Anti-Semitic fliers left on Chevy Chase driveways
Source: washingtonpost.com
Five streets in Chevy Chase, Md., were papered with anti-Semitic fliers on Wednesday morning.
Montgomery County police are looking for the person or people who left the hate-filled leaflets on almost every driveway on the streets.
“This is very disturbing. My community is definitely disturbed,” said Jean Sperling, the village manager of Martin’s Additions, the community where the fliers were found. Sperling called the leaflets “ghastly.”
Sperling said that police who responded to the fliers said that they had seen similar papers in neighboring communities, and that they would be doing extra patrols in Martin’s Additions.
The two-page fliers are a compilation of photocopied quotations from anti-Semitic documents. “Remove each and every Jew and Pro-Israel official from state and federal governments and financial organizations,” one corner of the flier says. The heading at the top of the flier is: “Jews Destroy U.S. Financially.”
On the first side of the first page, the leaflet includes a quotation maligning Jews which has been repeatedly, and falsely, attributed to George Washington, and another false quotation from Benjamin Franklin.
The succeeding pages grow increasingly chaotic, with arrows and text piled on top of each other. “‘The work of a confused, disturbed mind’ would be a kind way to put it,” Sperling said.
A county police spokeswoman said police were investigating and could not say much more until they complete a report. Sperling asked residents to tell police if they saw anyone distributing the fliers.
Source: washingtonpost.com
Anti-Semitic fliers found in neighborhoods across region
By Julie Zauzmer | washingtonpost.com
A day after anti-Semitic fliers papered a neighborhood in Chevy Chase, similar fliers turned up in a D.C. neighborhood, and people throughout the region said they had also seen the hateful leaflets at their doorsteps.
Multiple people in the Takoma neighborhood in Northwest D.C. contacted the Post to say that they had found the flier — a two-page compilation of declarations about Jews and falsified quotations — on Thursday morning.
Others said they had seen it earlier, before Montgomery County police said they were investigating the distribution of the leaflets in Chevy Chase.
Post readers said they had seen the flier at their homes in D.C. neighborhoods including Bloomingdale, Cleveland Park, Friendship Heights, Georgetown and Mount Pleasant; in other neighborhoods in Chevy Chase; and in Arlington and Alexandria.
Police in the District and Montgomery County said that they were aware of the fliers and interested in learning more about who was distributing them, but that they had not concluded whether distributing the fliers was a crime.
“We would have to consult with the state’s attorney to see if this activity actually rises to the level of a criminal violation,” Montgomery County Capt. Paul Starks said. He said the fliers were distributed in a Silver Spring neighborhood on Wednesday morning as well.
D.C. police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump also said it was not currently clear whether the fliers would be classified as hate speech, which is a crime to distribute. Police will investigate, she said, “if a crime occurred. A crime has not occurred.”
An Alexandria police spokeswoman did not know whether the city police department was investigating the fliers found there, and an Arlington police spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Rabbi Elizabeth Richman said she found the flier outside her home in Takoma on Thursday morning. Some of her non-Jewish neighbors, knowing that she is a rabbi, told her that they were bothered by the fliers too; one walked around the neighborhood to pick the leaflets up and throw them away.
“I’ve really been touched by the response of my neighbors,” Richman said. She said she thought the flier was the work of a fringe group, but she still found it unsettling.
“There’s a small amount of feeling uneasy, and maybe feeling a little bit unsafe. I have been thinking about it all day, because of that feeling of unease.”
Source: washingtonpost.com
