EPIC FAIL: Rev. Al Sharpton Invited to Sit on Commemorative Panel of 1991 Crown Heights Riots Which He Incited!
New York, NY - Twenty years after racially motivated rioting in Crown Heights took the life of Australian scholar Yankel Rosenbaum, a Westhampton Beach synagogue is holding a panel discussion on the current state of relations between blacks and Jews in Crown Heights.
The riots, occurred in August 1991 which lasted for three days, began after seven year old Gavin Cato, the son of Guyanese immigrants, was accidentally struck and killed by a car in a motorcade of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. An angry mob who felt that responding officers gave preferential treatment to the Jewish driver of the car decided to avenge Cato’s death by taking a Jewish life. A group of approximately twenty young men surrounded the twenty nine year old Rosenbaum, stabbing him several times and beating him to death.
The event, which is scheduled to take place at 7:30 PM on Sunday at the Hampton Synagogue located at 154 Sunset Avenue in Westhampton Beach, will feature a group of panelists from both the black and Jewish communities. The panelists will include Rabbi Marc Schneier, founding rabbi of the Synagogue and founder and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, Rabbi Robert Kaplan, Director of InterGroup/CAUSE-NY of the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Honorable Letitia James, City Council member for Brooklyn’s 35th district, which includes Crown Heights and Reverend Al Sharpton, of the National Action Network.
It looks like no Lubavitchers were invited.