-Caveat Lector-
Local activist maligned by story
Critics charge ADL and Denver Post with "character assassination"
by The Boulder (CO) Weekly Staff
The Anti-Defamation League the slander of Jews gun-rights group
founded and headed by a local Jewish man.
A May 28 story in The Denver Post said ADL officials are looking into
the Tyranny Response Team, the organization of gun rights activists
co-founded by Bob Glass, a Longmont gun store owner. It has grown in
less than two years to include thousands of members with chapters in 18
states.
The Tyranny Response Team routinely pickets a variety of events by
activists who want stricter gun laws. The group made headlines most
recently for nearly matching the number of gun control advocates at the
annual Million Mom March rally on Mother's Day.
The Post article said ADL investigations typically expose "hate groups
and militias," but said local ADL officials stopped short of placing the
Tyranny Response Team in that category. It said the ADL was concerned
because Glass and his followers have been seen wearing yellow,
six-pointed stars identical to those Jews were forced to wear in Nazi
Germany. The article also mentions that Glass and other Tyranny
Response Team members sometimes pass out flyers that contain pictures of
Holocaust victims.
The article never stated that Glass is Jewish, and did not reveal that
his gun rights advocacy is rooted firmly in his Jewish heritage.
Glass says the article is a clear case of "character assassination"
carefully crafted to cast gun rights activists as racist anti-Semites.
It's hurtful, he says, coming from an organization that's supposed to
uphold the Constitutional rights of Jews. Furthermore, says Glass, he
began wearing the Star of David and passing out pictures of Holocaust
victims because he wants Americans to never forget what happened to Jews
during World War II
Glass said he came to understand the Second Amendment as a child, while
sitting on his grandmother's lap and looking at pictures of relatives
who were killed by Nazis in the Holocaust.
"I'm a bagel-eating, pastrami-eating, Brooklyn-born, bar mitzvahed New
York City Jew boy and I'm proud of it," Glass says. "I'm not one of
these messianic, born again types who just discovered my Jewish heritage
while trying to find myself. I grew up with two Jewish parents, in a
Jewish community with a constant awareness of family members we lost to
the Nazis. That's why I'm defending our Second Amendment right to bear
arms. That's why I want people to never forget the Holocaust episode of
tyranny that most closely touches my life. That's why this article, which
clearly implies that I'm anti-Semitic, is very hurtful."
Trent Seibert, the Post reporter who wrote the article, says he did not
intend to cast Glass as anti-Semitic or racist. He did not mention the
fact that Glass is Jewish because he didn't think it was relevant. It's
no more relevant, says Seibert, than the fact that he himself grew up
Baptist.
"I don't know that it's much of a factor, considering the ADL's broad
scope when it comes to investigating these groups," Seibert says,
explaining that the ADL has expanded its charter to address many issues
other than Jewish defamation.
"How important is his religion, when it comes to groups that the ADL is
looking at? I know some of the ADL's concerns are in connection with
hate mail, which may or may not have been sent by rogue members of this
group to Tom Mauser (gun control advocate). Tom Mauser isn't Jewish. I
think what the ADL is concerned about are rogue members who may be
attracted to groups such as the Tyranny Response Team make threats or
religion."
Seibert says he would likely not disclose the race of a black man if the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People investigated
the subject for racism against blacks.
"I don't know that I would mention that either," Seibert says. "I hope
that I would look at the actions of the individual in question, not his
race or religion. I really don't know that it's relevant."
It's completely relevant, says former New York University law professor
David Kopel, who's Jewish. Kopel has written a rebuttal column about
Seibert's story for next Sunday's Post.
"It's relevant that you are Jewish when you are being looked into by a
group that is best known for protecting the interests of Jews," Kopel
says. "Bob Glass is first and foremost pro-Semitic, and pro civil
rights. It's his whole life. Yet this story was very adroit at making
insinuations, without crossing a line into libel."
Kopel says the story's unfounded, anonymous implication that someone in
the Tyranny Response Team may have committed a felony threat against
Mauser is outrageous.
"That's like reporting that some unnamed person suspects, without a
shred of evidence, that the Denver Post reporter who wrote this might be
a child molester," Kopel says.
As for criticism of the types of people who might be attracted to groups
such as the Tyranny Response Team, Kopel says that's almost equally
outrageous criticism.
"Bob Glass would throw out anyone like that, immediately," Kopel says.
"Racist, anti-Semitic hate-mongers stand against everything Bob Glass
lives for."
Bobbi Towbin, associate director of the ADL's Denver branch, was the
main source for Seibert's report. Two days after the story appeared,
she was backing off of her criticism of the Tyranny Response Team and
saying that the Post made too much of the ADL's concerns.
"I really don't know much about it," Towbin said. "We had an
investigative researcher in town and the Tyranny Response Team was one
of the groups she was looking into. I think that they carried that
further than they should have. By Othey,' I mean the Post."
Towbin, however, confirmed that the only groups the ADL investigates are
those suspected of "racism, white supremacy and anti-government
activity."
Towbin said she and other Jews in metro Boulder/Denver are "very
offended" when Glass and members of his group wear yellow stars and
distribute Holocaust brochures.
"They are using Holocaust symbolism for political purposes," Towbin
says.
"To see that imagery again is very disturbing to some Jews, especially
Holocaust survivors. They are using it to preserve gun laws, not to
promote Holocaust awareness."
One prominent Jewish politician and journalist says it's fully
appropriate for Glass and members of his organization to remind the
public about the Holocaust at every opportunity.
"I've known Bob Glass for 10 years. Like myself, Bob Glass is a strong,
proud Jew and a strong, proud Zionist," says Boulder County Commissioner
Paul Danish, a long-time contributing editor for Soldier of Fortune
magazine. "The entire European branch of my family disappeared during
the war Governments have a history of going bad and turning on people and
killing them, and that's why [neither] Jews nor anyone else should
sacrifice guns and their rights to defend themselves with private
weapons. If the knock ever comes on my door at midnight, I'm going to
take a few of them with me."
Danish, a former Boulder mayor who calls himself a "traditional liberal
Jew,"
says through extensive study of world history he has become convinced
that self defense is seldom futile in countering government tyranny and
oppression. He suspects that if Jews had started shooting abusive
anti-Semitic thugs in the 1920s, Hitler's Holocaust may never have
gained momentum in the 30s and 40s. Self defense, he says, has kept
Israeli casualties to about 12,000 during 53 years of war
than periodic single-day casualties during World War II.
Towbin says she's well aware of the pro-gun views of some Jews, and how
those views pertain to Jewish history. Such opinions, she says, are
held only by an extreme minority of American Jews.
"I simply don't agree with that view," Towbin says. "Reasonable people
can respectfully disagree."
Towbin says she personally, like the ADL as a group, supports the
Million Mom March in its fight for more gun control.
Danish says it's fine for Towbin or anyone at the Anti-Defamation League
to espouse anti-gun rhetoric. What's not OK, says Danish, is the tone
of the Denver Post article and the concerns expressed in it by Towbin in
order to gain political advantage.
"ADL officials, of all people, should be well aware of how damaging
guilt by association and innuendo can be," Danish says. "Members of the
ADL were called communists during the McCarthy era. People at the ADL
need to be more careful with statements that make them sound like they
are doing the same thing as the red baiters."
The ADL isn't the first group to publicly link Glass with dangerous hate
groups. In the mid 1990s, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed
Glass's store, Paladin Arms, in a reference manual of racist,
anti-Semitic organizations. Morris Dees, director of the law center,
backed off the accusation when asked by the Weekly to explain it. Dees
said his staff had probably made a mistake, which he was unaware of
before the book was published.
=======================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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