Netherlands: Fans unfollow actress for vacationing in Israel

Not surprising: Results of a new poll commissioned by the European Commission show that Israel is believed by Europeans in 15 countries to be the greatest threat to world peace, greater than North Korea, Iran or Afghanistan.

Via JTA:

One of the Netherlands’ best-known actresses said hundreds of people unfollowed her on social media because she posted pictures from her visit to Israel.

Victoria Koblenko, an award-winning movie, television and theater actress and journalist with 151,000 followers on Instagram, invited others to unfollow her as well on the social network, saying in a Jan. 3 post from the Old City of Jerusalem that she has no interest in the attention of people who “assume something about my political inclination based on my holiday destination.”

Koblenko, 37, noted in the same post that the Middle East is her favorite vacation destination, and that she has visited all its countries with the exception of Iraq and Afghanistan. “#unfollowme if you disagree,” she wrote at the ended of her post. Those who unfollowed her did so after she posted pictures from her trip to Israel.

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UK: Student Union apologises after Judaism is again omitted from a survey

Happening all the time, followed by apologies...

Via Campaign against Antisemitism UK:

The President of the National Union of Students (NUS), Shakira Martin, has apologised to Jewish students for the release of an NUS survey which asked respondents to select their religion from a long list of religions that omitted Judaism. This is not the first time that NUS has missed out its Jewish members and that Ms Martin has apologies: in July 2017, in a different survey of students, Judaism was also notably absent.

However, Ms Martin acknowledged the omission immediately, directly communicating with aggrieved students on Twitter before tweeting a heartfelt apology video, accepting that she was “accountable” and recognising “Jewish students should be pissed”. She assured students that this “would not be happening again”, “actions speak louder than words, when I said I was gonna stamp out all forms of antisemitism I’m not giving no lip service.” She acknowledged that this was a repeated issue, stating that “The first time it happened, I could tweet and say sorry, But the second time, it’s unacceptable, and I just want to reassure the whole Jewish community that I will be dealing with this.”

Ms Martin went on to discuss the context of these incidents, which came following an extremely difficult time for Jewish students under Ms Martin’s predecessor, the widely-scorned Malia Bouattia. Ms Martin was direct, saying: “I totally understand after the years – but especially last year, before my presidency, that Jewish students had – that this type of thing is not acceptable.” You will not not see Judaism on an NUS form again. I will be making sure that we will be reviewing all our forms, and that this is on everyone’s form, and that this [situation] will not happen again.”

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Netherlands: Amsterdam kosher restaurant vandalized again

Via Bad News from the Netherlands:

The Jewish restaurant, HaCarmel, in Amsterdam was attacked last month by a Palestinian Syrian asylum seeker. It has now been vandalized again.  

The owner says that it is a target of vandalism more often. He wants to place cameras around the restaurant and has asked the authorities for permission. His lawyer, Herman Loonstien, says that the weak attitude of the authorities enables the vandalism.

Photo: Joods.nl

France: Jews protest reprint of anti-Semitic pamphlets from Holocaust era

This is a small sample of what Louis-Ferdinand Céline wrote about Jews.  Via The New York Review of Books:

"Everything is mysterious about germs just as everything is mysterious about Jews. One germ so harmless, one Jew so admirable yesterday, tomorrow brings rage, damnation, infernal blight. No one can predict the future of a germ any more than the future of a Jew…. Waves of infection spread through space, as they wish, when they wish, and that’s that. Harmless bacteria, harmless Jews, semi-virulent germs become virulent tomorrow, epidemial. The same Jews, the same germs, just at different moments in life…. No one has the right to risk introducing a single germ, a single Jew said to be innocuous, into the operating theater. No one knows what will happen, what did happen, what will mutate the most benign-looking germ or Jew….  

What’s happening with the kikes in Italy and France is exactly what happened with pseudo-sterilization. It’s no mystery…. If you want to get rid of the rats in a ship, or the stink bugs in a house, do you de-rat by half, and exterminate on just the first floor? You’ll be reinvaded in a month by ten times the rats, by twenty times the bugs…. Two go out the door and 36,000 come back in through the window…. You have to know what you want. Do you want to be rid of the Jews or do you want them to stay? If you really want to get rid of the Jews, then don’t do it 36,000 ways, with 36,000 pretenses! Racism! The Jews aren’t afraid of anything except racism! They don’t care about anti-Semitism. They can always handle anti-Semitism…. Racism! Racism! Racism! And not just a little, not halfheartedly, but completely! absolutely! inexorably! like Pasteur’s perfect sterilization." 

"Beating up Jews (by Jew I mean anyone with a Jew for a grandparent, even one!) won’t help, I’m sure, that’s just going around in circles, it’s a joke, you’re only beating around the bush if you don’t grab them by the strings [tefillins], if you don’t strangle them with them."

JTA:

France’s best-known hunter of Nazis, Serge Klarsfeld, and the country’s main umbrella of Jewish groups protested a publisher’s plan to print anti-Semitic essays by the author Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, also known as Celine.

Klarsfeld, a historian and vice president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust, told Le Parisien that it would be “unbearable” to find at a French library the essays by the celebrated novelist, which he published under the pseudonym Louis-Ferdinand Celine between 1937 and 1941, the paper reported last week.

And CRIF, the umbrella group, said in a statement that it opposes the plan by Editions Gallimard to publish later this year the three “racist, anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler” essays titled “A bagatelle for a massacre,” “The school of corpses” and “Beautiful sheets.” (...)

In one of the 176 pages that comprise “Beautiful sheets,” Celine writes: “More Jews than ever before on the street, more Jews than ever before in the press, more Jews than ever before on the bar, more Jews than ever before at the Sorbonne, more Jews than ever before in medicine, more Jews than ever before in theater, in the opera, in industry, the banks. Paris, France more than ever before ceded to the masons and Jews, more insolent than ever before.”

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France: Anti-Semitic inscriptions at kosher shops in Paris

Via European Jewish Press:

Five swastikas were painted with red paint on the shuttered blinds of the Promo Stock and the local branch of the Hyper Casher kosher supermarket chain store in Creteil and on the door of the building. (...)

In January 2015, an Islamist terrorist killed four Jews at Hyper Cacher in the Porte de Vincennes branch in Paris. According to the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism (BNCVA), those anti-Semitic graffiti are linked to the upcoming commemoration of the anti-Jewish attack at the Hyper Casher three years ago.

CRIF, the umbrella representative group of French Jewish institutions, has called for a rally next Tuesday to honor the memory of the four people killed.

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Germany's dangerous foreign minister

Jerusalem Post editorial:

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel is the newly-crowned poster boy of Hamas. A picture of Gabriel was featured on Hamas’s Twitter page on December 31, accompanied by the following tweet: “German FM describes the Israeli occupation as an apartheid regime like the one was [sic] in South Africa.”

How did the foreign minister of one of Israel’s most important allies suddenly end up on the side of an Islamist terrorist organization that advocates targeting Israeli civilians and suicide bombings? Like many European progressives, Gabriel is capable of being hypercritical of his own Western culture – and of Israel – which is maliciously misrepresented in progressive circles as a colonialist power, while the many problematic aspects of non-white cultures, including radical Islam, are viewed as essentialist, racist or bigoted. For Gabriel, this might be due to feelings of guilt for his own country’s past crimes or might be an extension of his socialist ideology, which views Western, capitalist societies as inherently exploitative.

This worldview makes Gabriel and other like-minded progressives susceptible to anti-Israel propaganda. As reported by The Jerusalem Post European correspondent Benjamin Weinthal, Gabriel touted his hyper-critical attitude toward Israel during a panel discussion organized by – of all groups – the Kreuzberg Initiative Against Antisemitism.

The public event was held in Berlin in mid-December, as thousands of demonstrators – most of whom were migrants from Muslim countries – thronged the streets, burned Israeli flags and denounced US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

By the way, Gabriel is one of the architects – together with Chancellor Angela Merkel – of Germany’s self-destructive immigration policy that has resulted in the influx of more than a million immigrants from the Middle East and Africa since 2015. According to a recent survey by the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, many of these migrants bring with them anti-Jewish and anti-Israel prejudices.

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UK: BBC's new drama McMafia under fire for anti-Israel tropes

Via The Jewish Chronicle:

The BBC has been accused of resorting to “gratuitous slurs” in its new drama series, McMafia, over the portrayal of an Israeli character.

The influential UK Lawyers for Israel group issued a statement following the broadcast of the first episode on BBC1 on Monday evening, attacked the depiction of Semiyon Kleiman, a shady businessman and politician, played by actor David Strathairn.

The group also claimed that the much-hyped programme also made references to Israel which were not mentioned in the book by author Mischa Glenny, on which the drama was based.

In a further criticism, UKLFI also claimed that programme-makers had distorted the meaning of the motto of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.

In the statement, posted on UKLFI's Facebook page, the group wrote: "BBC 1 mini-series, McMafia, uses gratuitous slurs against Israeli businessmen and makes references to Israel which aren't mentioned in the original book, McMafia, by Mischa Glenny.

“Furthermore, the mini-series distorts the motto of Mossad which was quoted in the drama, as 'By deception we will do war'.

“The actual motto comes from Proverbs, 24.6 and says 'For by wise guidance you can wage your war'.  

“The use of the word 'deception' in substitute for the words 'wise guidance' attacks the integrity of Mossad and insinuates that Israel officially sanctions deception in its intelligence activities. (...)

Award-winning scriptwriters James Watkins and Hossein Amini are behind the series which and is co-produced by the BBC, AMC and Cuba Pictures, in association with Twickenham Studios.

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Europe: The NGO industry's terror trail

Via Gatestone Institute:

Gerald Steinberg (NGO Monitor): (...) On the other hand, you have cases like Germany and the European Union, where the officials involved in NGO funding avoid dealing with the evidence. Their first response to anybody providing them information on NGO terror links and antisemitism is to attack by saying, "Ah, that's a right-wing fiction." At the same time, the tight secrecy on all aspects of NGO funding in these countries continues, even in preventing members of parliament from examining the process. In Europe, the images of Palestinian suffering, and the overall sympathy for Muslim victims in general, are so strong that it is very hard to cut through the myths and slogans surrounding them. This is true across the board, even in the British Conservative Party. It is so deeply embedded in the culture that any criticism, including of NGOs with links to terrorists, immediately becomes labeled "Islamophobic." Any time you even look into where money is going, you get hit with political correctness. This is why it is crucial to create visibility and generate concern.

Gatestone: Why is your main focus Europe, with little emphasis on North America?

GS: In the case of the United States – Canada a little bit less, but still more than in Europe -- transparency in government funding is an extremely important policy and practice. Congress is pretty careful about making sure that budgets for NGO-funding frameworks are scrutinized before they are approved. Although some proposals for problematic organizations have slipped through, there is at least genuine openness and debate about the whole mechanism; discussion is routine. In Europe, on the other hand, the first time that a parliamentary debate was even held on such funding was after NGO Monitor published a report. (...)

Gatestone: To what do you attribute this difference?

GS: American culture is characterized by transparency and scrutiny. Also, in America, there is less naivety about NGOs than there is in Europe. After WWII and the Communist period, the concept of "civil society" – later called "NGOs" by the UN -- became holy in Europe. Civil society was supposed to be the antidote to manipulative democracy, like that of the Weimar Republic. But they forgot to ask what happens when civil society is itself the manipulating force. The answer is that there are no checks and balances imposed on it.

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Germany: Jews are increasingly under threat says Jewish leader

Via Breitbart:

Former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany Charlotte Knobloch claims that Jews are increasingly under threat in public and may require police protection to lead a normal life without harassment and violence.

Ms Knobloch, who is now the President of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, said that Jews are increasingly under threat, Die Welt reports. “Aggressive anti-Semitism, from verbal hostility on the Internet and in the analogue world to desecration and destruction to physical attacks are commonplace in Germany,” she said.

“Jewish life can only take place in public under police protection and the strictest security precautions, or it must be completely cancelled for security reasons,” Knobloch added.

The Jewish leader spoke about several recent anti-semitic cases including the vandalism of a Menorah in the city of Heilbronn, and the cancellation of a public Menorah lighting in Mülheim/Ruhr due to security issues.

“Anti-Semitism is strengthening on the right and the left, in the Muslim community and also in the middle of society. That’s why we need an anti-Semitism commissioner,” Knobloch said, requesting that the German Federal government appoint an official with “strong powers”.

Many have blamed the influx of Muslim migrants under Chancellor Angela Merkel for the growth in anti-Semitic incidents. Fashion mogul Karl Lagerfeld blamed Ms Merkel directly earlier this year, saying: “One cannot – even if there are decades between them – kill millions of Jews and then bring millions of their worst enemies in their place.”

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Germany: Anger at FM after he repeats Israel is an apartheid regime

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel reiterated his description of Israeli policies in the territories as embodying the former apartheid regime in South Africa, prompting fierce criticism on Friday from Jewish human-rights organizations and a leading German Jewish activist.

“There are two central narratives to Jewish history in the 20th century – the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. Sigmar Gabriel has already tried to undermine the core of each of them,” Dr. Efraim Zuroff, head of the Jerusalem Office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post.

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France: Antisemitic tag in a small town

Via I 24 News:

An anti-Semitic message was scribbled on the railway station at Cazères-sur-Garonne, South of Toulouse. It reads: "Fed up with the Jewish domination, Jews hold the world by the balls".

Cazarès is a small town with a population of less than 5,000 inhabitants.  Antisemitism is ubiquitous and is also to be found in small agglomerations.

France: Catholic-owned kid's magazine claims Israel not a real country

Some background: Youpi magazine is owned by the influential media group Bayard. "Bayard is a French press group created in 1873, just after the 1870 war, by Father Emmanuel d'Alzon (1810/1880), founder of the Catholic religious congregation Augustinians of the Assumption. This congregation is still the exclusive owner of the group." "It edits educational and Catholic publications such as La Croix and Catholic Digest." "Assumptionists , profoundly anti-semitic religious order, whose newspaper La Croix ( The Cross) became a daily in 1883. In 1890 it boasted that it was ‘ the most anti-Jew journal of France’"  The author of the article is Bertrand Fichou, editor in chief of Youpi and a prolific writer of children's books.

Via I 24 News:

A French children's education magazine that provoked a firestorm of criticism on Sunday after deeming Israel a state with disputed legitimacy along with the likes of North Korea said it will remove the edition from sale. The publisher Editions Bayard Jeunesse apologized, "to all those who may have been hurt" by this publication.

The controversial fact sheet featured in the latest edition of 'Youpi' magazine read, "we call these 197 countries 'states', like France, Germany, or Algeria. There a few more, but not all other countries in the world agree that these are real states (for example Israel or North Korea)."

The magazine's calling into question of Israel's legitimacy sparked major backlash on social media, with Israel's Ambassador to France Aliza Bin Noun saying she was "shocked" at the publication which she said encouraged anti-Zionism, and in turn, anti-Semitism.

"Shocked by this lie taught to children. Such a rhetoric can only encourage anti-Zionism, inseparable from anti-Semitism," she wrote on Twitter, tagging French President Emmanuel Macron in her statement. President of France's umbrella Jewish group CRIF, Francis Kalifat, told i24NEWS that Bayer's statement reflected "political revisionism."

"Unintentional or intentional, I do not know," Kalifat said. "I prefer to think it is unintentional. The Bayard publication conveys political revisionism."

"Israel has been recognized as a sovereign state since 1948 and by the United Nations since 1949," he said, adding that such intentional revisionism would represent an attempt by the company to "de-legitimize" Israel "this time by targeting its youngest readers." 

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Denmark cuts funding and is reviewing all funding of PA NGOs

Via Palestinian Media Watch (Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch):

• Denmark announced this week that it cut funding and is reviewing all funding of NGOs, in response to PMW exposing that money it provided was used to build a community center that Palestinians named for a mass murderer 

• Other countries cutting or freezing funding this year following PMW reports: Norway, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland
   
• PMW is changing European attitudes one country at a time 

On May 26, 2017 PMW reported that funds provided by Norway, the UN and a conglomerate of countries including Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland had been used to build a center for young women that was subsequently named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi led a terror attack that resulted in the murder of 37 Israelis, including 12 children, in 1978.

Denmark
Last week, Denmark decided to cancel some grants and review further funding of Palestinian NGOs. The decision was made following an investigation initiated after PMW's report that the women’s center funded by Denmark, was named after a Palestinian terrorist murderer. Denmark announced that it will also tighten the conditions for providing funding to all Palestinian NGOs and that the majority of the aid, suspended after PMW’s report, will not be paid.

“Denmark will tighten the conditions for providing money to Palestinian NGOs, Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said... The review followed revelations [by Palestinian Media Watch] in May that a women’s center partly funded with European aid money... was named after Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in the Coastal Road massacre in 1978 that killed 37 people... Samuelsen also said that the 'majority of aid' suspended from the summer while the review was under way will not be paid.” 

[The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 24, 2017]

Norway

When PMW released its report documenting the center named for terrorist Mughrabi, Norway immediately demanded that the Norwegian money be returned:

Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende: 

"The glorification of terrorist attacks is completely unacceptable, and I deplore this decision in the strongest possible terms. Norway will not allow itself to be associated with institutions that take the names of terrorists in this way... We have asked for the logo of the Norwegian representation office to be removed from the building immediately, and for the funding that has been allocated to the centre to be repaid."

[Norwegian Foreign Ministry website, May 26, 2017]

Belgium
When PMW reported that a Palestinian school built with Belgium funds, was also named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi, Belgium condemned it and froze the construction of ten additional Palestinian Authority schools.

Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Didier Vanderhasselt:

“Belgium unequivocally condemns the glorification of terrorist attacks [and] will not allow itself to be associated with the names of terrorists... Belgium has immediately raised this issue with the Palestinian Authority and is awaiting a formal response... In the meantime Belgium will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.”

[The Algemeiner, Oct. 7, 2017]

Additional Countries

Germany,  Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands also cut off funding to one or more Palestinian projects following PMW reports on the ways in which Palestinians are using donor funding to glorify terror.

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Poland: Christmas play at Polish consulate in Ukraine included anti-Semitic message

Via JTA:

A Christmas play presented at the Polish consulate in Lviv, Ukraine included an anti-Semitic message.

Oleg Vyshniakov, honorary consul of Israel in Ukraine, criticized the Christmas show presented last week at the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland by students of the Polish school in Lviv. During the show, the students presented a nativity scene featuring unusual characters in which one of the children was wearing a black hat with side curls and had a sign stuck to his back reading “Jew for president.”

Other characters included in the scene were King Herod, the Grim Reaper and the Devil.

“It crosses all lines of common sense when in an official state institution people promote anti-Semitism, and children take part in this terrible event,” Vyshniakov wrote in a post on Facebook which included a photo of the scene.

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Germany: In reversal, Düsseldorf will hold exhibition about Jewish dealer

Via The New York Times:

After intense criticism, the mayor of Düsseldorf has backtracked on his last-minute cancellation of an exhibition at the city’s Stadtmuseum about Max Stern, a Jewish art gallery owner who fled Nazi Germany in 1938.

The exhibition, originally due to open in February, will now go ahead in a “more complete and revised form” at a later date, the city said in a statement. Organized by the Stadtmuseum with partner museums in Canada and Israel, it was intended to honor the life and legacy of Mr. Stern, who settled in Montreal, where he once again ran a successful art gallery.

But Mayor Thomas Geisel abruptly scrapped the show in November, citing “current demands for information and restitution in German museums in connection with the Galerie Max Stern.”

His decision drew a barrage of criticism from the Jewish community in Düsseldorf, the World Jewish Congress, the partner museums in Israel and Canada, and the German government. Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, wrote to Mr. Geisel asking him to reconsider what he said was a perplexing move with an absurd justification.

The exhibition will now take place in the Stadtmuseum with an additional, yet-to-be-appointed curator and a “scholarly advisory board,” the city said. Mr. Geisel said by telephone that the target date is October 2018. The city also plans an international symposium on Mr. Stern to “offer a forum for research on the subject and to discuss possible forms of communicating and documenting it.” 

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