David Tenenbaum (Facebook photo)
By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
DETROIT — For the past 33 years, David Tenenbaum has worked as a civilian engineer at the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, known as TACOM, near 11 Mile and Mound roads in Warren, a suburb of Detroit.
And for a good part of that time, he tells the Detroit Jewish News, he was subjected to vile anti-Semitism from co-workers and from the Army itself. At one point, he was falsely accused by co-workers of being a spy for Israel, something that eventually triggered a painful FBI probe.
Tenenbaum, a Southfield, Mich., resident, was eventually cleared. And in 2008, the Inspector General found that Tenenbaum was “subjected to unusual and unwelcome scrutiny because of his faith and ethnic background, a practice that would undoubtedly fit a definition of discrimination.”
Still, til this day, he says he has been purposely underutilized, subjected to isolation and remains a pariah at work.
Now, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and Michigan Democrat Sen. Gary Peters, a committee member, have sent a letter to Secretary of Defense James Mattis asking that he provide closure and relief for the 60-year-old Tenenbaum. They want the Army to stop any workplace retaliation, and stop limiting his opportunities.
One of the reason he was hired at TACOM was his familiarity with Israel and his ability to speak Hebrew with Israeli counterparts.
The Jewish News reports:
Everything fell apart, however, when some of Tenenbaum’s local co-workers secretly and falsely accused him of spying for Israel in 1996. Tenenbaum later discovered they had been secretly accusing him of such spying as early as 1992. He found out they would observe him, an Orthodox Jew, carrying his kosher lunch to work every day in a backpack and they would fantasize that the backpack could be used to smuggle classified documents out of the building.
Some co-workers didn’t like him, he said, because he was a diligent employee who didn’t goof off on the job or join co-workers at restaurants for lunch or at bars after office hours. Some co-workers made anti-Semitic remarks behind his back, and a bag of pork rinds was once placed on his desk.
He recounts that one reason people said they suspected him of spying for Israel was that he spoke Hebrew with the Israelis — ironically one of his major qualifications for being hired at TACOM in the first place.
The letter by the two senators says:
“DOD’s lack of a remedy in accordance with the Inspector General’s findings sends a message that DOD is not concerned with even the most egregious cases of discrimination and employee retaliation,
