;1990s:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg objected to the United States Supreme Court bar inscribing its certificates "in the year of our Lord", at the request of some Orthodox Jews who opposed it, and due to her objection, Supreme Court bar members have since been given other choices of how to inscribe the year on their certificates. ;1990:
Lake Forest, Illinois kept anti-Jewish and anti-African-American housing covenants until 1990. ;1990: On five occasions in six weeks vandals used slingshots to shoot out windows at the synagogue
Bet Shira Congregation. Three teenagers, two of them students at Palmetto High School, were arrested for shooting out the windows. ;1990: For his portrayal of Jewish nightclub owners Moe and Josh Flatbush in the 1990 film ''
Mo' Better Blues'',
Spike Lee drew the ire of the
Anti Defamation League,
B'nai B'rith, and other such Jewish organizations. The Anti-Defamation League claimed that the characterizations of the nightclub owners "dredge up an age-old and highly dangerous form of
anti-Semitic stereotyping", and stated it was "...disappointed that Spike Lee – whose success is largely due to his efforts to break down racial stereotypes and prejudice – has employed the same kind of tactics that he supposedly deplores." Lee eventually responded in an editorial in
The New York Times, alleging "a double standard at work in the accusations of anti-Semitism" given the long history of negative portrayals of African-Americans in film: "Not every black person is a pimp, murderer, prostitute, convict, rapist or drug addict, but that hasn't stopped Hollywood from writing these roles for African-Americans". Lee argues that even if the Flatbush brothers are stereotyped figures, their "10 minutes of screen time" is insignificant when compared to "100 years of Hollywood cinema... [and] a slew of really racist, anti-Semitic filmmakers". According to Lee, his status as a successful African-American artist has led to hostility and unfair treatment: "Don't hold me to a higher moral standard than the rest of my filmmaking colleagues... Now that young black filmmakers have arisen in the film industry, all of a sudden stereotypes are a big issue... I think it's reaching the point where ''I'm'' getting reviewed, not my films." Ultimately, however, Lee refused to apologize for his portrayal of the Flatbush brothers: "I stand behind all my work, including my characters, Moe and Josh Flatbush... if critics are telling me that to avoid charges of anti-Semitism, all Jewish characters I write have to be model citizens, and not one can be a villain, cheat or a crook, and that no Jewish people have ever exploited black artists in the history of the entertainment industry, that's unrealistic and unfair." ;1990: In France, the
Gayssot Act, voted for on 13 July 1990, makes it illegal to question the existence of crimes that fall in the category of
crimes against humanity as defined in the
London Charter of 1945, on the basis of which
Nazi leaders were convicted by the
International Military Tribunal at
Nuremberg in 1945–46. When the act was challenged by
Robert Faurisson, the
Human Rights Committee upheld it as a necessary means to counter possible
antisemitism. ;1990: In a 1990 column defending
John Demjanjuk,
Pat Buchanan said: : When asked for his source, Buchanan said, "somebody sent it to me." Critic Jamie McCarthy says this claim may have come from the German American Information and Education Association's newsletter, a publication he accused of antisemitism and
Holocaust denial. He also argues that: : The
Washington Post had reported in 1989, before the controversy, that: ;1990: French literature professor
Robert Faurisson was convicted and punished for Holocaust denial under the Gayssot Act in 1990. ;1991:
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, published in 1991, is a book that asserts that Jews dominated the
Atlantic slave trade. The book has been labeled an
Antisemitic canard by historians including
Saul S. Friedman, who writes that Jews had a minimal role in New World slave trade.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., head of the department of Afro-American studies at Harvard University, called the book "the Bible of new anti-Semitism" and added that "the book massively misinterprets the historical record, largely through a process of cunningly selective quotations of often reputable sources". : The book was criticized for being antisemitic, and for failing to provide an objective analysis of the role of Jews in the slave trade. Common criticisms were that the book used selective quotes, made "crude use of statistics," and was purposefully trying to exaggerate the role of Jews. : Historian Ralph A. Austen criticized the book, saying that the "distortions are produced almost entirely by selective citation rather than explicit falsehood.... more frequently there are innuendos imbedded in the accounts of Jewish involvement in the slave trade," and "[w]hile we should not ignore the anti-Semitism of The Secret Relationship..., we must recognize the legitimacy of the stated aim of examining fully and directly even the most uncomfortable elements in our [Black and Jewish] common past." Austen acknowledges that the book was the first book on the subject aimed at a non-scholarly audience. : In 1995, the
American Historical Association (AHA) issued a statement condemning "any statement alleging that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic slave trade." : The publication of
The Secret Relationship spurred retorts published specifically to refute the thesis of
The Secret Relationship: • 1992 – Harold Brackman, ''Jew on the Brain: A Public Refutation of the Nation of Islam's The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews''. • 1992 –
David Brion Davis, "Jews in the Slave Trade," in
Culturefront (Fall 1992) pp 42–45. • 1993 –
Seymour Drescher, "The Role of Jews in the Atlantic Slave Trade,"
Immigrants and Minorities, 12 (1993), pp 113–125. • 1993 – Marc Caplan, ''Jew-Hatred As History: An Analysis of the Nation of Islam's "The Secret Relationship"'' (Published by the
Anti Defamation League). • 1998 – Eli Faber,
Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight, New York University Press. • 1999 –
Saul S. Friedman,
Jews and the American Slave Trade, Transaction. : A post-1991 scholar who analyzed the role of Jews in the overall Atlantic slave trade concluded that it was "minimal," and only identified certain regions (such as Brazil and the Caribbean) where the participation was "significant." : Wim Klooster wrote: "In no period did Jews play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the Transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades. They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean. Even when Jews in a handful of places owned slaves in proportions slightly above their representation among a town's families, such cases do not come close to corroborating the assertions of The Secret Relationship." : The
Anti-Defamation League states that Volume Two of
The Secret Relationship blames Jews for "promoting a myth of black racial inferiority and makes a range of conspiratorial accusations about Jewish involvement in the slave trade and in the cotton, textiles, and banking industries". ;1991: The
Crown Heights riot was a three-day anti Jewish pogrom that occurred from 19–21 August 1991 in the
Crown Heights section of
Brooklyn, New York City, in which Black residents attacked and killed
Orthodox Jewish residents. The riots began on 19 August 1991, after two children of
Guyanese immigrants were unintentionally struck by an automobile in the motorcade of
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the
leader of a Jewish religious sect. One child died and the second was severely injured. This event pushed a group of black men to go into Crown Heights and kill a Jewish man. : In its wake, several Jews were seriously injured; one Orthodox Jewish man was killed; and a non-Jewish man, apparently mistaken by rioters for a Jew, was killed by a group of black men. The riots were a major issue in the 1993 mayoral race, contributing to the defeat of Mayor
David Dinkins, an African American, who was blamed for an ineffective police response. ;1991: In December 1991 the
American Historical Association issued the following statement:
The American Historical Association Council strongly deplores the publicly reported attempts to deny the fact of the Holocaust. No serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place. This followed a strong reaction by many of its members and commentary in the press against a near-unanimous decision that the AHA had made in May 1991 that studying the
significance of the Holocaust should be encouraged. The association's May 1991 statement was in response to an incident where certain of its members had questioned the reality of the Holocaust. The December 1991 declaration is a reversal of the AHA's earlier stance that the association should not set a precedent by certifying historical facts. ;1992 March 1: A bomb attack was carried out by two men at
Neve Shalom Synagogue in
Istanbul,
Turkey causing no damage or casualties. ;1994 February 25: Second
Hebron massacre.
Baruch Goldstein, a Jew, kills several Muslim worshippers; this leads to riots that kill both Muslims and Jews. ;1994: On 1 March 1994, on the
Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, Lebanese-born immigrant Rashid Baz shot at a van of 15
Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish students that was traveling on the Brooklyn Bridge, killing one and injuring three others. See
1994 Brooklyn Bridge shooting. ;1994, 20 March: Chris Lord, an individual associated with the
Volksfront and
American Front, fired ten rounds with an assault rifle into
Temple Beth Israel (Eugene, Oregon), damaging the interior. ;1994:
AMIA bombing against the Jewish community of Buenos Aires. ;1995: In February 1995 a Japanese magazine named
Marco Polo, a 250,000-circulation monthly published by
Bungei Shunju, ran a Holocaust denial article by physician Masanori Nishioka which stated: : The Los Angeles-based
Simon Wiesenthal Center instigated a
boycott of Bungei Shunju advertisers, including
Volkswagen,
Mitsubishi, and
Cartier. Within days, Bungei Shunju shut down
Marco Polo and its editor, Kazuyoshi Hanada, quit, as did the president of Bungei Shunju, Kengo Tanaka. ;1995: In Belgium, Holocaust denial was made illegal in 1995. ;1996: In Turkey, in 1996, the Islamic preacher
Harun Yahya distributed thousands of copies of a book which was originally published the previous year, entitled
Soykırım Yalanı ("The Holocaust Lie") and mailed unsolicited texts to American and European schools and colleges. The publication of
Soykırım Yalanı sparked much public debate. This book claims, "what is presented as Holocaust is the death of some Jews due to the typhus plague during the war and the famine towards the end of the war caused by the defeat of the Germans." In March 1996, a Turkish painter and intellectual,
Bedri Baykam, published a strongly worded critique of the book in the Ankara daily newspaper
Siyah-Beyaz ("Black and White"). A legal suit for slander was brought against him. During the trial in September, Baykam exposed the real author of the book as
Adnan Oktar. ;1996: The depiction of Jews in some of
T.S. Eliot's poems has led several critics to accuse him of antisemitism. This case has been presented most forcefully in a study by
Anthony Julius:
T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form (1996). In "
Gerontion", Eliot writes, in the voice of the poem's elderly narrator, "And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner [of my building] / Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp." Another well-known example appears in the poem, "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar". In this poem, Eliot wrote, "The rats are underneath the piles. / The jew is underneath the lot. / Money in furs." Interpreting the line as an indirect comparison of Jews to rats, Julius writes, "The anti-Semitism is unmistakable. It reaches out like a clear signal to the reader." Julius's viewpoint has been supported by literary critics such as
Harold Bloom, Le Pen retorted ironically: "I understand now that it's the Second World War which is a detail of the history of the gas chambers." ;1997:
Jean-Marie Le Pen accused
Jacques Chirac of being "on the payroll of Jewish organizations, and particularly of the
B'nai B'rith." ;1997: In
Luxembourg, Article 457–3 of the Criminal Code, Act of 19 July 1997 outlaws Holocaust denial and denial of other genocides. The punishment is imprisonment for between 8 days and 6 months and/or a fine. He stated that Jews and Muslims could never get along and that war was "inevitable" between them, and further accused the U.S. of stirring up anti-Islamic sentiment. ;1999: Holocaust Remembrance Day has been commemorated as a national remembrance day in Sweden every year since 1999. ;1999:
Intelligence Ministry of Iran arrested 13 Iranian Jews, accusing them of spying for Israel. Arrestees were five merchants, a rabbi, two university professors, three teachers in private Hebrew schools, a kosher butcher and a 16-year-old boy. Ten of them were sentenced to 4–13 years in prison. As a result of the pressure campaigns and secret negotiations, the prisoners were gradually freed in small groups. All of them
emigrated to Israel with their families. ;1999:
Abraham Foxman of the
Anti-Defamation League, in an 11 October 1999, letter to
The Washington Post claimed that
A Republic, Not an Empire by
Pat Buchanan "defends
Charles Lindbergh against charges of anti-Semitism, not mentioning the infamous 1940 [sic] speech in which he accused the Jews of warmongering."
Pat Buchanan denies this and points out Foxman's error, saying that he mentioned the 1941 speech to say it "ignited a national firestorm," which lingered after the aviator's death, and shows "the explosiveness of mixing ethnic politics and foreign policy." ;1999:
Richard Baumhammers was arrested in Paris, France for striking a 50-year-old female bartender named Vivianne Le Garrac because he "believed she was Jewish". Baumhammers then told both Le Garrac and the arresting officers that he was "mentally ill." The police took Baumhammers to the psychiatric ward of the
Hôtel-Dieu de Paris for evaluation, then detained him at a police station. By week's end, he left on a flight for Spain. ;1999: There were
arson attacks in Sacramento, California –
Congregation B'nai Israel, Congregation Beth Shalom, and Knesset Israel Torah Center. The fires caused over $1 million in damage. On 17 March 2000, brothers Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams were charged with setting the three synagogue fires and a 2 July fire at the Country Club Medical center, which housed an abortion clinic. The charges carried up to 235 years in prison. Matthew Williams later admitted to reporters that he was one of eight or nine men who set fire to the synagogues and the clinic; he also claimed that his brother Tyler had not been involved. ;1999 August 10:
Buford O. Furrow, Jr. kills mail carrier
Joseph Santos Ileto and shoots five people in the
August 1999 Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting. == See also ==