Huckleberries Online

Update: Racists Target Lake City Man

Posted by DFO

Dec. 4, 2009 4:50 p.m. • 20 comments

Coeur d’Alene resident Haitham Joudeh woke to a call from the Coeur d’Alene Police Department on Friday morning telling him of the racist graffiti that was painted on his truck sometime after midnight. He talked about the incident that happened on the corner of Third Street and Coeur d’Alene Avenue today. Haitham is a Muslim of Middle Eastern descent. He currently has a $25 million lawsuit against the county pending in which he alleges that a storage project he proposed for Mica Bay was turned down by county commissioners because of his ethnicity and religion. KHQ story here. (Kathy Plonka/SR)

A Coeur d’Alene man of Middle Eastern descent left his pickup parked downtown Thursday night and returned to find it spray-painted with swastikas and a racial slur and a front tire slashed. The Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations counts the incident as the seventh hate crime perpetrated in the Inland Northwest since May, co-founder Tony Stewart said Friday. Haitham Joudeh, 33, who is a Muslim of Jordanian descent, was celebrating a friend’s birthday Thursday and left his black Ford F350 truck parked at the corner of Third Street and Coeur d’Alene Avenue. Friends drove Joudeh and his wife home around midnight, he said. In the morning, he was notified by police that his truck had been vandalized. Two swastikas were painted on it along with a slur urging him to “go home”/Alison Boggs, SR. More here.

Question: There have been 7 hate crimes in the Inland Northwest since May. What has triggered this recent epidemic of hate crimes locally?

20 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

Phaedrus on December 04 at 2:14 p.m.
Just ignore it and it’ll go away. We can keep our head in the sand and not look at such unpleasantness.
nic on December 04 at 2:18 p.m.
Yup, nowthat we’ve elected a black man as president, there’s no such thing as racism.

/sarcasm off.
nic on December 04 at 2:19 p.m.
Although, I’m trying to figure out why the vandals painted the n-word on the truck. Is it because his truck is black? I’m confused.
DFO on December 04 at 2:27 p.m.
Sorry, Nic, I expanded the cutline to include the fact that Haitham is a Muslim of Middle Eastern descent.
Sisyphus on December 04 at 2:28 p.m.
The anti-Muslim rhetoric on the right has come home to roost.
poolman on December 04 at 2:34 p.m.
This might sound a little radical – I believe we need to start controlling the sale of aerosol spray paint. It should not be sold to anyone under the age of 18 without valid identification. Records should be kept for all purchases that link back to the can of spray paint. Similar to what recently started doing with OTC medications containing Pseudoephedrine. Or exactly what we do with the purchase of 2-4-D herbicide. Also – those caught doing graffiti should have a mandatory sentence of cleaning up other graffiti.
Smacky on December 04 at 2:44 p.m.
Poolman, I think the law in CA is that very limit….and you can see how well that works if you visit.
moscow_minidoka on December 04 at 2:47 p.m.
How about banning the sales of aerosol paint to people who are so stupid as to hurl racial epithets that don’t even apply to the victim?
Smacky on December 04 at 2:58 p.m.
MM, not defending the slur, but it didn’t just have the ‘N’ word, it was preceded by “Sand”, so to the scum of our society, it would apply to this unfortunate victim.
zelda on December 04 at 3:49 p.m.
For those who think that this kind of expression is committed only by trailer-trash denizens, I can testify that I’ve heard it live, in person from the mouths of some of Spokane’s most prominent businessmen. When I was growing up, it wasn’t proper for a kid to tell your friend’s dad, “Hey, you’re a racist.” Some of these guys are still alive and continue to be influential. The hatred burns for generations like a coal mine fire.
hmoffsuite on December 04 at 3:51 p.m.
I’m curious what the real issue is here. In North Idaho, I think people ‘hate’ somebody more, who would disturb a perfect, quiet, peaceful rural setting much more than they would ‘hate’ because of ethnicity or religion. I’m familiar with Mica Flats and can understand why these folks don’t like the idea of wanting to commercialize their neighborhood. It was more likely turned down by the land use folks because it didn’t fit in. This reminds me of the proposed resort above Beauty Bay. Chateau d’ whatever. Turned down because it was not good for the area. I agreed 100% (and I am generally a pro growth guy for the economic benefits). Then the folks filed a discrimination suit against the city and she played ‘her’ race card. She was Black and from Vegas, baby. So, could be this incident here was motivated by something other that the normal reasons. I think this guy is wasting his time by suing. Consider the jury pool.
OrangeTV on December 04 at 4:00 p.m.
Ugh, this makes me want to puke! I am getting to the tipping point about this kind of thing ruining our beautiful part of the world - so sick of it! I’m ready to organize some sort of call to action and fight this kind of garbage. The frustration lies in finding an effective solution that hasn’t already been tried in this area (without getting arrested), and these cowards are so shadowy that they’ll continue these moronic acts no matter how vocally anti-racist the good citizens of this area are. Anyone that wants to publicly lead any kind of anti-hate action risks becoming victimized themselves, and I’d bet many are afraid to associate themselves with any sort of human rights fight out of fear. Argh, something must be done!
zelda on December 04 at 4:10 p.m.
You have some good points, hmoffsuite. I’m familiar with Mica Flats also and I’ve heard about some near-brawls during meetings at the Grange Hall. I think N. Idaho people are belligerent and overly prone to use force to display they are standing their ground. When someone challenges them who also is an ethnic minority, bad things happen in the name of preserving the status quo. And if the challenger is perceived to be somewhat of a s**t-disturber with money, look out.

OK, these are sweeping generalizations, but my experience with that area is that people don’t like a lot of change because the future becomes unpredictable in ways that can hurt instead of help. They’re mostly poor and lack the financial resources to keep things they don’t like from happening. That’s my armchair sociology assessment.
spokelooneh on December 04 at 4:48 p.m.
I traveled through Mica Flats a few weeks ago. Parts of it reminded me of Appalachia, then again, so do parts of the Spokane Valley.
factchecker on December 04 at 4:50 p.m.
Hope this guy sticks around and knows that majority of us aren’t like that.
nic on December 04 at 6:49 p.m.
“I’m ready to organize some sort of call to action and fight this kind of garbage.”

Fantastic idea OTV. Let me know if you get to that point, I’m game for lending a hand.
Fuschia on December 04 at 9:02 p.m.
Sorry to see a young man like that fall victim to Alopecia.
Me on December 05 at 10:02 a.m.
Zelda and Spoke - wow. That is all I can say at this point is just wow.
Stickman on December 05 at 4:49 p.m.
It’s North Idaho, and we will see it till the sun doesn’t shine.
wheels on December 07 at 6:43 a.m.
Unfortunately Stick you’re right.

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D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.