A 50-year-old truck driver with a history of spewing antisemitic hatred has been found guilty on all counts in the 2018 shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 worshipers and left seven people wounded. The verdict was expected, as Robert Bowers' attorneys admitted during trial that he was responsible for the massacre. (CBS News)
I am a native of Pittsburgh. I am Jewish. I knew, knew, very, very well, many of the victims of this HATE-inspired attack upon the Tree of Life Congregation. Although not a member of this “shul,” I have celebrated many a Bar and Bat Mitzvah, Wedding, Naming Ceremony, Shabbat, and High Holiday Services there. When I grew up in Pittsburgh, the Tree of Life Congregation was only a handful of blocks away from my house. I have stood on the corners of Wilkens Avenue and Shady Avenue, the location of the Tree of Life, watching neighborhood parades such as Memorial Day and Labor Day, waving my American Flag, proud to be an American, proud to be a Jewish American, proud to assume I was a free man in a free nation!
I am now at least five decades older than when I once claimed the Squirrel Hill Neighborhood as my home, and to this minute, in my heart and soul, I remain a Pittsburgher. I did not lose a family member to the madness of this Anti-Semitic attack, but I lost friends, I lost members of MY community, members of the community within the United States to this murder, inspired, I believe by the followers of Trump, Trump himself, who can only find their courage by denigrating others and finding others as a scapegoat.
Innocence has been the victim. Freedom has been a target. Equality has been seen as a threat. When will enough, finally be enough? I am grateful for this verdict, but when I consider the war waged by the MAGA cultist of Trump, and enabled by a majority of Republicans, I must wonder if justice will truly be served!
