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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: joseph krinsky who wrote (240335)	3/20/2002 6:40:33 PM
From: joseph krinsky	Respond to of 769670

Israeli flag defacing at U. Colorado not hate crime, police say By Jessika Fruchter Colorado Daily (U. Colorado) 03/19/2002 Respond to this article. (U-WIRE) BOULDER, Colo. -- Just days after members of the campus Jewish group found their Israeli flag defaced with anti-Israeli/pro-Palestinian messages, University of Colorado police said the act does not constitute a hate crime. Lt. Tim McGraw, spokesman for CU police, said Monday the vandalism would not be treated as a hate crime because of its political nature. "A hate crime is simply aggravating someone by virtue of their race, gender, age, sexual orientation," McGraw said. "This case was just a political statement. There wasn't any threat." McGraw pointed to last semester's vandalism and threatening phone calls targeted at the Muslim Student Association that were treated as hate crimes and said those incidents were religiously motivated. In recent months the campus Jewish organization, Hillel, also received a threatening phone call and other forms of vandalism, including a rock thrown through its off-campus office window. McGraw said those incidents would not be overlooked in this investigation. "Of course we take recent events into consideration," he said. "But we have to look at the specific actions in this case. This appears to be political." The decision of officials not to categorize the recent act of vandalism as a hate crime has not changed the perception of those being targeted. Director of CU Hillel Devorah Friedman said the incident has left some members of the Jewish community ill at ease. "I'm not really concerned with how the police classify it," Friedman said. "I feel like this is an act of anti-Semitism. When you deal with Israel you cannot separate the politics from the religious issues." Friedman added the day following the initial act of vandalism, in which the Israeli flag hanging outside of the UMC Hillel office was defaced, two other small Israeli flags were torn down from outside the office. The vandalism has prompted talk of a university-wide response, CU spokeswoman Bobbi Barrow said. "There's been discussion among the faculty to start addressing the issues going on in the Middle East," Barrow said. "The president is also considering holding a dinner similar to the one that was held after Sept. 11 for Muslim students." Barrow, relaying the sentiments of CU President Elizabeth Hoffman, said racist behavior of any type would not be tolerated on campus, including messages on individual student Web sites or the Web sites of student organizations. Barrow said concern had been expressed about a link on the Student Muslim Association to a Hamas Web site. Hamas, a militant group with links to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, has been described a physical threat to Israel. "A Jewish citizen e-mailed us about it," Barrow said. She added university policy requires such links to show a disclaimer the Web site is not a CU Web site or endorsed by the university. "We let the kids know they needed to add the disclaimer," Barrow said. To date, McGraw said there has been little progress made in the investigation. He said typically, in cases like this one, it is unusual to track down the person responsible. "Frankly we don't have any leads," McGraw said. "In a case like this one, where you have thousands and thousands of people walking through the UMC every day, I'm not certain we're going to have the opportunity to identify who did it. That doesn't mean we won't continue to investigate to the best of our ability." Friedman said she wasn't surprised by McGraw's comments, noting such cases are notoriously difficult to solve. "I did not anticipate they'd find anything," she said. "I know that CU police are doing everything they can." Friedman added Hillel had sought help from Boulder, Colo., police as well because of the group's off-campus location. "Because of the heated climate, we just wanted to let them know what's going on," she said. uwiretoday.com