Newspaper Page Text
Still no clues in attack
on synagogue sexton
MILWAUKEE(JTA)—Police here
have not yet caught any of the
three men who beat and burned
Sexton Buzz Cody of Reform
Congregation Emanu-El B’ne
Jeshurun when he refused to give
them access to the synagogue’s
Torah scrolls. Cody was hospitalized
and released six days after the
attack. The investigation, by a pair
of detectives on each of the force’s
three shifts, has produced no leads
so far.
The incident, on Dec. 7, however,
generated a storm of protest when
Police Lt. William Vogl, who was
not assigned to the case, told the
Milwaukee Journal that he doubted
Cody’s story. After the congregation’s
Rabbi Francis Barry Silberg protested
this statement, the police department
repudiated it, and Police Chief
Robert Ziarnik assured the Mil
waukee Jewish Council that the
case was being investigated.
According to a report in the
Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle by its
editor, Andy Muchin, 35-year-old
Cody, who converted to Judaism
12 years ago, was accosted shortly
after 8 a.m. on Saturday morning,
Dec. 7, in the synagogue’s sanctuary,
by three men. They demanded access
to the Torah scrolls, four of which
are stored in the ark behind locked
brass doors.
When Cody, who had a key to
the ark, refused to open it, the men
beat him, then dragged him up the
stairs to the second floor, which
serves as a storeroom, and choir
and organ loft. There, holding a
knife to his throat, they cut his
hand and leg, tore off his shirt and
poured a caustic liquid drain cleaner
on his barechcst, Muchin reported.
Cody kicked one of the men.
They fled, taking the $100 they had
robbed him of. Cody crawled to
the elevator and made it to the
lobby, where the janitor found
him. He was taken to the hospital
with second-degree burns.
The synagogue’s security system
of exterior and interior alarms was
turned off at 7:45 a.m. on Dec. 7 by
the janitor, who entered through
the door facing the congregation’s
parking lot. Cody arrived at about
8 a.m.
The attackers apparently entered
just before Cody, according to
Milwaukee Detective Dorsey Tisdale.
Tisdale thought such an attack was
a strange occurrence for broad
daylight, but he acknowledged that
the attackers might have known
that the alarm would be turned off.
The police, who came to the
synagogue when Silberg called them,
found a can of lye crystals, a carving
knife, two yellow rubber gloves
and a bottle of liquid drain cleaner
on the second floor, apparently left
behind by the attackers. Cody said
the attackers had “Middle Eastern
accents” and spoke in Arabic. Cody
later told police that the men
mentioned the initials “PDL." These
initials, said Randy Kahn, Wisconsin
coordinator for B’nai B’rith’s Anti-
Defamation League, could stand
for Palestinian Defense League.
The Chronicle, wrote Muchin,
received a telephone call the day
before the attack from an unidentified
man who, said secretary Pam Burns,
had said, . .Defense League is
at war with the Jewish community.”
A similar declaration by the
Palestinian Defense League was
received in a letter to a Colorado
Springs newspaper in March 1983,
according to Kahn.
The attack on Cody followed the
unsolved July spray-painting of
swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti
on the exterior of the Je'wish Com
munity Center and the adjoining
Helfaer Community Services Building
and a restaurant, and a similar
incident a year-and-a-half ago in
volving a suburban synagogue.
Judy Mann, executive director
of the Milwaukee Jewish Council,
called the Cody attack “more than
alarming” but urged Jews, as she
had, as well, afterthe July incident,
to remain calm and keep it in
perspective. She said that Police
Chief Ziarnik had “reassured” her
about the investigation of the Cody
attack.
Ziarnik subsequently told the
Jewish Chronicle that he did not
“know what was at the bottom of
this. . . . We’re going to work at it.
Somebody was seriously hurt.”
County Deputy District Attorney
General Thomas Schneider told
the Chronicle that the police depart-
e Southern
Israelite
The Weekly Newspaper For Southern Jewry
'Since 1925'
Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, December 20, 1985 No. 51
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Pressure builds in U.S
to move against Arafat
by Joseph Polakoff
TSTs Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON—The U.S.
Department of Justice, encouraged
by political allies of President Reagan,
including Colorado Republican Sen.
William Armstrong and the National
Jewish Coalition iri the Republican
Party, is examining two packets of
privately collected information and
legal opinion that could result in
proceedings vastly reducing Yasir
Arafat’s influence in countries
friendly to the United States.
Central to the examination by
lawyers on Attorney General Edwin
Meese’s staff is whether the United
States government under federal
anti-terrorism laws can issue a
warrant for the arrest of Arafat for
alleged complicity in the cold-blooded
tnet~nromcie that tne police depart- alleged complicity in the cold-blooded formal federal exposure of Arafat’s
ment has assureohim It believed murders 12 years ago in Khartoum alleged role in the killings.
Cody’s complaint to be valid, but
that he would “monitor” their
investigation to make sure it was
“thorough.”
Schneider added that detective
Vogl had no authority to comment on
the case, as he had not been assigned
to it. Vogl had said he doubted
Cody’s story of the attack on him
because “when you’re talking about
something involving a radical group,
they don’t operate in this manner.”
of two high-ranking American envoys
and a Belgian ambassador by the
Black September gang, a Palestine
Liberation Organization segment
under Arafat’s control.
Basic to the case in general is
whether elements in the Reagan
administration, who long have
shielded Arafat from political
extinction and want him brought
into the “peace process” along with
Jordan’s King Hussein and Egypt’s
Yasir Arafat
President Hosni Mubarak to deal
with Israel about the West Bank
and Gaza, can nullify or mitigate
federal t
eged role in the Killings.
Contrary to an official denial
two weeks ago by the Department
of Justice’s Criminal Division that
such an effort existed, Meese’s
spokesman, Terry Eastland, has
confirmed that the Department has
received “new allegations” about
Arafat’s personal role and that the
matter “is under review.”
In a letter Dec. 11, Armstrong
urged Meese “to determine whether
criminal charges can be brought
^ I n ninnin.i.iMr-fi-iiini- -nr Mil' 'WSIraW
TORAH DAY SCHOOL
OF ATLANTA
Atlanta’s latest addition
Sunday was a happy day at Torah Day School. See story, page 6.
against Mr Arafat.” He referred to
President Reagan’s statement July
8 to the American Bar Association:
“We must act against the criminal
menace of terrorism with the full
weight of the law, both domestic
and international. We will act to
indict, apprehend and prosecute
those who commit the kind of
atrocities the world has witnessed
in recent weeks.”
Noting news reports of “existing
evidence linking Arafat personally
to a specific crime,” the Khartoum
murders of March 1973 of U.S.
Ambassador Cleo Noel; the deputy
chief of the U.S. Embassy, George
Curtis Moore, and Belgian Ambas
sador Guy Eid, Armstrong wrote
Meese: If the allegations contained
in news reports “can be substantiated
by the Justice Department, then
certainly the policy outlined by the
president should be applied in this
instance.”
Richard Fox of Philadelphia,
chairman of the National Jewish
Coalition, urged the Justice Depart
ment “to act promptly” on the
Arafat case. Noting reports that a
tape recording exists of Arafat
directing Black September terrorists
to execute the three diplomats,
Fox said: “If the tape’s existence is
confirmed and if it does, in fact,
link Arafat to the crimes in question,
1 strongly encourage the admini
stration with all due speed to issue
an indictment against him.”
In conversations with The Southern
Israelite including Charles Lichen-
stein, former deputy chief of the U.S.
mission to the United Nations and
now with the Heritage Foundation,
the leading conservative research
and public policy organization here;
retired Army Lt. Gen. Vernon
Walters, the present U.S. represen
tative to the U.N., who was the
CIA’s deputy chief at the time of
the K hartoum murders; a top-ranking
foreign service officer with ambassa
dorial expertise on the Near East,
who spoke on background, and
others in the State and Justice
Departments, the following outline
of the situation has emerged:
Among Lichenstein’s duties while
with the U.S. mission was supervision
of its decisions of which foreign
nationals should be invited and
who should not be invited to the
U N. Following the rejection by
consensus by the U.N. General
Assembly in October of a proposal
to invite Arafat after Reagan warned
he would not go the U.N. if Arafat
See Arafat, page 5.