France: Court dismisses antisemitism charge in attack on Jewish family

Via Simon Wiesenthal Centre:

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed rage at the Paris suburb of Créteil’s investigating Magistrate ruling to dismiss the antisemitic character of a 2014 attack on a Jewish couple, and the decision to close the case.

Three men had broken into the home of the couple, beating them and tieing them up, then raping the young wife. The three, together with a suspected accomplice, were charged with group rape, armed robbery, violence and extortion.

The attackers, reportedly, were  heard to claim that the plan to attack Jews was because “they had money” and that their choice of victim was due to “their religious affinity.”

Their crime was evidently recidivist as, one month earlier, they had attacked an elderly Jew, identifiable due to his garb, in the same suburb.

Their defence lawyer, triumphantly, declared: “I cannot celebrate the rejection of the antisemitism charge, as it was never there… The case was built up by the media.”

Samuels noted that “the clearly antisemitic nature and the rape so shocked the Jewish community, that it resulted in a 2014 governmental proposed plan “to fight antisemitism and racism as a national cause.”

The Centre called on French Justice Minister, Jean-Jacques Urvoas, to ensure the reopening of this case.

Italy: Judge rules slurs against Jews in sport not racism

Via Ynet News (h/t Honestly Concerned):

Members of the Italian Jewish community were disappointed to learn of a recent court ruling in Rome which saw the acquittal of two soccer fans from the S.S Lazio team after being filmed in 2013 calling out anti-Semitic chants.

Policemen brought the two suspects in for investigation shortly after and they later stood trial for “incitement and racial hatred.”

However, the judge appears to have acquitted the two on the grounds that the phrase “Jewish Roma supporter” does not constitute racism, but is rather an acceptable and legitimate term because of the “historic sports antagonism between the two urban teams.”

“This is merely sports ridicule,” the judge said before discharging the two. He even justified his decision by saying that on the same day, Roma fans were not even present in the stadium.

In its essence, the judgement appears to legitimize both abusive chants, including explicit expressions of anti-Semitism, as long as they are expressed within the domain of competitive sport.

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German courts expose the mechanism by which opposition to Israel is indistinguishable from opposition to Jews

Via The Weekly Standard (by Joseph Bottum):

On January 13, 2017, a German regional court ruled that a lower court had been correct to find no anti-Semitism in the attempt by a group of Muslim men to burn down a synagogue in the city of Wuppertal. 

The failed firebombing attack had occurred in 2014, during the Israeli conflict with Hamas in Gaza. In 2015 the lower court found that the men had intended their actions as a protest against Israel—with the result that the adults in the group deserved to have their sentences suspended, freeing them from jail time. And now, after review by a superior court, the German legal system has affirmed that German synagogues are legitimate targets of protest against Israel. 

Remember this moment, for the German courts have exposed the mechanism by which opposition to Israel proves indistinguishable from opposition to Jews. (...)

To see the logic at play, suppose that three white men had attacked a traditionally black church in Birmingham, Alabama, scrawling graffiti and trying to set the church on fire. Caught and convicted, they were sentenced to a year in jail—with the jail time suspended. Yes, the judge explained, they had been unlawfully violent and thus deserved to be convicted. But he suspended their sentences because their purpose in attacking the African-American church had not been to harm Americans but to protest the failure of the Nigerian government to halt the kidnapping of schoolgirls by the radical African militia Boko Haram.  (...)

Black citizens of the United States are never taken as symbolic representatives of African governments. For that matter, imagine the outcry if a judge condoned violence against the places of worship of native citizens who happened to be Muslim—because a distant government was doing something objectionable. (...)

What the German courts have revealed, however, is not so much the psychology as the logic by which anti-Semitism has returned to the West. A strong case can be made that modern anti-Zionism was always a subterfuge, born from an anti-Semitism trying to disguise itself. But now even the need to wear that mask seems gone. The German Muslims who attacked the Wuppertal synagogue in 2014 took Germany's Jews as representatives of Israel, and in 2017 the German courts agreed, simply as a matter of law. 

Think about that for a moment. Once non-Israeli Jews have been legally recognized as symbols of Israel, not even a ray of daylight can slip between opposition to Israel and opposition to Jews. (...)

Once and for all, anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. German courts have told us so. 

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German Court Rejects Effort to Ban Neo-Nazi Party

Via New York Times:

Germany’s highest court rejected on Tuesday an attempt to ban the National Democratic Party, the country’s oldest far-right political organization, finding that it did not pose a danger to democracy even though its principles violate the Constitution.

The ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court came after years of deliberation and at a time of soul-searching in the country, where another right-wing party, Alternative for Germany, is poised to win representation in Parliament in national elections this year.

Although the National Democratic Party “pursues aims contrary to the Constitution,” there was a lack of “concrete supporting evidence” that the neo-Nazi party would be able to successfully achieve its goals and to pose a genuine threat, said Andreas Vosskuhle, the president of the court.

“That a party has aims that run contrary to the Constitution is not sufficient grounds for banning a party,” he said.

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Sweden: Malmö woman still suffers from antisemitic vandalism attacks

For the past few years, a Jewish woman in Malmö has been targeted by a hate campaign (see here and here).  Her front door is repeatedly vandalized.  She files complaints with the police, but they take no action whatsoever.


The latest attack was a couple of weeks ago, when her door was vandalized with a swastika and Star of David.

Germany: Attempt to firebomb shul not antisemitic, says court

Remember, Germany takes antisemitism seriously.   It's just those stupid Jews who are confusing between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

Via Jewish Chronicle:

A regional court in Germany has upheld a previous ruling from a lower court that an attempt to burn down a synagogue was not antisemitic.

The local court in Wuppertal, in the province of North Rhine-Westphalia, ruled in 2015 that three German-Palestinian men who had tried to burn down the city’s shul with homemade Molotov cocktails had intended “to draw attention to the conflict between Gaza and Israel”. The attack took place in July 2014, during the Israel-Gaza conflict.

The police were alerted to the blaze by a neighbour of the synagogue; the fire was put out quickly, leaving the synagogue with a £750 repair bill.

The chairman of the Lower Court’s judiciary, Jörg Sturm, said at the time that although the attack on the synagogue had “high symbolic meaning” – the original synagogue in Wuppertal was burned down during Kristallnacht in 1938 – the three men in this instance had not acted "for antisemitic reasons per se".

The three men in question were given suspended prison sentences.

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UK: Charity Commission will not act over trustee who complained of ‘Jewish stench’ because he spoke in “personal capacity”

Via CAA:

The Charity Commission has published a report confirming that it will not punish Abdurraheem Green, the founder and Chairman of the Islamic Education and Research Academy over comments captured on video in which he demanded that a Jewish man be removed from his sight.

Green was recorded saying: “Why don’t you take the Yahoudi [Jew] over there, far away so his stench doesn’t disturb us?” The charity said that the comment was “aimed at a habitual heckler in Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner, in a highly charged forum of debate, who happened to be Jewish. It was not aimed at any community or meant to be antisemitic in any way. However, recognising that it could be misconstrued, he has apologised openly for such errors of judgement made more than 20 years ago.” The comment was referred to the Commission as part of a report by the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.

The Commission wrote in its report that it will not act over the incident because it found Green’s comments to have been made in a “personal capacity and not on behalf of the charity or at an event it organised,” though it did concede that the comments exposed the charity to risks.

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UK: London police warn pro-Israel groups not to disclose their location

Via Israel Hayom:

The Metropolitan Police in London have asked pro-Israeli organizations Reservists on Duty and Campaign for Truth not to disclose the locations of any of their conferences, citing security concerns.

Wednesday's warning followed the violent anti-Israel rally at University College London last week, when Jewish students attending a campus event hosted by UCL Friends of Israel were trapped in the hall by protesters.

Police officers called representatives from the Israeli organizations to tell them it would be best not to disclose the location of a conference scheduled for next week. At the same time, since the location has not been disclosed, the police will not provide security at the event. The organizations were told that if necessary they could summon police to the scene.

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Netherlands: Victim of kosher restaurant attack says system did not look into antisemitic motives

Via Facebook:

Five months ago I got stabbed in my back by an unknown man at a kosher restaurant in Amsterdam. On Friday it was decided that the man will serve 1 year in a mental hospital, of his choice, and I will get 1500 EUR in compenstations.

It strikes me that the police, prosecutor and judges did not see the severity of the attack. I could have died, if the knife would have hit me only slightly differently. It was also shocking that the system had no interest in looking into the anti-semitic suspicion of the attack. It is still unclarified why the attacker entered two kosher restaurants on the same evening.

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Serbia: Belgrade Jews Oppose WWII Leader’s Rehabilitation

Via Balkan Insight (h/t Watch: Antisemitism in Europe):

A member of the Jewish Community of Belgrade, which represents the city’s Jews, told BIRN on Monday that the organisation would call witnesses to testify at the ongoing rehabilitation hearings about Nedic’s active participation in the Holocaust.

“Rehabilitation would represent a devaluation of indisputable historical facts, and an insult to all the victims and survivors of the survivors. Serbia would also suffer moral and political damage,” said Haris Dojc, a member of the Jewish Community of Belgrade and coordinator of historical research for heirless Jewish property.

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Europe's "Good Terrorists": because they might destroy Israel?

Khaled Abu Toameh @ Gatestone Institute:

Thousands of armed Hamas troops showed off their military hardware at a Dec. 14, 2014 parade in Gaza,
marking the organization's 27th anniversary. (Image source: PressTV video screenshot)

Once again, the Europeans seem to be in Alice's Wonderland when they consider Palestinian affairs in particular and the Middle East in general. The renewed attempt by the European Union to remove the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas from its terrorism list is a case in point.

Recently, an advisor to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) recommended that Hamas be removed from the EU's terrorism blacklist. In 2014, the EU's second-highest court ruled that Hamas should be taken off the list on "technical" grounds. It argued that Hamas's listing was not based on evidence, but on "factual imputations derived from the press and the internet."

However, the European Council then appealed this judgement, arguing that Hamas should remain on the terrorism blacklist, citing a 2001 decision by the UK and the US that designated both Hamas and the Tamil Tigers as terrorist groups. But the recent opinion by the ECJ advisor dismisses this argument. "The council cannot rely on facts and evidence found in press articles and information from the internet," Advocate General Eleanor Sharpton said. She explained that the council could not rely on terrorist listings by countries (the UK and US) outside the EU.

This latest highly dangerous European attempt to strike Hamas from the terrorism blacklist will, as the EU knows perfectly well, only serve further to embolden the Islamist movement to replace Israel with an Islamic empire.

Removing Hamas from the terrorism list would obviously be seen as a severe blow to Hamas's rivals in the Western-backed and funded Palestinian Authority (PA), and to the efforts to revive any peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.

As this is not the EU's first attempt to do this, it is hard not to conclude what many Palestinians have suspected all along: that the EU and its affiliates do not care if the Palestinians and others in the area are overrun by Hamas terrorists and are forced to live under the rule of despotic Islamist militants.

The recent opinion by the European court advisor lightheartedly ignores Hamas's own statements concerning its true intentions and continued preparations for war against Israel. It is hard not to conclude that this is what the EU secretly wants -- perhaps for Muslim voters, who brought to power France's President François Hollande, perhaps in the hope of buying off terrorists so that they avoid further attacks in Europe, perhaps to continue good business deals with Arab and Muslim countries, and, of course, perhaps all of the above. [...]

The ECJ is sending the message to Hamas that the Europeans see no problem with Hamas's desire to destroy Israel and continue to launch terrorist attacks against Jews. This message also undermines those Palestinians who still believe in a peace with Israel. Moreover, the recommendation comes at a time when countries such as Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and even Saudi Arabia, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are doing their utmost to weaken Hamas.

Those who embolden Hamas also strengthen ISIS, Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood, not only in the Middle East, but also in Europe. Appeasing terrorists is a dangerous game: it has already backfired on its foolhardy players and will continue to do so, not less, but more. This is exactly how Muslims conquered Iran, Turkey, North Africa, the Crimea and much of Europe including Hungary, Greece, Poland, Romania, and the Balkans -- countries that still recall a real "occupation," an Islamist one, all too well, and abundantly want none of it.

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Poland: Prosecutors absolve priest who called Jews ‘cancer’

“Bialystok investigation discontinued! Zero tolerance for ‘Jewish cowardice’. Salut!”

Via Times of Israel:

The Prosecutor’s Office in Bialystok has ended an investigation of a Polish priest who spoke of Jews being a “cancer” during a sermon, determining that no hate crime had been committed.

In a sermon on April 16 in Bialystok, Father Jacek Miedlar spoke of the “cancer which swept Poland,” apparently meaning Jews. He stressed that political correctness and tolerance enslave Poles.

According to the prosecutor, Miedlar “referred to the historical content and the Bible, pointing to examples of negative behavior of the representatives of the Jewish community from the time of slavery in Egypt, and generally referring to modern times.” The speech did not stigmatize a particular nationality, the prosecutor said Tuesday.

On the same day Miedlar, a known nationalist, wrote in response to the decision on Twitter: “Bialystok investigation discontinued! Zero tolerance for ‘Jewish cowardice’. Salut!”

He attached a picture showing Poles performing a Nazi salute taken on the night of June 23, 1936, when a group of Polish nationalists seized the city of Myślenice for several hours. During the siege, the nationalists beat Jewish residents and destroyed Jewish shops.

After a few hours Miedlar removed the post.

Miedlar also withdrew from the Congregation of the Missionaries, a religious order founded in 1625.

“The persecution of gay, liberal and Jewish groups led me to the fact that I can’t do my pastoral work,” he said, according to the Onet.pl website.

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Denmark: 4 acquitted in synagogue attack

Via JTA:

Four Danish citizens accused of assisting the gunman in two deadly attacks in Copenhagen last year, including one outside a synagogue that left a Jewish security guard dead, were acquitted.

On Tuesday, a Danish court found that the actions of the four men were “not of such a character that the actions can lead to a conviction for complicity,” according to the verdict, the French news agency AFP reported.

Bhostan Khan Hossein, Liban Ahmed Saleban Elmi, Ibrahim Khalil Abbas and Mahmoud Rabea were accused of helping Omar El-Hussein carry out the attack against Copenhagen’s main synagogue on Feb. 15, 2015. They had faced life in prison if convicted.

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Spain: Police tell Jew targeted for harassment to be 'less visibly Jewish'

The following was posted by a Spanish Jew:

So this morning I found this in the corner of my garage door. When I called the police they just told me it were probably just a random act of kids but just in case I should try to be “less visibly jewish” (not wearing a magen David/ hamsa, not having my name in the mailbox) and not tell people that I’m Jewish…

“Do your neighbours know you’re Jewish?”

EU court asked to drop Hamas from terror list

From the American Thinker:

Young enrollee at Hamas
summer camp

An adviser to the European Union's top court says Hamas and the Tamil Tigers should be dropped from the EU's list of terrorist organizations.

The reason?  It's not because the adviser thinks Hamas is no longer conducting terror attacks against Israel.  It's because the adviser says the procedure for placing the terror groups on the list in the first place wasn't followed.  

Wall Street Journal: 

 [...]  In 2014, the EU’s second-highest court ordered both Hamas and the Tamil Tigers to be struck off the bloc’s terror list in two separate decisions.

It said at the time that Hamas’s listing wasn’t based on evidence that had been properly examined and confirmed by national authorities, but on “factual imputations derived from the press and the internet.”

The European Council, which represents EU governments in the bloc’s lawmaking process, had appealed that judgment, arguing that it was relying on a 2001 decision by the U.K. that designated both Hamas and the Tamil Tigers as terrorist groups, as well as the terror listing for both groups in the U.S.

Thursday’s opinion rejects that argument, following similar reasoning as the 2014 decision. “The council cannot rely on facts and evidence found in press articles and information from the internet,” Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston said. [...]

Did the court think to ask EU member intelligence agencies for their opinion?  It wouldn't be evidence from "newspapers" or "the internet."  The evidence would be based on cold, hard facts.
But even that isn't necessary.  It may be a novel approach, but maybe they should ask Hamas about annihilating the Jews.  Or perhaps ask Hamas why they celebrate the spate of knife attacks on Israeli citizens – attacks they encourage.

But to the bureaucrats in Brussels, all the paperwork has to be in order, all the is dotted and ts crossed while the truth be damned.

The danger is, if Hamas is taken off the terror list, a flood of money will flow into its coffers.  It will be earmarked for "economic development" but will somehow – magically – end up funding terrorist attacks.  A child is aware of this probability, but that doesn't appear to matter to the fools who are playing with fire by legitimizing Hamas.

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Italy: Israeli fans blocked from stadium by Palestinian protesters

Via Jerusalem Post:

Israeli fans who traveled to Italy to watch soccer team Hapoel Beersheba play in the UEFA cup against Italian powerhouse Inter Milan were blocked from entering the stadium by a pro-Palestinian protest on Thursday.

One of the Israeli fans, Tal Lavi, a media manager for The Jerusalem Post, said that local police and stadium security for San Siro Stadium told Israeli soccer fans that they would not be allowed to enter the premises due to security concerns.

Video taken by Lavi shows protestors near the stadium waving Palestinian flags and shouting chants in opposition to the soccer match.

Lavi said that an estimated 1,200 fans of Hapoel Beersheba were restricted to an enclosure far from the stadium by stadium security and local authorities.

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UK Watchdog: British Jews 'Denied Justice'

Via Algemeiner:

British Jews are “being denied justice” by the country’s main criminal prosecution agency as it fails to crack down on antisemitic hate crimes, the head of a UK charity and antisemitism watchdog told The Algemeiner on Monday.

“The resulting atmosphere of impunity is enabling antisemitism in our country to grow and become increasingly violent,” said Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), in reference to what he called the “woeful record”  of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in combating the phenomenon.

“Earlier this year, we published our National Antisemitic Crime Audit. We found that, despite the crackdown promised in 2014, in 2015 hate crimes against British Jews surged to a new peak, with a 26 percent growth in crimes against Jews and a 51% leap in violent antisemitic crime,” he said.

One of the more significant finds of the audit, Falter said, is that “against the backdrop of major rises in antisemitic crime, the number of antisemitic crimes charges dropped.” According to the CAA, the CPS prosecuted 15,442 cases of hate crimes, “But we are only aware of a dozen prosecutions for hate crimes against Jews,” he said.

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Germany: Judge on trial for revealing that colleagues prevented Holocaust survivors from receiving compensation.

Via Arutz 7:

A German judge is facing reprimand for exposing how the German legal system regularly prevents Holocaust survivors from receiving money they are owed.

Colette Avital, the head of the Center Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, told Arutz Sheva about the judge's actions and the legal proceedings against him. "This is a 49-year-old German judge who began to work with Holocaust survivors about a decade ago," she began.

The judge in question, Jan-Robert von Renesse, has been helping survivors who sued for compensation over their manual labor in the ghettos. As he progressed, he found that many other judges had rejected the claims over bureaucratic excuses and improperly completed forms.

"The judge understood that the elderly survivors may not have understood how to properly fill out the forms. So he came to Israel, filled out the forms with them, asked them to show him on a map where they had been, and thereby helped them fill out the forms properly. He is truly one of the righteous among the nations," Avital continued. She explained that the manual laborers were forced to pay the government from the little money they received for their work, which is the basis for what the survivors are now requesting.

"They were eligible to receive reparations and the judge understood that they are prevented because of bureaucratic problems. The issue was resolved, but his big crime was that, when he discovered how they rejected the claims, he opened his mouth and said how things really work."

She noted that many people in Israel criticize the conduct of the judicial system, yet no one has been taken to court for doing so. In Germany, however, "they put him on trial for this about two weeks ago. Now we are waiting for the verdict."

"We cannot intervene in the German justice system but we can and must express solidarity with a person who did all he could in order to help Holocaust survivors."

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France: Strasbourg attacker has history of attacking Jews

Via i24News:

The assailant who moderately wounded a Jewish man in the French city of Strasbourg has been charged with attempted murder, a judicial source said on Saturday.

The prosecution said it had filed charges "for the attempted murder of a victim because of his real or inferred race or religion."

"The man, aged 45 was indicted by the investigating judge and was remanded in a criminal filing tonight," said the prosecutor.

The suspect, said to be in his 40s, has been described as mentally unstable.  Witnesses said that he shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) during the attack on the 62-year-old Jewish man.

The victim was wearing a kippa skullcap, when he was stabbed in the abdomen in the city's Jewish quarter by a man with a record of anti-Semitic violence, Strasbourg's chief rabbi, Rene Gutman, told AFP.

The victim was admitted to hospital but Gutman said his injuries were not life-threatening.

In 2010, the assailant attacked another kippa-wearing Jewish man in Strasbourg, beating him with an iron bar in a public square.

Put on trial for attempted murder, he was considered to be not mentally responsible for his acts under criminal law and detained in a psychiatric hospital.

Prosecutors at the time said the aggressor believed himself to be "the victim of a Jewish conspiracy" which he blamed for "all his misfortunes".

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France: Jewish man wounded in stabbing attack in Strasbourg

Via i24News:

A 55-year-old Jewish man was moderately wounded in a stabbing attack in the French city of Strasbourg Friday.

According to a report by the Daily Express, the perpetrator was a Muslim man who is said to have shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) during the attack.

The suspect has been taken into police custody, according to local media reports.

France's BFM-TV cited a source close to the investigation as saying that police have ruled out terrorism, but the motivation for the attack is still unclear.

Some initial reports said that the assailant suffered from a history of mental illness.

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