Anti-Arab Violence Represents 17% of Racial, Religious Attacks in 1985

In an apparent backlash against international Arab terrorist attacks, incidents of violence and vandalism against members of the Muslim faith have become Los Angeles County’s most serious new trend in racial or religious turmoil, the county’s Human Relations Commission said Friday.

In its annual report on such attacks, the commission said that of 71 religiously motivated incidents in the county in 1985, 12, or 16.9%, were directed against Islamic mosques, centers or individuals of the Islamic faith.

Commission officials said the new report marks the first time that any anti-Islamic incidents have been noted during the six years the commission has charted racial friction for the county Board of Supervisors. In the previous five years, all 212 religiously motivated acts recorded by the commission were directed against Jews.

The report said the anti-Islamic incidents seemed “to have been provoked by a number of events in the Middle East,” including the June hijacking of a TWA plane, the October hijacking of the Italian liner Achille Lauro and the December attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports. In each case, Americans were killed.

Mirrors National Trend

Stephen Menick, an official of the Washington-based Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the Los Angeles findings mirror a national trend.

“We saw a sudden upsurge after the TWA hijacking,” said Menick, referring to the June 14 incident in which two Lebanese Shiite gunmen hijacked a jet carrying 153 passengers and crew, including 104 Americans. The terrorists killed one American and held a number of passengers hostage for 17 days.

The most dramatic incident of anti-Arab violence of 1985 occurred in Orange County last October when a bomb exploded in the Santa Ana office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, killing its regional director, Alex M. Odeh. The blast came within hours after Odeh, a Palestinian-born naturalized U.S. citizen, had appeared on two television news broadcasts to defend the Palestine Liberation Organization, saying that the PLO had no role in the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. (Although the FBI has said it suspects the Jewish Defense League in the bombing, no arrests have been made.)

The commission’s report said many anti-Arab attacks seem based on crude ethnic stereotypes.

“Many people are unaware that large numbers of local Islamic worshipers are not Palestinians or Arabs, but rather represent the racial and ethnic diversity that exemplifies this county,” said the report, prepared by staff member Bunny Hatcher.

‘It’s Dehumanizing’

“Every time they say ‘Arab,’ they’re lumping a whole group together, and it’s having an adverse effect,” said Richard Haboush of Studio City, a member of the board of directors of the Los Angeles chapter of the Arab-American anti-discrimination group. “People feel the Arabs are the dirtiest things that ever existed in this country. It’s dehumanizing to us as an ethnic group.”

The commission recorded attacks against Arabs that ranged from anti-Muslim and anti-Arab graffiti spray-painted on mosques and businesses, to arson at a South Pasadena school owned by an Islamic center, to bomb incidents that occurred within four days of each other last November. In one, a fake explosive was placed on the steps of a Muslim family’s home in Venice. In the other, a bomb was placed at a Los Angeles mosque. It was found by early morning worshipers.

Not counted by the commission were two consecutive nights of violence that occurred in late January at a mosque and Islamic center in downtown Los Angeles and another Islamic center in the South Bay. Officials of the centers said they believed that the rock throwing, which smashed windows and a door, was coordinated.

There were 59 reported instances of anti-Semitic vandalism or violence last year, a 15.7% decrease from 1984 and the lowest recorded since 1980.

The decrease roughly followed a national decrease of 11% in anti-Semitic acts during 1985, according to a study by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. That study said such acts in California fell 14.1% last year.

Cross Burning

Besides a number of homes and businesses spray-painted with swastikas, victims of anti-Semitic attacks in Los Angeles County included a North Hollywood man who was pelted with food and epithets while coming home from synagogue on a Jewish holiday, and a young boy wearing a yarmulke who was pushed and shoved by a woman shouting anti-Semitic remarks in Los Angeles.

The increase in anti-Arab attacks and the fall of anti-Semitic ones canceled each other out. There were a total of 84 recorded attacks last year--13 racial and 71 religious ones--almost the same as the 1984 total of 13 racial and 70 religious incidents. The worst year recorded by the commission was 1982, when there were 101 religious incidents and 15 racial ones.

The commission’s report said that “the level of viciousness” of racially motivated attacks “appears to have escalated somewhat above prior years’ graffiti and hate literature campaigns.”

Examples included the burning of a cross on the lawn of a black family in Lakewood and the stabbing of an Asian student by a Latino student at an Alhambra school plagued by racial tension. Racist graffiti sprayed on public buildings or parks was not counted in the incident list.

The report emphasized, as it has in previous years, the commission’s belief that there were far more racially motivated incidents than reported.