Monika Grütters, Germany’s minister of culture, reversed her opposition to including a Jewish member on a commission set up to return cultural property stolen by the Nazis.
Speaking Sunday to The Jerusalem Post from New York City, Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal confirmed the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician’s decision. He said “she is strongly considering including a Jewish member. She is personally for it. The final decision has to be an agreement with the 16 German states for the Limbach commission.”
Teichtal, a rabbi in the Berlin Jewish community, met with Grütters on Tuesday and is on his way back to Berlin.
The commission to assess the restitution of stolen property during the Holocaust is named after Jutta Limbach, the former head of the German Federal Constitutional Court. According to a March New York Times report, Grütters justified the exclusion of Jews from the panel, saying: “We did not do this, and for good reason,” because a Jewish committee member “would be the only voice who would be prejudiced.”
Teichtal told the Post that he asked her about the Times interview. He said that Grütters claimed it was a “misunderstanding” and the she did not wish to express “such a meaning.”
He also said: “I do not know what happened during the interview. She never had that intention to be biased.”
He added: “the way she described it in the New York Times did not express how she felt. She was never against it from the beginning.”
Two British men allegedly performed a Nazi salute at a German concentration camp where 56,000 people were killed during the Second World War.
Police in Germany are investigating. It is thought the men are believed to be members of British neo-Nazi group National Action.
The group posted a blurry image of two people holding a National Action flag and raising their arms in salute at the former Buchenwald concentration camp, Bild reported.
The survey, carried out by Ipsos among 1,100 respondents in the US, finds that 33% of the population of the US think that a boycott of Israel is a justifiable measure. A similar survey in the UK found that an even greater proportion, 40%, agree that boycotting of Israel is a legitimate act.read more
Nevertheless, 62% of respondents in the US and 50% in the UK consider the BDS movement to be a modern form of antisemitism.
The small Jewish community in Edirne, in northwest Turkey, has waited patiently since 1976 for a wedding in its local synagogue – and when it finally occurred yesterday, the response it drew from other Turks was less than celebratory.
The wedding was set to be such a significant and joyous event that it was decided to broadcast it via Periscope and Twitter – a particularly popular social medium in Turkey. However, it drew the attention of anti-Semites in the country, and the bride, groom and Jewish community in general were told, "Too bad Hitler didn't finish the job" and the like.
(...)
Then began the upswing. In 2013, the synagogue was renovated, and last year it was opened to the public. Its first wedding, yesterday, drew many members of the budding Jewish community, and the joy was great. Community leader Yitzchak Ibrahimzadeh even decided that it should be shared with the public at large, via Twitter. The happiness turned to consternation, however, as the responses began tweeting in: "Kill the Jews!" "Get out of occupied Palestine!" etc.
Ibrahimzadeh did not lose heart. "Many anti-Semites expressed their hatred on the Periscope broadcast," he tweeted back. "Together, hand in hand, we will overcome them." He proudly included pictures of a synagogue, church, mosque and Turkish flag, symbolizing his hope that unity would win the day.
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| Ilan Halimi |
French Jews are experiencing the most difficult situation they have encountered since the end of World War II, the newly-elected president of France’s umbrella of Jewish communities said.
Francis Kalifat, 64, said Sunday that his first priority as president of CRIF is to fight against the anti-Semitism that he said was responsible for the situation he described.
“The fight against anti-Semitism is our main cause because French Jews are in the most difficult situation they have experience since World War II,” Kalifat said during an interview with Radio J shortly after his unanimous election to succeed Roger Cukierman as president. [...]
His presidency, which will become effective next month, comes at a time of record emigration by Jews from France, partly because of anti-Semitic violence that included hundreds of anti-Semitic incidents annually in recent years, and dozens of physical assaults. Since 2012, attacks on Jewish targets by French Islamists in France and Belgium claimed the lives of 12 people. Last year, roughly 8,000 French Jews left for Israel — the highest number on record for any year, which made France for the second year straight Israel’s largest provider of newcomers.
“I think all of our force needs to be united to fight against this anti-Semitism in all its forms, because we see this new anti-Semitism advancing under the guise of anti-Zionism,” added Kalifat, a businessman and longtime activist for Zionist and Jewish causes who is CRIF’s 11th president.
Divided ethnically from Belgian society, these largely Salafist groups created an alternative rhetoric of Muslim unity as their rallying call. “The question of Palestine was the decisive element in convincing my son Anis, aged 18, to leave Belgium to fight with ISIS in the battlefields of Syria,” says Geraldine, a mother of a terrorist from Molenbeek. “With the heavy police presence in the area, young people often compare the constant identity checks they conduct to living under occupation in Palestine,” confirms the deputy mayor. Karim Amezian, a manager of an independent association aiming to deradicalize youth in the area, says that there is nothing like Israeli checkpoints when it comes to upsetting young people in disadvantaged areas of Brussels and Belgium as a whole.read more
“My son, like many others, remained unemployed, afflicted by an implicit rejection from society by being unable to enter the labor market,” explains Geraldine. The same story is repeated by other mothers of jihadi fighters from Belgium, who know these men and their journey to radicalization best. Annalisa Gadaleta, a local official working in education for the municipality, adds how “the youth here in Molenbeek are frustrated in both identity and socio-economic terms."
Historian Bojan Dimitrijevic told the Belgrade-based Higher Court on Monday that the Nazi backed WWII-era puppet government led by Nedic never physically murdered any Jews, as killings were only carried out by German occupation troops in the country at the time.read more
“The Jewish question was not within the competence of Nedic’s government, but rather the German forces. In implementing this policy, Nedic’s government merely made statistical records of the Jews in Serbia,” Dimitrijevic said.
“All the activities of arresting [people], putting [them] in concentration camps and killings were carried out exclusively by German forces,” he added.
Asked by the judge whether the Nedic government published anti-Semitic posters, Dimitrijevic admitted that it did use propaganda against Serbia’s Jewish community.
“There were some elements of that, but that is not the same as killing people,” Dimitrijevic said.
(...)
Nedic, who was prime minister from 1941 to 1944, was declared a war criminal by the Yugoslav Communist authorities after the Nazi occupation of the country ended, but his great-grandson and his allies are hoping that the court will posthumously clear his name.
A group conducting an aggressive anti-Israel boycott campaign has its headquarters in Bremen city-owned property that has received federal funding, an investigation by The Jerusalem Post found.
“The Bremen Peace Forum has already publicly supported the BDS movement for some time. This [BDS] is nothing other than an anti-Israel, yes, anti-Semitic idea. It intolerable when such institutions are still publicly supported,” Gitta Connemann, a leading Bundestag deputy and a member of the German-Israel parliamentary group, told the Post on Thursday.
According to the Bremen Peace Forum’s website, “it is the time to boycott merchandise from Israel, some of which is produced in Israeli settlements, but also other goods that come directly from Israel.”
(...)
In an email to the Post, André Städler, the spokesman for the Social Democratic Mayor Carsten Sieling, said, “The City of Bremen, as the owner of the Villa Ichon [where the Bremen Peace Forum has its headquarters], agreed to a leasehold contract with the management company of the Villa Ichon.”
Städler said that the agreement expires in 2031 and cannot be cut short. He declined to send the Post a copy of the agreement. The spokesman said the City of Bremen condemns calls to boycott Israel.
(...)
In 2013, the Villa Ichon was embroiled in a scandal because it barred Jewish music teacher Noemi Köster and Israeli student Maor Shani from attending a lecture on anti-Semitism.
The event was organized by various peace activists and a local Left Party group.
The doorman at the event insulted Shani, who was wearing a kippa, and Köster, saying “Everything belongs to you already anyway, also the media,” the Bild newspaper reported.
Bremen is the center of anti-Israel activity in Germany.
How do you win an award with a British Charity whose mission statement isread more
To enable young people (aged 11 – 25 years in London and Essex), to achieve their potential by inspiring, investing in, developing and promoting activities that increase their personal, social, emotional and physical development.
Obviously, you make a hate speech containing nothing but blood libels against the State of Israel (a speech that also includes the statement "Islam is perfect" and ends with the raising of the Palestine flag and the call to "Free Palestine" which is wildly applauded).
Greek pro-Nazi Hellenic National Socialist Found blog has reposted an article from the popular news website Zougla.gr claiming that Achilles M. Peklaris, a well-known activist supporting and helping refugees in Greece, is an agent trained by Mossad, the Israeli secret services, to destabilize Europe by encouraging the arrival of refugees. Zougla.gr has meanwhile removed the article.read more
A senior Labour activist who was suspended over making alleged anti-Semitic comments on Facebook has been reinstated to the party.read more
Jackie Walker was one of a number of Labour members to be suspended shortly before the local elections earlier this month.
The Kent activist, who is vice chair of the pro Jeremy Corbyn Momentum movement, had written about ‘the African holocaust’ and called Jews ‘chief financiers of the slave trade’.
Speaking to the BBC she said the last few weeks had been a ‘living nightmare’.
She added: ‘I am glad this investigation has fully cleared me of any wrongdoing.
‘I am not a racist, but I robustly defend my right and the right of others to speak openly and frankly about matters of grave political and historical importance.’
News of her reinstatement was condemned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism.
Director of communications, Jonathan Sacerdoti, said the annoucement called in to question the party’s inquiry into anti-Semitism.
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| Nasser Abu Baker, wearing a Palestinian Authority military uniform. Photo: Facebook, Jan. 31, 2016. |
A leading media watchdog organization issued a report on Tuesday strongly criticizing French news outlet Agence France Presse (AFP) for betraying its self-described “rigorous neutrality,” by employing a reporter who was appointed in January to chair the anti-Israel Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS).
According to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), Nasser Abu Baker – who previously held the title of deputy chairman at PJS — has been covering Israeli-Palestinian affairs for AFP for more than a decade and continues to do so. This, said CAMERA, is in spite of the fact that PJS is a “leading force for the boycott of Israeli journalists and media.”
German prosecutors said Thursday they were investigating whether to bring charges against a publisher who has promised to print a version of Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic manifesto “Mein Kampf” without annotations.
Re-publishing the original tract is illegal under German sedition laws against inciting racial hatred, although a version for historians with thousands of critical commentaries was allowed to go on sale this year.
Prosecutors said “we are investigating whether to level charges” against publisher Der Schelm, based in Leipzig in Germany’s formerly communist east, national news agency DPA reported.
The publishing house is taking orders on its website for an “unaltered reprint” of the 1943 edition published by Hitler’s Nazi regime.
The city of Amsterdam will give its Jewish community $11 million as compensation for taxes imposed on Holocaust survivors who returned home to the Dutch capital following World War II.
Upon their return, according to an article in The Telegraph on Monday, the survivors were made to pay a tax because their homes were left empty during the Holocaust. They also had to pay back taxes for the years they had been taken away from the city, as well as insurance fees.
The taxes were discovered by a student in 2013, and that year, Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan said the city should “put it right,” according to The Telegraph. On Friday, the city said it would pay the $11 million — an estimate of the total taxes paid by survivors following the war.
Spain’s main Jewish group threatened legal action against a local lawmaker for calling a community leader “a foreign agent.”
Benet Salellas espoused “the most repugnant form of anti-Semitism” and used speech that “is wholly illegitimate in diplomatic discourse,” FCJE said Tuesday in an unusually harshly-worded statement. The group said that unless Salellas apologized and walked back his statements, it would press charges against him for hate speech.
During a May 12 debate in Catalonia’s parliament, Salellas accused Uriel Benguigui, president of the Jewish Community of Barcelona, of being a “foreign agent” and part of a “Zionist lobby,” local media reported.
Salellas — a member of the Popular Unity Candidacy, a left-leaning movement in favor of independence for the Catalonia region — apparently objected to Benguigui’s presence at the meeting of the parliament’s foreign relations committee.
A recent United Nations resolution singling out Israel as the world’s only violator of global health rights reveals how the international body is “completely disconnected from reality,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN told The Algemeiner on Thursday.
Danny Danon was referring to a resolution — co-sponsored by the Arab Group and the Palestinian delegation — accusing Israel of violating the “mental, physical and environmental health” of the Palestinians. The motion, which received support from France, Germany, the UK and various other EU states, was passed during the World Health Organization’s (WHO) annual assembly on Wednesday. The US and Canadian delegations both voiced their strong objections to the resolution.
According to the Geneva-based watchdog group UN Watch, no resolutions were passed against any other country. The assembly did not address other major health crises, such as the bombing of hospitals in Syria by pro-regime and Russian warplanes, or the Saudi-led bombing and blockade in Yemen, which is denying millions access to food and water.
Various Arab countries also used the WHO assembly to lob further accusations at Israel. Iran claimed that Gaza is under “an inhumane blockade,” while Egypt alleged that Israel shows a “disregard for basic human rights.” Pakistan charged Israel with carrying out a “wave of terror against the Palestinian civilian population.”
A London university don has turned down her share of Israel’s prestigious $1 million Dan David Prize for political reasons, to the cheer of boycotters.read more
Historian Professor Catherine Hall of University College London (UCL) said she declined an estimated £250,000 which was to be awarded to her for her work.
She told the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) that it was “an independent political choice, undertaken after many discussions with those who are deeply involved with the politics of Israel-Palestine, but with differing views”.
Awarded annually, the prize was set up with a $100 million endowment by Bucharest-born Israeli businessman Dan David, with awards in three categories, to those whose work covered the Past, Present or Future.
Prof. Hall, a distinguished feminist historian, was due to receive the Past award for her “impact on social history, as a pioneer in gender history, race and slavery,” with particular reference to her work on women’s history in the 1970s.
The online radio Radio Praha published an article about the recent situation of antisemitism in the Czech Republic. Two main issues of this short comment are that the web plays a huge role in nowadays antisemitism as well as a lot of people believe crude conspiracy theories like 'the Jews are behind the so-called Islamization of Europe'.
The stabbing of a woman at a kosher restaurant here was not a hate crime, police said.read more
The attack Monday night at Grand Cafe Rimon, which resulted in moderate injuries to the victim and ended with the arrest of the suspected assailant, was the act of a person who appeared mentally unstable, a spokesman for the police told JTA Tuesday.
Security camera footage shows the man, a Brazilian national who was not named by police, sitting at the restaurant in the southern part of the city, exiting and returning shortly thereafter, the spokesman told JTA. He then stabbed the woman and sat back down at the table, urging staff to call an ambulance. He told police during questioning that voices in his head told him to stab the woman. He had bought the knife at a nearby supermarket.
The victim, Victoria Warenholt, wrote on Facebook Wednesday that initial reports in Dutch media that she was stabbed in her arm were inaccurate, and that in fact the knife punctured one of her lungs.
“I was having dinner with a dear friend when suddenly I felt a punch in my back and I saw the man trying to stab my friend in her face. My friend was not hurt, but unfortunately the knife punctured my lung on the right side,” she wrote, adding that she was in pain but recovering. She neither knew the attacker nor spoke to him, she wrote.
“He appeared completely deranged and it’s not clear whether he even knew he was at a kosher, Israeli restaurant,” the police spokesman said. “This does not appear to be an anti-Semitic incident, though in the current atmosphere we had, of course, immediately suspected that it was.”
Controversy erupted on Sunday after disgraced actor Mel Gibson presented an award to an anti-Israel director at the Cannes Film Festival in France, according to the New York Post’s Page Six.read more
Gibson presented the Palme d’Or to British director Ken Loach for his film I, Daniel Blake — a move that one Hollywood insider called “blatant and boorish,” especially in light of the fact that antisemitic attacks are on the rise in France. The insider also called Loach a “virulently anti-Israel director.”
After Loach won the same award in 2006, he called for a cultural boycott of Israel. In 2009, he condemned the Toronto Film Festival for selecting Tel Aviv for its “City to City” section, and pulled his film Looking for Eric from a Melbourne festival when he discovered that Israel was a sponsor of the event.
Gibson is notorious for spewing antisemitic remarks at a Los Angeles police officer in 2006, when he was arrested for drunk driving. He ranted, “F***ing Jews… the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Shortly after his DUI arrest, Gibson issued an apology “specifically to everyone in the Jewish community” for his “vitriolic and harmful words.”
In one tweet dating from November 2012, she wrote: "Hitler didn't kill all the Jews, he left some. So we know why he was killing them."
And in another Facebook post from March 2014, she used an expletive to describe Jews before adding: "I hate them so much."Dyab Abou Jahjah, a famous antisemite himself, rushed to her defense.
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| Commeorating Arab terrorist in front of Jewish museum, AEL site |
"Palestine back to the Arabs. The Jews have to get off our land. Out of it or in it" (ie, buried in it).
"Palestine back to the Arabs. The Israelis must get off our land. Out of it in or it" (with an eye-rolling smiley and a "jeez, people")
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| (click to enlarge) |
Jew or no jew, we will still chase them out of our land. Fatah is corrupted anyway so why is anybody surprised. La valise ou le cerceuil.!and then
And again, Palestine is our land and we will take it back, it doesn't matter who did what there. If you are on Palestinian ground you are an invader and the resistance should deal with you. And Palestinian ground is the whole of historical Palestine. And spare me the lamentation about being a refugee cos once again I couldn't care less. I have onlu one phrase to all the Zionists invaders in Palestine: La valise ou le cerceuil.and (only partly on the screenshot):
Regarding Gaza, it is a concentration camp created by the Zio-Nazis and there is a total blockade against the people there because they elected Hamas as their democratic choice. So do not speak about Gaza as if Hamas made it like that. And before saying the name of a glorious resistance movement like Hamas in your mouth you better go wash it first from all the zionist dirty propaganda you are spreading.
... because I realize that in my situation as an example to many (sic!) and thus my responsibility to make people conscious that it is not an ethnic nor religious conflict.It is clear from his own statements that he is the first one to make it an ethnic conflict against Jews, and not only in Israel but also against the Jews in Europe!
The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) has allocated funds in the millions to anti-Israel NGOs linked to terrorism and working in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, according to a report that appeared in Switzerland’s Basler Zeitung on Monday.read more
The front-page story by veteran journalist Dominik Feusi, headlined “Resistance in Parliament against money for Israel-critical campaigns,” stated that MP Christian Imark had introduced a motion supported by 41 lawmakers from across the political spectrum calling on the FDFA to stop all direct or indirect funding to organizations that sponsor “racist and anti-Semitic actions” or are involved in BDS campaigns.
The move could bring about a sea change in Swiss funding for scores of anti-Israel NGOs operating in Israel and in the disputed territories.
Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, spoke with the The Jerusalem Post about the development.
“The detailed and unprecedented article... reflects the concerns of many MPs in Switzerland, who were surprised to learn of the very negative and counterproductive impact of their government’s funding for radical anti-peace NGOs,” Steinberg stated.
“As in the case of the EU and many individual states, the funding process, which supports Al-Haq [an NGO based in Ramallah] – the leader of the 'lawfare' campaign – and Breaking the Silence, as well as other Israeli groups, has been strictly hidden from the media and MPs until now,” he said.
Steinberg, along with Olga Deutsch, head of NGO Monitor’s Europe research desk, briefed Swiss MPs in Bern in March on the alleged misconduct of certain NGOs and their financial irregularities.
“As noted in the [Basler] article, additional Swiss funding goes to Islamic Relief Worldwide,” he continued. “Earlier this year, HSBC cut all ties to this NGO due to concerns about its involvement in terrorism. Israel declared IRW a terrorist-supporting entity in 2014, citing funding to Hamas. The Swiss government must now review this funding.”
The article alleged that the FDFA funneled the equivalent of nearly $182,000 to the IRW last year. It also noted that Swiss funds had been sent directly or indirectly to 44 NGOs that “are opposed to negotiations with Israel and peace, and work for a boycott of Israeli products.” [...]
According to the article, the Bundesrat, the executive council of the Swiss government, is required to respond to the motion submitted by the MPs.
“The revelations include cases of ‘double dipping’ – funding from different Swiss government agencies for the same NGOs, which was made possible by extreme secrecy,” Steinberg added.
He added that Swiss public debate that crosses party and ideological lines has helped spark similar debates now taking place in Holland, Denmark and other countries that might be involved in the large-scale funding of radical NGOs.
Officials in Brussels promised Turkey £2.5billion and visa-free travel by June if it clamps down on the number of migrants making their way into Europe through its borders.
As EU bureaucrats continue to thrash out a deal, Tom Wilson, a Fellow at the Centre for the New Middle East at The Henry Jackson Society, says Brussels is oblivious to Israel’s efforts to stop illegal migration from Africa.
Mr Wilson said: “For now, at least, and for an extortionately high price, Turkey’s co-operation seems to have been bought.
“But while Europe is being blackmailed into offering a whole host of concessions to Turkey, there is another country that has done a great deal to prevent the flow of illegal migration towards Europe, whose role is widely ignored.
“For some years now Israel has been serving as a buffer preventing illegal migration that would potentially flow towards Europe. [...]
Islamic State (ISIS) is also thought to be a threat in the Sinai peninsular with Egypt and Israel working together to stop the region becoming a stronghold for the Islamist militants.
The Foreign Office currently advises Britons against travelling to North Sinai as Egyptian armed forces conduct military operations against extremist groups in the area.
Mr Wilson said: “The Sinai had become a particularly lawless and ungoverned space, with Salafist militants in the area that have more recently aligned themselves with Islamic State. But this move also shut off the path of illegal migrants.
“Israel acts as a natural buffer between the African continent and the Middle East, as well as to the West more generally.
“Without this, the way would be left open for those coming north to pass through Israel to join the throngs that have been attempting to make their way to Western Europe through Greece and the Balkans.”Mr Wilson added that while “Turkey is rewarded for threatening Europe with a flood of migrants, Israel’s role in blocking illegal migration has gone unacknowledged.”
Citing anti-discrimination laws, a Spanish constitutional tribunal recommended scrapping a local government motion calling for a boycott against Israel.read more
The Ministerio Fiscal, an advisory judicial authority charged with guaranteeing equality in the judiciary, made the recommendation this month, according to a statement by ACOM, a Spanish pro-Israel lobby. The recommendation comes after ACOM sued the northern municipality of Gijon for declaring itself “a space free of Israeli apartheid.”
The motion, passed in January, also said the city would not pay for services of firms implicated in “human rights violations” in Palestinian territories. It said the city supports the BDS movement, which calls for boycotts, sanctions and divestment against Israel. Gijon, a city of 270,000 residents, is located 290 miles north of Madrid.
Demonstrators with Palestinian flags during a protest against the Israeli
offensive against Gaza, in Valencia, Spain. (photo credit:REUTERS)
But the Ministerio Fiscal said in its nonbinding recommendation that the objectives of Gijon’s boycott “violate the constitution as well as the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights.” The motion’s clauses, according to the tribunal, “jeopardize the fundamental right to equality without discrimination on the bases of appearance, ethnicity and religion.”
A motion similar to the one passed in Gijon was defeated last week by a majority of delegates in Tarragona, an eastern Spanish city with 130,000 residents. Tarragona is the fifth Spanish municipality where BDS motions have failed in recent weeks, while motions supporting an Israel boycott have passed in four Spanish municipalities.
Spain’s government has repeatedly expressed its opposition to BDS, which is illegal in neighboring France because it is deemed discriminatory. Britain’s ruling party is formulating similar legislation, officials said earlier this year.
Long seen as a hub of anti-Israeli lobbying in Europe, Spain has recently taken actions that angered BDS promoters, including a January offer of $107,000 in compensation for damages caused to an Israeli West Bank university due to its exclusion from a scientific competition for political reasons.
In recent days, a skillful unit, the “Prague Platform,” financed by European Union governments and various EU funds and budgets, has launched a new initiative designed to undermine the narrative of the Holocaust (and what Fascism brought to Europe) and replace it with the far-right’s “Double Genocide” model of history, whereby Communism and Nazism are in principle totally equal, and their victims must be remembered in a unitary jumble. For this movement, entrapping naive Western (often Jewish) fellow travelers to grant the cover of presumed legitimacy is a strategic imperative on the road to universal acceptance. The Platform, whose full name is Eurospeak’s “Platform of European Memory and Conscience,” has on its website the foundational constitution of the new revisionism, the 2008 “Prague Declaration,” which boasts the word “same” five times, in reference to Nazism and Communism, and (this one is quite Orwellian) demands that “all European minds” accept the proposed equivalence. There is by now a long and principled trail of opposition. We of the DefendingHistory.com team based in Vilnius were exceptionally proud, back in 2012, to co-draft the European parliamentary rejoinder, the Seventy Years Declaration, in partnership with Professor Danny Ben-Moshe, who the same year completed a documentary on these matters.
This week, in keeping with its red-brown, mix-and-match hodgepodgization, the Platform trumpets a brand-new exciting European Union competition for designs for a new memorial in Brussels that must in and of itself include “victims of National Socialism, Fascism, and Communism.” And who are the Platform’s two partners in flaunting the new memorial to be built in Brussels (not, Prague, Riga or Kiev, mind you…)? The Slovak presidency of the Council of the European Union, quite expectedly, and then the shocker: The European Shoah Legacy Institute. Peradventure, its current leaders, were caught unawares, and will hasten to withdraw from a project that is intended to diminish the Holocaust in the context of a major political movement that has some corollaries.
For the uninitiated in East European politics, it can sound rather innocuous, but the empirical evidence collected over the years makes clear what those corollaries include: Mandatory equalization of those who committed genocide at Auschwitz with those who liberated it. Plans to effectively replace Holocaust Commemoration Day with a mix-and-match day for Soviet and Nazi crimes together (knowing that Europe won’t need two memorial days for these things). Inflation of the term “genocide” to include an array of (genuinely horrific) Soviet crimes as deportation and imprisonment; propagation of the notion that many of the victims were at other times criminals themselves (recently pronounced by the head of the Platform’s Vilnius-based partner whose name is even more Orwellian: “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania”).
Now headed for Brussels (under cover of a "Jewish" institution recruited for legitimization)? Eastern Europe's red-equals-brown iconography samples include (clockwise from top): Estonian and German presidents celebrating Tallinn museum's keynote sculpture in 2013; entrance to Budapest's "House of Terror" museum; collectible Lithuanian postal service envelope. (Photo montage by Defending History.)
Then there is the most distasteful of all: the state-sponsored (or encouraged) glorification of Holocaust perpetrators on the grounds that they were anti-Soviet (which in Eastern Europe they were indeed; the Soviet Union, for all its many crimes and outrages, was the only serious force in Eastern Europe combatting Hitler’s rule from the onset of genocide in late June 1941 to war’s end). The “pro-Western” parts of Europe, including Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine are littered with memorials for Holocaust perpetrators. It’s hard to think of what could be more “far right” than that, bearing in mind the far right’s sophisticated, educated wing of elites in politics, academia and public institutions who know how to show naive Westerners a darned good time, and who have little in common with skinhead thugs who come to Western minds in association with the concept of the “far right.”
Cyprus’s ruling conservatives took the lead in Sunday’s general election, results showed, while a far-right party won its first seats in the legislature amid voter disillusionment after a 2013 financial meltdown.
With the voting tally at 100 percent, and an unprecedentedly high abstention rate, the right-wing Democratic Rally party was ahead with 30.6 percent of the vote followed by Communist AKEL with 25.6 percent.
Compared to the previous elections of 2011, those two main parties on the Cypriot political scene suffered setbacks. AKEL’s Communists lost up to seven percentage points while Democratic Rally lost 3.7 percentage points.
By contrast ELAM, an extremist party forged on the coat-tails of Greece’s Golden Dawn, scraped past a newly-imposed 3.6 percent electoral threshold and won up to two seats, according to preliminary estimates.
“It’s sort of a kindergarten version of Golden Dawn,” said political analyst Hubert Faustmann, referring to the party formed in 2008. “All the big parties lost.”
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| Afzal Khan |
Afzal Khan made the comment during the Israeli military action in Gaza two years ago, it has emerged. He tweeted in August 2014: “The Israeli government are acting like Nazi’s in Gaza”.read more
Labour said yesterday that Mr Khan had been “reminded of his responsibilities as a Labour representative”, but that he would face no disciplinary action.
Conservative MPs Andrew Percy and Sir Eric Pickles had urged Labour to suspend Mr Khan, who was appointed a CBE for his community and interfaith work and is co-founder of The Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester. They described his comments as “deeply offensive”.
Joan Ryan MP, chair of Labour Friends of Israel, told the Telegraph: “As the European Forum on Antisemitism has made clear, drawing comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis is totally unacceptable.”
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| Djamel Boumaaz and Dieudonné |
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A few weeks ago supporters of the football club BSG Stahl Riesa were seen wearing shirts with antisemitic codes printed on the chest. "JDN CHM" in the style of classic Run DMC shirts was addressed to the 'enemy' club of BSG Chemie Leipzig. It said "Juden Chemie" ('Jews of Chemie') with vocals left out.
An anti-Semitism row has hit sexist Muirfield golf club after Lord Grade claimed he was banned for being Jewish.
The East Lothian course has been savaged by critics after it refused to admit women members in a vote last week.
And now the former BBC chairman, 73, has branded the backward club anti-Jewish, slamming golf as rife with anti-Semitism.
He was invited to the course in the early eighties by Sir William Brown, the former boss of Scottish Television, who rang him to arrange a game when he was visiting the Edinburgh festival.
'About a week or so later he rang again and said he needed to give them the name of my home club and my handicap, and I told him it was 17 and Coombe Hill,' Lord Grade told The Telegraph.
Coombe Hill, near Kingston, Surrey, was renowned for having a largely Jewish membership, he said.
'He rang back a day later and said 'I don't know how to tell you this, but as soon as I said Coombe Hill the invitation was withdrawn'. I asked him if there was a particular reason, and he said, "You know why, Michael."'
Lord Grade added that on another occasion his friend put his name forward to a club with a 'No Jews' policy to test them out, and sure enough they rejected him.
He said he now avoids clubs with anti-Jewish reputations.
Not uncommon, and unequivocally worthy of criticism is the party’s anti-Semitism. There has been a certain unwillingness among the party’s leaders to address anti-Semitism within their ranks, even more so since long-time leader Gregor Gysi stepped down as parliamentary leader in 2015. Gysi has always been much more careful about accusations of anti-Semitism than most of his fellow party members. It’s particularly odd that an allegedly democratic socialist party would have members organizing a pro-Hamas demonstration, including chants of “Death to Jews,” glorification of Adolf Hitler and Nazi crimes, as well as swastikas and Al-Qaeda flags.
But that’s just a fraction of the anti-Semitism within Die Linke. There’s Inge Höger, member of the Bundestag, who publicly wore a scarf upon which a map omitting Israel was printed (denying Israel’s right to exist is widely considered as anti-Semitic in Germany), on another occasion the party refused to join a multi-party appeal against a call to boycott Israeli products. Such a call is reminiscent of Nazi campaigns against patronizing Jewish shops in the 1930s.
Occasional transgressions – like a swastika entangled with a Star of David on a local party website – can be put down to singular individuals, but in 2008, eleven members of Die Linke in the Bundestag refused to support a resolution against anti-Semitism, a dangerous decision for any German party to make. There are numerous party members who have shown that they have highly problematic stances on various issues – and then there’s Diether Dehm. Why this particular party member is worth special attention becomes clear with an appraisal of some of the dubious things he’s said and done. Dehm was involved in the so-called vigils of peace, a movement out of which the xeno- and Islamophobic Pegida evolved, and where anti-Semitic, right-wing populist sentiments are more than common. One of his friends at those demonstrations was Ken Jebsen, Germany’s leading conspiracy theory devotee, who once said the “Holocaust was invented as a PR stunt”. He is friends with Kathrin Oertel, founder of Pegida. His assistant in Parliament is a former Red Army Faction terrorist, and he has compared the choice between the current and previous German president to choosing between Hitler and Stalin. To be fair, Diether Dehm is only one of 64 of Die Linke‘s Members of Parliament, but the fact that none of his controversial outbursts has provoked even one comment from the parliamentary leadership suggests that these issues may have their roots deep within the party.
The Hungarians were and still are anti-Semitic. It’s not pleasant. I’ve lived there for 15 years, but it’s only in the past two years that I’ve started to feel it, and it’s starting to bother me. There’s a word in Hungarian, zsidiozm, that’s said about someone or something Jewish. For the Hungarians it’s a curse word. Like “nigger.” I’m a makeup artist at a club, and once a few girls who worked with me came and asked whether I would do them. A guy at the club said, “Probably their Jew-boss was too tightfisted to pay for their makeup” – using that derogatory word. I cringed. didn’t react at that moment, but afterward I thought that there were so many things I could have said. It’s possible that if I’d told him I myself was Jewish he would have been embarrassed, but there was no longer any point. I’m not sure it was really spoken as an insult ... but they don’t really know who or what a Jew is, it’s just something they hear.read more
A Dutch-Jewish woman was injured in a stabbing attack at a kosher restaurant in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam Monday night.
She suffered lightly to moderate injuries and was taken to a local hospital for treatment.
Ronnie Eisenmann, president of the advisory board of the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI), a Dutch monitor, told VIN News that the attack took place at approximately 8 PM local time, when an unidentified English speaking man walked into the Rimon Grandcafe in the city’s Jewish Quarter.
According to Eisenmann, the man left ten minutes later, crossing the street and going into a grocery store.
Amsterdam’s AT5 News reported that the man purchased a knife at the store before returning to Rimon.
The man then ordered a coffee and entered into a discussion with two women seated nearby, before pulling out a knife and stabbing one of the women in the back.
He then told restaurant staff to call the police and turned himself in without resistance.
Waitresses in the restaurant said that the man appeared to be confused and did not speak Dutch.
While the motive for the attack appears unknown, members of the local Jewish community are concerned for their safety.
When young Arabs and Muslims express hatred towards Jews it is 99% of the time an echo of Israel portraying itself as the Jewish state and them believing it. This is very regrettable but it is not antisemitism. It is a lack of politisation and can only be remedied by explaining Zionism to them as a political racist movement that hijacks the identity of the Jews just like "Daesh" hijacks that of the Muslims.
With the clear difference that support for Israel and Zionism is unfortunately mainstream among jews. While support for Daesh is marginal among muslims. Not only that, Arabs and muslims are waging war against Daesh. But either way, yes young people say stupid uninformed things often out of emotionality.
There is no willingness on our part to take a position for or against anyone . Some of our country sheets certainly require revision . We have company. Thank you for pointing out some inconsistencies.They changed the maps for both Israel and "Palestine" to this one:
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| Shami Chakrabarti |
