Hungary: Uproar After Antisemitic Journalist Receives Country’s Second Highest Honor

Via Algemeiner:

Controversy has erupted in Hungary over the government’s decision to give a prestigious award to a journalist known for making antisemitic and racist comments, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Journalist Zsolt Bayer, whom the Bloomberg report called a “close ally” of right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, received the Order of Merit of the Knight’s Cross – Hungary’s second highest honor — last week.

In protest, more than 50 past recipients of the honor have returned their awards.

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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

Portugal: Government cancels police force training in Israel over human rights concerns

This is how Israel a trusted partner is ditched by the Portuguese government, at a time when Europe is facing all sorts of security threats, terrorism, transnational organised crime etc.  About 50,000 Muslims live in Portugal and the numbers keep growing whereas approximately 600 Jews (the lowest number in Europe).  Israel is constantly criticised in Portugal but Arab countries are viewed favourably.

From the Daily Mail on Line Wires:

Government cedes to pressure from Communists, cancels police force training in Israel over human rights concerns (Diario de Noticias)

From Diário de Notícias (Google translation):

The Ministry of Justice (MJ) ordered the Judicial Police (PJ) to suspend participation in the European project to train inspectors in interrogation techniques of transnational organized crime suspects. This decision came following several protests by leftist parties and organizations, mainly the Portuguese Communist Party, because the technical coordination was from Israel, whose security forces "violate human rights."

The Ministry of Justice refutes any "political motivation" in the decision. Both in the PJ, as in other forces and security services, the news, published by Jornal de Negócios, caused high concern, due to the fact that Israel has been for many years a training partner at different levels of the Portuguese police and even the secret police, as well as a supplier of almost all the telephone surveillance and interceptions technology used by the PJ.

read more (in Portuguese) 

More on the century-old antagonism against Jews and now against Israel: Portugal, the Jews and Israel - a difficult relationship.

UK: London Mayor opposes Corbyn, is attacked for being a 'Zionist stooge'

Via Yair Rosenberg, Adam Bienkov:

London's Muslim mayor came out against Labour party head Corbyn. So anti-Semites came out for him:

France: Shop targeted with anti-semitic tag

Hand-written inscription : "commerde Sale JUIF".  The first word should be Commerce (shop), instead it's written "Commerde" (merde meaning shit).  In other words this could be interpreted as: "This shit shop belongs to a dirty Jew".  Here.

Hungary: Zsolt Bayer, purveyor of hate, honoured by the Government

From Eva Balogh @ Hungarian Spectrum (via Harry's Place):

Zsolt Bayer, leading the Peace March
in Hungarian Guard uniform

Decent, democratic Hungarians are stunned. The hate-filled, racist, anti-Semitic journalistic hack, Zsolt Bayer, on the recommendation of Zoltán Balog, received the third highest decoration the government can bestow on people of great achievement. János Lázár presented Bayer with the “Hungarian Middle Cross.”

The independent media could scarcely find words to display its disgust with the government, but some headline writers rose to the occasion. One headline read “By mistake Zsolt Bayer received the cross of the knight [lovagkereszt] instead of the Swastika.” Swastika in Hungarian is “horogkereszt.” A blog writer at Népszabadság titled his piece “The knight of the Godfather” since Viktor Orbán and Bayer are old friends and fellow founders of Fidesz.

Instead of trying to describe Bayer’s “literary output,” I think it’s best to let Bayer speak for himself. I will be only his English voice. In the past, every time I wrote about Bayer I always said how difficult it is to translate his prose. For starters, Hungarian obscenity beats American obscenity by a mile. Moreover, I hate to repeat this smut. 

The first time I discussed Bayer at some length was in January 2011 shortly after András Schiff, the world-renowned pianist, wrote a letter to the editor of The Washington Post. Bayer retorted with an article titled “The same stench.” Here are a few lines from that piece.

A stinking excrement called something like Cohen from somewhere in England writes that ‘foul stench wafts’ from Hungary. Cohen, and Cohn-Bendit, and Schiff. Népszava appears with the red figure of the man with the hammer and demands freedom of the press. Most people think that this is something new and that war like that didn’t take place before. Nonsense. There is nothing new under the sun. Unfortunately, they were not all buried up to their necks in the forest of Orgovány.

A brief explanation. Orgovány, a small village on the Great Plains, was the site of massacres committed by the leaders of the Hungarian White Terror in 1919-1920. Most of the victims were Jewish. In plain language, Bayer is expressing his sorrow that not all the Jews were killed in those days. [...]

In 2013 Bayer wrote another hateful piece in which, although he didn’t use the word “Jew” or “Jewish,” anyone who is familiar with Bayer’s style and way of thinking knows whom he has in mind when he talks about those who have been doing their best to ruin the white Christian race ever since the 1919 Soviet Republic, which in far-right circles is considered to be a “Jewish affair.” Those who are antagonistic toward Hungary organize themselves “in packs and attack their victims like loathsome drooling hyenas.” And he continues: “For you only death is the proper punishment. Because you believe in death, in public executions while your victims are left alone, go bankrupt, their friends deny them, they lose their jobs, and come to a sorry end. This is your goal.” Their sins are immeasurable and they will be punished. Because these mysterious people don’t realize “what monster [they] are trying to resuscitate. In fact, [they] woke him up already.” All that sounds pretty threatening, but then comes the twist:

You don’t foresee yet that it will be only we who raise our voices in your defense. We, the marked victims. We are the only ones to whom you can turn for help. It will be only we who will hide you. Because we are good to the point of ruining ourselves. And take this all very seriously. You miserable ones.

As for the charge of anti-Semitism, analysts pussyfoot around when it comes to the Orbán government’s attitude toward the country’s Jewish citizens and their role in Hungary’s history. I don’t think that, with the decision to award Bayer this high honor, there can be any question where Viktor Orbán stands on this issue. Bayer’s decoration must have been cleared with Orbán himself, and he must have known that this move will be interpreted as the government’s approval of Bayer’s racism and anti-Semitism. It seems that Orbán doesn’t care what the world thinks of him and his regime. Bayer’s decoration strikes me as a purposeful provocation not only of the Jewish community at home and abroad but of democratic communities in Europe and the Americas.

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Czech Republic: Social Democratic MP posts Holocaust-denial video

Via romea (h/t CFCA):

The weekly Euro in the Czech Republic reports that Stanislav Huml, an MP for the Czech Social Democratic Party, has published a video denying the Holocaust to his Facebook profile. The video, which Huml called "brutal and [politically] incorrect" but "inspiring", is a sort of criticism of the "ethnomasochism" of Western civilization, defined as a feeling of guilt for the historical injustices of colonialism, slavery, etc., including what the video terms the "alleged" Holocaust.

The producers of the video say they refuse to accept the blame for this history. They call on Europe to "stop apologizing" for its previous actions.

What's more, the video says the Jews are "to blame" for the Holocaust, not that they were its victims. Huml said that it is not essential to him that the Iron Dawn YouTube channel, from which he shared the video, has also posted video footage of NSDAP conventions, footage of the occupation of Ukraine by the Nazis, or videos promoting the "healthy lifestyle" of the Nazi Third Reich.

"I don't concern myself with those details," Huml said in response to an query from a reporter with Euro. "The video has an actual basis in history extending back to the 15th century."

The MP then added this note to his Facebook post:  "P.S. for journalists - I actually do not approve of the Holocaust and I do not see it being approved of in the context of this video either." The video, published online on 9 August, was ultimately removed from the MP's public profile.

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Ukraine’s honoring of war criminals leaves its Jews uneasy — and divided

Via Times of Israel:

However, even Zissels is confessing his discomfort at the post-revolution government’s controversial veneration of local pro-Nazi collaborators — amid an explosion of nationalist and anti-Russian sentiment — who were responsible for the murder of countless Jews and Poles during World War II.

In Ukraine, that means the rehabilitation of “heroes” like Stepan Bandera, who last month had a street named after him in Kiev; Symon Petliura, a 1920s anti-Semitic statesman who in May was commemorated on public television, and Roman Shukhevych, a militia leader who will also be honored with a street name in Kiev.

Such veneration has deepened divisions among Ukrainian Jews and heightened their concern over the government’s commitment to democratic values.

“These are not my heroes,” Zissels, the head of the Vaad organization of Ukrainian Jews, told JTA during a recent interview. “They’re being honored not for anti-Semitic crimes, but for their fighting for Ukrainian independence against Russia. And still I don’t like the naming of streets after them, which has divided Ukrainians and Ukrainian Jews.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “most Ukrainians do like it and the Jewish minority, or any other ethnic minority, should not interfere with the choice of the Ukrainian people as they name their national heroes.”

Speaking out against this trend, Zissels said, “can and will serve Russian propaganda.”

    ‘Unfortunately most Ukrainians do like it and the Jewish minority should not interfere with the choice of the Ukrainian people’

Nearly all of Ukraine’s mainstream political Jewish groups share Zissels’ unease over the veneration of Bandera and Shukhevych. During the war, the two served as leaders, respectively, of OUN and UPA, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Their men butchered thousands of Jews and Poles, including women and children, while fighting alongside Nazi Germany against the Red Army and communists.

Unlike Zissels, however, other leaders are willing to publicly denounce this trend as Jews.

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France: Many Jews fleeing recall an Islamic phrase "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people"

Guy Millière @ Gatestone Institute:

The slaughter of French priest Father Jacques Hamel on July 26 in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray was significant. The church where Father Jacques Hamel was saying mass was nearly empty. Five people were present; three nuns and two faithful. Most of the time, French churches are empty.

Christianity in France is dying out. Jacques Hamel was almost 86 years old; despite his age, he did not want to retire. He knew it would be difficult to find someone to replace him. Priests of European descent are now rare in France, as in many European countries. The priest officially in charge of the parish of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Auguste Moanda-Phuati, is Congolese.  [...]

The assassins of Father Jacques Hamel are what is coming. One of them, Adel Kermiche, was born in France to immigrant parents from Algeria. His path looks like the path followed by many young French Muslims: school failure, delinquency, shift towards a growing hatred of France and the West, return to Islam, transition to radical Islam. The other, Abdel Malik Petitjean, was born in France too. His mother is Muslim. His father comes from a Christian family. Abdel Malik Petitjean nevertheless followed the same path as Adel Kermiche. A growing number of young French-born Muslims radicalize. A growing number of young French people who have not been educated in Islam nevertheless turn to Islam, then to radical Islam.  [...]

French mainstream media do their best to hide the truth. Abdel Malik Petitjean and Adel Kermiche are described as troubled and depressed young people who slipped "inexplicably" towards barbarity. Their actions are widely presented as having nothing to do with Islam. The same words were used to depict Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the jihadist who murdered 86 people in Nice on July 14th. These words were used to depict all the jihadists who killed in France during the last few years. Each time, Muslim intellectuals are invited to speak, and invariably explain that Islam is peaceful and that Muslims are guilty of nothing.

The anger expressed by political leaders after the attack in Nice has already faded. Some political leaders in France call for tougher measures, but speak of "Islamic terrorism " very rarely. They know that speaking too much of "Islamic terrorism" could be extremely bad for their future careers.

All political parties, including the National Front, talk about the need to establish an "Islam of France." They never explain how, in the internet age, the "Islam of France could be different from Islam as it is everywhere else.  [...]

For several days after the attack in Nice, it seemed that the country was on the verge of explosion. This is no longer so. The French population seems resigned.  [...]

What is happening today is a continuation of what has been happening here so far this century. In 2001-2003, France experienced a huge wave of anti-Semitic attacks by Muslims supporting the "Palestinian cause." The French government denied that the attacks were anti-Semitic. It also denied that they were perpetrated by Muslims. It chose appeasement, expressed loudly its own support for the "Palestinian cause," and added that the revolt of a "part of the population" was "understandable." It asked Jewish organizations to remain silent. French Jews began to leave France. Many of them recalled an Islamic phrase in Arabic: "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people." In other words, first Muslims attack Jews; then when the Jews are gone, they attack Christians. It is what we have been seeing throughout the Middle East.

Attacks against non-Jews began in 2005: riots broke out all over France. The French government again chose appeasement, and said that the revolt of a "part of the population" would be "heard."

French Jews understand why his
mother had him reburied in Israel

A Jew, Ilan Halimi, was tortured for three weeks and then murdered in Paris in 2006. Then, more Jews were murdered in Toulouse in 2012 and in a Paris suburb in 2015.  Now more and more often, non-Jews are attacked. The French government has repeatedly talked of war, but each time returns to a policy of appeasement. 

Today, appeasement reigns, virtually unchallenged. All French political parties are choosing appeasement over confrontation, and hardly dare to call the danger by its name: radical Islam. The French choose submission: they have no real alternative.

Jews continue to flee. Synagogues and Jewish schools throughout the country are guarded around the clock by armed soldiers. Jews who are still in France know that wearing a skullcap or a Star of David is extremely dangerous. They seem to see that appeasement is a dead end. They often emigrate to the country that appeasers treat as a scapegoat and that Islamists want to destroy: Israel. They know that when in Israel, they might have to confront jihadists like those who kill in France, but they also know that Israelis are more ready to fight to defend themselves.  French non-Jews now see that appeasement will not allow them to be spared.   [...]

There will be no civil war in France. The jihadists have won. They will kill again. They love to kill. They love death. They say, "we love death more than you love life."   One of the nuns present in the empty church said that after slaughtering Father Jacques Hamel, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean smiled. They were happy.

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UK: Palestinian Grim Reaper banner raised in anti-Israel protest by Celtic Football Club supporters

Via Legal Insurrection (h/t glykosymoritis)

Yesterday, a football (soccer) match in Glasgow, Scotland, took place between Glasgow-based Celtic and the Israeli team Hapoal Beersheva in the Champions League qualifying round. Celtic won 5-2.

(...)

At the match, fans waved Palestinian flags and chanted. A huge banner of a skull wrapped in a Palestinian Keffiyeh — the dress code for Palestinian terrorists like Yassar Arafat — came to symbolize the tone:

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Germany: Leipzig University students declare BDS anti-Semitic

Via Jerusalem Post:

Students at one of the world’s oldest universities – Leipzig University in the German state of Saxony – passed a resolution this month opposing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement because it is anti-Semitic.

According to the resolution, the student council voted “to condemn the anti-Semitic BDS campaign,” and is “against anti-Semitic measures such as disinviting Israeli academics.”

The Leipzig University student council sees BDS as a danger to academic freedom and that the BDS measures resemble the Nazi-era slogan “Don’t Buy from Jews!” BDS’s goal is the “abolition of the State of Israel,” the resolution said.


The student council initiated the resolution after a University of London professor appeared at a June event at Leipzig University. Anthropologist Lori Allen held an event regarding her book titled, The Rise and Fall of Human Rights: Cynicism and Politics in Occupied Palestine, and used the talk to promote BDS and to minimize terrorism, according to the resolution.

The pro-boycott event was sponsored by the European Network in Universal and Global History, and the university’s Center for Area Studies and Center for Global and European Studies. The event was also supported by Stanford University and the German federal Ministry for Education and Research.

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Germany: Graffiti artists are turning swastikas into adorable animals

Via The Verge:

Ibo Omari’s war against swastikas began earlier this year, when a man walked into his Berlin graffiti store and asked for a few cans of spray paint. The man had been playing with his son at a nearby playground and noticed a huge Nazi flag painted on an adjacent wall. The father wanted to paint over the flag himself, but Omari wouldn't let him.

"We said we are going to take care of it — don’t spend any money, don’t get your hands dirty," Omari recalls. "So we went there and made something beautiful out of it."

Within a few minutes, Omari and another artist transformed the giant swastika into a cartoonish mosquito, effectively neutering a symbol that continues to haunt Germany. Not long afterward, another friend told Omari of another swastika they had seen painted in a Berlin park, and suggested that he perform the same kind of street art alchemy.

Thus began Paintback, a campaign to change neo-Nazi graffiti into playful images. Over the last few months, Omari and 11 other members of his graffiti collective have transformed around 50 swastikas into a variety of whimsical designs: rabbits, owls, even Rubik’s cubes. The campaign began in Berlin and has since spread to other cities across Germany, thanks in large part to social media.

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Turkey: Media blames Jews, Israel for coup attempt

Jack Gozcu @ Times of Israel (h/t Honestly Concerned):

Between the dates of 17th of July–15th of August; the number of mainstream newspapers who directly linked the “Coup Attempt” to Jews and/or Israel is 76. Numbers are stated below.

(...)

Demonisation of Jews and Israel is a constant concept used in the Turkish written media. And on social media… I don’t even want to go there…

Latest news is suggesting that Fetullah Gülen’s mother’s name is Jewish and the “Üst Akıl” – so called “Supreme mentality” which consists of Jewish and Zionist and Masonic teachings are behind everything.

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France: Strasbourg attacker has history of attacking Jews

Via i24News:

The assailant who moderately wounded a Jewish man in the French city of Strasbourg has been charged with attempted murder, a judicial source said on Saturday.

The prosecution said it had filed charges "for the attempted murder of a victim because of his real or inferred race or religion."

"The man, aged 45 was indicted by the investigating judge and was remanded in a criminal filing tonight," said the prosecutor.

The suspect, said to be in his 40s, has been described as mentally unstable.  Witnesses said that he shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) during the attack on the 62-year-old Jewish man.

The victim was wearing a kippa skullcap, when he was stabbed in the abdomen in the city's Jewish quarter by a man with a record of anti-Semitic violence, Strasbourg's chief rabbi, Rene Gutman, told AFP.

The victim was admitted to hospital but Gutman said his injuries were not life-threatening.

In 2010, the assailant attacked another kippa-wearing Jewish man in Strasbourg, beating him with an iron bar in a public square.

Put on trial for attempted murder, he was considered to be not mentally responsible for his acts under criminal law and detained in a psychiatric hospital.

Prosecutors at the time said the aggressor believed himself to be "the victim of a Jewish conspiracy" which he blamed for "all his misfortunes".

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Italy: Islamic University official calls for 'final solution for Zionists'

Via Ynet News:

Rafelo Vilni, a high ranking official at the Islamic University in Lucca, Italy recently wrote on his Facebook page that "there needs to be a final solution for Zionists."

The post went on to say that "the real Jews are the victims are Zionism." 

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