Ireland: Leila Khaled, a convicted plane hijacker, to speak at a teachers’ club in Dublin

Via The Times of Israel:

Israel has lodged an official protest to Ireland over the invitation of Leila Khaled, a convicted Palestinian plane hijacker who has continued to advocate violence against Israelis, to speak at a teachers’ club in Dublin belonging to the Irish National Teachers’ Organization.  

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan sent the protest letter to Dublin’s education minister, Richard Bruton, demanding that he cancel Khaled’s appearance, Hadashot TV reported Thursday. Khaled is scheduled to speak via video link in a public talk hosted at the club by the socialist groups Anti Imperialist Action Ireland and Lasair Dhearg.  

“It is hard to understand why Ireland, which has also experienced many terror attacks, would agree to honor a terrorist at an educational event, who expresses solidarity with terror attacks and views them as a legitimate tool,” Erdan wrote.

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Belgium: Anti-Semitic caricature removed from textbook

Background: Belgium: Antisemitic Latuff cartoon published in textbook

Via Ynet:

Two months after Ynet first made public a Belgian textbook contained a caricature that could be construed as anti-Semitic, the country's Education Ministry announced Thursday that the upcoming edition of the book will be published without the offensive drawing.

A letter forwarded by Belgian Education Minister Hilde Crevits Thursday to attorney Yifa Segal, director of the International Legal Forum—who first exposed the story—notified the lawyer that after a probe and a talk with the book's publisher, the caricature will be removed starting with the book's next edition.

The minister added that, "One of the education system's goals is to bring up the younger generation to become respectable, informed citizens" and that the Flemish government only set a bar on academic achievement, leaving selection of appropriate books to each school.

The matter initially came to light in late March, when the International Legal Forum NGO was informed by parents from Bruges of a geography textbook intended for 15 year olds and approved by the country's education system.

The chapter in which the caricature appeared dealt with purported inequality in water distribution between Israelis and Palestinians residing in the West Bank. The caricature showed an overweight Jew with traditional Jewish payos (or sidelocks) asleep in a bathtub filled with water, contrasted with an old Palestinian woman with an empty water bucket.

The cartoon—which may have come from the international human rights group itself—carried a caption that read, "Amnesty International: Israel is denying Palestinians access to adequate water … While settlers enjoy lush lawns and swimming pools!"

Attorney Segal, who is deeply involved in the international struggle against the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, was astounded by a copy of the textbook she obtained and consequently sent a scathing letter to the Belgian education minister demanding the anti-Semitic caricature be removed summarily. 

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Belgium: Antisemitic Latuff cartoon published in textbook

Via Elder of Ziyon:

A Flemish geography book published a cartoon by noted anti-semite Carlos Latuff

It shows a stereotypical, fat religious Jew enjoying Palestinian water while their own pipes run dry. 

The geography textbook, Polaris GO!, attributes the cartoon to Amnesty International, although Amnesty has nothing to do with the cartoon. The textbook authors decided to attribute the cartoon to Amnesty in an apparent attempt to make it look like it was an official protest cartoon from that organization.

The book reaches many thousands of Flemish children.

Amnesty, when reached by a Jewish newspaper, denied anything to do with the cartoon.

The good news is that the publisher Plantyn agreed to remove the cartoon from future editions of the textbook, although it will keep the misleading Amnesty quote that ."In the ...Israeli settlement of Sussia, whose very existence is unlawful under international law, the Israeli settlers have ample water supplies. They have a swimming pool and their lush irrigated vineyards, herb farms and lawns – verdant even at the height of the dry season – stand in stark contrast to the parched and arid Palestinian villages on their doorstep. "

Keeping the quote while eliminating the picture is still an example of bias in the textbook.

Here is a photo of the Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah. Note the lawn. Note the pool.

Of course, the "parched" Palestinians have lots of swimming pools too. But Amnesty would never mention that.

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Germany: Iranian spies targeted Israel embassy, Jewish kindergartens

Via Times of Israel:

The German journalist who first reported raids by local security forces at the homes of suspected Iranian spies across Germany supplied new details Wednesday about the Israeli and Jewish targets allegedly monitored by the suspects.

Josef Hufelschulte, of the weekly German-language magazine FOCUS, told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that the suspected spies had been gathering information on the Israeli embassy in Berlin, as well as on targets related to the local Jewish community, including kindergartens.

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Germany: “Antisemitism has been a massive problem in public schools for over 10 years"

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal): 

Germany’s largest regional Jewish community, in Berlin, condemned the Education and Science Workers’ Union (GEW) for disproportionately targeting Jewish schools for strike activity and failing to rope in antisemitism in Berlin’s school system. 

“In the last four years, the GEW has called six times for strikes at Jewish schools of the Jewish community.

No other private school has received so much attention from the labor union,” Ilan Kiesling, the spokesman for the over 10,000-members of the Berlin Jewish community, told The Jerusalem Post. Kiesling asked, why is the teachers union fixated on the community executive board even after a 12-year standstill raised the salaries of teachers? Likewise, Sigmount A. Königsberg, the Berlin Jewish community’s commissioner on antisemitism, told the Post, “Antisemitism has been a massive problem in public schools for over 10 years... Dozens of Jewish students have left public schools because of antisemitic harassment and were taken in by schools of the Jewish community in Berlin. Over all of the years, the Jewish community has not heard the sound of protests from the GEW [regarding antisemitism in the schools].” 

Königsberg said he would look forward to the teachers’ union bringing the same protest activity toward the outbreaks of Jew-hatred in public schools in Berlin. 

The labor dispute has sharpened into a civil society debate over whether the left-leaning GEW, with a Nazi past, has ignored Muslim and other forms of antisemitism in the school system, including one of its member unions supporting a full boycott of the Jewish state. (...)

A Post email query to the federal president of Germany’s teachers’ union, Marlis Tepe, was not returned.

Königsberg said the time is ripe for "the GEW to clearly distance itself from its first federal chairman Max Traeger because of his involvement in the National Socialist Teachers League, especially in connection with the confiscation of [Jewish property] still in use by the GEW in Hamburg."  

Kiesling asked, "Which support do teachers receive from the GEW who can't--or without fear-- teach topics at their schools like the Shoah and the Middle East?" He noted a study that showed that 40% of students over the age of 14 do not understand the meaning of Auschwitz. Kiesling asked, "where is the outrage from the teachers union?"

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UK: School cancels Balfour poetry contest that fails to mention Israel

Via The Jewish Chronicle:

A Kent grammar school has abruptly withdrawn from hosting a poetry competition marking the Balfour Declaration centenary which only asked for submissions on the theme of Palestine.

St Olave’s Grammar School in Orpington announced in its June newsletter that it would hold an international poetry competition on November 2.

The competition, sponsored by The Balfour Project, Shortlands Poetry Circle and Bromley International Cluster, is open to students aged between 10- and 18-years-old from “all faiths and none”, and will award £500 to the winner.

The school was contacted by Board of Deputies vice president Sheila Gewolb over why Israel was not mentioned.

Headmaster Aydin Önaç told Mrs Gewolb that the school was “simply hosting the competition”. (...)

But when contacted by the JC on Wednesday, the headmaster said the school was no longer hosting the event. He declined to comment further.

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UK: “F*** Yids” found freshly scrawled on side door to London Jewish school

Via CAA:

Stamford Hill Shomrim has reported graffiti found freshly scrawled on the side door to a Jewish school to the Metropolitan Police Service. It is likely that whoever is responsible intended to target the graffiti at the school.

Anybody with information should contact the police by calling 101 and quoting reference number CAD6281/30/08/2017.

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Denmark: Teen charged with plotting to bomb Jewish school

Via Times of Israel:

A Danish prosecutor said a 16-year-old girl has been formally charged with planning bomb attacks against two schools in Denmark.

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Prosecutor Lise-Lotte Nilas says the teenager is accused of “having made preparations to make bombs” using the explosive known as TATP. She said her targets were a school west of Copenhagen and a Jewish school in the capital.

Police thwarted the plans by arresting the girl on Jan. 13, 2016. A trial is set to start April 7, 2017 in Holbaek, northwest of the Danish capital.

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UK: Swastikas Daubed On Vehicles Outside London Jewish School

Via LBC:
Police in Hackney are investigating after swastikas and abusive messages were painted onto vehicles opposite the Beis Malka School in Stoke Newington.

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France: Court slaps $15,000 fine on admirer of quasi-Nazi salute

Via JTA:

A French court fined and gave a suspended prison sentence to a man who disseminated a picture of a quasi-Nazi salute being performed at a Jewish school.

On Wednesday, the Toulouse Appeals Court hit Noel Gerard with a $15,000 fine and a six-month suspended term for incitement to hatred.

In 2014, he shared a picture on social media of a man performing the salute known as the quenelle in front of the Ohr Hatorah school, where in 2012 a jihadist killed a rabbi and three children, the news site 20minutes reported.

The quenelle is promoted by the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, whose critics say it is a variant of the Nazi salute designed to express admiration for the murder of Jews without incurring the punishment reserved in the French penal code for doing so.

French courts rarely hand out prison sentences, even suspended ones, and such heavy fines on actions like the one committed by Gerard.

Gerard, 34, who is known in online anti-Semitic circles as “Joe le Corbeau” — French for “Joe Crow” — was arrested in 2014 near Marseille in southern France.

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UK: By Jewish school man threatens to kill Jews

Via Shomrim:

"Jews, dirty Jews, I'm Hitler, I'll kill the Jews", part of shocking unprovoked abuse outside Jewish school in Stamford Hill this afternoon

France: "In the Paris region, there are virtually no more Jewish pupils attending public schools"

Cnaan Liphshiz @ JTA:

“Enrolling a Jewish kid into a public school was normal when I was growing up,” Tayar [a 43-year-old communications and computers specialist] said in a recent interview as he waited with two helmets in hand to pick up his youngest from her Jewish elementary school in eastern Paris. “Nowadays forget it; no longer realistically possible. Anti-Semitic bullying means it would be too damaging for any Jewish kid you put there.”

This common impression and growing religiosity among Jews in France are responsible for the departure from public schools of tens of thousands of young French and Belgian Jews, who at a time of unprecedented sectarian tensions in their countries are being brought up in a far more insular fashion than previous generations.

Whereas 30 years ago the majority of French Jews enrolled their children in public schools, now only a third of them do so. The remaining two-thirds are divided equally between Jewish schools and private schools that are not Jewish, including Catholic and Protestant institutions, according to Francis Kalifat, the newly elected president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities.

The change has been especially dramatic in the Paris area, which is home to some 350,000 Jews, or an estimated 65 percent of French Jewry.

“In the Paris region, there are virtually no more Jewish pupils attending public schools,” said Kalifat, attributing their absence to “a bad atmosphere of harassment, insults and assaults” against Jews because of their ethnicity, and to the simultaneous growth of the Jewish education system.

Whereas most anti-Semitic incidents feature taunts and insults that often are not even reported to authorities, some cases involve death threats and armed assaults. [...]

In neighboring Belgium, the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism has documented multiple incidents that it said were rapidly making Belgian public schools “Jew-free.” Some blamed Belgian schools for being more reluctant than their French counterparts to punish pupils for anti-Semitic behavior.

The latest incident there involved a 12-year-old boy at a public school outside Brussels. Classmates allegedly sprayed him with deodorant cans in the shower to simulate a gas chamber. The boy’s mother said it was an elaborate prank that also caused him burns from the deodorant nozzles.

In April, another Jewish mother said a public school in the affluent Brussels district of Uccle was deliberately ignoring systematic anti-Semitic abuse of her son, Samuel, in order to hide it. She enrolled him specifically at a non-Jewish school because she did not want him to be raised parochially, the mother said, but she had to transfer him to a Jewish school due to the abuse.

In addition to charting anti-Semitism among students, watchdogs in France and Belgium are seeing for the first time in decades a growing number of incidents involving teachers – as victims and perpetrators.

Last month, the Education Ministry in France began probing a high school teacher who shared with her students anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on Facebook — including ones about the clout of the Jewish lobby in the United States and another about French President Francois Hollande’s Jewish roots (he has none).

In 2012, a teacher from a suburb of Lyon said she was forced to resign after her bosses learned that she had suffered anti-Semitic abuse by students. Days later, two teenagers were arrested near Marseilles on suspicion of setting off an explosion near a teacher who had reported receiving anti-Semitic threats at school.

The atmosphere is pushing many French Jewish parents to leave for Israel, which is seeing record levels of immigration from France. Since 2012, 20,000 Jews have made the move. Their absence is already being felt in Jewish schools and beyond, said Kalifat, because “the people who are leaving are exactly the people who are involved in the Jewish community.”

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Belgium: Teacher uses Charlie Hebdo shooting to hit at Jews
Belgium: Teacher posts Jew depicted as pig cartoon on Facebook
Belgium: Catholic school supports teacher who won prize at Iran Holocaust-mocking cartoon contest

Belgian high school ‘proud’ of teacher honored at Iran’s Holocaust cartoon show

One can safely assume that if a teacher in Germany, France, UK, Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe had taken part in the anti-semitic Teheran cartoon contest, there would have been some criticism, and it is doubtful that it would have been a cause for "pride" for many.  Sadly, not in Belgium.  No criticism, only pride.  It should also be noted that the Holocaust and the fight against antisemitism is often used in Europe as a political tool to fight the Far Right.

Background: Belgium: Catholic school supports teacher who won prize at Iran Holocaust-mocking cartoon contest 

Cnaan Liphshiz writes @ JTA

Faculty at a Catholic high school in Belgium said they were proud of a senior teacher who won an award and a cash prize at Iran’s controversial cartoon contest about the Holocaust.

Luc Descheemaeker, who this summer retired from the Sint-Jozefs Institute high school in the city of Torhout, 60 miles west of Antwerp, accepted a “special prize” at the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Contest in Tehran in May for a drawing of the words “arbeit macht frei” over a wall with guard posts — presumably comparing Israel’s security barrier along the West Bank with the gates at Auschwitz.

The German sentence, which means “work sets you free,” was featured on a gate of the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. Descheemaeker, who spoke at the competition via a video uplink from Belgium, won $1,000 for the cartoon, organizers said. The first-prize entry was a drawing of a cash register shaped like Auschwitz.

UNESCO, the United Nations educational organization, has condemned the cartoon contest — the second organized in Iran since 2006 — as aiming “at a mockery of the genocide of the Jewish people, a tragic page of humanity’s history.”  [...]

Asked by JTA whether the school is proud specifically of Descheemaeker’s award, director Paul Vanthournout said Wednesday that the school had no position on the award [...]            

But Vanthournout confirmed the school was proud of Descheemaeker’s work within the institution, where he taught plastic arts and cultural sciences. Descheemaeker has put on educational plays about the Holocaust at school, Vanthournout said. In 2002, Descheemaeker won a royal distinction from Queen Paola of Belgium for staging a play about the Holocaust for children, an adaptation of Art Spiegelman’s award-winning graphic memoir “Maus.”

“I understand you find criticism on Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza unpleasant,” Vanthournout wrote to JTA, “but your consideration of it as anti-Semitic is exaggerated.”

According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – an intergovernmental organization with 31 member states, including Belgium – “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of modern anti-Semitism.

Vanthournout said the school’s position is that the Holocaust, which he said “featured atrocities of hitherto unseen proportions,” cannot be compared or likened to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. But the Holocaust, he added, “cannot serve as an alibi to solving conflicts with violence.”

According to the Belgian school’s newsletter, which published an interview in June with Descheemaeker ahead of his retirement, the former teacher has accepted an offer to travel to Tehran to be a judge at the competition’s next edition.

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Denmark: Teenager plotted to bomb Jewish school

Via The Local:

A 16-year-old Danish girl who was arrested in January and charged with the possession of explosives and supporting terror had plans to bomb two schools, police said on Tuesday.

Little had been known about the teen’s case since her arrest in the village of Kundby on the island of Zealand, as court appearances had been held behind so-called 'double-locked doors', meaning all information is withheld from the media and the public.

The girl has been described as a recent convert to Islam and one of her neighbours told the tabloid BT that her Facebook page indicated that she wanted to convert other Danes to the religion. TV2 also reported that the girl's profile page indicated that she was a member of Facebook group for ethnic Danish members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic group that openly supports the establishment of a caliphate and that has been at the centre of numerous controversies in Denmark.

A 24-year-old man who has previously fought alongside extremists in Syria was also arrested and detained in January in connection to the case. The alleged jihadist was described as “a friend” of the teenage girl.

On Tuesday, prosecutors publicly released details on the case, saying that both the girl, who was only 15 at the time of her arrest, and the 24-year-old man plotted to bomb the Jewish private school Carolineskolen in Copenhagen and the Sydskolen public school in the western Zealand town of Fårevejle.

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UK: Bomb threats made to Jewish schools

Via Jerusalem Post:

At least eight Jewish schools in Britain received bomb threats on Monday, the Community Security Trust reported.

The threats are the latest in a series of similar such warnings that have been issued against schools across the UK and further afield.

The bomb threats were made in the form of a recorded message, with a voice threatening that the school in question will be bombed, while Arabic or Islamic music was heard in the background.

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Moldova: Jewish school defaced with antisemitic graffiti

Via Everyday Antisemitism:

Theodore Herzl High School in Moldova has been defaced with a swastika and antisemitic slur. Police are investigating.

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France: Jewish students are frightened and wary on campuses

Interestingly, Jewish students' fear in French universities is a subject that is not raised in France.  A lot of attention is given to what is going on in primary and secondary schools, but when it comes to universities French Jewish organisations and Jewish academics keep silent.  There is no such thing as a University Watch body in a country where antisemitism is rampant, Israel-bashing is the norm and Jews are leaving in great numbers.  Why does it take a visiting British delegation to notice and report that Jewish students are very frightened and wary on their campusus? "I vividly recall meeting with Jewish students and their talk of how frightened they were, of how wary they were on campuses."

The Jewish Press reports:

Activists behind the “disgraceful” attack on Jewish students at a university are “neo-fascists”, Sir Eric Pickles has said.

The Conservative former communities secretary suggested the scenes which disrupted a meeting at King’s College London shared similarities with 1938’s Kristallnacht, also known as Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis attacked Jewish people and their property. Sir Eric was referring to disruption at an event organised by the KCL Israel Society and LSE Israel Society, in which politician Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, appeared. 

Speaking in the Commons, the UK’s post-Holocaust envoy said: “(Labour MP Wes Streeting) mentioned that we travelled together to France in the autumn of last year to look at anti-Semitism there and I vividly recall meeting with Jewish students and their talk of how frightened they were, of how wary they were on campuses.

“I can’t help but reflect at the disgraceful attack upon Jewish students in King’s College in London just two nights ago, where a peaceful meeting – literally about peace – was broken up with obscenities and with the breaking of a window and the breaking of glass and the offering of violence.

 Read more. 

More on this topic: 
- France: Sorbonne runs a student exchange programme with Bir Zeit university but not with Israel universities
- France: "I was branded a Nazi four times this week, I was told to go back to the gas chambers." 
- France: Israeli activists banished from university after pro-Palestinians riot

UK: Scottish Jewish school hires full-time security guard

Via The National:

A SCHOOL is to have a full-time security guard after parents expressed fears about attacks on the pupils.
Calderwood Lodge Primary School, which is Scotland’s only Jewish faith school, is based in Glasgow’s south side, but run by East Renfrewshire Council.

Last year the school felt targeted when anti-Israeli stickers started appearing on lamp posts around the vicinity of the school.

(...)

Although a Jewish faith school, where pupils study Hebrew and Jewish culture on top of the standard curriculum, a high percentage of the 150 pupils who attend the school are Muslim, Christian or come from no religious background.

Moldova: Jewish school vandalized with swastikas

Via CFCA:

A Jewish high-school in Chișinău (Kishinev) was vandalized this week with swastikas and curses.

UK: 'F*** the Jews' scrawled outside Jewish school, car window smashed outside synagogue

Via London Evening Standard (h/t CFCA):   

'F*** the Jews' scrawled outside Jewish primary school in Hackney... hours before car is vandalised at synagogue

Sickening anti-Semitic graffiti was daubed on the gates of a north London Jewish primary school - the same day as an axeman smashed the windows of a car parked outside a nearby synagogue.

The two incidents in Stamford Hill are not thought to be related, according to the Shomrim - the area's volunteer Jewish neighbourhood watch group.

In the first, which happened yesterday at Simon Marks primary school in Cazenove Road, the words "f*** the Jews" were scrawled in black marker pen across an entrance sign.

The graffiti was cleaned off before children arrived at the school, which teaches Jewish youngsters of various denominations and shares a playground with a nearby Muslim free school.

(...)

The second incident saw a man's car smashed in with an axe as he prayed at the Beth Hamedrash Skver Synagogue in nearby East Bank, a few minutes' walk from the primary school, just hours later.