Spain: Texas slams Spanish banks over Israel-boycott account

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

BDS group president tried to hide PayPal account from ‘Post’

Two giant financial institutions – Dallas-based Comerica and Spain’s La Caixa – are caught in the crossfire of criticism from politicians and human rights organizations over a fiercely anti-Israel legal group’s accounts with them.

Texas State Sen. Brandon Creighton told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, “The International Association of Democratic Lawyers [IADL] supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to boycott Israeli products. I do not agree with that stance and I have authored legislation to prohibit Texas from investing public funds in companies that boycott Israel.”

He added, “That [closure of the account] is unfortunately not up to the Texas legislature to decide. As a public official and voice for my constituents, my concern is to ensure that the State of Texas does not support organizations engaged in these discriminatory trade practices.”

Texas State Rep. Phil King, the author of another anti-BDS bill, told the Post that “financial institutions and companies, just like state governments, should be encouraged by their stakeholders to exercise their freedom and moral obligation to carefully choose the parties with whom they do business.” 

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, told the Post, “Any steps that limit the ability of organizations which support terror and seek the destruction of the State of Israel are welcome and should be actively encouraged. This is a perfect example of such a step, which we hope will be replicated in the banking and business sectors.” 

Jan Fermon, the secretary-general of IADL and a Belgium-based lawyer, wrote the Post by email that “regarding BDS, IADL supports this movement.” He added, “IADL engaged in solidarity with the Palestinian people in a very early stage of its existence because it considers the violations of international law and human rights law... by the Israeli authorities as a major obstacle to a just and lasting peace in the region.”

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told the Post, “The IADL never met an anti-American or anti-Israel extremist they didn’t support. They have absolutely no credibility among objective lawyers. Their history as a Communist front created and funded by the Soviet Union continues to motivate their biased approach. Their lack of transparency is designed to hide their real agenda, which is ideological, not legal.”

When asked about IADL’s funding sources, the NGO’s president Jeanne Mirer wrote in an email to the Post, “Tell him [the Post reporter] we do not use PayPal. They will go after them [PayPal] to cut us off.”

Mirer, a Brooklyn-based labor lawyer, wrote in subsequent emails to the Post, “The emails you received from me were only intended for Mr. Fermon,” and, “We do not receive government or UN money.” Mirer declined to further comment on the group’s PayPal account, which is listed as a method of donation on IADL’s website. (...)

Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the head of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, told the Post, “It is not surprising that this group, which was reportedly created by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and did anti-American propaganda during the Korean War, is now pushing hard-core anti-Israel propaganda. Among their 17 member organizations is one from North Korea.”

He added, “This is consistent with the Soviet campaign on anti-Zionism, mixed with antisemitism, which later fed into the BDS movement. As if often the case with such front organizations, their finances are nontransparent. Unlike legitimate NGOs which publish audited annual financial reports on their websites, IADL provides no information other than the claim that funding is provided by member organizations – most of which also lack transparency.”

Fermon said that the criticism and the Post inquiries are attempts “to silence voices that are critical to Israel by demonizing them unjustly as ‘terrorists, antisemites, communist fronts, etc.’”

IADL has defended the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, saying Tehran “wishes to develop its nuclear matter research for peaceful use. Such a use is obviously the right most basic to each country.”

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Netherlands: Rapper chosen for Liberation Day show, caught on tape shouting antisemitic slogans

Via RTL Nieuws:

Hip-hop band Broederliefde (brotherly love) was chosen as "Ambassadors of Freedom" -  representatives of the Dutch Liberation Day festivities.

A day later, a video of one of the band members, Emms, started making the rounds, in which  he is shouting "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas" after Feyenoord's victory last year.

Emms apologized for his antisemitic statements.  "I'm very sorry for the things I said at that moment.  I used certain words that are often used by supporters of Feyenoord when they want to intimidate their opponents.  That is no excuse and I realize that it can't be tolerated."

The Liberation Day festivities committee said they were shocked, but will keep the group as their ambassadors.  They said the slogans were inappropriate, but given the reaction of the group they will remain part of the festivities.


The Liberation Day committee posted this clip to their site.  Broederliefde's visit to Auscwitz.

UK: Two men shout antisemitic death threats at synagogue-goers

Via CAA:

Two men have been arrested after allegedly shouting antisemitic abuse including death threats at Jewish people walking to synagogue in Stamford Hill in London. The two adults, described only as a black man and a white man reportedly began shouting abuse at 09:00 yesterday morning as Jewish families made their way to synagogue, at one point even entering the front garden of a synagogue.

Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol, assisted officers from the Metropolitan Police Service in arresting the men.

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UK: BBC News airbrushes Gerald Kaufman’s antisemitic remarks

Via BBC Watch:

The death of British MP Gerald Kaufman was covered in the ‘UK politics’ section of the BBC News website on February 27th in an article and an obituary.

In the article titled “Labour MP Gerald Kaufman dies at 86” readers were told:kaufman-art-1

“A practising Jew, he was best known for his fierce opposition to the policies of the Israeli government and its treatment of the Palestinians.”

(...)

Despite the fact that Kaufman went far beyond “criticism of Israel”, the BBC elected to airbrush from the picture entirely his record of antisemitic remarks, his collaboration with Hamas and its supporters and his meetings with Hamas representatives – a terror organisation proscribed by the British government

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UK: Jewish Museum in London evacuated by bomb threat

Via JTA:

A bomb threat forced the evacuation of The Jewish Museum in London.

Staff and visitors were sent outside after the threat was called in Monday at noon, the Jewish Chronicle reported Tuesday. Children from two schools were visiting at the time.

Police and security officials did not find any explosives in their inspection of the building.

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Austria: BDS barred from holding event at Vienna cultural center

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

Vienna cultural institution barred BDS Austria from holding an event, the WUK cultural center told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday.  

“The WUK distances itself clearly from ‘Israel Apartheid Week Vienna 2017’ and its organizer, BDS Austria, and there is no place for any form or statement of antisemitism,” Christine Baumann, a spokesperson for the WUK, told the Post. 

She added that the “Israeli Apartheid Week Vienna 2017” was not planned as a WUK event. 

“In the concrete case of BDS Austria, the use of the room was approved because the organizer was mistakenly believed to be for equal rights and against repression and far removed from antisemitism.” 

BDS Austria wrote on its Facebook page that the WUK cultural center prevented a discussion and “jumped on the comfortable train of general propaganda and agitational mood against the BDS movement. (...)

One BDS Austria event is set to feature Salma Karmi-Ayyoub, a British-Palestinian lawyer who is a consultant for Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq. Her talk is titled, “Apartheid and its applicability to Israel/Palestine.” 

Shawan Jabarin, head of Al-Haq, “has been linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organization,” according to the Jerusalem- based NGO Monitor. The PFLP is classified as a terrorist entity in the US and the EU. 

The cancellation of the event posed another setback for the group. The Amerlinghaus, a municipal- funded cultural center in Vienna, canceled BDS Austria events last March because of opposition by Vienna’s mayor and political parties. 

Austrian politicians and civil society organizations have pushed back against the anti-Israel movement over the last year. “The city of Vienna rejects boycott calls against the State of Israel and the association BDS Austria receives no funding from the city of Vienna,” Martin Ritzmaier, a spokesman for Vienna’s Social Democratic Mayor Michael Häupl, told The Jerusalem Post last year. 

Student associations at the University of Vienna issued a statement last March stating their opposition to every form of antisemitism, including the BDS movement. 

The Austrian Parliament canceled an event last February that would have featured late BDS activist and anti-Zionist Hedy Epstein. Vienna’s Jewish community, which has over 7,000 members, banded together with a coalition of civil society groups fighting antisemitism to organize a protest against BDS Austria last year. The group spoke out “against the antisemitic masquerade of ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’” on their website, Boycott Antisemitism.

The Austrian financial giant Erste Group terminated BDS Austria's bank account last year. 

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France: Teacher in machete attack says he now hides his kippa

Via Times of Israel:

On the eve of a landmark trial for terrorism in France, the Jewish victim of a violent machete attack said he has begun concealing his kippah from fear.

Benjamin Amsellem told the news website 20 Minutes on Tuesday about how his life was turned upside down following last year’s incident in Marseille, when police say a radicalized youth of Turkish descent lightly wounded the city teacher using a machete.

Having moved to the Paris region as part of his therapy, Amsellem said he now prefers “to wear a hat instead of the kippah in places where I don’t feel safe.” He said he never feared wearing a kippah in Marseille.

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Portugal: Opposition to Jewish museum in Lisbon

Via Artuz 7:

Two municipalities in Portugal opened museums about their Jewish heritage amid protests by residents of the capital Lisbon against the ongoing construction of a third and larger one.

In the northeastern city of Braganca, the municipality last week opened a two-story Sephardi Interpretive Center that focuses on the life of Jews under persecution in 15th and 16th centuries. And on Thursday, a smaller Jewish Memorial Center opened in the town of Vila Cova à Coelheira east of the northern city of Porto.

Separately, the Association for Heritage and Population in Alfama organized a news conference Wednesday to express its opposition to the ongoing construction of the four-story Jewish museum being built in the neighborhood.

The building, which will feature a facade with a large Star of David, “breaks with the neighborhood’s tradition,” a spokeswoman for the residents association was quoted by the Public newspaper as saying in an article about the opposition published Wednesday.

The spokeswoman, Maria de Lurdes Pinheiro, also said residents were not consulted about the plan to erect the Jewish Museum of Lisbon in Alfama. Portuguese Jews had lobbied for decades for the construction of a Jewish museum in Lisbon – one of the few capital cities in Western Europe without such an institution -- until an agreement was reached in 2016.

Pinheiro insisted she does not oppose plans to erect a museum about Jews as such.

“Jewish museum, sure. But not in Sao Miguel Square,” she said in reference to the intended area where the museum is being built. She also said the planned museum does not fit the “atmosphere” of the neighborhood, which is one of Lisbon’s oldest and is considered a tourist attraction for its narrow hillside alleyways, with their many boutique restaurants, leading to the Sao Jorge Castle overlooking the Tejo River.

But Ester Mucznik, the former vice president of the Jewish Community of Lisbon, in 2016 said Alfama and Sao Miguel Square were “symbolic” choices for a Jewish museum because of their proximity to Lisbon’s historical Jewish neighborhood.

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Netherlands: Anti-Semitism watchdog calls to ban ‘Hamas front’ conference

Via Times of Israel:

A watchdog on anti-Semitism in the Netherlands petitioned the government to ban an upcoming Rotterdam conference that it said was organized by Hamas-affiliated groups.

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, on Friday asked Justice Minister Stef Blok and Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk to stop the conference, titled “Palestinians in Europe,” which is slated for April 15. CIDI said it has made repeated appeals to Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb to prevent the forum.

“The organizers of this conference are affiliated with the terrorist group Hamas,” CIDI wrote in a statement, noting that Hamas is classified by the European Union and the Dutch government as a terrorist entity, and espouses an anti-Semitic policy.

CIDI also wrote that the German security service, BfV, has called the PRC group that organizes Palestinians in Europe conferences “a front for Hamas.”

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Switzerland: Jean Ziegler, Hezbollah and Holocaust-denier Garaudy admirer, honored at U.N.

With the Portuguese António Guterres, the U.N. will be just more of the same...

Via UN Watch:

Letter from UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer to U.S. Amb. Nikki Haley, Feb. 26, 2017.

Dear Ambassador Haley,

We are alarmed that as U.N Secretary-General António Guterres tomorrow opens the 2017 session of the Human Rights Council, that body will be honoring its advisory committee member Jean Ziegler—a notorious anti-American ideologue who has accused the U.S. of committing “genocide” in Cuba, supported the terrorist group Hezbollah, and is the co-founder and 2002 recipient of the Muammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize—as one of its high-level speakers, together with High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein and UNDP chief Helen Clark. 

Moreover, two weeks later, Mr. Eric Tistounet, Head of the Human Rights Council branch of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), will be speaking together with Mr. Ziegler at the Geneva screening of a film “Jean Ziegler: Optimism of the Will,” the publicity for which heaps praise upon Ziegler as a great “intellectual.”

We urge you to speak out and condemn the U.N.’s obscene celebration of this apologist for brutal dictators and terrorists—and to try to stop it. The United States gives some $40 million to OHCHR in regular budget and voluntary funds, and yet it seems this office seeks to insult the U.S. by honoring a leading anti-American figure.

Both of these events supported by the U.N. are designed to obscure Mr. Ziegler’s shameful record, which includes:

• In 2006, Mr. Ziegler said, “I refuse to describe Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. It is a national resistance movement.”

• Ziegler has for decades acted as a propagandist for the world’s worst dictators, including Muammar Qaddafi, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe, as I documented in a 2008 essay.

• In 1989, shortly after Libyan agents blew up Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Mr. Ziegler went to Libya to co-found the “Moammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize.” He announced it to the world. All of this is fully documented in our 2006 report, confirmed by the Neue Zurcher Zeitung.

• Under Mr. Ziegler’s supervision, the prize was awarded to anti-Western dictators Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and to antisemites such as Louis Farrakhan and Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammad.

• In 2002, Mr. Ziegler himself received the Qaddafi Prize, together with convicted Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, whom Ziegler had previously praised as a “leading thinker of our time.

• Astoundingly, when challenged in 2006, Mr. Ziegler completely denied any involvement with the Qaddafi Prize. He blatantly lied on repeated occasions over seven years—until, in 2013, video evidence emerged of Ziegler receiving the prize.

• Ziegler has never accounted for the estimated $100,000 award money—the receipt of which violates U.N. ethics rules, and for which he must be investigated by High Commissioner Zeid, who is copied on this letter. (...)

• For these reasons and more, Mr. Ziegler has been condemned by leading authorities:

• U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power declared in 2013 that Mr. Ziegler was “unfit” to serve in the UNHRC.

• Seventy members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to the U.N. in 2005 citing Mr. Ziegler for anti-Semitism, and urging his removal.

• Ziegler was specifically named as an offender by members of the U.S. Congress in Sec. 501(10) of the draft bill entitled United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act of 2011.

• Ziegler was condemned in 2005 by both U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and High Commissioner of Rights Louise Arbour for his remarks comparing Israelis to “concentration camp” guards. His references to Israel were, in Arbour’s words, “evocative of Nazi Germany,” and “inflammatory.” (...)

• The Swiss Parliament’s foreign affairs committee opposed Ziegler’s nomination in 2013, saying it was “inappropriate.”

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UK: Jeremy Corbyn with activists who shared anti-Semitic posts about the 'ugly Israeli species'

Via The Daily Mail:

Jeremy Corbyn was pictured singing a Communist anthem while embracing Labour activists who made shocking anti-Semitic posts on social media, MailOnline can reveal.

Jeremy Corbyn, centre, sings a Communist anthem while embracing Edward Clarke, left, who has referred to an 'ugly Israeli species', and Rita Roberta Tiziana, right, who spread the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that the ISIS leader is a Mossad agent

Supporters were seen punching the air as the Labour leader led a chorus of the Red Flag with campaigners who have said that Israel is responsible for ISIS, openly admitted to 'hating' Israel, and ranted about the 'ugly Israeli species'. 

Mr Corbyn also supported a Muslim group which states on its website that the Labour Party is 'indebted to Jewish financiers with Zionist leanings', and attended one of its events last year. 

In an incendiary post, Mr Clarke also used the offensive phrase, 'ugly Israeli species'
 

Mr Clarke, pictured embracing Corbyn as they sang a Communist anthem, wrote of his hatred of the Jewish State on Facebook

The revelations will raise fresh concerns that Mr Corbyn – who is battling rock bottom popularity ratings after a humiliating Labour defeat in Copeland last week – is unqualified to deal with claims of anti-Semitism in his party.  

It comes as the Labour leader appointed two virulently anti-Israel MPs, Kate Osamor and Sarah Champion, to lead his party's efforts to repair relations with the Jewish community, a move that was met with outrage from British Jews.  

The role, previously dubbed 'shadow minister for Jews', is intended to restore relations with British Jewish community, which have been severely damaged by Mr Corbyn's leadership. 

But Ms Champion has accused Israel of 'mass intimidation and collective punishment', and Ms Osamor has campaigned for boycotts against the Jewish state. 

Marcus Dysch, the Jewish Chronicle's political editor, tweeted: 'Should be serious problem for Corbyn that all his allies are fervent Israel critics who have riled British Jews. But he clearly doesn't care.' 

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UK: University investigating student leader’s anti-Semitic tweets

Via Honest Reporting:

Britain’s Exeter University launched an investigation of a Palestinian student leader who posted a series of anti-Semitic tweets. Malaka Shwaikh — also known as Malaka Mohammed — deleted her Twitter account as her controversial tweets surfaced shortly after she was elected to a position representing post-graduate students.

The tweets under scrutiny included statements saying that Zionist ideology is “no different to that of Hitler’s” and that “Hitler did his deed and the Palestinians had to pay for it”. Judge for yourself Shwaikh’s response to the probe.

Here’s another tweet documented by the Campaign Against Antisemitism and picked up by the Daily Mail.

Austria: Woman convicted for Holocaust denial

Via Times of Israel:

A woman who questioned the Holocaust and displayed a sign over her toilet saying “This Hitlerine needs a clean latrine” has been found guilty of contravening Austria’s anti-Nazi law and given a suspended jail sentence.

A court in the western city of Feldkirch also fined the 53-year old 1,200 euros ($1,280) on Friday.

The woman was charged after she criticized a Facebook posting of a German soccer club commemorating the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp and paying homage to the victims. In a response, she accused the club of “spreading lies.”

A subsequent house search revealed the sign in the toilet.

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ISIS-linked jihadis call for attacks on Jewish targets in the West, singling out U.K.

Via Foreign Desk News:

An ISIS-linked Telegram channel is urging supporters in the West to carry out attacks on Jewish communities, encouraging them to disguise themselves as Jews and strike Jewish targets, particularly in the U.K.

“IF YOU'RE STILL IN THE WEST! Dress up like a Jew! Go to your nearest Jewish area! Make sure you have plenty of weapons under you coat! Then unleash the pain of the Muslims upon these A.P.E.S!!!,” the post says.

Entitled “LM” or Lone Mujahid, the chat room aims to be a resource for terrorist-wanabees who are looking to carry out so-called ‘lone-wolf’ jihad.

The channel routinely posts large dumps of files including PDFs and video tutorials on carrying out successful ‘lone wolf’ operations. Resources include videos, guides and tutorials, ranging from knife attack infographics to bomb assembly and oddly enough, full-length tutorials on Krav Maga, an Israeli-themed martial arts and self-defense technique.

A subsequent entry contains a list of Jewish communities in the U.K. above a photo of Paris Kosher Supermarket terrorist Amedy Coulibaly with a caption, “Take the brother's (rh) example and terrorize the Yahood” (Jew).

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France: Anti-Jewish sentiment “metastasized over a period of time” and life has become “intolerable”

Via The Times of Israel:

Israeli Apartheid Week in
several Belgian universities

Anti-Semitism is taking on potentially “pandemic” dimensions globally, even in the US, and if left unchecked could grow into an immensely serious threat, one of American Jewry’s most senior leaders said this week, calling on world leaders to convene a global summit to forcefully denounce the phenomenon.

 “I think we’re seeing a pandemic in formation,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, who heads the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “I don’t think it’s here. I think America’s situation is different from Europe. But the potential is there.”  (...)

“We saw anti-Semitism in Britain, we saw it in France, and now we see it’s spreading everywhere,” Hoenlein told The Times of Israel in its Jerusalem office on Sunday. “Look at the numbers of incidents in Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of the world. And now we see in America swastikas being painted, other expressions [such as phoned-in] threats or aggression against kids on campuses. So it spreads. It’s not isolated to one geographic locale. It’s like a virus that spreads. And you have to declare it for what it is.” (...)

The interview with Hoenlein was conducted mere hours before news emerged of an apparently anti-Semitic act of vandalism that took place in his hometown of Philadelphia. Several tombstones in the city’s Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetery had been toppled in what the Israeli government called a “shocking” and worrying act. 

“I don’t think now it’s a direct threat to Jewish existence or Jewish survival,” Hoenlein said about general trend of anti-Semitic acts committed recently in the US, including the desecration of Jewish cemeteries or bomb threats made to Jewish community centers. “I do think that this cancer, left unchecked, spreads and becomes more and more of a threat.”

The best example of such a process can be identified in France, where anti-Jewish sentiment “metastasized over a period of time,” he said. “It didn’t just happen,” he added, citing recent reports of attacks on Jews, and information from his own relatives who live in France telling him life has become “intolerable” there.

European governments have denounced such incidents and increased measures to protect Jews, Hoenlein said. “But we can’t deny the fact that anti-Semitism today is no longer something that has to be done under the cloak of darkness, with the fear of repercussions. Those restrictions are gone. And I think we have to reimpose it and there have to be standards set. That’s why I want government officials saying this is not acceptable, just like racism and bigotry in any other form is not acceptable.” 

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