Russia: Duma’s Deputy Speaker speaks against Jews

Via Jewish Press:

The Russian Federation of Jewish Communities (FJC) on Tuesday accused the Duma’s Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy of undermining international peace and called on the Parliament to rebuke him for his statements concerning the handing over of St. Petersburg’s St. Isaac’s Cathedral to the Russian Orthodox Church, Interfax reported.

Tolstoy told a press conference that “the people who are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who pulled down our temples, and jumped out from the Pale of Settlement to the revolver in 1917, and today are working in very respectable places – on the radio, in the legislatures, continue the work of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers.”

“We usually hear such statements from irresponsible instigators of anti-Semitic campaigns,” the FJC stated. “When we hear this from the mouth of the State Duma deputy speaker at an official press conference, it directly undermines inter-ethnic peace in the country and stirs up tension.”

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European members of UN Security Council support resolution denying Jewish rights to Jerusalem

Via Reuters:

The Obama administration on Friday allowed the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements, defying pressure from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as well as Israel and several U.S. senators who urged Washington to use its veto.

The resolution was put forward at the 15-member council for a vote on Friday by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal a day after Egypt withdrew it under pressure from Israel and the U.S. president-elect. Israel and Trump had called on the United States to veto the measure.

It was adopted with 14 votes in favor, to a round of applause. It is the first resolution the Security Council has adopted on Israel and the Palestinians in nearly eight years.

The European members of the UN Security Council are Spain and Ukraine, along with the permanent members - France, Russia and the UK.

The countries that voted for the resolution say that this has been their policy all along.  Indeed, this is not new.  Europe does not think Jews have any rights to Jerusalem or to Judaism's most holy sites.

Less than a month ago, all European members of the UN voted in favor of yet another resolution ignoring Jewish ties to Jerusalem.

Russia: "If we talk about domestic anti-Semitism and attitudes in society in general, there is no decline there"

Via RBTH:

However, the conference's participants agreed that anti-Semitism still exists in Russia. "Open forms of anti-Semitism have weakened, but anti-Semitism has not disappeared," Gudkov said. "The entire structure of anti-Semitist sentiments has persisted. Anti-Semitism has simply entered a ‘dormant phase.'"
Monika-Yevgeniya Kuznetsova, 26, an ethnic Russian Jew, told RBTH that she often has to deal with anti-Semitism, which, for example, is expressed in people's reactions to Hebrew textbooks.

"Once I was in the metro, studying Hebrew," Monika-Yevgeniya recalled. "A guy spoke to me, seeking to get acquainted. After learning that I study Hebrew, he changed his expression and said angrily: 'Our grandfathers died because of those nasty Jews, how can you learn their language?'"

"If we talk about domestic anti-Semitism and attitudes in society in general, there is no decline there, the situation has not changed," Alexander Kargin, director of the office of the Likud World Organisation (Likud Olami) in Russia, told RBTH. "It's just a matter of degrees. Against the background of Europe, where anti-Semitic moods are growing, the situation in Russia is undoubtedly better."

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Russia: Government spokeswoman says Jews behind Trump win and mocks Jews

From The Times of Israel:

Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, has reportedly suggested that Donald Trump won the US election because of support from “the Jews.”

Zakharova made the comments over the weekend on a nationally televised talk show, saying that it was Jewish money that tipped the election for Trump, Radio Free Europe reported.

“If you want to know what will happen in America, who do you have to talk to? You have to talk to the Jews, naturally. But of course,” Zakharova said while on Sunday Evening, a show hosted by pro-Kremlin television personality Vladimir Solovyov, the report said.

Zakharova then reportedly adopted “a cartoonish Jewish accent” while impersonating her alleged interlocutor.

“They told me: ‘Marochka (a Russian diminutive for Maria), you understand, of course, we’ll donate to Clinton. But we’ll donate twice as much to the Republicans.’ That was it! The matter was settled, for me personally,” she said, according to Radio Free Europe.

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Russia: College Questionnaire Asks Students If Jews Are Responsible for the ‘National Crisis’

Via Moscow Times:

Students at the small Moscow State Education College were recently handed a questionnaire with six simple, increasingly bizarre questions. The first question simply asked individuals to identify themselves as a grade schooler, a college student, or a teacher. The next question was a bit more personal: “What’s your ethnicity?” And then: “How do you feel about persons of other ethnicities?”

Things started to go off the rails a bit with the fourth question: “How do you feel about the Jews who live in Moscow?” The final two questions were even stranger: “How willing are you to talk to them [Moscow’s Jews]?” and most shockingly “Are Jews involved in the nation’s current crisis?”

When news of these questions leaked to the public, those expecting to find a vicious anti-Semite behind the quiz were soon surprised to discover that the teacher responsible is Jewish herself. According to college administrators, she designed the questionnaire as part of her class curriculum in ecological studies, where one of the research focuses is ethnography. The teacher decided to put her own ethnicity at the center of a classroom exercise, distributing the questions to a room of 16-year-olds. 

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Russia: Guard injured in attempted attack on Moscow synagogue

Via JTA:

Russian police beefed up security around a central synagogue of Moscow following what they said was an attempted attack by an armed resident of the capital in which a security guard sustained mild injuries.

The incident occurred on Saturday at the Moscow Choral Synagogue, where the alleged attacker, carrying a canister of gasoline and a firearm, lightly wounded a security guard during a struggle, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. Police detained the suspect, who threatened to burn down the building, according to the report.

The Moskovskij Komsomolets daily identified the injured security guard as Oleg Demshin, 35. He suffered injuries to his hand, the paper reported. Demshin, a father of one, prevented the suspect from entering the building and other security guards overpowered him at the entrance, according to the report.  He has worked at the synagogue for two years.

The attacker was Ivan Lebedev, a 40-year-old man with a history of mental illness, Moskovskij Komsomolets reported.

Approximately 150 people, including the chief rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt, were in the building when the attempted attack happened, Goldschmidt wrote on Facebook Saturday. Goldschmidt wrote the suspect was carrying a pistol.

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Russia: Opponents of Chabad synagogue bury pig's head at site

Via CFCA:  In Perm, opponents to the new Chabad synagogue buried a pig's head on the site where the synagogue is to be built, and uploaded a clip of them doing so to youtube.

The clip claims that this Chabad center will serve like the Chabad center in Dnipropetrovsk, which was where the "head of Chabad in Ukraine", Ihor Kolomoyskyi, commanded the elimination of Russians in Novorossiya (ie, Ukraine).


See also: Synagogue vandalized with racist stickers, Opponents of Chabad synagogue say movement is anti-Christian, funding war in Ukraine, Protesters demand ban on Chabad movement

Russia: Sole liberal opposition MP accused of Jewish-Ukraininan conspiracy

Via VOA News:

Days before an election expected to extend Kremlin dominance over Russia's parliament, the sole liberal opposition member, Dmitry Gudkov, is waging what he fears is a losing battle for political survival.

His re-election campaign ran out of money this week, he cannot get TV air time, his meetings are disrupted by people shouting him down, and a fake newspaper handed out to voters has cast him as a U.S. stooge involved in a shadowy Jewish-Ukrainian conspiracy to seize power.

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UK: "People who didn't know that I could understand them sometimes said very harsh things against Jews"

An interview with a Jewish Polish-Russian family who recently made Aliyah to Israel.  The family had lived in the UK for a few years, when their son decided he's moving to Israel. 

The mother says: "This reminded us that there had also been various unpleasant incidents in London.  When we walked in the park, seven thugs threw Avraham's hat off and laughed, for example. There was antisemitism. I know Polish and Russian and people who didn't know that I could understand them sometimes said very harsh things against Jews.  And there was once a march of 70,000 people who wanted London free of Jews."

Russia: RT's readers cheer at Tel Aviv building collapse

A multi-story parking building under construction collapsed yesterday in Tel Aviv.

Commentators on RT's site responded with joy to the news.  Some examples:

"Surely the crane is anti-semitic"

"SQUASHED kosha spaghetti and pasta"

"the headline should read 6 trillion feared dead"

""Will be blamed on the Palestinians....watch this space..............."

"With all the bad news in the world everyday, it's nice to see something different, for a change."

"NO Sympathy for israelis....... not a jot"

"Lols, another Jewish builder trying to save a shekel or two on the materials."

"Yay K!kes are DEAD !!! lol ZioTechnology just collapses ha ha ha"

And so forth.  The comments are still online.

Russia: Vandals wrecked the memorial site for Holocaust victims in Pskov region

Via CFCA:

Pskov Region - vandals wrecked the memorial site "Golubaya Dacha" in the Nevelski area of Pskov province. The incident was reported on the Pskov Region news.

The Damage was discovered on August 28 by a Nevel resident, Natalia Gloshnovha. She says when she returned from a trip to the woods she decided to visit "Golubaya Dacha." This was my first visit at the memorial site. We arrived to the monument and were shocked from what we have seen. Tombstones were knocked over, most of the lilac bushes planted by school students this spring, were cut down. How come no one cares?".

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Russia: TV broadcaster blames Jews for sinking of Titanic, Chernobyl and 9/11

REN TV is one of the largest private federal TV channels in Russia.

Via Everyday Antisemitism:

Moscow’s REN-TV aired an antisemitic documentary last Friday at prime time hours.

The documentary was a reworking of a 2012 documentary that blamed the sinking of the Titanic on a conspiracy which one commentator said was a “reanimation” of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and one viewer described as having a “clearly expressed anti-Semitic subtext”.

The documentary suggested a “group of 300” Jews, freemasons and “illluminati” had sunk the ship to provoke an international crisis and install themselves as leaders of a world government, a central theme of antisemitism conspiracy theories.

The 2012 version of the documentary used the past tense, suggesting that the attempt was in the past and ultimately unsuccessful. However, REN-TV’s airing of the documentary was edited to use the present tense, as well as to link the conspiracy to various more recent events, including the Chernobyl disaster, 9/11, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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Russia: Chabad leader slams state-funded TV for ‘blood libel’

Via Times of Israel:

A Chabad-Lubavitch leader condemned a state-funded channel’s airing of Palestinian allegations that an Israeli rabbi approved the poisoning of Palestinian wells.

Rabbi Alexander Boroda, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, said the RT network’s June 27 report on the issue repeated unfounded allegations reminiscent of the medieval “blood libel” against Jews.

The RT report referred to recent reports in Arab and Muslim media which claimed that a West Bank rabbi issued an “advisory opinion” allowing Jewish settlers to poison Palestinian water. A version of the story previously appeared in the state-run Turkish press agency Anadolu, credited to a Palestinian reporter in Ramallah. Neither the rabbi in the story nor the organization he is described as representing appears to exist.

The report came a week after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas repeated the unfounded allegations at the European Parliament. Abbas later acknowledged that the charges were “baseless.”

In medieval Europe, Jews were often accused of poisoning wells to spread disease among Christians. This recurrent theme led to several major pogroms against Jews.

“It is surprising that the modern Russian television channel produces similar plots,” Boroda was quoted as saying in a statement Friday on the news site Jewish.Ru. These blood libels, he added, “were the product of a sick imagination” and led to brutal violence.

“In this case we are talking a falsification which has already been refuted,” added Boroda, who also noted Abbas’ office had apologized for his remarks. The report on RT, Boroda said, “is not an unfortunate exception, but rather the rule.” The channel, he said, “regularly features stories about the alleged persecution of Arabs by Jews – attacks and house demolitions without reporting these are the houses of terrorists who kill civilians.”

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Russia: "My country of birth never accepted me, so why should I accept it now?"

Margarita Gokun Silver@The Guardian:

In the famous Café Gijón, one of the oldest cafes of Madrid, I recently told a friend how much I am struggling to make it as an artist in Spain. When I present my portfolio I introduce myself as an American, in hopes of awakening some kind of interest. My friend looked at me quizzically. “Why don’t you say you are a Russian-American?” she asks. “It’ll sound a lot more interesting.”

But I have never called myself Russian – even though I grew up in Russia. When I left Moscow, the city of my birth, at 20, the country still carried the name and the map coordinates of the Soviet Union. I surrendered my red, Soviet passport at Sheremetyevo airport knowing I wouldn’t be allowed back. Along with my family I was immigrating to the United States as part of the second wave of Jewish immigration and under the rule of no-right-of-return. As far as I was concerned I didn’t need to come back. I was done with the USSR.

We left in 1989, several weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall and a year after I first broached the subject of immigrating with my parents. At first they balked at the proposal, but, with the Perestroika-induced rise in Russia’s beloved tradition, antisemitism, they soon agreed.

My parents quit their two stable, engineering jobs; we left behind our apartment and everything we’d accumulated during our life in Moscow. We boarded the plane with two suitcases and $80 each. For my parents – much more sober than I was about the prospects of relocating to another culture, another language and another political system – the move was a gamble.
 

or me it was a dream. Not only was I leaving behind the constant stream of antisemitic slurs thrown either directly at me or printed in the Soviet press, but I was also discarding the notion that my future was tied to the engineering realm. In the USSR the profession of an engineer was the most accessible career path for Jews. There was no question in my parents’ minds that I’d follow suit – just like they did and their parents did before them. And even though I hated engineering, there was no question in my mind either. I knew there wasn’t much I could do about it.

On arrival to the United States I quickly learned that the sky was the limit. My US passport – unlike my former Soviet one – didn’t list my ethnic origin. It didn’t preclude me from entering professions deemed too dangerous to entrust to Jews. I went into a field that required me to travel abroad, a feat either never or rarely afforded to Jewish citizens in the USSR. No longer a Jew among a sea of Russians, I was now like everyone else. I was an American.

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Russia: Arson attempt against synagogue under construction

Via CFCA:

Arkhangelsk - Vandals tried to set fire the under construction synagogue building in the city of Arkhangelsk, by throwing a Molotov cocktail at the building. The synagogue didn’t catch fire. Police are investigating.

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Russia: RT headline blames terror attack 'ultra-Orthodox Jewish' gunmen

Via Algemeiner:

Kremlin-affiliated news outlet Russia Today (RT) takes first place for the most misleading headline in all media reporting on yesterday’s bloody terror attack in Tel Aviv, spokesmen for two prominent media watchdog groups told The Algemeiner on Thursday.

In its initial report on the attack, RT ran an article under the headline “2 ‘ultra-Orthodox Jewish’ gunmen kill 1, injure 8 in Tel Aviv.” In response to the portrayal, Simon Plosker, managing editor at Honest Reporting, said that RT ”wins the prize” for “most appalling headline.” Gilead Ini, a senior research analyst  at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) described RT’s “short-lived headline” as “dramatically absurd.”

“If anyone ever considered RT, the Kremlin’s propaganda outfit, to be a credible news organization, this headline proves the opposite,” said Plosker. According to Ini, the headline “was quickly changed after CAMERA and others drew attention” to it.

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France: Cartoonist Zeon wins Iranian Holocaust-denial contest

French cartoonist Zeon is the winner of Iran's 2nd International Holocaust cartoon contest in the 'cartoon' category.  Other Europeans won special mentions in both the cartoon  and caricature categories.


Via Teheran Times:

Speaking at the ceremony, the secretary of the competition, Masud Shojaei-Tabatabai said, “One of the subjects we asked cartoonists to focus on was why the Western countries arrest any scholar who doubts the Holocaust while they put no limit on freedom of speech in other categories.”

“The other subject was why Palestinians should pay for the Holocaust… we are concerned about the modern Holocaust that is being sought by the Zionist regime, which is known as a child killer government,” he added.

Zeon (France, first prize)

Misha (Russia, special prize)

Luc Descheemaeker (Belgium , special prize)

Hicabi Demirci (Turkey, special prize)

Santiagu (Portugal, special prize)

Russia: Rock band 'Alisa' accused of antisemitism

Via Arutz 7:

A concert by a controversial rock band has divided Israel’s Russian-speaking community, pitting fans against those who argue the band should be banned from Israel over allegations of anti-Semitism.

Konstantin Kinchev, the lead singer of ‘Alisa’ rejects charges that the band is anti-Semitic.

Describing himself as an “enlightened Russian nationalist”, Kinchev has long fought accusations of Nazi sympathies, suing a Russian newspaper for defamation in 1987.

But Alisa makes no secret of its use of Fascist and Nazi imagery in its music and performances.
Swastikas, the Hitler salute, and other symbols are regular parts of Alisa’s live shows. Lyrics of the band’s songs, critics argue, are also loaded with thinly veiled references to Jews and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Despite this, however, the band has acquired a following in Israel, particularly among Russian-speakers. A concert scheduled for May 14th has already sold out. Nor is this month’s show the band’s first appearance in Israel.

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Russia: Protesters demand ban on Chabad movement

As previously reported, the opponents of Chabad in Perm claim it's a radical, anti-Christian group and accuse it of helping fund the war in Ukraine.



Via Times of Israel:

Demonstrators protesting the allocation of land to the Jewish community in the Russian city of Perm demanded the outlawing of the Chabad movement.

More than 100 people attended the rally near the area that municipal authorities in Perm, which is located 870 miles east of Moscow, designated for transfer without charge to the local Jewish community that is headed by a Chabad rabbi. They sang a song titled “Holy War,” a patriotic tune widely identified with Russia’s fight against Nazi Germany.

Unrest around the Jewish community of Perm has been brewing for years amid accusations made in 2013 that the local Jewish community made unauthorized use of a local theater. Unidentified individuals that year tried to set fire to the local synagogue.

On Saturday, the protesters showed up with signs reading “Chabad out” and “liberate us Russians from Chabad.” One protester held a placard that read “Chabad settlement is over the line: 1547,” an apparent reference to the decision that year by Ivan the Terrible, a grand prince of Moscow, to ban Jews from entering or living in his kingdom because they “bring about great evil.”

But participants insisted they were protesting against Chabad specifically and not against Jews in general, the Russian news site Ura reported.

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France, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, Russia support UNESCO resolution denying Jewish ties to Temple Mount, Western Wall

Via Jerusalem Post:

UNESCO’s Executive Board in Paris on Friday adopted a resolution whose language ignored Jewish ties to the holy religious site of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall area in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The broad ranging resolution condemned Israeli actions in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. But the resolution focused in large part on Israeli actions with regard to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall Plaza.

All three major monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christian and Islam — consider the Temple Mount to be a holy site.

But the UNESCO resolution referred to the Temple Mount area solely as the Al-Aksa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif, except for two references to the Western Wall Plaza that were put in parenthesis.

The text also referred to the plaza area by the Western Wall as the Al-Buraq Plaza.

(...)

UNESCO called on Israel not to restrict Muslim worshipers from accessing the Al-Aksa Mosque site and condemned the violence that occurred there in the fall, but solely focused on Israeli actions in those incidents and not on the violence of the Muslim rioters at the site.

It condemned Israeli plans to build a prayer space for Women of the Wall by Robinson’s Arch, although it did not mention the group by name.

The resolution also charged that Israel had planed “Jewish fake graves” in other Muslim cemeteries located on Wakf property east and south of the Al-Aksa mosque.

The 58-member board approved the resolution 19 with 33 votes in favor, six against and 17 abstention. Two countries, Ghana and Turkmenistan were absent all together.

Those countries who opposed it outright were: Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

France, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, Russia and Slovenia were among those countries who supported the resolution.

A second resolution that more globally condemned Israeli actions, passed with 45 votes in favor, 1 vote against and 11 abstentions.

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