Police are investigating an incident here in which a skinned pig carcass was left outside the home of Stanley Sheinbaum, one of the five American Jews who met with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat in Stockholm last month.
Next to the pig was a blood-soaked note bearing one word — “Troy.”
Sheinbaum said he had no idea what the word was meant to convey, but some members of the Jewish community have charged that his meeting with Arafat served as a “Trojan horse” to undermine Israel’s security.
Police said they are investigating the case as a hate crime, but did not identify any suspects at this time.
In April of last year, a live pig was delivered to the home of Paul Conrad, editorial cartoonist of the Los Angeles Times, whose perceived anti-Israel cartoons had incurred the wrath of many Jews.
The incident was organized by an otherwise unknown group calling itself People United Against Jew-Hatred, which answered to the same phone number as the Jewish Defense League.
An inquiry to the Los Angeles home of Irv Rubin, national chairman of the JDL, was answered by his wife, Shirley, who said her husband was unavailable. But she said that “it’s ridiculous to call this a hate crime.”
Sheinbaum and his wife, Betty, told police that the carcass was left outside their home on New Year’s Day, when the couple were away.
He commented that the act was the work of “some people whose quality is reflected by their own action.”
The 68-year-old economist and publisher conceded that “a lot of my fellow Jews are very upset that I met with Yasir Arafat.”
Some critics took particular exception to a widely published photo showing Sheinbaum with his arm draped around the PLO leader’s shoulder.
Sheinbaum is a longtime fund-raiser and activist for the Democratic Party and a regent of the University of California.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
