-Caveat Lector- Local activist maligned by story Critics charge ADL and Denver Post with "character assassination" by The Boulder (CO) Weekly Staff The Anti-Defamation League the slander of Jews gun-rights group founded and headed by a local Jewish man. A May 28 story in The Denver Post said ADL officials are looking into the Tyranny Response Team, the organization of gun rights activists co-founded by Bob Glass, a Longmont gun store owner. It has grown in less than two years to include thousands of members with chapters in 18 states. The Tyranny Response Team routinely pickets a variety of events by activists who want stricter gun laws. The group made headlines most recently for nearly matching the number of gun control advocates at the annual Million Mom March rally on Mother's Day. The Post article said ADL investigations typically expose "hate groups and militias," but said local ADL officials stopped short of placing the Tyranny Response Team in that category. It said the ADL was concerned because Glass and his followers have been seen wearing yellow, six-pointed stars identical to those Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany. The article also mentions that Glass and other Tyranny Response Team members sometimes pass out flyers that contain pictures of Holocaust victims. The article never stated that Glass is Jewish, and did not reveal that his gun rights advocacy is rooted firmly in his Jewish heritage. Glass says the article is a clear case of "character assassination" carefully crafted to cast gun rights activists as racist anti-Semites. It's hurtful, he says, coming from an organization that's supposed to uphold the Constitutional rights of Jews. Furthermore, says Glass, he began wearing the Star of David and passing out pictures of Holocaust victims because he wants Americans to never forget what happened to Jews during World War II Glass said he came to understand the Second Amendment as a child, while sitting on his grandmother's lap and looking at pictures of relatives who were killed by Nazis in the Holocaust. "I'm a bagel-eating, pastrami-eating, Brooklyn-born, bar mitzvahed New York City Jew boy and I'm proud of it," Glass says. "I'm not one of these messianic, born again types who just discovered my Jewish heritage while trying to find myself. I grew up with two Jewish parents, in a Jewish community with a constant awareness of family members we lost to the Nazis. That's why I'm defending our Second Amendment right to bear arms. That's why I want people to never forget the Holocaust episode of tyranny that most closely touches my life. That's why this article, which clearly implies that I'm anti-Semitic, is very hurtful." Trent Seibert, the Post reporter who wrote the article, says he did not intend to cast Glass as anti-Semitic or racist. He did not mention the fact that Glass is Jewish because he didn't think it was relevant. It's no more relevant, says Seibert, than the fact that he himself grew up Baptist. "I don't know that it's much of a factor, considering the ADL's broad scope when it comes to investigating these groups," Seibert says, explaining that the ADL has expanded its charter to address many issues other than Jewish defamation. "How important is his religion, when it comes to groups that the ADL is looking at? I know some of the ADL's concerns are in connection with hate mail, which may or may not have been sent by rogue members of this group to Tom Mauser (gun control advocate). Tom Mauser isn't Jewish. I think what the ADL is concerned about are rogue members who may be attracted to groups such as the Tyranny Response Team make threats or religion." Seibert says he would likely not disclose the race of a black man if the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People investigated the subject for racism against blacks. "I don't know that I would mention that either," Seibert says. "I hope that I would look at the actions of the individual in question, not his race or religion. I really don't know that it's relevant." It's completely relevant, says former New York University law professor David Kopel, who's Jewish. Kopel has written a rebuttal column about Seibert's story for next Sunday's Post. "It's relevant that you are Jewish when you are being looked into by a group that is best known for protecting the interests of Jews," Kopel says. "Bob Glass is first and foremost pro-Semitic, and pro civil rights. It's his whole life. Yet this story was very adroit at making insinuations, without crossing a line into libel." Kopel says the story's unfounded, anonymous implication that someone in the Tyranny Response Team may have committed a felony threat against Mauser is outrageous. "That's like reporting that some unnamed person suspects, without a shred of evidence, that the Denver Post reporter who wrote this might be a child molester," Kopel says. As for criticism of the types of people who might be attracted to groups such as the Tyranny Response Team, Kopel says that's almost equally outrageous criticism. "Bob Glass would throw out anyone like that, immediately," Kopel says. "Racist, anti-Semitic hate-mongers stand against everything Bob Glass lives for." Bobbi Towbin, associate director of the ADL's Denver branch, was the main source for Seibert's report. Two days after the story appeared, she was backing off of her criticism of the Tyranny Response Team and saying that the Post made too much of the ADL's concerns. "I really don't know much about it," Towbin said. "We had an investigative researcher in town and the Tyranny Response Team was one of the groups she was looking into. I think that they carried that further than they should have. By Othey,' I mean the Post." Towbin, however, confirmed that the only groups the ADL investigates are those suspected of "racism, white supremacy and anti-government activity." Towbin said she and other Jews in metro Boulder/Denver are "very offended" when Glass and members of his group wear yellow stars and distribute Holocaust brochures. "They are using Holocaust symbolism for political purposes," Towbin says. "To see that imagery again is very disturbing to some Jews, especially Holocaust survivors. They are using it to preserve gun laws, not to promote Holocaust awareness." One prominent Jewish politician and journalist says it's fully appropriate for Glass and members of his organization to remind the public about the Holocaust at every opportunity. "I've known Bob Glass for 10 years. Like myself, Bob Glass is a strong, proud Jew and a strong, proud Zionist," says Boulder County Commissioner Paul Danish, a long-time contributing editor for Soldier of Fortune magazine. "The entire European branch of my family disappeared during the war Governments have a history of going bad and turning on people and killing them, and that's why [neither] Jews nor anyone else should sacrifice guns and their rights to defend themselves with private weapons. If the knock ever comes on my door at midnight, I'm going to take a few of them with me." Danish, a former Boulder mayor who calls himself a "traditional liberal Jew," says through extensive study of world history he has become convinced that self defense is seldom futile in countering government tyranny and oppression. He suspects that if Jews had started shooting abusive anti-Semitic thugs in the 1920s, Hitler's Holocaust may never have gained momentum in the 30s and 40s. Self defense, he says, has kept Israeli casualties to about 12,000 during 53 years of war than periodic single-day casualties during World War II. Towbin says she's well aware of the pro-gun views of some Jews, and how those views pertain to Jewish history. Such opinions, she says, are held only by an extreme minority of American Jews. "I simply don't agree with that view," Towbin says. "Reasonable people can respectfully disagree." Towbin says she personally, like the ADL as a group, supports the Million Mom March in its fight for more gun control. Danish says it's fine for Towbin or anyone at the Anti-Defamation League to espouse anti-gun rhetoric. What's not OK, says Danish, is the tone of the Denver Post article and the concerns expressed in it by Towbin in order to gain political advantage. "ADL officials, of all people, should be well aware of how damaging guilt by association and innuendo can be," Danish says. "Members of the ADL were called communists during the McCarthy era. People at the ADL need to be more careful with statements that make them sound like they are doing the same thing as the red baiters." The ADL isn't the first group to publicly link Glass with dangerous hate groups. In the mid 1990s, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed Glass's store, Paladin Arms, in a reference manual of racist, anti-Semitic organizations. Morris Dees, director of the law center, backed off the accusation when asked by the Weekly to explain it. Dees said his staff had probably made a mistake, which he was unaware of before the book was published. ======================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ======================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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