Jewish Giffords' shooting suspect: 'No! I don't trust in God!'
(USA Today) -- by Kathy Lynn Grossman --
Were U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords and her aide, Gabe Zimmerman, targeted by suspected gunman Jared Loughner because they're Jewish?
Or was that incidental to a shooting spree that killed the young aide and five others and left the U.S. representative gravely wounded?
While Loughner's illogical comments on God, government, calendars and cash circulate on the Internet, Jewish media quickly spotted that Hitler's Mein Kampf is among the alleged gunman's favorite books -- an eclectic list that also included Aesop's Fables.
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has said, "Yes, I believe she was the target."Add that to Gifford's proud status as Arizona's first Jewish U.S. representative and rumors of anti-Semitic motives boil to the surface. In this photo taken Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio reenacts the swearing-in of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., on Capitol Hill in Washington,, whose hand is on a Jewish bible.. Giffords is in critical condition after being shot in the head in her district in Arizona Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011.
The shooting came just days after she began her third term. She was holding a copy of the Jewish Bible, the Five Books of Moses, for a ceremonial photo with Speaker of the House John Boehner.
YnetNews, the Internet arm of popular Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, reports,
Giffords is the granddaughter of Akiba Hornstein, the son of a Lithuanian rabbi who in the 1940s moved from New York to Tucson. He later changed his name to Giff Giffords in an effort to avoid anti-Semitism.
JTA, a Jewish news service, reports:
Giffords, 40, was raised "mixed" by a Christian Scientist mother and Jewish father, but said that after a visit to Israel in 2001, she had decided she was Jewish only. She attended services at a local Reform synagogue.She said at the time,
If you want something done, your best bet is to ask a Jewish woman to do it. Jewish women -- by our tradition and by the way we were raised -- have an ability to cut through all the reasons why something should, shouldn't or can't be done and pull people together to be successful."Yet. looking at Loughner's rants on YouTube and other writing such as his MySpace page, it's hard to find a coherent thought, much less to discern if the anti-Semitism her ancestor fled caught up to Giffords in front of a Tucson Safeway.
For all the instant analysis that this might be tied to political attacks on Giffords and others who supported President Obama on health care reform, there's not a whiff of politics in Loughner's language about coins and calendars and other ramblings. Yet he does exclaim in his YouTube video, "No! I won't trust in God!"...MORE...LINK
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