Ocean Freeholders Label Facebook Group As Anti-Semitic

TOMS RIVER, NJ — An Ocean County group with a growing Facebook page has been denounced by the Ocean County Board of Freeholders, who adopted a resolution on Wednesday calling the site anti-Semitic and urging its administrators to reveal their identities.

"While the Board of Chosen Freeholders recognize the right of free speech to all Americans, the conduct of the creators and administrators of 'Rise Up Ocean County' is contrary to the goals of American free society and liberty," the resolution reads in part, and goes on to condemn "such hate speech."

Administrators of the Rise Up Ocean County Facebook page, which has more than 7,000 members, say their concerns are not about religion, but about the effects of overdevelopment on Ocean County and of fair application of laws.

"Our group and anti-Semitism and hate are not synonymous," an administrator of the group said in a telephone interview with Patch. The administrator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the group's administrators — there are nine, including two who are Orthodox Jews — spend a great deal of time policing the page for comments that are anti-Semitic and removing them. "I would like to ask them (the government officials passing the resolutions) how much time they have spent on the page."

The group, created in October 2018, has posted a number of reports about information it says it has uncovered on topics pertaining to development in Ocean County.

Development and the growth of Lakewood in particular — and the impact of that growth on neighboring towns — has been a hot topic for a few years, and it's also a very touchy subject. Lakewood's population has skyrocketed in the last 20 years, from just under 61,000 in 2000 to more than 110,000 2018, according to U.S. Census figures. Lakewood town leaders are projecting that number will more than double by 2030, to more than 230,000, the Asbury Park Press reported in 2017.

As a result, the need for housing has become critical. That has led to conflicts with neighboring towns as those towns have wrestled with ways to control the amount of development. In Toms River, the township spent $10 million in 2016 to buy and preserve open space in the North Dover section. The township also banned real estate solicitation ban in parts of town closest to Lakewood. The friction over development issues led to a federal discrimination lawsuit and an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice that resulted in a judgment against the township.

Rise Up Ocean County says its concerns are about the ongoing development issues and the potential impacts on the environment and on the towns themselves. Every housing development that is proposed in the northern portion of Toms River meets with questions about its effects on traffic on Route 9 in particular, which Toms River officials have repeatedly said is sorely neglected by the state and cannot accommodate current traffic levels.

"Understanding that Lakewood cannot possibly support the housing and infrastructure needs, we acknowledge the urgency to expand beyond the boundaries of that community," the group's Facebook page says. "We also acknowledge that corruption of our political system has allowed development in Lakewood at an unprecedented rate and frankly in an unsafe manner. What has occurred is tragic, we exist to insure that what has happened there cannot happen elsewhere in Ocean County."

To that end, the group says it intends to release a documentary titled "OC2030," which it says delves into the issues of development and its impact, along with what the group alleges is corruption surrounding the matters.

The group has been under fire from commenters as anti-Semitic almost since its inception. But it was the posting of a short video ahead of the release of the documentary that has ignited public outrage. The video, a trailer for the documentary, showed a group of Orthodox children behind a chain-link fence at a school in Lakewood, with a narrator discussing the potential impacts of the population growth. It also included a rewrite of the famous Martin Niemöller poem, "First they came for the socialists," which he penned after he was freed from a concentration camp after seven years under Nazi rule.

The video was immediately decried as evoking images of the Holocaust.

Rise Up Ocean County has since removed the video from its Facebook page, but that has not stopped formal action protesting the group.

The Lakewood Township Committee in early February passed resolution condemning the video and Rise Up Ocean County, and on Feb. 14, a group of officials and faith leaders spoke at a press conference in Jackson, urging the township council there to pass a similar resolution.

The Jackson council did not take action, but the press conference, led by the Simon Wiesenthal Center's eastern regional director, Michael Cohen, was an opportunity for local officials to issue a rebuke. State Sen. Robert Singer, who represents the district that covers both Jackson and Lakewood, delivered the most stinging remarks, blistering the group over its unwillingess to reveal the identities of its administrators and over the video.

"If you're so proud of what you're saying, put your name on it," Singer said. "Call them what they are, they are anti-Semites. They deserve that term."

"I always say an anti-Semite is also a racist and a racist is also an anti-Semite. They go hand-in-hand," he said. "We must speak out against anti-Semitism."

Singer was called out by name on the Rise Up page in a Feb. 4 post that accused him of conflicts of interest.

The Rise Up group, in a Facebook post about the video, said: "When the video was created we did so with the intent of communicating the same message that complacency is complicity and we believed that the accompanying images captured that message. We certainly did not intend to draw a moral equivalency between the Holocaust and current events in Ocean County."

"What took place under Nazi rule will forever be known as the greatest human tragedy in the history of mankind," the post said, "whereas what is taking place in Ocean County is nothing more than a difference of opinion regarding the proper level of population growth."

"Although we stand by the message that complacency is complicity, we also recognize that Pastor Niemöller's words may have different meaning to different people. To the extent that we angered, upset or insulted some, we do apologize," the group wrote.

While the Jackson council did not take action, the freeholders did. And the Simon Wiesenthal Center has called a press conference for 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 26, before the Toms River Township Council meeting, to call on that body to pass the resolution condemning the group.

Officials who spoke at the Jackson press conference decried the use of "unapproved video footage of Orthodox children" in the trailer. The footage in question comes from a video posted to YouTube in November 2013, and shows a group of Orthodox boys on a fenced-in playground in Lakewood. The man taking the video is on a sidewalk outside the chain-link fence, and the boys talk to him. (You can view the footage here.)

"We were not driving around taking pictures of kids," the administrator said during the telephone interview.

As for the questions about their refusal to reveal their identities, the administrator said all of the administrators are concerned for their safety and security. Some of that is concern over their employment being targeted. But some of it is concern of a more serious nature, the administrator said, citing an attack on a Lakewood couple in their home in The Fairways, an age-restricted community in Lakewood, last August.

That couple, Frederick "Rob" Robison, 66, and his wife, Patricia Robison, 64, have been vocal opponents of a proposed development at Eagle Ridge Golf Course, which has been mired in extensive legal battles but just recently was scheduled to once again go before the Lakewood Planning Board. GDSM Holdings, the developer, has a new proposal for about 1,000 residential units at the golf course.

The attack remains unsolved nearly six months later.

"This is a gated community," the administrator said, questioning how there seems to be no surveillance video footage or any information released by authorities. Lakewood police have said the incident remains under investigation but have released little else.

The administrator said the group has a significant amount of information it has uncovered in its research into development in Ocean County, information it says will demonstrate political corruption. The goal is merely to bring a halt to the rapid spread of residential development that the group says will overwhelm the area.

"This isn't about faith," the administrator said.

"We have time and again emphasized that the issues that we seek to address are not related to religion but instead are driven exclusively by behavior," the group said in another post. "We have made it abundantly clear that featuring orthodox Jewish people in our imagery is coincidental and that if the majority population in Lakewood was black, Hispanic, Muslim, Hindu, Christian or Atheist the imagery would be of the dominant population. You see, it doesn't matter WHO is responsible, it only matters that the environmental destruction, erosion of the quality of education in public schools, the continued strains on our infrastructure and the corrupting influences in our political system are all very real. And at present those debilitating conditions are being driven by a small minority of a much larger majority population in Lakewood."

You can read the resolution passed by the freeholders below.