UK: Seven Labour MPs resign citing ‘institutional’, ‘sickening’ antisemitism

Via Jewish Chronicle:

Seven MPs have resigned from the Labour Party citing institutional antisemitism as among the main reasons for their departure.

At a press conference in London, Liverpool Wavertree MP Luciana Berger said she was "embarrassed and ashamed" to be a member of the Labour Party which she said was "institutionally antisemitic" and had "a culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation". Ms Berger has long been a target for antisemitic Labour activists who have plied her with abuse and death threats.

The other MPs to speak cited antisemitism as their reason for leaving but added several other reasons, primary among which was Labour’s direction over Brexit.

The second MP to speak, Chris Leslie, who represents Nottingham East, said: "It has not been an easy decision for any of us" adding that the party had been "hijacked by the machine politics of the extreme left".

Ilford South MP Mike Gapes said: "I am sickened that Labour is now a racist, antisemitic party" and "furious that the Labour leadership is complicit in this".

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UK: Bringing up antisemitism ‘is upsetting Labour staff’

Via Times:

Labour’s general secretary has warned MPs that public criticism of the way antisemitism allegations have been handled is “distressing” for party staff.

Jennie Formby, a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, said that the party had received nearly 700 complaints linked to antisemitic abuse by party members since April last year and had expelled 12 people.

Dame Margaret Hodge, the MP for Barking, disputed this, saying that she alone had made complaints about 200 members. Ms Formby said this was not correct, claiming that Dame Margaret’s complaints related to 111 individuals, 20 of whom were Labour members.

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Belgium: Kosher slaughter ends in northern Belgium, threatening supplies to Europe

Via Times of Israel:

As the year 2018 came to a close Monday, it brought with it an end to kosher slaughter in the northern Flanders region of Belgium, home to half of the country’s Jewish population and a major supplier of meat for European Jewish communities.

In June 2017, the parliament in the Flemish region, one of the five sectors that make up the country, unanimously passed a resolution banning ritual slaughter without stunning.

The decision followed a similar one approved in May 2017 by the Walloon Parliament in the south, Belgium’s largest region. Both measures take effect in 2019. 

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UK: Labour suspends Mohammed Yasin, who blamed ‘all wars in the world’ on Jewish people

The man shared antisemitic posts for more than two years, and the Labour party had no idea. What does that say about their rank-and-file?

Via Times:

A senior Labour Party official shared anti-semitic material blaming Jews for “all the wars in the world”.

Labour’s West Midlands regional organiser, Mohammed Yasin, was suspended last night after The Sunday Times approached the party with a dossier of his activity on social media. Labour has launched an investigation.

For more than two years Yasin, not to be confused with the Labour MP with a similar name, shared anti-semitic posts and 9/11 conspiracy theories, praised a homophobic preacher and described his former leader Tony Blair as a “child-killer”.

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Hungary: Jobbik Deputy Leader to Step Down After Anti-Semitic Recording Surfaces

Via Hungary Today:

Jobbik deputy group leader and parliamentary notary István Szávay announced his immediate resignation on Thursday following the release of recordings containing anti-Semitic comments and details of an alleged assault.

On Wednesday, Hir TV presented a sound recording of Szávay privately informing fellow party members at a spring congress that he had verbally and physically assaulted a Jewish woman in a pub the previous day. According to Szávay, the woman initiated the conflict:

“She was yelling, ‘Nazis are stinking here,’ and I just knocked her out, dirty Jew, pakk, just like this.”

He admitted that the recording and the anti-Semitic comments were authentic, however, he insisted that he did not actually physically harm the woman.

In a message posted to his Facebook page on Thursday, Szávay said he informed group leader Márton Gyöngyösi about his resignation, which was accepted, and announced that he will remain a member of the Parliament.

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UK: Labour AM 'deeply sorry' over comments on Cardiff's Jewish community

Via Wales Online:

Cardiff Central Labour AM Jenny Rathbone is facing a call for her to resign or be expelled in the wake of controversial reported comments about Jews and anti-Semitism.

She will meet with a local rabbi to apologise and will refer herself for “equalities training”.

The Jewish Chronicle released a recording in which she appears to link anti-Semitism to Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories and argue that Jews in this country have a responsibility to promote peace.

In the recording, she is told that a synagogue in the Cyncoed area of Cardiff has had to “install bulletproof glass” but she suggests that “siege mentalities are also a part of this”

The AM compares the Welsh synagogue to a “fortress” and says it is hard for her to judge “how much of it is for real and how much of it is in their own heads”.

Her comments, made in 2017, have triggered alarm among Jewish groups and a call for her to quit.

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UK: Hundreds contact JLM's new Antisemitism Monitoring Centre about Jew-hate in Corbyn's Labour

Via TheJC:

A new Antisemitism Monitoring Centre set up by the Jewish Labour Movement to record and process complaints relating to Jew-hate within Jeremy Corbyn’s party has received nearly 500 submissions just a week after it was launched.

An email sent by JLM to its 2,000 members suggested there was a urgent need for the service because the Labour Party had allowed complaints of antisemitism to be “dismissed when reported, obfuscated when they entered the national press, and dragged on because that was politically easier”.

The launch of the centre – which is accessible to all Labour members regardless of whether or not they subscribe to JLM – will allow the organisation to build up a clear picture of what is happening across all areas of Mr Corbyn’s party.

The move comes amid fears that Labour’s own compliance unit, which is meant to investigate allegations of inappropriate conduct, is now operating on threadbare staffing levels following several departures in recent months.

The request to hear experiences of antisemitism in Labour is directed at either “victim or third-party observer” according to the email and JLM website. The group is also keen to learn of alleged instances of antisemitism from both Jewish and non-Jewish members of the Labour Party.

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Poland: In secret recording, PM slams ‘greedy’ Jewish, American hedge fund owners

Via Times of Israel:

Poland’s prime minister was heard making allegedly anti-Semitic remarks in secret recordings from 2013, before he rose to power.

The recordings of Mateusz Morawiecki complaining to friends about “greedy” and rich “Americans, Jews, Germans, Englishmen, and Swiss” that run hedge funds were published Tuesday by the news site Onet.

Part of a corruption scandal, the remarks appeared in a 3-hour recording of Morawiecki, who was then a senior banker, discussing politics and finance with his friends at a prestigious Warsaw restaurant. 

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Sweden: Members of far-right party caught making anti-Semitic statements online

Via JTA:

Regional politicians from the far-right Sweden Democrats party were caught making anti-Semitic statements online, including using a picture of Anne Frank to mock Holocaust victims.

Per Olsson, who represents the party on the city council of Oskarshamn, a coastal Swedish city, posted earlier this year a picture of Frank captioned “coolest Jew in the shower room” on the Russian social network VKontakt, the Expressen daily reported Friday.

The Expressen report was part of a project in which journalists for that daily and the Expo magazine looked into the digital footprint of many politicians from various parties ahead of the country’s September 9 general and local elections.

Sweden Democrats is currently in third place according to various polls, with 18.7 percent of the vote. Its share was just under 13 percent in the 2014 elections.

The journalists also found anti-Semitic material on the social media accounts of Raghu Jacobsen, who represents the party on the city council of Stenungsund, located in western Sweden.

“As long as Rothschild controls the economy and with the modern slavery on this planet, there will be anti-Semitism. #Jews #israel,” he wrote in English in February on Twitter.

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France: Politician calls Macron ‘President Rothschild’

Obviously Mr Di Filippo would not have called President Macron, the Société Générale or BNP President. The reference to Jewish bankers is clear.

Via JTA:

A top representative of French Jewry condemned harshly what he called anti-Semitic rhetoric of a Republican politician who called the republic’s leader “President Rothschild.”

Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, on Thursday wrote on Twitter that he considered “revolting” Fabien Di Filippo, The Republicans’ secretary general, message on the same platform about President Emmanuel Macron.

“Following the revolting tweet, featuring anti-Semitic language from the 1930s, of the secretary general of The Republicans,” Kalifat wrote, he has asked that party’s president, Laurent Wauquiez, to issue “a firm condemnation” and an “:exemplary sanction” of Di Filippo.

But Di Filippo on Twitter denied that he had made any anti-Semitic references in his tweet about Macron, who used to work for the Rothchild Bank after joining it in 2008.

“Naturally, the expression ‘President Rothschild’ was a reference to the past functions of banker Emmanuel Macron,” Di Filippo wrote, adding Macron was “disconnected from our realities.” His reference to the Jewish banker family “had no other connotation,” he added.

The same in the UK.  Via Guido Fawkes:

Black-t-shirted Corbyn outrider Aaron Bastani has been hitting out at former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for calling Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite. His recent attack is nothing new, here are a selection of old tweets railing against Goldman Sachs, Rothschilds, Meyer Rothschild, Philip Green, Alain de Botton‏ and Peter Mandelson:

Greece: Anarchists raid Ministry in protest against Israel "genocide" of Palestinians

Via Greek City Times (H/T Watch Anti-Semitism in Europe):

Two anarchists of the anti-establishment group Rouvikonas stormed into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in downtown Athens on Tuesday early morning after scaling the buildings gates.

The anarchists left a bag containing a Palestinian flag as well as photographs depicting Palestinians killed during recent clashes with Israel’s armed forces.

The group was protesting Greece’s cooperation with Israel and a video of the raid was posted on the anti-authoritarian website.

The footage shows two members of Rouvikonas climbing the ministry’s metal gate and entering its courtyard unimpeded. “This time, we decided to take a symbolic action, depositing a bag that contained a Palestinian flag and a few pictures, in the courtyard of the foreign ministry. They were photographs of the dead from the last ‘episode’ in the genocide of a people, triggered by the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, by a diachronically of the Greek state, the US”, Rouvikonas highlighted in a post on the anti-authority website.

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UK: Labour veteran quits the party and warns its leadership is 'becoming a force for anti-Semitism'

Via The Daily Mail:

Labour was plunged into turmoil today after veteran MP Frank Field sensationally quit blaming Jeremy Corbyn for making the party a 'force for anti-Semitism'.  

Mr Field, 76, told party bosses that after nearly 40 years as a Labour MP he was quitting the party whip and will sit as an independent. 

Labour MP Wes Streeting warned the party now faces a 'catastrophic' split as others will follow Mr Field and quit. 

In a letter detailing his decision made public tonight, Mr Field said Britain fought World War II to defeat Nazis - but under Mr Corbyn's watch that victory is being eroded.  

And in an interview with Sky News, he said he finally made the tough decision after former chief rabbi Lord Sacks accused Mr Corbyn of being an anti-Semite. 

Lord Sacks was responding to a video, exclusively revealed by MailOnline, in which Mr Corbyn told a meeting that British 'Zionists' had 'no sense of English irony'.  

Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said the resignation was a 'serious loss' for Labour and must be a 'wake up call' for the party. Mr Streeting warned that more could follow in his footsteps, telling Sky News: 'Frank Field isn't the first and I fear Frank Field wont be the last.'

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European Union continues to fiscally back hate education against Israel

Via JNS (Michael Calvo):

By supporting Palestinian teachers’ salaries, the European Union financially participated and continues to participate in hate education; disregard for life of the Jews and others by promoting jihad; and inciting schoolchildren to become martyrs. That makes it an accomplice to the killings and injuries of innocent victims.

In May 2018, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy published a report titled “The Money Trail: The Millions Given by EU Institutions to NGOs With Ties to Terror and Boycotts Against Israel, An In-Depth Analysis.” Two months later, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Frederica Mogherini replied to the report. Her main arguments being that allegations according to which the European Union supports incitement or terror are unfounded and unacceptable - that terror and boycott are two distinct phenomena.

The Israeli Ministry’s report is clear and substantiated, and Mogherini should read it again.

What is not mentioned in the report is that the European Union and its member states finance NGOs that harass Israel, Israeli officials and corporations doing business in Israel and in Europe with lawsuits. The European Union still finances the Palestinian Authority that encourages Palestinians to kill Jews. “The Palestinian Authority’s practice of paying salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of deceased terrorists, is an incentive to commit acts of terror.” (Taylor Force Act).

It is well known that the Palestinian leaders have incited to kill Jews. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas even admitted that the terrorists “did what the Palestinian Authority ordered them to do” and Mohammed Dahlan confirmed that “Forty percent of the Martyrs in this Intifada belonged to the Palestinian security forces … and that the Palestinian Authority has hidden Hamas members against Israeli counter-actions.”

Those who still have doubts should see these videos.

The incitement begins in schools. Between 1994 and 2012, the European Union provided 5.6 billion euros to assist the P.A. During 2014-15, a total of more than €390 million has been allocated to the P.A. through Pegase Direct Financial Support (DFS). The aim of Pegase DFS is to assist the P.A. to meet its obligations towards its civil servants, pensioners and vulnerable families; maintain essential public services; improve public finances; and pay teachers’ salaries. Among the civil servants and pensioners who received payments from Pegase DFS during 2014 and 2015, 67 percent were working in Health and Education. 

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Sweden: Politician denies calling Jews ‘impure’

Via Times of Israel:

A Swedish politician from Malmo who has worked on integration of immigrants denied saying that Jews and Armenians have “impure spirits.”

Muhammad Khorshid, who represents the Liberals on the city council of the municipality in southern Sweden, told Expressen that the comment in his name from 2016 on Facebook belonged to a fake account. The person behind that account wrote in Turkish about the two ethnicities: “We call them out for their impure spirits,” the daily reported Thursday.

The issue is the subject of an internal probe within the party, the report said. 

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Germany: Merkel bows to Trump demand on Nazi guard

Via Politico:

The U.S. deported a New York man who served as a guard at a Nazi labor camp to Germany late Monday, resolving a more than decade-long dispute between Washington and Berlin over who should take responsibility for the suspected war criminal.

U.S. immigration authorities flew Jakiw Palij, who turned 95 last week, on a government jet from a New Jersey airport to Düsseldorf, where he arrived early Tuesday before being transferred by ambulance to a care facility near Münster.

Though the case received little attention in Germany over the years, it was often front page news in New York, where protestors regularly gathered in front of Palij’s home demanding he be deported. President Donald Trump, who grew up in the New York borough of Queens, where Palij has lived for nearly seven decades, instructed Richard Grenell, his ambassador to Germany, to make resolving the case a priority.

“I felt very strongly that the German government had a moral obligation and they accepted that,” Grenell said at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin on Tuesday.

In recent years the U.S. failed to deport another eight suspected Nazi collaborators before they died because Germany refused to accept them, insisting it had no legal basis to do so.

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UK: Corbyn’s secretary urged voters to avoid candidates who appeared in Jewish newspapers

A BBC documentary on antisemitism in France (2016) revealed that "Many French Jews are coming to London, and one synagogue has been transformed recently by French arrivals, with their congregation in a few years becoming 90 percent French."

Via JTA:

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s longtime secretary urged supporters to oppose candidates who appeared in the Jewish media, The Sun reported.

In a pamphlet published by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in 2010, Nicolette Petersen recommended that Labour supporters “read the Jewish Chronicle online and look at websites that will show you who not to vote for,” asserting that it was better to divert support from Labour than to support anyone considering himself a “friend of Israel,” according to The Sun on Monday.

“This isn’t about helping Palestinians. It’s about attacking Jews,” Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard said. “The recommendation that activists who want to rid Parliament of Zionists use the Jewish Chronicle for a hit list of targets exposes the truth: that they use the word Zionist as a euphemism for Jew.”

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Germany: Top German social democrat urges bank to end Israel boycott support

Via The Jersusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

Michaela Engelmeier, a member of the executive board of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, demanded that the Bank for Social Economy stop providing accounts to groups that support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign against the Jewish state.

“My opinion is that no one, no institution, no societal group, really no one should work together with BDS or hold accounts for these antisemitic groups,” Engelmeier wrote The Jerusalem Post on Thursday in connection with a query about the Bank for Social Economy’s enabling of BDS.

The Cologne-based Bank for Social Economy is engulfed in an ever-widening anti-Israel scandal because of its defense of BDS groups which use accounts with the bank to launch economic warfare against the Jewish state.

Engelmeier’s call for the bank to stop its BDS business is the first instance of a federal-level politician in Germany weighing in on the bank.

The increase of pro-BDS activities in Germany prompted Felix Klein, the German government commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism, to write in Die Welt last week that Frankfurt sent an important signal that it will not conduct business with banks that engage in BDS activities.

Klein wrote that “the BDS movement is antisemitic in its methods and goals.” He added that BDS’s “Don’t buy!” stickers on products from the Jewish state are “methods from the Nazi period.”

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UK: Corbyn's antisemitism isn't a scandal, it's a strategy

Via The Weekly Standard (Tamara Berens):

[…] an old video recently resurfaced of Jeremy Corbyn linking a terror attack in Egypt to “the hand of Israel.” The 2012 interview on Iranian-owned Press TV saw him pedal anti-Israel conspiracy theories in a discussion of a bombing where 16 Egyptian policemen were killed in the Sinai desert. His comments from 2012 were defended last week by a Labour party spokesperson, who asserted that his “speculation” had been factually based on previous Israeli actions in Egypt.  

Many focus on the question of whether Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite himself. He may or may not be. However, his deliberate actions to reject the Jewish community’s concerns, silence his moderate Labour detractors, and pedal anti-Zionism as central to his political image show that he is more than happy to utilize antisemitism for political purposes.

Anti-Zionism—and by extension, giving credence to antisemites—is fundamental to the worldview Corbyn has cultivated on his journey to political stardom. For most of his political career, Corbyn was a fringe socialist politician and supporter of the USSR, Syria’s Assad, the Iranian Ayatollahs and Maduro’s Venezuela. After becoming Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn toned down some of this support for radical anti-Western groups. Nonetheless, he has consistently maintained his support for anti-Zionist causes. What’s undoubtable is that throughout his career, his ultimate goal has remained the same; rejecting Western values and embracing the alliance between radical socialists and Islamists in a strategic bid to normalize and implement socialism in the UK.

Politically, Corbyn’s strategy is working: According to a recent YouGov poll, 61 percent of the party believes Corbyn is handling accusations of antisemitism well. And 80 percent of the party deems him a good leader overall. The events of the past few weeks indicate that the Labour leadership has been able to build on their apparent success to formally distance themselves from the overwhelmingly Zionist British-Jewish community. This perhaps became most apparent last Friday, when Jeremy Corbyn published another article in The Guardian disregarding his part in normalizing antisemitism in the party. The piece came out at 5pm, when the majority of Jews in the country were busy preparing for the Sabbath.

The reality is that support from the Jewish community is no longer an indispensable part of the Labour party. In fact, Corbyn’s foreign policy—a large aspect of his political differences to Blair’s Labour—rests on weakening UK-Israel relations. Corbyn has constructed a successful strategy for claiming the Labour party as his own socialist vehicle for disruption of the Western liberal order. Labeling recent events a “scandal” greatly underestimates the strategic nature of his leadership. 

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Holland: Extreme antisemitic tweet from municipal council member

Via Bad News from the Netherlands blog:

A member of the municipal council in the town of Heerenveen on behalf of the Frisian National Party [the FNP is a left-wing nationalist party] tweeted that Jews murder entire groups of populations.

read more @ De Dagelijkse Standaard (in Dutch)

UK: Britain’s “next?” prime minister called terrorist who helped blow up café, “brother”

Via Tom Goss @ Mideast Dispatch:

CORBYN CALLED MEMBER OF TERROR GANG WHICH KILLED ESTEEMED JEWISH DOCTOR AND HIS DAUGHTER, HIS “BROTHER” [Notes by Tom Gross]

The first picture above is of Dr David Applebaum with his 20-year-old daughter Nava on the eve of her wedding. Dr Applebaum, one of Israel’s most distinguished doctors, ran the A&E department at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem and saved many Palestinian and Jewish lives.

The second photo is of Abdul Aziz Umar, the Palestinian terrorist and Hamas operative who helped organize the murder of Dr Applebaum and his daughter, in conversation with British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in a live interview on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s state-run Press TV, during which Corbyn calls him “brother”.

Footage of Corbyn praising Umar was revealed by the Mail on Sunday newspaper last Sunday. Umar was released from prison in the notorious “Gilad Shalit-for terrorists” prisoner swap.

According to opinion polls Corbyn is a leading candidate to become Britain’s next prime minister.

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