A group of African-American clergy and civil rights leaders gathered by Al Sharpton met with a New York rabbi in the wake of attacks on Jews in Monsey and Jersey City, as well as a spate of nearly daily assaults on Jews in Brooklyn. The African-American leaders met Monday with Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, to condemn the spate of attacks on Jews in New York in recent weeks. “I am terribly disturbed by the recent anti-Semitic attacks on Jews, and particularly because they were perpetrated by members of the African-American community,” Sharpton said at a news conference following the meeting. “Rabbi Schneier and I have worked together for many years to bring our respective communities closer together. Today, we must work together to start to repair the damage and terrible pain these acts have caused. “We in the African-American community know all too well how abhorrent hatred, based on physical appearance or religious observance, is. We cannot now be a part of something that members of our community are doing to other people.” Schneier said he discussed with the leaders “concrete ways the Jewish and African-American communities can come together to promote our common interests and stem the differences that lead to such violent acts of hatred.” He added that Sharpton’s leadership “will help us repair the damage these acts of domestic terrorism have caused our two communities.” Sharpton is founder of the National Action Network, with chapters throughout the United States. He has long been a controversial figure nationally for his history of racist and homophobic comments, along with his involvement in the Tawana Brawley case, in which he promoted a 15-year-old black girl's claims she had been assaulted and gang-raped by a group of white men - a claim which was later proven to be fabricated. The 65-year-old Baptist minister has also been much-criticized in the Jewish community for his long history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and incitement against Jews in New York. Critics have also cited Sharpton's incendiary rhetoric during the 1991 Crown Heights riots, during which an Australian-Jewish yeshiva student was murdered by black rioters. The rioters were sparked by the accidental killing of a black child in Brooklyn by a car driven by a member of the Lubavitcher rebbe’s entourage. Four years later, Sharpton was accused of inciting black radicals to target Freddy’s Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned clothing store in Harlem. In December 1995, Roland Smith opened fire inside Freddy’s Fashion Mart and set fire to the building, leaving eight dead and four injured. Earlier this year, Sharpton admitted to saying “cheap things”, alluding to his anti-Jewish rhetoric in the 1980s and 1990s, but stopped short of issuing an apology.
