Discussing cultural hatred and bigotry

Education is key to reducing anti-Semitism across the world

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Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas recounted a story of a 17-year-old girl who defaced a building with a swastika, and after being educated on what the swastika symbolizes wrote a letter to the judge adjudicating her case.

“In the letter she wrote, she was so repentant, saying ‘I just didn’t know what I was doing,’” Singas said, as she told the story to an audience of roughly 400 people at the Global Institute at LIU Post’s anti-Semitism conference on Sept. 13. That case was sent to the Adolescent Diversion unit of the DA’s office, so no more details are available, said Miriam Sholder, a District Attorney spokeswoman.

To a person, from host Steve Israel, the former congressman who chairs the Global Institute, to keynote speaker Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, who is considered the preeminent scholar on the Holocaust, all the people who spoke at the anti-Semitism conference, said that education is the key to reducing ethnic hatred.

“Education is the best way to combat hate,” Anthony Bivona, the FBI supervisory special agent for the Civil Rights/Public Corruption Bureau, who was part of the five-person panel that discussed local trends in anti-Semitism.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini, who was also on the panel, said that when an anti-bias crime is committed that person’s parents should also be brought into the conversation, especially if it was a young person.

What should be taught? Lipstadt noted that prejudice comes from the words to pre-judge. People with preconceived thoughts about a person or a people already has a predisposition to hate. “How do you fight anti-Semitism without building it up in importance?,” Lipstadt asked. “Racism, hatred, bigotry concerns everyone,” she added.

Rabbi Gedaliah Oppen, the Judaic studies principal at the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, didn’t attend the conference, but said that the two guiding principles for not hating is “love your fellow man as you love yourself” and the “Talmud teaches us that what is hated to you, don’t do unto others.”

“Unfortunately for centuries, hate has been taught at home, modeled at home,” Oppen said. “Don’t model hate. Children pick up on everything.”

The New York Police Department has tracked 111 anti-Semitic hate crimes as of Sept. 13, said Evan Bernstein, the New York regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. A 40 percent increase compared to the same time period last year. City police have also logged 278 hate crimes, a 34 percent uptick over 2016.

Nearly 40 percent of the hate crimes are anti-Semitic in nature, Bernstein said. One-third of the anti-Semitic incidents tracked by the ADL occurred on Long Island, he said.

“There is a human element to these numbers,” Bernstein said. “It’s so important to look beyond the numbers. Anti-Semitism or hate crimes just don’t affect the victim but the broader community as well.”

Ambassador Dani Dayan, the consul general of Israel in New York, said he spent a Shabbat in Charlottesville earlier this month. “An anti-Semitic incident, even if it happens six thousand miles from Jerusalem is a local issue,” said Dayan, who discussed the significance of “never again.” The two words are the post-Holocaust battle cry of most Jews. “For these words not to be empty or shallow puts obligations on our shoulders to oppose genocide,” he added.

Israel explained why the institute was created. “I wanted a place where we could delve into those complexities,” he said. We have three missions: Number one we provide connections to foreign leaders … And second to travel … And third we study and educate on major issues and challenges in the world.”