12 dead in Fort Hood shooting spree

[compared2what?]

It takes a special combination of implicit racism, ethno/geographic ignorance, and failed/faked political correctness to spawn a phrase like "of Muslim descent." And quick, can anyone tell us the "descent" of Klebold and Harris?

In a reportorial, political or casual conversational context, yes. But it would be a perfectly legitimate demographic measure in a historical-anthropological context. Or in any number of fields that make valid use demographical statistics.

My point being, again, that the problem with it is that it's ignorant and bigoted and irresponsible to use it in reference to Hasan. Not that it's inherently erroneous. The response "Go ask the Jews" also has cultural and political implications, for that matter. Judaism is far from the only religion that bases membership primarily on descent. It's just the only religion that's commonly recognized as including that practice from a basic standard-issue, western contemporary judeo-christian cultural perspective. And not for no reason, either. Cultural and political implications aren't necessarily indicative of bias in each and every reference to a specific religion to which they're attached. They might imply cultural and political realities of an otherwise value-neutral character. But that doesn't mean they're not there at all, or that they mean nothing. At a minimum, they reflect the user's cultural orientation and/or heritage.

Let's all read "Politics and the English Language" again.

[Sweejak]

I've missed a few pages so apologies if this has been answered, but who was arrested at the golf course?

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/05 ... witnesses/

[JackRiddler]

It's just the only religion that's commonly recognized as including that practice from a basic standard-issue, western contemporary judeo-christian cultural perspective.

Well, unless you were born into one of the Eastern Orthodox churches, each of which is very closely attached to an ethno-national identity. Despite the Eastern, they are a part of "Western" contemporary Judeo-Christian culture that, admittedly, tends to be ignored. But that doesn't change your main points, of course, all well taken.

[Uncle $cam]

paraphrasing or paraplagiarizing a comment I read elsewhere, (I forget where), "Whatever the truth is, the narrative will be Muslim sleeper cells. Too many people gain profit from it. If you want escalation in ___istan here is your talikng point. If you are al CIAda here is your chance to pretend to be a global network. Cue new bin laden video on this..."

[Nordic]

I've missed a few pages so apologies if this has been answered, but who was arrested at the golf course?

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/05 ... witnesses/

shhhhh!

[JackRiddler]

The "sleeper cell" narrative was predictably applied by many on the Web, and they will do so on the basis of the most tenuous or made-up associations (such as Web sites Hasan may have visited).

But it's not how the military themselves are presenting it at this point, and I think their incentive is to control damage and get past this story. It's very hard to spin into an anti-Muslim, pro-team recruitment pitch, much as that gratifies right-wing commenters, who will not be enlisting.

Recruitment propaganda focuses on the career training, character building, camaraderie and awesome fun you'll experience in a safe, happy military, and they want an image where traumatized soldiers get expert treatment and recover, and are not shot on a domestic base by their own psychiatrist. So far this horror is a PR disaster for the military.

Here is today's official line, looking for a lone gunman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/us/08 ... ml?_r=1&hp

Little Evidence of Terror Plot in Base Killings
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Crosses and flags were erected Saturday near Fort Hood, Tex., to honor victims of the rampage. More Photos >

By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: November 7, 2009

WASHINGTON — After two days of inquiry into the mass shooting at Fort Hood, investigators have tentatively concluded that it was not part of a terrorist plot.

The Victims at Fort HoodInteractive Feature
Army Releases Names of All 13 Killed in Shootings (November 8, 2009)
Army Concludes Shootings Involved Only One Gunman (November 8, 2009)

Rather, they have come to believe that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused in the shootings, acted out under a welter of emotional, ideological and religious pressures, according to interviews with federal officials who have been briefed on the inquiry.

Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that Major Hasan believed he was carrying out an extremist’s suicide mission.

But the investigators, working with behavioral experts, suggested that he might have long suffered from emotional problems that were exacerbated by the tensions of his work with veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who returned home with serious psychiatric problems.

They said his counseling activities with the veterans appear to have further fueled his anger and hardened his increasingly militant views as he was seeming to move toward more extreme religious beliefs — all of which boiled over as he faced being shipped overseas, an assignment he bitterly opposed.

Investigators have gleaned most of their findings from Major Hasan’s computer use and from interviews with his family members, co-workers and neighbors. One significant investigative thrust has involved determining whether Major Hasan had contact with extremists who preyed on his increasingly angry and outspoken opposition to American policies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But so far, investigators have unearthed no evidence that he was directed or steered into violence or ever traveled overseas to meet with extremist groups, as defendants in some recent terrorism cases are accused of doing, the officials said.

The officials emphasized that their findings were preliminary and that the investigation was fluid. New information could alter their perceptions of Major Hasan’s motives. But the early conclusions are already influencing the course of the inquiry, including which law enforcement agencies lead it.

“It’s early, but it looks like there are a number of factors going on here,” said a senior government official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings do not represent the government’s formal investigative and legal views of the case.

The officials said a continuing search of Major Hasan’s computer indicates that he had logged on to Web sites that celebrated radical Islamic ideologies and that he had exchanged e-mail messages with like-minded people, some possibly overseas. In addition, they believe that he may have written inflammatory Internet postings that justified suicide attacks, though that has not been concretely established.

Still, investigators have found no evidence that Major Hasan sent e-mail messages to known terrorists or anyone else who encouraged or helped him to orchestrate the shootings.

Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat who is head of the House Homeland Security intelligence subcommittee, confirmed in a phone interview on Saturday that investigators had thus far not found any evidence suggesting that Major Hasan had been in contact with extremist or terrorist organizations. “I don’t know of that link,” Ms. Harman said, adding that the investigation was seeking to answer that question. The committee oversees some of the agencies involved in domestic counterterrorism inquiries.

The officials said it was increasingly unlikely that co-conspirators might still be found and charged. Based on this preliminary view, the officials said they were leaning toward charging Major Hasan in a military court rather than a civilian court. Though that decision was not official, they said he was more likely to be prosecuted in a civilian court if other nonmilitary defendants were involved.

Confirming the law enforcement view, a senior American intelligence official said on Saturday that there were no known co-conspirators at this point. “Hasan is the only name that’s emerged so far,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity when discussing intelligence matters.

The possibility that the Fort Hood attack involved terrorism arose for a number of reasons. For one, early reports from the chaotic scene indicated that there might have been more than one gunman. Investigators have now said publicly that there was only one shooter. Also, friends and work associates of Major Hasan have described his increasing doubts about the American military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In interviews in recent days, friends and others have portrayed Major Hasan as a troubled man, deeply concerned about being deployed to the war zones.

Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command are moving deliberately through their search of Major Hasan’s computers. They suspect that he might have used multiple e-mail accounts and fictitious identities, and might have destroyed documents in advance of the attack, perhaps in an effort to conceal his activities in the days leading up to the shootings.

Such steps could be revealing and potentially legally significant as evidence that the killings were premeditated and not the spontaneous outburst of a mentally impaired malcontent.

Neighbors in the run-down two-story apartment building were Major Hasan has lived since arriving in Killeen, Tex., said that federal agents had seized a computer belonging to his next-door neighbor. Major Hasan had used the computer frequently, they said, paying the neighbor for its use.

Federal agents also took away a large trash bin in which the psychiatrist had dumped a shredder and a plastic bag full of shredded documents on the morning before the shooting, neighbors said.

Over all, the inquiry is somewhat more subtle than many criminal cases in which investigators try to piece together a timeline of a suspect’s activities. The inquiry into the Fort Hood shootings is turning into a deep psychological exploration of the mind of a suspect in a mass killing.

James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting from Killeen, Tex.

[SanDiegoBuffGuy]

Here's an interesting article from Friday's USA Today about how the image of Muslims has been affected by all of this.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... clude=Juno

The scariest part of the article is the comments section!

[Nordic]

I just read somewhere that the reliable Joe Lieberman (the word "lie" is in his name I just realized) is announcing that it was, indeed, a "terrorist attack".

Sez he.

I like it whenever it's a shooter who's a Muslim, it's a "terror attack". When it's some right-wing nutjob, it never is.

[Iroquois]

I've missed a few pages so apologies if this has been answered, but who was arrested at the golf course?

I'm still waiting for the answer to that question to, as well as specifically who arrested him as well as a better explanation for why. I'm presuming from the comment below about the President meeing with the FBI chief to mean that the FBI is essentially in charge of the investigation and therefore were likely the suits in the CrownVic at the golf course. Does anyone know why the FBI would have jurisdiction?

Also, Hasan allegdly had two firearms, an FN FiveSeven semi-automatic pistol which typically uses 20 round magazines (but 30 round magazines are available) and a 357 revolver which may have not been used at all. If the shooting did occur entirely within a densely crowded room, it would go a long way to explain the tremendous number of people shot. But, as has been pointed out, he would have needed a couple of magazine changes.

I would be very surprised, however, if anyone in the room had an unauthorized concealed firearm. -Iroquois



Alleged Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Malik Hasan Was 'Calm,' Methodical During Massacre
Death Toll at 13; Alleged Gunman Paralyzed ABC News Has Learned
By CHRIS CUOMO, EMILY FRIEDMAN, SARAH NETTER, and RICHARD ESPOSITO

Nov. 6, 2009 —

Hundreds of soldiers and personnel from the Fort Hood Army post in Texas gathered at a vigil Friday evening to mourn the victims and offer prayers for the families of Thursday's shooting rampage that left 13 dead and 38 wounded.

The Army's Chief Chaplain, Douglas Carver told the gathering to "remember to keep breathing...keep going," The Associated Press reported.

Earlier Friday, the caskets of 13 victims were loaded on to a C-130 transport plane for a flight to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Some 300 soldiers in dress uniform watched as the caskets were loaded onto the plane.

Shelia Casey, wife of the Army's top commander Gen. George Casey, attended the ceremony. She told ABC News' Charles Gibson. " It's an important ceremony, very moving, but important, " she said. "Rows and rows of soldiers there to bid farewell."

Gen. George Casey told ABC News' Charles Gibson that the attack at the U.S Army facility was "like a kick in the gut."

The suspect in the shooting, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was transferred Friday to the Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio. He is reportedly on a respirator, suffering from paralysis, although he is said to be in stable condition.

At a Friday evening news conference at Fort Hood, Army Col. John Rossi said the suspect fired more than 100 rounds, before being shot by a civilian police officer, Sgt. Kimberly Munley.

Neighbors said Hasan had been giving away his furniture and copies of the Koran over the last week, apparently disposing of his worldly goods, ABC News' Brian Ross reported.

Witnesses to Thursday's massacre at Fort Hood said alleged shooter appeared calm and shouted "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is Great!") before opening fire at a crowd of young soldiers, pausing only to reload before he was taken down by a female officer who is being hailed as a hero.

"It was very deliberate in his approach, they said that he was calm," Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, the base commander at Fort Hood, told "Good Morning America" today.

"He was shooting people more than once if he could," said Cone.

The Fort Hood Web site today addressed the tragedy with a line reading "Friday Is Day of Mourning! -- The duty day will begin no earlier than 0900."

Hasan used an FN Herstal 5.7 tactical pistol. The gun was purchased legally in August 2009 at Guns Galore in Killeen, Texas. Some law enforcement officials say the gun packs so much firepower that they call it "the cop killer."

A second gun found was a 357 Magnum Smith and Wesson revolver, but it is not yet clear if Hasan used the weapon during the shooting.

An army videographer who witnessed the shooting likened the event to a wartime battle.

"I felt like I was back in Iraq," specialist Elliot Valdez told ABC News' Terry Moran. "The noise, the chaos. It felt like Iraq."

Valdez was preparing to film graduation ceremonies in the theater when people started running in screaming, "Someone's shooting!" Then, a soldier in dress uniform for the graduation staggered in, shot in the back.

Valdez ran out and saw Hasan on the ground. "I thought he was dead," Valdez said. He did not realize that the man on the ground was the shooter until later. Valdez stayed focused and kept filming.

When asked how he felt about what he saw, Valdez struggled to contain his emotions.

"You see the bodies on the stretchers--that's tough, that's really tough," he said. "But Fort Hood families are strong. We pull together."

Victims of the shooting rushed to help others even before tending to themselves, said Cone.

"A young lady who had been shot in the hip and didn't realize it immediately took care of one of her buddies," said Cone. "She put a tourniquet on a soldier's leg and carried him out of the facility."

"Only after she had gotten her buddy taken care of did she realize that she herself had been shot," said Cone.

President Obama warned early Friday against "jumping to conclusions" regarding the motive for the shooting and ordered flags to be flown at half staff until Veteran's Day, saying that the "entire nation is grieving."

The president said he had met with the FBI chief to discuss the massacre.

Sgt. Kimberly Munley Ended the Carnage

Sgt. Salvatore "Rico" Sanchez told "Good Morning America" that he treated a captain who was nearby when the shooting started. Covered in blood that wasn't his own, the captain escaped unscathed with only a mild case of shock.

"According to the captain that I was treating, [Hasan] was sitting down and he just stood up out of nowhere and started shooting," Sanchez said.

As the sound of gunfire erupted, Sanchez said he heard people yelling to call 911 and "all kinds of cries for help."

Sanchez saw a virtual battlefield with dozens wounded and 13 dead or dying. Their names began to emerge today and each had a heartbreaking story. Among them was Francheska Velez, a 21-year-old soldier who had returned from Iraq three days ago because she was pregnant.

Velez was in the buildling filling out paperwork regarding her pregnancy when Hasan opened up.

Cone said Sgt. Kimberly Munley exchanged gunfire with Hasan and shot him four times despite being shot herself, putting a stop to the carnage.

"She was quite effective, one of our most impressive young policemen," Cone said. "She walked up and basically engaged him. I think, certainly, this could've been far worse."

Cone said Munley spent Thursday night calling her fellow co-workers from her hospital bed to make sure everyone was OK.

The atmosphere at Fort Hood Thursday seemed to be one of chaos, yet also one of quick action and sharp thinking. Numerous reports have described well-trained soldiers who used anything they could find to treat the wounded -- one witness told ABC News that a man's gunshot wound was treated with supplies from a mother's diaper bag.

"It is absolutely inspiring, the actions that soldiers took," Cone said today.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan Was Being Sent to Afghanistan

An Army official confirmed that Hasan would have been deployed to Afghanistan later this month, although officials previously said he was being sent to Iraq. Sources told ABC News that this would have been his first deployment.

Maj. Khalid Shabazz, who was Fort Hood's Muslim chaplain until a few months ago, told "GMA" he was "mortified" when he heard the news about the shooting and the person alleged to be behind it.

Shabazz said he had met with Hasan, one of 48 Muslim soldiers on base, on several occasions, and said that while Hasan and others sometimes complained about teasing from other soldiers, "I didn't find him to be depressed at all. I found him to be very pleasant."

Some of the Muslim soldiers, he said, "would complain about being taunted and harassed."

Shabazz said the taunts ranged from mild joking and misunderstandings to sometimes something more and could be "a real problem."

Hasan, who was reportedly upset about an upcoming deployment to Iraq, had been disciplined in the past for preaching to his patients about his Muslim faith.

Earlier in the day, Hasan had cleaned out his apartment, gave leftover frozen vegetables to a neighbor and called another to thank him for his friendship, the Associated Press reports.

Jacqueline Harris, 44, who lives with her boyfriend Willie Bell in the apartment next door to Hasan, told the AP that the alleged shooter had left a phone message on Thursday at 5 a.m.

Bell said Hasan had said it was "nice knowing you old friend. I'm going to miss you."

Hasan's cousin, Nader Hasan, issued a statement late Thursday. "We are shocked and saddened by the terrible events at Fort Hood today. We send the families of the victims our most heartfelt sympathies," the statement read. "Nidal was an American citizen. He was born in Arlington, Va., and raised here in America. ... Our family loves America. We are proud of our country, and saddened by today's tragedy."

Hasan had reportedly recently hired an attorney to help him get out of the military.

According to the suspect's cousin, Hasan was also harassed after 9/11 because of his ethnicity, and was called a "camel jockey."

According to sources, Hasan, who is 39, attended the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md, and later finished his residency as a psychiatrist.

In 2009, Hasan completed a fellowship in disaster and preventive psychiatry at the Center for Traumatic Stress.

He was promoted to major status in May, according to the Army Times.

According to Tthe Associated Press, retired Army Col. Terry Lee told Fox News that Hasan had expressed hope that Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and often argued with others who supported the wars.

ABC News' Ethan Nelson and Desiree Adib contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Venture

[Cordelia]

[quote="Nordic"]I just read somewhere that the reliable Joe Lieberman (the word "lie" is in his name I just realized)quote]

Wonderful observation! Who put the lie in Lieberman? (Who put the gore in Gore?)

[Sweejak]

I've missed a few pages so apologies if this has been answered, but who was arrested at the golf course?

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/05 ... witnesses/

shhhhh!

hehehe, Caddies! that whole caddie culture is steeped in Marxist thought!

[smallprint]

FBI sends team to Fort Hood to re-create shooting

Nov 06, 2009

USA TODAY correspondent Kevin Johnson sent us this report on the dispatch of an FBI team to Fort Hood:

The special team of investigators from Washington, D.C., will re-create the shooting in an attempt to learn how the attack was carried out, FBI spokesman Eric Vasys says.

Among the goals of the "shooting team,'' Vasys says, is to establish the exact location of the shooter at the time of the attack, a time-line reflecting the order in which the victims were shot, how many rounds were fired and how the suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was ultimately stopped by a military police officer.

Vasys says federal authorities are involved in an "aggressive investigation of any and all aspects of Maj. Hasan.''

"All resources are being made available to assist with this tragedy,'' he says.


http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... shooting/1

[8bitagent]

I just read somewhere that the reliable Joe Lieberman (the word "lie" is in his name I just realized) is announcing that it was, indeed, a "terrorist attack".

Sez he.

I like it whenever it's a shooter who's a Muslim, it's a "terror attack". When it's some right-wing nutjob, it never is.

Well it's curious how the same folks who laugh at the idea of Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan or James Earl Ray being part of a much larger conspiracy laugh....but are now scrambling to claim this is part of a conspiracy

Similar to how so many people get angry if you allege Mcveigh was working for others

[8bitagent]

Valdez ran out and saw Hasan on the ground. "I thought he was dead," Valdez said. He did not realize that the man on the ground was the shooter until later. Valdez stayed focused and kept filming.

This event was filmed? I can imagine there is also a few security cameras as well...wouldnt this disprove if there was a second gunmen; as well as show the body language of Hasan?

Hasan had expressed hope that Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and often argued with others who supported the wars.

Oh how convenient. Just as even being anti Afghanistan war was starting to become acceptable...good grief...

[justdrew]

The gunman was Muslim, or as NBC news said yesterday morning, "of Muslim descent" (but they didn't explain how you can have descent from a religion).

Go ask the Jews.

even there, it depends on who you ask...

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/world/europe/08britain.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=todayspaper]November 8, 2009
Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question
By SARAH LYALL[/url]

LONDON — The questions before the judges in Courtroom No. 1 of Britain’s Supreme Court were as ancient and as complex as Judaism itself.

Who is a Jew? And who gets to decide?

On the surface, the court was considering a straightforward challenge to the admissions policy of a Jewish high school in London. But the case, in which arguments concluded Oct. 30, has potential repercussions for thousands of other parochial schools across Britain. And in addressing issues at the heart of Jewish identity, it has exposed bitter divisions in Britain’s community of 300,000 or so Jews, pitting members of various Jewish denominations against one another.

“This is potentially the biggest case in the British Jewish community’s modern history,” said Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper here. “It speaks directly to the right of the state to intervene in how a religion operates.”

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews’ Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London’s Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts.

Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority.

By many standards, the JFS applicant, identified in court papers as “M,” is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — nor was her son. It turned down his application.

That would have been the end of it. But M’s family sued, saying that the school had discriminated against him. They lost, but the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal this summer.

In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.”

The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.

“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”

The same reasoning would apply to a Christian school that “refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin,” the court said.

The school appealed to the Supreme Court, which is likely to rule sometime before the end of the year.

The case’s importance was driven home by the sheer number of lawyers in the courtroom last week, representing not just M’s family and the school, but also the British government, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, the United Synagogue, the British Humanist Association and the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Meanwhile, the Court of Appeal ruling threw the school into a panicked scramble to put together a new admissions policy. It introduced a “religious practice test,” in which prospective students amass points for things like going to synagogue and doing charitable work.

That has led to all sorts of awkward practical issues, said Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, because Orthodox Judaism forbids writing or using a computer on the Sabbath. That means that children who go to synagogue can’t “sign in,” but have to use methods like dropping prewritten postcards into boxes.

It is unclear what effect the ruling, if it is upheld, will have on other religious schools. Some Catholic schools, accustomed to using baptism as a baseline admissions criterion, are worried that they will have to adopt similar practice tests.

The case has stirred up long-simmering resentments among the leaders of different Jewish denominations, who, for starters, disagree vehemently on the definition of Jewishness. They also disagree on the issue of whether an Orthodox leader is entitled to speak for the entire community.

“Whatever happens in this case, there must be some resolution sorted out between different denominations,” Mr. Benjamin said in an interview. “That the community has failed to grasp this has had the very unfortunate result of having a judgment foisted on it by a civil court.”

Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school, saying that observance is no test of Jewishness, and that all that matters is whether one’s mother is Jewish. So little does observance matter, in fact, that “having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn’t make you less Jewish,” Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

Lauren Lesin-Davis, chairman of the board of governors at King David, a Jewish school in Liverpool, told the BBC that the ruling violated more than 5,000 years of Jewish tradition.

“You cannot come in and start telling people how their whole lives should change, that the whole essence of their life and their religion is completely wrong,” she said.

But others are in complete sympathy with M.

“How dare they question our beliefs and our Jewishness?” David Lightman, an observant Jewish father whose daughter was also denied a place at the school because it did not recognize her mother’s conversion, told reporters recently. “I find it offensive and very upsetting.”

Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism here, said the lower court’s ruling, if upheld, would help make Judaism more inclusive.

“JFS is a state-funded school where my grandfather taught, and it’s selecting applicants on the basis of religious politics,” he said in an interview. “The Orthodox definition of Jewish excludes 40 percent of the Jewish community in this country.”