Jewish organizations slam US Coast Guard for quietly easing rules against swastikas |
JTA — After the Washington Post reported last month that the US Coast Guard was reclassifying swastikas and nooses to no longer be considered hate symbols, Jewish leaders voiced their objections.
The Coast Guard’s acting commandant, claiming the report was inaccurate, sought to assure them. There would be no change to its categorization of the symbols, Admiral Kevin Lunday told Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner in emails with the head of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center. Lunday also issued a memo giving an explicit directive not to change them.
For a time, he seemed to put fears at ease. But this week, another Post report revealed that the Coast Guard had, indeed, quietly gone through with the change. The Nazi insignia and the noose, a symbol closely associated with lynchings, were now labeled as “potentially divisive,” downgraded from hate symbols. The policy had been codified in the Coast Guard’s updated workplace harassment manual on Monday.
Now, Jewish groups are sounding off again — and they’re furious.
“I am outraged and baffled as to how the policy change has, in fact, occurred on your watch,” Pesner wrote in an open letter to Lunday viewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The rabbi said the admiral had assured him, “The swastika has always been and remains a prohibited symbol of hate in the Coast Guard.” Now, Pesner said, he was doubting the sincerity of the exchange.
“Was your initial reply an outright falsehood?” Pesner asked. “In the last month, has USGC suddenly discovered an affinity for symbols under which millions were murdered, enslaved, oppressed, or otherwise dehumanized? Is there another justification for this newly adopted policy?”
He........