Anti-Semitic Violence Escalates, Report Shows : Racism: The number of S.D. incidents leveled off in ‘89, but, as nationwide, they were of a much more dangerous nature than before.

San Diego County experienced no appreciable increase in anti-Semitic crimes in 1989, but their “virulence and threatening nature was much worse” than in the previous year, the local head of the Anti-Defamation League said Thursday.

Morris Casuto, director of the league’s San Diego office, said the county showed a 300% increase in such crimes in 1988, many of which were desecrations of synagogues, homes and offices.

Casuto pointed to three ‘889 firebombings, two of which targeted the San Diego Jewish Times in El Cajon.

He said the “far more serious nature” of the crimes mirrored a nationwide trend, outlined in a league report released Thursday. In San Diego and throughout the nation, such crimes “represented a quantum leap in danger from someone daubing or spray-painting swastikas on a synagogue,” Casuto said.

He said the county’s worst anti-Semitic incident in 1988 was the desecration of the Tifereth Israel Synagogue in San Carlos, where teen-agers scrawled swastikas and pro-Nazi slogans on the outside walls and entrance of the building. The incident occurred near the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, which some point to as the beginning of the Holocaust, just before the start of World War II in Europe.

“But in ‘89,” Casuto said, “one of the three firebombs was found at a Jewish school. It appears to have been dropped there rather than thrown there, but it was a school, attended by children. We also experienced in ‘89, threatening letters and phone calls to Jewish leaders and even some citizens, who may have been called because they have Jewish-sounding names.”

Casuto said “there’s no question” that anti-Semitic incidents are increasingly a problem, and he pointed to the rise of skinheads and other neo-Nazi groups as the main reason.

“The skinheads’ sense of organization resembles chaos; nevertheless, they are extremely dangerous,” he said. “They are front-line warriors in the racist movement.”

Casuto said that, since 1979, the league has conducted a nationwide audit of anti-Semitic incidents, “and by now, our methods are fairly refined.”

He said the total of anti-Semitic crimes in the United States rose to an all-time high of 1,432 in 1989. Of those, 845 (five in San Diego) were considered incidents of anti-Jewish vandalism and desecration. The other 587 (29 in San Diego) were episodes of harassment, assaults or threats against Jews or Jewish institutions.

“By no means should anyone construe that San Diego is a hotbed of anti-Semitic violence or anti-Semitic activity, although there is anti-Semitism, to a serious degree, in some segments of San Diego society,” Casuto said.

“The law enforcement agencies have made it clear, however, that they’re fed up with anti-Semitic crimes. We feel well supported by both the San Diego Police Department and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department,” he said.

Casuto said some areas saw a sharp rise in such crimes in ‘89, including Orange County, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

“There’s almost no community where you’ll see a decrease in these incidents,” he said.

In efforts to combat the problem, Casuto said, a federal grand jury in Dallas indicted 16 members of the Confederate Hammerskins on civil rights charges, a tactic he said may be employed elsewhere.

He also said the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center are acting as co-plaintiffs in a civil suit brought by the family of an Ethiopian man who was beaten to death on Nov. 13, 1988, in Portland, Ore.

Named as co-defendants in the federal suit are Tom Metzger, founder of the White Aryan Resistance, a white supremacist group, and his son, John, who, from their Fallbrook base, have been linked to recruiting and indoctrinating skinheads. Damages are being sought from the Metzgers, whom the plaintiffs accuse of working “to incite three Portland skinheads, who beat Mulugeta Seraw to death,” according to the suit.

A spokesman for the Oregon chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that the Metzgers had approached them, asking for legal representation. But he added that it was “unlikely” that an ACLU lawyer “would ever defend Tom Metzger.”