March 7, 2017
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Human Rights Commission stands with the Seattle Jewish Community in resisting anti-Semitic threats to synagogues, community centers, and cemeteries.
For information contact:
Marcel Baugh
marcel.baugh13@gmail.com
Pauline Alvarado
paulinealvarado@gmail.com
Jeremy Wood
jeremywood10@gmail.com
SEATTLE – We, the Seattle Human Rights Commission (the Commission), are horrified by the rising tide of anti-Semitic incidents in our country. Desecrations of Jewish cemeteries and bomb threats against religious and community institutions have deeply concerned many in our Seattle Jewish community. On Monday February 27 the Mercer Island Stroum Jewish Community Center received such a bomb threat. 250 people, including infants in cribs, were evacuated. Jewish residents of Seattle have reported numerous other incidents of anti-Semitism recently, including swastikas appearing as graffiti and carved into buildings. Such incidents harken back to the 2006 mass shooting at the Seattle Jewish Federation Building that injured five people and killed one.
Jewish communities here and throughout the country have protested the Trump administration’s sluggish pace in responding to these and similar incidents. Several times, the administration has shown an unwillingness to recognize or take seriously increases in anti-Semitism. In doing so, it has violated the civil and human rights of Jewish Americans affirmed in the United Nations 1981 Declaration against religious intolerance.1
The Commission stands with the Seattle Jewish Community in its fear and concern over these local and nationwide incidents. We urge the FBI and Department of Justice Civil Rights Division maintain the utmost commitment in investigating this epidemic of hate crimes. And we urge more aggressive opposition from the White House to any attack on an American community, motivated by racial or religious bias.
1 G.A. Res. 36/55, U.N. Doc. A/Res/36/55 (Nov. 25, 1981), available at
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/36/a36r055.htm.