Funerals For US Synagogue Massacre Victims As Trump Visits

Funerals For US Synagogue Massacre Victims As Trump Visits

US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump disembark from Air Force One upon arrival at Pittsburgh International Airport in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 30, 2018. SAUL LOEB / AFP

Mourners crowded into Pittsburgh synagogues and joined street processions Tuesday at the first funerals for victims of the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in recent US history — as US President Donald Trump arrived in the grieving city for a controversial visit.

The funeral for brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, both in their 50s, was the first in honour of the 11 people gunned down during prayers at the Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday in an apparent hate crime.

Services for 66-year-old doctor Jerry Rabinowitz and 71-year-old Daniel Stein followed in Pittsburgh, where scores of residents protested Trump’s visit.

The president’s trip to Pennsylvania comes amid a mounting row over whether his fierce rhetoric at campaign rallies and on Twitter has helped stoke extremism ahead of next week’s midterm elections.

“It’s just enraging that this type of hate crime could occur here and that the leadership of our country does not denounce anti-Semitism and does not denounce white nationalism and does not denounce neo-Nazism. And that is the problem,” mourner Joanna Izenson told AFP.

“There’s always going to be anti-Semitism, there always has been, but never have we had a president of this country who does not fight hard against it, verbally and in every way,” she said.

“He needs those supporters and that’s why he doesn’t.”

The shooting was allegedly carried out by Robert Bowers, a loner who reportedly told police after his capture, “I just want to kill Jews.”

Bowers, 46, is facing more than two dozen charges related to the carnage, which erupted during Shabbat services at the Tree of Life, located in the city’s traditionally Jewish Squirrel Hill neighbourhood.

The suspect said on social media that Jews were helping transport caravans of refugees from Central America into the US, repeatedly calling the migrants “invaders.”

The caravans are a favourite target of the president, and he has called a group of several thousand impoverished mainly Honduran migrants currently attempting to walk north to the United States “an invasion.”

– ‘Beautiful tribute’ –

Friends and strangers alike packed the Rodef Shalom temple, a 25-minute walk from the Tree of Life, for the Rosenthals’ funeral, which took place under tight security.

After the service, mourners spilled out onto the street, some of them sobbing and clasping each other.

The brothers’ caskets were placed in two hearses and driven away, with a sheriff’s car leading the procession.

“The family spoke and spoke beautifully,” said mourner Marilyn Latterman.

“It was tragic, it was sad — it was a beautiful tribute to two wonderful, loving, innocent men,” said Paul Taylor, a Catholic priest who also attended the service, which he said was “standing room only.”

Another mourner, a retired teacher who only gave her first name Nancy, said: “I was finally able to cry.”

Later in the day, dozens of mourners walked behind the hearse carrying the remains of Rabinowitz in Squirrel Hill, according to footage posted on social media.

Meanwhile, protesters gathered near the Tree of Life synagogue to protest Trump and his wife Melania’s visit.

“The president of the United States is always welcome,” Jeffrey Myers, a rabbi who was present when the attack started, told CNN.

But a former president of the synagogue, Lynette Lederman, spoke out on the network on Monday to tell Trump to stay away, calling him a “purveyor of hate speech.”

A group of Pittsburgh Jewish leaders wrote an open letter to Trump on Sunday telling him he bears responsibility for the shooting and saying he was not welcome in the city unless he denounced white nationalism and ended his “assault on immigrants and refugees.”

The Pittsburgh shooting spree came in the same week that authorities arrested an ardent Trump supporter from Florida on suspicion of mailing more than a dozen homemade bombs to opponents and critics of the president.

The incidents have led to accusations that Trump has fanned violence through almost daily tweets and speeches lambasting illegal immigrants, political opponents and journalists in divisive language.

– ‘Christian rabbi’ –

Trump has struck back in typically robust fashion, arguing that critical journalists were, in fact, the ones feeding extremism across the country.

“There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news,” Trump tweeted.

Trump’s Pittsburgh visit is not the only element of the administration’s response to the massacre that has been a source of controversy.

On Monday, Vice President Mike Pence attended a campaign rally in Michigan at which a so-called “Christian rabbi” was invited to speak on behalf of the area’s Jewish community.

Instead of opening with prayers for the 11 victims of the Tree of Life shooting, Loren Jacobs praised Jesus Christ and then offered prayers for four Republican candidates.

Jacobs later offered words for the dead in the form of a prayer to Jesus Christ, without naming any of them.

Jews expressed outrage over social media, describing Jacobs’ appearance as an “insulting political stunt” and blasting Pence as a “Christian supremacist.”