OCTOBER 24 • 2024 | 19
ran nearly three hours. The public
meeting can be viewed in its entire-
ty on YouTube: www.youtube.com/
watch?v=z8TkPI6uQu8.
David Kurzmann, senior director
of community affairs at the Jewish
Federation of Detroit,
was the first to speak.
He expressed his
gratitude to the fine
working relationship the
Federation, located in
Bloomfield Township, has
always had with the board.
“[Fakih’s social media
remarks] are a blatant and harmful
attack on our Jewish community,
”
he said. “Labeling us as ‘scum’ is not
merely offensive, they are deeply
hurtful and contribute to a climate of
hatred and dehumanizing intolerance
that has no place in our society.
Zionism is the belief in a Jewish
ancestral homeland. It’s a central tenet
of Jewish identity and history. The
vast majority of Jews are Zionists. Our
liturgy is full of references to the Land
of Israel and Jerusalem.
”
Addressing the board, Kurzmann
continued: “Our elected officials
understand the responsibility you take
on in your role. You have been elected
to serve all the people of this township
and have the duty to denounce hate
speech and promote a culture of
respect and understanding.
”
Rabbi Mark Miller of Temple
Beth El in Bloomfield
Township was the next
to speak, expressing the
hurt that Fakih caused
by calling him and his
family “scum of the earth”
and criticized using a
definition of Zionism
pulled from an English dictionary.
“When you call a person ‘scum,
’ it
is either out of hatred or ignorance,
”
Miller said. “I would like to think you
said it out of ignorance. You can’t get a
definition of Zionism from Merriam-
Webster, which is good for verbs and
nouns, but it doesn’t do Zionism.
”
Miller said that the word and
the historic, spiritual and religious
meanings of it, have been around
long before the publication of the first
Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
“My son is named Ben Tziyon, the
son of Zion,
” Miller said. “
All of that
predates the modern idea of Zionism.
And when you label me personally as
‘scum,
’ you say that I am ‘scum,
’ what it
means is that if you aren’t antisemitic,
you have committed an antisemitic
act. And I hope you can understand
the difference.
“
And my hope, honestly, my deep
hope, is that you will understand the
anger in this room and the anger
that’s coming from a lot of different
quarters, which isn’t because people
hate you; it’s because what you said
was hateful, and my hope is that
one day we can find a way to work
together to make that better.
”
In his remarks at the meeting,
Rabbi Tzvi Muller of the Birmingham
Bloomfield Shul warned Fakih about
how antisemitism is now masked as
anti-Zionism and that the roots of this
type of hatred can be traced back to
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The
propaganda from this forgery, Muller
said, was embraced by the Nazis to
perpetuate the Holocaust.
“The words posted by you,
Stephanie, a township trustee, convey
the message that in Bloomfield
Township, it is open season for Jew-
hatred,
” Muller said.
“Those words uniquely contribute
to an environment in which those
who wish to harm my community
feel emboldened. For them, it doesn’t
matter whether they know my views
on Zionism. Wearing my kippah is all
they need to see to call me a Zionist
baby-killer on the street.
“I came here asking Stephanie
to retract and apologize. But
unfortunately tonight, all I have heard
from you was a lot of gaslighting,
aggression and playing the victim.
”
David
Kurzmann
Rabbi Mark
Miller
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