Swastikas and anti-Semitic tags were found daubed over 80 gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France on Tuesday on the day of nationwide marches against a rise in anti-Semitic attacks.
The damage was discovered on Tuesday morning at a cemetery in the village of Quatzenheim, close to the border with Germany in the Alsace region, a statement from the regional security office said.
Seven MPs have resigned from the Labour Party citing institutional antisemitism as among the main reasons for their departure.
At a press conference in London, Liverpool Wavertree MP Luciana Berger said she was "embarrassed and ashamed" to be a member of the Labour Party which she said was "institutionally antisemitic" and had "a culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation". Ms Berger has long been a target for antisemitic Labour activists who have plied her with abuse and death threats.
The other MPs to speak cited antisemitism as their reason for leaving but added several other reasons, primary among which was Labour’s direction over Brexit.
The second MP to speak, Chris Leslie, who represents Nottingham East, said: "It has not been an easy decision for any of us" adding that the party had been "hijacked by the machine politics of the extreme left".
Ilford South MP Mike Gapes said: "I am sickened that Labour is now a racist, antisemitic party" and "furious that the Labour leadership is complicit in this".
Editor in chief said the print headline was an editing error and the words "should never have been used"
Norway's largest print newspaper apologized this week for running an article about Israel and antisemitism that used the phrase "the Jewish question" in the headline.
That phrase has a long history of being used to demean, dehumanize and stigmatize Jewish people, both before and during the Holocaust.
Espen Egil Hansen, the editor in chief of Aftenposten, issued a lengthy apology for the original article - which ran in the newspaper last week. In a full page commentary in Monday's newspaper, Hansen apologized for the original article, which was headlined in print: "The Jewish question splits the left on both sides of the Atlantic." The article examined accusations of antisemitism against figures including US Rep. Ilhan Omar and UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Hansen took full responsibility for the unfortunate wording.
Anti-Semitic offences rose by almost 10% in Germany last year, according to preliminary data released by police on Wednesday.
Some 1,646 anti-Semitic acts were reported in 2018, according to police, marking their highest level in the past decade. Sixty-two of these acts were violent, wounding 43 people.
The preliminary figures were released at the request of Die Linke left-wing party, and the final study will be published in May.
(...)
In Germany, one of the reasons behind the current jump of antisemitic acts is the rising popularity of the far-right AFD party, said Carsten Nickel, Managing Director of the think tank Teneo.
Since the 2015 migration crisis, Germany has seen a resurgence of far-right sentiment tainted with antisemitism which was impossible just 10 year ago due to German history, Carsten told Euronews.
The far-right's political strategy has been to blame migrants, which come predominantly from Muslim countries, for the resurgence of anti-Jewish hatred in Germany. "Muslim immigration might be part of the story, but I don't think that's the only story," Carsten said.
Labour’s general secretary has warned MPs that public criticism of the way antisemitism allegations have been handled is “distressing” for party staff.read more
Jennie Formby, a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, said that the party had received nearly 700 complaints linked to antisemitic abuse by party members since April last year and had expelled 12 people.
Dame Margaret Hodge, the MP for Barking, disputed this, saying that she alone had made complaints about 200 members. Ms Formby said this was not correct, claiming that Dame Margaret’s complaints related to 111 individuals, 20 of whom were Labour members.
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.
French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut was the target of an anti-Semitic attack Saturday night, French media outlets reported.
The philosopher, whose writing focuses on the ideas of tradition and identitary violence (including Jewish identity and anti-Semitism), was assaulted by Yellow Vest protesters who have taken to France's streets in recent months to demonstrate the country's rising fuel prices.
In videos that documented the incident, protesters can be heard yelling: "Dirty Jew" and "you're a hater, you're going to die, you're going to hell," while others called on the thinker to "go home" and "return to Tel Aviv."
In a different clip demonstrators can be heard screaming anti-Semitic profanities such as "dirty Zionist shit."
A Dutch publisher that previously created school textbooks accusing Israelis of ethnic cleansing has released a new volume omitting Jerusalem’s significance to Jews.
The omission occurred in a textbook about social issues titled “Plein M” by Nordhoff Publishers for preparatory middle-level applied education level schools, including public schools. It states Jerusalem is holy to Muslims and Christians, but does not mention its holiness to Jews.
It also states that Jews and Christians were “mostly treated well” by Arabs throughout history. It does not mention capital taxes and many pogroms perpetrated against Jews in Arab countries before and during the flight of at least 800,000 Jews from those countries in the 20th century. Today, there are fewer than 7,000 Jews living in Arab countries.
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Likoed Nederland, a pro-Israel group, called the book a form of “historical falsification” in a statement Sunday, adding it “reads like Palestinian propaganda.”
A tree planted in a Paris suburb in memory of a young Jewish man who was tortured to death in 2006 has been chopped down, authorities said Monday, confirming the latest in a series of anti-Semitic acts in France.read more
Ilan Halimi was kidnapped by a gang that demanded huge sums of money from his family, believing them to be rich because he was Jewish.
After being tortured for three weeks, the 23-year-old cellphone salesman was found dumped next to a railway in the southern suburb of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. He died while being brought to hospital.
On Monday, municipal workers sent to prepare a memorial site for a annual remembrance ceremony this week discovered that a tree planted in his honour had been chopped down and a second one partly sawn through, local officials told AFP.
The police are investigating the incident, which the French government's special representative on racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination, Frederic Potier, described as "ignominious".
It is the latest in a series of anti-Semitic acts and attacks that have raised fears of a new wave of anti-Jewish violence in a country that is home to Europe's biggest Jewish population.
In two separate incidents in the past two days, swastikas were drawn on Paris postboxes containing portraits of late Holocaust survivor Simone Veil and the word Juden (German for Jews) was sprayed on the window of a bagel bakery in the capital.
A ruling issued by the Divisional Court of the High Court of Justice in London, made public on Tuesday, has upheld the right of an Orthodox Jewish Housing Association to allocate housing exclusively to Jewish families.
Agudas Israel Housing Association (AIHA) was founded to serve the U.K.’s Orthodox Jewish community and builds, part-owns and manages properties in London, Salford and Canvey Island.
The claimants against AIHA, who are not Jewish, had wanted to be allocated a home in AIHA’s new Aviv development in Stamford Hill, but were not given the chance to bid. The claim against Hackney London Borough Council and AIHA, challenged AIHA’s policy of allocating its social housing properties on the basis that they precluded any persons who are not members of the Orthodox Jewish community from becoming tenants. The claimants applied for a Judicial Review of the case.
Following a detailed investigation of the social housing market, and the specific characteristics of Hackney’s Orthodox Jewish Community, including anti-Semitism and religious needs, the Divisional Court ruled that AIHA’s policy was lawful and found against the application for Judicial Review, concluding that AIHA served a specific need and tried to do so with access to only 1 percent of Hackney’s social housing stock
In what is potentially a landmark ruling, the court recognized that Orthodox Jewish community members’ way of life requires them to live close by each other as a community – to the extent that many prefer to live in unsuitable properties rather than to move away from their community.
It also sadly acknowledged widespread and increasing overt anti-Semitism in society and prejudice, including in the private rental sector, specifically against Orthodox Jews, due to their higher visibility as Jewish.
Posters issued by the municipal authority of Frankfurt bearing words of support for the city’s Jewish community have been plastered across the metropolis this week in an act of solidarity with Frankfurt’s Jews.
The posters, titled “Together in Frankfurt” and bearing an image of a man wearing a kippah with a design of the Frankfurt skyline on it, were hung as an initiative to highlight the contribution of Jews to the city and as a statement against antisemitism, which recent studies have found is still prevalent in Europe.
“Jewish life is an ancient tradition in Frankfurt and is an inseparable part of the city’s identity,” reads the text of the poster, and goes on to describe the contribution of the Jewish community to the city’s culture and status as a financial center.
Noting the “wounds” caused by “the Holocaust and the terrible era of the Nazis,” the municipality said that “Today we are able to be happy that Jewish life has returned and has an established and important status in our city.”
The poster asserts that “Antisemitism is not only a problem for Jewish society, it is a problem for all of society and therefore the obligation is on our shoulders, every day, to strengthen cooperation and to stand strong and determined against any phenomenon or sign of antisemitic discrimination and racism.”
Jewish community leaders and politicians have condemned a third successive year with a record number of antisemitic incidents.
Last year, 1,652 incidents, a 16% increase on 2017, were logged by the Community Security Trust, which has monitored antisemitism for 35 years and provides security to the UK Jewish community.
The CST said the spread of incidents throughout the year, with more than 100 a month, indicated a general atmosphere of intolerance and prejudice. However, there were also spikes related to events in Gaza and the argument over antisemitism in the Labour party.
The biggest number of incidents were in April and May (151 and 182 respectively), when scores of Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured in protests at the border fence between Gaza and Israel. May was the highest monthly total recorded since August 2014, when there was a major conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
In total, there were 173 incidents recorded that explicitly showed anti-Israel motivation alongside antisemitism, the CST said.
It also recorded 148 incidents over the year that were explicitly related to arguments over alleged antisemitism in Labour, with 49 in August when there was significant media and political attention on the issue.
The award was presented to BDS activists Ronnie Barkan, Majed Abusalama and Stavit Sinai (known as “Humboldt 3”) by Copenhagen’s Mayor for Technical and Environmental Affairs, Ninna Hedeager Olsen, at a ceremony in Copenhagen’s City Hall Thursday. It stated thatread more
Mr. Barkan and his colleagues have worked tirelessly to reveal the Apartheid-like nature of the Israeli regime and its systematic violation of international law. By doing so, the Copenhagen Courageous laureates have sown the seeds for a peaceful settlement between Israelis and Palestinians based on truth and justice.
(Full statement here).
A man who tried to prevent a suspected anti-Semitic assault at a German train station was severely beaten by the alleged culprit.
The incident unfolded on Jan. 23 at the train station of Langen, a southern suburb of Frankfurt. An inebriated 27-year-old German citizen of Cameroonian descent accosted verbally and then shoved to the ground a much older man who was dressed like an Orthodox Jew, the Hessenschau newspaper reported Tuesday.
The older man got up and boarded a train unscathed, but a passerby who intervened ended up being injured much more seriously by the alleged aggressor, the paper reported. The 48-year-old victim was pummeled repeatedly and severely injured on his face and hands, the report said.
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A Hungarian Jewish leader was pictured on the cover of a pro-government magazine surrounded by images of money.
The image of Andras Heisler, head of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, or Mazsihisz, the country’s largest Jewish group, was published late last week on the front page of the Figyelo weekly.
The magazine accuses Heisler and Mazsihisz of accounting irregularities in connection with a state-funded synagogue renovation project in Budapest including a Jewish museum, according to the AFP news service. Mazsihisz denies the allegation.
The cover image “revives centuries-old stereotypes against our community,” the group said in a statement published on its website.
“The appearance on a front cover of such incitement against a religious leader without any factual basis is unprecedented,” the statement said, calling it “deliberate character assassination.”
The cover was published about a day after the Hungarian government pledged to spend $1.7 million every year on projects to combat anti-Semitism in Hungary and elsewhere in Europe, according to the AFP.
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