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Media reports - October 12, 2007
Empire State building tower lit for Islamic holy days
NEW YORK - The Empire State Building was illuminated green this weekend to mark the Islamic holy days of Eid-al-Fitr.
The joyous "Festival of Fast-breaking" marks the end of Ramadan, a month of intense spiritual renewal.
This year is the first time the famous skyscraper was aglow for the Islamic holiday. A spokeswoman for the building's owner says it will be an annual event, in the same tradition of the yearly skyscraper lighting for Christmas and Hanukah.
In Islam, the color green symbolizes a happy occasion and the importance of nature. It was illuminated from Oct. 12 through Oct. 14.
CAIR Bulletin – October 11, 2007
Interfaith leaders offer support after mosque attack
LOS ANGELE - S, CA, October 11, 2007- The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA), along with Muslim and interfaith community leaders, held a news conference today in reaction to a weekend incident in which a group of people smashed car windows and attacked worshipers at the Islamic Center of San Joaquin Valley in Bakersfield, Calif. Slurs such as “Arab terrorists” and "go home terrorists" were allegedly used by the perpetrators.
At the news conference, CAIR-LA Civil Rights Coordinator Affad Shaikh commended local law enforcement authorities for their professional response to the incident, which is being investigated as a “hate crime” by the Kern County Sheriff’s Department.
Rabbi Paul Gordon of B'Nai Jacob in Bakersfield said: "Think about how diverse our community of Bakersfield is. If everyone starts attacking each other, then we'll never have a safe place to go and worship God, or to come together and celebrate happy moments of life, or weddings or anything else.”
A letter of support was also issued by the Diocese of Fresno, in which Bishop John T. Steinbock stated: “While we still do not know all the facts about these incidents, we nevertheless deplore acts of vandalism or violence at any place of worship or against any faith community. This is particularly so if the violence results from ignorance, bigotry, or religious hatred.”
The California Council of Churches also extended support to the Bakersfield Muslim community.
"The attack on the mosque, the property of worshippers, and the spewing of hateful slurs against Muslims is abhorrent to us and to all people of good will, " said Council Executive Director Rev. Dr. Rick Schlosser. "It is evidence of the thoughtless, knee-jerk reactions that have been perpetrated by people who know nothing of Muslims, our fellow Californians who add so much good to our society."
Tri-Valley Herald October 25, 2007
Bill may revamp school bias rules in California
By Eric Louie
SAN FRANCISCO — The state Department of Education will check to make sure school districts have policies and procedures in place to address reports of bias-related discrimination and harassment — something many California districts do not have.
Several advocacy groups — the Asian Law Caucus, American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Council on American-Islamic Relations among them — held a news conference Tuesday to announce Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggers Oct. 12 signing of Assembly Bill 394.
Sponsored by Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, AB394 notes the 2004-06 California Healthy Kids Survey shows between 27 and 30 percent of middle and high school students have reported being harassed because of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability.
Angela Chan, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, said a 1999 bill signed into law, AB537, made it policy that students should not face discrimination. It is interpreted, she said, to require school districts have policies and procedures in place.
Chan said the Department of Educations check is for more than just a policy condemning such actions, but also for an effective procedure for how to deal with them.
A random sample of 75 school districts last spring by the Asian Law Caucus found that 31 percent had no anti-harassment policy, she said. The group first looked on district Web sites for policies and procedures; if they werent found, district officials were called. If a district did not respond, it was counted as having no harassment policy or remedial procedure.
The survey also found it often took districts several days to find their own policies when asked.
Imagine how hard it would be for students and parents to access these policies, Chan said. The schools, she added, have a responsibility to protect student from harassment; districts failing to address such action could be held liable in civil suits, she said.
The survey included seven Contra Costa County school districts: San Ramon Valley, Mount Diablo, West Contra Costa, Antioch, Byron, Martinez and John Swett. All had both policies and procedures except for Antioch, which did not have a procedure, and Martinez, which had neither. There were no Alameda County districts in the survey.
Vivian Huang of Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality, a partnership that includes some of the groups involved in Wednesdays press conference, said the states check would be tied to money, included in a review for categorical funding performed on about a quarter of California school districts each year.
Mahrukh Hasan, civil rights coordinator for the Bay Area Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said there has been a growing number of incidents against Muslims in general, now at their highest level since the surge right after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Tamara Lange, a staff attorney for the ACLU, said such incidents can escalate into major violence.
The victims can also suffer academically; for example, she said, there is a 27 percent dropout among transgender students.
The new law, Lange said, is welcome. What’s changing now is there’s an actual governmental organization monitoring it.
Chan of the Asian Law Caucus said harassment comes not only from students, but from teachers and other staff, too. Her group, which receives many calls regarding discrimination and harassment, recently filed a complaint with the San Ramon Valley school district. It involves two students of Middle Eastern descent and two teachers last summer. One student was called a terrorist by a teacher, said Chan, who would not provide other details.
San Ramon Valley school district spokesman Terry Koehne said Wednesday that district officials had not heard of the complaint.
The anti-harassment bill had wide support locally, though there was opposition. State Sens. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, and Don Perata, D-Oakland, voted for the bill during a state Senate floor vote in September. Assembly members Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, Loni Hancock D-Berkeley, and Mary Hayashi, D-Hayward, voted for it when it went to the Assembly floor the following day.
Assemblyman Guy Houston, R-San Ramon, voted against AB 394 in that same Assembly floor vote…..
http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/localnews/ci_7276239
Los Angeles Times - October 11, 2007
Evidence emerges in slaying of Arab American leader
Federal and local authorities say the new information sheds light on the planning and execution of a bomb plot that killed Alex Odeh in Santa Ana in 1985.
By Greg Krikorian
Federal and local authorities have uncovered new evidence in the bombing that killed a prominent Arab American civil rights leader in Santa Ana 22 years ago today, in one of the first acts of modern-day terrorism in the United States.
The undisclosed evidence, including statements from a now-deceased informant, is not expected to immediately solve the slaying of Alex Odeh, but law enforcement officials familiar with the long-running investigation said the information provided new details about how the attack on the onetime Western regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee was planned and carried out.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that the evidence developed in recent months by the FBI and Los Angeles Police Department in a Joint Terrorism Task Force could help investigators eventually bring charges in the case.
"It just adds more pieces to a puzzle that we have been trying to put together for years," one source said.
On Wednesday, Odeh's brother, Sami, said he was cautiously optimistic that the newly disclosed evidence would finally help solve the killing.
Contacted shortly after he had his first face-to-face meeting with case agents in about two years, Sami Odeh said: "They seemed to be optimistic [about the new evidence], and my reading of that is that it might be significant new information."
Alex Odeh, 41, was killed and seven people were injured Oct. 11, 1985, when a bomb exploded as he opened the door to the committee's Santa Ana office.
The attack occurred 12 hours after Odeh appeared on a local television broadcast and criticized the news media for linking the Palestine Liberation Organization to the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro.
Within days of Odeh's death, the FBI said it believed the militant Jewish Defense League was behind the attack as well as two other bombings months earlier on the East Coast.
The link, authorities said at the time, involved the explosive devices used in all three incidents. The JDL was founded in 1968 by Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who moved to Israel in 1970 and founded the Kach Party, which called for forcibly removing all Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. He was assassinated in New York in 1990.
After the FBI's comments about the JDL and the Odeh investigation, JDL leader Irv Rubin called the alleged link "absurd, obscene and outrageous" and accused the FBI of slander.
But even as the bureau later softened its public comments linking the JDL to the attack, its investigation continued to center on the possibility that members of the organization knew more than they were admitting about who had planned and carried out the attacks.
Over the years, in fact, the FBI focused on several onetime JDL members in its investigation of Odeh's death.
In 2005, former JDL member Earl Krugel was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for plotting to bomb a Culver City mosque and the field office of U.S. Rep. Darrell E. Issa (R-Vista), who is an Arab American. Rubin was also charged in the bomb plot.
As part of a plea agreement, Krugel promised to help federal authorities in the Odeh investigation and was said to have provided the names of several people mentioned by JDL leader Rubin as being involved in the bomb plot.
One source close to the probe told The Times in 2005 that three of the people were former JDL members Keith Fuchs, Andy Green and Robert Manning, all of whom had been publicly identified as possible suspects in the case as far back as 1988.
Fuchs and Green are believed to be living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Manning is serving a life prison term in California for the 1980 letter bomb slaying of Patricia Wilkerson, a Manhattan Beach secretary who was killed when she opened a package intended for her boss, who prosecutors said was having a business dispute with a JDL member.
Less than two months after he was sentenced to prison in Phoenix, Krugel was slain by a fellow prisoner. Former JDL leader Rubin died in November 2002 after leaping from a balcony at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center, where both he and Krugel had been held since their arrest in December 2001. Authorities termed Rubin's death a suicide.
After more than two decades of waiting for the crime to result in charges, Sami Odeh said he tried not to think about the possibility that his brother's killers will never be identified…..
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-odeh11oct11,1,7720507.story?ctrack=2&cset=true
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