Though much has been written about Israel’s security fence and the mock wall currently on display in London, attempts to impute Israeli racism, segregation or even “apartheid” to such a non-lethal response to murderous attacks against its citizens is standard fare within radical anti-Israel circles - all of which brings us to the following photo published on page 8 of the Dec. 30 print edition of the Guardian, under the heading, ‘A taste of segregation‘:
French basketball star Tony Parker has come under fire over pictures and video of him performing the “quenelle,” which is considered a neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic gesture derived from the Nazi salute. Criticism of Parker’s use of the gesture came a day after top French soccer player Nicolas Anelka flashed the “quenelle” to celebrate a goal in the English Premier League on Saturday.
French academic and far-right expert Jean-Yves Camus, in an interview in left-leaning daily newspaper Libération in September, called the quenelle a “badge of identity, especially among the young, although it is difficult to say whether they really understand its meaning”.
Camus added that Dieudonné has become the focus of a “broad movement that is anti-system and prone to conspiracy theories, but which has anti-Semitism as its backbone”.
“Their conviction is that there is a world order dominated by Washington and Tel Aviv,” he said. “Behind speeches that are critical of NATO and global finance, and supportive of [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad and [late Venezuelan president] Hugo Chavez, there is the underlying conviction that it is the Jews who are pulling all the strings.”
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman (Likud-Beytenu) wrote Sunday on his Facebook page that the “neo-Nazi” salute by soccer player Nicolas Anelka is “the essence of the entire problem that exists in Europe today, toward the Jews and toward Israel.”
"Anelka is a Muslim since 2004,” the seasoned politician explained. “The atmosphere created by the radical Muslims in Europe, whose number keeps on growing, combines with anti-Semitic sentiments and de-legitimization of the state of Israel.
"Even if the majority in Europe and the political leadership in Europe is not anti-Semitic and is not anti-Israeli, the growing percentage of Muslim voters makes it necessary for them to radicalize their positions as far as the situation between Israel and the Palestinians,” Liberman added.
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| "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" quote, Dec 30, 2013 |
A Twitter account using the @BDSAmsterdam name uses Anne Frank for its Avatar, dressed in an Arab Keffiyeh and apparently has been doing so for quite some time.
The use of the Anne Frank in keffiyeh image is part of a deliberate strategy to usurp her story and image. It apparently was spread, at least in part, on the now defunct BDS Amsterdam Facebook page.More: Legal Insurrection
The Football Association have opened an investigation into a gesture made by Nicolas Anelka at Upton Park today which is widely viewed in France as being anti-semitic.
Anelka has insisted he was not making an anti-semitic statement when he celebrated a goal with the gesture, known as 'La Quenelle', but it is deeply controversial in France.
Anelka greeted his first goal in West Bromwich Albion's 3-3 draw with West Ham United today with the salute.
Defended as an anti-establishment gesture by those who have used it but associated with anti-semitism by many others in France, it was invented by Anelka's friend and French comedian Dieudonne.More: Daily Telegraph
French Interior Minister Manuel Valls announced on Friday that he would try to legally ban performances by French comic and actor Dieudonné, who has frequently been accused of anti-Semitism.
Dieudonné is best known for televised sketch comedy and a one-man show in Paris, in which he professes staunch anti-Israel views that many say amount to hate speech. He has also downplayed the significance of the Holocaust, calling commemorations “memorial pornography”.
“Despite a conviction for public defamation, hate speech and racial discrimination, Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala no longer seems to recognise any limits,” a statement released by Valls read. “Consequently, the interior minister has decided to thoroughly examine all legal options that would allow a ban on Dieudonné’s public gatherings, which no longer belong to the artistic domain, but rather amount to a public safety risk.”
Russia's chief rabbi Berel Lazar believes the state should protect religious figures.
"We are asking law enforcement agencies to do everything to ensure that religious figures feel confident and to ensure their safety," Lazar told a press conference in Moscow on Monday, commenting on the recent assassination attack against Ovadya Isakov, the rabbi of the Dagestani city of Derbent, and the numerous attacks and killings of Islamic figures.
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Lazar also said anti-Semitism is declining in Russia, while at the same time expressing concerns about ethnic relations. He called for opening tolerance centers similar to centers already functioning in Moscow in other Russian cities.
The Times will be taking a deep look at anti-Semitism in Hungary this coming year. As we report on this issue, we are hoping to hear from Hungarian Jews on their experiences. If you are Jewish and living in Hungary or are from Hungary, we invite you to answer the following questions. Your responses will not be published without your permission. A reporter may follow up with you.
Earlier on Monday, Bradauskas, the chairman of the parliamentary Budget and Finance Committee, stated that state pensions to the Lithuanians who rescued the Jews during World War II should get state pensions from Israel, not Lithuania.
“I do not see why the Lithuanian state should be paying. It would be logical for us to turn to Israel so that it could pay. But no, Jews do not want to pay and are just looking for what they can take from Lithuania,” Bradauskas told BNS.
All surveys have limitations. A limitation is not a defect, but it is necessary to keep the limitations of a survey in mind in order to assess its findings. The FRA report holds up a mirror to the EU Jewish population, giving us a glimpse of how European Jews perceive and experience antisemitism today. In this way, it contributes to our understanding. It does what it does, no more, no less. It does not license sweeping statements about the rise of antisemitism, nor does it warrant gloomy prognostications about Jews leaving Europe in droves.
French police arrested six Jews they believe staged vigilante attacks against suspected anti-Semites.
The attacks occurred on Dec. 21 in Lyon and Dec. 22 in nearby Villeurbanne and are believed to have been perpetrated by members of France’s Jewish Defense League, or Ligue de Defense Juive (LDJ), the local branch of the militant group associated with the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.
The victims were targeted on social networks and tracked down for performing the “quenelle,” a gesture conceived by the anti-Semitic comedian and Holocaust denier Dieudonne M’bala M’bala,the Le Progres daily reported.
“There are political or diplomatic means that they can use to deescalate the situation rather than use disproportionate force on people who have no effective army and cannot fight,” he told RT.More: IzRus
Concert pianist Andras Schiff said that he has been threatened with having his hands cut off if he returns to Hungary.
Schiff, an outspoken critic of the right-wing government of Viktor Orban and its relationship with the nationalist Jobbik Party, told the BBC in an interview Monday that “things in Hungary are not very good, to put it mildly.”
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| Original Staples notice, as reported on the site of Norwegian People's Aid |
–Norwegian People’s Aid and Fagforbundet have had a good dialogue with Staples about the production of SodaStream on occupied Palestinian territory. The decision to stop selling SodaStream products is one we applaud! Says Liv Tørres, Secretary General at Norwegian People’s Aid.
More: Times of Israel
The EU maintains that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is unique, legally speaking, but consistently refuses to explain exactly how it differs from, say, Turkey’s occupation of Northern Cyprus or that Moroccan presence in Western Sahara; while Rabat asserts ownership of the territory, not a single other country recognizes the claim.
Historian Simon Schama has restated his Zionist beliefs and called for a shift in the public view of Jews as “either victims or bullies”.
Despite the shock expressed in some circles over his statement that he was a Zionist in his recent BBC series The Story of the Jews, Professor Schama said he had meant to be bold and was “completely unapologetic”.
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“The distinction is between what the Israeli government does, and what Israel is. You can be a critic of what the government does, but not, I think, a critic of what Israel is. That’s why I did that.”
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| defenseless donkey, attacked by Israelis |
There are many people who believe that the Western world has entered a post anti-Semitic era. I am often told that anti-Semitism in the West is a thing of the past and that in the today's new world anti-Semitism, especially in its traditional form, has dissipated. And then come these lyrics.
Conventional wisdom is wrong. Romania is a Western country and Traditional Jew Hatred, the ideas about the Jew that permeated the Middle Ages, is fruitful and is flourishing. Traditional Jew Hatred is a hatred that depicts the Jew as the murderer of Jesus. It is the attitude that justifies hating the Jew on theological grounds. It is the belief that one defends Jesus by hating his murderers.
A Russian court ordered the early release of a Jewish teacher whose bribery trial was marred by anti-Semitic statements and whose lengthy prison sentence was criticized by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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The prosecution petitioned the court to reduce Farber’s sentence in September, days after Putin told a television network that the sentence was “egregious.”
Putin made the statement as the Kremlin’s human rights council was looking into the case because of irregularities in the trial and claims that it had been tainted by anti-Semitism.More: JTA
02 November 2013 – Polish League II (Western Group): Blekitni Stargard v Odra Opole
Anti-Semitic chants from a group of Odra Opole fans targeted the former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who died on 28 October 2013More: FARE
A paradigmatic characteristic of all bigotry is to take a fault that is widespread among all cultures, races, religions and nationalities and to attribute it singularly to one group.
For example: “Blacks are violent.” “Jews are cheap.” “Asians are sly.” “Gays are pedophiles.” “Women are irrational.” “Romanies (gypsies) cheat.”
The truth, of course, is that all groups have some among them with these negative characteristics.
The bigots who make these claims correctly point to the fact that some members of these groups display the negative characteristics attributed to the groups as a whole.
But the bigotry consists of singling out any such group for unique condemnation on the basis of these widespread faults without acknowledging that members of other groups have them as well, sometimes in greater proportion than the group that is singled out.
The French army has launched an inquiry after a soldier serving in the Central African Republic is photographed wearing what appears to be a Nazi slogan.
The photo showed a soldier with a rifle in his hands wearing a patch on the right arm carrying the French flag, number 32 and the insignia “Meine Ehre heißt Treue” (My honour is loyalty), the motto used by SS soldiers during the Nazi regime.
It is unclear what the number 32 refers to, although it may refer simply to the soldier's military unit.
The Koran's prejudicial passages against Jews seem to have found an appreciative audience among some neo-Nazis as well as extremist elements on the left of the political spectrum. This is particularly the case in Western Europe.[14] However, some American Jewish students perceive that this affliction has found its way onto the college campus as well.[15]
Moreover, as early as the turn of the century, there were reports of contacts between al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremist networks with neo-Nazi groups. This seemingly incongruent phenomenon was denounced by former German Minister of Interior, Otto Schily, when he publicly described the relationship between his country's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party and the now outlawed Muslim extremist organization, Hizb-ut-Tahir (Party of Liberation)[16]. This alliance seems to have gained more traction in today's Europe, where many of the continent's citizens, even when secular, seem to have trouble separating their opposition to Israel's policies from their feelings for the surviving remnant of Jews among them.
Now, a senior official from the National Farmers’ Union has sparked complaints by claiming that cull supporters have experienced intimidation similar to that suffered by Jews in Nazi Germany.
Andy Foot, the chairman of the NFU’s beef cattle group, told the Western Daily Press that, as result of action by anti-cull protesters: “The brave farmers, cull companies, local communities and National Farmers’ Union staff involved in the culls have faced a degree of fascist intimidation and propaganda akin to Kristallnacht.”
Neo-Nazi parties were participants in the parliaments of four European nations. The political platforms of Jobbik in Hungary, Ataka in Bulgaria, Golden Dawn in Greece, and Svoboda in Ukraine were anti-democratic manifestos of racism and anti-Semitism. Two of the parties, Jobbik and Golden Dawn, have associated militias that assault minorities. Xenophobic parties were active in other European countries as well.
And, in a clear threat to religious freedom, the Polish parliament voted in July against a proposal to explicitly allow kosher and halal slaughter. The vote put in doubt the legal status of kosher and halal slaughter, striking a blow to the future of Jews living in Poland and giving rise to questions of whether anti-Semitic prejudice played a role in the decision.
French public radio has decided to take legal action following anti-Semitic remarks made by controversial humorist against one of the radio’s Jewish journalist.
" Following the openly anti-Semitic remark by Dieudonné aganst Patrick Cohen, the management of Radio France decided to take legal action to the court. The prosecutor will decide whether or not to open criminal proceedings against Dieudonné,'' Radio France said in a statement.
A report by France2 television last Thursday showed Dieudonné joking with the Holocaust during a show at a Paris theater. ‘’When I hear Patrick Cohen , I think, you know, the gas chambers ... Too bad ," he said, triggering laughter among his fans.
More: JTA
A county in Sweden is moving ahead with plans to ban the nonmedical circumcision of boys, its leading elected official said.
More: CFCA
a memorial monument for Max and Herta Naujocks was desecrated and a swastika was painted on it. The Naujocks couple hid a Jewish family in their home during the Second World War.
In a series of interviews, Cukierman lamented a “climate of anti-Semitism” in France and singled out both extreme-right and extreme-left parties for contributing in different ways to increase resentment against Jews.
during the TV program Virus di Porro, with the host Nicola Porro, that was broadcast on Rai2 on Wednesday, December 11, the reporter interviewed in the square of Torino a man named Luciano, who said these words (In the clips it occurs after 1 hour, 25 minutes and 52 seconds):
“There was a caption which read: ‘Who maintains the Letta government in power? This is very easy. All Italians know it. First it was Prodi, then Monti and afterwards Letta. All of them were maintained by the Bildenberg group,’ (applause from the audience). Meaning - the big bankers, capital owners, international Zionists who are trying to overturn Italy… to take all the good that is in Italy. This is very simple. Everyone knows it. Therefore all the Letta people get their salaries from the Bildenberg group, period.”
On Tuesday the town of Dietramszell in Bavaria was supposed to distance itself from Hitler and other leading Nazis in a motion put forward by mayor Leni Gröbmaier.
The move came after archivist Agnes Wagner found Hitler had been made an honorary citizen in March 1933, the Münchener Merkur newspaper reported.
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“It would be a distortion of history, the whole debate is laughable,” said council member Traudi Fröstl. Another member Josef Hauser said: "Honourary citizenship goes with death. It is all a very long time ago."
And the failure of the motion attracted widespread criticism and international media attention.
But in a special meeting on Wednesday the council finally passed a motion which confirmed that Hitler lost his honorary citizenship with his death and recognized that the town had been associated with Hitler.
“It was never our intention to trivialize the crimes of Adolf Hitler. We underestimated that our voting behavior could be understood in such a way,” the council said, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
More than half of the 26 people arrested in Sunday's neo-Nazi riot in Stockholm are younger than 20. Experts warn attempts to denazify Sweden are failing, as a new generation of "social outcasts" emerges.
There were sweeping arrests following the incident that marred an anti-Nazi demonstration by local residents, including families with children, in the Kärrtorp neighbourhood of the capital. Members of the far-right Swedish Resistance Movement (Svenska motståndsrörelsen) attacked the peaceful protest, which left three people hospitalized.
Looming in the background is what many Jews here refer to simply as “Toulouse,” the 2012 slaying of three children and a rabbi by an Islamist at a Jewish school in the southeastern city. Many of France’s estimated 600,000 Jews, the third-largest Jewish community in the world, live in the shadow of the attack.
“Since Toulouse, my family and I worry every day that my grandchildren go to school,” says Menache Manet, a 64-year-old Parisian who will be leaving for Israel in several weeks with his son and four grandchildren.
“I grew up in a civilized country,” he adds, his voice trembling with anger. “Nowadays, I take off my kippah on my way to synagogue.”
‘’Anti-Semitism is like cancer. There are two things that are certain about this cancer of hate. We know that it is deadly and we know that if we don’t fight it it will spread,’’ said Michal Kaminski, Polish Member of the European Parliament, in an address to the General Assembly of the European Jewish Parliament (EJP) Monday in Brussels.
He urged to stay vigilant. ‘’Vigilance is key because like cancer anti-Semitism often stays hidden for a long time until it strikes suddenly. But although it may hide from us, that does not make it any less dangerous.’’
A former top official of a right-wing party in Romania withdrew his application to be a judge at the country's top court Monday after being accused of anti-Semitism.
The Centre for the Fight against Anti-Semitism (MCA) in Romania had urged the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) to reconsider its nomination of Lucian Bolcas, citing what they said were "racist and anti-Semitic ideas".
CST’s final annual report of the year, Antisemitic Discourse in Britain in 2012 is now available in pdf format. Read it here on CST’s website.
The report contains introductory sections (pages 4-13) on Jewish life, antisemitism and anti-Zionism. It then (pages 14-36) features developments in antisemitic discourse during the year.
The report cites numerous mainstream publications, groups and individuals who are not necessarily antisemitic, but whose behaviour may well impact upon attitudes concerning Jews and antisemitism.
I cannot help but think, however, that the rise and fall of anti-Semitism is as inevitable as changes in the weather. Attempts to combat anti-Semitism, while admirable, often seem futile. Worrying about the rise of anti-Semitism is not much different from fretting and wringing one’s hands over a coming storm.
A suburb of Paris honored a man imprisoned for helping to murder diplomats from Israel and the United States.
A majority of aldermen from the City Council of Bagnolet east of the French capital voted on Wednesday to make the Lebanese citizen, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, an honorary resident, calling him a “communist activist” and “political prisoner” who “belongs to the resistance movement of Lebanon, his country,” French media reported Friday.
The problem with the “Israel first” and “new anti-Semitism” approach is not so much that it makes of the State of Israel a priority and of the criticism of Israel an offense. The real danger lies in the implication that the freedom and dignity of Jews in the diaspora is somewhat of an expendable asset. That if anti-Semitism is taking new forms, then its old forms should be accepted, to a certain extent.
Seriously, I worry.
Maybe, when Jewish leaders start telling you shouldn't worry about anti-Semitism, you should start worrying, too.
Several Dutch politicians accused the Vitens water company of hypocrisy in its decision to abandon projects with an Israeli firm because of West Bank settlements while pursuing projects in Hamas-led Gaza.
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| Guards of the Carpathian Homeland (Kárpát Haza Orei) |
Last Friday the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a condemnation of remarks made by a spokesman for the Italian populist "Pitchfork Movement," remarks which the organization says show a "deep-seated anti-Semitic hatred."
Andrea Zunino, the protest leader of the Pitchfork Movement which is leading current anti-government protests in Italy, gave an interview to the Italian La Repubblica.
In his interview, Zunino espoused classic tropes of Jewish global domination. He remarked "we want the government to resign. We want the sovereignty of Italy, which is the slave of bankers like the Rothschilds. It's curious that five or six of the richest people in the world are Jewish."
The president of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, Benjamin Albalas, called Golden Dawn an “extremely dangerous Neo-Nazi criminal party” and said anti-Semitism had recently “infected” Greek society.
“They have not stopped denying the Holocaust and to use on purpose the fake ‘Protocols of [the Elders of] Zion’ to accuse Jews, to scream loudly that for the [financial] crisis in Greece the Jewish bankers worldwide are to blame” and that Jews are responsible for “all tragedies and wars,” Albalas said. “Unfortunately, such messages have become quite popular in Greek society.”
French prosecutors on Friday called for comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala to pay 20,000 euros for failing to pay an earlier fine for anti-Semitic remarks in a video posted online or face prison.
Three men have been arrested for posting anti-Semitic comments on Twitter following Tottenham Hotspur's Premier League match against West Ham United in October, police said on Friday.
Two men, aged 22 and 24, were arrested on Thursday in London and in Wiltshire, while a 48-year-old man was arrested at his home in Canning Town in London last week on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.
Early this summer, at a colleague’s suggestion, I returned to an author I last read in my teens. Georges Simenon churned out some 200 crime novels in 40 years, of which 75 featured his imposing creation, Inspector Jules Maigret.
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Apologists have long argued that Simenon’s racism was a product of his time, no different or worse than the attitudes of such crime writers as Arthur Conan Doyle, G K Chesterton and Agatha Christie. It should, writes one analyst, “be seen as a symptom of intellectual and moral laziness rather than a deliberate expression of a social or political agenda.” Perhaps. But Simenon’s antisemitism persists longer than the rest; his last slur appears in Maigret’s Patience, as late as 1965. He is, in a word, unregenerate.
Now no one would expect a publisher to suppress books that have sold half-a-billion copies and remain gloriously readable. Nor would a professional translator agree to modify an original text in tune with current sensibilities. What is required, however, is an expression of detachment. Penguin need to issue a cover warning of racism in all Maigret novels where Jews are mentioned. Nothing less will do.
A sapling that came from the tree that stood outside the hiding place of Anne Frank in Amsterdam was cut down and stolen in Frankfurt, German police said.
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Unidentified parties cut down the 8-foot tree that grew from the cutting some time between last week and Monday, according to a report Tuesday by the Dutch public broadcaster NOS. Police have no information or leads on the identity of the thieves or their motives, the report said.
“The intellectual demonization of Jews continues until the present despite sweeping changes which have taken place intellectually, socially and politically in European history. Anti-Semitism is by no means the sole province of the ignorant and uneducated. Many writers, artists, prominent journalists and academics are in the forefront of making odious comparisons of Zionism to Nazism and Israel to Hitler’s Germany. Portuguese Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago was just one of many. Yet they all fit into a lengthy tradition of intellectual Jew-hatred.”
Europe judges Israel by a different standard than other countries in the region because it is seen as a “European country” that should be judged by European standards, Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said Monday.More: Jerusalem Post (via Elder of Ziyon)
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A Romanian public broadcaster distanced itself from a Christmas carol celebrating the Holocaust that aired on the new channel.
TVR3 Verde, a television channel for rural communities, presented the carol on Dec. 5 during its maiden transmission.
Sung by the Dor Transilvan ensemble, it featured the lyrics: “The kikes, damn kikes, Holy God would not leave the kike alive, neither in heaven nor on earth, only in the chimney as smoke, this is what the kike is good for, to make kike smoke through the chimney on the street.”
US State Department Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Ira Forman, said the US government views with concern the mounting of anti-Semitism around the world, which he said has become “dramatically worse in the last decade” and especially since the financial crisis of 2008-2009.
Speaking at a meeting of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians (ICJP) Steering Committee, Forman cited France, Hungary and Venezuela, among others, as countries the US was watching closely and said that stopping the assaults across Europe on religious freedoms, such as male circumcision, was “critical to the US government.”
The convicted terrorist Isaac Meyer was today found guilty of assaulting the poet Yahya Hassan in Copenhagen Central Station in November.
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Meyer changed his name from Abdul Basit Abu-Lifa after completing a jail sentence handed to him as a 17-year-old in 2007 for his involvement in planning terrorist acts in Europe.
Anti-Zionism is an inherently anti-Semitic doctrine. In calling for the fall of the Jewish state, anti-Zionists are engaged in a racist endeavour. Jews should feel no hesitation whatsoever in calling out those who challenge Israel’s right to exist as anti-Semites, with all the attendant implications.
None of this should be controversial. “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” is part of the EU’s working definition of anti-Semitism (or was, until the EU inexplicably dropped it). This article is concerned with articulating the intellectual foundations for this proposition, rather than somehow presenting a new idea.
A non-Jewish British Olympian has been the subject of a vicious online antisemitic attack, her fiance revealed in an interview with the UK’s Daily Mail.
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“She got a tweet the other day from someone saying she was a Jewish c*** because of her nose and should die like the rest of her lot in a concentration camp,” Adlington’s fiance, Harry Needs, a fellow swimmer, said. “How can people write that stuff?”
Many would view the stream of vitriol, sent to German Jewry’s central communal organization between 2002 and 2012, as little more than raw sewage. But Monika Schwarz-Friesel, a professor of linguistics at the Technical University of Berlin, saw it as raw data. Together with Jehuda Reinharz, the American historian and former president of Brandeis University, Schwarz-Friesel has recently published a study of these letters. And their findings reaffirm one of the enduring, if still surprising truths about anti-Semitism in Germany and elsewhere.
More than 60% of the hate mail came from well-educated Germans, including university professors, according to their study, “The Language of Hostility Towards Jews in the 21st Century,” released earlier this year. Only 3% came from right-wing extremists.
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One of the research pair’s other main findings was that hatred for Israel has become the main vehicle for German anti-Semitism. More than 80% of the 14,000 emails focused on Israel as their central theme.
