UK: The hateful whispers that make me want to move from London to Tel Aviv

Via The Spectator (by Simon Wilder):

As a Jew, the city where I grew up and have always lived feels less and less comfortable

I’ve always lived in London. I grew up near Baker Street and went to school in Camden. Even when I was at college in Kent, I lived in Islington and commuted. Five years ago I moved to Belsize Park and I’ve been here, the nicest place I’ve lived, ever since. I didn’t mean to stay — I was going to see the world, but my father died and my mother said she needed me to be close. She said it with a tremor in her voice, so I stayed. 

London is in my heart and in my blood, but the wind has changed, like it did for Mary Poppins, and I think it’s going to blow me out of the city, all the way to Tel Aviv. (...)

There’s a train of thought among right-thinking people in London at the moment that Israel is culpable; that it is responsible for all the ills of the Palestinians, all the woes of the Middle East. If it weren’t for Israel, they say, the world would be a better place. If you go to a dinner party you can hear things that wouldn’t have sounded unfamiliar in 1930s Germany. They say they’re just ‘anti-Zionist’ but to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-Semitic. No one is anti- any other country. No one questions, say, Iran’s right to exist. (...)

If only those people who wish ill on Israel, on Jews, could know what it’s like to hear their hatred — to live in London and hear that Jews are the puppet-masters of the world, that Israel only helps in disaster zones to harvest organs. My father would have known. He spent time in the 1940s in Nazi concentration camps, because he was Jewish. His parents and sister were murdered for the same reason. My father would feel the same dread chill, and know — first-hand — where all this blame and hatred of Jews leads. If you think I exaggerate, then tell me; where do you think it leads? It may be only the first ugly murmur, from stupid people, but it won’t end there.

I’ve been to Tel Aviv four times in five years, and it seems to me a place of positive things: hope, investment in the future, strength and patience and humour. This is why I’m thinking of moving. 

A large section of the city was designed by European émigrés who had studied at the Bauhaus in the 1930s. The lucky architects who managed to leave Germany in time, of course. The buildings are rarely more than three or four storeys and often have curved balconies. These are lovely streets to walk along, not least because of the exotic trees planted close together, casting cool shadows.

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Belgium: Newspaper fires columnist About Jahjah over praise of driver who killed Israeli soldiers

Abou Jahjah

As reported, Belgian anti-racism activist and much respected columnist with the prestigious daily De Standaard, Abou Jahjah, incited for more terrorist attacks against Israeli soldiers in 'occupied Jerusalem'.  
The situation became so embarrassing for De Standaard that they sacked him - but cleverly De Standaard did not give the whole picture and only indicated that they severed links with Abou Jahjah because of his latest tweet glorifying the slaying of Jews: “Debate has borders and for us the border lies short of support of violence of any kind”, ignoring all the previous calls for violence made by him, such as "the suitcase or the coffin" ("la valise ou le cercueil") as the only choice for Jews in Israel.

Since the decision, not a single Belgian newspaper did criticise the De Standaard for its three-year cooperation with an antisemite, which is understandable because most approved of him.  Some came out in support of About Jahjah (more later).  One of the more outspoken admirers of Jahjah is Alexis Deswaef,  president of Belgian Human Rights League, Belgium's leading anti-racist organization, who wrote to this blog defending and praising Abou Jahjah.

Only the Libre Belgique told its readers that Jahjah had called Belgium a "shit-hole", but not that he had accused the mayor of Antwerp Bart De Wever of being "a Zionist c***sucker".

In the meantime more news came out about terrorism in Belgium and the Daily Mail referred to Brussels as the "jihadi capital of Europe".  One wonders.

The JTA reported the story:  

A Belgian daily newspaper fired one of its columnists following his praise for the slaying of four Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem. 

De Standaard, a left-leaning Flemish-language daily, said Monday that it would no longer feature columns by Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanon-born activist from Belgium who has called for violent attacks on Jewish Israelis. 

A day earlier, Belgian Jews took to Twitter to condemn Abou Jahjah’s remarks, which included: “By any means necessary, #freepalestine,” following an attack in which a Palestinian terrorist plowed a truck through a crowd of soldiers visiting a popular tourist spot. The driver, who was shot dead, reportedly was a supporter of the Islamic State terror group. 

He also wrote on Facebook that the attack was “not terrorism but resistance.” Abou Jahjah, a Hezbollah supporter who has accused Israel of genocide, has written a weekly column for De Standaard for the past three years. 

“Debate has borders and for us the border lies short of support of violence of any kind,” De Standaard wrote in an editorial announcing the dismissal. 

The Forum of Jewish Organizations of Flemish Jews said in a statement Monday that it was “shocked” by Abou Jahjah’s remarks and called on “certain media offering him a platform” to stop publishing his writings. 

In 2015, Abou Jahjah called Antwerp’s mayor “a Zionist c***sucker” on Twitter. He founded a Muslim European group that published on its website a picture of Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler as well as a caricature suggesting that Jews invented the Holocaust. 

The Jewish Chronicle of London has described Abou Jahjah, who famously posed for a picture while holding an AK-47 assault rifle in his native Lebanon, as a former Hezbollah combatant. 

After the 9/11 attacks of 2001 in New York, Abou Jahjah spoke of his “feeling of victory.” He has called Antwerp, which has a large community of Orthodox Jews, the “international capital of the Zionist lobby,” according to NRC. 

In an interview published last year in the Dutch daily Volkskrant, Abou Jahjah defended his claim that the Israeli flag is comparable to that of Nazi Germany “because both countries practiced ethnic cleansing.” He rejected claims that the statement and others by him were anti-Semitic.

French Ambassadors declare war on Israel

Note: On 19 February 2016, Le Figaro published an opinion by Francis Gutmann, a former ambassador, and a member of the 'Club des vingt' arguing that France should engage in "active neutrality" with Israel and Palestine and that peace will not be achieved if France tilts towards Israel as it has been doing for ten years (according to them Sarkozy and Hollande...).  Members of the 'Club des vingt' include Roland Dumas (who thinks former PM Manuel Valls is under the influence of his Jewish wife), Hervé de Charette, Hubert Védrine, Henry Laurens and Rony Brauman, all known for their anti-Israel and pro-Arab positions. 

Via the Gatestone Institute (by Yves Mamou):

- For our ambassadors, terrorism does not exist in "Palestine". They just whisper Quixotically about "the need for security" for Israel.
- The obvious conclusion is that they are just trying to hide their own detestation of Israel behind the Arab one.
- The problem is not Jewish "settlers" in "Palestine". Before 1967, there were no settlements, then what was the Palestine Liberation Organization "liberating" when it was created in Cairo in 1964? The answer, as the PLO was the first to admit, was "Palestine" -- meaning the entire state of Israel, regarded by many Arabs as just one big settlement. Just look any Palestinian map.
- The problem is that these ambassadors are not as dangerous to Israel as they are to Europe and the free world, as they keep on succumbing to the demands of Islam.  

Do not forget these names: Yves Aubin de La Messuzière; Denis Bauchard; Philippe Coste; Bertrand Dufourcq; Christian Graeff; Pierre Hunt; Patrick Leclercq; Stanislas de Laboulaye; Jean-Louis Lucet; Gabriel Robin; Jacques-Alain de Sédouy and Alfred Siefer-Gaillardin.  

These men are retired French ambassadors. They are apparently well educated, very polite and aristocratic people and they regularly publish op-eds in Le Monde. However, they publish in Le Monde only to threaten Israel.  

Their most recent op-ed in Le Monde on January 9, 2017, was to explain how an international conference on the Middle East, the one which scheduled for January 15 in Paris, would be beneficial for the "security" of Israel. Their text is a discouraging enumeration of traditional clichés of France's hypocritical diplomacy.  

Example: "For the Palestinians, nothing is worse than the absence of a state". In which way is it the worst? As Bret Stephens wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal:  

"Have they experienced greater violations to their culture than Tibetans? No: Beijing has conducted a systematic policy of repression for 67 years, whereas Palestinians are nothing if not vocal in mosques, universities and the media. Have they been persecuted more harshly than the Rohingya? Not even close."  

Stephens also noted that:  

"a telling figure came in a June 2015 poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, which found that a majority of Arab residents in East Jerusalem would rather live as citizens with equal rights in Israel than in a Palestinian state. "  

The French ambassadors, however, do not explain. They just add: "The Proclamation of a Palestinian state will certainly not change anything on the ground," but they say that they hope this symbolic move will create "a new dynamic imposing new realities". Hmm. Now what could these "new realities" be in a Palestinian state in the middle of a war-torn Middle East?

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Spain chooses city boycotting Israel to play Israel/Spain WC qualifier

A very cynical choice...

Via YNet News:

The Israel national team's World Cup qualifying game against Spain in Gijon has angered state officials because the city hosting the game has declared a boycott against Israel. Officials are also concerned that protests will accompany the game, which will be held on the 24th of March.

The Spanish national team holds games in many cities, so residents across the country have the opportunity to see the games.

In January 2016, the city council approved a boycott on Israel, which was initiated by extreme left-wing and socialist parties. Gijon Mayor Carmen Moriyón was opposed to the boycott, but her party and other centrist parties abstained and failed to overturn the decision. 

Pro-Israel activists appealed the decision to the Administrative Court, but the judge rejected the appeal on the grounds that the action had no real practical significance, but was only a political statement. (...)

In light of the city's attitude towards Israel, the Israel national team is not expecting a warm reception. "It makes us sick that the team has to come and play in a place that is boycotting the State of Israel, even if it is just a declaration," said state officials. "It is unclear to us why out of all places, Spain chose the hold the game in this city." 

The Israel Football Association said, "We have no information or explanation as to why Spain chose to hold the match in Gijon. They do not need our approval, of course. The relations between the associations are excellent. We play wherever is permitted, we don't mix sports with anything else."

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Belgium: Educational body screens film 'Occupation of the American Mind' by Zionist lobbies at 'Freedom Festival'

Several blatantly anti-Israel films featured at the "Liberties" film festival organized by Bruxelles Laïque (a State-funded organisation which promotes secularism and humanistic values).

The festival opened on 20 October with a film which was aired in Sweden by the educational broadcasting company (“The Occupation of the American Mind") and caused a controversy, but not in Belgium where it even received a prize.  The theme is not new.  In 2006 Jean Bricmont who teaches physics at the Catholic University of Louvain and is a fellow-member of the prestigious Belgian Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts, warned against the Zionization of the American mind.  

Lifted from the festival programme:

The Jury Prize has been awarded to the documentary The Occupation of the American Mind, which explores the way in which the pro-Zionist lobby has for several decades been able to influence - and even shape - media coverage about the Israel-Palestine conflict so that it is systematically in favour of Israel. Carefully honed, effective propaganda seeks to impose on the American mind and media a truncated and biased vision of this major conflict. The film provides pertinent and incontrovertible evidence of this state of affairs. The Festival of Libertés jury has decided to support this film and its directors, who have had difficulty finding distributors and theatres in the United States. 

The Occupation of the American Mind/ Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States.This film decodes the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by mainstream American media and reveals the communication strategy implemented by Zionist lobbies in order for their point of view to become the vision shared by a majority of Americans. A constant barrage of rockets on the news and an insistence on "the right of Israel to defend itself" are the main weapons of this propaganda campaign. 

The screening was followed by a discussion session with Sut Jhally, George Matta (film producers) and Frank Barat (of the Russell International Tribunal on Palestine, a kangaroo court made in Belgium...)

Other Israel-bashing films screened:

HOTLINE  - Silvia Landesman,  Based in Tel Aviv (Israel) 

Hotline is an organisation that helps migrants. It fights a hard battle for human rights in a country which basically does not recognize any refugees and does anything possible to send migrants back to their countries, especially South Sudanese and Eritrean people, who risk deportation and even death. Under threats and insults from locals who are often radically opposed to them and amid the quagmire of legislation, Hotline opens the offices of their mission impossible for all to see.

Best Israeli Documentary, Jerusalem Film Festival, 2015

"HOLOT" 

A short animated film directed by students and based on the stories of African refugees, imprisoned in Holot, a detention centre for migrants in the heart of Southern Israel’s Negev desert. Its long detention times without trial have been ruled unconstitutional and while the centre is "open", it requires three signatures each day to come and go.

THIS IS MY LAND - Tamara Erde 

How is history taught in Israel? Or in Palestine? What kind of effects can the historical perspective presented by teachers have on young students? Are they building walls in their head even before becoming adults? This Is My Land explores three types of teaching, three co-existing worlds: an Israeli school, a Palestinian school and a combined school. Social Justice Prize, DC Filmfest (Washington), 2015 • First Prize Documentary, FIFOG Festival (Genève), 2015 • First Prize, PRIMED Enjeux Mediterraneens (Marseille), 2014

The screening was followed by a meeting with Tamara Erde (film director), Simone Susskind (a member of the Brussels parliament, president of Actions in the Mediterranean and a member of the major Belgian Jewish organisation, CCLJ, which regularly engages in Israel-bashing) and Hamdan Al Damari (representative from Liège of the  Palestinian Community in Belgium and Luxembourg).

Holland: Publisher’s contract with Hezbollah fan About Jahjah causes authors walkout

Via JTA:

A Dutch publishing house that was founded by anti-Nazi fighters lost some of its best-known authors following its contract with a Hezbollah supporter who has accused Israel of genocide.

Leon de Winter, a Dutch-Jewish writer who is one of the Netherlands’ best-known novelists, said he joined the walkout by three other writers from De Bezige Bij last week, partly because the company was “lacking a leader” but also over its publication of the book “Plea for Radicalization” by Dyab Abou Jahjah — a Lebanon-born activist from Belgium who has called for violent attacks on Israeli Jews.

De Winter said he considered Abou Jahjah an anti-Semite, an accusation rejected by Abou Jahjah — who last year called Antwerp Mayor “a Zionist cocksucker” on Twitter, and who founded a Muslim European group which published on its website a picture of Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler as well as a caricature suggesting that Jews invented the Holocaust.

De Winter told JTA Thursday that his leaving De Bezige Bij after 30 years “is very painful” because of the company’s wartime history and its record of supporting its authors. “But when you add the worldview of a person like Abou Jahjah, which is incompatible with mine, when my publisher tries to hide these differences or perhaps prefers Abou Jahjah, then I have to go look for a new publisher,” he said.

De Winter is the fourth big name to leave De Bezige Bij since Abou Jahjah’s signing on in February. In June, the publishing house lost Jessica Durlacher, a celebrated Jewish author who is de Winter’s wife, and the award-winning novelist Tommy Wieringa. Both of them cited Abou Jahjah as a factor that led to their departure.

Durlacher said she did not want to share a platform with “someone who uses the word Zionists to describe Jews, and calls himself a radical anti-Zionist,” according to Volkskrant.

John Irving, the American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter, announced together with de Winter that he would be leaving De Bezige Bij, though Irving’s decision was unconnected to Abou Jahjah, according to NRC Handelsblad, a Dutch daily newspaper.

The Jewish Chronicle of London has described Abou Jahjah — who famously has posed for a picture while holding an AK-47 assault rifle in his native Lebanon — as a former Hezbollah combatant.

After the 9/11 attacks of 2001 in New York, Abou Jahjah spoke of his “feeling of victory,” and has called Antwerp, which has a large community of Orthodox Jews, the “international capital of the Zionist lobby,” according to NRC.

In an interview published last week in the Dutch daily Volkskrant, Abou Jahjah defended his claim that the Israeli flag is comparable to that of Nazi Germany “because both countries practiced ethnic cleansing.” He rejected claims that this and past statements by him were anti-Semitic, and said that de Winter and Durlacher are the ones who don’t belong at De Bezige Bij because “they support occupation, that of Israel.”

"I have only one phrase to all the Zionists invaders in Palestine: La valise ou le cercueil (either the suitcase or the coffin)."

For more on About Jahjah click here

Europe: 600,000 Jews have left Europe in last 25 years

From the European Parliament:

First Vice-President
of the European Parliament,Antonio Tajani.

The current situation in Europe of Anti-Semitism and future prospects for Europe’s Jewish communities were debated at a conference hosted by EP President Martin Schulz and First Vice-President Antonio Tajani on Tuesday.

“When we see that every fifth Jew in Europe has experienced verbal or physical violence, when these aggressions are getting more and more numerous, and when we see that the Jewish population in Europe has decreased from almost four million in 1945 to barely more than one million today, then we know that it is high time not only to make a clear political statement, but to take effective action as soon as possible. Europe has to be a better home for its Jewish citizens”, said the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz in his closing remarks.

“Some of us still have not understood that what makes us European is not our blood or religion but our strong adherence to our most fundamental values of tolerance, respect and liberty”, he added.

Opening the conference, Mr Tajani (EPP, IT), who is responsible for inter-religious dialogue for the Parliament, said “According to the Jewish Agency, almost ten thousand Jews moved to Israel in 2015, including eight thousand from France alone. This was double the 2014 figure. This, sadly, is the result of a persistent climate of hatred towards Jews: their numbers fell substantially from two million in Europe in 1991 to one million four hundred thousand in 2010. Yet Europe without Jews would no longer be Europe."

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How serious is the European Parliament (and Mr Schulz in particular) about tackling anti-Semitism?
- The European Parliament rewards hate
- Anything the PA does, no matter how murderous, never elicits anything but the mildest form of vague condemnation, if any, from the EU

Belgium:Anti-racism activist blames Israel for Muslim hatred of Jews, compares Zionism to ISIS ideology

Dyab Abou Jahjah is an extremist antisemite.  He's also a minority-rights activist, a distinguished columnist in one of Belgium's top papers, and a respected partner for Belgium's anti-racism organizations.  The ones tasked with fighting antisemitism.

Belgians find it perplexing when Jews say he's antisemitic, because he only wants to kill all Jews in Israel (a sentiment he's shared quite a few times).   A decade ago he also organized pogroms in Jewish neighborhoods in Belgium, but apparently that doesn't make him an antisemite either.

Yesterday, Abou Jahjah posted a post in English on his Facebook in which he blamed Israel for Muslim and Arab antisemitism.  He then went on to compare Israel to Islamic State (also a recurring sentiment by him).  Except Israel is much worse, because most Jews support Israel, while only a fraction of Muslims support ISIS.
 

When young Arabs and Muslims express hatred towards Jews it is 99% of the time an echo of Israel portraying itself as the Jewish state and them believing it. This is very regrettable but it is not antisemitism. It is a lack of politisation and can only be remedied by explaining Zionism to them as a political racist movement that hijacks the identity of the Jews just like "Daesh" hijacks that of the Muslims.

With the clear difference that support for Israel and Zionism is unfortunately mainstream among jews. While support for Daesh is marginal among muslims. Not only that, Arabs and muslims are waging war against Daesh. But either way, yes young people say stupid uninformed things often out of emotionality.

I wrote about this Belgian hypocrisy in the past, but it's worth repeating. 

It is not surprising that a Hezbollah activist in Belgium hates Jews.  It's not surprising that he led riots in Jewish neighborhoods in which protesters burned Jews in effigy, or that he posted Holocaust cartoons accusing Jews of making it all up, or that he supports Holocaust deniers, or that he supports the genocide of Jews in Israel.

I really don't expect much from people like Abou Jahjah.

What is surprising is that the Belgian establishment supports him, including those people whose job it is to protect Jews from antisemites.   The city of Ghent invited him to speak about racism, as did Amnesty International and the Belgian Human Rights League.   He also has a weekly column in De Standaard.

The Belgian Human Rights League got really upset at me for calling them out on their support of antisemites.  Because the people whose job it is to fight antisemitism in Belgium prefer to team up with a Hezbollah terrorist, rather than to listen to Jews who complain about it.

It really doesn't matter how many times Belgian politicians say that they are serious about fighting antisemitism.  As long as Belgian society and Belgian anti-racism organizations accept Abou Jahjah as one of their own and as an acceptable voice in society - they are sending a clear message to the  Jews in Belgium: You are on your own.

France: Getting results - Health site now gives Israel positive rating

Background: France: Popular online doctor site strikes Israel off the map 

Docteurclic.com has changed the maps and no longer claims that Israel is a primitive and dirty country (you know those dirty Jews...).

The "Warning" section now reads: "Sanitary and hospital infrastructures in Israel are excellent. ("Israel est un pays où les infrastructures sanitaires et hospitalière sont excellentes.")   It had warned that sanitation was very poor: "In addition, the low level of sanitation does not allow the traveller to ensure optimum safety in terms of the management of health problems. Sanitation infrastructures are poor or very degraded." ("De plus, le faible niveau sanitaire ne permet pas d'assurer au voyageur une sécurité optimale sur le plan de la prise en charge des problèmes de santé. Les infrastructures sanitaires sont médiocres, voire très dégradées.")

The site no longer advises travellers to avoid visiting Israel and now rates it green  instead of amber - the rating given to Yemen.  Egypt, Jordan and Syria were all rated green...  This has been changed too.. 

Elder of Ziyon also reports:

EoZ readers wrote to the site to complain, and Alyssa Cohen Kaplan received this reply:

There is no willingness on our part to take a position for or against anyone . Some of our country sheets certainly require revision . We have company. Thank you for pointing out some inconsistencies.

They changed the maps for both Israel and "Palestine" to this one:

It is a start.  I don't know if anyone wrote to them from the stories about the topic in The New Antisemite and Dreuz.Info but since Alyssa received the reply, it looks like we did get results.

France: Popular online doctor site strikes Israel off the map

Via Victor Perez

Docteurclic is a popular French site which offers health advice: in the travel section not only is Israel absent but Palestine is described as being occupied...  The article was written by Dr Yohan Servais.

And this is how Israel is depicted:

Dutch humanists spurn call to condemn Erasmus’ anti-Semitism

JTA reports:

Erasmus in 1523 as depicted
by Hans Holbein the Younger

The Netherlands Humanistic Association declined to condemn the anti-Semitism of pioneering humanist Catholic theologian Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Hans Jansen, a former minister of the Dutch Reformed Church called for the condemnation in a recent Op-Ed in the Reformatorisch Dagblad daily. He said the association, which promotes the humanist school of thought that Erasmus helped create in the 15th and 16th centuries, should distance itself from Erasmus’ characterization of Jews as “the most noxious pests.”

Jansen, who is a partner of the Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Brussels, argued the Humanist Association should take action now in light of the Protestant Church of the Netherlands’ public rejection last month of anti-Semitic statements by Martin Luther, who began the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

But a spokesperson for the Netherlands Humanistic Association dismissed the call, Reformatorisch Dagblad reported Thursday, saying, “Humanist tradition is very diverse” and Erasmus “was not the founder of Humanism. Humanists are also not followers of Erasmus, as is sometimes the case with Luther.”

Erasmus is widely known by the sobriquet “prince of the humanists.”

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Belgium: Holocaust memorial patron is gas chamber negationist!

Drawing lifted from a Holocaust-
denial Portuguese blog

Belgian Jewish on-line magazine Regards reported an antisemitic incident which took place at a Brussels restaurant.

A diner overheard people at the table next to hers calling Jews a "filthy race" and denying the existence of gas chambers.  The lady and her husband drew a swastika on a piece of paper and pinned it above the table where the group of friends were sitting.  They were greatly amused, started laughing and explained that they had  first-hand experience of the war and contested the existence of gas chambers. 

An investigation revealed that the author of the remarks, Mr Jacques Engels, was a member of the resistance during the war and that he is a prominent member of the World War II memorial Kazerne Dossin.   He is a collector of war documents which he entrusted to the museum.  But it turns out that he denies the existence of gas chambers!

A question arises: how can someone be an active supporter of a museum/memorial dedicated to the Jews deported from Belgium and murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and at the same time deny the existence of gas chambers?

Mr Engels has since explained that his words had been taken out of context. People who know him have indicated that it is not the first time that Mr Engels, who is now in his 90s, has engaged in Holocaust-denying.

Europe: Kerry: US quietly helping 'embattled' European Jews

Arutz Sheva reports:

Speaking at Baker Institute, Kerry revealed State Department working with European Jewish communities suffering from rampant anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise again, said Secretary of State John Kerry, and the US is reaching out to Jewish communities across Europe suffering from harassment and hate crimes.

Speaking on Tuesday at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Kerry addressed the issue of religious freedom worldwide, focusing on the plight of religious minorities around the globe.

In the course of his address, Kerry discussed the surge in anti-Semitism worldwide, emphasizing America’s commitment to stamping out all forms of bigotry.

“It shouldn’t be necessary, but silence has been misinterpreted too many times in the past to risk it again. Make no mistake: The United States remains unalterably opposed to bigotry in all forms, including anti-Semitism, and our commitment on this point, I am telling you, will never weaken, never waver, and never change.”

Kerry noted that the rise of anti-Semitism was particularly prominent in Europe, and discussed the efforts of US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Ira Forman, in Jewish communities suffering from regular harassment.

“[I]n Europe and elsewhere, anti-Semitism is again on the rise, as evidenced by a significant increase in hate crimes – many of them violent – and also frequent incidents of intimidation and examples of anti-Semitic graffiti and verbal abuse.”

“Ira Forman, America’s special envoy, who I mentioned earlier, has quietly reached out to a number of embattled Jewish communities. In one city in northern Europe, he met with the sole remaining rabbi – everybody else had been chased out – a man so frequently harassed by local immigrant youths that he feared to make the short trip home – from his home to the synagogue. In other urban centers, Ira has worked with our embassies to alert local authorities to the need of upgrading security at Jewish facilities.”

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Why is Ireland so hostile to Israel? Why do the Irish support BDS? What Is It about Israel that upsets them?

Alex Grobman, Ph.D., writes @ The Jewish Voice and Opinion

During her formative years, Israel received significant support in Ireland. Having experienced religious persecution themselves, the Irish identified with Jews. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case, according to Professor James Bowen of the National University of Ireland at Cork.

Bowen, who serves as national chairman of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), says the initial sympathy expressed towards Israel disappeared when the Irish learned how the Arabs were “dispossessed” of their land in 1948 and then experienced the “horrors of the post-1967 occupation.”  Founded on November 29, 2001, the IPSC has no policy regarding the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, according to Bowen, it believes the decision to turn the area into two states, a federated state, or a single state should be made by the Palestinians and Israelis, who, the group says, have a legitimate interest in the outcome.

Promoting BDS

However, IPSC does not see itself as merely an interested party trying to support both sides. The group and its national chairman have taken a prominent role in promoting the Boycott-Divestment-and-Sanction (BDS) movement in Ireland against Israel. In fact, Irish academics have been particularly adamant in their efforts to have Israeli academic institutions boycotted.

In a letter to the Irish Times dated September 16, 2006, 61 Irish professors signed a petition urging academic institutions throughout the world to adopt a policy of boycotting Israeli institutions of higher education.

The date was no coincidence. The Irish professors, calling themselves Academics for Justice, published their letter on the anniversary of the 1982 massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon. In that incident, thousands of Arab civilians, mostly Lebanese Shiites and Palestinians, were killed by a militia controlled by the Philange, a predominantly Christian-Lebanese party. The Philange claimed the attack on Sabra and Shatila was retaliation for the assassination of then-newly elected Lebanese-Christian president Bachir Gemayel. Although Israeli soldiers did not participate in the massacre, the IDF, which was already in the area, did nothing to stop it.

Academics for Justice have proclaimed September 16 as Ireland’s “Boycott Israel” day. [...]

More Irish Demonizing of Israel
But teachers are not the only segment of society promoting BDS against Israel in Ireland, where a de facto cultural boycott of the Jewish state has been in effect for years. A classified Israeli Foreign Ministry report revealed in December 2011 that, for more than a decade, no Israel dance or theatrical company, musician, or filmmaker had been invited to Ireland. Thirty-four Irish artists—one-fifth of all Irish performers receiving public funds—signed a petition calling for a cultural boycott against Israel. Irish artists and performers interested in maintaining relations with Israel are subjected to verbal and written attacks.

The Irish press regularly demonizes Israel and tirades against the Jewish state’s leaders are published in the name of “human rights.”

Trócaire, the overseas development agency of the Catholic Church of Ireland, which is funded by the Irish government through Irish Aid, is also anti-Israel. Although Irish Aid’s mandate is to “promote coherence across the full range of Irish government policies on issues such as agriculture, trade, the environment, and fiscal matters,” Trócaire has assumed a major role in fostering the demonization of Israel. In January 2013, for example, Trócaire produced a series of biased “educational resource guides” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that drew strong criticism from Israelis and some Irish commentators.

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Europe: Islamic state attacks make Europe more—not less—hostile toward Israel

Via Mosaic Magazine:

Islamic State (IS) seems, for the time being, more interested in attacking Europe than in attacking Israel, thus threatening the former’s longstanding hope that Muslim terrorists would focus their attention on the Jewish state and ignore the West. Evelyn Gordon argues that this is why EU members are likely to respond to Islamist aggression not with new sympathy for Israel but by intensifying their efforts against it:

[T]o Europe, it must have seemed the perfect solution: the [jihadist] crocodile could keep attacking Israel forever, and Europeans would be permanently safe. All they had to do was make sure the beast remained fixated on Israel by maintaining a steady drumbeat of anti-Israel outrage.

Yet now, suddenly, that tactic no longer works—and like any weakling confronted with a bully, Europe is cravenly trying to divert the bully’s attention back to his former victim.

That’s precisely why Islamic State’s rise over the last few years has coincided with an upsurge in anti-Israel activity by European governments, including the European Union’s discriminatory decision to start labeling settlement products, moves by several European parliaments to recognize a Palestinian state, and France’s recent push for both an anti-Israel Security Council resolution and an international conference conducted under threat of recognizing “Palestine” if Israel doesn’t capitulate completely. All these are frantic efforts to restore the jihadist status quo ante—first, by refocusing world (and especially Muslim) attention on Israel, and second, by weakening Israel enough that it once again looks like a tempting target for jihadists, rather than one too strong to be tackled without first bringing down several other countries.

Read more at Evelyn Gordon
  
Herb Keinon (JPost) has come to the same conclusion: Brussels attacks won't translate into more support for Israel.
 

UK: For years, anti-Semitism in Britain was the prejudice that dared not speak its name.

Melanie Philips wirtes @ The Jerusalem Post:

Alex Chalmers

What is that unfamiliar rustling in the British cultural undergrowth? It’s the sound of people suddenly acknowledging a problem with anti-Semitism.

For years, anti-Semitism in Britain was the prejudice that dared not speak its name. The hostility toward Israel endemic in educated circles was emphatically declared to have nothing whatever to do with hatred of Jews. Anyone who claimed a connection was denounced as “waving the shroud of the Holocaust” to silence legitimate “criticism” of Israel.

Jewish students have long run the gauntlet of vicious Israel- and Jew-hatred. “Israel apartheid” weeks, BDS motions and campus conferences declaring Israel is a “settler-colonial state” have morphed into intimidation, stigmatization and discrimination against Jews at university.

VIRTUALLY NO ONE outside the Jewish community has paid this any attention.  Now, though, unease has begun to seep into British national consciousness.

The reason is a shift in perspective. Israel is no longer seen as the world’s major flashpoint. The TV news is instead pumping images of Syrian atrocities and floods of displaced migrants into the living rooms of the nation.

Security officials repeatedly warn of the likelihood of coordinated Islamist attacks in Britain. The terrorist atrocities last year in Paris and most recently in Brussels have ratcheted up anxiety levels.

After the Paris attacks, though, something else changed. Many, from Prime Minister David Cameron downward, expressed their shock when British Jews said they no longer felt safe in Britain, specifically as Jews. How could this be, Britain asked itself in blinkered bewilderment. [...]

Meanwhile, the issue of campus Jew-hatred exploded when Alex Chalmers, the non-Jewish co-chairman of the Labor Party-affiliated Oxford University Labor Club (OULC), resigned with a devastating account of the Jew-bashing in such circles.

“Whether it be,” he wrote, “members of the executive throwing around the term ‘Zio’ (a term for Jews usually confined to websites run by the Ku Klux Klan) with casual abandon, senior members of the club expressing their ‘solidarity’ with Hamas and explicitly defending their tactics of indiscriminately murdering civilians, or a former co-chair claiming that ‘most accusations of anti-Semitism are just the Zionists crying wolf,’ a large proportion of both OULC and the student Left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews,” he wrote.

The Chalmers statement received huge attention from the British media. For the first time, non-Jewish commentators started expressing horrified concern about the swell of anti-Semitism.

read more

France: A Holocaust-denier "historian" and Freemason at La Rochelle

Michel Goldberg reports @ the Huffington Post:

The denial of the extermination of Jews by the Nazis is at the heart of a book that contains the most brutal anti-Semitic clichés.  

Robert Mingam, a self-stiled "historian" has written one of the most vicious revisionist books ever, The Order of the Priory of Sion, in which he elaborates on four themes:

 -    He draws on a viciously anti-Semitic book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to propound his theory that there is a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.
-     He accuses all the Jews of being engaged in that conspiracy.
-     He elaborates that the extermination of Jews by the Nazis is a fib.
-     He affirms that the "Jewish lobby" is now fomenting the third world war because they got wealthier as a result of World War II.

Robert Mingam is a freemason.  The Huffington Post indicates that, within three hours of the publication of the article, the head of the Grand Lodge to which Mingam is affiliated advised Michel Goldbeg that Mr MIngam will be expelled on January 9.

Read more (in French).


Readers may be interested in this piece (2013) French Students Stage 'Grossly Anti-Semitic' Play at La Rochelle. At the time, Michel Goldberg criticized the play.

Belgium: Jewish family explains why it chose to leave Belgium for the U.S. (video)

Testimony detailing the reasons a Belgian Jewish family chose to leave Belgium for the United States: the rise of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, the attacks of Toulouse, Islamism, etc (in French with subtitles in English).

 For our children, before its too late...  Video is dated February 2014 - and the situation keeps getting worse.

France: Army teaches kids that Israel is slaughtering Palestinians

JDC at the Metz BA 128(copyright BA 128)

The Goys Defending Israel blog were contacted by a Jewish mother whose daughter attended  "a day of national defense instruction" (JDC), concerning the remarks made by a speaker from the National Service Center of Vincennes.  The JDC "is designed to be a step on the path to citizenship". It is a substitute for the draft, designed to assume numerous roles with which it was vested: citizenship, duty of remembrance, youth awareness regarding defence issues, statistics on "draftees”, strengthening the bond between the army and its nation.  In 2010 the content was "modified through an increased awareness of citizenship and the rights and duties associated with it".

One of the speakers indicated that he had been giving presentations on French military operations for 12 years.  He explained that the French Army could not intervene everywhere.  To illustrate the point he mentioned that when Palestinians are killed by Israel, the French army cannot intervene. In the discussion that followed the remark, several young people said that it was not normal that France cannot intervene when Israel slaughters Palestinians.

Speakers at the JDC are usually reservists in uniform - they are commissioned and paid by the Ministry of Defence - and as such, they do not express their personal views but those of the institution they represent.  It could therefore be inferred that the Ministry of Defence and the French Army are openly and publicly anti-Zionist.  Obviously, this is not the case and the pronouncements of the speaker do not reflect an official position.
 
This  is precisely  why such statements are so dangerous. By flouting the general disciplinary regulations which require him to to exercise restraint while in uniform, the speaker gave the impression to the youngsters he was addressing, that Israel stands accused by France of committing crimes against the Palestinians on a large scale. This is the message the youngsters understood. 
 
Not only are such accusations entirely baseless but they are also contradicted by statistical data.- Palestinian life expectancy stands at 73 years and the growth rate of the population also disproves the claim of genocide or mass murders.  

Goys Defending Israel blog are working out with the girl's mother a way to deal with this regrettable affair which reveals that even civic education aimed at the young is infiltrated by anti-Zionist propaganda which tries to validate the idea that the whole of France supports such ideas.

Note: a reader of the Goys Defending Israel blog wrote that her daughter went through the same experience  a few months ago at the same place (Vincennes) that left her very shocked.  She was the only Jew in the assembly and was surrounded by pro-Palestinian young people, especially young women, who were very aggressive and outspoken...  The military staff in charge didn't say a word!

France’s coming battle, and what It means for French Jewry

Via Mosaic Magazine:

France may well show more fortitude and perseverance in fighting Islamist terror than is widely expected, argues Michel Gurfinkiel. But whether a reinvigorated French nation will become more sympathetic to its beleaguered Jews is another question entirely:

In recent years Jews have been a main target of jihadist violence in France, from the Jewish school massacre in Toulouse in 2012 to the Hyper Cacher massacre in 2015. It goes on: four days after the November 13 attacks, a Jewish teacher was stabbed in Marseilles by three men wearing pro-Islamic-State t-shirts. While the government and the political class constantly express their concern, and the police have provided large-scale protection to synagogues and other Jewish public places, . . . many Jews wonder whether parts of the public are not in fact indifferent, ready to wave away Muslim anti-Semitism and terrorism, even in France, as an outcome of an alleged Israeli unwillingness to come to terms with the Palestinians.

The new patriotic mood that has been emerging since November 13 seems to have muted this “argument.” Since everybody feels threatened now and everybody demands protection, there is much greater understanding and sympathy for the special case of the Jews. Israel is no longer described in the media as a country engaged in a colonial war of sorts against the Palestinians, but rather as a victim, along with France, of jihadist terrorism—and even sometimes as a positive example of successful anti-terrorist mobilization.

For all that, however, the long-term consequences may not be positive for Jews, and French-Jewish emigration, either to Israel or North America, will likely not subside. One reason is that greater ethnic and religious polarization means less toleration of all third parties.

Read more at American Interest.