Jared Lee Loughner is crazy. That, more than any other single fact, is to blame for why he walked up to a gathering outside a Tucson Safeway last Saturday and tried to kill Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, murdering six other people in the rampage.
The Anti-Defamation League said it is \”critical\” to determine whether the man alleged to have shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was influenced by hate speech.
Following the shooting Saturday that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and left six dead, the Tucson Jewish community has come together to pray for Giffords and the other victims and offer their support. Giffords, who is Jewish, was among 14 wounded in the shooting rampage in front of a Tucson supermarket Saturday morning. Jared Lee Loughner was arrested for perpetrated the shooting and appeared in a Phoenix courtroom Monday. Among those killed were U.S. District Judge John M. Roll, 63; Christina-Taylor Green, 9; Giffords constituent services director Gabriel Zimmerman, 30; and Phyllis Schenk, 79; Dorothy Morris, 76; and Dorwan Stoddard, 76. Zimmerman, a native Tucsonan, was widely reported as being Jewish, although he was not.\n
An analysis of Internet musings by Jared Lee Loughner dismisses speculation that he may have targeted U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords because she is Jewish. \”In the end, the writings so far revealed seem to indicate no particular leanings about race, and it is difficult to come away from the postings with such a conclusion,\” according to the analysis published Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL analysis also said that the writings do not \”point to a particular ideology or belief system.\” Loughner\’s \”semi-coherent\” writings \”are indicative of an individual who has been exposed to a number of different ideas, from across the political spectrum, and has sometimes appropriated external concepts — often seemingly divorced from their original context,\” the analysis said. Loughner, 22, waived bail Monday when he appeared in a federal courtroom to face two federal charges of murder and three charges of attempted murder. He is expected to face additional state murder charges.
My grandfather, Akiba Hornstein, was the son of a Lithuanian rabbi. My grandfather changed his name to Giff Giffords for reasons of anti-Semitism and moved to Southern Arizona from New York more than a half century ago. In the 1940s, he founded my family\’s tire and automotive business, El Campo Tire, which grew into a successful and thriving business for 50 years, which I ran for several years before serving in the Arizona Legislature.
President Obama spoke with the rabbi of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords during a series of calls to friends and families of victims of the weekend shooting in Tucson. A White House official said Rabbi Stephanie Aaron of Tucson\’s Congregation Chaverim was among the Tucson-area officials, victims and families Obama reached Monday in the wake of the Jan. 8 attack that left Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, critically injured and six dead.\n
In 2002, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Gabrielle Giffords, then a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, visited Israel on a trip organized by AJC\’s Project Interchange. She wrote this insightful, moving account, which AJC is honored to republish nine years later, upon her return to the United States. It is a land of contradiction, of complexity and simplicity. Its mountains and deserts were the backdrop for the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Koran. Now journalists stand before this same landscape and transmit battle reports to viewers of BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera. It is a land where Orthodox Jews wearing clothing that was fashionable 300 years ago pose for digital pictures taken by tourists wearing the most modern fashions. And it is a place that offers the most ancient historical accounts, along with the most modern of lessons.
An acquaintance of Jared Lee Loughner, the accused gunman in the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, says his mother is Jewish.
The 8th District in southern Arizona represented by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords comprises liberal Tucson and its rural hinterlands, which means moderation is a must. But it also means that spirits and tensions run high.
The event was typical Gabrielle Giffords: no barriers, all comers — Democrats, Republicans, independents welcome to talk about what was on their minds and in their hearts.
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