The New Antisemite

Friday, January 22, 2016

France: Jewish students are frightened and wary on campuses

Interestingly, Jewish students' fear in French universities is a subject that is not raised in France. A lot of attention is given to what is going on in primary and secondary schools, but when it comes to universities French Jewish organisations and Jewish academics keep silent. There is no such thing as a University Watch body in a country where antisemitism is rampant, Israel-bashing is the norm and Jews are leaving in great numbers. Why does it take a visiting British delegation to notice and report that Jewish students are very frightened and wary on their campusus? "I vividly recall meeting with Jewish students and their talk of how frightened they were, of how wary they were on campuses."

The Jewish Press reports:

Activists behind the “disgraceful” attack on Jewish students at a university are “neo-fascists”, Sir Eric Pickles has said.

The Conservative former communities secretary suggested the scenes which disrupted a meeting at King’s College London shared similarities with 1938’s Kristallnacht, also known as Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis attacked Jewish people and their property. Sir Eric was referring to disruption at an event organised by the KCL Israel Society and LSE Israel Society, in which politician Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, appeared.

Speaking in the Commons, the UK’s post-Holocaust envoy said: “(Labour MP Wes Streeting) mentioned that we travelled together to France in the autumn of last year to look at anti-Semitism there and I vividly recall meeting with Jewish students and their talk of how frightened they were, of how wary they were on campuses.

“I can’t help but reflect at the disgraceful attack upon Jewish students in King’s College in London just two nights ago, where a peaceful meeting – literally about peace – was broken up with obscenities and with the breaking of a window and the breaking of glass and the offering of violence.

Germany: Teachers indifferent to use of “Jew” as an insult

Via Everyday Antisemitism:

German news platform Hessenschau has reported that “Jew” has become a common insult amongst pupils in schools across German.

One teacher and educational scientist, Türkan Kanbicak, notes that “You Jew”, “You spastic” and sexist insults are very common. She remarks that, while she determinedly challenges all such incidences, many of her colleagues appear indifferent and say nothing.

Anti-Semitism threatens France’s Jewish communities

From the Washington Times

An increasingly violent wave of anti-Semitic words and acts in France threatens the very existence of Jewish communities there, one human rights advocacy group warned in a new report.

The attacks are “a harbinger of societal breakdown,” said Susan Corke of Human Rights First. “Left unchecked, antisemitism leads to the persecution of other minorities, and to an overall increase in repression and intolerance.”

Reported anti-Semitic hate crimes in France have more than doubled from 423 in 2014 to 851 in 2015, according to numbers cited in the report “Breaking the Cycle of Violence: Countering Antisemitism and Extremism in France” released Jan. 7 by the group Human Rights First and authored by Corke.

“These incidents are increasingly violent,” the report stated.

(...)

The commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, told CNA/EWTN News last March of the fear in the Jewish communities that she witnessed during a visit to France. Many Jewish parents “don’t see a Jewish future” for their children there, she said. The government has stationed security outside of Jewish buildings and synagogues to protect them from vandalism and violence.

The decline of the situation is largely due to two major factors: the rise of the far-right National Front political party, and the resentment of disenfranchised immigrant and minority groups, the report said.

UK: "I will slit your throat, I'm going to kill all the Jews"

I missed this incident at the time. There is a lot of antisemitic harassment that doesn't get to the press.

Via Campaign Against Antisemitism:

Rashal Miah was convicted today by a jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court despite pleading “not guilty” to telling a Jewish man: “Shut the f*** up, you f***ing Jew. I will slit your throat.”

The incident took place on 29th September 2014 in Stamford Hill in London. An orthodox Jewish man who was recognisably Jewish from his clothes was driving a school van full of children through traffic. Miah was driving a black Mercedes towards the school van on the wrong side of the road, which caused traffic to build up and block the road.

The driver of the school van asked Miah to reverse his car to let traffic pass, at which point Miah exited his car, “aggressively” approached the van and said: “Shut the f*** up, you f***ing Jew. I will slit your throat.” He went on to refer to the school van driver as “Yehudi” (Jew) and said: “I’m going to kill all the Jews.”

UK: Pro-Palestinians campaign for yet another terrorist who wanted to kill Jews

Ahmad Manasrah and his cousin showed up with knives in a Jerusalem neighbrohood and started chasing Jews. They almost killed a 12-year-old boy before they were stopped by police.

While Ahmad Manasrah was being treated in an Israel hospital, Palesinan leader Abbas claimed he had been 'executed' by the Israelis.

Now the poor freedom fighter is standing trial for attempted murder. After all, he only wanted to kill Jews. There's no reason he should pay a price for that.

Via Samidoun:

A group of activists in Bristol, UK joined the international campaign to Free Ahmad Manasrah, projecting a video about the 13-year-old Palestinian boy’s severe injury, abusive interrogation, imprisonment and separation from his family at the hands of Israeli occupation forces on the city council building on Sunday, 17 January.

UK: Pro-Israel rally organisers say venue pulled out because of ‘intimidation’ from boycotters

The Jewish Chronicle reports:

The organisers of a pro-Israel rally claim they have been forced to postpone the event because the venue pulled out after “gross intimidation” from boycott activists.

North West Friends of Israel (NWFOI) said that despite the Sheridan Suite function rooms in Manchester “accepting the booking in full knowledge of the event purpose,” the venue had “fallen victim to an orchestrated campaign by specific pressure groups whose sole aim is to delegitimise the existence of the state of Israel.

“Sadly, by caving in to this external pressure, the Sheridan Suite has succumbed to gross intimidation and allowed itself to become a target of the antisemitic boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, all of which only serves to strengthen our resolve to do everything in our power to oppose their ongoing delegitimisation.”

Around 2,000 people had been expected to attend the “Say No To Terror: Stand With Israel” national rally, on January 31.

Read more.

UK: The Foreign Office’s Secret Survey to 'Measure Zionist Influence'

Via Haaretz:

In 1971 seven British embassies and Whitehall diplomats were asked to evaluate Zionist activity in the U.S. and Europe. Their responses echoed anti-Semitic notions of Jewish financial power, dual loyalty and undue political influence.

The idea that Jews use their financial clout to influence politics and the media for nefarious purposes lies at the heart of modern anti-Semitism. Often, the terms ‘Jewish’ and ‘Zionist’ are interchangeable in these storied fantasies. Put the phrase “Zionist influence” into Google and your computer screen fills up with the paranoid fantasies of conspiracy theorists - and anti-Semitic cranks.

But the conflation of the two terms, and the assumption of the malign influence of both, has not always been confined to the fringes. During the early 1970s, it made an appearance in the heart of British foreign policy making when the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) embarked on a secret research project under the title of “Zionism and its influence in USA and Western Europe.”

This was not an analysis of Israeli diplomatic outreach or relations between Israel and its allies. Rather, it was an attempt to identify and evaluate Zionist activity and influence within the United States and Western Europe. Working without a clear definition of the term ‘Zionist’, much of the research for this project was little more than a survey of Jewish political activity and demography. And while the project reached no firm conclusions, the content of its files, held in the U.K. National Archives and revealed here for the first time, says much about the FCO’s attitudes towards Zionism and Diaspora Jewry during that period – and the consistent confusion between the two.

At times, the language and thinking of some of the civil servants involved in the project even echoed anti-Semitic notions of Jewish financial power, dual loyalty and undue political influence. Fairly or not, the project will confirm the suspicions of those who believe that the FCO’s traditional ‘Arabist’ orientation was evidence of latent anti-Semitism within its walls.

(...)

At the heart of the FCO’s research project was a fascination with the power and influence of American Jewry. One Washington-based diplomat wrote of the “enormous influence (which can scarcely be exaggerated) of the Jewish intellectuals… It follows that much of the intellectual thought and discussion, certainly on the East Coast, is dominated by Jewish savants.” No evidence is offered of these intellectuals’ Zionist inclinations or writings, which was taken as read.

UK: British doctors campaigned to expel Israeli association from World Medical Association

Via Alegmeiner:

British doctors have submitted a request to the World Medical Association to have the Israel Medical Association expelled, Israeli news website nrg reported on Wednesday.

Dr. Ze’ev Feldman, a representative of the Israel Medical Association, said 71 British doctors had reached out to the WMA asking for Israel’s membership to be revoked. He said British medical journals have published letters to the editor carrying accusations against Israeli doctors, including malpractice against Palestinian patients.

read more

For more on antisemitism among British doctors, see:

UK: Pro-Palestinians disrupt talk by Israeli pro-Palestinian

Yachad is a Jewish organization which is pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-two-state-solution. They organize tours in Israel showing how bad Israel is, and sometimes even slip into actual anti-Zionism.

This week they're hosting Ami Ayalon. A former director of Israel's security agency and a former commander of Israel's navy, he's also a peace activist. Together with Sari Nusseibeh he authored "The People's Voice" peace initiative.

These are the type of people that anybody who cares about the Palestinians should uphold and embrace. But these activists don't care about the Palestinians, their aim is to destroy Israel, and therefore Yachad and Ayalon are perfectly acceptable targets.

Jews will not be allowed to speak unless they speak out for destroying the only Jewish state.

Via Richard Millett @ UK Media Watch

As soon as the doors shut the frustrated anti-Israel activists pounded the doors and the windows looking into the talk. They screamed “Free Free Palestine”, “Viva Viva Palestina” and “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be free” and smashed a window.

Europe/France: Incitement against Israel that has become a staple of European political culture

An important article by Jonathan S. Tobin @ Commentary:

[...] French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last week while commemorating the anniversary of the terror attack on the Hyper Cacher market in which four Jews were slaughtered by the same Islamist cell that committed the Charlie Hebdo massacre, that the thought of Jews leaving the country because they were no longer safe was, “an unbearable idea.” In his view, “France without Jews is not France.”

Maybe so. But the reality of France — as well as much of Europe — in 2016 is that Ammar is right in assessing the danger to the Jews of Marseilles. Anyone who walks around in parts of the city overtly proclaiming their Jewish identity is taking their lives into their hands. That’s why immigration to Israel — a place where Jews can and do defend themselves against Jew-haters and where the expression of Jewish identity is guaranteed — is rising from France as well as the rest of supposedly enlightened Western Europe.

The France that Valls wants to believe in may be a secular republic where equal rights for Jews, Muslims and all religious and ethnic minorities are not called into question. But the Jews of Marseilles and Paris don’t live in such a place anymore. They understand that although the ringing speeches about fighting anti-Semitism we hear after every attack on Jews is comforting, neither those words nor other gestures of solidarity are going to protect Jews that are singled out for brutality by Islamist thugs.

While one should be careful not to exaggerate the danger, the frequency of attacks on Jews is discouraging and enough to impact the mentality of a community that understands that Europe is changing.

Part of this stems from the incitement against Israel that has become a staple of European political culture. An unholy alliance of academic and artistic elites with Muslim immigrants in a coalition that seeks to isolate supporters of Israel is disturbing in and of itself. But these groups no longer even bother to hide the connection between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The growing hatred for the Jewish state is inseparable from the rising tide of anti-Semitism that is sweeping through Europe. [...]

Expressions of solidarity with Jews are certainly to be welcomed. [...] But Prime Minister Valls can no more promise that a Jew in a kippah won’t be attacked with a machete any more than Chancellor Angela Merkel can tell German women that they need not fear being assaulted if they stand in public spaces with large numbers of young male immigrants.

European Jews are entitled to hope that the situation will change, but no rational analysis of the situation lends any credence to such wishes. That’s why more French and European Jews are leaving for relative safety in Israel. Though life there is not without strife or peril, at least there Jews need not be dependent on the mercy of non-Jewish authorities that are essentially powerless to alter the shift in the culture of their countries.

In that sense, French Jews are again the proverbial canaries in the coalmine indicating the peril of anti-Semitism. Their kippahs are an indication that European civilization as we knew it is once again in peril. While there are clear differences between what is happening now and what happened in the 1930s, the best advice for those Jewish communities may not be dissimilar. They can stay and bravely hope for the best. Or they leave and live fully Jewish lives elsewhere, particularly in Israel. Choosing the latter may not only be safer but the better part of valor.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Germany: Jewish journalist experiences antisemitic harassment

Tamara Anthony is a Jewish journalist. In an article in Tagesschau she describes an antisemitic incident she recently experienced (h/t Honestly Concerned, Translation help by Daniel).

Tamara was with friends at a pub/restaurant in an exclusive neighborhood in Hamburg. Some well-dressed civilized looking guy said one should gas (murder) all Jews. When she said: "I'm Jewish, so that means you want to murder me?" he said: "In this case, yes!"

She refused to be terrorized and leave the establishment. One friend heard the exchange and also tried to get the guy to leave.

She said the most shocking thing was his attitude: Being nicely dressed and his attitude that his opinion was shared by majority.

Switzerland: Gov't capitulated to terror, agreed to support Palestinian cause

Via SwissInfo:

Switzerland and the militant Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) concluded a secret deal in 1970 to avert further terrorist attacks against the country.

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) newspaper says a delegation led by Foreign Minister Pierre Graber met senior PLO officials in Geneva to negotiate a pact offering diplomatic support for the Palestinian cause in return for assurances to be spared from attacks.

The first contacts between the Swiss minister and the Palestinians was initiated by Jean Ziegler, according to the NZZ. The controversial leftwing human rights advocate was a member of the Swiss parliament at the time.

The confidential negotiations risked creating a diplomatic crisis with the United States, Britain, Germany and Israel, according to the report.

Details of the agreement are still locked away under a 50-year statute of limitations.

Slovenia: Supermarket chain boycotts Israel

Via Times of Israel:

Slovenia’s largest supermarket chain has succumbed to pressure from the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and pulled Israeli produce off its shelves, the Ynet news website reported Tuesday.

The Israeli produce carried by the Mercator chain consisted largely of citrus fruits, avocados and dates.

France: French diplomat in Jerusalem marries terrorist

In 2005,three Palestinian terrorists, residents of Jerusalem, plotted to murder Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former chief rabbi of Israel. The plot was foiled and the terrorists jailed.

Salah Hamouri, one of the terrorists, was released in 2011 along with hundreds of other terrorists in exchange for abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

A year ago Hamouri married Elsa Lefort, an employee at the French consulate in Jerusalem. Elsa is daughter of Jean-Claude Lefort, former Communist MP and one of the leaders of the antisemitic BDS movement in France. (see Nana10)

Following a family visit in France, Israel barred Elsa Lefort from entering Israel The French are furious.

France, the country whose diplomats marry people who want to kill Jews. Why fight antisemites when you can marry them?

Here's the story from Samidoun, a site dedicated to the rights of Jew-killers.

Germany: "We are no longer safe here"

Via Jerusalem Post:

The spokesman for Hamburg’s Jewish community, Daniel Killy, said deteriorating security in Germany has led to a highly dangerous situation for Jews.

“No, we are no longer safe here,” Killy told the news outlet tagesschau.de on Tuesday. He said the disintegration of state power, excesses of the extreme right-wing, the loss of political credibility, and “the terrible fear of naming Islamism as such” have contributed to an insecure environment for Jews. Hamburg’s Jewish community has nearly 2,500 members.

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