Johnson’s “hate crime” revealed to be a Gottheimer scam.

By Rubashov

Whenever he gets caught in some hypocrisy or in an outright lie, Congressman Josh Gottheimer tries to deflect criticism from average folks by accusing them of something terrible. It’s a trick Gottheimer picked-up from his former boss, Bill Clinton, who trashed the reputations of the women he forced himself upon.

Gottheimer calls his Right-of-Center critics “terrorists” and accuses his Left-of-Center critics of “anti-Semitism”. It seems he has a pejorative for everyone.

Worse still, Gottheimer’s power and money means that he is never short of “friends” who will do his dirty work for him. A month ago, the New Jersey Globe reported on a case in point:

Assembly Speaker Pro-Tempore Gordon Johnson has asked the Bergen County Prosecutor to investigate a September 2021 incident where a protestor allegedly screamed “Jew” at Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) as a possible hate crime.

In a speech at Rutgers University last month, Gottheimer claimed that a member of the Working Families Party hurled the anti-Semitic slur at him at a Glen Rock event with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. Raimundo is backing up Gottheimer’s allegation.

Working Families state director Sue Altman said last month that her group reviewed footage from the protest and interviewed several participants.

“To be absolutely clear, if that ever happened at a WFP event, the person would have been rebuked instantly and asked to leave,” Altman said. “However, we do not believe Gottheimer’s explosive allegation ever occurred.”

Johnson wants the organization to dig deeper.

Well, the Times of Israel has published a piece that dug so deep it got to the bottom of this so-called “hate crime”. It is written by Dr. Russell Miller, a research psychologist at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and adjunct assistant professor of Children and Youth Studies at Brooklyn College.

Dr. Miller is also a journalist who has published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, New York, Ha'aretz, and Corriere della Sera. Dr. Miller’s column is titled: “I called Josh Gottheimer a Jew – it wasn’t a slur.” Dr. Miller’s column begins:

A couple of weeks ago, David-Seth Kirshner, the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, in Closter, New Jersey published a commentary here on the indisputable truth that even among the most well-meaning, compassionate, and socially engaged, there can be people who hate. His impetus? The charge by US Congressman. Josh Gottheimer that a progressive adversary, the Working Families Party, is sheltering an antisemite.

The piece rehashed Rep. Gottheimer’s claim that at a rally in September in support of “Build Back Better,” President Biden’s social services bill, a WFP member attacked the “reputable and respected Congressman” with the Jew-hating epithet “Jew.”

There’s only one problem. The claim is patently false – and Gottheimer almost certainly has to know that. Anyone following this phony blood libel would know it’s false. And how am I so certain it’s false? I’m the “attacker.”

The first time Gottheimer mentioned the supposed antisemitic attack was on December 13 at Rutgers University, three months after the fact. Since then, he’s speechified, fundraised and called in chits around the WFP’s alleged antisemitism. The US Secretary of Commerce signed on. A New Jersey state senator demanded a hate-crime investigation. The ADL announced, “we take him at his word.” Rabbi Kirshner came forward as character witness.

Meanwhile, the WFP scoured its ranks to find the offender. I was late to hear of this; I’m not a member. But as soon as I did, I contacted a reporter and “confessed” on a national podcast. That was four days before Rabbi Kirshner’s indictment of the WFP.

As I told that reporter, like Josh Gottheimer, I’m a Democrat and, as my grandmother would say, oich a yid – also a Jew. Gottheimer has to have known this all along. Rabbi Kirshner may not have, because the Congressman conveniently neglects to report the full sentence I spoke last September — at precisely the place and time he’s vouched the slur was slung. The moment was heated, so my reconstruction of the syntax may be off, but it was something like, “Josh, as a Jew, it’s a shanda that you’re blocking Build Back Better.”

That’s right, “a shanda,” as generations of Ashkenazic Jews have cried in Yiddish: A disgrace. That’s not Jew hating. That’s Jewish shaming. That was one Jew addressing another in a time-honored voice.

If Gottheimer heard “Jew,” he would have almost certainly heard “shanda.” If he heard “shanda,” he would have certainly known his attacker was anything but antisemitic.

Now, the record does show Gottheimer has memory issues. At Rutgers, he claimed several of us were jeering “Jew!” Subsequently, he revised his recollection to one. As a research psychologist, I can understand how, hit where it hurts, his mind might have reframed the scene. I can only assume my podcast appearance jogged his memory since his office has since refused comment. Meanwhile, it appears he’s buying Facebook ads to keep Rabbi Kirshner’s condemnation afloat.

As for the rabbi, in the worrisome week after Colleyville, he might well have missed my interview and subsequent coverage in the Jewish press. Odds are Gottheimer’s team, busy fibbing on Facebook, failed to brief him on my clarification, which surely would have brought him relief.

But by the time his piece went public, no informed observer could believe the Working Families Party, or even a stray antisemite, was the source of the telltale monosyllable.

You can access the entire column at the Times of Israel:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-called-josh-gottheimer-a-jew-it-wasnt-a-slur/

Meanwhile, we have a high-powered Democrat political consultant from Gottheimer’’s district – a guy who controlled numerous political action committees, SuperPACs and other entities – who admitted to having another Democrat operative murdered, and nobody in Gordon Johnson or Josh Gottheimer’s circles seem concerned about getting to the bottom of it. Nobody is demanding that anyone “dig deeper”.

Fake hate crimes are a growing phenomenon in America, as is “crying wolf’ when there’s no wolf…

Incidents of reporting FAKE "hate crimes" are on the rise.

Did he cover for a Nazi? Democrats placed in bad spot by Malinowski.

When a Republican legislator attended a country music concert last year and was photographed standing in front of the band’s banner, he was excoriated by a long list of Democrats because that band banner incorporated aspects of a “rebel” flag.  The Democrats promptly accused the Republican legislator of being a racist (even though he has African-American family members who quickly came to his defense) and called for his resignation and a boycott of his business (a course of action that caused the Executive Director of the local County Democratic Committee to break with her party and come to the defense of the Republican).

Last week, Democrat U.S. Senator Cory Booker got caught holding up an anti-Israel sign and calling for the destruction of the border security wall that has done so much to reduce the number of terrorist murders of innocent women and children by Islamic extremists.  It was a grossly irresponsible act by the increasingly light-weight, childish Senator.

Now it’s emerged that Democrat Tom Malinowski ran an organization that was decidedly anti-Israel and that employed as one of its top operatives, a guy who is obsessed with the Third Reich.  In a column published in yesterday’s  Times of Israel, journalist Robert Goldberg writes:  “Tom Malinowski Defended Advisor’s Nazi Fetish.”

The author notes how Tom Malinowski ran Human Rights Watch’s Washington, DC, office when it came out that Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch’s longtime senior military advisor was “an enthusiastic collector of Nazi memorabilia.”  The column continues:  “Rather than speak out against ‘any sign of anti-Semitism’, Malinowski defended Garlasco, claiming he was just a student of history and that his critics were part ‘of a campaign to deflect attention from Human Rights Watch’s rigorous and detailed reporting on violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by the Israeli government.’”

That’s right Tom, blame the Jews themselves for the anti-Semitism inflicted upon them.  The column continues…

“The website NGO Monitor which was critical of Human Rights Watch for claiming – based on Garlasco’s assessment – Israel was guilty of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead – noted at the time, that collecting Nazi memorabilia in many European countries is illegal. ‘It is banned on many internet sites and from auction houses….The Simon Wiesenthal Center notes it glorifies the horrors of Nazi Germany.'”

Garlasco’s Screen Logo

Garlasco’s Flak-88 Mini Cooper

“Garlasco’s screen logo was a picture of a German badge with a swastika.  His screen name on the Nazi memorabilia sites was Flak88, which is a German anti-aircraft gun but also a code for ‘Heil Hitler’ used by neo-Nazis to identify themselves. Though Garlasco likely knew of the dual meaning, NGO Monitor notes, ‘he even used it on his license plate (a practice which is banned in Germany) and as a screen name on websites unrelated to his Nazi collection.’  When he obtained a leather SS jacket Garlasco gushed that it made his ‘blood ran cold.  It is so COOL.’”

“… in September 2007, Garlasco wrote: ‘Need advice. So I am trying to figure out what to do. My book [on Nazi war medals] is clsoe [sic] to done, but I am not sure if I should put my name on it. If folks at work found out I might very well lose my job. That is the reality, so don’t dwell on it – ok? But this is a small group of people – should I worry? And shouldn’t I stand up for myself? And if I use a psyeudonym [sic] isn’t that worse, like I am trying to hide something?’

Garlasco then added, ‘I will talk quietly to some at work that I trust – a small group indeed.’”

“If he did talk to people at HRW in 2007, it means that someone at the organization knew about his fetish two years before he was exposed and did nothing then, as well as in 2009. HRW was, at the time, leading the effort to get the United Nations, Obama administration and Congress to endorse the Goldstone report which concluded Israel had committed war crimes and released several reports urging endorsement.  Garlasco’s claims that Israel deliberately bombed civilians and used incendiary weapons during Operation Cast Lead were cited repeatedly by the report. And Garlasco’s reports – as well as he alleged military expertise —  were being successfully .”

“…Through all this, Malinowski, who had no problem praising Garlasco before the controversy, remained silent.  Garlasco was suspended without pay pending an investigation, if It was ever conducted, has not been discussed publicly.

Malinowski’s behavior during the Garlasco affair not a profile in courage. It was an act of political expediency.  It raises the question of whether Malinowski would have defended  Garlasco was an exuberant collector KKK memorabilia. In either case, the fascination with an evil regime dedicated to killing Jews (and African Americans) is a disturbing fetish that Malinowski and HRW defended as scholarship.”

The author notes that Malinowski’s “actions then and now were inconsistent with his moralizing about running for Congress… But it is consistent with Malinowski’s leadership of HRW when it supported the virulently anti-Semitic Durban Conference on Racism in 2001 and in 2009, which, as the Forward noted, was ‘the blueprint and launching pad for the modern iteration of the boycott movement against Israel, otherwise known as BDS’.”

Author Robert Goldberg closes by asking Tom Malinowski to disclose…

“It is consistent with his leadership in developing and defending the discredited Goldstone Report as well as vigorous efforts to get the world to condemn Israel based on that review. Indeed, it is consistent with Malinowski’s accepting the endorsement of a group that honored Linda Sarsour (an admirer of Louis Farrakhan).

Mr. Malinowski should provide the public with a full and honest explanation of his defense of Garlasco’s Nazi souvenir collection as well as HRW’s campaign against Israel. It’s what any normal, decent person would do.”

Well, well, all you Democrats who lost your ass over that band banner in 2017, what say you now?  Crickets?  Well here’s a heads up, you are not going to get away with saying nothing.  We’re going to get you all on the record on this and on Booker… so beware next time someone comes up to you and says those dreaded words:  “Pardon me…”