When I boarded a packed 102 bus in Golders Green on Tuesday evening, the last thing I expected was to be confronted with a racist free to spout antisemitic abuse with no one prepared to stop him.
On the top deck of my bus, which was full of Jewish school children, sat a grey-haired man screaming “get the Jews off the bus, all they do is f*** us”.
I took my seat and looked around stunned at what I was hearing, desperate to catch the eyes of other outraged passengers.
But all I saw was heads tilted, eyes down or firmly faced forward, as the man continued to shout: “I hate the Jews, burn them, I’m going to burn this bus.”
When he pulled over at the next stop I gave him my phone and insisted he speak to the operator.
“He’s just shouting things. It’s no problem. He is just nuts”, he told her.
Even more disturbing was the emergency operator’s response.
She told me: “If the driver doesn’t stop the bus we can’t send police to you. He said the man was just shouting abuse, which is only anti-social behaviour.”
A hotline to report anti-Semitic incidents has been launched in Italy.
Renzo Gattegna, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, announced the creation of the anti-Semitism Antenna in a statement published Tuesday on his umbrella group’s information website.
The hotline is an experimental project by the group and the Milan-based Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation Foundation, or CDEC, Italy’s main anti-Semitism monitoring institution.
Victims of and witnesses to anti-Semitic acts can report the incidents to CDEC’s anti-Semitism monitor section by calling a Milan phone number – 0233103840 – or filling out a form on the CDEC website.
Shortly after 8:00 a.m., a vehicle stopped at the entrance of the Belz school and the driver asked one of the students for directions.
He asked the boy to accompany him, but the boy refused and ran away. In the afternoon, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman was attacked.
The suspect choked her while screaming: “We have to kill all the Jews as they kill Palestinians.” Police increased the number of patrols in the neighborhood.
Days before Scotland votes in a referendum on independence from Great Britain, the Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond appeared to equate Islamic State terrorism and Israel’s military campaign this summer against Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip.
Speaking on BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, the separatist leader responded to a question about the beheading at the weekend of British aid worker David Haines by Islamic State, describing the murder as an act “of unspeakable barbarism” and later stressing, “The Muslim community of Scotland isn’t responsible in any shape or form for atrocities or extremism in Iraq or elsewhere.”
“So there’s community relations to be thought about,” interjected the host.
“It’s very, very important,” Salmond continued. “I mean, just like a few weeks ago, the Jewish community of Scotland wasn’t responsible for the policies of the State of Israel.”
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| "How I Fell In Love with Adolf Hitler" |
Proceedings in the trial of Roman Z. began in Wroclaw on Wednesday. He is a recognized thug, known for his unruly behavior in soccer stadiums. However, this time he is facing charges not for disturbing the peace, but for writing a book called “How I Fell in Love with Adolf Hitler.”
Yet despite the fact that this work is replete with anti-Semitic expressions and disparaging comments about homosexuals, blacks and anyone who is not a pure Polish Catholic, and despite the fact that the prosecution is charging him with dissemination of fascist propaganda and hatred of foreigners, the presiding judge, according to the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, noted at the outset that he will try to acquit him. The judge, according to the newspaper, will try to base his decision on the testimony of a linguistic expert who read the text and did not reach an unequivocal conclusion.
The book is published online. The back cover shows Z. in Nazi uniform, along with his credo: “I am a declared anti-Semite, at least from the moment I met my Jewish acquaintances. I support race theories ever since I crossed my country’s borders. Before that I didn’t.”
(...)
In chapters labeled “Poland is not lost as long as there are no blacks and Arabs here,” and “The Jew, an enemy of Poles,” Z. freely expresses his xenophobia. The issue of Jews constantly recurs. He claims that the ‘Jewish problem’ exists but is concealed by the government. He exonerates the farmers of Jedwabne who burned their Jewish neighbors and stole their possessions during the war, and questions the contention that 6 million Jews were killed in Auschwitz.
On Sunday, stones and bottles were thrown at people visiting a memorial dedicated to the Jews in Belgium who were killed in the Holocaust. The memorial, which is located nearby the Anderlecht synagogue, was open to the public in the framework of the European Day of Jewish Culture.
A Turkish pundit writing for Yeni Akit, a major publication aligned with President Erdogan, called for the country’s Jews to be taxed to pay for reconstructing buildings damaged in Gaza during Israel’s recent Operation Protective Edge.
Faruk Köse said that the “Gaza Fund Contribution Tax” should apply to Turkish Jews as well as foreign Jews doing business in Turkey and any Turkish nationals with commercial ties to the Jewish state.More: Algemeiner
Berlin - Monument to Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn (Komponistendenkmal) in Berlin’s Tiergarten was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, Berlin police reports on Monday.
A fire, which appears to be criminal, broke out early Tuesday morning at a synagogue in Brussels.
According to Belgian daily La Dernière Heure, one or more people managed to enter the building and set several fires on the fourth floor of the building. Three people, a woman and two children were present at that time in the synagogue, were slightly intoxicated by the fire which was quickly extinguished by Brussels firefighters Brussels. The three are the family of the synagogue’s caretaker who was absent that day.
The synagogue is located in Anderlecht, an area in the south west of Brussels mainly populated by Muslims. The commune, located near the south train station,was once home of a large Jewish community.More: European Jewish Press
Sports Direct has apologised after two schoolboys were barred from a store by a security guard who allegedly told them: ‘No Jews, no Jews’.
The sports retailer removed the worker from its outlet in Borehamwood in Hertfordshire after he reportedly told the Year 7 students they could not enter.
Both youngsters attend Yavneh College, a Jewish secondary school in the town, and were wearing their school uniform at the time.
