The New Antisemite

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Netherlands: Jewish family attacked with firecrackers

The story was reported here, but the family was now interviewed and added further details.

Via AT5:

A Jewish family in Amsterdam was harassed by a group of youth on New Year's Eve.

The group attacked a mother and daughter out on the street, and threw firecrackers at their heads. When the two came inside, the harassment continued. One of the daughters says that the youth rang the bell and shouted "Happy New Year", then "Free Palestine" and they tried to throw firecrackers through the mail slot in the door. Her mother held the mail slot closed, so they broke the door and shouted "fuck Jews". they also shouted through the window "open".

After ten minutes, they went away.

The family has been living in the neighborhood for decades and the daughters have lived there their whole life. The father is a traditional Jew and recognizable as such, but the family never had problems before.

One of the daughters says that she's not afraid, but she gets the feeling that such things are becoming more acceptable and that now they have an excuse, namely Palestine.

The family debated whether to complain to the police, since they didn't want to escalate the situation, but due to the severity of the situation, they finally did so.

Greece: Pro-immigrant concert attacked by anachists 'in solidarity with Palestine'

The concert was organized by antifascist groups who also fight antisemitism.

Via Against Antisemitism:

On the 16th of October 2015 a hip-hop concert was organized in the School of Economics (ASOEE) by the antifascist groups of ‘Antifa Negative’ and ‘0151’ in Athens, supported by antifascist and antiracist hip hop bands of ‘second generation immigrants’. The concert was devoted to immigrants of second generation in Greece, and the many problems they face from the Greek state, people that even if they are born and/or raised in Greece, they are not given the Greek nationality and full civil and social rights. The above-mentioned antifascist groups however are also well known because of their explicit struggle against antisemitism, both right and left-wing, in Greece.

The concert was attacked by a group of 10 anarchists in its very beginning. The attackers sprayed some slogans over ‘solidarity to Palestine’, threw flyers condemning ‘the fascist state of Israel’ and while leaving the place beat one of the organizers threatening that ‘they will meet again in the future’.

Germany: Nazi group claims New Year's Eve greeting is 'Jewish'

Via Everyday Antisemitism, RIAS:

RIAS have reported that a small, Berlin-based, neo-Nazi group has been active on Facebook recently, under the name “Berlin Autonomous Nationalists” (Autonome Nationalisten Berlin).

On New Year’s Eve the group posted a status update entitled “Guten Rutsch – NEIN Danke!” meaning “Happy New Year – NO Thanks!”, in reference to the customary “Guten Rutsch” New Year greeting in Germany and Austria.

The neo-Nazi group states at length that it is a “disgrace” that this phrase is being used in Germany to convey well wishes, as the expression “has Jewish origins and nothing to do with German culture” and its use must “finally be put a stop to”.

L'Express reports that Zarie, a young Jewish woman who survived the Hyper-Cacher shooting perpetrated by Amedy Coulibaly in January 2015, is "angry with France". She has since trained as a midwife and she shortly be leaving for another country.

Her sufferings resurfaced after the massacres perpetrated on November 13 - another "Hyper Cacher which made ten times more victims." Indeed 130 people were killed and 368 were wounded, of which 80–99 seriously, a total of 498 victims.

In France, she says, they must believe that the deaths of 7 and January 9 were not enough and that it took dozens more for them to react and to become aware of the terrorist danger, she complained.

The Telegraph described the ordeal of Zarie and other hostages:

Zarie was at the till, and Coulibaly’s shots grazed her arm and killed her friend. Coulibaly aimed at her legs, but Zarie survived.
“You don’t seem to want to die, so now you are going to help me,” he told her, in an account she posted on Facebook.
Coulibaly ordered her to pull down the shutters and close the metal bars at the main entrance.
A little while later, he ordered her to go downstairs and order the hostages all up to the main shop floor.
“A woman came downstairs to tell us all to go up to the ground floor,” said Deborah.
“We were all terrified. We looked at each other and no one moved.”
A few minutes later, Zarie returned.
“She came back and yelled that he was going to kill everyone if we didn’t go up,” she said. “I stayed hidden. I knew that if I went up he would kill me. That man was insane.”
Some of the other hostages decided to go upstairs, including Mickael, who had gone to the shop to buy some bread and chicken with his son.
Mickael told Le Point magazine that, on climbing the stairs, Coulibaly introduced himself.
“I am Amedy Coulibaly, I am a Malian and a Muslim. And I’m from the Islamic State.”
He forced those upstairs to put their mobile phones on the floor. And one man – believed to be Yoan Cohen – noticed Coulibaly’s gun was resting on the counter. He seized it, but it wouldn’t fire. Coulibaly spotted the movement, spun around and killed him.

Monday, January 4, 2016

Turkey: Erdogan cites Hitler's Germany as an examplary presidential system

Erdogan later walked back his comments. We are expected to believe that in order to prove why his suggested system of government is the best idea, he gave the most disgraceful example in history that he could think of.

Via CBC/Reuters:

Erdogan wants to change the Turkish constitution to turn the ceremonial role of president into that of a chief executive, a Turkish version of the system in the United States, France or Russia.

Asked on his return from a visit to Saudi Arabia late on Thursday whether an executive presidential system was possible while maintaining the unitary structure of the state, he said, "There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Hitler's Germany. There are later examples in various other countries," he told reporters, according to a recording broadcast by the Dogan news agency.

A Turkish official told Reuters the comments had been taken out of context and that his comments were meant to demonstrate that an executive presidency can exist in a unitary state and does not depend on a federal system of government, and that neither a presidential nor parliamentary system is a guarantee against abuse of power.

"There are good and poor examples of presidential systems and the important thing is to put checks and balances in place," the official said. "Nazi Germany, lacking proper institutional arrangements, was obviously one of the most disgraceful examples in history."

Holocaust denial on the rise in Eastern Europe

Via Ynet News:

After Lithuania changed the definition of 'genocide' and Baltic countries have turned murderers of Jews into national heroes, Holocaust researchers are accusing the State of Israel of standing idly by as history is being re-written.

The testimonies are fading away, the memorial sites are turning into entertainment centers, and the historical story is seen as just another "Jewish narrative": If anyone thought that Holocaust denial was a marginal phenomenon among a few anti-Semites and Israel haters, evidence shows that is it a much wider, more well-established and dangerous phenomenon that is receiving reinforcement on the ground from eastern European countries.

In Lithuania, for example, people are doing everything to downplay the significance of the horrors of the war as a unique event in the history of mankind, and in Ukraine a famous mass murder site has turned into a thriving jogging spot.

(...)

Rabbi Avraham Krieger, head of the Shem Olam Institute for Holocaust education and research, believes the new Holocaust deniers are driven by a psychological motive, namely an attempt to dissolve the perception of the Holocaust as a unique phenomenon in favor of a historical description which will minimize the feelings of guilt among the countries which actively participated - or whose citizens actively participated - in the murder of Jews.

Dr. Zuroff sees it too. He says there is an attempt to conceal and blur the eastern Europeans' role in the massacre. "In Lithuania there was a systematic killing of Jews by the local population," he explained. "That is the reason why 96 percent of the Jews there did not survive and many communities were completely erased. The intentional goal is to conceal this fact.

"The mass murderers of Jews among the local population are perceived as national heroes because of their war against the communists, and streets, squares and governmental institutions have been named after them. How can anyone acknowledge their role in the annihilation if the murderers are considered heroes?"

Lithuania is not alone. According to the two researchers, "soft denial" is taking place in Baltic countries like Estonia and Latvia, as well as in Poland, Croatia and Hungary.

Europe starring in Weisenthal Center "Top Ten" list

The Weisenthal Center published its 2015 Top Ten Worst Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Incidents.

The Weisenthal Center chose the San Bernardino attacker's hatred of Israel and Jews as their #1 incident. Palestinian Authority and Iranian incitement to kill Jews and exterminate Israel only make the #5 and #6 spots, though I think both of the latter drive much of world antisemitism today.    Maybe it's due to the fact that the Weisenthal Center is located in Los Angeles?

ISIS is #2, for their threats against Israel and the Jews.

Quite surprisingly, the Weisenthal Center does not even mention the Islamic State attacks in Europe against Jews: the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen in which Jews were targeted and murdered by Islamic State terrorists, the stabbing in Marseille or the Berlin plot to attack Jewish targets. Additionally, Islamic State published a handbook the suggest Muslims ally with anti-Zionists to fight the Jews (and the conquer Europe).

I would also include European media and politicians, from both the right and the left, who blame Israel for ISIS or find ways to justify ISIS attacks against Jews.


Europe does otherwise star prominently in the top ten list:

#3 - EU decision to label products from the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The Weisenthal Center states that "This use of double standards against Israel typifies modern anti-Israelism and has been at the core of anti-Semitism for many centuries." At a time when radical Islamist rebels are holding the Syrian Golan, the EU still insists that Israel should return the Golan Heights to Syria. It should also be noted that despite EU protestations that they're only marking products from areas that Israel has not annexed, this includes Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

#7 - European culture and sports events. For example, the boycotting of Jewish-American singer Matisyahu by a Spanish music festival, and antisemitic chanting by sports fans across the continent.

#8 - The British Labour Party - Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his support for Jew murderers, and MP Gerald Kaufman who accused Israel of fabricating terror attacks.

#10 - Polish incidents of antisemitism - most notably a far-right protest in which a Jew was burned in effigy.

Germany made two of the three "Dishonorable Mentions": Munich for allowing a BDS event on Kristallnacht and Jakob Augstein for comparing the Israeli government to Nazis.

Poland: "Many called Jews worse than Nazis"

I previously brought other quotes from this review of the book "The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939-1945". I focus here on the antisemitic aspects of the Polish underground, but the article also brings examples to the contrary.

Via Haaretz:

With Polish Jewish-tensions soaring, a new book delves into the heart of that divide with an eye toward reconciliation.

(...)

What he discovered is that they greatly differed depending on location, unit and person. Sometimes when going through officers’ reports, Zimmerman would see a word that alerted him that perhaps the author’s attitude was different than the norm.

“I would see, ‘Unfortunately, most people here are happy to see that Jews are gone,’” Zimmerman notes. “So you could tell that the person writing the report wasn’t an anti-Semite.”

(...)

But not all chapters paint as glowing a picture of Poles. Chapter 10 takes a very critical look at those Home Army commanders who committed real crimes against humanity. Their accounts are shocking and disturbing, told in graphic detail, attesting to how easily it was to turn entire units against Jews, even among those who weren’t openly anti-Semitic before the war. “They were all too eager to kill entire villages of Jews out of some misplaced sense of fulfilling a moral obligation to rid Poland of Jews,” says Zimmerman. “Many called Jews worse than Nazis. And yet, at the same time, in a different region, there are Jewish platoons fighting alongside Polish ones.”

In other words, there was great variation among the units.

Via Against Antisemitism (h/t glykosymoritis):

Hand in hand with Eleftheri Ora, the newspaper of conspiracy theories and balderdash, the Apostolic Ministration of the Church of Greece headed by the Archbishop Hieronymus trades in those most eminent books promulgating conspiracy theories, antisemitism and extremist nationalism. [TBJ]

The Church of Greece’s silence regarding the revelatory, documented accusation on the website XYZ Contagion that we republished here three days ago confirms the Church’s accord with racial extremists.

We visited the bazaar on Aiolou Street on December 29th only to find the entrance dominated by the poster for the bazaar, which boldly features the insignia of the Apostolic Ministration of the Church of Greece and in smaller letters the newspaper Eleftheri Ora.

On the shelves of the bazaar alongside numerous conspiracy books, we saw among others “The Secret Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, Giannis Fourakis’ “Zionist Conspiracies”, Kostas Plevris’ “Viglatores” [Sentinels], and the “Patriotic People’s Will” by Christos Goudis, the Golden Dawn member of the Athens Municipal Council.

France: A Holocaust-denier "historian" and Freemason at La Rochelle

Michel Goldberg reports @ the Huffington Post:

The denial of the extermination of Jews by the Nazis is at the heart of a book that contains the most brutal anti-Semitic clichés.

Robert Mingam, a self-stiled "historian" has written one of the most vicious revisionist books ever, The Order of the Priory of Sion, in which he elaborates on four themes:

-    He draws on a viciously anti-Semitic book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to propound his theory that there is a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.
-     He accuses all the Jews of being engaged in that conspiracy.
-     He elaborates that the extermination of Jews by the Nazis is a fib.
-     He affirms that the "Jewish lobby" is now fomenting the third world war because they got wealthier as a result of World War II.

Robert Mingam is a freemason. The Huffington Post indicates that, within three hours of the publication of the article, the head of the Grand Lodge to which Mingam is affiliated advised Michel Goldbeg that Mr MIngam will be expelled on January 9.

Read more (in French).

Readers may be interested in this piece (2013) French Students Stage 'Grossly Anti-Semitic' Play at La Rochelle. At the time, Michel Goldberg criticized the play.

Hungary: Blasphemy antisemitic graffiti

Via CFCA, FAA:

Budapest – on a billboard on the way to Árpád kilátó mountain in Budapest, antisemitic blasphemy was sprayed.

UK: Jewish journalist hounded out of a Respect party meeting

Robert Colville wrote @ The Spectator an article entitled "Why George Galloway’s luck may finally be running out. Respect has dwindled, his mayoral campaign has failed to catch fire, and several groups of investigators are circling…" He reports this incident:

Elsewhere, Ben Judah, a reporter for Politico, claimed to have been hounded out of a Respect meeting by Galloway lackeys who punched him in the face and called him a ‘fucking Jew’.

Germany: Meet Jeremy Corbyn’s German doppelganger (pro-Hezbollah, pro-Hamas, pro-BDS)

Benjamin Weinthal reports @ The Spectator:

Sahra Wagenknecht

Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn has a socialist doppelganger in Germany. Her name is Sahra Wagenknecht and she serves as co-chairperson of the largest opposition party in the German Bundestag—The Left Party [Die Linke]. Her remarks blanketed the German media on Tuesday because she equated Islamic State terrorism in Paris with Britain’s aerial campaign designed to help destroy the terrorist organisation in the Syrian and Iraqi theatres of war. [...]

The attitudes of Wagenknecht’s Left Party mirror in many respects the enthusiasm of Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn for Hamas, Iran’s clerical regime and Hezbollah. Moral conflation and a bottomless level of cultural relativity dominate the thinking of both hardcore left-wing leaderships. For Wagenknecht, Corbyn brought ‘movement into the sleeping social democracy of Europe’.

The Left Party is a formidable force in German politics. Germany’s Parliament has 630 members, of which the Left Party has 64 seats. [...]

The Left Party’s foreign policy spokesman, Bundestag deputy Wolfgang Gehrcke, has attended pro-Hezbollah and pro-Hamas demonstrations in Germany. He participated in a 2006 rally where ‘We are all Hezbollah’ blared from the loudspeakers. Many of the party’s parliamentarians hold views from a catalogue of horrors. Deputy Christine Buchhloz supports the ‘legitimate resistance‘ of Hamas and Hezbollah. [...]

Wagenknecht and Buchholz’s refusal to participate in the standing ovation for Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Israeli President Shimon Peres during his Holocaust remembrance speech in the Bundestag which was praised by Germany’s NPD neo-Nazi party.

The Left Party has a peculiar obsession with fanning the flames of the Boycott, Divestment,Sanctions (BDS) movement in Germany targeting the Jewish state.

Wagenknecht has gone to great lengths to defend her party’s lawmakers who traveled aboard the Mavi Marmara vessel in 2010 in an attempt to break Israel’s legal blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. By way of background, the deputies, Inge Höger and Annette Groth, agreed to be segregated into an all-female section aboard the ship filled with a substantial number of Islamists.

Netherlands: Pro-Palestinian youth attack Jewish homes on New Year's Eve

http://www.dagelijksestandaard.nl/2016/01/free-palestine-joden-in-amsterdam-belaagd-tijdens-oud-en-nieuw

Via Dagelijkse Standaard:

A Jew in Amsterdam posted on Facebook about her New Year's Eve experience:

Last night, a few teens decided their celebrations are not complete without some hatred. While yelling "cancer jews" and "free palestine" they kicked our doors and windows.

"Cancer Jews" is the Dutch equivalent of "fuck Jews".

Friday, January 1, 2016

Germany: Antisemitic flyers warn of “Jewish terror” from Great Britain