Zionist vigilantes attack Black youth

Community groups are responding to a racist attack by members of a Zionist vigilante group called Shomrim against a 15-year-old African-American student in northwest Baltimore. They are demanding that the group be disbanded, that hate crime charges be brought against it and that more resources be provided to the predominately African-American community of Lower Park Heights.

On Nov. 19 a student from Northwestern Senior High was assaulted by three members of the Shomrim, which calls itself a community patrol group (the name means “watchers” in Hebrew). Only one of the attackers, Eliyahu Eliezer Werdesheim, has criminal charges pending.

The student, whose family has requested that his identity be withheld, told the court he was walking that afternoon when a vehicle began driving next to him. The vehicle, he said, followed him a short distance before the two men inside jumped out and surrounded him. (Baltimore Sun, Dec. 2)

According to the teen, the passenger grabbed him and threw him to the ground. Then Werdesheim, the driver, hit him on the head with his radio and asked if he “had anything on him.” The teen said Werdesheim yelled, “You wanna [expletive] with us. You don’t belong here. Get outta here!”

A third man got out of a van, the student said, and kneed him in the back, then pinned him to the ground as the others patted him down. The men then fled the area. Court records show that the teen’s wrist was broken and that he had cuts and bruises on the back of his head.

Shaquille Carbon, a Northwest Senior High student, told Workers World: “The story does not add up. It does not take three adult men to apprehend a 15-year-old. I can’t help but think this could have been me or someone close to me. I don’t want this to happen again.”

Nnamdi Lumumba of the Ujima People’s Progress Party told Workers World: “The UPP condemns this attack as a colonialist and racist attack on African people. The attack on this young African student is but one of many assaults on the impoverished African community of Park Heights by Zionist forces. ... We have to go beyond frustration and build a grassroots workers’ movement that goes to the core of the contradictions and overturns the parasitic relationships that currently exist in that community, supported by elected capitalist stooges in City Hall.”

Werdesheim, a 23-year-old former Israeli special forces soldier, worked for an elite unit of the Israeli Defense Forces, where he specialized in urban counterterrorism, hostage rescue and high-profile apprehensions.

It should come as no surprise that a person with such a background would assault and attack an African-American youth. Werdesheim was trained by the Zionist Israeli state, which terrorizes the Palestinian people. Zionism was equated to racism in the U.N. Durban conference on racism in 2001. The U.S. boycotted the conference. Attacks by IDF on Palestinians are a daily occurrence and breed racism toward Arabs and other people of color.