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Army Private Subjected to Anti-Semitic Attacks Brutally Beaten By Soldiers
A U.S. Army soldier was brutally beaten by other soldiers in his platoon earlier this month following two incidents in which a drill sergeants allegedly used anti-Semitic slurs to address the soldier.

Pvt. Michael Handman, 20, who has just completed his fifth week of basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, was recently released from a hospital where he was treated for a concussion, facial wounds, and severe oral injuries following the attack, according to the boy’s father, Jonathan Handman.

The soldier’s father said he received a disturbing telephone call last week from his son’s commanding officer “to tell me that my son is OK and out of the hospital.”

“Apparently he got his clocked cleaned and beat to the point that he was sent to the hospital by ambulance with a concussion,” Jonathan Handman said in an interview. “He was in bad enough shape that they did a head and neck [CAT] scan.”

Jonathan Handman said his son was lured into a laundry room at the Fort Benning Army base by other soldiers, knocked unconscious and beaten while he lay on the ground.

Michael Handman enlisted in the Army earlier this year. He wears a yarmulke with his uniform, which apparently led his drill sergeants to refer to him as a “fucking Jew” and a “kike” and a demand that he remove the yarmulke during dinner, according to his father. The soldier recently wrote a letter to his mother Randi recounting the anti-Semitism he has endured by his drill sergeants and members of his platoon since arriving for basic training at Fort Benning....

...While attending the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs in the 1970s, Weinstein was subjected to a virulent series of anti-Semitic attacks which he describes in gripping detail in his book, With God On Our Side: One Man's War Against An Evangelical Coup in America's Military (St. Martins Press, 2006).

Recently, in fact, Weinstein launched MRFF more than three years ago after his sons, Casey and Curtis, also U.S. Air Force Academy graduates, told him they were harassed about their Jewish faith and urged by other cadets and Air Force officials to convert to Christianity. Weinstein's daughter-in-law, Amanda, likewise an Air Force Academy graduate and a Christian, also experienced wrongful religious pressure from Christian fundamentalist officers at the Academy. Weinstein said his son Curtis, like Michael Handman, was also called “A fucking Jew.”

Recently, Weinstein's family was the subject of a much-publicized hate crime attack where, among other things, his house was marked with a swastika and a crucifix....