Via
Jerusalem Post:
The
antisemitic cartoon that ran in the New York Times International
Edition was not printed by accident. It comes in the context of historic
antisemitism that is common across Western Europe and is part of more
than a thousand years of anti-Jewish stereotypes and caricatures. The
cartoon originally was drawn by a cartoonist who is known for his work
at a Portuguese media outlet. Cartoons similar to this that have
appeared in European newspapers have not led to the kind of controversy
that the New York Times cartoon has.
In 2016, author
Mario Vargas llosa wrote an article condemning Israel in Spain's El Pais
daily. The illustrative photo showed a man dressed in a black hat of
the kind worn by religious Jews, wearing a blindfold, as if he was
“blind” to the suffering of Palestinians. Anti-Jewish caricatures and
tropes, conflating Israel with all Jews and using images of religious
Jews whenever Israel is condemned, or Jewish symbols such as the Star of
David, are too often the norm in European cartoons and illustrations.
Unlike with the New York Times controversy where these images,
caricatures and tropes were at least questioned, they appear
consistently across Europe and rarely lead to the kind of controversy
that the Times cartoon has elicited.
For instance, the
cartoonist behind the Times cartoon appears on a website called
‘Cartooning for Peace.’ One of the other cartoons from 2006 depicted on
the website shows a foot with an American flag for pants and a Star of
David as spurs. The Star of David is dripping blood. Why is it dripping
blood? Why is the US depicted wearing spurs of a Jewish symbol? Next to
the Star of David is another leg with an Islamic crescent. The cartoon’s
symbolism appears to imply: The Jews are the US weapon against Islam.
Similarly,
the current cartoon depicts a dog with a Jewish Star of David, leading
the US blindly, with its president wearing a yarmulke. From the 1930s
until today, very little has changed in aspects of antisemitic imagery -
only that Israel is sometimes the stand-in for “the Jews,” with the
same use of Jewish symbols or traditional clothing.
Read more
Via
Jewish Chronicle:
A
Labour member in Brighton suggested that the local party “march to" a
local Synagogue to protest against the suspension of a fellow Labour
party member over alleged antisemitism, with an MP calling on the police
to investigate her for "incitement".
Amanda Bishop was
writing in the Brighton and Hove Labour party forum Facebook group in
response to news that local council candidate Alex Braithwaite had been
suspended from the party.
Miss Braithwaite was suspended two weeks ago over her posts to social media.
One
such post claimed that Israel was “giving African migrants 90 days to
leave the country so they don’t effect [sic] Israeli bloodline. They
must leave or they will be jailed or murdered.”
Another
showed a cartoon with BBC and CNN news cameras pointing at a crying
Israeli child while ignoring dead Palestinian bodies.
The
image’s caption accused “the media” of being “nothing more than an
accessory to the police/terror state”. In another post written by Ms
Braithwaite herself, she accused “IsraHell” of carrying out a “genocide”
against the Palestinians.
...
Brighton
MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle tweeted on Tuesday evening, after the news
broke, that Ms Bishop had been suspended after he reported the comments.
Read more
Via
Buzzfeed News:
German WhatsApp users are spreading far-right propaganda through the use of stickers and chain letters, and the company is doing little to nothing to stop it, despite local laws forbidding the use of Nazi imagery.
In nine WhatsApp groups that BuzzFeed News has observed since October, tens of thousands of messages have been sent among its far-right participants. Among them have been symbols glorifying the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler, deeply anti-Semitic images created using WhatsApp’s “sticker” function, and messages seeking to incite violence and threats against leftists or refugees.
The groups have names like "The German Storm" and "Ku Klux Klan International.” At times, between 90 and 250 people have been members of the groups, close to the maximum size allowed by WhatsApp.
In October last year, WhatsApp introduced the so-called sticker function in Germany, which lets users choose from premade images to attach to their chats with the option to make their own. The Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism, a Berlin-based advocacy group, quickly drew attention to the surge in Nazi-themed stickers. "As soon as WhatsApp made it possible to create and use stickers, right-wing extremists flood their group chats with Nazi symbolism,” the group wrote in October, asking the platform how this could be prevented in the future.
"These anti-Semitic stickers are unacceptable and we do not want them on WhatsApp,” a WhatsApp spokesperson wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News last November. “We strongly condemn this hate. If a user receives a sticker with illegal content, we ask them to report it to WhatsApp."
But when BuzzFeed News followed up this month to ask WhatsApp how many reports of possibly illegal content it's received since then, the company declined to respond to specific questions.
Read more
Via
JTA:
A town in southern Poland reenacted the custom of casting judgement on Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus, using a life-size effigy of a stereotypical Jew with a hooked nose and sidelocks.
The event in the town of Pruchnik, called “Judgment over Judas,” took place on Friday afternoon. On a pole on Pope John Paul II Street, the residents hung the large effigy of the Jew which bore the label “Judas 2019, traitor!”
The crowd cut the effigy down from the post, dragged it on a rope through the town, stopping at the square in front of the church and at the street crossing where the effigy was beaten 30 times. After reaching the local river, the head of the effigy was cut off and the effigy was burned.
The rite attracted a crowd of onlookers. Children were encouraged to beat the effigy. There were some anti-Semitic cries, such as “Five more hits for wanting compensation from Poland.”
The custom of the judgment over Judas has occurred at least since the eighteenth century and takes place in the days preceding Easter. In the past, it was accompanied by acts of direct violence against Jewish residents. In the years of the Polish People’s Republic, the tradition gradually disappeared.
read more
Via
Times of Israel:
A right-wing newspaper with national distribution in Poland ran on its front page an article that instructs readers on “how to recognize a Jew.”
The Polish-language weekly, Tylko Polska, or “Only Poland,” lists on its front page “Names, anthropological features, expressions, appearances, character traits, methods of operation” and “disinformation activities.”
The text also reads: “How to defeat them? This cannot go on!”
The page also features a headline reading, “Attack on Poland at a conference in Paris.” The reference is to a Holocaust studies conference last month during which Polish nationalists complained that speakers were anti-Polish. That article features a picture of Jan Gross, a Polish-Jewish Princeton University scholar of Polish complicity in the Holocaust and a frequent target of nationalist attacks.
Only Poland is published by Leszek Bubl, a fringe nationalist political candidate and sometime musician who has sung about “rabid” rabbis. The paper was spotted Wednesday at the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, as part of this week’s packet of periodicals.
Michał Kamiński, a conservative lawmaker, protested the article and its presence at the Sejm, Polsat news reported.
read more
Via
Jewish Chronicle:
A survey of thousands of left-wing social media accounts by Hope Not Hate found that nearly a fifth promote or engage in antisemitism.
The anti-fascist group’s “State of Hate 2019” report into racism — to be published on Monday — analysed 27,000 Twitter profiles that follow a selection of UK-based left-wing accounts which “regularly spread antisemitic ideas”.
Of the 27,000 accounts, the charity found up to 5,000 of them — just under 19 per cent — have expressed antisemitic ideas twice or more on social media.
Some of the accounts posted over 100 tweets that could be clearly identified as antisemitic, featuring tropes such as Jewish control of the media or banking system.
Hope Not Hate described the results as “worrying” and said urgent action needed to be taken against social media accounts disseminating antisemitic ideas.
read more
Via
Reykjavik Grapevine:
Musician and Eurovision enthusiast Páll Óskar Hjálmtýsson, who is currently pressing for Iceland to withdraw from Eurovision this year on account of it being held in Tel Aviv, made some decidedly anti-Semitic remarks on national broadcasting radio yesterday. Hours later, he posted a lengthy apology.
Thousands of Icelanders currently support boycotting Eurovision as it takes place in Israel this year; support for Eurovision, it is argued, expresses tacit support for the Israeli government’s policies regarding the Palestinian people. While Iceland ultimately decided to participate, the debate is far from over, and Páll Óskar has been amongst the most vocal supporters of a boycott.
However, when speaking with radio station Rás 1 yesterday, he made remarks regarding Jewish people as a whole that crossed the line from criticism of the Israeli government into more sweeping generalisations.
“The reason why the rest of Europe has been virtually silent is that Jews have woven themselves into the fabric of Europe in a very sly way for a very long time. It is not at all hip and cool to be pro-Palestine in Britain,” he said, saying at the interview’s conclusion: “The tragedy is that Jews learned nothing from the Holocaust. Instead, they have taken up the exact same policy of their worst enemy.”
The remarks were met with sharp criticism from many Icelanders, and hours later, Páll Óskar posted an apology and retraction.
“I admit unreservedly that I put the Israeli government, the Israeli military and the Jewish people under the same hat,” he wrote. “I made judgements and generalisations about Jewish people. … I take full responsibility for these words, take back my remarks about Jewish people, they are wrong and hurtful. I will take responsibility in actions, from this point forward, and will never again speak ill of the Jewish people, wherever in the world they may live.”
read more
Via
Algemeiner (h/t
glykosymoritis):
One of France’s most vocal antisemites, Alain Soral, was sentenced to a year in prison by a criminal court in Paris on Thursday, after he was found guilty of inciting racial hatred in an article that described Jews as “manipulative, domineering and hateful.”
The offending article was published last March on Soral’s playfully-titled Égalité et Réconciliation (“Equality and Reconciliation”) website — an online home for antisemitic, extreme nationalist and anti-capitalist activists and writers.
Following the announcement of Soral’s sentence, the French Union of Jewish Students (EUJF) tweeted, “Justice has put a new stop on this little propagandist of hatred.”
...
Originally a communist, the Swiss-born Soral crossed to the far-right
National Front (FN) before carving out his own path in 2007. A purveyor
of conspiracy theories about “Jewish” and “Zionist” power, Soral has for
several years worked closely with Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, an
antisemitic propagandist who presents himself as a comedian.
read more
Via
Independent:
Far-right Polish nationalists organised an anti-Semitic protest during a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony at Auschwitz.
The small group of hardline activists held their demonstration inside the former concentration camp at the same time as the official Holocaust commemorations on Sunday.
The 50 protestors from the Polish Independence Movement were led by Piotr Rybak, who was once jailed for burning an effigy of a Jew.
Mr Rybak told reporters they were there to oppose the official – and historically accurate – narrative that millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis with the active collaboration of some Poles.
"It's time to fight against Jewry and free Poland from them,” Mr Rybak said, a Polish newspaper reported.
read more
Via
Israel National News:
A group monitoring anti-Semitism in Germany is calling on the operators of a popular cell phone application to take action, after it discovered neo-Nazis have begun using a new feature in the application to spread pro-Nazi images.
Recently, the popular Whatsapp messenger service – which is owned by the social media giant Facebook – added a new feature, allowing users to upload custom digital images or “stickers”, and share them with fellow users.
Shortly after the new feature debuted, however, far-right nationalists and neo-Nazi groups in Germany began using the Whatsapp sticker system to create and spread pro-Nazi images.
The Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism (JFDA) said neo-Nazis and white supremacists were using the sticker function to flood group chats with hateful symbols.
read more
Via
Haaretz:
Prosecutors in France have launched an investigation for incitement against a senior Muslim cleric from Toulouse who recited anti-Semitic religious passages and predicted Israel’s destruction.
On Tuesday, the Toulouse Prosecutor’s Office opened the probe against Mohamed Tatai, the imam of the newly inaugurated Grand Mosque of Toulouse and the leader of an interfaith dialogue group, the Sud Ouest daily reported.
In a sermon delivered on December 15, 2017, Tatai recited a Muslim text, called a Hadith, stating that on Judgment Day, the Muslims will kill the Jews.
read more
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.'
read more
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.
read more
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.
read more
Via
Times of Israel:
Danish prosecutors on Tuesday charged an imam with calling for the killing of Jews in the first case of its kind in the Nordic nation and which sparked political outrage.
Imam Mundhir Abdallah, who preaches in the Copenhagen neighborhood of Norrebro at the Masjid Al-Faruq mosque, which media have linked to radical Islam, is accused of citing a hadith or koranic narrative calling for Muslims to rise up against Jews.
“Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them,” Abdallah said in a Facebook and YouTube video post in March, according to a translation of the original Arabic provided by the US organization the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
“These are serious statements and I think it’s right for the court to now have an opportunity to assess the case,” public prosecutor Eva Ronne said in a statement.
This is the first time the prosecution has raised such charges under a criminal code introduced January 1, 2017 on religious preaching.
read more
Via
Times of Israel:
A long-awaited study by internationally renowned anti-Semitism expert Monika Schwarz-Friesel has found that the amount of German anti-Semitic content on the internet has grown massively in the last 10 years, permeates mainstream society, and is increasingly extreme.
Released Wednesday, the research project studied 300,000 pieces of German internet content between 2014 and 2018, with a focus on social media. During the first year of the study, slightly less than 23 percent of the content was classified as anti-Semitic. In 2017, this number had jumped to over 30%.
A similar study conducted by Schwarz-Friesel in 2007 found only 7.5% of the internet content examined to be anti-Semitic, indicating an increase of more than 22% over the last decade.
The latest results show not only a massive increase in the amount of anti-Semitic content found online, but also a radicalization in terms of the content’s quality. For example, anti-Semitic comments in response to news and other articles have not only grown in number, but have become more rabid.
(...)
In fact, campaigns against anti-Semitism themselves on social media networks such as Facebook elicit massive amounts of anti-Jewish comments. Thirty-eight percent of comments posted in response to a 2014 German Facebook campaign entitled #Never Again Jew-Hatred were actually anti-Semitic.
The study also found that much online anti-Semitism appears as stereotypes projected at the State of Israel.
read more
Via
Jerusalem Post:
A new academic study by the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs has described “a surge” in hostility to Jews and Israel in Polish media and politics in 2018 following the efforts to pass a controversial law making it a crime to say that the Polish state or nation was complicit in the Holocaust.
According to the study written by Dr. Rafał Pankowski, a sociology professor at Warsaw’s Collegium Civitas, there has been a “disturbing revival of antisemitism” in Poland since the law was introduced and stirred controversy.
“The surge of hostility to Jews and the Jewish State in the Polish media and politics in early 2018 took many observers by surprise,” wrote Pankowski for the IJFA, a publication of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations which operates under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress.
“It was also a great shock because, for many years, bilateral relations between Poland and Israel had been especially cordial and fruitful.”
Pankowski noted that Poland has made “significant progress in recognizing and researching the inconvenient truths about its own legacy of antisemitism” unlike other post-Communist countries in eastern Europe.
“In the wake of the new legislation, however, that progress has been seriously hampered and the findings of these historians, and even their patriotism, has been called into question,” he wrote.
He noted that while in recent years anti-Jewish discourse was mainly confined to extreme quarters, of late it has found a prominent place in the mainstream media, especially in state-controlled news outlets.
“The surge in radical nationalist discourse,” warns Dr. Pankowski, “reflects a deeper crisis of liberal, democratic, and humanistic values – in Poland and elsewhere in post-Communist Europe, as well as in the wider world.”
read more
Via
Times of Israel:
Public prosecutors in the French city of Toulouse announced Friday they are opening an investigation into a senior Muslim cleric who recited anti-Semitic religious passages and predicted Israel’s destruction in a sermon.
Mohamed Tatai, the imam of the newly inaugurated Grand Mosque of Toulouse and the leader of an interfaith dialogue group, is to be investigated for “possible incitement to hatred.”
On December 15 Tatai recited a Muslim text, called a Hadith, stating that on Judgment Day, the Muslims will kill the Jews.
The Prophet Muhammad “told us about the final and decisive battle: ‘Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him – except for the Gharqad tree, which is one of the trees of the Jews,’” he said.
He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “afraid that Israel would not live longer than 76 years – as is written in the prophecies.” He then said that an Israeli journalist, whom he did not name, said the 2016 funeral of the late president Shimon Peres was “the funeral of Israel.”
The video of the Arabic-language sermon was posted in December on the YouTube channel of the Grand Mosque of Toulouse. The Middle East Media Research Institute translated the video and posted it on its website.
As part of the French investigation, the translation will be checked for accuracy before prosecutors determine if a crime was committed.
read more
Via
JTA:
A French-Jewish group called for legal action against a senior Muslim cleric in Toulouse who in a sermon recited anti-Semitic religious passages and predicted Israel’s destruction.
On Wednesday, the France chapter of the B’nai B’rith group condemned on Twitter the statements that Mohamed Tatai, the imam of the newly inaugurated Grand Mosque of Toulouse and the leader of an interfaith dialogue group, delivered on Dec. 15.
Tatai recited a Muslim text, called a Hadith, stating that on Judgment Day, the Muslims will kill the Jews.
The Prophet Mohammed “told us about the final and decisive battle: ‘Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him – except for the Gharqad tree, which is one of the trees of the Jews,'” he said.
read more
