand by you against anti-Semitism in all its forms.

All my love and prayers are for you.

[fulcrum-agent]

This is cued up to where the Rabbi from the Poway Chabad speaks to the press. It’s incredibly moving, yet hard to watch. What he asks is rather challenging, but also the best thing to ask right now.

[jillianleedy]

Domestic terrorism. Another despicable and heinous attack upon the innocent. A sickness has overtaken our world for too long now. We must take more action to defeat senseless violence.

[outsidetheknow]

Poway, Calif.: A Tight Community With San Diego at Its Doorstep by BY DEBRA KAMIN

Poway, Calif.: A Tight Community With San Diego at Its Doorstep by BY DEBRA KAMIN

By BY DEBRA KAMIN

Residents say they like the country setting and good schools, as well as the access to urban jobs and sandy beaches.

Published: January 22, 2020 at 03:01AM

from NYT Real Estate https://ift.tt/37eu6HF via IFTTT

[americanmysticom]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/opinion/poway-synagogue-shooting-meme.html

Mass Shootings Have Become a Sickening Meme

Online messages from suspects in shootings at a California synagogue and  New Zealand mosques were similar.

By Charlie Warzel - THE NEW YORK TIMES

[welcometothenod]

"A straight A student who played the piano"

" A STRAIGHT A STUDENT WHO PLAYED THE PIANO"

Are y'all fucking kidding me with this? Are y'all serious, ABC? Listen. I love true crime. I love researching people like this and knowing what makes them tick. But for fuck's sake, can the media quit turning them into anti-heroes and constantly propagating more mass murders by screaming about the event 24/7? He killed someone. He tried to kill more. If you're gonna put cutesy fun facts about anybody out there for the world to see, maybe tell us something sweet about the woman that was murdered. Or the other people that were shot.

I do not need to know that this gunman was had straight A's. At this point, as it does every single time, the media is going balls to the wall with this shooting, and more are going to result from it. Every single time this happens, but nobody cares - we just want that sweet, sweet info, apparently.

[rapturousrot]

On May 9, 2019, federal officials filed 109 hate crime charges against 19-year-old John Earnest.

The affidavit offered the most detailed account yet of the April 27th shooting that left one person dead at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California.

Earnest’s weapon was identified as a Smith & Wesson M&P15 Sport II rifle, equipped with a 10-round magazine. He wore an “ammunition chest rig” with five additional 10-round magazines.

He expended 10 rounds inside the synagogue, then was confronted by “several members of the congregation,” while he “unsuccessfully attempted to reload the firearm.”

He fled the scene and called 911 from his gray 2012 Honda Civic. Earnest stated, “I just shot up a synagogue. I’m just trying to defend my nation from the Jewish people...They’re destroying our people...I opened fire at a synagogue. I think I killed some people.” He added the reason he committed the shooting was “because the Jewish people are destroying the white race.”

The manifesto he titled “An Open Letter” and posted online was referenced, and a copy was found on his laptop, as well as a web posting made by Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch mosque attacker.

[bezrat-ha-shem]

For the second time this year, a white supremacist marched into a synagogue and shot it up. On the six-month anniversary of the deadly shooting in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, a copycat inspired by that attack marched into the Chabad of Poway and opened fire.

In the wake of the horrific attack, many were the forceful condemnations of hate. I’ve read meaningful, painful expressions of solidarity.

But one disturbing phrase kept popping up. Everyone from Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris, Republican Senator Tim Scott, Democratic Representative Ted Lieu, and even Jewish writers and activists felt the need to announce: “anti-Semitism is real.”

Hearing this didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel worse.

Of course, anti-Semitism is real. That should go without saying. According to the Anti-Defamation League, over one billion people in the world harbor anti-Semitic attitudes. These hateful thoughts are leading to real atrocities; 2017 was plagued by 1,986 anti-Semitic hate crimes, plus a march where hundreds of white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis came together to chant that “Jews will not replace us.”

This problem isn’t confined to South Carolina. I went to high school in New York and college in Los Angeles; both of the buildings where I went to school have been branded with spray-paint swastikas.

When the Chabad of Poway was attacked, American Jews hadn’t gone six months since a white supremacist last stormed into a synagogue and killed the Jews inside. We hadn’t gone a full day since The New York Times had to apologize for publishing an anti-Semitic cartoon.

I shouldn’t be able to roll out these statistics and offenses off the top of my head. But I, like most Jews I know, am constantly forced to “prove” that my community is under siege.

Every time I speak up about anti-Semitism, I’m gaslit by people who deny it exists. They even go so far as to accuse me of fabricating false allegations of hate in bad faith.

In other words, not only is there a furious spike in hatred against Jews in this world; there is also a ferocious movement to deny that it is happening.

Jews no longer just face a fringe squad of maniacs who pretend the Holocaust was a hoax; anti-Semitism denial is a widespread epidemic.

This morning, my mother told me that she’s too afraid to step into a temple again. She has good reason to panic. Lori Gilbert Kaye, the woman who was shot dead in Poway, is right around her age. She left behind a daughter who’s mine. They could have been us; in some ways, they were.

Instead of crying with my mother, I spent tonight regurgitating statistics, pointing to today’s tragedy as evidence that our panic isn’t paranoia, that it shouldn’t take Jews getting murdered for people to recognize anti-Semitism.

But it does. So every time an anti-Semitic tragedy strikes, I feel compelled to broadcast it as evidence of the atrocities Jews face. I’m not the only one who so feels that way. Even Audrey Jacobs, a close friend of Kaye who expressed her loss in a Facebook post, took the time to repeat “anti-Semitism is real” in its final lines.

We wouldn’t be compelled to state that “anti-Semitism is real” if people weren’t actively declaring that it wasn’t.

Read more: https://forward.com/opinion/423348/why-do-jews-have-to-be-murdered-for-you-to-admit-anti-semitism-is-real/

[sergeantmiller]

Here's pictures of some far-right White Supremacist mass killers.

Brenton Harrison Tarrant

Killed 51 Muslim worshippers at 2 different mosques.

John T. Earnest

Killed 1 woman & Injured Several others at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue.

Patrick Wood Crusius

Killed 22 People at a Walmart in El Paso, TX.

Stephen Baillet

Attempted to shoot up a Synagogue in Halle, Germany. He would kill 2 others in 2 different locations.

Claude Sinké

Injured 2 Muslim Worshippers in a Mosque in Bayonne,France.

Franz Fuchs

Murdered 4 Romani & injured 15 others in a series of bombings from 1993-1995 in Austria.

Eric Rudolph

Responsible for the Bombing of the Centennial Olypic Park in Atlanta, GA.The bombing itself killed one person, another victim had a heart attack & had died.He was also responsible for a bombing of an Abortion Clinic & a Lesbian Bar that injured 5.In Birmingham,AL, he was also Responsible for a bombing of a Abortion Clinic that killed a Police Officer.

Tobias R.

Kills 9 people at 2 different Hookah Bars in Haunu, Germany. He would later kill his mother then himself at his home.

James Harris Jackson

Killed one black man named Timothy Caughman in NYC.

James Alex Fields Jr.

Killed one, injured 19 after he drove his car into a crowd of protesters at the Unite The Right rally in Charolettesville, VA.

Richard Baumhammers

Shot & killed 5 people at different locations throughout the Pittsburgh Area.

Jeremy Christian

Killed 2 men who tried to stop Christian from verbally harassing 2 Muslim girls on a MAX Lightrail train in Portland, OR.

Philip Manshaus

After Killing his Chinese Step-Sister, he attempted to shoot up a Mosque. He failed after Mohammad Rafiq pinned Manshaus down & struggled to keep him down.

Dylann Roof

Killed 9 at a AME Church in Charleston, SC.Roof attempted to kill himself, but failed. Roof was captured the Next day in Shelby, NC.

Timothy James McVeigh & Terry Nichols

Committing the worst Domestic terror attack on U.S. Soil on April, 19 1995.

They filled a rented Ryder Truck with explosives & bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in OKC, OK. Killing 168 People.

Samuel Woodward

Killed Blaze Bernstein , a gay Jewish man, by stabbing him multiple times.

Anders Behring Breivik

Killed 77 total in a terrorist attack in Oslo & Utoya Island.A Van bomb killed 8 in Oslo, as he shot & killed 69 in Utoya.

Wade Michael Page

Killed 6 in a sikh temple in Wisconsin.

Richard Poplawski

Killed 3 cops in Pittsburgh, PA.

Luca Traini

Wounded 6 Nigerian immigrants in Italy.

Robert Gregory Bowers

Killed 11 Worshippers at the Tree Of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA.

Scott Paul Beierle

Killed 2 women at a Yoga Studio In Tallahassee, FL.

Alexandre Bissonnette

Killed 6 at a Mosque in Quebec, Canada.

NOTE: I know, some either killed 1 or injured a few, but I included them in because they have influenced a few other people that are in the college.

(source: reddit)

[jewish-privilege]

Today should have been my funeral.

I was preparing to give my sermon Shabbat morning, Saturday, which was also the last day of Passover, the festival of our freedom, when I heard a loud bang in the lobby of my synagogue.

I thought a table had fallen down or maybe even that, God forbid, my dear friend Lori Gilbert Kaye had tripped and fallen. Only a few moments earlier I had greeted Lori there; she had come to services to say Yizkor, the mourning prayer, for her late mother.

I went to the lobby to check on her. What I saw in those seconds will haunt me for the rest of my days.

I saw Lori bleeding on the ground. And I saw the terrorist who murdered her.

This terrorist was a teenager. He was standing there with a big rifle in his hands. And he was now aiming it at me. For one reason: I am a Jew.

He started shooting. My right index finger got blown off. Another bullet hit my left index finger, which started gushing blood.

After the massacre in Pittsburgh, we had a community training. Now that training kicked in. Somehow my brain directed my body to the synagogue ballroom, where the children, including two of my grandchildren, were playing. I ran toward them screaming “Get out! Get out!” I grabbed as many as I could with my bloody hands and pushed them out of the building.

One of our congregants that day, Almog Peretz, a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces, ran after me to help get the children to safety and took a bullet in the leg. His eight-year-old niece, Noya Dahan, took some shrapnel to hers. Then an amazing miracle occurred: The terrorist’s gun jammed. Two other heroic congregants — an Army veteran named Oscar Stewart and an off-duty border patrol agent named Jonathan Morales — rushed toward him and he fled.

The ambulances had not yet arrived. We all gathered outside. I don’t remember all that I said to my community, but I do remember quoting a passage from the Passover Seder liturgy: “In every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand.” And I remember shouting the words “Am Yisrael Chai! The people of Israel live!” I have said that line hundreds of times in my life. But I have never felt the truth of it more than I did then.

I am a religious man. I believe everything happens for a reason. I do not know why God spared my life. I do not know why I had to witness scenes of a pogrom in San Diego County like the ones my grandparents experienced in Poland. I don’t know why a part of my body was taken away from me. I don’t know why I had to see my good friend, a woman who embodied the Jewish value of hesed (kindness), hunted in her house of worship. I don’t know why I had to watch Lori’s beloved husband, a doctor, faint as he tried to resuscitate her. And then their only daughter, Hannah, sob in agony as she encountered both her parents collapsed on the floor.

I do not know God’s plan. All I can do is try to find meaning in what has happened. And to use this borrowed time to make my life matter more.

I used to sing a song to my children, a song that my father sang to me when I was a child. “Hashem is here,” I would sing, using a Hebrew name for God, pointing with my right index finger to the sky. “Hashem is there,” I would sing, pointing to my right and left. “Hashem is truly everywhere.” That finger I would use to point out God’s omnipresence was taken from me.

I pray that my missing finger serves as a constant reminder to me. A reminder that every single human being is created in the image of God; a reminder that I am part of a people that has survived the worst destruction and will always endure; a reminder that my ancestors gave their lives so that I can live in freedom in America; and a reminder, most of all, to never, ever, not ever be afraid to be Jewish.

From here on in I am going to be more brazen. I am going to be even more proud about walking down the street wearing my tzitzit and kippah, acknowledging God’s presence. And I’m going to use my voice until I am hoarse to urge my fellow Jews to do Jewish. To light candles before Shabbat. To put up mezuzas on their doorposts. To do acts of kindness. And to show up in synagogue — especially this coming Shabbat.

I am a proud emissary of Chabad-Lubavitch, a movement of Hasidic Judaism. Our leader, the great Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, famously taught that a little light expels a lot of darkness. That is why Chabad rabbis travel all over the world to set up Jewish communities: I have colleagues in Kathmandu, in Ghana, as well as in Paris and Sydney. We believe that helping any human being tap into their divine spark is a step toward fixing this broken world and bringing closer the redemption of humanity. It is why 33 years ago my wife and I came to this corner of California to build a house of light.

Because we are obviously Jewish, identifiable by our black hats and beards, it has also meant that some of us have been targets before. Eleven years ago, my colleagues Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, who ran the Chabad of Mumbai, India, were murdered with four of their guests. They were targeted by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba because they were Jewish. And over the years people I know have been harassed and assaulted by thugs in the neighborhood where I grew up, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in incidents that typically go unreported by the press.

In his vile manifesto, the terrorist who shot up my synagogue called my people, the Jewish people, a “squalid and parasitic race.” No. We are a people divinely commanded to bring God’s light into the world.

So it is with this country. America is unique in world history. Never before was a country founded on the ideals that all people are created in God’s image and that all people deserve freedom and liberty. We fought a war to make that promise real.

And I believe we can make it real again. That is what I pledge to do with my borrowed time.

[mitchipedia]

A judge ruled victims of a 2019 synagogue mass shooting here in San Diego can sue the gun maker

Chris Jennewein at the Times of San Diego:

Victims and survivors of the 2019 shootings at Chabad of Poway can sue Smith & Wesson, maker of the AR-15 rifle used in the hate crime, a San Diego state judge has ruled.

Superior Court Judge Kenneth Medel on Wednesday rejected Smith & Wesson’s argument that the suit was barred by a federal law that generally shields gun manufacturers and sellers from being sued over shootings.

San Diego Guns, the store that sold the gun, is also a defendant in the case….

The lawsuit, filed in 2020, alleges the manufacturer violated state law by designing the rifle to be easily modified into a rapid-firing assault weapon to appeal to “impulsive young men.”

[theartofimaginaryfriends]

I’m taking a bit of a turn away from the new PJO/HOO focus of this blog to speak out about something important to me.

If you don’t already know, I’m a Jew. If you’re following me and you have a problem with that, unfollow me and move along. While we’re at it, I’m also Indian and a lesbian, so if you’re against that, again unfollow and move along.

If you aren’t already aware, DeSean Jackson recently posted a series of anti-Semitic posts on his Instagram falsely quoting Hitler. He later apologized for it, but to the community it felt empty.

Amid the awakening of activism, everyone except my Jewish friends and now myself have been silent on the issues regarding Jewish oppression.

If you consider yourself an activist and an ally, but you do not support Jews and specifically POC Jews, you aren’t a true ally.

If someone says Black Lives Matter, and then starts being anti-Semitic, they’re saying that black lives matter unless that life is Jewish.

INCLUDE JEWS IN YOUR ACTIVISM.

Antisemitism inextricably links with racism, and to be truly anti-racist we must openly and loudly reject all forms of hate.

I urge you to educate yourself if you’re unaware. I urge you to stop the spread of misinformation around Jewish people. I urge you to help silence the voices trying to silence us.

I’ve seen one non-Jewish friend of mine posting about anti-semitism and why it’s a form of racism. ONE.

We need more non-Jews helping amplify our voices as much as people have been with black voices. Not just for us, but for our black Jewish brothers and sisters. Their lives matter as much as everyone else.

Here’s some sources to help you get started:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/10/28/us/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-victims/index.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/chabad-of-poway-synagogue-shooting-these-are-the-victims/135219/%3Famp

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1109981

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-17426313

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5392084

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/world/europe/mireille-knoll-murder-holocaust.amp.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism

https://m.jpost.com/american-politics/black-lives-matter-the-jews-and-palestinian-nationalism-634946