Los Angeles Jews nervous at
Century City Shopping Mall

High security intrudes on shoppers

by
Miroslava Flores
La Voz de Aztlan

Los Angeles, Alta California - September 9, 2001- (ACN) The Intifadah in Palestine is having repercussions all the way to the Century City Shopping Mall where many West Los Angeles Jews do their shopping. The mall located adjacent to the Los Angeles Country Club in Beverly Hills has never had so many uniformed security guards prowling up and down the corridors keeping an "eye" on things.

After an absence of approximately three months, this past Saturday I was shocked at the number of guards stationed at the parking garage, standing outside the shops and patrolling the corridors. My boyfriend who is Mexican but looks "Arab" noticed the same thing. He was being followed everywhere he went in the mall, unobtrusively of course. He noticed that after he discarded an empty paper bag in the trash can that a "worker" immediately went into the trash bin to retrieve it.

This part of Los Angeles has the largest concentration of Jews in the U.S. next to New York City and it appears that their community has been a little bit jittery lately. I picked up the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles at Barnes and Noble and it seemed that every article was on Israel and "Islamic terrorists. "

The Jewish Journal included an article by their local Congressman Henry Waxman titled "Israel Under Siege" in which he opens with, "On the news it's easy to find sickening evidence of the terrorist war being waged against Israel; harder to find, but no less real, are other insidious assaults that are growing in number and venom." He ends his article with the following: "We must stand in solidarity with our people and support Israel's right as a sovereign nation to defend its vital interests." Congressman Waxman along with Congressmen Berman and Lantos and U.S. Senators Feinstein and Boxer are Jewish elected officials that have a very tight grip on the California Democratic Party.

Another of their many "Israel" articles was one titled "Eastward Bound" by their staff writer Michael Aushenker. The article was a "rallying cry" for Angeleno Jews to support the huge "Support Israel Rally" to be held in New York City on Sunday September 23rd. The rally is being billed as the largest "Jewish Pow-Wow" for Israel in the history of U.S. Zionism. The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, one of 189 federations across the U.S. and Canada, is spearheading the organizing efforts in Southern California for the umbrella organization called the United Jewish Communities (UJC).

The Jewish Federation estimates that the New York rally will cost about $1.2 million dollars. A principal thrust of the organizing efforts is to sponsor thousands of students from Hillel to attend the rally. Hillel is the "student arm" of the Zionist Movement in the United States and Canada. Rhoda Weisman, Senior "Creative" Officer at Hillel said, "It is important for students to express their commitment to the State of Israel in person". She added, "This is the next generation of the Jewish community, and hopefully they will bring back to campus the energy and powerful commitment that will be a part of the New York rally".

The Jewish Journal article went on to say that the umbrella organization United Jewish Communities (UJC) is bracing itself for the arrival of tens of thousands of Jews, Zionists and supporters from throughout North America. The huge rally scheduled on the day before the United Nations General Assembly begins and right in the middle of Jewish High Holy Days will feature as speakers Ariel Sharon himself and a host of Zionist elected federal officials and supporters. Avraham Burg who is Speaker of the Israeli Knesset is expected to speak as well as Senators Joseph Lieberman, Charles Schumer and Hilary Clinton of New York.

Meanwhile, the visit to the Century City Shopping Mall started getting a little bit more uncomfortable for my boyfriend Jose and I. Now it seemed that it was not just the prying "eyes" of the security guards that were on us but the "eyes" of the many Jewish shoppers as well. We decided to head back to our part of town. The visit, however, left us with a sense of "pity" for the Jews. If their "paranoia" is this bad here in L.A., we wondered how bad it must be in shopping malls in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.