EU: Funds to demonize, boycott Israel

A few days ago NGO Monitor published its report "Evaluating Funding for Political Advocacy NGOs in the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR)"

The EU claims it does not boycott Israel.  But it funds organizations whose main goal is to do so.

Breitbart reports:

In particular, Steinberg pointed to the EU's highly disproportionate funding for NGOs through the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) which, "allocated over 11 million euros to NGOs in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which represents 57% of EIDHR funding directed at the Middle East, while projects in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are largely ignored by such EU frameworks."

As just one the example, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), which in 2010 was awarded an EIDHR grant of 169,661 Euros, presented a completely one-sided, context-free perspective on the conflict, including accusations against Israel of "ethnic cleansing," "genocide," "collective punishment," and "apartheid."

Numerous EU funded organisations routinely employ demonising anti-Israel rhetoric, campaign for anti-Israel boycott efforts (BDS), actively lobby international frameworks, and engage in anti-Israel “lawfare” activities, says the NGO Monitor report.

Belgium: Politician says Israel founded to establish global domination

Agnes Jonckheere, head of the Free Christian Democrats party (VCD) had to temporarily resign close to a year ago ago after she wrote that “a few Jewish families that monopolize the banking world” caused the financial crisis in Europe.  She explained that the protests against the Jewish banking elite in Hungary and Greece were nothing like the Nazis.  "That anger is directed at 'Judaism, which controls the banks, the government, and world economy'".

Her 'resignation' barely lasted a couple of weeks.

Now she's back.

Belgian Jewish site Joods Actueel reports that in a news update sent to party supporters and posted on the party's website, Jonkheere wrote as follows (my translation):

"The real reason for the founding of the State of Israel was not to give the Jews a homeland, but mainly to enable to install from this place, where the three world-religions are established, global domination too, with the necessary military control.  The nation is zealously defended, but not the religion of the Jews.  On the contrary: they pass laws to support and strengthen liberal Judaism, represented  by the modern Orthodox Jews with their kippahs."

The update has since been removed from the party's site.

Netherlands: Labor Party candidate posts antisemitic, anti-Israel material

Natasha Elfrink is the Dutch Labor Party's candidate in Arnhem.

On the Muslim site "Wij Blijven Hier" (We're Staying Here), she explains why she's not an antisemite (h/t joods.nl).

To summarize:

She was eight when Mohammed el Durah was killed, and she sympathized with him.  As time passed, her empathy for the Palestinians grew.  She writes that she wasn't blind, she also saw the suicide attacks against innocent Israelis.  But those were desperate cries for help.  "Where you sow hate, you'll also reap hate".

She felt very insulted when she was first accused of being an antisemite.  She does not think that the Holocaust is justification for the suffering of the Palestinians.  Calling her an antisemite for saying so is just a way for the Israeli regime to shut people up.

Anyway.

Natasha Elfrink is also a Facebook member of many Palestinian groups.  She's also signed up to various Jihadi, Islmist, and Sharia groups.  A Facebook group called "Who is Natasha Elfrink" is currently following up on the friends of this Labor candidate.

When confronted about it, she said that she signed up for groups she did not agree with for her studies (Islam and Arabic at Radboud University).

In any case, she participated in World Hijab Day.  She retweets 'Free Koran' giveaways.

On her twitter feed she jubilates over freed Palestinian terrorists.

In mid-December, Israel was hit by a major storm.  For several days thousands were left without electricity and in some cases, water.

Elfrink focused on the 'real' news, and wrote: "Look.  I think this is outrageous.  And you know why?  On December 14, Israel flooded Gaza.  Not a word about it in the media."

You know why the media did not report it?  Because no such thing happened.  It was yet another Palestinian blood libel against the Jews.

Elfrnk is not antisemitic because she thinks the Palestinians got a raw deal.  She's antisemitic because she believes conspiracy theories against Israel.  Because she's happy when a Jew-murderer goes free.  And because she justifies terrorism against Jews.

When the victims are Arabs, she sympathizes.  Nothing justifies their suffering.  When the victims are Jews, she sympathizes with their persecutors.  Because it's understandable.

Note to Elfrink: If you 'understand' and 'sympathize' when people kill Jews, you're an antisemite.

Russia: Mistaken for Jewish

Australian  Howard Willis describes the hostility with which he was met in Russia (and Poland).  People just assumed he was Jewish.

My naiveté was bumped but not quite overturned the week before I went to Moscow. On a rainy day in south-eastern Poland, an elderly man made a show of walking out of a bakery as I entered. A complete stranger, whose sudden fury was open and unmistakable. I had never before experienced such impersonal hatred, such open contempt. It shocked me. But then, what to make of it? That old bastard in Debica could have been just a nutter, right?

In Moscow there were those who looked at me, to use Anya von Bremzen's phrase, with a scowl like frostbite. But you can misread it. One old girl approached me, her eyes glittering with apparent malice ... and politely, timidly asked directions. Muscovites have a legendary rep for brusqueness (talk to them, they melt), but over and above the background surliness, there were a few distinctly hostile stares.


Settling the matter of my origins usually led to 'the Jewish Question'. The version put to me by one of my more forthcoming interlocutors concerned those Jews who got out of the stagnating and collapsing USSR in the 1970s and '80s. These people, I was told, acquired assets in the West and then returned to fall like wolves upon poor, vulnerable Russia during the disgraceful and terrible times of Yeltsin. 

More: Eureka Street

Norway: Article on "Jew Clause" sketch attracts antisemites

Norwegian broadcaster NRK was criticized for a recent sketch on Norway's "Jew clause".   This clause in the Norwegian constitution banned Jews from the country.  It was removed in 1851.

The Local's report on this story attracted several antisemitic comments, from people who don't understand why Norway let the Jews in.  The comments are still online.

Lithuania: Neo-Nazis marchers demand “Lithuania for Lithuanians"

This past Sunday, Lithuanian neo-Nazis marched in honor of Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis, the WWII Prime Minister who actively encouraged Lithuanian participation in the mass murder of Jews.

A day earlier a similar march was held in Bulgaria, this time honoring Gen. Hristo Lukov, a Nazi supporter.

Honoring Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis
Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

Although the demonstrators in this event, purposely held for the past six years on Lithuania’s Independence Day, have in the wake of our criticism of past marches desisted from expressing overt anti-Semitism, their deep animus against Jews is obvious to the discerning observer. Thus once again, among the leading and largest banners was one glorifying Juozas Ambrazevicius, the prime minister of a provisional government established by the Lithuanian Activist Front in Kaunas shortly after the Nazi invasion, which strongly supported the Third Reich and actively encouraged Lithuanian participation in the mass murder of Jews.

The adulation expressed for Ambrazevicius is hardly surprising, given the reburial of his remains in Kaunas with full national honors by the govenment in 2012, as if he were a heroic Righteous Among the Nations, rather than a war criminal. In that context, the most popular slogan of the marchers, “Lithuania for Lithuanians,” rings particularly ominous, as its implications are clearly exclusionary.

More: Jerusalem Post

Czech Republic: Swastika sprayed near Prague synagogue

A swastika was sprayed on a bench next to the Old-New Synagogue in Prague.

More: CFCA

Sweden: Rocks thrown at Malmö synagogue

Rocks were thrown at a synagogue window in Malmö.

More: CFCA

Germany: Neo-Nazis play Jew-killing monopoly

"Pogromly" board

A Neo-Nazi group created a perverted board game based on Monopoly where Jewish people get sent to death camps so they could pass the time between murders. 

The game, where the winner is the person who deports the most to the gas chambers, has featured at the trial of 'Nazi bride' Beate Zschape in Munich.

More: The Daily Mail

France: Antisemitic graffiti on school

A school in Tarare (eastern France) was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti.

More: LyonMag, h/t LDJ

Norway: Holocaust survivors suffer because Jews prefer their name on new hospitals, or something

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, journalist Sidsel Wold wrote an article on the problems of Holocaust survivors in Israel (h/t Norway, Israel and the Jews).  The article is based in part on a similar article which appeared in the Guardian, written by Harriet Sherwood.

There is no doubt Israel should do more for its Holocaust survivors, though I personally feel uncomfortable when foreign journalists use Holocaust Day as a platform to talk about how bad Israel is.

Wold's article is titled: "Here [Poland] The Knesset Members Honor the Dead, at Home The Survivors Live in Poverty".

So we start off by accusing the Knesset of daring to go to Poland and pretending to care about the Holocaust, when they really should do more for the survivors.  But Wold doesn't stop there.  She thinks all Jews are responsible for the sad state of Holocaust survivors.  

She cites Avi Dichter, who heads an Israeli state-funded organization to help Holocaust survivors.  Dichter spoke to the Jerusalem Post (which Wold wrongly identifies as Ynet) and said as follows:

Dichter said that he makes sure to fit in meetings with potential international donors when he takes personal trips each month. 

“Donating to a museum, a university or a hospital is much more widely accepted because they put a sign with your name on things, but you can’t put a sign on a Holocaust survivor,” Dichter said. “It demands a different approach.” 

“We need to tell them the individual stories of these struggling survivors,” he said. 

“Donors want to connect to the cause not just rationally but also emotionally.”

In Wold's world, this was translated to the following (my translation to English):

The Foundation for the Benefit of the Holocaust Victims in Israel is dependent on both state and private donations. But for many Jewish donors, it's more accepted, or even more attractive, to give money to a new museum or a hospital wing, where the donor's name is put on the wall in large letters. 

"You can't put your name on a Holocaust survivor," said Dichter.

Dichter did not mention Jews specifically, and he was talking about the different approach needed to get money for an emotional issue.   But for Wold, this becomes an accusation against all Jewish donors: Jews prefer to give money to places where they'll be noticed.  In large letters, no less.

Notice that in the one line which is an actual quote, Wold manages to misquote Dichter.

Wold also accuses PM Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians of using the Holocaust to claim special privileges (again, my translation):

PM Benjamin Netanyahu is one of Israel's many politicians who constantly refer to the fate of the Jews under the Nazi regime, and to the six million Holocaust victims, in order to explain to the wold why the State of Israel must be so strong and why Israel has special needs.

Of course, this is in an article where she actually talks about those special needs (!).

British Middle East expert: “The possibility of a conventional attack against Israel is next to nil"

Fanar Haddad is considered an expert on the Middle East.   So he must be aware that the residents of every major city in Israel have been under conventional attack in the past ten years.  I myself spent time in a bomb shelter, and I do not appreciate being called 'paranoid', when I wish that next time a rocket is aimed at me, it will be blown out of the sky before it lands.  Because it's obvious to all Israelis that there will be a next time.

But some feel Israel, which gets significant funding from key ally the U.S. for missile defense capabilities, is going overboard.

Fanar Haddad, a research fellow from the Middle East Institute in Singapore, said Israeli military superiority in the region was so firmly established that Iron Beam was unlikely to change anything in the short or medium term. 

“The development of another layer says more about Israeli paranoia,” he said. “The possibility of a conventional attack against Israel is next to nil and there is hardly a need for five layers of missile defense systems.”

More: Times of Israel

Hungary: “fellow Hungarian countrymen” vs “our Jewish citizens”.

There is a problem with the comparison, as Hungary is an ethnic nation-state, while America is a non-ethnic country.  Still, this is an issue in most European countries.

Imagine the White House chief of staff stating the following at a press conference after a significant meeting about a highly controversial issue with the leading representatives of American Jewry: “The President will address all of our fellow Americans as well as our Jewish citizens next week.” It does not take a lot of imagination to envision the firestorm of criticism that would follow such a division of the American people into real Americans versus Jewish citizens of America.

Yet, this is precisely what János Lázár, the Minister of State for the Prime Minister’s office, said after the unsuccessful round-table meeting with leading Hungarian Jewish organisations. Of course, he was not talking about fellow Americans but rather “fellow Hungarian countrymen” and “our Jewish citizens”.

More: Budapest Times

Malta: ‘No anti-Semitism case ever reported’

The Malta Independent reports:

Speaker of the House Anglu Farrugia today had a courtesy visit from John Mann MP, Chair of the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group against Anti-Semitism and of the Steering Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism. 

The two sides discussed how anti-Semitism should be combated. 

Dr Farrugia highlighted that no case was ever reported to have occurred in Malta related to anti-Semitism.

I was intrigued by the idea of a country with no antisemitism.  So I Googled around.  Malta does not have a lot of antisemitism, but it's not antisemitism-free.   A few years ago a teenager set up an antisemitic Facebook page.  Additionally, Malta is a Catholic country, and Catholic antisemitism, blaming Jews for the death of Christ, is alive and well on the island.

Sweden: Neo-Nazis charged with rioting (and antisemitic hate speech)

The riots had nothing to do with Jews.

The Local reports:

Charges were filed on Monday against people who took part in a violent riot in Stockholm's Kärrtorp suburb in December last year. Four of the suspects were charged with violent rioting (våldsamt upplopp) and hate speech (hets mot folkgrupp) and another three were charged with instigating violent rioting. According to the indictment, several of those charged threw bottles, rocks, and firecrackers.

What type of hate speech?

Radio Sweden adds a few more details: One person made disparaging remarks against Jews, raised his hand in a Nazi salute and yelled "Adolph Hitler".