CAIR Wants Bus Assailants Jailed for Hate Crimes

DU genuinely regrets the incident on an Ann Arbor public school bus this past week in a which a group of teens “taunted and jumped” a Muslim girl and her brother, snatching the girl’s hijab off and causing her a black eye and an injury requiring six stitches. (“Rights office urges Ann Arbor schools to cool ethnic tensions following beating”).

Kelvin W. Scott, the director of the Michigan Civil Rights Department, said they had been aware “that tensions between local youths of various ethnic groups were high even before Tuesday's incident. He said tensions may have been escalating in the days before the attack.” No one was arrested, but the four attackers responsible for the assault, two girls and two boys, were being referred to “conflict resolution training.”

Of absolutely no surprise, CAIR-MI is calling “for the incident to be investigated and prosecuted as a hate crime.” Our favorite civil rights leader is still having trouble recognizing the distinction between investigations that uncover the facts, and subsequent decisions about whether or not those facts point to a hate crime having been committed.

Actually, if I believed in hate crimes as a matter of law, which I don’t, I would probably concede that this does sound like an assault motivated by hate: most student assaults between races are motivated by hate, at least on one side, if not always on both sides. And in southeastern Michigan, the black and Arab communities are not known for their strong mutual affection.

When MDCR explains this incident in the context of already-rising tensions “between local youths of various ethnic groups,” Muslim vs. black, or Arab vs. black strife must have something to do with it. I expect the two Muslims siblings, (regardless of who said what first) found themselves in an argument with the four black students, who thought they’d settle it by opening up a can of whup-ass.

I’m sure this kind of thing happens in America only about five days a week. When you hear about kids like this getting sent down for “conflict resoluton training,” it's because they can't even imagine settling any disagreement, no matter how minor, without resorting to violence.

You can bet this isn’t the kind of case Walid and CAIR want to get their hands on, what with the assailants being black teens, instead of white kids whose parents watch Fox News. These facts don’t support CAIR’s Islamophobia theme, the one Walid has been repeating all these years without being able to back up: that white, non-Muslim, Americans have besieged and persecuted the country's Muslims on an ascending scale of savagery since about five minutes after news of the 9/11 attacks reached our redneck ears. But these are desperate times for Islamophobia.

Dearborn Gets Spontaneous

I took some time off over Christmas.

It seems there was a demonstration here on Warren in East Dearborn Tuesday, protestors denouncing Israel and demanding that Hamas in Gaza be left alone.

I wasn’t there myself, and reports on actual numbers are unreliable, but the AP says there were about 1,000, and one of our eyewitness contacts estimates 1,200.

Osama Siblani’s Arab American News report of the demonstration, (Thousands gather in Dearborn to protest Israeli airstrikes), takes me right back to the bad old days of August 2006, when local reporting on the Israel-Hezbollah war was so uniformly horrible that we had to launch this blog to get our voices heard somewhere.

Which reminds me, the local paper here, the Dearborn Press & Guide, has so far been very quiet about the Gaza airstrikes. Back in August and September 2006, the Press & Guide’s strictly pro-Hezbollah reporting, and strictly pro-Hezbollah opinion columns, forced us to drive over to see for ourselves just how big the giant yellow Hezbollah flag was flapping from the flagstaff above Park Street. (Big.)

From what we can find out about Tuesday’s demonstration, it was a convergence of angry Palestinians, neighborhood women, anti-Israel Jews, race hustlers, Trotskyites, Ann Arbor peaceniks, Socialists, and poorly-informed college students (or is that last one redundant?).

“This isn’t just an Arab issue. It’s a human rights issue,” said Suhaib Al-Hanooti, a student activist who helped organize the gathering.

Or did you know that launching rockets at the civilians across your neighbor’s border was a human right?

Then there were the opportunists, like State Rep Martha Scott, and this guy from Michigan’s most lawsuit-happy civil-rights exploiting racket, By Any Means Necessary:

“We’re out here supporting the Arab American community. We believe in what they’re fighting for… What Israel is doing is racist. We have to put a stop to this,” said BAMN organizer Xavier Carr, of Detroit. “. . . .Just the fact that we’re out here shows that we give a damn.”

And the fact that he was out there also shows Carr doesn’t have a real job. The clunky chant Carr tried to get going:

“Black, Latino, Asian, Arab and white, by any means necessary we will fight!”

explains why Xavier is out trying to bogart any cause he can find rather than sinking any more effort into his hip-hop career. See from the photo how the crowd doesn’t seem to give much of a bamn about this rank opportunist.


The Communists were excited, too, sending two reporters to cover what they called “a spontaneous outpouring of anger against the Israeli onslaught” for the World Socialists, and pass out some tracts Washington bears guilt for Gaza war crimes amongst the “workers” while they were at it. Those Socialists, they just love the workers:

The crowd included many young workers, as well as college and high school students. In addition there were workers of all ages and families with small children. (“Protest in Dearborn, Michigan denounces Israeli attack on Gaza”).

I’m thinking there were a lot of nonworkers there, too. The Reds were thrilled to meet “Abe,” a UM-Dearborn student, who denounced the Arab governments as “puppets.” “He expressed interest in Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, which explains that even the most basic democratic demands of the masses cannot be carried forward by bourgeois or nationalist movements.” Abe has a real future in the Ivy League somewhere.

Siblani’s newspaper is announcing another go-around on Friday at 5 pm outside City Hall, if you’re inclined to see for yourself.