Booking.com amends “Jerusalem as Israeli settlement” after inquiry from Joods Actueel

Via Joods Actueel:

Internet travel giant booking.com this week amended its policy of referring to Jerusalem as being an “Israeli settlement” after questions from the Belgian Jewish magazine Joods Actueel. Michael Freilich, editor-in-chief of Joods Actueel, received a complaint from one of his readers about the subject.

“The person was looking for a hotel room in Jerusalem and was shocked to discover that Jerusalem was classified as being an “Israeli settlement”. Honestly, I thought it was a hoax until I checked it out myself and saw it with my own eyes.”

The mention of Jerusalem as a settlement appeared throughout the website in all of it’s different languages: Dutch, French, English, Spanish and so on.

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Germany seems to once again be embracing anti-Semitism

Victor Davis Hanson @ Hoover Institution:

Every 20 to 50 years in Germany, things start unraveling. Germans feel aggrieved. Ideas and movements gyrate wildly between far left and far right extremes. And the Germans finally find consensus in a sense of victimhood paradoxically expressed as national chauvinism. Germany’s neighbors in 1870, 1914, 1939—and increasingly in the present—usually bear the brunt of this national meltdown. […]

Germany has always had a “Jewish Problem.” In the late nineteenth-century, German academics became obsessed with pseudo-research about eugenics and racial purity—which often led to talk of both Aryan purity and crass anti-Semitism that played out in the real world with disastrous results during the Holocaust. After World War II, Germany tried to make amends through introspection, some reparations, and the subsidized sales of military supplies to Israel. Yet Germany seems to once again be embracing anti-Semitism quite aside from its fierce opposition to Israel. Dieter Graumann, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has warned of the present climate: “These are the worst times since the Nazi era. On the streets, you hear things like ‘the Jews should be gassed,’ ‘the Jews should be burned.’ We haven’t had that in Germany for decades. Anyone saying those slogans isn’t criticizing Israeli politics, it’s just pure hatred against Jews: nothing else.”

In response to the growing hatred, Felix Klein, Germany’s newly appointed special envoy entrusted by the Merkel government with addressing the nation’s growing anti-Semitism—much of it the result of the influx of Muslims—recently shrugged it off, simply pointing out that more and more Jews are leaving Germany: “It is quite understandable that those who are scared for the safety of their children would consider leaving.” […]

In a perfect world, Germany would address its frustrations through introspection. After all, no one forced Berlin to take in over a million problematic refugees from the Middle East. No one forced it to export goods on easy credit to leveraged buyers who visibly lived far above their means. No one forced it to renege on its NATO defense promises and responsibilities. No one forced it to have a long and catastrophic history with the Jewish people. And no one forces it to expect perpetual U.S. military protection while continually setting record trade surpluses.

Despite the long postwar history of U.S.-German friendship, and despite Germany’s financial and economic power, the country is becoming psychologically isolated, if not unhinged. While Germans broadcast their anti-Americanism, they seem oblivious that Americans may likewise be tiring of German petulance.  

If we are entering yet another historical period of dangerous German resentment, the ensuing result will bode ill for everyone involved.

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UK: Britain’s “next?” prime minister called terrorist who helped blow up café, “brother”

Via Tom Goss @ Mideast Dispatch:

CORBYN CALLED MEMBER OF TERROR GANG WHICH KILLED ESTEEMED JEWISH DOCTOR AND HIS DAUGHTER, HIS “BROTHER” [Notes by Tom Gross]

The first picture above is of Dr David Applebaum with his 20-year-old daughter Nava on the eve of her wedding. Dr Applebaum, one of Israel’s most distinguished doctors, ran the A&E department at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem and saved many Palestinian and Jewish lives.

The second photo is of Abdul Aziz Umar, the Palestinian terrorist and Hamas operative who helped organize the murder of Dr Applebaum and his daughter, in conversation with British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in a live interview on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s state-run Press TV, during which Corbyn calls him “brother”.

Footage of Corbyn praising Umar was revealed by the Mail on Sunday newspaper last Sunday. Umar was released from prison in the notorious “Gilad Shalit-for terrorists” prisoner swap.

According to opinion polls Corbyn is a leading candidate to become Britain’s next prime minister.

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Holland: Restaurant owner evicts Dutch Jewish community from synagogue

Via JTA:

The Jewish community of this Dutch city was evicted Monday from its former synagogue in what members said was the first such occurrence in years in the kingdom.  

Members of Beth Shoshanna, a Masorti/Conservative Jewish congregation of approximately 30 people, packed up and loaded into a van their Torah scroll and other scripture, as well as other items used for worship and furniture.  The move followed a legal fight against the building’s new owners, who are seeking to turn it into a restaurant.  

“It’s a very heavy feeling that this thing can happen here in 2018,” said Tom Furstenberg, the community’s chairman.  

His community had been told to move out by the office of Ayhan Sahin, a Dutch-Turkish developer and owner of several eateries, who in January bought the building housing the Great Synagogue of Deventer with a partner. Last week, the city blocked his plan to open an eatery in the 125-year-old synagogue. But as the owners, Sahin and his associate can still determine who has access to the building and have asked the congregation to move out, according to Sanne Terlouw, a member of the congregation.  

The community has found a new home in the nearby municipality of Raalte. “We will continue. But this means the end of centuries of Jewish life in Deventer itself,” Terlouw said.

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Germany: Antisemitic grafitti in Hamburg

Via Watch Anti-Semitism in Europe:

Several anti-semitic graffiti were found in Hamburg such as "Gas the Jews":

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Ukraine: Like the Dreyfus Affair: An innocent Jew released from prison

Via Jerusalem Post:

A tragic story has come to a happy conclusion. Israel Repkin, a Jewish Ukrainian who had been imprisoned for years on false charges of attacking an elderly woman, was released from confinement recently. He won his release because the central witness in his case admitted to lying and framing Repkin after having been badly mistreated by the government.

"The man, whose name is Sartzinsky, was himself a suspect and framed Repkin. Afterwards, he admitted that he lied, but the prosecutors did not pay attention," said the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Azman, who was involved in Repkin's release. "Regarding the woman who was attacked, who said she saw Repkin in her house in 2006, there is proof that he was out of the country at the time."


The head of the parliamentary friendship with Israel committee, Georg Logvinskyi, a Jewish Ukrainian, was also a critical figure in Repkin's release. "They caught a Jew from a small city, brought him to a police station and beat him so that he would admit to the crime. For four and a half years there was no judgement. The accused approached me asking for help, because they were holding him in a temporary prison in very harsh conditions. I traveled to the prison and found his health in a critical situation. I was in contact with the prison and posted bail for him, but the judge rejected the request. The chief rabbi of Ukraine also became involved, and the Jewish community rallied to his cause."

"They accused him because he was a Jew," Logvinskyi said. "He didn't do anything wrong."

"In 2012, Israel Repkin was accused of stealing a telephone from a nearly-90-year-old woman," explained Shimon Briman, a journalist and historian who is an expert in Israel-Ukraine relations. "Despite the evidence that he was not in the country at the time, Repkin was sentenced to 14 years in prison. In the Kiev Jewish community I heard the same voices over and over again: 'Such a cruel judgement could only have been given for antisemitic reasons.'"

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Denmark: Imam charged over call to kill Jews

Via Times of Israel:

Danish prosecutors on Tuesday charged an imam with calling for the killing of Jews in the first case of its kind in the Nordic nation and which sparked political outrage.

Imam Mundhir Abdallah, who preaches in the Copenhagen neighborhood of Norrebro at the Masjid Al-Faruq mosque, which media have linked to radical Islam, is accused of citing a hadith or koranic narrative calling for Muslims to rise up against Jews.

“Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them,” Abdallah said in a Facebook and YouTube video post in March, according to a translation of the original Arabic provided by the US organization the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“These are serious statements and I think it’s right for the court to now have an opportunity to assess the case,” public prosecutor Eva Ronne said in a statement.

This is the first time the prosecution has raised such charges under a criminal code introduced January 1, 2017 on religious preaching.

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Bosnia: Jewish Community, Sarajevo Mayor Urge Action over Anti-Semitic Graffiti

Via Inside Sarajevo:

Bosnian Jewish Community denounced two recent anti-Semitic incidents and urged the authorities to act.

A prominent member of the Bosnian Jewish Community posted on Facebook photos of anti-Semitic graffiti in two residential buildings in Sarajevo and Tuzla, featuring Nazi swastika and word “Juden”. According to the post, members of the Bosnian Jewish community live in those buildings.

“We have received the news with deep indignation and disappointment, aware that those incidents will not threaten the good neighborly relations that the Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina have built and are building with their fellow citizens of other ethnic and religious groups. We appeal to the authorities to identify and sanction the perpetrators in accordance with the law,” said the Jewish Community.

The Jewish Community said that they have always attached great importance to the absence of anti-Semitic incidents in Bosnia.

Sarajevo mayor also issued a statement, condemning the incidents.

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UK: JVL chair sparks fury by comparing IHRA definition of antisemitism to homophobic Section 28

Via TheJC:

The chair of Jewish Voice For Labour has sparked fury by comparing the internationally recognised definition of antisemitism to controversial 1980s legislation that banned promoting homosexuality in schools.

Speaking at Wednesday's meeting of Finchley and Golders Green Labour Party, Jenny Manson claimed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition prevented support for Palestinians, in the same way Section 28 prevented support for gay pupils.

The comments infuriated many in the room.

Jack Lubner, 17, was said to have been left "upset and intimidated" after Ms Mason strode towards him after he said he objected to her remarks.

He tweeted: "Jenny should be ashamed of herself. How dare she."

Local Labour member Luisa Attfield, tweeted: "As a Jewish lesbian I am offended and as person with a brain its a baseless comparison."

(...)

JVL, a pro-Jeremy Corbyn group founded in September 2017, has backed a campaign to support the new antisemitism guidelines Labour's national body approved, which omit key examples from the IHRA Jew-hate definition about how criticising Israel can be antisemitic.

The issue has caused huge outrage among the Jewish community.

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Europe: US Vice President Mike Pence cited attacks on Jews in Europe

Via JTA:

Wrapping up a rollout of a major Trump administration effort to fight for religious freedom, Pence made the remarks Thursday on the final day of the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., after singling out Iran for its persecution of religious minorities.

“While religious freedom is always in danger in authoritarian regimes, threats to religious minorities are not confined to autocracies or dictatorships,” he told government officials from from 80 countries, including Israel. “They can, and do, arise in free societies, as well — not from government persecution but from prejudice and hatred.”

The vice president noted a rise in religious intolerance in Europe.

“Just 70 years after the Holocaust, attacks on Jews, even on aging Holocaust survivors, are growing at an alarming rate,” he said. Pence cited what he said was a record high last year in attacks on British Jews, and warnings of Jewish leaders in France and Germany not to wear kippahs.

“It is remarkable to think that within the very lifetimes of some French Jews — the same French Jews that were forced by the Nazis to wear identifiable Jewish clothing — that some of those same people are now being warned by their democratic leaders not to wear identifiable Jewish clothing,” he said.

“These acts of violence and hatred and anti-Semitism must end,” Pence said to applause.

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Germany: Antisemitic insults and knife attack against a woman in Hamburg

Via Watch Antisemitism in Europe:

On Tuesday a drunk 61 year old man yelled antisemitic slurs towards a 63 year old lady in a public bus in the city of Hamburg. He also attacked her with a knife and left her injured.

Read more in German @ Focus

Bosnia: Anti-Semitic graffiti found on homes of Jewish community members

Via European Jewish Press:

Jewish community leaders in Bosnia have expressed concern after anti-Semitic graffiti were discovered this week in the country’s capital Sarajevo and in Tuzla on homes of community members.

“We received this news with regret and bitterness, aware that these incidents will not violate the good neighbourhood relations that Bosnian Jews have built with their fellow citizens from other ethnic and religious groups,’’ the Jewish community said in a statement issued on Friday.

“We appeal to the competent authorities to identify and punish the perpetrators,” it said, stressing that the country has no recent history of anti-Semitic incidents.

Jews have been equal citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina for more than 450 years and they did not deserve something like this, said the community President Jakob Finci. […]

About 1,000 Jews live in the country, half of them in Sarajevo and the rest in Mostar, Zenica, Tuzla, Doboj and Banja Luka.

Two-thirds of the community left after the outbreak of conflict in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995), but the tendency toward emigration has slackened. Some 90% of the community is Sephardi. However, only older people still speak Ladino.

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UK: The Labour Party has officially become institutionally antisemitic

Via Archbishop Cranmer blog:

It has long been suspected that Jeremy Corbyn has a problem with Jews (if not known that he is antipathetic to Judaism, defends antisemitic conspiracy theorists, and accommodates Jew-hatred), but to learn that the Labour Party itself now inclines to its leader’s worldview is somewhat disturbing.

Yesterday Labour’s NEC approved its organisational sub-committee decision not to endorse the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. So Labour does not accept:

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

The concern is that such a definition embraces the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, and would, for example, inhibit the expression or belief that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour. Labour doesn’t want to muddy the water between Jew-hatred (which is antisemitic and racist) and Israel-hatred (which is enlightened and progressive), so the IHRA definition has been rejected. Instead, Labour is going to consult on developing its own definition. […] 

You can’t imagine Labour adopting a definition of ‘Islamophobia‘ which Muslims could not accept, or a definition of ‘homophobia‘ which LGBT people could not accept. Jeremy Corbyn would be immensely concerned if Muslims and gays suddenly starting deserting his party of such an issue, and no doubt Labour MPs would act swiftly to stem the flow. So why single out the Jews for special treatment?

Unless…

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Greece: Turkey’s rise sparks new friendship between Israel and Greece

Via The Wall Street Journal:

It’s hard to find a better example of how geopolitical realities trump ideology than the blossoming friendship between Israel and Greece.

As the leader of Greece’s leftist Syriza party before gaining office in 2015, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called to expel Israel’s ambassador and close Greek ports to U.S. arms shipments heading to Israel.

Syriza’s leftist allies in Europe still demonize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government. Many of them back the boycott, sanctions and disinvestment campaign against Israel.  

Not Mr. Tsipras—who intensified cooperation with Israel instead. The leaders of Israel, Greece and Cyprus are holding regular trilateral summits—the fourth was in May—and the Israeli air force uses Greek airspace for training. The three countries, plus Egypt, are jointly developing the eastern Mediterranean’s natural-gas reserves.

The key reason for all this: Turkey. 

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Holland: Ministers say Israel’s deduction of money paid to terrorists by Palestinians is unwise

Via Bad News from the Netherlands blog:

Israel has decided to withhold from tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority payments to terrorists and their families by the PA. In answer to parliamentary questions, ministers Blok and Kaag reply that the Dutch government considers this Israeli decision unwise.  

(Suggested Dutch parliamentary question: If someone kills Dutch ministers, will the Dutch government pay him or her for that?)

read more in Dutch @ CIDI.NL

France: Jewish man, 69, attacked in Paris by assailant shouting about Allah and Hitler

Via JTA:

A 69-year-old Jewish man wearing a kippah was assaulted in Paris by a young Arab man who shouted about Allah and Hitler.

In Tuesday’s incident, the alleged assailant hit the Jewish man, pushed him to the ground and dragged him by his hair while shouting “Alla hu akbar, long live Hitler, death to the Jews,” the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, wrote in a statement Wednesday. The call in Arabic means “Allah is the greatest.”

Police apprehended the suspected assailant, the report said. A police physician recommended transferring the suspect to a psychiatric institution for observation because he was in a “state of over-excitement,” according to the information received by BNVCA.

It was the third time this year that French police sent a man who displayed violent behavior toward Jews for psychiatric evaluation.

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Austria: Turkish man beats Jews in front of kosher shop in Vienna

Via Arutz Sheva 7:

Several Jews were physically assaulted in Vienna on Thursday outside of a kosher restaurant. The incident occurred in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt district Thursday morning, on Tabor Street.

According to Austrian media outlets, a 24-year-old Austrian man of Turkish origin attacked three Jewish men in front of a kosher restaurant and near a synagogue.

Witnesses say the assailant jumped one of the victims, knocking him to the ground. The suspect then began to beat the victims.

“I had just walked out of the synagogue,” one victim, Daniel, told Heute, “and I had my kippah and Tefillin [phylacteries] on, so I was easily recognizable as a Jew. He came at me from behind while I was on my phone and didn’t see him. He jumped me from behind.”

Daniel says he suffered injuries to his hip, but was thankful the attacker was not armed. “I’m glad he didn’t have a knife with him.”

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German Jewry: a bleak future

Via Jewish Policy Center (Benjamin Weinthal):

[…] A second telling example of the growing—or perhaps continued—indifference was the April attack by a Syrian refugee on Adam Armush, an Israeli Arab, because he dared wear a kippa (yarmulke) on a Berlin street.

The assault triggered headlines in the German and foreign media because there was video evidence of the attack. Der Spiegel’s influential columnist Jakob Augstein blamed the Israeli for having “come up with the idea to wear the kippa and use it as a provocation.” Augstein—who inherited significant ownership in the Spiegel news organization—has played a key role in mainstreaming media anti-Semitism. The Simon Wiesenthal Center ranked him ninth on its “2012 Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs” list for his bigoted statements.

Armush told the Deutsche Welle news outlet: “I am not Jewish, I am an Israeli and I grew up in Israel in an Arab family,” adding, “It was an experience for me to wear the skullcap and go out into the street yesterday.” He said he filmed the attack “for the police and for the German people and even the world to see how terrible it is these days as a Jew to go through Berlin streets.”

For observers of Jewish life in Germany, the anti-Semitic attack on Armush came as no surprise. In 2016, the spokesman for Hamburg’s nearly 2,500-member Jewish community, Daniel Killy, said a breakdown in security in the Federal Republic has created a highly dangerous situation for Jews.

“No, we are no longer safe here,” Killy told the tagesschau.de news outlet. Killy said the collapsing sense of state power, excesses of the extreme right-wing, the loss of political credibility, and “the terrible fear of naming Islamism as such” have all contributed to creating a climate of insecurity for Jews.

The response to the attack on Armush was a call for an anti-anti-Semitism protest. “Berlin wears the kippa” was the name of the feel-good rally on April 25 against Jew-hatred. It attracted some 2,000 people, according to press reports. The real number of attendees is believed to have been fewer than 1,500, in a city of 3.7 million. The demonstration took place under conditions that resembled those in a maximum-security prison.

A second protest against anti-Semitism in the largely Muslim neighborhood of Neukölln in Berlin had to be called off after a mere 20 minutes because of the anticipated violence of pro-Palestinian counter-demonstrators.

To put things in perspective, roughly 150,000 people marched in Berlin in 2015 against a planned free trade deal between the United States and Europe.

Germans frequently invoke the phrase “nip it in the bud” at Holocaust remembrance events when referring to anti-Semitism. Dead Jews trigger widespread commemoration events across the country, but the fight to stop anti-Semitism against living Jews limps—at best—on both legs. A detached observer might ask of modern Germany: Have we learned anything from the Holocaust? […] 

Germany’s woefully inadequate system for classifying anti-Semitic crimes is also cause for alarm. As anti-Semitism rises in the country, the authorities continue to classify Islamic-animated anti-Semitism as a “politically motivated right-wing extremist crime.” A telling example, cited in Die Welt, was an outbreak of Hezbollah-related anti-Semitism that was registered as right-wing extremism. 

Supporters of the Hezbollah terrorist organization participated in an anti-Israel march during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Twenty Hezbollah supporters yelled the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil” (Hail Victory) at a group of pro-Israel activists in Berlin. The “Sieg Heil” call violates Germany’s anti-hate law and was designated as a far-right extremist crime.

The result is German whitewashing of the leading cause of lethal anti-Semitism in Europe: jihadi-based eliminatory anti-Semitism.

The Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch, who is head of Munich’s Jewish community, said in 2017: “The Muslim associations have for decades not only done nothing [to combat anti-Semitism], rather they have allowed anti-Semitic hate preachers from Muslim countries to bring their anti-Jewish ideology into German mosques and into the heads of young Muslims.”

Germany’s tiny Jewish community—100,000 among a population of over 82 million in the Federal Republic—is in dire straits today and faces an increasingly precarious future. Chancellor Merkel and mainstream German society would do well to remember the words of the British historian Sir Ian Kershaw: “The road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved with indifference.” Acute indifference is now the norm in Germany.

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Germany: Online anti-Semitism is going mainstream, study finds

Via Times of Israel:

A long-awaited study by internationally renowned anti-Semitism expert Monika Schwarz-Friesel has found that the amount of German anti-Semitic content on the internet has grown massively in the last 10 years, permeates mainstream society, and is increasingly extreme.

Released Wednesday, the research project studied 300,000 pieces of German internet content between 2014 and 2018, with a focus on social media. During the first year of the study, slightly less than 23 percent of the content was classified as anti-Semitic. In 2017, this number had jumped to over 30%.

A similar study conducted by Schwarz-Friesel in 2007 found only 7.5% of the internet content examined to be anti-Semitic, indicating an increase of more than 22% over the last decade.

The latest results show not only a massive increase in the amount of anti-Semitic content found online, but also a radicalization in terms of the content’s quality. For example, anti-Semitic comments in response to news and other articles have not only grown in number, but have become more rabid.

(...)

In fact, campaigns against anti-Semitism themselves on social media networks such as Facebook elicit massive amounts of anti-Jewish comments. Thirty-eight percent of comments posted in response to a 2014 German Facebook campaign entitled #Never Again Jew-Hatred were actually anti-Semitic.

The study also found that much online anti-Semitism appears as stereotypes projected at the State of Israel.

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Study: ‘Surge’ in Polish antisemitism since controversial Holocaust law

Via Jerusalem Post:

A new academic study by the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs has described “a surge” in hostility to Jews and Israel in Polish media and politics in 2018 following the efforts to pass a controversial law making it a crime to say that the Polish state or nation was complicit in the Holocaust.

According to the study written by Dr. Rafał Pankowski, a sociology professor at Warsaw’s Collegium Civitas, there has been a “disturbing revival of antisemitism” in Poland since the law was introduced and stirred controversy.

“The surge of hostility to Jews and the Jewish State in the Polish media and politics in early 2018 took many observers by surprise,” wrote Pankowski for the IJFA, a publication of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations which operates under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress.

“It was also a great shock because, for many years, bilateral relations between Poland and Israel had been especially cordial and fruitful.”

Pankowski noted that Poland has made “significant progress in recognizing and researching the inconvenient truths about its own legacy of antisemitism” unlike other post-Communist countries in eastern Europe.

“In the wake of the new legislation, however, that progress has been seriously hampered and the findings of these historians, and even their patriotism, has been called into question,” he wrote.

He noted that while in recent years anti-Jewish discourse was mainly confined to extreme quarters, of late it has found a prominent place in the mainstream media, especially in state-controlled news outlets.

“The surge in radical nationalist discourse,” warns Dr. Pankowski, “reflects a deeper crisis of liberal, democratic, and humanistic values – in Poland and elsewhere in post-Communist Europe, as well as in the wider world.”

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Poland honors satirist who said Jews create antisemitism

Via Jerusalem Post:

A Polish satirist who in 2016 made anti-Semitic jokes on television and later accused Jews of fomenting hatred against themselves was awarded his country’s highest distinction for artists.

Ryszard Makowski, 62, was awarded the Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture on Thursday along with 20 others by Culture Minister Piotr Gliński in Warsaw, the w Polityce news website reported. Makowski won the bronze medal, the lowest of three categories in the distinction awarded annually to artists by the ministry.

“It is an expression of thanks by Poland for your creativity and for your commitment, for your talent – that is always augmented with work, perseverance, creative courage,” Gliński said in presenting the award.

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Germany: Jewish Professor Calls Police After Alleged Anti-Semitic Attack, Cops Beat Him Instead

Via Newsweek:

A visiting professor from an American university was allegedly thrown to the ground and beaten by police in Germany after being attacked by a civilian who asked him if he was Jewish.

Johns Hopkins Philosophy Professor Yitzhak Melamed gave a keynote lecture on Wednesday at the prestigious Bonn University after reportedly being punched by German police. The police were originally contacted to address a man in a park who Melamed said attempted to hurt him after the man asked if Melamed was Jewish.

Melamed was with Bonn University professor Dr. Lina Steiner at Bonn Hofgarten park when he says he was approached by a man who asked if he was Jewish and then identified himself as a Palestinian. In a Facebook post on Friday, Melamed said the man threw his kippah, a small head cover worn by Jewish men, to the ground multiple times before the man began to push him.

Melamed said he heard the civilian shout “no Jews in Germany” before the man walked circles in the park and attempted to hurt him. Melamed said police arrived 20 minutes after the initial call was placed. The attacker began to run away, at which point 50-year-old Melamed ran after him, to show officers the direction in which his attacker was headed.

Melamed said the attack that followed—police holding him down and hitting him “with a few dozen" punches—only stopped after he repeatedly attempted to shout in English that he was the wrong man, according to a report by the General Anzeiger.

Melamed said he was bleeding when he initially tried to file a complaint against the German police. The police, who said in a statement that the professor resisted arrest, also said Melamed initiated the incident by touching an officer’s hand.

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France: Are the Jews of France doomed?

Via The Algemeiner (Shmuley Boteach):

"For all the reports that we American and Israeli Jews read about growing French antisemitism, especially emanating from sectors of the Muslim community, and for all the reports of French Jews wanting to either make aliyah to Israel or emigrate to Canada, French Jewry is still thriving.  

What has changed is that it’s becoming more and more subterranean. Yes, you can still find large numbers of synagogues, kosher restaurants, and Jewish community centers. What you don’t see on the streets, however, is Jews. Or you see them, but you don’t necessarily know they are Jews. Overt, identifiable symbols of Jewishness — like a kippa, Magen David, or tzitzit — are disappearing from French streets and cities."

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Austria: State May Require Jews to Register to Buy Kosher Meat

Via Haaretz:

A regional politician in Austria defended a plan to limit access to kosher meat, conditioning its sale on permits that would be individually issued to observant Jews.

The Wiener Zeitung daily reported Tuesday about the draft decree in the state of Lower Austria, one of nine states that make up the federal Republic of Austria. Gottfried Waldhäusl, the cabinet minister in the state government of Lower Austria who is in charge of animal welfare and several other portfolios, defended the plan as necessary “from an animal welfare point of view.”

Oskar Deutsch, the president of the Jewish Community in Vienna, warned that, in practice, the plan would require compiling a list of Jews, which he called “like a negative Aryan clause,” referencing racist laws passed by Nazi Germany and implemented in Austria after its merger with Germany in 1938. 

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Germany: Group of men attacks German Jew wearing Israeli pin and kippa

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

A large group of men attacked a 17-year-old German Jew who wore an Israeli pin and kippah on Friday night in what the police believe was an antisemitic attack.  

Media in the German city of Dusseldorf reported that some 10 men of “North African or Mediterranean” appearance pushed the young Jewish man, causing painful injuries. The men also insulted the youth, whose name was not published in German media reports.  According to the police, the suspects are between the ages of 18 and 23.  

Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted in response to The Jerusalem Post story: “Those are not just separate and distinct events. It’s a pattern, a pattern of antisemitic attacks by Muslim migrants against the members of the Jewish community, just because they are Jewish. It is unacceptable anywhere, and doubly so in Germany.”  

Michael Szentei-Heise,the executive director of the Jewish community in Dusseldorf, told the WAZ daily newspaper that the attack showed, “For the safety of Jewish citizens in Germany it is catastrophic.”

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French Ambassador: Israel should protect Gaza border 'without killing'

Via The Jerusalem Post:

"There are extremely violent protests in France [as well]", said French ambassador to Israel Hélène Le Gal in an interview with Maariv when asked what would France do if it had to deal with similar security concerns as Israel does, "and yet nobody is killed."

The interview was published on Friday ahead of Bastille Day (July 14'th). Le Gal discussed the French position regarding the American peace program, Iran, and the strong relations France and Israel enjoy.

Yohann Taïeb (MondeJuif.org) replied that on October 26, 2014, Rémi Fraisse, a 21-year-old botanist, was killed by French police during violent protests against the construction of a dam at Sivens.

Columnist and blogger Véronique Chemla tweeted:

"These are not "protests" in the Gaza Strip: no banners, no flyers, etc. It's the pursuit of jihad with the intent to kill the Yahoud (Jews).

EU ambassador summoned for a reprimand for "interfering with Israeli legislation"

Via EJP:

"It is not enough that the EU finances NGOs that strive to undermine the State of Israel and finance illegal construction.it is now interfering with Israeli legislation. Apparently they do not understand that Israel is a sovereign state."

This was the wording of a press statement issued late Thursday by the Israeli Prime Minister Media Advisor informing that he has instructed the Foreign Ministry Director General to summon the EU Ambassador to Israel, Emanuele Giaufret, for a second reprimand and that "he also intends to take additional steps."

The diplomatic reprimand follows a report that the ambassador had lobbied members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to vote against a bill being advanced by the Likud-led coalition government to enshrine Israel’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

The European Union is pressuring Israel not to pass the law, claiming one of the clauses is "racist," and if passed would harm Israel’s international standing.

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Greece: Jewish cemetery memorial in Thessaloniki vandalized

Via Watch Antisemitism in Europe:

A monument on the campus of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University (AUT) which commemorates a Jewish cemetery destroyed by the Nazis was targeted by vandals on Tuesday, the second time in two weeks.

The perpetrators daubed blue paint and painted a cross on the monument.

“Today, unknown individuals vandalized the monument to the [old] Jewish cemetery on the university campus. We restored the monument and we condemn the unacceptable action,” the university said in a press release, adding that “the solution to religious fanaticism and bigotry” is education.

read more @ Against Antisemitism

Sweden: Caught between jihadists and neo-Nazis, Jews fear for their future

Via JTA (Cnaan Liphshiz):

When Carinne Sjoberg dissolved the Jewish Community of Umea in northern Sweden, she knew it would send shockwaves far beyond the small congregation that she had spent decades building.

The move in May owed to intimidation by neo-Nazis, making it the first time in decades that a Jewish organization in Western Europe acknowledged that it felt compelled to close shop over safety concerns.

Neo-Nazis from the Nordic Resistance Movement, beginning in 2016, pasted stickers with fascist imagery on Umea’s Jewish community center, “making the place look like after Kristallnacht,” Sjoberg said. The closure followed surveillance activity on the center by the neo-Nazis, who published details about individual visitors.

“I didn’t take it lightly,” Sjoberg, a 56-year-old Jewish mother of two, told JTA about the decision to close. “I hate giving neo-Nazis this victory. But I can’t bear the responsibility for people’s lives, not under such threats,” she said of her city’s Jewish community of 70 people.

The closure caused a national uproar. Amid intense media coverage in Sweden of the affair, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven mentioned it in a speech denouncing anti-democracy forces in his country.

But the indignation did little to change the fact that in Sweden, Muslim extremism and the far right are part of a broader set of challenges to Jewish communal life. So while the Jewish community of Stockholm may be growing, the problems are nonetheless causing some Swedish Jews to fear for their future as a minority here.

“We have a vibrant community in Stockholm but even here we face multiple threats, from Muslim extremism to far-right violence,” said Aron Verstandig, president of the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities — an umbrella group with approximately 6,000 members out of Sweden’s estimated 20,000 Jews.

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France: A double whammy for the Jews of France

Via JNS (Lyn Julius):

France does not want to admit that its terrorism problem has ideological roots. It prefers to blame economic grievances, despair or mental illness.

The sun may have been shining, but these are dark days for the Jews of France. They have sustained a double whammy.

The first is that the murderer of Sarah Halimi, who shouted “Allah Hu Akbar” as he tortured and hurled the Orthodox Jew to her death from her balcony in April 2015, may not even stand trial. Kobili Traore has been declared “mentally incapable” by a panel of psychiatrists. After months of foot-dragging by the judge, the panel has reversed the findings of an earlier evaluation, which had retained the charge of anti-Semitism as an “aggravating circumstance.”

The second blow delivered to the Jewish community concerns the shoddy treatment of French historian and director of the Paris Holocaust memorial Georges Bensoussan. Over the last three years, Bensoussan has been fighting charges of “Islamophobia” and incitement to hatred against Muslims. In a television debate, he had said that Arab anti-Semitism was endemic, quoting the words of an Algerian sociologist that “Arabs sucked in antisemitism with their mother’s milk.”

Thus far, Bensoussan has been acquitted in the French courts. But his reward has been to be unceremoniously dismissed from his job after 25 years of faithful service. His contract had still had two years to run, but the lock to his office was changed. When he was eventually allowed in to collect his possessions, a minder looked over his shoulder.

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Germay: Teens fire antisemitic insults at local rabbi

Via Algemeiner:

A Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in Offenbach, Germany, was the victim of a verbal assault on his way to synagogue this past weekend by a group of teenagers.

“They shouted, ‘sh**ty Jew’ and ‘Free Palestine’ and other things at me,” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Gurevitch wrote in a post on Facebook. The incident took place on Friday afternoon when Gurevitch, 39, was on his way to pray. He said he does not hide his Jewish identity, despite increasingly frequent antisemitic attacks in Europe.

“Usually, I ignore things like this, but this time I couldn’t, so I decided to try and talk to them. But the more I talked, the more they shouted at me,” he wrote.

This was not the first time that Gurevitch, director of Chabad Lubavitch of Offenbach am Main, has come under attack. Five years ago he was assaulted by a group of teens who started screaming antisemitic slurs at him. After that incident, a group of local residents organized a meeting with the assailants and they apologized.

“Offenbach is a good city, but antisemitism is becoming normalized and standard. I get ‘compliments’ like these often,” he told the local news site Hessenschau.

“My children don’t want to walk with me if I’m wearing a kippah,” he added, saying that his children hide their own kippahs under hats when they are outside, “because they’re scared.”

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France keeps blackening Israel and is the most dangerous country in Europe for Jews

Via Algemeiner (Manfred Gerstenfeld):

(…) When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Macron in Paris in April, the French president told him that the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem “led to people dying and did not advance peace.” With this transparently manipulative statement Macron showed his skills in distorting the truth in a few words. What provoked the violence was the terror organization Hamas’ initiative to send civilians to the border and mix terrorists among them. Among the more than 115 Gazans killed by Israel, more than half were confirmed terrorists. That many of those killed were terrorists was confirmed by Hamas itself.

France also supported an UN Security Council resolution which called for protective measures for Palestinians, but didn’t mention Hamas. Deputy Israeli Minister Michael Oren summarized it in a tweet: “Shame on France for supporting it. French government cannot say it’s against anti-Semitism and vote for this anti-Semitic resolution.”

During the violence in April, France urged Israel to show restraint and told Israel that it was its duty to protect civilians. Their spokesmen knew full well that Hamas had sent terrorists to mingle among the civilians and that many civilian demonstrators did not have peaceful intentions. This French behavior was in particular hypocritical because of the many deadly terrorist attacks by Arabs in their country. The most deadly took place in Paris in 2015 and resulted in 130 deaths. In 2016, 86 people were killed in Nice.

When the IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis spoke to French parliamentarians this month, he reminded them that along with other countries, French donations had helped Hamas to build terror capabilities.

French reactions to the Gaza violence have deep roots in Middle Eastern history. In 2008, David Pryce-Jones published his book, Betrayal: France, the Arabs and the Jews. He had access to the archives of the French Foreign Ministry, better known as the Quai d’Orsay. His conclusion can be summarized as: France throughout modern history has done more damage to the Middle East than any other country. (…)

There are other aspects which should be taken into account when judging the French blackening statements of Israel. France is the most dangerous country in Europe for Jews. Of the fifteen Jews killed for ideological reasons in Europe — of which the perpetrators, all Muslims, are known — twelve were murdered in France in six different attacks. The two mass attacks by violent Muslims on synagogues in the EU were both carried out in France, in Paris and Sarcelles. [Also,  Frenchman Mehdi Nemmouche perpetrated an attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014, which left four dead.]

Frequently exposing the ongoing French hypocritical blackening of Israel is unlikely to stop it, but it may make it less worthwhile for the country’s official perpetrators.

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Switzerland: Knife-wielding man attacks Jewish family in Zurich

Via Arutz Sheva:

An Orthodox Jewish family was attacked by a man carrying a knife in Zurich, Switzerland over the weekend, local news outlets have reported.  

According to a report by the Zurich-based Blick newspaper, the incident occurred Saturday evening in Zurich’s 3rd district, when a man carrying a knife lunged at an Orthodox Jewish family. When his would-be victims fled, the attacker chased after them, hurling anti-Semitic curses as he pursued them.

The attacker was later arrested and transferred for questioning, Zurich police said.

A report by LOOK claimed that the incident began in a playground, when the attacker began staring at a group of children.

When the children’s father, approached the man and asked if he needed any help, the “guy reacted very aggressively and stood up in front of me,” the father said.

“I didn’t want any trouble, so I took my kids and left.”

The Jewish man and his family returned home, believing that was the end of the matter.

When they stepped out half an hour later, however, to go to synagogue, the man was waiting for them, carrying a knife.

The family attempted to quickly walk away from the man carrying the knife, but the attacker “suddenly started sprinting towards us,” the father said.

A passerby, who is also a member of the local Jewish community, later managed to subdue the attacker until police came.

The assailant has been identified as a “local man”, who police say is neither a radical Muslim nor a known member of any neo-Nazi movement.

Police held the suspect overnight, but freed him on Sunday.

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Germany: Police arrested 10 people over alleged anti-Semitic attack in Berlin

Via The Times of Israel:

German police arrested 10 people Sunday over an alleged anti-Semitic attack in a Berlin park.

The group, aged between 15 and 25, including three women, were detained following the assault in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Police did not give the names or nationalities of the suspects or the victim, but German daily Welt reported that all involved are Syrians.

Police said the victim had approached the group in a park to borrow a lighter, but his cigarette was snatched away.

The 25-year-old was wearing a chain with a Star of David, which police said was ripped from the victim’s neck by one of the men, while spewing “anti-Semitic insults.”  

The attacker allegedly repeatedly punched the victim in the face, before fleeing. The victim was treated in a hospital after suffering cuts to the head.

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Iceland: What do Icelanders really think about Israel? (video)

Via Rudy Rochman:

On the way to Iceland, I was told that many Icelanders were against Israel and that their media had been feeding them lies for years. I was also told that they had recently started a petition to boycott the Eurovision competition in Israel next year. 

Rudy Rochman Facebook

France: Court sentences 'ignorant' anti-Semitic attackers

Via DW:

The sentencing in France of three men for an anti-Semitic rape-robbery in Paris in 2014 has revived concerns within the Jewish community. The men's defense lawyer claimed they were not anti-Semitic but ignorant.

The court gave the three men sentences of eight, 13 and 16 years for the crime they carried out in the Creteil suburb of Paris in 2014.

A 22-year-old who made comments including "for my brothers in Palestine," and suggesting they should "gas" their victims during the attack, before destroying all the Jewish images in the apartment, is still on the run. He was sentenced in absentia.

The 26-year-old and 23-year-old co-accused were in court for the sentencing. They have already been detained for four years.

Defense lawyer Marie Dose told the court in Val-de-Marne, southeast of the French capital on Friday: "They are not anti-Semitic, they are ignorant. They are swimming in gross stupidity."

Prosecutors said there was no doubt the victims had been chosen because the attackers believed them to be Jewish.

...

Prosecuting counsel commented during the hearing: "To say that 'Jews have money' is a prejudice, but it is not criminal. You have to fight it by going to schools. But racial prejudice, this human imbecility, becomes a prejudiced act when it is used to target its victims."

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Germany: 10 arrested after man is punched in alleged anti-Semitic attack

Via Times of Israel:

German police arrested 10 people Sunday over an alleged anti-Semitic attack in a Berlin park.

The group, aged between 15 and 25, including three women, were detained following the assault in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Police did not give the names or nationalities of the suspects or the victim, but German daily Welt reported that all involved are Syrians.

Police said the victim had approached the group in a park to borrow a lighter, but his cigarette was snatched away.

The 25-year-old was wearing a chain with a Star of David, which police said was ripped from the victim’s neck by one of the men, while spewing “anti-Semitic insults.”

The attacker allegedly repeatedly punched the victim in the face, before fleeing.

The victim was treated in a hospital after suffering cuts to the head.

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UK: The weird Israel hatred world of Claudia Webbe

Via Harry's Place:

Claudia Webbe’s elevation to chair of the Labour party’s disputes panel is causing controversy. No wonder:

But she stood by her decision to write a letter to the Guardian in defence of the former London Mayor in 2006 after he was suspended from the party for four weeks over his encounter with Mr Finegold.

Ms Webbe worked as an adviser to Mr Livingstone in 2000 and 2004 and, in the Guardian letter, said his suspension “smacked in the face of true democracy”.

“His history of work in the anti-racist movement is unquestionable,” she wrote in the letter.

Oliver Finegold is the Jewish journalist Livingstone compared to a “concentration camp guard” in 2005.

What a fine anti-racist, eh. Keep in mind that Livingstone had already earned notoriety in 2004 by inviting Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the hate preacher extraordinaire, to London. Al-Qaradawi duly told BBC Newsnight that he fully supported suicide bombing attacks on Israeli civilians. Jewish community leaders protested about the visit at the time.

Webbe went on to become an Islington Labour councillor. For a revealing look at her weird Islington world, try a Gaza meeting she chaired at the Finsbury Park Mosque in August 2014.

A tape of the meeting is available on YouTube. Webbe praises and identifies with the crowd, opening the meeting with this line: “This is a true unity meeting. This is about all of us.”

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Holland: Jewish community remains an important target for terrorists

Via Bad News from the Netherlands:

The annual report of the BLEW advisory body for the security of the Dutch Jewish community says that the Dutch Jewish community remains an important target for terrorists. Jews get much attention in jihadi propaganda. The worldwide increase in antisemitism also proves that Jews are threatened. BLEW concludes that it is of great importance to maintain existing security measures. The organization is unhappy with the decision to remove a number of police posts from Jewish institutions. 

read more (in Dutch) @ CIDI

Holland: Swastikas daubed on wall of Jewish cemetery in Amsterdam

Via European Jewish Press:

The outer wall of a Jewish cemetery in Amsterdam was daubed with swastikas last Saturday. Dutch police reported that a suspect has been arrested.

In addition to the swastika, letters were found on the wall. For the time being, it is unknown what these should mean. As soon as the daubing was noticed, the graffiti was removed. Nothing is known yet about the motive of the perpetrator.

The Zeeburg cemetery is the final resting place where some 80 percent of the Amsterdam Jews were buried between 1714 and 1914. Some 100,000 people are believed to be buried, making it the largest Jewish cemetery in the Netherlands.

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Ireland: Israel slams ‘immoral’ bill banning trade with settlements

Via The Times of Israel:

Israel on Wednesday slammed an Irish bill that would outlaw the sale and import of settlement-produced goods, saying it was “immoral” and encourages terrorism.

“The Embassy of Israel is concerned by bills that further the divisions between Israel and the Palestinians. Legislation, which promotes a boycott of any kind, should be rejected as it does nothing to achieve peace but rather empowers the Hamas terrorists as well as those Palestinians who refuse to come to the negotiating table,” Israel’s mission in Dublin said in a press release. (…)

The government in Dublin — known to be one of the most pro-Palestinian governments in Europe — is opposed to the law, arguing that it is not legally entitled to curtail trade with Israeli companies based in the settlements.

“The Irish Government has always condemned construction of illegal settlement,” Foreign Ministry Simon Coveney tweeted on Tuesday. “But this Bill asks Irish govt to do something it is not legally empowered to do — trade is an EU competence, not an Irish one. FF [Fianna Fáil — The Republican Party] knows this — so this move is both opportunist and irresponsible.”

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UK: Bigoted columnist: Jews ‘Poisoning the wells’

Via Honest Reporting:

Update:

Shortly following our complaint, the Daily Mail has made a shocking edit to Peter Oborne’s article, adding the words “according to a number of respectable sources” to justify the blatantly antisemitic allegation promoted by Oborne. The Daily Mail’s reaction is almost as sickening as Oborne’s original offense.

Original article:

The official visit of future British monarch, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, to Israel has, so far, been a very positive event. It’s disappointing then to see British journalist and commentator Peter Oborne using this opportunity to write a nasty anti-Israel piece in the Daily Mail.

It’s disgusting, however to see Oborne spreading blatant antisemitism:

Yes, you read that correctly – Oborne is charging Israeli settlers with poisoning Palestinian wells, which he claims to have personally witnessed.

Jews poisoning the wells is a classic antisemitic canard that dates back to Medieval European times when Jews were accused of being responsible for spreading disease such as the Black Death. This in turn led to massacres of Jewish communities. (…)  

Oborne makes this antisemitic claim only a few years after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas retracted the very same charge made in a June 23, 2016 speech to the European Parliament.

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UK: Court forces apology from Israeli-born antisemitic activist for libeling of Jewish campaigner

Via The Algemeiner:

One of Britain’s most vocal antisemites was handed a humiliating court defeat in London on Monday.

Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli-born jazz musician and conspiracy theorist who refers to himself as a “former Jew,” was forced to deliver an apology in the High Court to Gideon Falter, the chairman of the UK’s Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). Atzmon will also have to pay undisclosed costs in legal fees and damages that the CAA described as “substantial.”

The CAA sued Atzmon for libel over an article he published in July 2017 entitled “Antisemitism is a Business Plan.” In the piece, Atzmon falsely claimed that “Falter and the CAA obviously fabricate antisemitic incidents” and that “Falter and the CAA need the Jews to be hated so they can collect more and more British taxpayer money.”

Unable to substantiate these and other charges against the CAA as summarized by High Court Justice Matthew Nicklin, Atzmon capitulated. Falter said afterward in a statement that he was “delighted” to have “been able to set the record straight and expose one such antisemitic liar for what he truly is.”

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Greece: Holocaust memorial in Thessaloniki vandalized

Via Ekathimerini:

Vandals threw black paint on the Holocaust Memorial in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, on Wednesday night, bespoiling the bronze sculpture that depicts a menorah with human bodies intertwined into its flames.

Authorities believe that the vandals may have been participants in a rally held earlier outside the Macedonia-Thrace Ministry to protest the name deal signed between Athens and Skopje.

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Ukraine: Jews want to drown Ukraine in blood, Ukraine's Military Prosecutor says

Via Newsweek:

In an extensive interview with the Ukrainian news outlet Insider, Anatoliy Matios, Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor, espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in which he implied that Jews want to drown ethnic Slavs in blood.

Referring to Alexander Parvus, a Belarussian-born Marxist theoretician who was active in Germany’s Social Democratic Party in the late 19th century, and who also happened to be Jewish, Matios claimed that Jews can be found financing all great conflicts.

“In each war, there is always a Parvus, who brought Lenin money for a revolution which flooded Slavs with blood for decades. Parvus was also Jewish. In this case, they want to do the same to Ukraine,” Matios told the Insider.

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Germany: JFK School latest site of anti-Semitic bullying in Berlin

Via Handelsblatt Global:

Just days after a Berlin court sentenced a man for an anti-Semitic attack, Berlin’s prestigious John F. Kennedy School acknowledged that a student had been the victim of months of anti-Semitic bullying.

School officials are still unclear of the scope of the bullying, but a newspaper report said students had put swastika stickers on the Jewish ninth-grader’s backpack, made remarks about trains to Auschwitz and blew smoke in his face, saying it should remind him of the fate of his forefathers.

“There wasn’t enough effort in the beginning to rectify the situation,” Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, told Tagesspiegel, a sister publication of Handelsblatt Global. Ms. Berger had been in touch with the school administration for weeks and said the complaints were originally dismissed as juvenile pranks. She first contacted the school by letter on June 12 but has yet to receive a reply.

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Hungarian Jews see anti-Semitism as a serious problem, survey finds

Via Times of Israel:

Two-thirds of Hungarian Jews believe anti-Semitism is a serious problem in their country, according to a new survey, though fewer than half say they have experienced it firsthand.

The survey, which the prominent sociologists András Kovács and Ildikó Barna conducted in 2017 through face-to-face interviews with 1,879 Jewish adults, was published Thursday at a news conference in Budapest. It is a follow-up to a 1999 survey of Hungarian Jews that asked about perceptions on a range of topics.

On anti-Semitism, 48 percent of the respondents said they heard anti-Semitic rhetoric on the street in the year preceding the survey, down from 75% in 1999. The number of respondents who said they had experienced at least three instances of anti-Semitism was 6%, compared to 16% in 1999.
 

However, asked to quantify the extent of anti-Semitism in Hungary, 55% of the respondents said it was “great” and another 10% said it was “very great.”

“In 2017, the situation was perceived as much worse than it had been perceived in 1999,” the authors of the survey wrote.

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France: Prosecutors announce investigation into anti-Semitic mosque sermon

Via Times of Israel:

Public prosecutors in the French city of Toulouse announced Friday they are opening an investigation into a senior Muslim cleric who recited anti-Semitic religious passages and predicted Israel’s destruction in a sermon.

Mohamed Tatai, the imam of the newly inaugurated Grand Mosque of Toulouse and the leader of an interfaith dialogue group, is to be investigated for “possible incitement to hatred.”

On December 15 Tatai recited a Muslim text, called a Hadith, stating that on Judgment Day, the Muslims will kill the Jews.

The Prophet Muhammad “told us about the final and decisive battle: ‘Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him – except for the Gharqad tree, which is one of the trees of the Jews,’” he said.

He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “afraid that Israel would not live longer than 76 years – as is written in the prophecies.” He then said that an Israeli journalist, whom he did not name, said the 2016 funeral of the late president Shimon Peres was “the funeral of Israel.”

The video of the Arabic-language sermon was posted in December on the YouTube channel of the Grand Mosque of Toulouse. The Middle East Media Research Institute translated the video and posted it on its website.

As part of the French investigation, the translation will be checked for accuracy before prosecutors determine if a crime was committed.

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Holland: Muslim political activist wishes cancer on ‘filthy Jews’ at pro-Israel paper

Via JTA:

A former staffer at a Muslim political party in the Netherlands sent an email to a newspaper that was attacked this week saying “May you get cancer, you filthy, far-right cancer Jews.”

Hussein Jamakovic, who worked for the Denk Muslim party, which Dutch Jews allege is anti-Semitic, wrote the message to Telegraaf, the country’s largest-circulation daily, as well as three other news organizations.

The message came amid elevated concern in the Netherlands for the safety of journalists following the attack Tuesday on Telegraaf, when a van drove into the newspaper’s entrance in Amsterdam. Police do not have any suspects in custody.

Telegraaf is seen to have a center-right editorial line. The pro-Israel publication features an activist and a hostile attitude toward radical Islam. It also covers organized crime regularly and thoroughly.

Jamakovic’s message was over reports of his alleged expressions of sympathy for the Islamic State terrorist group. He also sent the email to the DDS, WNL and GeenStijl news sites.

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