Rusty Sneiderman, Debbie Schlussel, Facial Topography and Reality

If you type the name 'Rusty Sneiderman' into Google, the sixth hit down is a post on Debbie Schlussel's overwrought 'conservative' blog, from November of 2010. It was in that month that an Atlanta businessman, Rusty Sneiderman, was murdered in front of a daycare center by a gunman who, at that time, was unidentified.

A police sketch artist, with the help of witnesses, produced a sketch of the killer, which you can see to your left. Debbie Schlussel, inspired by one of her readers, immediately came up with a theory, based on this sketch. She decided that the killing might have been an act of terror--a jihadi assault on a Jew.

Schlussel is careful in her piece not to say flat-out that she's sure this is the answer, but she is clearly pretty enamored of the theory. What is it based on? Glad you asked. It has to do with 'facial topography'.

Schlussel writes: As reader Joe pointed out, the guy looks like a Muslim, mostly because of his beard and some of the facial features. And the man is described as a White man. Few non-Muslim White men wear the kind of beard in the sketch. And few non-Muslim White men have the kinds of facial topography illustrated in the photo.

I'm going to jump right to the obvious heart of this--'looking like a Muslim' means 'looking like an Arab', which in this case means 'big nose and full lips', just in case you were wondering about that. As for the beard, I must confess that it brings to my mind an Amish guy in a watchcap, although the odds that an Amish person was responsible for a murder in Atlanta seemed pretty long even at the time. But Schlussel explained that it was a special Muslim-style beard, and since I am not an expert on Muslim beards, perhaps she is correct. Anyway, what other proof had Schlussel got? Let's move on.

Sneiderman, a Harvard Business School grad active in several charities, was active in the Atlanta Jewish community and was a member of Or Hadash conservative synagogue, there. Was the guy who gunned him down a Muslim? Was it religiously motivated? Police and witnesses say the execution was clearly planned and deliberately targeted Sneiderman. They believe the killer was a professional hit man. No-one said devout Sunni Muslims aren’t hit men. In fact, on 9/11 we got acquainted with 19 of ‘em. And several more since. Hey, maybe this is the one Amish guy in America who snuffs people out for a living. (He saw “Witness,” and didn’t like Harrison Ford sleeping with the Amish Kelly McGillis and turning her into a lesbian?)

OK, let me see. Sneiderman was Jewish. He was killed by someone who targeted him, and planned the killing. And we know that Muslims have, in the past, killed people. Also, the killer, as I pointed out above, was probably not Amish. With evidence like this...

I haven’t drawn any conclusions, Schlussel goes on, (this may be the funniest line in the piece, actually) and we may never know who murdered Rusty Sneiderman. It may turn out to be your average White dude hitman who has a thing for the Planet of the Ape Men. But again, look at the photo. Sure looks like a follower of Mohammed to me. Although it appears that Sneiderman and his wife were typical Jewish liberals (who generally pander to Muslims and serve as their chief apologists), that makes no difference in global jihad. Liberal Islamo-pandering Jews, like Daniel Pearl, are eagerly cut up like chickens by Muslims, in a New York minute.

By all means, let us interrupt our rather unsubstantiated assumption that Rusty Schneiderman was killed by a jihadi hitman by casting aspersions on the victim, his wife, 'typical Jewish liberals' everywhere, and the late Daniel Pearl. Why the heck not?

Ignoring the facial features and blaring cues in the sketch doesn’t make them incorrect. And we ignore them at our peril. As I noted earlier this year, authorities refused to put out a correct sketch of stabbing serial killer, Elias Abuelazam, a Palestinian Arab who targeted Black people for extinction. The sketch looked like your average White guy in a baseball cap, not an Arab from the Middle East. Had the sketch been accurate, Abuelazam might have been caught sooner and less people might have died at his hands. That nose on the sketch just ain’t your average White guy’s nose. Not even your average White hit man’s nose. And saying so isn’t “bigoted.” It’s intellectually honest and could help catch this murderer sooner.

Elias Abuelazam, an Israeli citizen and stark raving nutjob, did in fact get a rather bad sketch of himself put out, although I cannot say that I buy Schlussel's notion that this was done on purpose. The man in the sketch has a narrower nose and a more angular face than Abuelazam. Unfortunately, sketch artists have to work with what they have, they can't just draw a stereotypical Arab and hope it looks sort of like the bad guy. Honestly. They can't. (I know that Schlussel doesn't entirely believe this.)

(I have to add that this whole essay kind of undermines a common meme among the sort of people who think Schlussel is a deep and important thinker, namely that they can't be 'racist' because 'Islam isn't a race'. This is true, but Debbie Schlussel certainly writes as though it is.)

I will be following this story, though if the killer does turn out to be Islamic, I bet we’ll never hear about it. Schlussel concludes.

You know– it gets in the way of the “religion of peace” meme and all that.

This sort of racially confused, paranoid drivel is par for the course on Schlussel's blog, but I was interested enough to follow the story myself. A few nights ago, I Googled Sneiderman's name again, wondering if the case was ever broken.

Back in January, there was an arrest and indictment in Rusty Sneiderman's murder.

The accused's name is the decidedly Islamic Hemy Zvi Neuman.

He made a shiva visit to the dead man's family.

Oh, and he is a dead ringer for the witness sketch, minus the beard, which is believed to have been fake.

Alas, reader Joe who did in fact pick up on the Semitic features of the sketch, was close but no cigar. That's a g-g-g-g-g-great grandson of Abraham all right--but Joe picked the wrong branch of the family. An understandable error.

And Debbie Schlussel, who didn't get what she wanted out of this case, has not updated her blog to reflect this information.

I am sure that she'd insist her assumptions were quite valid. After all, there are jihadis, and they do target Jews. Therefore, making shit up out of whole cloth, insulting the victim, and feeding her followers' general sense of roiling paranoia about all things Muslim is perfectly valid.

I disagree. I would call this bigoted, dishonest, and self-indulgent in extreme. Is it really necessary to use the callous murder of a father of young children to whip up a little more self-pitying sensationalism and bigotry?

(Cross posted from The Makabit)

What is the religious value of 'ick'?

I've been over at Joe Settler's place, makin' a nuisance of myself, and I'm left with some questions from our conversation, namely, what is the religious (or political, for that matter) value of the 'ick' factor?



Apparently the Israeli Tourist Board folks ran some campaign to bring gay travelers to Israel. They included some pictures of gay couples doin' gay couple stuff around Jerusalem. Per Joe, and some other things I've seen on the web, religious MKs and some other people went berserk. These photos seem to include:



This one, featuring two young men in yarmulkes gazing deeply into one another's eyes in a familiar honeymoon-photo location. Joe comments that they 'slapped' yarmulkes on gay models for this, and I have to say, that given the fact the guy with his back to the camera doesn't seem to have bothered to pin his, and may be about to lose it altogether in the passion of the moment, this could be the case. (Also, how does his mother feel about him walking around Jerusalem with a tattoo showing.) (It's also possible that these two models are straight, in which case we have an altogether different kind of deception going on.) Joe tells me that that this photo is the equivalent to a picture of a priest and a nun making out, and asks me to consider how I would feel if I were a devout Christian and saw that.





Unfortunately, I spent a while living in Ireland, a deeply Catholic nation where hiring kissing telegram people dressed as clergy is considered rollicking fun. And equally unfortunately, I think that what Joe is implying is that people like this--boys in kippot who go to Jerusalem for the Jewishness and kiss because they're in love--don't exist--and I know a bunch. Although most of them (I'm thinking of one notable exception, Mrs. Bluejeans knows who he is), they're not that conventionally pretty.

Do I care if the religious MKs were offended? Well, yes, I do. I don't want them to feel bad, but this is the face of Judaism too, and, uh, to modify, they're here, they're gay, they wanna see Eretz Yisrael and they're willing to pay. I'm entirely aware that some people are not comfortable with the existence of religious gay Jews, but they're part of us, (and an incredibly good and strong part too, editorializes the Balabusta). Live, says I, and says the tourist board too.

But apparently some of the lady MKs were not so happy about this picture, which was sent out by the Israeli Consulate in NYC, to interest straight men of a certain age in Israel. The young lady in the photo, as you can see, is stretched out on a wall, in a bikini and high heels, in a bluntly sexual pose. Apparently Dahlia Itzik and Zahava Gal-On were not so amused.



I'm not so amused either. I'm used to this kind of thing, everything is sold with women's mostly naked bodies, but this is, by me, offensive in a way that the other is not. Why? Couple of things. First, the couple in the gay tourism photos are a couple, being sexual together. This woman is being a virtual stripper. Secondly, this apparently is meant to promote a piece Maxim did on 'Women of the IDF'. Please imagine male soldiers being sexualized like this, and then their consulate happily promoting it, and you get the real-world equivalent to this ad.

Joe feels that the reaction is hypocritical--if Dahlia and Zahava weren't willing to support the religious MKs, their outrage now is worthless. I dunno. Where is the outrage of the religious MKs now? Are they OK with this? Is the sexual exploitation of women something they take for granted, or can't be bothered with?

Joe says that the Maxim ad does not bother him, while he is offended as a religious Jew by the gay couple one. He also sees hypocrisy in MKs objecting to one but not the other. I say that the gay couple ad does not bother me, while I am irritated as both a woman and religious Jew by the Maxim one. So, here's my question. Does the 'ick' factor actually have a religious nature to it, or are Joe and I both responding to our socialization and opinions around homosexuality, tznius, and Judaism, and trying to put some spin on it?