Militant anti-gay church turns its sights on Jews (Westboro Baptist)

[IndianaGreen]

Ahhh, the beautiful morphing of the axis of intolerance: homophobia, misogyny, and anti-Semitism.

Thursday, May 14, 2009 | return to: news & features, national Militant anti-gay church turns its sights on Jews

by eric fingerhut , jta

After years of focusing on gays and lesbians with its protests, the Westboro Baptist Church has a new target — the Jewish community.

The Topeka, Kan.-based church, which features the slogan “God Hates Fags,” protested at three Jewish sites in Washington, D.C., on May 8. The protests are part of a series of upcoming rallies that will bring members of the church to Jewish community institutions in Omaha, St. Louis, South Florida and Providence in the next few weeks, according to the church’s Web site and fliers the group is distributing that list scheduled protests and proclaim “Jews Killed the Lord Jesus.”

Led by Fred Phelps, pastor of the 71-member church, Westboro Baptist first gained notoriety about a decade ago when it began picketing the funerals of gays or those they thought were gay — including Matthew Shepard, who was the victim of an anti-gay attack.

In recent years, church members frequently have protested outside the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, or at other events that are likely to bring news coverage and, in turn, publicity to the church.

While picketing outside the Washington office of the Anti Defamation League on May 8, Phelps’ daughter Margie said that the group is now focusing on the Jewish community because church members have been “testifying” to non-Jews for 19 years that “America is doomed” and they haven’t gotten the message.

“Now it’s too late,” she said. “We’re done with them.”

Margie Phelps added that “one of the loudest voices” in favor of homosexuality and abortion is “the Jews, especially the rabbis.”

http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/38068/militant-anti-gay-church-turns-its-sights-on-jews/

[Chulanowa]

1. Testifying for 19 years that America is doomed

Yeeeah

How's that coming along, guys?

[IndianaGreen]

2. Fred Phelps shot his wad when he decided to picket military funerals

that's when he lost the support of people that were sympathetic to his anti-gay views.

[struggle4progress]

3. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church: On Jews (ADL)

http://www.adl.org/special_reports/wbc/wbc_on_jews.asp

This is really nothing new here, except the escalation of rhetoric: the Phelps hate group has been preaching the same anti-semitic nonsense for years :puke:

[marmar]

4. The axis of intolerance?......Racism and Xenophobia are missing.

:shrug:

[Rebubula]

5. Please...

...Please, please...Westboro Assholes.. DIAF!

I hate these assholes...

[Bluenorthwest]

6. And while we will hear much about how Phelps is not like all Christians

we will not see any Christians speaking out to or against Phelps if history is any judge. The will instead demand respect they have not earned from people they help to oppress with their lack of action in the face of Phelps.
Those who are not standing against Phelps are standing with him, holding coats, being his choir. Own it church folks, he's one of yours. Do something.

[FiveGoodMen]

7. Amen!

[IndianaGreen]

8. The silent majority you described, was also silent in Nazi occupied Europe

In one Lithuanian town, they even rounded up and killed their Jews and set their bodies on fire in the public square while the crowds danced and sang patriotic songs.

The Holocaust in the Baltics
By Katy Miller-Korpi
SCAND 344, May 1998

In Lithuania, before the Nazis arrived, there were at least 40 pogroms in as many Jewish communities. These pogroms were perpetrated by the local populace against the Jews. Women were raped and Rabbis tortured. (Levin, p.333)In Kaunas, Col. J. Bobelis of the Lithuanian army issued a statement that condemned the Jews as the enemies of both the Germans and the Lithuanians. At his instigation gangs sought out Jews to murder and torture. On June 25, 1941 1,200 Jewish men, women and children in the Kaunas suburb of Slobodka were pitilessly massacred. According to Dov Levin the perpetrators of these crimes called themselves Lithuanian partisans. Over the next several nights 2,300 more Lithuanian Jews suffered the same fate.

The Germans had established mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen. One of these units, Einsatzgruppe A, was assigned the Baltic detail. As a part of the German invasion this group was responsible for the extermination of the Baltic Jews. The common method used in extermination of the Baltic Jews was execution by gunshot. Between July and August 1941, the majority of Jews in rural Lithuania were murdered. In the cities, Jews were murdered and forced into ghettos. Those who survived the initial days of the invasion were later murdered between the months of September and November of 1941. A small number of Jews were spared to be used as forced labor. In Kaunas, on October 28, 1941, the action known as the "Great Aktion" took place, when 10,000 Jews were sent to their deaths. By the end of December 1941 approximately 180,000 Jews had been massacred. Also included in this number were Jews from other parts of Europe who had sought refuge in Lithuania, but instead were trapped by the Nazi invasion.

http://depts.washington.edu/baltic/papers/holocaust.html