Jeffrey Goldberg has a series of posts with the shooter’s writings: here, here, here. He also has a statement from the Anti-Defamation League, an e-mail they found in their archives and a denial.
Yet again, we have a despicable attack based on hatred and political extremism, the third such attack in two weeks to result in fatalities. Doubtless many people will try to find ways to score political points, like the e-mailer who waited a whole 20 minutes to blame conservatives for dismissing the DHS report on right-wing extremism for this tragedy. To that, I’d respond that our criticism was that the DHS report didn’t focus on known, specific threats, instead making generalized threats about abortion opponents and other vague and broad generalizations about conservative issues. In fact, it never mentioned Holocaust denial at all, nor did it mention anti-semitism at all, either; those terms don’t appear at all in the report. And despite being well-known as a threat since the 1980s, the DHS never bothered to identify von Brunn or his organization as a specific threat in the report — which, again, was the heart of our criticism.
There are crazy people out there shooting up abortion clinics and Holocaust museums. These people identify with causes normally described as right-wing. Deal with it. Tea bag away to your heart’s content. It’s not til you start plotting to kill people that DHS should take an interest. If anyone starts spying on you prior to that, then I, the ACLU, and dirty hippies everywhere will support your grievances.
At TPM:
Brian Beutler and Zachary Roth have a profile of the shooter.
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary
Danielle Crittenden at New Majority:
Now fast forward: The little boy who once asked, plaintively, grasping my hand, “Mommy, why do people want to kill the Jews?” is now taller than I. He recently (as in, during the most recent conflict in January) accompanied our Rabbi on a tour of Gaza and visited with Israeli victims of suicide bombings and other acts of terror. Post 9/11, he’s witnessed the rise of worldwide, and often officially sanctioned, anti-semitism in cities where we once thought it had been eradicated — London, Paris, Berlin. Closer to our home in D.C., he’s watched cement barricades go up around the Jewish schools he attended in pre-K and elementary. The playgrounds are now screened from the street. The front classroom windows are darkened so as to impede visibility from the outside. We no longer remark on the police cruiser that sits outside our shul on major Jewish holidays: Private security is now as central to the celebration of Rosh Hashanah as apples and honey.
So when free time arose this week, I proposed he and I go back to the museum so he could see it through more mature, less vulnerable, eyes. He was keen to visit this time — and ribbed me again about inflicting it upon him when he was so young.
We were thinking of going today or tomorrow. It’s a good thing that we procrastinated. Who would have imagined that the sentiments we’d once thought were so safely encased as historical exhibits would blast forth and shatter through the museum itself?
And what would I answer now to my son’s haunting question: ”Mommy, why do people want to kill the Jews?”
Mark Blumenthal at Pollster.com (h/t Sully):
The guards and staff at the Holocaust Museum have a special duty. The do more than just protect and operate one of Washington’s many heavily trafficked museums. On a daily basis, they help open the doors to the elderly survivors of the atrocities of World War II. As my stories attest, they do it with a remarkable degree of kindness and professionalism.
As far as I know, the Holocaust Museum personnel that we encountered were not armed guards, though it is possible they were. But when I heard about the shooting this afternoon, and more specifically that at least one of the victims is a security guard now apparently in critical condition, it struck very close to home.
This is personal.
As far as I am concerned, the staff members of the Holocaust Museum are part of our family and the Museum itself is hallowed ground, and we pray for the recovery of the wounded guard. “Never take your guard force and security people for granted,” William Parsons, the museum’s chief of staff said on television a few minutes ago. Our family never will.
A very sad update: MSNBC just reported that the guard, Officer Steven Tyrone Johns, has passed away. We are all mourners tonight.
Three posts from Steve Benen, here, here and here.
More later.
UPDATE: At TNR, Jason Zengerle and Michael Crowley
Charles Johnson at LGF
Ryan Sager (h/t Sully)
UPDATE: John Cole on Morrissey. Morrissey responds and Cole responds.
Perhaps this means nothing but I feel that I should acknowledge that a black man was killed on guard duty at the Holocaust museum. That may mean nothing. But I think it should be said.
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June 12, 2009 at 3:00 pm
[...] EARLIER: Holocaust Museum Shooting: The Blogosphere Reacts [...]