Poland: Bishop delivers thinly veiled anti-Semitic sermon

Via Times of Israel:

Andrzej Jeż appears to refer to Jews during Easter speech, saying ‘certain nation’ plotted in 1937 to slander Catholic Church by controlling media

A Polish bishop said that “a certain nation” plotted in 1937 to divide and slander the Catholic Church by controlling the media.

Andrzej Jeż, who is the top Catholic spiritual leader in the city of Tarnow near Krakow, appeared to be referring to Jews last month in his Easter sermon, which was filmed.

The video aired Thursday in an article by the Kan public broadcaster.

“A certain nation, I can’t name it because I would be attacked from all sides immediately, said this: ‘Our natural enemy is the Catholic Church. We need to slander them and sow hatred against them, we have to create scandals about their private lives to incite hatred and ridicule against them. We must strengthen our media because then our control will be strong and secure’,” Jez said.

Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland, said the remarks underscore an internal fight within the Catholic Church between supporters and opponents of that institution’s reform about 50 years ago of its anti-Semitic tenets.

“I’ve never heard anything like this said,” Schudrich told Kan. “What the bishop said goes against modern-day Catholic faith.”

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Poland: Southern Polish town burns effigy of Judas, made to look like Hasidic Jew

Via JTA:

A town in southern Poland reenacted the custom of casting judgement on Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus, using a life-size effigy of a stereotypical Jew with a hooked nose and sidelocks.

The event in the town of Pruchnik, called “Judgment over Judas,” took place on Friday afternoon. On a pole on Pope John Paul II Street, the residents hung the large effigy of the Jew which bore the label “Judas 2019, traitor!”

The crowd cut the effigy down from the post, dragged it on a rope through the town, stopping at the square in front of the church and at the street crossing where the effigy was beaten 30 times. After reaching the local river, the head of the effigy was cut off and the effigy was burned.

The rite attracted a crowd of onlookers. Children were encouraged to beat the effigy. There were some anti-Semitic cries, such as “Five more hits for wanting compensation from Poland.”

The custom of the judgment over Judas has occurred at least since the eighteenth century and takes place in the days preceding Easter. In the past, it was accompanied by acts of direct violence against Jewish residents. In the years of the Polish People’s Republic, the tradition gradually disappeared.

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Poland: Amid tensions over the Holocaust, Jewish cemeteries vandalized

Via JTA

Two Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized in Poland amid a fresh diplomatic crisis between that country and Israel over complicity in the Holocaust.

In the city of Świdnica, a suburb of Wroclaw in southwestern Poland, at least 15 headstones were smashed last week at the local Jewish cemetery. Other headstones were painted with black graffiti, including one of a pentagram – a symbol associated with Satanism.

Local police are investigating possible anti-Semitic motives, the website Wmeritum reported.

The cemetery had seen previous incidents, Monika Krawczyk, chairwoman-elect of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“The evil comes back,” she added.

Separately, in Wroclaw the words “Jesus is King” were written on the fence of another Jewish cemetery on Feb. 13. Several locals showed up earlier this week to paint over the slogan, Gazeta Wroclawska reported Sunday.

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World Council of Churches trainees use antisemitic rhetoric, advocate BDS

Via Jerusalem Post:

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is training volunteers to promote boycotts of Israel and engage in antisemitic rhetoric, with funding from several Western governments and the EU, as well as support from the United Nations, a new report by research institute NGO Monitor has found.

The WCC flagship project – Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) – has sent 1,800 “ecumenical accompaniers” from around the world to serve as observers in the West Bank and Jerusalem over the past 15 years, and aim to have 25 to 30 of these unofficial observers on the ground at all times. This is the only program of this kind run by the WCC.

(...)

The WCC calls itself the broadest organized group of churches, and says it seeks to represent 350 member churches in 110 countries and 500 million Christians throughout the world. Its website says that the group’s goal is Christian unity.

Yet one of the ways it seems to achieve that is through anti-Israel advocacy, which at times has explicit antisemitic overtones, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This definition has been accepted by the EU, which along with some of its member countries, provides funding for the EAPPI.

WCC leadership and EAPPI volunteers have repeatedly made comparisons of Israeli actions to those of Nazi Germany in their advocacy sessions. For example, WCC general secretary Dr. Olav Fyske Tveit said: “I heard about the occupation of my country during the five years of World War II as the story of my parents. Now I see and hear the stories of 50 years of occupation.”

(...)

The WCC supports boycotts and divestment from settlements, but EAPPI activists have called for a boycott of all of Israel.

The EAPPI publication “Faith Under Occupation” called in 2012 for “sanctions and suspension of US aid to Israel,” to “challenge Israel in local and international courts” and “economic boycotts.”

EAPPI National Coordinator in South Africa Dudu Mahlangu-Masango signed a letter to then-president Jacob Zuma calling “on our government and civil society to instigate broad-based boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel” in 2012. She repeated this call in a 2018 television interview, calling for “total sanctions” on Israel.

The organization also seeks to combat Christian Zionism. In a 2015 WCC event, Zionism was called “heresy” under Christian theology, modern Israelis were said to have no connection to ancient Israelites, and Israeli society was noted to be “full with racism and light skin privilege.” Their leadership also compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.

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Europe: Why does the Pope trot out antisemitic tropes?

Giles Fraser @ Unherd:

Pope Francis loves to reference the Pharisees and hypocrites in his sermons. Whether it is corruption in the priesthood or the European attitude towards refugees, it has become one of his things. Last Sunday, the Pope again used his address at the Angelus to return to this well worn theme. Admittedly, the gospel reading from Mark was all about Jesus’s reaction to the “scribes and Pharisees” who challenge Jesus’s followers for not following the Jewish law. But it was classic Francis: “The hypocrite is a liar, he’s not authentic,” he told his audience. “A man or woman who lives in vanity, in greed, in arrogance and at the same time believes and pretends to be religious and goes as far as condemning others, is a hypocrite.” Many took this to be a reference to the abuse scandals that have rocked the Church in places such as Ireland, from where he has recently returned.

There are multiple examples of Francis using ‘Pharisee’ as a term of abuse. Let one more example stand for many. Last October, at Mass in Casa Santa Marta (St Martha’s guesthouse) where he lives, he said: “Three months ago, in a country, in a city, a mother wanted to baptise her newly born son, but she was married civilly to a divorced man. The priest said, ‘Yes, yes. Baptise the baby. But your husband is divorced, so he cannot be present at the ceremony.’ This is happening today. The Pharisees, or Doctors of the Law, are not people of the past, even today there are many of them.”

Now, I don’t dissent from the general sentiment of these pronouncements. Francis is a good man, wanting to shift the Roman Church in the right direction. And nor do I think Francis is unique in laying so much emphasis on his condemnation of Pharisees and their hypocrisy – Christians have been attacking the Pharisees since the earliest days of the Christian proclamation. Hence ‘Pharisee’ long ago became a code work for religious hypocrisy in general.

But there has always been something basically racist about this association: Pharisees are Jews, and Jews are shifty, untrustworthy, hypocrites. Given the long and violent Christian persecution of Jews, today’s Christians should be far more circumspect in referencing the Pharisees as Francis regularly does.

So who were the Pharisees, and what did they stand for? 

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Poland: Priest Accused of anti-Semitism Behind New Holocaust Museum

Via Haaretz:

A new museum in Poland will exhibit over 40,000 accounts of Polish Christians who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage will donate $22 million to the Saint John Paul II Memory and Identity Museum. Its goal is to present the over 1,000-year history of Christian Poland with particular emphasis on the teachings of Pope John Paul II and its impact on the fate of Poland, Europe and the world.

The museum, located in Toru, will be run by the Lux Veritatis Foundation associated with the controversial Roman Catholic priest Tadeusz Rydzyk, who for years ran a radio station that espoused anti-Semitic views.

Part of the exposition will feature the accounts by witnesses on the rescue of Jews by Poles during World War II. Rydzyk and the Lux Veritatis Foundation have collected the accounts since 1995.

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Greek Jews call for the abolition of the 'burning of the Judas'

Via Against antisemitism – Ενάντια στον αντισημιτισμό:

The ‘burning of the Judas’ in the village of Tolo, on the Peloponnese peninsula

(Easter 2018). Screenshot via YouTube

Announcement by the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece:

During the Easter holidays, various customs take place in our country. One of these is the “burning of the effigy of Judas”, which takes place in some areas of the country. This custom perpetuates stereotyped perceptions against the Jews. It is significant that the custom has almost been eliminated in the rest of Europe.

In the past, we, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, have repeatedly proceeded with representations to competent bodies in order to stop the custom in our country. The fact that the Church of Greece, with its Synodic Circulars of 1891, 1910 and 1918, demanded that “these customs are expressly forbidden” is of particular significance.

We believe that this custom not only offends the Greek Jewish community but also affects every effort towards the understanding and respect of common values ​​that characterise Judaism and Christianity. 

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Germany: Pro-BDS pastor and Green Party figure speaks at Nazi event

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

Friedrich Bode, a Protestant pastor and co-founder of the Green Party branch in Bremen, delivered a talk at a neo-Nazi party event in Karlshöfe, Lower Saxony, on Saturday.

Bode supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting the Jewish state.

The church in the city-state of Bremen where Bode worked as a pastor for 18 years, subsequently barred him from appearing at future events organized by Germany’s main neo-Nazi organization – the National Democratic Party (NPD), the Christian website Domradio reported on Tuesday. The church has not imposed any other disciplinary measures.

Pastor Renke Brahms, the executive cleric of the church, told Radio Bremen that Bode’s activity is “open antisemitism.”

Brahms said a “racist, antisemitic and neo-Nazi view of people and the world is not compatible with the preaching of Jesus Christ.”

The 77-year-old Bode can be seen on the YouTube channel of the right-wing extremist group Nordland TV, terming Adolf Hitler a “brilliant, self-taught person.”

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Italy: Why Some Catholics Defend the Kidnapping of a Jewish Boy

Via Atlantic:

One summer evening in 1858, the police showed up at the home of a Jewish family in Bologna, Italy, and took their six-year-old child. Authorities had discovered that the child, Edgardo Mortara, had been secretly baptized when he was a baby. Edgardo had fallen gravely ill and his Catholic nanny baptized him for fear that he would die a Jew and be locked out of heaven. But Edgardo survived—and, in the eyes of the Church, he was now a Catholic. Papal law mandated that all Catholic children must receive a Catholic education, and so he was separated from his Jewish family, with Pope Pius IX personally overseeing his religious education.

The “Mortara case” spurred a wave of protests, with activists and intellectuals from Europe and the U.S. petitioning Pius IX to return the child to his parents. The pope refused. Edgardo eventually became a priest, and in 1940 he died in a Belgian monastery. The Vatican never apologized for his kidnapping specifically. But in 2000, John Paul II issued an apology for the persecution of Jews. Today, the dominant Catholic attitude toward the Mortara case is one of regret: “It’s not one of the episodes that the Church is very proud of,” Massimo Faggioli, a Church historian at Villanova University, told me.

Now, however, conservative voices are defending Pius IX’s decision to abduct a Jewish boy. In the latest issue of First Things, a right-leaning Catholic magazine, the Dominican priest and theologian Romanus Cessario wrote a review of Kidnapped by the Vatican? The Unpublished Memoirs of Edgardo Mortara, which recently appeared in English translation. In the book, author Vittorio Messori, an Italian Church historian, goes through Mortara’s personal archive and defends the abduction. Likewise, Cessario calls the law upon which Pius IX acted “not unreasonable” and casts Edgardo’s kidnapping in a positive light: “Divine Providence kindly arranged for his being introduced into a regular Christian life.”

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UK: Nuns used anti-Semitic threats while beating boy of Jewish descent, inquiry told

Via Jewish News:

Nuns at an orphanage used anti-Semitic threats while beating a boy of Jewish descent, an inquiry has heard.

The witness, who was at Smyllum Park in Lanark during the 1940s and 1950s, said he is “haunted” by memories of his time at the facility.

He told how he is still “scared” of nuns, to the extent he could not watch the film comedy Sister Act with his daughter.

His submissions were heard at the Scottish child abuse inquiry in Edinburgh on Tuesday.

Although he did not know of his Jewish heritage at the time, having entered the home at a very young age, he said it was referred to while he was beaten on a number of occasions.

The witness said: “The nuns would say ‘we will beat the Jewishness out of you’.

“If you consider what Hitler did during the war – it was just after that period. I don’t think I was beaten because I was Jewish, it’s just an expression that was used.”

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Russia: Murmansk Jewish leader's car set aflame on Christmas

Via Barents Observer:

At midnight on the 7th of January, as Russia was celebrating the Orthodox Christmas, someone put the community leader’s car on fire. Ilya Raskin believes it was not coincidental.

«The Jewish community sees this not only as an act of vandalism and hooliganism, but also as a well-directed antisemitic and extremist act, aimed at stirring inter-ethnic and inter-religious strife,» he says on his Facebook page.

Next to the car, which was partly destroyed by the fire, was found a gasoline can, 7x7-journal reports. Raskin says to the online news magazine that he intends to address the FSB and the prosecutor’s office about the case.

He argues that the timing indicates that there was an antisemitic motive behind the fire.

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France: Catholic-owned kid's magazine claims Israel not a real country

Some background: Youpi magazine is owned by the influential media group Bayard. "Bayard is a French press group created in 1873, just after the 1870 war, by Father Emmanuel d'Alzon (1810/1880), founder of the Catholic religious congregation Augustinians of the Assumption. This congregation is still the exclusive owner of the group." "It edits educational and Catholic publications such as La Croix and Catholic Digest." "Assumptionists , profoundly anti-semitic religious order, whose newspaper La Croix ( The Cross) became a daily in 1883. In 1890 it boasted that it was ‘ the most anti-Jew journal of France’"  The author of the article is Bertrand Fichou, editor in chief of Youpi and a prolific writer of children's books.

Via I 24 News:

A French children's education magazine that provoked a firestorm of criticism on Sunday after deeming Israel a state with disputed legitimacy along with the likes of North Korea said it will remove the edition from sale. The publisher Editions Bayard Jeunesse apologized, "to all those who may have been hurt" by this publication.

The controversial fact sheet featured in the latest edition of 'Youpi' magazine read, "we call these 197 countries 'states', like France, Germany, or Algeria. There a few more, but not all other countries in the world agree that these are real states (for example Israel or North Korea)."

The magazine's calling into question of Israel's legitimacy sparked major backlash on social media, with Israel's Ambassador to France Aliza Bin Noun saying she was "shocked" at the publication which she said encouraged anti-Zionism, and in turn, anti-Semitism.

"Shocked by this lie taught to children. Such a rhetoric can only encourage anti-Zionism, inseparable from anti-Semitism," she wrote on Twitter, tagging French President Emmanuel Macron in her statement. President of France's umbrella Jewish group CRIF, Francis Kalifat, told i24NEWS that Bayer's statement reflected "political revisionism."

"Unintentional or intentional, I do not know," Kalifat said. "I prefer to think it is unintentional. The Bayard publication conveys political revisionism."

"Israel has been recognized as a sovereign state since 1948 and by the United Nations since 1949," he said, adding that such intentional revisionism would represent an attempt by the company to "de-legitimize" Israel "this time by targeting its youngest readers." 

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Russian priest denies blaming Jews for killing tsar

Via The Times of Israel:

The head of a Russian Orthodox Church panel looking into the 1918 killing of Russia’s last tsar and his family said his statement that the church is investigating whether it was a ritual murder had no anti-Semitic connotations.

Father Tikhon Shevkunov said Thursday that he was only talking about the “ritual revenge of atheist Bolsheviks” and never implicated the Jews.  

At an event in Moscow earlier this week, Shevkunov said that according to “the most rigorous approach to the version of ritual murder, a significant part of the church commission [on Nicholas II’s killing during the Russian revolution of 1917] has no doubt that this murder was ritual.” 

That drew an angry response from Russia’s largest Jewish group, which denounced the words as a revival of anti-Semitic myths. 

Also at the conference, Marina Molodtsova, a senior investigator for a special ministerial committee on the 1917 slaying of Nicholas II of Russia, said her committee will conduct “a psycho-historical examination” to find out whether the execution of the royal family was a ritual murder, Ria Novosti reported. 

Claims that Nicholas was killed by Jews for ritual purposes had been limited before the conference to a fringe of zealous anti-Semites and promoters of unsophisticated conspiracy theories.

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Russia: Bishop caims that Jews killed Czar in ritual murder

Via Haaretz:

Russia’s largest Jewish organization protested a local bishop’s claim, repeated by a justice ministry official, that the country’s last czar was murdered by Jews for ritual purposes.

Marina Molodtsova, a senior investigator for a special ministerial committee on the 1917 killing of Czar Nicholas II of Russia, said on Monday during a conference in Moscow that her committee will conduct “a psycho-historical examination” to find out whether the execution of the royal family was a ritual murder, the state-run Ria Novosti news agency reported.

At the same event, Father Tikhon Shevkunov, a Russian Orthodox Church bishop, said that, according to “the most rigorous approach to the version of ritual murder, a significant part of the church commission [on Nicholas II’s killing during the Russian revolution of 1917] has no doubt that this murder was ritual.”

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Belgium: Catholic Brigitte Herremans is central figure in European demonisation of Israel, including the practice of exploiting tourist visas

Via Fathom (Gerald Steinberg):

Among Israeli politicians and pundits, the recognition of threats from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and demonisation, through labels such as ‘apartheid’ and ‘war criminal,’ dawned very slowly. When the response came, it took the form of an overreaction and a series of own-goals that, if anything, have made matters worse. 

The most damaging involves policies preventing the entry of BDS activists (actual and imagined) into Israel, first through the actions of overzealous officials in the Interior Ministry at Ben Gurion International Airport, and later through Knesset legislation. This led to intense criticism, and became another major source of friction between Jewish critics of Israel in the Diaspora and the government. (...) 

In this period, a number of ‘global BDS’ activists – particularly non-Jews leading major organisations, were denied entry, including Brigitte Herremans of the Catholic Belgian NGOs Broederlijk Delen and Pax Christi (both involved in BDS initiatives). Herremans is one of the central figures in European demonisation of Israel, including the practice of exploiting tourist visas for bringing groups to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). These ‘familiarisation tours’ emphasise Palestinian victimhood and Israeli culpability, reinforcing support for political warfare, including BDS, among the participants. Afterwards, the group members are expected to participate in campaigns targeting Israel.

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Related: Israel’s allies vastly inflate anti-Semitism problem, Belgian charity boss Brigitte Hermans says 

Greece: Holocaust monument in Larissa vandalized by alleged clergyman

VIA KIS (h/t Against Antisemitism):

In the evening of Monday July 17, 2017, an individual dressed as a monk who calls himself ‘father Kleomenis’ -a cult figure, popular for his bigot ideas and You tube posts- attacked and vandalized the Holocaust Monument in Larissa, situated in the central Jewish Martyrs Square of the city. In his video posted on You Tube, the alleged monk curses the Jews, denies the Holocaust and calls on the local patriots of Larissa to intervene and demolish the Monument. "Father" Kleomenis spits, kicks and throws eggs at the Monument. Some of his characteristic quotes: “Here, we read 6 million! Fairy tails… Shit on their faces, merely 600.000 Hitler wiped out!”. Kleomenis spits the Monument and says: “Satanic Jews”. He kicks the Monument and says: “Curse on your dirty Monuments” and continues: “Worms, Jewish bitches, this has to fall. The stinking Jewishness has to be taken down from Larissa. Rise up! Patriotic organizations of Larissa take it down, bring the bulldozer on!”.  Local police was notified and legal procedure was enacted. Investigation is ongoing. 

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Greece: Four men arrested for vandalizing Holocaust memorial In Kavala

Via Against Antisemitism:

Police say they have arrested four men who used hammers to smash the marble veneer on the Holocaust memorial in Kavala three months ago. 

All four men are Greek citizens, aged 40, 29, 22 and 20 years, local media have reported. 

The Kavala Holocaust Memorial was dedicated on June 7, 2015 after city officials postponed its original dedication, saying they opposed the Star of David on the memorial.

Czech Republic: Evangelical Christians successfully campaigned for recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel

Via Mosaic Magazine (Jürgen Bühler):

In the 21st century, evangelical Christians have come to constitute the world’s fastest-growing religious group; if current trends continue, they will outnumber Catholics and possibly even Muslims in a few decades. The movement’s growth corresponds to a shift in its center of gravity; a majority of evangelicals now come from Asia, Africa, and Latin America rather than the U.S. Given that evangelical Christianity tends to encourage a positive attitude toward Jews and the Jewish state, argues Jürgen Bühler, this change could be especially significant for Israel: 

The last few decades have seen evangelical Christianity become the religious denomination with the most rapid growth rates in the world. It is set to surpass Catholicism, and perhaps even Islam, in a few decades. The most significant growth rates, however, are not in cities like Wurttemberg, Geneva, London, Dallas, or Nashville, but places like Manila, Lagos, Beijing, and Sao Paolo. This means a dramatic change in the demographic landscape of the Christian world, in which the average Christian is no longer a white European or North American; most evangelicals today are Asian, Africans, or residents of Latin America. This has enormous significance for Israel. (...)

One factor that unites evangelicals across the world, whether in the Amazonian rainforests, the Niger delta, or in Chinese cities is a great love of Israel. . . . The rapid increase in the number of evangelicals may turn these countries into strategic allies for Israel, as they are becoming a significant part of the general population. In Brazil, between 26 and 30 percent of the citizens are evangelicals. In Guatemala, more than 40 percent. In Uganda, 37 percent. In Nigeria, 40 percent. Even in Muslim Indonesia, 12 percent of the population are evangelicals. Their number in China is estimated at around 100 million. 

Already today, this phenomenon has political and diplomatic influence that aids Israel, both at the national level and in international organizations like the UN—and this influence is set to increase in the coming years. For instance, the previous president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, ordered the state’s representatives in the UN not to support the vote on recognizing the Palestinian Authority as a state, due to pressure from the evangelical community in his country. 

Even countries with a small evangelical community play a significant role in support for Israel. The International Christian Embassy in the Czech Republic, for instance, played a decisive role in promoting a decision by the country’s parliament, adopted a few weeks ago, which recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel—an unprecedented move in Europe. In addition, the activity of the International Christian Embassy in Muslim countries in West Africa has led to a moving-together between their governments and Israel in recent times. 

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Poland: Former priest indicted for inciting hatred against Jews

Via The Times of Israel:

Jacek Miedlar

The prosecutor’s office in the western Poland city of Wroclaw issued an indictment against former priest Jacek Miedlar for “public incitement to hatred based on religious and national differences.” 

He could face up to 2 years in prison. 

On November 11, 2016, during the Polish Independence Day, Wroclaw hosted the “March of Patriots.” According to the prosecutor’s office, Miedlar in his speech to the march, “under the guise of promoting patriotic attitudes,” publicly called for hatred against Jews and Ukrainians. 

“He used expressions intended to inspire others to feelings of contempt, strong dislike, anger, disapproval and hostility towards them [Jews and Ukrainians], imputing them hostility towards Polish people and transgressive intentions and encouraging the participants of the march to fight against them,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. 

Międlar did not plead guilty. In his statement he stated that he defended the good name of Poles, whom he said the Jews call “worms.”

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UK: Polish coupe arrested for allegedly punching and pushing Jewish people near a synagogue

Via Antisemitism.uk:

A man and woman, both described as Polish and middle-aged, were arrested yesterday evening on Clapton Common in London after allegedly attacking Jewish people near a local synagogue. The couple, who had a dog, allegedly approached Jewish people, banging on a car, pushing two people and punching another in the face, shouting “Kurwa” (a Polish expletive) and telling them in broken English: “Dog stay here England, you Jews go away.” 

Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood watch patrol was called and followed the assailants to Clapton Common where they were arrested on suspicion of common assault and racially aggravated public order offences.

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