Southern Poverty Law Center writes about Stillwell article. Follow-up

[Tom Joad]

With the intention of providing some insight here, I want to follow up on a post that mentioned a very controversial commentary printed in a popular Northern California Jewish Weekly. It supported the hate group JDL.
It's title was Jews Must Stand by Jews — including the marginalized JDL.
You can see the full article here. Do read it if you do not know what i am referring to. http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/27629/format/html/displaystory.html

I have additional material, including an email from Editor and Publisher of J, and my response. I am encouraging folks to demand a retraction, because of Stillwell's rewriting of history. See it all here: http://tomjoad.org/stopthejdl.htm

Most importantly, I want folks to see this, a splendid response from Mark Potok, the Director of the Intelligence Project, part of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that millions of us know and respect. His 200 word letter really nails it. (He wrote this letter because I contacted SPLC).

His full response, which to the credit of J, it was printed, though without an apology or retraction of the misstatements of fact in the original commentary:

Terrorist history

The bizarre summation in Cinnamon Stillwell’s Nov. 21 opinion piece on the Jewish Defense League that “the JDL’s real crime has always been standing up unequivocally for the Jewish people” comes close to the aggressive stupidity of those who today deny the Holocaust.

In fact, the JDL is a racist hate group with a lengthy record of terrorist crimes — one of more than 700 we monitor at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Stillwell suggests the deaths in prison of JDL leader Irv Rubin and follower Earl Krugel involved some kind of nefarious conspiracy. Incredibly, she never mentions the reason they were imprisoned — they were principals in a plot to bomb a mosque and the offices of a California congressman. I guess this is what Stillwell means when she speaks adoringly of the “armed self-defense” that she claims is what the JDL is really all about.

By the way, lest Stillwell contend that I’m some kind of raving anti-Semite, let me state for the record that most of my father’s side of the family died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Mark Potok | Montgomery, Ala.
Southern Poverty Law Center

Let's keep the discussion hate-free.

[Wordie]

1. Thanks for the update. It's hard to see how anyone could excuse the JDL.