A student minority officer at a British university told a Jewish student to “be like Israel and cease to exist.”
Omar Chowdhury, the Black and Ethnic Minorities officer at Bristol University, in southwest England, also told Izzy Posen to “fuck off” and that “your comments are like Israeli settlements: always popping up where they are not wanted.”
Chowdhury ran for his student union position on a platform of “zero tolerance for racism,” the London-based Jewish Chronicle reported.
A student association at Oxford University passed a non-binding motion to effectively ban all kosher meat.
The Junior Common Room, a student government association at Oxford’s Somerville College, called on the college to only serve meat that has been stunned before being killed, according to the BBC. That requirement would exclude kosher meat, which cannot be stunned before slaughter.
A spokesman for the college said the college is looking into the request, but will also be expanding its kosher and halal meat offerings.
The Berlin-based Center for the Research of Antisemitism faced a flurry of criticism this week from Israeli and German experts for employing a researcher who worked for a British organization that promotes the London version of the al-Quds Day rally. The rally calls for the destruction of the Jewish state each year.
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Jerusalem office for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post, “You would imagine something like this would be done in Iran. Set up an institute to study antisemitism and invite antisemites to work there.”
The center, which is part of the Technical University of Berlin, hired Luis Hernandez Aguilar, who was previously listed as a research officer of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, a main organizer of the Iranian regime-sponsored al-Quds Day march.
According to a June report in the London-based The Jewish Chronicle, Hezbollah flags were on display at the march in London, where one speaker said Israel should be “wiped from the map.” Shaykh Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour claimed Zionists’ “days are numbered,” wrote the paper. Speakers at the al-Quds march have also spread wild anti-Jewish conspiracy theories over the years.
If Jews in France have long had a charged — at times painful — relationship with their country dating back centuries, they now face a new, particularly pernicious reality, says prominent French Jewish intellectual and writer Alain Finkielkraut.read more
“I’m extremely worried — as much for French Jews as I’m worried for the future of France,” says Finkielkraut, during a recent interview with The Times of Israel in his Paris apartment. “The anti-Semitism we’re now experiencing in France is the worst I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, and I’m convinced it’s going to get worse.”
Sitting at a long table in his living room, whose walls are lined with tall shelves laden with books, Finkielkraut, 69, comes across as a serious, deep-thinking man. (…)
His commentary is often trenchant, especially concerning the plight of his 500,000 Jewish compatriots. Among the worrisome developments that preoccupy him is what some call “internal migration.”
“Due to the increased hostility Jews are facing, especially in certain suburbs of Paris, many feel the need to leave where they’ve lived for a long time,” says Finkielkraut, referring to a growing unease caused by virulent anti-Semitism in predominantly immigrant areas.
“In recent years, tens of thousands of Jews have moved, some to Israel, most to neighborhoods where they feel more secure. Such a situation would have been unimaginable 20 years ago. It’s without precedent in France and, what’s really terrible, it’s going to continue,” he says.
For Finkielkraut, the origin of this malaise is clear.
“It’s a terrible phenomenon linked to immigration,” he says. “And as immigration is increasing, so is the rise in this anti-Semitism. Not only does a big part of the left refuse to recognize this, but they explain to us that the immigrants are the new Jews and that it’s important to know how to welcome them as the country should have done for Jews during World War II.
“What’s crazy is the situation is going to get worse with the complicity of people who claim to have learned the lessons from the Holocaust. We are at an absolutely diabolical juncture,” Finkielkraut says.
The head of Germany’s leading Jewish organisation criticized the use of “antisemitic stereotypes” in the school textbooks.
Josef Schuster, president of The Central Council of Jews in Germany, slammed the Germany’s schools and textbook publishers for doing too little to root out the problem. Many textbook illustrations in German textbooks resemble the anti-Semitic depictions from the Nazi-era newspaper “Der Stürmer,” while at the same time failing to provide the appropriate historical context to the imagery, Schuster said.
Criticism aired by Schuster is based on a detailed study published by Germany’s Georg Eckert Institute. The study evaluated history textbooks being used in schools across the country. German weekly Der Spiegel reported the details:
“There are too many illustrations [in the textbooks] which have been shaped by antisemitic stereotypes and thus reminiscent of Der Stürmer, [and] don’t offer an objective representation,” Schuster said. Der Stürmer was an antisemitic Nazi propaganda newspaper.
“We have too many textbook that treat Judaism in a very rudimentary way,” criticized Schuster. “Judaism was not restricted to the period between 1933 an 1945. “There was Jewish life in Germany many centuries before that and fortunately we have it today. One, however, don’t see that in the textbooks.”
The content regarding the case in point deals with the persecution of the Jews during the Nazi era and the Holocaust. School textbooks often show antisemitic imagery, confirmed Dirk Sadowski, researcher at the Georg-Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research. (…)
Sadowski and his colleagues took three years to examining 84 history books of various grades and from several states and were surprised to find how simplistically the Jewish life has been depicted.
read moreJosef Schuster refers to this study when he complains that “many school textbooks take the perspective of the perpetrators, particularly when it comes to the topics of National Socialism and Shoah.” The antisemitic depictions of the Nazi-propaganda “are hardly put in the context. The antisemitic stereotype are thus reproduced, but not dealt with critique.” [Translated by the author: Vijeta Uniyal]
If Sacha Ghozlan had any doubts about whether there would be more anti-Semitic attacks in France following the March murder of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, he quickly got an answer.
Ghozlan, the president of the French Jewish Students Union (UEJF), planned to attend a rally on March 28 with more than 10,000 others in response to the murder of Mireille Knoll, who was found stabbed 11 times in her Paris apartment a few days earlier.
Hours before the gathering, Jewish students at the University of La Sorbonne in Paris found that its UEJF chapter office had been vandalized, with materials tossed on the floor and stepped on and “Death to Israel” and “Zionist racist anti-goy office,” written in French on the walls, according to videos of the office.
“At that particular time, it was very difficult to organize a gathering of the non-Jewish students,” said Ghozlan. “They refused to release a public statement [condemning the vandalism]because they didn’t want to be involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” (...)
After the vandalism, the UEJF wanted to get political leaders’ attention, so they commissioned a survey that measures attitudes among French people towards Israel and Jews. The study by the Institut français d’opinion publique, a market research firm, found that 54 percent of the respondents ages 18 to 24 believe that “Zionism is an international organization that seeks to influence the world and society in favor of Jews.”
Fifty-two percent considered Zionism a racist ideology, and 57 percent had a bad image of Israel.(…)
Jews in France and elsewhere in Europe now face not only traditional anti-Semitism from the far-right, but also from far-left parts of European society and from Muslim immigrant communities, according to Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, director of the American Jewish Committee-Europe. The focal point is a “biased view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”read more
She would like to see European governments adopt a “zero-tolerance policy” towards anti-Semitism.
“There seems to be a discrepancy between the words and the actual actions,” she said. “You will have very strong words from the president, from the prime minister, on anti-Semitism, but then you will have small incivilities or anti-Israeli demonstrations in the streets of Paris that suddenly turn sour.”
Israel has lodged an official protest to Ireland over the invitation of Leila Khaled, a convicted Palestinian plane hijacker who has continued to advocate violence against Israelis, to speak at a teachers’ club in Dublin belonging to the Irish National Teachers’ Organization.
Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan sent the protest letter to Dublin’s education minister, Richard Bruton, demanding that he cancel Khaled’s appearance, Hadashot TV reported Thursday. Khaled is scheduled to speak via video link in a public talk hosted at the club by the socialist groups Anti Imperialist Action Ireland and Lasair Dhearg.
“It is hard to understand why Ireland, which has also experienced many terror attacks, would agree to honor a terrorist at an educational event, who expresses solidarity with terror attacks and views them as a legitimate tool,” Erdan wrote.read more
Two months after Ynet first made public a Belgian textbook contained a caricature that could be construed as anti-Semitic, the country's Education Ministry announced Thursday that the upcoming edition of the book will be published without the offensive drawing.read more
A letter forwarded by Belgian Education Minister Hilde Crevits Thursday to attorney Yifa Segal, director of the International Legal Forum—who first exposed the story—notified the lawyer that after a probe and a talk with the book's publisher, the caricature will be removed starting with the book's next edition.
The minister added that, "One of the education system's goals is to bring up the younger generation to become respectable, informed citizens" and that the Flemish government only set a bar on academic achievement, leaving selection of appropriate books to each school.
The matter initially came to light in late March, when the International Legal Forum NGO was informed by parents from Bruges of a geography textbook intended for 15 year olds and approved by the country's education system.
The chapter in which the caricature appeared dealt with purported inequality in water distribution between Israelis and Palestinians residing in the West Bank. The caricature showed an overweight Jew with traditional Jewish payos (or sidelocks) asleep in a bathtub filled with water, contrasted with an old Palestinian woman with an empty water bucket.
The cartoon—which may have come from the international human rights group itself—carried a caption that read, "Amnesty International: Israel is denying Palestinians access to adequate water … While settlers enjoy lush lawns and swimming pools!"
Attorney Segal, who is deeply involved in the international struggle against the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, was astounded by a copy of the textbook she obtained and consequently sent a scathing letter to the Belgian education minister demanding the anti-Semitic caricature be removed summarily.
"The history of Palestine resembles the parasitic phenomenon in which an individual colonizes an animal or a plant and feeds on it at its expense. In the case of Palestine, the phenomenon begins with World War I and what is named the Sykes-Picot Accords, two diplomats who, on behalf of the UK and France respectively, divided their areas of influence in the Middle East on the remains of the Ottoman Empire which was then the ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The agreement was signed, in reality, on May 16th, 1916, by Paul Cambon, French Ambassador in London, and Sir Edward Gray, Secretary of State. In this context, the first stage of parasitism in Palestine is the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, in which Lord Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild, acting on behalf of the Political Committee of the Zionist Organization: (...)
The fifth stage of the parasitic enterprise is the construction by Israel from 2002 of a wall that separates the West Bank from Israel but which, by its route, includes parts of Palestinian territory, prevents Palestinians from circulating in their own country. territory, deprives them of land and impedes their access to fields, health services, schools, water, a situation condemned almost unanimously by the ICJ in its advisory opinion of 9 July 2004 (ICJ, loc cit., § 163).
The 6th stage of the parasitic enterprise - which is less of a "phase" than a consequence of the pathology of the Israeli parasitosis - lies in the armed operations carried out by Israel against the Gaza Strip, particularly the operations "Cast Lead" in 2008-2009 and "Protective Edge" in 2014, operations in response to rocket fire from Gaza and totally disproportionate as they killed and injured hundreds of Palestinian civilians. (...)
The Israeli parasite has thus settled in the Palestinian body and it is part of it just as the millions of yeasts, parasites and bacteria that occupy the human body! "Read the full article (in French) by Eric David @ The Courrier du Maghreb et l'Orient
Shocking anti-Semitic messages from a University of Manchester Physics group chat have tonight been exposed, where one student twice commented that "6 million Jews ain't enough" and another called for an invasion of Poland.
The messages were sent to a "1st Year Physics" Facebook group chat, broadcasting them to over 200 fellow students, originally reported the Mancunion.
The abhorrent conversation was initiated when a student asked the group if they would rather become an engineer or a Neo-Nazi.
Another student replied "Pfft, why you asking that? Tis an easy question. Now brb while I make some lebensraum."
Lebensraum was an ideological principle of Nazism, referring to a territorial expansion into Eastern European countries and the removal or genocide of their populations.
When another student replied "I would rather die tbh," the student that instigated the conversation told him "Don't be a Jew."
On April 12, just now, Robert Faurisson suffered one more minor legal defeat in a French court, which is good news, in a small way, for the world, and, in a bigger way, for the newspaper Le Monde. The court ruling means that, in France, you can denounce Faurisson as a “professional liar” and a “falsifier of history.” And you do not have to worry about a defamation suit—which is good news for Le Monde because, back in 1978, the editors made the insane error of judging Faurisson to be a man-with-an-idea-worth-debating, and they welcomed him into their pages. Faurisson is of course the theoretician of Holocaust denial. He contributed to Le Monde an “ideas” piece titled “The Debate Over the ‘Gas Chambers,’ ” with the extra quotation marks signifying his belief that Nazi gas chambers are a Zionist lie. And Le Monde has needed, ever since, to make the point over and again that publishing his article was a big mistake, and Faurisson is, in fact, a professional liar and a falsifier of history. The judicial ruling reinforces the point yet again. It is good. We should applaud. But it is sobering to reflect that, 40 years later, the point does need reinforcement, and Faurisson, who is a minor screwball, has had major successes in different corners of the world. And falsification of history turns out to be a factor in history.read more
The provenance of Faurisson’s ideas is altogether curious. He derived them principally from a sad-sack leftwing pacifist in France named Paul Rassinier, whose misfortune during World War II was to be arrested and tortured by the Germans, which permanently ruined his health. He was jailed in two camps, Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora, where conditions were bad. He was beaten by the SS. When he emerged, though, he explained and re-explained at book length that, even if conditions in the camps were less than good, neither were they especially terrible, and Germany’s conduct during the war was no worse than any other country’s. Germany ought not to be demonized. And the truly evil people in the camps were the Communist prisoners. And the Jews were responsible for the war.
I have sometimes wondered if Rassinier’s impulse to deny or downplay his own experience wasn’t, in some respect, normal—a pitiable but human impulse to cope with an experience of extreme suffering by denying that anything extreme has happened. But then, if Rassinier’s impulse was normal, wouldn’t there be other examples of people responding to catastrophic suffering in the same way? It is hard to find other examples, though. The literature of the German camps, the literature of the Soviet gulag, and the 19th century American literature of “slave narratives” (by slaves who escaped to the free states and recounted their experiences)—the several literatures of horrendous suffering under extreme social conditions—do not seem to contain a place for fantasists like Rassinier.
A Jewish employee at Anne Frank House could not believe his ears when his bosses banned him from wearing a skullcap at work.read more
Barry Vingerling turned up for work on his first day at the museum in Amsterdam and was told to take off his 'yarmulke'.
Anne Frank House is a writer's house and museum dedicated to a famous Jewish teenager who wrote a diary as she hid from the Nazis in World War II.
The 25-year-old was told wearing the skullcap might endanger the neutrality of the foundation which runs the museum and 'influence its work combating antisemitism'.
Mr Vingerling did not don a skullcap for his interview but hoped to wear it at work to meet his requirement as an Orthodox Jew to keep his head covered.
The Dutchman was told the brimless cap, also known as a kippah, was banned by the Anne Frank House as employees were not allowed to wear Jewish symbols.
The museum told Mr Vingerling he had to apply for formal permission to wear a yarmulke at the Anne Frank Foundation. (...) The board of the Anne Frank Foundation finally concluded, after more than six months of discussions, that Mr Vingerling could wear his yarmulke.
He said he was happy to hear he could finally wear his skullcap but still did not understand why the Anne Frank Foundation had made an issue out of it for so long.
'I work in the house of Anne Frank, who had to hide because of her identity. In that same house I should hide my identity?' he said.
Polish officials have intervened to prevent an author accused of anti-Semitism from receiving an award at a Polish diplomatic outpost in the United States.read more
A private US-based Polish organization had planned to give awards at the Polish consulate in New York next week to three people. One, Polish author Ewa Kurek, has claimed that Jews had fun in the ghettos during the German occupation of Poland during World War II.
Vandals have scrawled anti-Israel graffiti and ransacked the offices of a Jewish student group at a Paris university, on the same day that marches are being held around France to protest anti-Semitism.
Sacha Ghozlan, president of the French Jewish Students Union, told Le Monde that that the damage was inflicted Wednesday at the group's facilities at the University of Paris' Pantheon-Sorbonne campus.
“A cabinet was thrown on the ground and there were inscriptions such as ‘Death to Israel,’ ‘Viva Arafat’ on the wall,” Gozlan told the French paper. A tweet from the scene also showed "Zionist local racist anti-goy" and "Palestine will win" were written as well.
He said it came as far-left student protesters were blocking parts of the campus in a protest movement, but said it is unclear who was behind the incident.
The Brussels Free University (ULB) has decided to honor British film director Ken Loach despite protests by Belgian Jewish organisations citing his “obsessive hatred of Israel.”
The Jewish organisations, which include the David Susskind Jewish Community Center (CCLJ), the Union of Belgian Jewish Deportees and the Union of Jewish Students, accuse Loach of being unable to denounce anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. They point to an ambiguous response he gave in an interview last September on the Holocaust.
Asked in a BBC interview if Holocaust denial was acceptable, Loach said: “History is for all of us to discuss. All history is our common heritage to discuss and analyze. The founding of the State of Israel, for example, based on ethnic cleansing, is there for us to discuss.”
He later clarified his comments saying that the Holocaust was “as real a historical event as World War II itself and not to be challenged.”
The Ghent University has been running a training course for about ten years, mainly intended for alumni and the elderly. This year, the programme featured lectures by Professor em. John Everaert on the theme of "Human trafficking: Europe and the thread of shame". The first lecture titled "Medieval Europe reorients its slave trade" was held on November 7. Dr. Rudi Roth was dismayed when he read in the first slide of the presentation: "slave traders / slave-brokers: rather Jews (polyglot)" and by Prof Everaert's oral assertion that the trade was conducted "mostly by Jews".1. The Economic History of European Jews. Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, 2013, pp. 178-190.
Which sources? When asked about the sources he drew on to make his claim, Professor Everaert referred to the work of his predecessor, Professor Charles Verlinden (1907-1996), a Belgian historian and professor at Ghent University. In 1935, Verlinden developped this hypothesis in a first publication that has been passed on uncritically ever since. Belgian historian Henri Pirenne also underlined the important role played by Jews in trade and in the slave trade during the early Middle-Ages (7th to 11th century). So did the acclaimed French historian, Maurice Lombard.
Dr. Roth examined their works and compared them with newer academic publications. They invalidate the theory of Verlinden because it is not based on hard facts but on erroneous assumptions. Historians such as Verlinden were not rigorous when dealing with sources and mixed information from various sources. Very simply put, saying that "Jews had slaves" and that "Jews were merchants" became "Jews were slave traders". Historical truth was distorted, and historians such as Pirenne and others, adopted this view.
Everaert misses the point The proof that Everaert's explanation is not based on facts is apparent from research by the Austian-Israeli historian Eliyahu Ashtor, but especially from the articles by Professor Michaël Toch of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the leading authority in the field of the Middle-Ages and Judaism in Europe. We asked for his opinion on the expressions "rather Jews" and "mostly by Jews" used by Everaert. Professor Toch responded there is no doubt that both are wrong: "This is as wrong as it can be, and that is not an exaggeration because it is simple: these allegations are wrong for a lot of reasons The sources and arguments against this thesis are clearly explained in my book (1), but also in other studies, for example in Atti della XXXI Settimana di Studi(2).
The specific and erroneous argument, that the slave trade was carried out "mostly by Jews" can be primarily be explained by underlying and passive antisemitic prejudices. The fact that the slave trade was mainly a non-Jewish practice was deliberately brushed aside or even concealed. This anti-Jewish claim was later adopted by a number of historians.
Professor Jean-Pierre Devroey (ULB) also rejects Charles Verlinden's approach for similar reasons. Professor Everaert was contacted by J.A. and maintained obstinately that his theory is right even though it is not based on facts and disputed by other historians.
A Flemish geography book published a cartoon by noted anti-semite Carlos Latuff
It shows a stereotypical, fat religious Jew enjoying Palestinian water while their own pipes run dry.
read more
The geography textbook, Polaris GO!, attributes the cartoon to Amnesty International, although Amnesty has nothing to do with the cartoon. The textbook authors decided to attribute the cartoon to Amnesty in an apparent attempt to make it look like it was an official protest cartoon from that organization.
The book reaches many thousands of Flemish children.
Amnesty, when reached by a Jewish newspaper, denied anything to do with the cartoon.
The good news is that the publisher Plantyn agreed to remove the cartoon from future editions of the textbook, although it will keep the misleading Amnesty quote that ."In the ...Israeli settlement of Sussia, whose very existence is unlawful under international law, the Israeli settlers have ample water supplies. They have a swimming pool and their lush irrigated vineyards, herb farms and lawns – verdant even at the height of the dry season – stand in stark contrast to the parched and arid Palestinian villages on their doorstep. "
Keeping the quote while eliminating the picture is still an example of bias in the textbook.
Here is a photo of the Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah. Note the lawn. Note the pool.
Of course, the "parched" Palestinians have lots of swimming pools too. But Amnesty would never mention that.
Tens of Jewish students and former students react to a Palestinian terrorist speaking at Amsterdam Free University. They have written a letter to the Board of the Amsterdam Free University.read more @ NIW (in Dutch)
In it they say that the university has tolerated radical organizations with racist antisemitic tendencies. The most recent case concerned a lecture by the Palestinian Rasmea Odeh who was involved in the murder of two Israeli civilians. She was presented by the organizers in a location at the university as a hero and resistance fighter.
The Jewish students want to meet with the Board to discuss this issue.
The Austrian government has been rocked by a new scandal after the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ) was linked to an anti-Semitic songbook for the second time this year.
Herwig Götschober, a senior FPÖ official, heads a student fraternity that uses a songbook containing the lyric: “Once upon a time, two Jews went to bathe in a river... One drowned, as for the other one we can hope”.
It also comes a week after the party issued a statement rejecting Nazism and anti-Semitism and pledged to hold an inquiry to root out Nazi sympathisers among its ranks.
Mr Götschober works in the office of Norbert Hofer, the current transport minister who narrowly failed to be elected president for the FPÖ in 2016.
The fresh controversy comes less than a month after another FPÖ politician was forced to resign over a separate songbook which contained lyrics glorifying the Holocaust.
