Pittsburgh – Synagogue Shooter Was Obsessed With Jewish Refugee Agency

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     Students from the Yeshiva School join together in prayer with Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto in front of the Tree of Life synagogue two days after a mass shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 29 October 2018.EPAPittsburgh – Just moments before the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 people dead, the suspect is believed to have posted a final social media rant against a Jewish refugee settlement agency most people had never heard of, but which has increasingly become the target of right-wing rage and conspiracy theories.

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    “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” Robert Gregory Bowers wrote on the platform Gab early Saturday. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

    The group, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, was founded in 1881 in a Manhattan storefront to assist Jews persecuted in Russia and Eastern Europe. HIAS is now among nine groups that contract with the State Department to help refugees settle in the United States, and it has recently clashed with the Trump administration over policies that have throttled the flow of such newcomers.

    Analysts who follow the extreme right say the fixation some extremists have with HIAS appears to be fueled by a mix of anti-Semitism and the recent caustic rhetoric about an immigrant caravan trudging slowly toward the United States.

    Specifically, they believe Bowers ascribed to the “white genocide” conspiracy, which holds that Jews are prominent among the forces seeking to destroy the “white race” by bringing in non-white people. The Gab.com account believed to be Bowers’ includes several recent postings or re-postings critical of HIAS.

    “Who do they blame for these immigration policies? Who do they blame for diversity multi-culturalism? It’s the Jews,” said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “And so as a Jewish organization that is focused on issues of immigration, that’s one of the reasons they were targeted.”

    Based in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Silver Spring, HIAS has an annual operating budget of $42 million and receives about half of its money from the federal government. Among the thousands of people it has aided are Google co-founder Sergey Brin and singer Regina Spektor.

    As the Trump administration restricted the number of refugees allowed into the U.S., HIAS and its local affiliates went from resettling 4,191 refugees in 2016 to 1,632 for the fiscal year that just ended.

    Though HIAS strongly supports the rights of asylum seekers to a fair hearing, it has no connection to the immigrant caravan, said spokesman Bill Swersey.

    “We’re the people who go to the airport, that bring the refugees home, that make sure there’s food in the fridge, make sure their kids know where the school is,” said Melanie Nezer, HIAS’s senior vice president for public affairs.

    But right-wing extremists see HIAS in a more sinister light.

    Heidi Beirich, who directs the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, said HIAS’s name comes up on white-supremacist message boards whenever posters become angry about refugees or immigrants. She noted that other resettlement agencies, such as those associated with Christian religions, have not raised the same sort of ire.

    It happened toward the end of the Obama administration during the debate over Syrian refugees. Attention ratcheted up recently as President Donald Trump and others started drawing attention to the migrant caravan slowly making its way through Mexico toward the U.S. border.

    “White supremacists are ginned up right now,” Beirich said.

    HIAS also has been public in its opposition to Trump’s immigration policies. It sued the administration in 2017 over the executive order halting refugee resettlement. In August, HIAS and the ADL led a delegation of national Jewish organizations to the U.S.-Mexico border.

    Segal said the high-profile visit this summer could have drawn the attention of right-wing extremists.

    As Bowers appeared in federal court in a wheelchair Monday, HIAS-affiliated offices across the country increased security.

    Nezer said the group is still processing the tragedy.

    “I think we need to redouble our efforts to stand up for these values and not cower and hide,” she said, “because to me that would be the most dangerous response.”


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    29 Comments
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    Lodzker
    Lodzker
    5 years ago

    Trump supporters should read the meforshim on the story of Sodom which was a wealthy and fertile place who only accepted the rich people like Lot but brutalized and excluded the poor immigrants, and for that they deserved to be destroyed.

    triumphinwhitehouse
    triumphinwhitehouse
    5 years ago

    HIAS nowadays imports Muslims.

    dannyboy
    dannyboy
    5 years ago

    HIAS was Jewish, they haven’t
    been for decades.

    kolemes
    kolemes
    5 years ago

    When Muslims attack the left always says “you have to look at the root cause” why dont they use same logic here that maybe liberal jewish orgs by being in the forefront of bringing millions of Muslims to the US will cause alot of people to blame and attack all jews these orgs have jewish blood on their hands!!.
    When Muslim commit terror attacks the liberal media constantly barks that you “you cant blame all muslims for the action of a few” how come here the blame all trump supporters? What hypocrites!!

    ComplicatedTimes
    ComplicatedTimes
    5 years ago

    It is really so sad to see too many people try to cash and milk this brutal tragedy for political gains.

    Texas_Joe
    Texas_Joe
    5 years ago

    HIAS was founded by German Jews who had settled and immigrated before the great influx of Eastern European Jews in the latter part of the 19th century. It’s goal was to help in absorbing the embarrassing greenhorns into the American way of life. It is responsible for the assimilation of thousands of yidn by spreading them throughout the Midwest and South with mere lip service to real Jewish infrastructure.

    hashomer
    hashomer
    5 years ago

    HIAS is a humanitarian service agency. They helped millions of Jews land and successfully assimilate in America, escaping oppression and pogroms in Europe. They assisted Russian Jews and other Yidden to come in. Now they help non-Jews escape tyranny. Read up on what they do!

    PaulinSaudi
    PaulinSaudi
    5 years ago

    I do not know what the moderators do here. People are defending the Nazis. They are saying Jews are not really Jews. This low level of discussion is what can be found on parts of the internet that are not moderated.