FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Anti-Semitic Flyers Left on Parked Cars

Shoppers at the Lucky supermarket on Brookhurst Street found anti-Semitic flyers stuck on their windshields Sunday night.

The flyers, white leaflets reading “Support Racism and Prejudice,” purport to seek donations for the American Jewish Committee chapter in La Jolla, but outraged officials there denied any connection.

“I’m just in shock reading this,” said Ann Gottschalk, administrative assistant for the group. “It’s just obscene. I have chills running through me. It’s completely unheard of.”

Deborah Horwitz, president of the AJC’s San Diego chapter, said the leaflet was similar in appearance to an advertisement placed by the group in the San Diego Jewish Press Heritage in June, 1990. The leaflet appeared to be a doctored version of the ad, which solicits membership in AJC.

The ad, headlined “Cut Out Racism and Prejudice,” says the group “for over 80 years . . . has fought racism, prejudice and mindless hatred at home and abroad throughout the world” and asks readers to join the AJC by submitting a fee.

The flyer distributed Sunday changed the headline and says, in a typeface different from that of the legitimate advertisement, that the AJC “has supported racism, prejudice and hatred at home and abroad throughout the world.” The rest of the leaflet is the same as the advertisement in both type style and content, including the phone number for the committee’s La Jolla office.

Rosanne Benter, a Huntington Beach woman who made a five-minute stop at Lucky about 9 p.m. Sunday, was incensed to find one of the flyers on her car.

Benter reported the incident to the Fountain Valley Police Department after attempting to track down the parties responsible for distributing the flyers.

After driving around the parking lot, Benter said, she spotted two women dressed in black, one with a bundle of flyers in her hand.

Benter said the women at first denied distributing the flyers but later told her they had been paid by the AJC to put them on cars.

Police Lt. Bob Moseley said a patrol officer found four women in their mid-20s, all dressed in black, putting the anti-Semitic flyers on cars.