HIKIND DEMANDS INVESTIGATION INTO NY TOWN’S ‘ACCEPTED’ ANTI-SEMITISM

NEWS FROM
ASSEMBLYMAN DOV HIKIND

November 8, 2013

Contact: Yehudah Meth                                                       For Immediate Release
718-853-9616 (office)
973-945-4903 (cell)

AS KRISTALLNACHT ANNIVERSARY APPROACHES, HIKIND DEMANDS INVESTIGATION INTO NY TOWN'S 'ACCEPTED' ANTI-SEMITISM

“THIS ISN’T A SERIES OF INCIDENTS—IT’S A CULTURE OF HATE AND INTIMIDATION. PINE BUSH IN 2013 IS GERMANY IN EARLY 1933.”

CALLS ON NY STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE TO INVESTIGATE

Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) is calling on New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the years of anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred in the Pine Bush Central School District in New York State—incidents that have been tolerated by the district and ignored by local officials. A class action suit by three Jewish families whose children have suffered enormously from the tolerated racism in Pine Bush—once home to a local KKK chapter president—has uncovered a culture of tolerated racism that has terrorized local Jewish families for years.

“There are reports about incidents of swastikas, ant-Semitic epithets and nicknames, and jokes about the Holocaust being virtually ignored by the school system,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind. “And of course it doesn’t end there—when local authorities ignored assault, it inevitably leads to battery, to terroristic threats, to a tolerance of constant intimidation as if that’s an inalienable right. So one Jewish boy gets beaten severely and another Jewish child is withdrawn from school, a third child learns to deny being Jewish and a fourth testifies to feelings of depression and suicide.

“We have a national dialogue about equality for everyone and tolerance for all lifestyles and the long-term damage that bullying does to a child. But here in Pine Bush we discover the worst type of bullying. It is taught by parents, tolerated by the school district, and it has gone on for years without interference from local officials. That is unconscionable.

“You have the local superintendent responding to a parent who complained about her daughter’s harassment, ‘your expectations for changing inbred prejudice may be a bit unrealistic.’ You have testimony from numerous victims that not one or two but 35 students regularly carry out anti-Semitic acts. Threats like ‘Die Jew’ are made and tolerated. A swastika is drawn on a photograph of President Obama’s face and, after reported, left hanging on a wall for a month! You have a seventh grade girl restrained by one student while another draws a swastika on her face!

“This is beyond outrageous. This is heart breaking. This is what those poor Jewish children and their families had to tolerate in Germany in 1933. But we will not stand for this. We will not tolerate Jewish children being used as punching bags. There are laws in this country and it’s time to unmask what’s been going on in Pine Bush, New York and bring law to this town and protection to all of its residents.”

Assemblyman Hikind, the Assistant Majority Leader of the New York State Assembly, represents the largest number of Holocaust survivors in the United States.