Police have looked into anti-Semitic messages scrawled on benches in North London this week.
A bench on Clapton Common near a synagogue was daubed with graffiti. The graffiti in the area, which has a significant strictly Orthodox Jewish community said ‘stop bombing kids’, ‘free palestine’ and ‘Nazi = Zionist’.
Posted on social media by neighbourhood watch group Shomrim, the incident was reported to the police after it was spotted on Tuesday.
Most of the Jewish population in Serbia was eradicated during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s, so why is a world famous cartoonist drawing comics about anti-Semitism?read more
Alexsandar Zograf says that his comments are an “attempt to reflect on Serbian past and present”, and tackle the absurdity of football hooligans, who “hate Jewish people without seeing one in their entire lives.”
But Zograf works also touches the historical side of anti-Semitism in Serbia, focusing on figures like Hilde Dajc’s story, and her experience in a concentration camp in Belgrade during the 40s.
A Budapest court has ordered the temporary shutdown of nearly two dozen websites that carry content denying the Holocaust, the Budapest chief prosecutor said.
The websites sell the Hungarian edition of a Swedish author’s book that denies the Holocaust and other crimes committed by the Nazi regime, prosecutor Tibor Ibolya said. The sites also make some of that content available online.
The Hungarian authorities also started investigating the book’s publisher in Hungary but suspended the procedure because the company’s head is currently abroad.
The leading German language dictionary ‘Duden’ is whitewashing the genocide of 1 million Serbs, Jews and Roma during WW2, according to Filip Filipi, president of “28. Jun”, the largest Serbian diaspora organization.
“The ‘Ustase’ were/are a Croatian fascist, ultranationalist and terrorist organization. Its members murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist or dissident Croats in Yugoslavia during World War II, and Duden defines them as a movement which fought against ‘Serbian centralism'” Filipi said.
Filipi said that “We need to stop the promotion of Nazism in Germany and make Duden re-define these terrorist killers,” and called everyone to sign the petition [link].
The Ustase, also known as “Ustashe”, “Ustashas”, and “Ustashi”, were members of the Ustasa – Croatian Revolutionary Movement, a Croatian fascist, ultranationalist and terrorist organization, active, in its original form, between 1929 and 1945. Its members murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and anti-fascist or dissident Croats in Yugoslavia during World War II.
The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Roman Catholicism and Croatian nationalism. The Ustase supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span the River Drina and extend to the border of Belgrade (Serbia). The movement emphasized the need for a racially “pure” Croatia and promoted genocide against Serbs, Jews and Romani people, and persecution of anti-fascist or dissident Croatians.
At the same time, across the Pond, two dioceses of the Church of Sweden (also Lutheran) sponsored a Kairos Palestine summer camp to consider ramping up the pressure on Israel by increasing the Church’s support of and participation in the BDS movement.
Disestablished in 2000, the Church of Sweden is no longer the state church, but 63% of the country are members, and it is an influential force in Swedish politics.
About 40 of its peace workers, together with a Roman Catholic and a few from the Uniting Church in Sweden (a recent merger of the Baptist Union of Sweden, the United Methodist Church and the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden) gathered at a modest beach-side hotel in Skane, on Sweden’s cool and windy Southwest coast. Virtually all had traveled or lived in Palestine, and knew what was happening on the ground there.
I was invited to share the work of Jewish Voice for Peace (“JVP”) on BDS and Palestinian liberation generally. I found a receptive audience. It was clear that their patience with Israel and its oppression of Palestinians was running out.
The camp was convened by a dynamo named Anna Karin Hammar. She is a priest and the sister of the Swedish Church’s 40th Archbishop and Primate since the Reformation. A feminist undaunted by the fact that all 40 were of the male persuasion, the Rev. Dr. Hammar ran to succeed her brother in 2006 and actually garnered 10% of the vote. (The female 42nd Archbishop, installed in 2014, finally broke that clerical glass ceiling). Anna Karin, as she was known at camp, is now the Church’s coordinator with the Christians of Palestine, who in December 2009, drafted “A Moment of Truth: A Word of Faith, Hope and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering,” now known as the Kairos Palestine Document. Her first trip there was in 1988, during the First Intifada.
In 2012, the Swedish Church’s Synod passed a resolution recommending that its local churches heed the call of the Kairos Palestine Document to cancel investments, impose sanctions and boycott companies and products from the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian areas, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and to demand that the ongoing Israeli blockade of Gaza be lifted.
Impatient at the response, or lack of one now, four years later, Anna Karin did not mince words. The increasingly difficult plight of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza “called for less talk and more action,” she said in her initial presentation to the camp. “We have waited 41 years” as the situation has gotten worse and worse in Israel and the Occupied Territories. “We are cowards,” in not sufficiently challenging both the Swedish Churches and Government to change strategies to do more to assist Palestinians engaged in non-violent resistance, and to press Israel to change its oppressive policies. “BDS may be the only chance to liberate both Palestinians and Israeli Jews from the occupation. We should have nothing to do with the Israeli banking system,” and there should be “no military cooperation between Sweden and Israel” until Israeli occupation of Palestinian land ends.
“Apartheid is worse in Palestine than it was in South Africa because it is killing daily life there,” where the Christian community “is diminishing and increasingly marginalized, so that migration appears to many to be the only realistic solution.” In South Africa, she noted, India and Sweden spearheaded the BDS movement. Now, it is South Africa which is spearheading an ecumenical Christian BDS movement in Palestine, with an office and paid staff. It is time, Dr. Hammar concluded, for Swedish Christians and their congregations to get on board.
Staffan Graner, of Jews for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (“JIPF”), the Swedish analog to JVP, told the camp that the call to BDS is just starting to percolate among Sweden’s small Jewish community of 20,000, 0.2% of the country’s 9.6 million people. (The 1.4 million Jews in Europe constitute about that same percentage of the European population).
A Jewish member of the British Parliament was provided police protection after receiving online anti-Semitic death threats.read more
Ruth Smeeth was repeatedly referred to as a "Yid," the Jewish Chronicle reported.
The message also said that “the gallows would be a fine and fitting place” for the 37 year old MP “to swing from”.
She wrote on Twitter about the reaction to the threats: “Huge thanks for the solidarity and supportive messages. I'm very touched and will keep fighting the good fight against abuse.”
The death threat showed strong support for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, referring to a “hatchet job” against him by the “right-wing, neo-con, Nazi-Zionist outfit Portland Communications”.
It ended by saying “Jeremy Corbyn, to put it bluntly, is staying exactly where he is”.
Pskov Region - vandals wrecked the memorial site "Golubaya Dacha" in the Nevelski area of Pskov province. The incident was reported on the Pskov Region news.
The Damage was discovered on August 28 by a Nevel resident, Natalia Gloshnovha. She says when she returned from a trip to the woods she decided to visit "Golubaya Dacha." This was my first visit at the memorial site. We arrived to the monument and were shocked from what we have seen. Tombstones were knocked over, most of the lilac bushes planted by school students this spring, were cut down. How come no one cares?".
Antisemitic articles are so abundant in the Greek Press that one could fill entire volumes with one-year’s output alone. But one would err, should he presume the mere abundance as proof of why Greece is the most antisemitic country in the western world. Instead the feature that sets Greece apart is how normalized and ubiquitous antisemitism is; or as Moses Altcheh says «it is embedded in the society».
In an article by Kostas Kaltsis in the Proinos Logos newspaper, we have everything: rhetorical questions whether we should continue talking about the Holocaust, claims that many more Greek Christians died, that Jews do not care about Greek (Christian) deaths, of Jewish influence on how the world evolves, of the genocide of the Palestinians, of accusations of Jews of Ioannina conspiring with the turkish despots against the Christians et cetera. In a next article he attacked personally the president of the Jewish Community Dr.Moisis Elisaf attributing his designation as deputy director at Ioannina General Hospital, to the international «Jewish Lobby» and generally attacking Jews as «trying to manipulate/rule the world», (in the meantime Elisaf is an accomplished medical professor in Ioannina University and one can access his fantastic track record at Pubmed). Other articles accused Jews of having a fascist mentality and similar antisemitic accusations.
This particular incident does not concern the typical neonazi crude antisemitism which we see every day in newstands all around Greece with titles like «Zionist plan to exterminate the White Race». On the contrary it offers the token condemnation of nazi murders but takes offense at every facet of Jewish existence. The pretext for this attack is the Holocaust Memorial planned for the city of Ioannina, a city in which faced multiple violent antisemitic acts in the past, albeit met with limited but nevertheless existent resistance by Christians.
But despite nazi Golden Dawn supporting Kostas Kaltsis, one cannot label him a nazi. Indeed the newspaper Proinos Logos, (owned by the Koutsoliodos family), is a mainstream newspaper with no overt pro-Jewish or antisemitic sentiments. Of course, as any other newspaper in Greece, houses the occasional antisemitic jab but it also houses opinions which place the Holocaust into the local history with dignity.
But who is Kostandinos Kaltsis ? He is associated with the newspaper Epirus Press which has the same address and telephone number, with two other entries is the Ioannina Chamber of Commerce: publishing company Informedia and another run by Vasilios Kaltsis of Konstandinos. Also see the weekly Erevna in which V.Kaltsis appears as the owner shares the same email as Epirus Press in which K.Kaltsis appears as editor. In any case there is the infomercial «Ηπειρώτες Δημιουργοί» where the names Vasilis Kaltsis, Kostas Kaltsis, Informedia are tidely grouped together in the beginning. There is also a radio station, Studio E, on whose behalf V.Kaltsis receives money from the Chamber of Commerce and where K.Kaltsis works.
If one searches these companies in Diavgeia, he will quickly find out that these companies, which appear to be linked to this antisemitic editor, have received funding from the Chamber of Commerce of Ioannina from 2011 to 2016, the Water Company of Ioannina, the Region of Epirus and other publicly funded organizations.
A German judge is facing reprimand for exposing how the German legal system regularly prevents Holocaust survivors from receiving money they are owed.read more
Colette Avital, the head of the Center Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, told Arutz Sheva about the judge's actions and the legal proceedings against him. "This is a 49-year-old German judge who began to work with Holocaust survivors about a decade ago," she began.
The judge in question, Jan-Robert von Renesse, has been helping survivors who sued for compensation over their manual labor in the ghettos. As he progressed, he found that many other judges had rejected the claims over bureaucratic excuses and improperly completed forms.
"The judge understood that the elderly survivors may not have understood how to properly fill out the forms. So he came to Israel, filled out the forms with them, asked them to show him on a map where they had been, and thereby helped them fill out the forms properly. He is truly one of the righteous among the nations," Avital continued. She explained that the manual laborers were forced to pay the government from the little money they received for their work, which is the basis for what the survivors are now requesting.
"They were eligible to receive reparations and the judge understood that they are prevented because of bureaucratic problems. The issue was resolved, but his big crime was that, when he discovered how they rejected the claims, he opened his mouth and said how things really work."
She noted that many people in Israel criticize the conduct of the judicial system, yet no one has been taken to court for doing so. In Germany, however, "they put him on trial for this about two weeks ago. Now we are waiting for the verdict."
"We cannot intervene in the German justice system but we can and must express solidarity with a person who did all he could in order to help Holocaust survivors."
RIAS Nationwide Incident report: from Passau, Lower Bavaria, (south eastern Germany), 8th June 2016.
Two students were subject to antisemitic verbal abuse on Passau University campus.
On 8th June, at approximately 6pm, the two students were verbally abused by three men calling them “Dirty Jews”. Neither of the students was wearing any obvious ‘Jewish’ or ‘Israeli’ symbols, but the three men said that their targets looked like “typical Jews”.
The three men sat, with bare torsos, on a bench and were most likely inebriated. The reporter noted the three men singing an antisemitic song.
From their various and visible tattoos, it could be deduced that the men were associated with the extreme Right.
Tel Aviv will replace Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in a Czech school atlas, following Palestinian complaints.read more
Khaled Atlattrash, Palestinian ambassador to Prague, raised the issue earlier this month with the Czech Foreign Ministry, and subsequently the Education Ministry, after local Palestinian parents alerted him to texts and maps depicting Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel.
Israel regards the whole of Jerusalem as its capital, while the international community regards the eastern part of the city — including the whole of the Old City — as occupied territory.
“The data in the atlas will be corrected as of the New Year,” the Prague Daily Monitor quoted Czech Education Ministry spokeswoman Klara Bila as saying.
“The Czech Republic does not consider East Jerusalem a part of the State of Israel,” Czech Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Irena Valentova said, adding that the atlas, published by Shocart, did not express Prague’s official position.
“The EU member countries, including the Czech Republic, view Jerusalem as the future capital of both states, i.e. the State of Israel and the future State of Palestine,” Valentova said.
My organisation Harif — a UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa — was invited to the Shalom Festival to present the film, the Forgotten Refugees.read more
As we entered the Shalom Festival venue, we ran the gamut of Palestinian flags and verbal threats. More political, you could not get. This was obviously a well-funded and well-run campaign. The presence of familiar faces suggested that some demonstrators had been flown in from London.
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The noisy protesters chanted hateful and defamatory slogans and libels about Israel. The air was bristling with hatred and intimidation.
We presented our film, which deals with the plight of 850,000 Jews driven from Arab lands. These Jews and their descendants now comprise over 50 percent of Israel’s Jews.
As we strained to be heard over the racket on the street below, the slogan rang out over the megaphone: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
In no uncertain terms, the protesters had revealed their true intentions: Free Palestine of Jews. Irony of ironies: here we were — describing the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the region, and the protesters were advocating finishing the job — by ethnically cleansing the Jews of Israel.
The head of the German–Israel Parliamentary Group in the Bundestag, Volker Beck, launched an inquiry into the misuse of German aid for Palestinian terrorism.read more
The inquiry appears to be the first legislative investigation in Germany into the possible misappropriation of Palestinian humanitarian aid.
According to letters obtained by The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, Beck, a Green Party deputy, wrote in July to German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier that “the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) in Washington, DC, recently presented to Congress and subsequently published the interesting report ‘Palestinian Authority Support For Imprisoned, Released, And Wounded Terrorists And Families Of Martyrs.’”
Beck asked, “What information is available to the Federal government about payments by the PA, possibly through intermediaries, to Palestinian prisoners involved in terrorist activities against Israel or its citizens?”
He continued, “What information is available to the Federal government about payments by the PA, possibly through intermediaries, to the families of dead Palestinian terrorists (so-called martyrs) who were involved in terrorist activities against Israel or its citizens?”
He then asked, “How does the Federal government intend to rule out that the PA is directly or indirectly financing terrorists or the relatives of terrorists with money from the Federal Republic of Germany or the EU?”
