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August 20, 1999/8 Elul 5759, Vol. 51, No.46
Anti-Jewish terror hard to prevent in era of 'lone wolf'
DANIEL KURTZMAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - The recent shooting rampage at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles struck an all-too-familiar chord of fear in the Jewish psyche.
The fear comes not only because this was the latest in a string of recent violent anti-Semitic attacks across the country, but because it was carried out at random by a lone extremist intent on sending a message - an unmistakable echo of the kinds of terrorist attacks Israelis have long suffered.
Extremists in America have apparently learned that it does not take a mass movement to carry out their agenda: just one well-armed individual.
"This incident was not just a hate crime. It was a terrorist attack," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
Taken together with the other recent anti-Semitic attacks and threats, the Los Angeles assault has created a climate of fear among Jews unseen in this decade.
This summer alone, the torching of three synagogues in Sacramento, the discovery of a "hit list" of Jewish community leaders in Northern California, the shooting spree in an Orthodox neighborhood in Chicago, the Jewish Community Center attack in Granada Hills and other incidents have terrorized the Jewish community.
Despite the frequency and fervor of the recent attacks, federal and state investigators and experts who monitor hate activity maintain there is no evidence of an organized effort by white supremacists to target the Jewish community or other minorities. Nor is there evidence of an upsurge in the number of people affiliated with those groups, although a growing number of self-proclaimed hate groups have skillfully used the Internet to expand their reach.
"There seem to be a series of lone wolves acting on the basis of ideology that's put out by hate groups all over this country," said Mark Potok, an analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Ala.-based organization that tracks hate groups.
The center has received numerous threats in recent weeks from extremists, according to Potok. One letter sent in the wake of the deadly shooting spree carried out in Illinois and Indiana by Benjamin Nathan-iel Smith over the July 4 weekend called the gunman "a martyr to the cause" of creating an "international Aryan commonwealth."
In the wake of the L.A. attack, some argue that it may be time to give law enforcement greater authority to track hate groups and root out terrorists before they strike. In a guest column published in The New York Times last week, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, argued that the Justice Department and the FBI are "so hamstrung" from fears of lawsuits from the American Civil Liberties Union and by complaints by conservative lawmakers about overstepping their bounds that "they can't act aggressively."
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