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NATION Jewish and Arab-American groups back bill Ron Kampeas
(JTA)—Jewish and Arab-Americans are joining in support of a bipartisan bill in the House and Senate that would streamline the reporting of hate crimes. The NO HATE bill introduced would train law enforcement across the country to report hate crimes according to a single standard. Anti-defamation groups have long complained that assessing hate crimes in the United States is frustrated by wildly varying standards among police departments determining what crimes should be designated as hate crimes, when law enforcement reports the crime at all. Among the groups backing the new bill in a joint release were the Jewish Federations of North America, the American Jewish Committee, the AntiDefamation League, the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council and the Arab American Institute. Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Reps. Don Beyer, D-Va., Fred Upton, R-Mich., Judy Chu, D-Calif., and Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., introduced the measure. Blumenthal is Jewish.
Jewish Federations of North America spearheaded a letter last month signed by 30 Jewish organizations covering all Jewish religious streams, and ranging from left to right, from Ameinu to the Zionist Organization of America, urging backing for the bill, which was then in draft mode. That letter was pinned to reports of a rise in crimes targeting Asian Americans spurred by the coronavirus pandemic. Others joining in praising the introduction of the bill included Asian American umbrella groups; the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an umbrella group; law enforcement in Miami and Washington, D.C.; and the families of Heather Heyer and Khalid Jabara. The bill is named in part for Heyer, killed in 2017 during a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Jabara, who was murdered in Tulsa in 2016 by a neighbor who for years had targeted Jabara’s family with anti-Arab epithets and violence. The bill also backs programs that rehabilitate perpetrators of hate crime through community service and education.
Jewish Democrats reintroduce ‘Jaime’s Law,’ named for Jewish Parkland victim Ron Kampeas
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8 | JEWISH NEWS | April 26, 2021 | jewishnewsva.org
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WASHINGTON (JTA)—In the midst of a spate of mass shootings, top Jewish Democrats in the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives have reintroduced legislation named after a Jewish victim of the Parkland school shooting that would subject ammunition purchases to background checks. The bill, introduced in the House by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and in the Senate by Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, is named for Jaime Guttenberg, the Jewish girl who was among the 17 people killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. Gun purchases are subject to background checks under federal law to find
criminal records, domestic abuse reports and mental illness, but ammunition purchases are not. The last Congress had launched the measure, but it failed to advance with Republicans controlling the Senate and White House. Backers are hoping that President Joe Biden’s vocal backing for gun control reforms, and the Democratic majority in the Senate, will improve the chances of passage. Also present at the introduction of the legislation was Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., the Jewish congressman whose district includes Parkland. Blumenthal’s state was the scene of a mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown in 2012 that killed 26, including 20 first-graders.
