Pages

Sunday, December 16, 2018

Greece: Holocaust Memorial in Thessaloniki sprayed with Swastika



Via Ekathimerini:
Unknown assailants spray-painted a black Swastika on the Holocaust Memorial on the northern port city of Thessaloniki's Eleftherias Square late on Friday or in the early hours of Saturday.

The assailants are believed to have been part of a rally held earlier on Friday by protesters opposed to the name deal Greece signed over the summer with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Local website Voria published photographs of demonstrators in that rally giving the Nazi salute.
read more

UK: Labour suspends Mohammed Yasin, who blamed ‘all wars in the world’ on Jewish people

The man shared antisemitic posts for more than two years, and the Labour party had no idea. What does that say about their rank-and-file?

Via Times:
A senior Labour Party official shared anti-semitic material blaming Jews for “all the wars in the world”.

Labour’s West Midlands regional organiser, Mohammed Yasin, was suspended last night after The Sunday Times approached the party with a dossier of his activity on social media. Labour has launched an investigation.

For more than two years Yasin, not to be confused with the Labour MP with a similar name, shared anti-semitic posts and 9/11 conspiracy theories, praised a homophobic preacher and described his former leader Tony Blair as a “child-killer”.

read more

Friday, December 14, 2018

France: Jewish cemetery near Strasbourg defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti


Via Times of Israel:
Several tombstones were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti at a Jewish cemetery near the French city of Strasbourg.

The incident was discovered Tuesday in Herrlisheim, a northern suburb, the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities said in a statement. “CRIF = ZOG” and the digits 88 were written on the tombstones. ZOG stands for “Zionist occupation government,” and the number is code for Adolf Hitler.

It’s the fourth time in two months that graffiti featuring far-right anti-Semitic rhetoric has been discovered at sites linked to Jews in the eastern Alsace region. In two incidents, Jewish mayors were the targets.
read more

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Italy: Outrage after plaques honoring Rome's deported Jews stolen


Via Ynet News:
Rome’s mayor, Catholic groups and politicians of every stripe joined Italy’s Jewish community this week in denouncing the theft of 20 small bronze plaques honoring a Jewish family deported during the Holocaust.

The plaques, affixed to the cobblestones in front of the Di Consiglio family home in the Monti neighborhood of downtown Rome, were taken overnight. A gaping hole in the cobblestones was all that remained Monday.

The organization responsible for laying the plaques, “Art in Memory,” reported the theft. In July, the same group reported receiving a threatening letter featuring a photo of Adolf Hitler.

read more

France: Tax protests often feature anti-Semitic rhetoric

Via JTA:
Protests in France over taxes are giving rise to anti-Semitic rhetoric, a prominent watchdog group said.

The head of the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Antisemitism, or BNVCA, Sammy Ghozlan, said Wednesday that “the ‘Yellow Jackets’ movement has an anti-Semitic base that repeats conspiracy theories about Jews and power.”

Launched last month as a protest against a proposed rise in diesel and fuel taxes, the movement has expanded into an anti-government drive featuring violent riots that have shut down the French capital several times. Some protesters have been filmed carrying signs and chanting slogans describing French President Emmanuel Macron as a “whore of the Jews” and their “puppet.”

Such language “was present from the very beginning of the protests and persists,” Ghozlan said, although he added that it exists “on the margins” of the protests. France has seen a 69 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2018 over the past year.

read more

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

UK: Life imitates art as play about antisemitism faces wave of abuse

Via Guardian:
A new play about rising antisemitism that opens in a London theatre this week has become the target of antisemitic abuse. One Jewish Boy by Stephen Laughton focuses on the relationship between a Jewish man and a mixed-race, non-Jewish woman, their experiences of hatred and abuse, and the impact on their marriage. “It’s about big themes on a domestic level,” Laughton said.

Since publicity for the play was launched in September, Laughton has been targeted with abuse on social media, and posters for the production have been defaced and torn down. Palestinian flags were posted online in response to mentions of the play.

Among the comments were: “Who cares about Jews? This looks shit”; “I must say I do not give a fuck. Perhaps you could write a play about Palestinian kids getting blown to pieces by Jews”; and “You’re a fucking enabler. You Jews disgust me”.

Laughton said he was saddened by the responses. “I expected something, but I didn’t anticipate they’d come for me. I’m worried there’ll be more antisemitism when the play opens, and I’m worried it could become physical.” The Community Security Trust, which protects and defends British Jews, had been consulted.

Laughton said he had wanted to write about antisemitism for some time as he had watched friends – mostly liberal Jews who are critical of the Israeli government’s policies – become more fearful about rising tensions and overt abuse.

“The play has been written from a place of tangible fear. Things that were on the fringes of the far right and the far left started creeping in to the mainstream.

“In the last few years it seems like people feel they have permission to be antisemitic,” he said. “You see it in our politics, on our social media, with our kids getting beaten up on the streets. I wanted to chart that.”

(...)

Laughton said his Jewish identity was of central importance to him. He belongs to Liberal Judaism, a small, radical denomination, and is “historically a Labour party supporter”. He described himself as a “romantic Zionist” with an attachment to the Jewish homeland but is highly critical of blockades and settlements. At the end of each performance during the play’s four-week run, collections will be taken for Medical Aid for Palestinians, a charity that delivers healthcare for those affected by the conflict, and Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli organisation that focuses on settlements and human rights violations.

The closing night of the show will be followed by a vigil for peace, incorporating a Havdalah service marking the end of Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath, and a recitation of Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.

read more

Unprecedented EU Poll Finds 90% Of European Jews Feel Anti-Semitism Increasing

Via Jewish Week:
Nearly 90 percent of European Jews feel that anti-Semitism has increased in their home countries over the past five years, and almost 30% say they have been harassed at least once in the past year, reveals a major European Union report published on Monday.

The poll was carried out in 12 European Union member states, and was the largest ever of its kind worldwide.

Of the more than 16,000 Jews who participated in the online survey, 85% rated anti-Semitism the biggest social or political problem in the country where they live. Thirty-eight percent said they had considered emigrating because they did not feel safe as Jews.

Britain, Germany, and Sweden saw the sharpest increases in those saying anti-Semitism is a “very big” or “fairly big” problem. The highest level recorded was in France at 95%. Denmark saw the lowest level at 56%, while Jews in Hungary suggested that anti-Semitism was becoming less of a problem. 

read more

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

What does anti-Semitism look like in Europe in 2018?

Via CNN:
It's a 17-year-old boy, too frightened to wear a kippa (a religious skullcap) on the streets of Paris. It's an Israeli restaurant owner in Berlin who is told that he will end up in the gas chambers. It's a 24-year-old Austrian who knows nothing about the Holocaust. It's the armed guards outside synagogues and Jewish schools across much of Europe. It's the online chat rooms where people peddle conspiracy theories that Jewish "globalists" run the world.
 
It can be violent or subtle. Overt or insidious. Political or personal. It can come from the right or the left. It exists in countries that have large Jewish populations, like France, and it also flourishes in places with smaller Jewish communities, like Poland.

More than a quarter of Europeans surveyed believe Jews have too much influence in business and finance. One in five say they have too much influence in media and politics. In individual countries the numbers are often higher: 42% of Hungarians think Jews have too much influence in finance and business across the world.

While 44% of Europeans agree that anti-Semitism is a growing problem, a substantial minority is unsympathetic to the problem. Almost one in five (18%) agree that most anti-Semitism in their country is a response to the "everyday behavior of Jewish people." In Poland, 50% of people think that Jews use the Holocaust to advance their position; 19% of Hungarians admit to having an unfavorable impression of Jews altogether.

So why is anti-Semitism a growing phenomenon once again? Poland's Chief Rabbi, Brooklyn-born Michael Schudrich, is not sure the problem ever really went away.

"There will always be people who had anti-Semitic feelings and I don't know if the number has grown but this new situation today is they feel that it's more acceptable socially that they can express these opinions out loud...

"The feeling beforehand was, 'This is what I believe but don't tell anyone.' It was not perfect but at least there was a social taboo against anti-Semitism."


read more

Hungary: Jobbik Deputy Leader to Step Down After Anti-Semitic Recording Surfaces


Via Hungary Today:
Jobbik deputy group leader and parliamentary notary István Szávay announced his immediate resignation on Thursday following the release of recordings containing anti-Semitic comments and details of an alleged assault.

On Wednesday, Hir TV presented a sound recording of Szávay privately informing fellow party members at a spring congress that he had verbally and physically assaulted a Jewish woman in a pub the previous day. According to Szávay, the woman initiated the conflict:

“She was yelling, ‘Nazis are stinking here,’ and I just knocked her out, dirty Jew, pakk, just like this.”

He admitted that the recording and the anti-Semitic comments were authentic, however, he insisted that he did not actually physically harm the woman.

In a message posted to his Facebook page on Thursday, Szávay said he informed group leader Márton Gyöngyösi about his resignation, which was accepted, and announced that he will remain a member of the Parliament.
read more

Monday, December 3, 2018

Switzerland: Synagogue in Basel vandalized


Via JTA:
A Chabad Lubavitch synagogue in Basel, Switzerland was vandalized.

A window of the synagogue was smashed in with a hammer, the BZ Basel news website reported.

The damage was discovered on Saturday morning as worshippers gathered for the Shabbat morning service.

“I’ve been living in Basel for 16 years. It’s the first time that I have been worried about myself and my family,” Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski of Chabad Lubavitch told BZ Basel.

There currently are no suspects in the incident, the Basel public prosecutor’s office told the news website.

The incident comes after a kosher butcher shop in Basel was vandalized four times in one month in what local Jews have condemned as an anti-Semitic campaign of intimidation.

read more

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Poland: Will they „hang a Jew” under the Israeli embasy? Police prepares for Saturday


Translated from Gazeta Wyborcza (many thanks!):

"You know me, it’s going down. I promise I’ll put up a scaffold under the Israeli embassy and I’ll hang a Jew from it” -- this is how Slawomir Dul announces his Saturday demonstration. Our reader calls for action to the ABW [Agency of Internal Security] and the police.

„I’ve been trying to get several forces to notice these men, but they don’t seem to be interested in any kind of intervention. It’s even more puzzling to me since what I have found out about the man who started in the past local election as a candidate for a member of the [city district] council is  shocking. He also invited a man who called for people to join him in „hanging an effigy of a Jew” under the embassy of Israel to appear on his Youtube channel - says Piotr [the name has been changed], our informer.

Candidate for [Warsaw] city district council: „Ukraine needs to be partitioned”

The man who has been accused by our reader is Damian Bieńko, ran in [the last month’s] election for the council of the Praga-Południe district of Warsaw as the No. 1 candidate on the ballot from the Wolność [Freedom] party of Janusz Korwin-Mikke [note: it is a far-right, eurosceptical party, openly anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, anti-women’s rights, racist and often also antisemitic party, the leader is currently an MEP]. He was the head of the Narodowa Wolna Polska organization [National/Nationalist Free Poland] - one of the smallest nationalist organisations, which is notable for its sympathy towards Russia and the Donbas separatists. „Ukraine needs to be partitioned. so that its territories will return to the rightful owners - Donbas to Russia, Lviv to Poland, Carpathian Ruthenia to Hungary”, says Bieńko in his online recordings. Currently, he runs a Youtube channel called TWN Telewizja Wolności Narodu [Television of Freedom of the Nation].

On 22nd of November, his guest was Sławomir Dul, a member of Confederacy of Parents. The man has announced a demonstration under the embassy, which is to include a „hanging of an effigy of a Jew”.

Dul has been previously noted for a long court struggle during which he attempted to regain the custody of his children [he held a hunger strike in Piotrkow Trybunalski after having the visitation rights revoked], as well as burning an effigy of Jaroslaw Kaczynski [the leader of the ruling right-wing party] in 2016. It was a way of manifesting his support for Piotr Rybak, who has been sentenced to 10 months of inprisonment after burning an effigy of a Jew in Wroclaw. Dul has said of the judge who sentenced Rybak: „he should be put against a wall and executed by a firing squad.”

In the TWN show, Dul has announced his plans to organise a march from the Ukrainian embassy to the Israeli embassy on December 1st at 12 PM. He invites all the Polish people to join, „from the left and the right alike” - "You know me, it’s going down. I promise I’ll put up a scaffold under the Israeli embassy and I’ll hang a Jew from it,” he says.

Bieńko joins him - „I also invite you. Even if you don’t agree, come, watch the show, maybe you’ll join the troupe.”

KSP: We aren’t downplaying the issue

Our informer has contacted the KSP [Police Headquarter in Warsaw], including the protection of diplomatic posts division, the anti-terrorist division and the homicide division. „The video remains on YouTube though. They aren’t doing anything. I demand blocking it and looking into those people. I’m ashamed that this is going on in Poland,” Piotr says angrily.

Warrant officer Mariusz Mrozek from the Warsaw Police Headquarter assures that the case is known to the police, and that the emails have been noted. „Maybe your informer hasn’t received a response, but we are treating the matter seriously. We are in touch with the city hall. The Office of Security and Crisis Management has informed its Ochota district cell, as this is where the embassy of Israel is located.”

As officer Mrozek says, Dul has attempted to register his demonstration [at the city hall], but the city didn’t approve it, partly because of his YouTube annoucement. Dul has appealed.

„According to the informations I received, the city sent a set of documents to the Ochota district's court, as well as the prosecutor’s office. Still, no matter what the decision will be, we are aware of the fact that some people break the bans. Therefore we are preparing ourselves for everything that might happen on Saturday. We are not downplaying the issue,” adds officer Mrozek.

Friday, November 30, 2018

UK: Antisemitic, racist and other discriminatory abuse rise in football for sixth straight year

Via Telegraph:
Reports of antisemitic, racist and other discriminatory abuse within English football have risen for the sixth year in a row, according to the latest figures from Kick It Out.

Football's equality and inclusion organisation has revealed there were a total of 520 reports of abuse last season, up 11 per cent from 469 in 2016/17, with racist abuse accounting for more than half of the cases.

One in 10 reports of abuse concerned antisemitism, while reports of disability discrimination more than doubled from 14 to 29.

The statistics are compiled from all levels of the game and include reports of abuse on social media.
read more

Germany: Israeli reporter attacked in Berlin ‘for speaking Hebrew’


Via Times of Israel:
An Israeli journalist was recently attacked in Berlin while trying to film a report, with video capturing a group of men harassing her and then apparently attacking her with a firecracker.

Antonia Yamin claimed the attack occurred because she spoke Hebrew, with several men throwing a firecracker at her and at her cameraman, while trying to film a report.

A video of the incident was published Sunday on Twitter by Yamin, Europe correspondent for Israel’s public broadcaster Kan.

(...)

German daily Bild reported that the assailants were immigrants.

Yamin later tweeted that she had been asked by police to give a statement but shied from labeling the attack as anti-Semitic.

Speaking to Bild, Yamin suggested she was targeted because she was speaking Hebrew and had Hebrew writing on her microphone, although she said she did not know definitively if that was the reason for the attack.

read more

Thursday, November 29, 2018

UK: Racist who gave Nazi salutes and shouted 'child killers' during anti-Semitism rally is jailed for six months


Via Daily Mail:

A racist who gave Nazi salutes during an anti-Semitism rally then tried to claim it was 'freedom of speech' has been jailed.

Catering assistant Joseph Brogan, 27, shouted 'child killers' and 'you people should live in Israel' as hundreds of people, including MPs and rabbis, took part in a march.

As marshals at the rally in Manchester intervened, Brogan continued to hurl profanities and then raised his arm to mimic the Nazi salute before he was arrested.

One of the abused security staff later revealed members of his family had perished in the Holocaust.

Brogan, from Openshaw in Manchester admitted racially aggravated threatening behaviour but later tried to claim he was giving his opinion on 'Zionism'.

read more

Netherlands: 43% of Jews say they hide their ethnic identity



Via Times of Israel:
Nearly half of 557 respondents in a survey of Dutch Jews said they were afraid of identifying as such.

Of the respondents, 43 percent said they take active steps to hide their Jewish identity, such as wear a hat over their kippah or hide Star of David pendants.

Many respondents cited their perception of a rise in the prevalence of anti-Semitic sentiment, with 48% saying they avoid situations where they suspect they may be exposed to anti-Semitic reactions.

The results of the survey were published Monday.

Other key findings were that 52% of respondents said anti-Semitism on the street has become more common, 59% said it extends also to media and 82% see it rising online.

When it came to experiencing anti-Semitism, 34% said they had experienced racially offensive remarks directed against them, and of those, 89% said that those remarks were connected to Israel. 11% of respondents said they had experienced anti-Semitic violence directed against them.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they heard anti-Semitic jokes, featuring stereotypes about Jews. Other jokes involved the Holocaust. One respondent said a neighbor once told him that the only reason the respondent is living in the Netherlands is “because they forgot to gas” his family.

read more

Germany: 'The word Jew was not a common insult when I went to school...it is now.'


Via CNN:

Rachel always thought it was best to hide her religion from her high school students. The trouble started a few years ago when she let slip to a student that she was Jewish.

"I found swastikas scribbled in their textbooks, they drew penises around my name on the blackboard, and they'd yell like 'Hey, Jew' at me during class," said Rachel, a teacher in Berlin. "It became harder... to do my job."

Rachel, whose name has been changed because of safety concerns, went to her headmaster, and then to the police, but she said neither took her complaint seriously and would not intervene.

She said things got worse. The students saw Israel as a menace, an oppressor of the Palestinian people and viewed her as a stand-in for the Jewish state, she said. They took out their frustration by screaming anti-Semitic slurs at her.

Last year, she decided to switch schools for her own safety. She has not told her new students she's Jewish.

In a country still haunted by the Holocaust, anti-Semitic incidents in the classroom offer clear evidence that deep wounds haven't healed. Some Jewish teachers and students say they are caught between a surge of traditional right-wing anti-Semitism and threats from Muslim immigrants angry at Israel.

Unsure of how to deal with anti-Semitism in the classroom, Jewish teachers very often keep incidents to themselves to avoid tipping off their own religious identity, according to Marina Chernivsky, the head of the Berlin-based organization Kompetenz Zentrum für Pravention und Empowerment (or Competence Center for Prevention and Empowerment), which provides counseling to individual and institutions after anti-Semitic and discriminatory incidents.

She recently held a workshop to help Jewish teachers deal with anti-Semitism in their classrooms. Around 20 Jewish teachers attended the session; Chernivsky said it was the first time many of them opened up about the problem.

"It's not normal to be Jewish in Germany so anti-Semitism is not normal to talk about," Chernivsky said. "It's very taboo."

It took history and politics teacher Michal Schwartze years to reveal her religion to her students.

The Frankfurt based 42-year-old said she didn't feel comfortable teaching about the Holocaust, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or anti-Semitism in Europe without being transparent with her students.

"I don't say hey I am Jewish, but I make it clear that I am personally affected," said Schwartze.

A few years ago, Schwartze penned an article in her school's newspaper encouraging students to stop using the word "Jew" as a slur. She said she took a risk writing the piece, but it raised awareness around anti-Semitism at her school.

"Fortunately, I have colleagues who are sensitive and a headmaster who has an interest in preventing anti-Semitism," says Schwartze. She cautioned that Jewish teachers who don't have similar support need to "hide their identity."
read more

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

UK: Company apologises to Jewish residents for telling them to take down their mezuzot

Via Jewish Chronicle:
A management company has apologised to its Jewish residents for threatening to take their mezuzot down if they did not remove it themselves.

Warwick Estates said on Monday it was sorry for the "overzealous" letter to residents of Cedarwood Court, near Stamford Hill, which said hanging mezuzot on front doors breached the terms of the residents' leases and they could be billed if they did not take them down.

The letter was sent last week, saying hanging objects outside their homes was against the terms of their leases. It specifically singled out the mezuzah, the rolled-up scroll of parchment Jewish families customarily hang on their front doors.

One residentsaid she had never seen anyone complain about the mezuzot in 10 years living in the area and the mayor of Hackney said he would intervene.

On Monday, the company backtracked, a day after the JC reported the letter and the anger it had caused locally. 

read more

UK: Labour AM 'deeply sorry' over comments on Cardiff's Jewish community

Via Wales Online:
Cardiff Central Labour AM Jenny Rathbone is facing a call for her to resign or be expelled in the wake of controversial reported comments about Jews and anti-Semitism.

She will meet with a local rabbi to apologise and will refer herself for “equalities training”.

The Jewish Chronicle released a recording in which she appears to link anti-Semitism to Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories and argue that Jews in this country have a responsibility to promote peace.

In the recording, she is told that a synagogue in the Cyncoed area of Cardiff has had to “install bulletproof glass” but she suggests that “siege mentalities are also a part of this”

The AM compares the Welsh synagogue to a “fortress” and says it is hard for her to judge “how much of it is for real and how much of it is in their own heads”.

Her comments, made in 2017, have triggered alarm among Jewish groups and a call for her to quit.

read more

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Jewish leaders call for new editions of the Bible and the Koran to carry trigger warnings highlighting anti-Semitic passages


Via Daily Mail:
Jewish leaders are calling for new editions of the Bible and Koran to carry warning messages which highlight anti-Semitic passages in the holy texts.

The recommendations have been made in a new document called ‘An End to Antisemitism! A Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism’.

It was produced following an international conference organised by the European Jewish Congress, at which academics gathered to discuss how prejudice and discrimination can be tackled.

Among the policies mentioned in the document was the idea of warning messages in holy texts, a topic discussed in a chapter entitled 'recommendations regarding Religious Groups and Institutions'.

The document reads: 'Translations of the New Testament, the Qur’an and other Christian or Muslim literatures need marginal glosses, and introductions that emphasize continuity with Jewish heritage of both Christianity and Islam and warn readers about antisemitic passages in them.

'While some efforts have been made in this direction in the case of Christianity, these efforts need to be extended and made consistent in both religions.'
read more

Germany: Neo-Nazis use Whatsapp to share anti-Semitic 'stickers'

Via Israel National News:
A group monitoring anti-Semitism in Germany is calling on the operators of a popular cell phone application to take action, after it discovered neo-Nazis have begun using a new feature in the application to spread pro-Nazi images.

Recently, the popular Whatsapp messenger service – which is owned by the social media giant Facebook – added a new feature, allowing users to upload custom digital images or “stickers”, and share them with fellow users.

Shortly after the new feature debuted, however, far-right nationalists and neo-Nazi groups in Germany began using the Whatsapp sticker system to create and spread pro-Nazi images.

The Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism (JFDA) said neo-Nazis and white supremacists were using the sticker function to flood group chats with hateful symbols.

read more

Monday, November 26, 2018

Belgium: Vandals damage Holocaust memorial in Ghent


Via JNS:
Vandals damage a Holocaust memorial in the Belgian city of Ghent on the eve of a Kristallnacht commemoration. 

Vandals damaged a Holocaust memorial in the Belgian city of Ghent, some 50 kilometers west of Brussels, on the eve of a Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”) commemoration.

The so-called Michaël Lustig monument, in the shape of a dreidel, is located at the confluence of a major canal. It was ripped off its foundation and left on its side.


read more

Sunday, November 18, 2018

France: Jewish mayor’s home covered with anti-Semitic graffiti

Via JTA:
The home of a Jewish mayor in France was covered with anti-Semitic graffiti including swastikas and “Dirty Jew, get out.”

The graffiti were spray-painted Friday on the home of Etienne Wolf, mayor of Brumath, near Strasbourg in France’s east, France3 reported. Police have no suspects in the incident, which occurred on the 80th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms by the Nazis against German and Austrian Jews.

“Mayor Marx = Jude,” a reference to the communist ideologue Karl Marx, followed by the German-language word for “Jew,” also was painted on the house along with several swastikas and the words “Dirty Jew, get out.” Another tag read “Jews want to destroy Whites.”

Wolf discovered the tags early in the morning when he came out to get his newspaper.

“It stunned me. I wondered what I had done to deserve this,” Wolf, whose town has approximately 10,000 residents, told France3.

read more

Sweden: Hospital official quits over alleged anti-Semitic bullying by surgeon


Via Times of Israel:
A department head at a Swedish hospital resigned following media reports about a physician in the department continually bullying Jewish staff.

The former manager left Karolinska University Hospital, near Stockholm, due to “a combination of personal reasons, but also because he has not handled the situation [efficiently] enough,” Annika Tibell, the hospital’s director, told Sveriges Television, the broadcaster reported Tuesday. The department head was not named in the report.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center made accusations against a surgeon from the hospital in a letter sent in October, the Aftonbladet daily reported.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories
Free Sign Up

Management at Karolinska knew about the “obvious and open anti-Semitism” expressed by the physician to at least one Jewish employee since February, but the complaints were “ignored,” the center’s dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, wrote in the letter, which was obtained by JTA.

At least two other Jewish employees quit until only the one mentioned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center remained, Cooper said.

Tibell told Aftonbladet that the institution has a “zero tolerance for all types of harassment and offensive treatment.” She also said that “relevant investigative measures” are being taken when “misunderstandings arise.”

According to Aftonbladet, Karolinska has launched an internal investigation and asked outside counsel to review the complaints.

read more


Tuesday, November 13, 2018

UK: Muslims harass pro-Israel group in Hyde Park


Here you'll see a smorgasbord of antisemitism: Muslim fundamentalism, Holocaust-denial, accusations of Christ-killers

All because Jews dared stand with an Israeli flag in Hyde Park.


Monday, November 12, 2018

Germany: NGO rescinds award to U.S. Women's March due to antisemitism

Via Jerusalem Post:
The think tank for the German social democratic party withdrew its Human Rights Award to the Women’s March USA in Washington, DC, on Thursday because doctoral students associated with the foundation accused the organizers of the march of hardcore antisemitism and support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign targeting the Jewish state.

“We believe that the Women’s March USA does not meet the criteria of this award, as its organizers have repeatedly attracted attention through antisemitic statements, the trivialization of antisemitism and the exclusion of Zionists and Jews since Women’s March USA’s establishment in 2017. Women’s March USA does not constitute an inclusive alliance,” wrote members of the scholarship working group, called Critique of Anti-Semitism and Jewish Studies, from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in a public letter.

read more

France: Anti-Semitic acts surge, government promises action

Via Reuters:
Violence against Jews and other acts of anti-Semitism have surged in France in the past nine months, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Friday, promising stepped-up action against perpetrators.

Citing new government statistics, Philippe said acts of anti-Semitism had risen 69 percent in the year to September, compared with the same period in 2017, an increase he said should worry everyone in France. In the two previous years there had been a downward trend in the figures.

“Not remaining indifferent means taking better care of victims, acknowledging their complaints and more efficiently punishing those who carry out attacks,” Philippe said in a post on his Facebook account. 

read more

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Moldova: Jewish cemetery vandalized

Via Artuz 7:
A Jewish cemetery in Moldova was vandalized by unidentified individuals who painted a swastika on one of the headstones.

The Nazi symbol was discovered Monday at the cemetery in Chisinau, the capital of the East European country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, the news website Point reported Wednesday.

read more


Sunday, October 21, 2018

Germany: Center for antisemitism research hires alleged ‘antisemite’



Via Jerusalem Post:
The Berlin-based Center for the Research of Antisemitism faced a flurry of criticism this week from Israeli and German experts for employing a researcher who worked for a British organization that promotes the London version of the al-Quds Day rally. The rally calls for the destruction of the Jewish state each year.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Jerusalem office for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post, “You would imagine something like this would be done in Iran. Set up an institute to study antisemitism and invite antisemites to work there.”

The center, which is part of the Technical University of Berlin, hired Luis Hernandez Aguilar, who was previously listed as a research officer of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, a main organizer of the Iranian regime-sponsored al-Quds Day march.

According to a June report in the London-based The Jewish Chronicle, Hezbollah flags were on display at the march in London, where one speaker said Israel should be “wiped from the map.” Shaykh Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour claimed Zionists’ “days are numbered,” wrote the paper. Speakers at the al-Quds march have also spread wild anti-Jewish conspiracy theories over the years.

read more

Belgium: Jewish woman reportedly threatened with firearm outside her home


Via Times of Israel:
A Jewish woman whose family has endured months of anti-Semitic intimidation in Belgium said a man pointed a gun at her outside her home.

The woman, identified in the Belgian media only as Nicole, told the SudPresse media group that the incident happened on Oct. 9 outside their home in Marchienne-au-Pont, a suburb of Charleroi, 30 miles south of Brussels, the media group’s report from Friday said.

...

Recounting the firearm incident, Nicole told SudPresse: “We stopped at a red light in front of a hair salon near our street. There was a bearded individual there whom I recognised because he verbally assaulted me two weeks ago. He turned to us. He first looked at my husband and then at me, saying: ‘I’m going to put a bullet in your head’.” Then he took out a gun and pointed it in her direction, Nicole said.

Earlier this year, the La Meuse regional daily published an article about the multiple cases of harassment directed at the couple. They had been living for over two years in Marchienne-au-Pont without incident, according to the report.

But this summer, the report said, she and her family have been targeted in a campaign of harassment that has featured written death threats stuffed into their mailbox and the scrawling of anti-Semitic graffiti on their front door.

“We are too afraid to leave our home since this started,” Nicole, a native of Chile, told the newspaper. “Several people discovered we’re Jewish and ever since we’ve been getting death threats.” One letter addressed to Nicole called her a “dirty whore” and other insults.

read more


Tuesday, October 16, 2018

UK: Hundreds contact JLM's new Antisemitism Monitoring Centre about Jew-hate in Corbyn's Labour

Via TheJC:
A new Antisemitism Monitoring Centre set up by the Jewish Labour Movement to record and process complaints relating to Jew-hate within Jeremy Corbyn’s party has received nearly 500 submissions just a week after it was launched.

An email sent by JLM to its 2,000 members suggested there was a urgent need for the service because the Labour Party had allowed complaints of antisemitism to be “dismissed when reported, obfuscated when they entered the national press, and dragged on because that was politically easier”.

The launch of the centre – which is accessible to all Labour members regardless of whether or not they subscribe to JLM – will allow the organisation to build up a clear picture of what is happening across all areas of Mr Corbyn’s party.

The move comes amid fears that Labour’s own compliance unit, which is meant to investigate allegations of inappropriate conduct, is now operating on threadbare staffing levels following several departures in recent months.

The request to hear experiences of antisemitism in Labour is directed at either “victim or third-party observer” according to the email and JLM website. The group is also keen to learn of alleged instances of antisemitism from both Jewish and non-Jewish members of the Labour Party.

read more

France: Jewish teens assaulted, robbed in anti-Semitic attack


Via Times of Israel:
French police have arrested four men suspected of assaulting four Jewish youths in an anti-Semitic assault in Nice, apparently triggered by the assailants spotting a Star of David pendant one of the victims was wearing.

The incident in the southern French city occurred in the city center at about 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, according to a report by the France3 television station.

The four suspects and a fifth teenager, who was not immediately apprehended, assaulted the alleged victims, beating them and causing minor injuries. At least one of the perpetrators also stole a golden chain from one of the victims, the municipality said. 
read more

Sweden: 'Anti-Semitic' motive suspected in arson attack on politician's home


Via The Local:
A Jewish rights group has said that a fire affecting a politician's house in southern Sweden was likely a deliberate "anti-Semitic attack" and followed threats and harassment of local public figures with a Jewish background.

Police were called to a fire at a private property in Lund, owned by a local politician, shortly after 2am on Tuesday morning. Police later said that several people in the same row of terraced homes had been evacuated but no one had been injured in the fire.

The Jewish Community of Malmö chairman Fredrik Sieradzki told The Local that the property owner had previously received anti-Semitic threats.

"This person has been threatened and harassed earlier this year, and been given messages that were clearly anti-Semitic. We had already been helping her with these threats, and our suspicion is very strong that it's an anti-Semitic attack. Police also see this as an arson," Sieradzki said.

The organization called the fire "an attack on Swedish democracy" and said that it had a "strong suspicion" that there was an anti-Semitic motive in a statement released on Wednesday.
read more

Thursday, October 4, 2018

France Investigates Imam for Incitement Over anti-Semitic, anti-Israel Sermon

Via Haaretz:
Prosecutors in France have launched an investigation for incitement against a senior Muslim cleric from Toulouse who recited anti-Semitic religious passages and predicted Israel’s destruction.

On Tuesday, the Toulouse Prosecutor’s Office opened the probe against Mohamed Tatai, the imam of the newly inaugurated Grand Mosque of Toulouse and the leader of an interfaith dialogue group, the Sud Ouest daily reported.

In a sermon delivered on December 15, 2017, Tatai recited a Muslim text, called a Hadith, stating that on Judgment Day, the Muslims will kill the Jews.
read more

Poland: In secret recording, PM slams ‘greedy’ Jewish, American hedge fund owners


Via Times of Israel:
Poland’s prime minister was heard making allegedly anti-Semitic remarks in secret recordings from 2013, before he rose to power.

The recordings of Mateusz Morawiecki complaining to friends about “greedy” and rich “Americans, Jews, Germans, Englishmen, and Swiss” that run hedge funds were published Tuesday by the news site Onet.

Part of a corruption scandal, the remarks appeared in a 3-hour recording of Morawiecki, who was then a senior banker, discussing politics and finance with his friends at a prestigious Warsaw restaurant. 

read more

Germany: Nazi Attack on Kosher Restaurant in Chemnitz



Via Publication79 (h/t glykosymoritis):
  An attack on ‘Schalom’, a kosher restaurant in Chemnitz, took place almost two weeks ago, on August 27th, 2018. The information surfaced only now. The incident was considered serious. Germany’s antisemitism commissioner Felix Klein said “the most terrible memories from the 1930-s are being awoken.”
 On August 27th, Nazis in Chemnitz hunted foreigners in the city center, after a young German man was killed in a stabbing attack. At the same time, about a dozen men dressed in black attacked ‘Schalom’, the German-language ‘Freie Presse Chemnitz’ reported.
 At 9:45 p.m., when most guests had already left the restaurant, its owner Uwe Dziuballa heard noises outside, so he left ‘Schalom’ through the main door. He was now confronted with those Nazis, who were holding iron bars and stones and shouted “Jewish pig, get out of Germany!”, in German. Dziuballa was injured on his shoulder, when one of the stones hit him.

read more

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Czech Republic: Jew portrayed as money-grubbing at city festival


Via Times of Israel:
A municipally organized street show in Prague celebrating Czech nationhood featured a skit apparently mocking an Orthodox Jew.

In the skit, police characters remove a man dressed like an Orthodox Jew for demanding money from the event’s host, who wears traditional Czech attire.

Sunday’s event was organized by the 3rd District of Prague.

The Jewish character was named Rozenkrants. “I will get this money from you one way or another,” the actor said, before another actor dressed as a police officer escorted him away. Hundreds of onlookers laughed.

read more

Germany: Dutch Man Assaulted in Berlin in Alleged anti-Semitic Attack

Via Haaretz:
Two unidentified men in Berlin hit a Dutch national and then kicked him after asking him if he is Jewish, a German newspaper reported.

The incident happened Saturday morning in the Spandauer Vorstadt area in Berlin, Der Tagesspiegel reported.

The 31-year-old alleged victim, who is not Jewish and living in Berlin, asked the two men why they wanted to know if he was Jewish. They then assaulted him, the report said.

The two alleged perpetrators left the scene of the incident in a taxi. 

read more

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Germany: SPD expresses outrage over neo-Nazi marches in Dortmund

Via DW:
Opposition politicians heavily criticized the conditions in Dortmund that led to neo-Nazi groups spontaneously marching uninhibited through the streets of the city.

The Social Democrats (SPD) on Sunday slammed both the Dortmund police and the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, which is controlled by Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU).

"What has the state government done to distance itself from the ugly scenes of that evening, to stop them, and to protect our constitution?" the SPD wrote in its letter to state Interior Minister Herbert Reul, according to the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung daily.

The lawmakers were especially flabbergasted because the far-right scene in Dortmund is so well known to police and has been surveilled by authorities for years.

However, on Friday, two different neo-Nazi rallies took place. Footage showed about 100 extremists who paraded through the streets holding flags of the pre-World War I German empire. They used pyrotechnics and shouted slogans like "Whoever loves Germany is an anti-Semite," and "National Socialism now!"

read more

France: Anti-semitic graffiti on apartment door shocks Paris

Via The Local:
Anti-semitic graffiti reading "Jewish scum live here", that was scrawled on the door of a Paris apartment building has caused shock and anger in the French capital and led to the police launching an investigation.

French police said Thursday they had launched an investigation after anti-semitic graffiti was scrawled on the door of a Paris apartment building.

"Jewish scum live here," read the graffiti, on a building in the 18th arrondissement in the north of the capital. "Notably on the third floor," it added on the other side of the door, above a drawing of a target.

A photo of the graffiti was circulating on Twitter Thursday, and a woman living in the building filed a formal complaint with the police.

read more

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Swiss Holocaust denier Gaston Amaudruz died aged 97


Via Wikipedia:
Gaston-Armand "Guy" Amaudruz (21 December 1920 – 7 September 2018) was a Swiss neo-fascist political philosopher and Holocaust denier.

Initially a supporter of the Swiss fascist movement of Arthur Fonjallaz, he came to wider attention in 1949 when he published Ubu Justicier au Premier Procès de Nuremberg, one of the first works to question the veracity of the Holocaust.  Increasingly active in neo-fascism, he organized conferences in Malmö in 1951 which led to the formation of a pan-European nationalist group known as the European Social Movement and then led the more radical splinter group known as the New European Order later that year. This group sought the creation of a new Rome–Berlin axis to unite Europe against capitalism and communism and in January 1953 set up a European Liaison Office under Amaudruz in Lausanne to co-ordinate the work of affiliated groups. He also came an early member of the Volkspartei der Schweiz but left the party over the issue of South Tyrol (where he was opposed to irredentism). […]  
In 2000 Amaudruz was sentenced to a year in a Swiss jail for Holocaust denial and returned to prison in 2003 on similar charges. However, as of 2005 he was continuing to publish a far right journal, Courrier du continent. 
read more

Monday, September 10, 2018

Europe: Why does the Pope trot out antisemitic tropes?


Giles Fraser @ Unherd:
Pope Francis loves to reference the Pharisees and hypocrites in his sermons. Whether it is corruption in the priesthood or the European attitude towards refugees, it has become one of his things. Last Sunday, the Pope again used his address at the Angelus to return to this well worn theme. Admittedly, the gospel reading from Mark was all about Jesus’s reaction to the “scribes and Pharisees” who challenge Jesus’s followers for not following the Jewish law. But it was classic Francis: “The hypocrite is a liar, he’s not authentic,” he told his audience. “A man or woman who lives in vanity, in greed, in arrogance and at the same time believes and pretends to be religious and goes as far as condemning others, is a hypocrite.” Many took this to be a reference to the abuse scandals that have rocked the Church in places such as Ireland, from where he has recently returned.

There are multiple examples of Francis using ‘Pharisee’ as a term of abuse. Let one more example stand for many. Last October, at Mass in Casa Santa Marta (St Martha’s guesthouse) where he lives, he said: “Three months ago, in a country, in a city, a mother wanted to baptise her newly born son, but she was married civilly to a divorced man. The priest said, ‘Yes, yes. Baptise the baby. But your husband is divorced, so he cannot be present at the ceremony.’ This is happening today. The Pharisees, or Doctors of the Law, are not people of the past, even today there are many of them.

Now, I don’t dissent from the general sentiment of these pronouncements. Francis is a good man, wanting to shift the Roman Church in the right direction. And nor do I think Francis is unique in laying so much emphasis on his condemnation of Pharisees and their hypocrisy – Christians have been attacking the Pharisees since the earliest days of the Christian proclamation. Hence ‘Pharisee’ long ago became a code work for religious hypocrisy in general.

But there has always been something basically racist about this association: Pharisees are Jews, and Jews are shifty, untrustworthy, hypocrites. Given the long and violent Christian persecution of Jews, today’s Christians should be far more circumspect in referencing the Pharisees as Francis regularly does.

So who were the Pharisees, and what did they stand for? 
read more


Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Germany: Why is Germany silent on Corbyn’s praise of Munich terrorists?


Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):
The barn burning revelations in the British newspaper Daily Mail in August that Jeremy Corbyn – head of the UK’s Labour Party – laid a wreath at the graves of the Black September terrorists who executed 11 Israeli athletes and a German police officer 46 years ago today (September 5) raise unsettling questions about Germany’s reaction to the events of Munich in 1972.

Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel and her social democratic Foreign Minister Heiko Maas have remained silent about Corbyn’s 2014 visit to Tunisia to commemorate the Black September Palestinian terrorists. Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post that Germany’s government “should have said something” because Black September murdered German police officer Anton Fliegerbauer.

“It was out-and-out terrorism in the heart of Europe, in Munich,” said Zuroff, of the Munich massacre. “This is something you would assume would get universal condemnation,” he added. […]

The German political scientist Dr. Wolfgang Kraushaar has described the Munich massacre “as a joint work of German Left radicals and Palestinian terrorists.”

Wilfried Böse, a leftist student in Frankfurt in 1969 who helped create the terrorist organization Revolutionary Cells, worked closely with Palestinian terrorists.

“There is serious information that Böse also supported the terrorists of the Black September in the Olympic attacks,” Kraushaar said. Böse was involved in the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 in 1976 that caused Israel to deploy commandos to free the hostages in Entebbe, Uganda.

Böse, who played a role in separating Jewish from non-Jewish passengers, was killed during the rescue operation.

The German left-wing terrorist group Red Army Faction leader Ulrike Meinhof cheered the 1972 murders of Israeli athletes as an expression of “anti-imperialism.”

When this reporter in 2002 asked the former head of the East German foreign intelligence section of the Stasi, Markus Wolf, if the Stasi played a role in the Munich Massacre, he declined to answer.

One could argue that Germany’s silence about Corbyn’s praise for the Black September terrorists is part and parcel of a long history of soggy appeasement toward secular and Islamic terrorism from the Middle East. West Germany’s government failed to pursue the Black September terrorists after the attack, helping to trigger Israel’s operation to hunt down the terrorists. […]

Germany allows 950 Hezbollah members to operate within its territory to fund raise and recruit new members, according to German intelligence reports released in 2018.

The Corbyn affair regarding the Black September terrorists is another litmus test on whether the German government’s counter-terrorism strategy takes the business of anti-terrorism seriously. The optics of Germany’s posture toward combating Palestinian, Hezbollah and Iranian terrorism don’t look good within the field of counter-terrorism.
read more

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Sweden: Members of far-right party caught making anti-Semitic statements online


Via JTA:
Regional politicians from the far-right Sweden Democrats party were caught making anti-Semitic statements online, including using a picture of Anne Frank to mock Holocaust victims.

Per Olsson, who represents the party on the city council of Oskarshamn, a coastal Swedish city, posted earlier this year a picture of Frank captioned “coolest Jew in the shower room” on the Russian social network VKontakt, the Expressen daily reported Friday.

The Expressen report was part of a project in which journalists for that daily and the Expo magazine looked into the digital footprint of many politicians from various parties ahead of the country’s September 9 general and local elections.

Sweden Democrats is currently in third place according to various polls, with 18.7 percent of the vote. Its share was just under 13 percent in the 2014 elections.

The journalists also found anti-Semitic material on the social media accounts of Raghu Jacobsen, who represents the party on the city council of Stenungsund, located in western Sweden.

“As long as Rothschild controls the economy and with the modern slavery on this planet, there will be anti-Semitism. #Jews #israel,” he wrote in English in February on Twitter.
read more

Friday, August 31, 2018

France: Politician calls Macron ‘President Rothschild’


Obviously Mr Di Filippo would not have called President Macron, the Société Générale or BNP President. The reference to Jewish bankers is clear.


Via JTA:
A top representative of French Jewry condemned harshly what he called anti-Semitic rhetoric of a Republican politician who called the republic’s leader “President Rothschild.”

Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, on Thursday wrote on Twitter that he considered “revolting” Fabien Di Filippo, The Republicans’ secretary general, message on the same platform about President Emmanuel Macron.

“Following the revolting tweet, featuring anti-Semitic language from the 1930s, of the secretary general of The Republicans,” Kalifat wrote, he has asked that party’s president, Laurent Wauquiez, to issue “a firm condemnation” and an “:exemplary sanction” of Di Filippo.

But Di Filippo on Twitter denied that he had made any anti-Semitic references in his tweet about Macron, who used to work for the Rothchild Bank after joining it in 2008.

“Naturally, the expression ‘President Rothschild’ was a reference to the past functions of banker Emmanuel Macron,” Di Filippo wrote, adding Macron was “disconnected from our realities.” His reference to the Jewish banker family “had no other connotation,” he added.
The same in the UK.  Via Guido Fawkes:
Black-t-shirted Corbyn outrider Aaron Bastani has been hitting out at former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for calling Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite. His recent attack is nothing new, here are a selection of old tweets railing against Goldman Sachs, Rothschilds, Meyer Rothschild, Philip Green, Alain de Botton‏ and Peter Mandelson:

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Greece: Anarchists raid Ministry in protest against Israel "genocide" of Palestinians


Via Greek City Times (H/T Watch Anti-Semitism in Europe):


Two anarchists of the anti-establishment group Rouvikonas stormed into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in downtown Athens on Tuesday early morning after scaling the buildings gates.

The anarchists left a bag containing a Palestinian flag as well as photographs depicting Palestinians killed during recent clashes with Israel’s armed forces.

The group was protesting Greece’s cooperation with Israel and a video of the raid was posted on the anti-authoritarian website.

The footage shows two members of Rouvikonas climbing the ministry’s metal gate and entering its courtyard unimpeded. “This time, we decided to take a symbolic action, depositing a bag that contained a Palestinian flag and a few pictures, in the courtyard of the foreign ministry. They were photographs of the dead from the last ‘episode’ in the genocide of a people, triggered by the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, by a diachronically of the Greek state, the US”, Rouvikonas highlighted in a post on the anti-authority website.
read more

UK: Labour veteran quits the party and warns its leadership is 'becoming a force for anti-Semitism'


Via The Daily Mail:
Labour was plunged into turmoil today after veteran MP Frank Field sensationally quit blaming Jeremy Corbyn for making the party a 'force for anti-Semitism'.  
Mr Field, 76, told party bosses that after nearly 40 years as a Labour MP he was quitting the party whip and will sit as an independent. 
Labour MP Wes Streeting warned the party now faces a 'catastrophic' split as others will follow Mr Field and quit. 
In a letter detailing his decision made public tonight, Mr Field said Britain fought World War II to defeat Nazis - but under Mr Corbyn's watch that victory is being eroded.  
And in an interview with Sky News, he said he finally made the tough decision after former chief rabbi Lord Sacks accused Mr Corbyn of being an anti-Semite. 
Lord Sacks was responding to a video, exclusively revealed by MailOnline, in which Mr Corbyn told a meeting that British 'Zionists' had 'no sense of English irony'.  
Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said the resignation was a 'serious loss' for Labour and must be a 'wake up call' for the party. Mr Streeting warned that more could follow in his footsteps, telling Sky News: 'Frank Field isn't the first and I fear Frank Field wont be the last.'
read more

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Europe: SodaStream BDS lobbyists were particularly effective in Europe


Via The Washington Times (Clifford D. May):
[...] Unsurprisingly, champions of the Palestinian cause denounced Mr. Birnbaum [SodaStream's CEO] as anti-Palestinian. In particular, advocates for BDS (the campaign to de-legitimize and demonize Israel through boycotts, divestments and sanctions) accused him of stealing Palestinian land, profiting from the “occupation” and exploiting Palestinian workers.  
“Suddenly,” Mr. Birnbaum recounted to me over dinner in Tel Aviv three years ago, “I’m a walking war criminal!”  
BDS lobbyists were particularly effective in Europe. For example, they persuaded retailers in Sweden to ask Mr. Birnbaum not to send them SodaStream products from the West Bank. Those retailers had no problem receiving merchandize made in China, a country where about a million Muslims are right now incarcerated in “re-education camps,” a country that occupies Tibet (offering no “two-state solution”), a country where persecution of Christians and other minorities continues to worsen.  
When Mr. Birnbaum needed a new and bigger factory, he decided not to build in the West Bank but instead to relocate to the Negev Desert, well within the “armistice lines,” the temporary borders drawn in 1949 when the war between the fledgling Jewish state and the Arab nations surrounding it came to a halt.
read more

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

European Union continues to fiscally back hate education against Israel


Via JNS (Michael Calvo):
By supporting Palestinian teachers’ salaries, the European Union financially participated and continues to participate in hate education; disregard for life of the Jews and others by promoting jihad; and inciting schoolchildren to become martyrs. That makes it an accomplice to the killings and injuries of innocent victims.

In May 2018, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy published a report titled “The Money Trail: The Millions Given by EU Institutions to NGOs With Ties to Terror and Boycotts Against Israel, An In-Depth Analysis.” Two months later, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Frederica Mogherini replied to the report. Her main arguments being that allegations according to which the European Union supports incitement or terror are unfounded and unacceptable - that terror and boycott are two distinct phenomena.

The Israeli Ministry’s report is clear and substantiated, and Mogherini should read it again.

What is not mentioned in the report is that the European Union and its member states finance NGOs that harass Israel, Israeli officials and corporations doing business in Israel and in Europe with lawsuits. The European Union still finances the Palestinian Authority that encourages Palestinians to kill Jews. “The Palestinian Authority’s practice of paying salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of deceased terrorists, is an incentive to commit acts of terror.” (Taylor Force Act).

It is well known that the Palestinian leaders have incited to kill Jews. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas even admitted that the terrorists “did what the Palestinian Authority ordered them to do” and Mohammed Dahlan confirmed that “Forty percent of the Martyrs in this Intifada belonged to the Palestinian security forces … and that the Palestinian Authority has hidden Hamas members against Israeli counter-actions.”

Those who still have doubts should see these videos.

The incitement begins in schools. Between 1994 and 2012, the European Union provided 5.6 billion euros to assist the P.A. During 2014-15, a total of more than €390 million has been allocated to the P.A. through Pegase Direct Financial Support (DFS). The aim of Pegase DFS is to assist the P.A. to meet its obligations towards its civil servants, pensioners and vulnerable families; maintain essential public services; improve public finances; and pay teachers’ salaries. Among the civil servants and pensioners who received payments from Pegase DFS during 2014 and 2015, 67 percent were working in Health and Education. 
read more

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Germany: Most Germans have never met a Jew


Via Handelsblatt (Mark Leonard):
[…] But since 2015, when Chancellor Angela Merkel announced her policy of Willkommenskultur (“welcoming culture”) and opened Germany’s doors to refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria, unease about resurgent anti-Semitism has been growing in the German establishment, and particularly in the Jewish community. […]  
Attacks on Jews have sparked outrage from the many Germans who thought such scenes had vanished forever from their country’s streets. But, in addition to the more visible abuses, German Jews have also begun to talk about more subtle changes in their everyday lives as major German cities like Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Berlin grow more multicultural. […]

[…] most Germans have never, and will never, meet a Jew, for the simple reason that Jews constitute a vanishingly small share of the population. Frankfurt, home to the country’s second-largest Jewish community (behind Berlin), has only 7,000 Jews, out of a metropolitan-area population of 5.7 million.
read more

Sweden: Politician denies calling Jews ‘impure’


Via Times of Israel:
A Swedish politician from Malmo who has worked on integration of immigrants denied saying that Jews and Armenians have “impure spirits.”

Muhammad Khorshid, who represents the Liberals on the city council of the municipality in southern Sweden, told Expressen that the comment in his name from 2016 on Facebook belonged to a fake account. The person behind that account wrote in Turkish about the two ethnicities: “We call them out for their impure spirits,” the daily reported Thursday.

The issue is the subject of an internal probe within the party, the report said. 

read more

Russia: Swastikas daubed on Chabad center in cradle of Lubavitch Hasidic movement


Via JTA:
Anti-Semitic slogans were scrawled on the fence of a Jewish cultural center in the Russian village of Lyubavichi, the cradle of the Chabad Hasidic movement.

The inscriptions, reading “Jews out of Russia, our land” and featuring the Baltic variant of the swastika, were spray-painted on the wall of the Hatzer Raboteinu Nesieinu Belubavitch last week but reported Tuesday in the Russian-language media, the news site Cursor reported.
read more

Estonia: Holocaust victim memorials vandalised at Kalevi-Liiva



Via err.ee:
Sometime Saturday overnight or on Sunday, just days ahead of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, unidentified individuals vandalised multiple Holocaust memorials at Kalevi-Liiva, Harju County, the execution site of thousands of victims of Nazism.

The memorials were tagged with a swastika, penises and antisemitic and Nazi messages as well as burned, likely using a blowtorch.

The vandalism was discovered by local residents, who notified the police, the municipal government and Estonia's Jewish community about it.

Jewish Community of Estonia chairwoman Alla Jakobson said that she was shaken and outraged by the news.

"I can't call these Nazi-sympathisers who attack the memory of innocent victims with such brutality and anger human," she said. "The memory of the dead has always been regarded with such great respect and honour in Estonia, regardless of ethnicity. An Estonian resident cannot act like this, which is why I am sure that the memorial was vandalised by people who hate Estonia, and this should also be seen as a provocation timed to coincide with the Day of Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Estonia."

Jakobson also thanked those who alerted the authorities and the Jewish community to the incident.

read more

Friday, August 24, 2018

France: Jewish scholar Alain Finkielkraut is worried for France’s future


Via The Times of Israel:
If Jews in France have long had a charged — at times painful — relationship with their country dating back centuries, they now face a new, particularly pernicious reality, says prominent French Jewish intellectual and writer Alain Finkielkraut.

“I’m extremely worried — as much for French Jews as I’m worried for the future of France,” says Finkielkraut, during a recent interview with The Times of Israel in his Paris apartment. “The anti-Semitism we’re now experiencing in France is the worst I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, and I’m convinced it’s going to get worse.”

Sitting at a long table in his living room, whose walls are lined with tall shelves laden with books, Finkielkraut, 69, comes across as a serious, deep-thinking man. (…)

His commentary is often trenchant, especially concerning the plight of his 500,000 Jewish compatriots. Among the worrisome developments that preoccupy him is what some call “internal migration.”

“Due to the increased hostility Jews are facing, especially in certain suburbs of Paris, many feel the need to leave where they’ve lived for a long time,” says Finkielkraut, referring to a growing unease caused by virulent anti-Semitism in predominantly immigrant areas.

“In recent years, tens of thousands of Jews have moved, some to Israel, most to neighborhoods where they feel more secure. Such a situation would have been unimaginable 20 years ago. It’s without precedent in France and, what’s really terrible, it’s going to continue,” he says.

For Finkielkraut, the origin of this malaise is clear.

“It’s a terrible phenomenon linked to immigration,” he says. “And as immigration is increasing, so is the rise in this anti-Semitism. Not only does a big part of the left refuse to recognize this, but they explain to us that the immigrants are the new Jews and that it’s important to know how to welcome them as the country should have done for Jews during World War II.

“What’s crazy is the situation is going to get worse with the complicity of people who claim to have learned the lessons from the Holocaust. We are at an absolutely diabolical juncture,” Finkielkraut says.
read more

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Germany: Jewish leader slams “Antisemitic stereotypes” in school textbooks


Via Legal Insurrection:
The head of Germany’s leading Jewish organisation criticized the use of “antisemitic stereotypes” in the school textbooks.

Josef Schuster, president of The Central Council of Jews in Germany, slammed the Germany’s schools and textbook publishers for doing too little to root out the problem. Many textbook illustrations in German textbooks resemble the anti-Semitic depictions from the Nazi-era newspaper “Der Stürmer,” while at the same time failing to provide the appropriate historical context to the imagery, Schuster said.

Criticism aired by Schuster is based on a detailed study published by Germany’s Georg Eckert Institute. The study evaluated history textbooks being used in schools across the country. German weekly Der Spiegel reported the details:
“There are too many illustrations [in the textbooks] which have been shaped by antisemitic stereotypes and thus reminiscent of Der Stürmer, [and] don’t offer an objective representation,” Schuster said. Der Stürmer was an antisemitic Nazi propaganda newspaper.

“We have too many textbook that treat Judaism in a very rudimentary way,” criticized Schuster. “Judaism was not restricted to the period between 1933 an 1945. “There was Jewish life in Germany many centuries before that and fortunately we have it today. One, however, don’t see that in the textbooks.”

The content regarding the case in point deals with the persecution of the Jews during the Nazi era and the Holocaust. School textbooks often show antisemitic imagery, confirmed Dirk Sadowski, researcher at the Georg-Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research. (…)

Sadowski and his colleagues took three years to examining 84 history books of various grades and from several states and were surprised to find how simplistically the Jewish life has been depicted.  
Josef Schuster refers to this study when he complains that “many school textbooks take the perspective of the perpetrators, particularly when it comes to the topics of National Socialism and Shoah.” The antisemitic depictions of the Nazi-propaganda “are hardly put in the context. The antisemitic stereotype are thus reproduced, but not dealt with critique.” [Translated by the author: Vijeta Uniyal]
read more

Poland: Jewish cemetery vandalized for second time in a month


Via Times of Israel:
A Jewish cemetery near Krakow was vandalized for the second time in less than a month, resulting in damage to dozens of headstones.

At least 30 headstones were pushed over, some of them shattered, in the latest incident recorded at the cemetery in Mysłowice, a town located about 40 miles west of Krakow, the Jewish.pl news site reported Tuesday on its Facebook page.
read more

UK: Shocking film shows attendees of far-left 'antisemitism' talk making antisemitic statements


Via Jewish Chronicle:
Attendees of a far-left event on the subject of “Corbyn, antisemitism and justice for Palestine” were filmed making comments such as “the Jewish people do not exist”, and “if you walk around expecting to be treated like Jewish ‘scum’, that’s what’s going to happen to you.”

The event, which was held on Tuesday night at London’s Conway Hall, featured speakers such as Tariq Ali, Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and Richard Kuper of Jewish Voice for Labour.
read more

Ukraine: Jewish activist: Facebook banned me for posting antisemitic graffiti


Via Jerusalem Post:
 Eduard Dolinksy, a prominent Ukrainian Jewish activist, was banned from posting on Facebook Monday night for a post about antisemitic graffiti in Odessa.

Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, said he was blocked by the social media giant for posting a photo. “I had posted the photo which says in Ukrainian ‘kill the yid’ about a month ago,” he says. “I use my Facebook account for distributing information about antisemitic incidents and hate speech and hate crimes in Ukraine.”

Be the first to know - Join our Facebook page.


Now Dolinsky’s account has disabled him from posting for thirty days, which means media, law enforcement and the local community who rely on his social media posts will receive no updates.

(...)

Dolinksy says that he has been targeted in the past by nationalists and anti-semites who oppose his work. Facebook has banned him temporarily in the past also, but never for thirty days. “The last time I was blocked, the media also reported this and I felt some relief.

It was as if they stopped banning me. But now I don’t know – and this has again happened. They are banning the one who is trying to fight antisemitism. They are banning me for the very thing I do.”

read more

Germany: When a Nazi comparison makes sense: the BDS movement against Israel


Via The Hill (Benjamin Weinthal and Asaf Romirowsky):
In a remarkable finding in their May report, intelligence officials of the German state of Baden Württemberg wrote that propaganda from the neo-Nazi party Der Dritte Weg (The Third Way) calling to boycott Israeli products “roughly recalls similar measures against German Jews by the National Socialists, for example, on April 1, 1933 (the slogan: 'Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!')"

The historical significance of the parallel between contemporary calls to boycott Israeli products and the Hitler movement’s economic warfare against German Jewish businesses should not be ignored.

The Nazi efforts to strangle Jewish companies in order to isolate and dehumanize German Jews was a nascent phase of the Holocaust. Hence the boycott campaign against Israel is just another dangerous recurrence of history in a new form.

Fast forward to 2005: According to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement’s declaration targeting the Jewish state, a key demand is the return of all “Palestinian refugees” to Israel. The “return” of the alleged millions of Palestinians refugees—based on a bogus definition of refugee status—would spell dissolution of the Jewish state. Anti-Semitism at its core is about discrimination against Jews.

The proliferation of pro-BDS activities in Germany prompted Felix Klein, the German government commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism, to write in the daily Die Welt in August that “the BDS movement is antisemitic in its methods and goals.” He added that BDS’s “Don’t buy!” stickers on products from the Jewish state are “methods from the Nazi period.”

According to the German intelligence report from May, boycotts of products from the Jewish state are a “new variation of anti-Semitism.” This is the first instance of a domestic intelligence agency labeling boycotts targeting Israeli products as anti-Semitic and a security threat.

The following month, in June, an intelligence report from the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate arrived at the same conclusion. “The Third Way’s slogan ‘Boycott Products from Israel’ and … betray significant parallels to the anti-Jewish agitation of the National Socialists,” the agency wrote.

The intelligence agency copied a graphic from The Third Way’s website featuring the slogan, “Boycott products from Israel: 729=Made in Israel.” The number 729 is used in barcodes to identify Israel-based companies, although not necessarily where a product was manufactured.

It is worth noting that the party platform of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union declared in 2016, “Who today under the flag of the BDS movement calls to boycott Israeli goods and services speaks the same language in which people were called to not buy from Jews. That is nothing other than coarse anti-Semitism.”
read more

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Germany: Merkel bows to Trump demand on Nazi guard


Via Politico:
The U.S. deported a New York man who served as a guard at a Nazi labor camp to Germany late Monday, resolving a more than decade-long dispute between Washington and Berlin over who should take responsibility for the suspected war criminal.

U.S. immigration authorities flew Jakiw Palij, who turned 95 last week, on a government jet from a New Jersey airport to Düsseldorf, where he arrived early Tuesday before being transferred by ambulance to a care facility near Münster.

Though the case received little attention in Germany over the years, it was often front page news in New York, where protestors regularly gathered in front of Palij’s home demanding he be deported. President Donald Trump, who grew up in the New York borough of Queens, where Palij has lived for nearly seven decades, instructed Richard Grenell, his ambassador to Germany, to make resolving the case a priority.

“I felt very strongly that the German government had a moral obligation and they accepted that,” Grenell said at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin on Tuesday.

In recent years the U.S. failed to deport another eight suspected Nazi collaborators before they died because Germany refused to accept them, insisting it had no legal basis to do so.
read more

UK: Corbyn’s secretary urged voters to avoid candidates who appeared in Jewish newspapers

A BBC documentary on antisemitism in France (2016) revealed that "Many French Jews are coming to London, and one synagogue has been transformed recently by French arrivals, with their congregation in a few years becoming 90 percent French."

Via JTA:
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s longtime secretary urged supporters to oppose candidates who appeared in the Jewish media, The Sun reported.

In a pamphlet published by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in 2010, Nicolette Petersen recommended that Labour supporters “read the Jewish Chronicle online and look at websites that will show you who not to vote for,” asserting that it was better to divert support from Labour than to support anyone considering himself a “friend of Israel,” according to The Sun on Monday.

“This isn’t about helping Palestinians. It’s about attacking Jews,” Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard said. “The recommendation that activists who want to rid Parliament of Zionists use the Jewish Chronicle for a hit list of targets exposes the truth: that they use the word Zionist as a euphemism for Jew.”
read more

Friday, August 17, 2018

Germany: Top German social democrat urges bank to end Israel boycott support


Via The Jersusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):
Michaela Engelmeier, a member of the executive board of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, demanded that the Bank for Social Economy stop providing accounts to groups that support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign against the Jewish state.

“My opinion is that no one, no institution, no societal group, really no one should work together with BDS or hold accounts for these antisemitic groups,” Engelmeier wrote The Jerusalem Post on Thursday in connection with a query about the Bank for Social Economy’s enabling of BDS.

The Cologne-based Bank for Social Economy is engulfed in an ever-widening anti-Israel scandal because of its defense of BDS groups which use accounts with the bank to launch economic warfare against the Jewish state.

Engelmeier’s call for the bank to stop its BDS business is the first instance of a federal-level politician in Germany weighing in on the bank.

The increase of pro-BDS activities in Germany prompted Felix Klein, the German government commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism, to write in Die Welt last week that Frankfurt sent an important signal that it will not conduct business with banks that engage in BDS activities.

Klein wrote that “the BDS movement is antisemitic in its methods and goals.” He added that BDS’s “Don’t buy!” stickers on products from the Jewish state are “methods from the Nazi period.”
read more