L.A. Times: reports from 3,000 miles away, a mixed report about the raids.
It was a spectacle nobody in this sleepy New Jersey town would forget.
Early one Monday morning, police and FBI agents in bulletproof vests bounded up the steps of suburban townhouses and split levels, threatening to break down the doors, hauling out in handcuffs husbands and wives in the distinctive clothing of ultra-Orthodox Jews.......It was the dramatic kickoff of a series of well-publicized raids
“None of these people used any of this welfare money for an extravagant lifestyle. They were struggling to make ends meet and trying to pay medical bills,” said Harold Herskowitz, a businessman who runs a toy store in Lakewood. He believes the prosecutions were motivated by hostility toward the ultra-Orthodox.
“I’m the child of Holocaust survivors; I don’t appreciate Jewish people dragged out in public early in the morning,” Herskowitz said.
“You have a family or six or seven or eight, somebody is paying the mortgage, somebody is paying the taxes, they have two cars in the driveway, they’ve got food for all the kids … and they’re reporting their total income at $10,000,’’ said Joseph Coronato, the Ocean County prosecutor who took the lead in the case. “You have to ask — what is going on here?’’Read more HERE
It was a spectacle nobody in this sleepy New Jersey town would forget.
Early one Monday morning, police and FBI agents in bulletproof vests bounded up the steps of suburban townhouses and split levels, threatening to break down the doors, hauling out in handcuffs husbands and wives in the distinctive clothing of ultra-Orthodox Jews.......It was the dramatic kickoff of a series of well-publicized raids
“None of these people used any of this welfare money for an extravagant lifestyle. They were struggling to make ends meet and trying to pay medical bills,” said Harold Herskowitz, a businessman who runs a toy store in Lakewood. He believes the prosecutions were motivated by hostility toward the ultra-Orthodox.
“I’m the child of Holocaust survivors; I don’t appreciate Jewish people dragged out in public early in the morning,” Herskowitz said.
“You have a family or six or seven or eight, somebody is paying the mortgage, somebody is paying the taxes, they have two cars in the driveway, they’ve got food for all the kids … and they’re reporting their total income at $10,000,’’ said Joseph Coronato, the Ocean County prosecutor who took the lead in the case. “You have to ask — what is going on here?’’Read more HERE