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December 12, 2003/Kislev 17 5764, Vol. 56, No. 12
Anti-Semitic graffiti defaces home
BARRY COHEN
Editor
When a Fountain Hills resident backed out of his driveway on Dec. 5 and lowered the garage door, he saw spray-painted on the garage a swastika, an expletive and the words, "you dirty Jews."
The house had been defaced sometime during the night before.
The perpetrator "should be put on notice," said homeowner Bruce Weisman. "I'm not the upsettable type," he said. "I'm an attorney. I get even judiciously."
Possible suspects are two students at Middlesex Middle School, said Lisa Allen-MacPherson, public information officer of Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.
"Bruce Weisman's son has seen them drawing swastikas and 'you dirty Jew,' " she said.
Allen-MacPherson said it is "too early to tell" whether the sheriff's office will view the incident as a hate crime.
Although the graffiti is "extra-ordinarily distasteful," it would be viewed differently if were done by an adult with ties to a neo-Nazi group, such as the Aryan Brotherhood, than by a middle-school student, she explained.
If the perpetrator is a student, the defacement is not a hate crime, "but rather a crime from hatefulness," she said.
A hate crime is a criminal act motivated by "bigotry or hatred" against the victim's "race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender or disability," said Barnet Lotstein, special assistant Maricopa County attorney. Prosecutors must prove such motivation to the court, he added.
Of the incident in Fountain Hills, "based on the prima facie evidence ... (police) should assume, at least initially, that the motivation was hate," he said.
"When you're talking about young kids - eighth graders - the question is whether or not they formed this kind of motivation for the crime or they thought it was just funny," he noted.
Weisman said his neighbors have been supportive and apologetic. People were offended when they saw the graffiti, he said.
Mark Klein saw the graffiti on the Weisman garage when he was taking a walk.
"I felt shock and disgust," he said. "We need to stamp out any racist activity ... and not gloss it over," whether it is targeting Jews, blacks or His-panics."
Fred Widom, president of the Fountain Hills synagogue Beth Hagivot, views the defacement as an isolated in-cident.
"This is the first incident of anti-Semitism that I have heard of" in Fountain Hills, said Widom, a 13-year resident.
"I would like to think that in an enlightened com-munity like Fountain Hills that (anti-Semitism) couldn't go on," said Bob Slobin, president of Shalom of Fountain Hills, a Jewish social organization. "But I guess there are bad apples everywhere."
Contact the writer at barry_cohen@jewishaz.com.
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