The New Antisemite

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Polish journalist: Jews also took part in the Holocaust

A Polish TV host has suggested that World War II death camps in Poland be referred to as “Jewish death camps” instead of Polish or German, while a journalist intimated on his program that Jews played a part in the Nazi Final Solution.

The comments have fanned the flames that have already mildly burned relations between Warsaw and Jerusalem after the Polish parliament recently moved to pass legislation that Israel has argued is an attempt to downplay Poland’s role in Nazi atrocities.

The guest of the program aired by TVP2 also slammed Israel for its vociferous opposition to the bill, which prescribes prison time for defaming the Polish nation by using phrases such as "Polish death camps" to refer to the killing sites Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland during World War II.

“This narrative is built out of contempt for the facts,” argued Marcin Jerzy Wolski who hosts the Polish public mainstream TV channel operated by TVP.

Discussing an experiment carried out in Germany in which exhaust fumes were pumped into rooms containing monkeys and humans, Wloski and the conservative commentator and author Rafal Aleksander Ziemkiewicz digressed into a conversation about Jews in the Holocaust, gas chambers and how the Nazis improvised as they searched for more efficient methods to murder European Jewry.

The two then segued into an attack of Israeli criticism against the new bill and the “claims” that Poles participated in the Holocaust. Ziemkiewicz also slammed the notion of blaming nations for the actions of individuals.

“Don’t be surprised if someone teaches that the Jewish people crucified Jesus or participated in the Holocaust,” he said. “If we look at the percentage of involvement of countries that took part, Jews also were part of their own destruction.”

Wolski responded by saying: “Using this terminology, linguistically, we could say these were not German or Polish camps, but were Jewish camps. After all, who dealt with the crematoria?”

Taking the theory further, Ziemkiewicz asked: “And who died in them? Jews. History has been forgotten. Instead of history there is a narrative that serves political and other interests. This narrative is built out of contempt for facts.”

A few hours before the program, Ziemkiewicz published on Twitter an anti-Semitic post before deleting it shortly after.

“For many years I have convinced my people that we must support Israel. Today, because of a few scabby or greedy people, I feel like an idiot,” he wrote in his tweet, evoking a term often used in anti-Semitic slurs in Poland.

Germany: City cuts ties to banks that enable Israel boycotts

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

The deputy mayor of the city of Frankfurt announced on Monday that the municipal government will end all commerce with banks that conduct business with organizations that support a boycott of the Jewish state.

In a statement sent to The Jerusalem Post, Deputy Mayor Uwe Becker wrote that “we will shortly only work together with banks, peoples’ banks, and Sparkassen (public saving banks), who do not maintain business relations with organizations of the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement or affiliated groups.”

Frankfurt is the first German city to sanction banks and financial institutions for providing services to the BDS campaign targeting Israel. The Frankfurt decision to penalize financial entities could have far-reaching implications for the scores of BDS organizations that operate in Germany.

Frankfurt, with a population of nearly 720,000, is located in the state of Hesse and is considered the banking capital of Germany.

Becker said that he planned to forward letters to banks about the new anti-BDS policy.

Frankfurt’s anti-BDS policy also applies to credit institutions and companies that conduct business with the city of Frankfurt.

Europe: Knesset Member Elazar Stern: Europe must stop supporting terrorism in Palestine

Via European Jewish Press:

Europe must stop support terrorism in Palestine, says Elazar Stern, member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in an interview published by Belgian daily L’Echo.

Stern, who is a member of the centrist Yesh Atid party, conveyed the message to members of the European Parliament he met while in Brussels.

"Europeans do not realize that their own money goes indirectly to terrorists. They answer that they only finance schools and books. Education is important.

But the European authorities should open the schoolbooks printed with their money and see what is written there: that the Jewish state doesn’t exist, that one needs to sacrifice his life. You find nothing on the Holocaust."

Stern has proposed a bill that would reduce the money that Israel collects for the Palestinians from customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through Israeli ports. "The Palestinians have a budget of which 7.5 percent go to the families of terrorists. A total of one billion shekels per year," says Elazar Stern. "The more the terrorist action is efficient, the more you receive money. This money given to terrorists is much more than the average salary in Palestine." "This is an incitement to commit terrorist acts, to kill Israelis," he stresses.

"If I asked the Belgians, right here in the street, what they thought about the fact that they are giving money to the family of someone who killed an Israeli? And that the amount doubles when they kill two? Do you think they would be ok with it? And yet, this is what is happening," he says.

Europe: Israeli parliament speaker urges 'sincere' EU action against anti-Semitism

Via i24News:

Israeli parliament speaker Yuli Edelstein addressed a special session of European parliament marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday, and accused EU leaders of contradictory approaches to fighting anti-Semitism in Europe while repeatedly condemning Israel.

Edelstein praised efforts to combat anti-Semitism but said that public rebuke for Israel contradicted messages coming from many elected officials.

“The efforts to combat anti-Semitism and protect the Jews of Europe are sincerely appreciated,” Edelstein said at the Brussels ceremony. "But what is the message when elected officials march with the Jewish community one day, and against Israel the next?"

The speaker declared that when leaders embrace the Jewish leaders "in solidarity after a hate-crime and then treat Hamas as a legitimate voice. When an attack is condemned as anti-Semitic and then condemns Israel for fabricated war crimes." "These contradictory messages do not build trust. Instead they prevent us from meeting our joint obligations,” he said. Edelstein also chided an EU delegation that recently traveled to Tehran for failing to condemn a Holocaust denial cartoon contest hosted in Tehran.

"I'm sure, and correct me if I'm wrong, that during that visit no one protested the international cartoon contest taking place in Tehran for the best caricature denying the Holocaust," Edelstein said, brandishing the contest's first prize winner -- an old fashioned cash register with a sketch of Auschwitz at the top [France: Cartoonist Zeon wins Iranian Holocaust-denial contest].

"It's about Jews exploiting the Holocaust to get money," he said, noting that the illustrator came from France.

"For 'Never Again' to really mean 'Never Again', consistent and sincere actions are necessary," Edelstein said. "Anti-Semitism, wherever it rears its ugly head, for whatever reason, is wrong and must be fought at every turn. Writing off such acts as mere opposition to Israel is absurd."

"Anti-Semitism has no excuse. not religion, not poverty, not lack of education, and not political disagreements," he said. Edelstein also thanked the United States for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. (...)

Edelstein asked the European parliament "what has been learned from all the memorials if synagogues across Europe need round the clock protection?"

"Is Holocaust education effective if Jews on this continent don't wear a kippah or a Star of David necklace for fear of attack?" said the speaker.

Italy: Why Some Catholics Defend the Kidnapping of a Jewish Boy

Via Atlantic:

One summer evening in 1858, the police showed up at the home of a Jewish family in Bologna, Italy, and took their six-year-old child. Authorities had discovered that the child, Edgardo Mortara, had been secretly baptized when he was a baby. Edgardo had fallen gravely ill and his Catholic nanny baptized him for fear that he would die a Jew and be locked out of heaven. But Edgardo survived—and, in the eyes of the Church, he was now a Catholic. Papal law mandated that all Catholic children must receive a Catholic education, and so he was separated from his Jewish family, with Pope Pius IX personally overseeing his religious education.

The “Mortara case” spurred a wave of protests, with activists and intellectuals from Europe and the U.S. petitioning Pius IX to return the child to his parents. The pope refused. Edgardo eventually became a priest, and in 1940 he died in a Belgian monastery. The Vatican never apologized for his kidnapping specifically. But in 2000, John Paul II issued an apology for the persecution of Jews. Today, the dominant Catholic attitude toward the Mortara case is one of regret: “It’s not one of the episodes that the Church is very proud of,” Massimo Faggioli, a Church historian at Villanova University, told me.

Now, however, conservative voices are defending Pius IX’s decision to abduct a Jewish boy. In the latest issue of First Things, a right-leaning Catholic magazine, the Dominican priest and theologian Romanus Cessario wrote a review of Kidnapped by the Vatican? The Unpublished Memoirs of Edgardo Mortara, which recently appeared in English translation. In the book, author Vittorio Messori, an Italian Church historian, goes through Mortara’s personal archive and defends the abduction. Likewise, Cessario calls the law upon which Pius IX acted “not unreasonable” and casts Edgardo’s kidnapping in a positive light: “Divine Providence kindly arranged for his being introduced into a regular Christian life.”

Ukraine: Prohibition of book over passage detailing wartime murder of Jewish children by Ukrainian militia

Via The Guardian:

Leading British historian Antony Beevor has described a Ukrainian ban on his award-winning book Stalingrad as “utterly outrageous”. The bestselling history, winner of the 1999 Samuel Johnson prize, tells of the battle for the Russian city during the second world war. A Russian translation was one of 25 titles included on a banned list issued by Ukrainian authorities last week, alongside books by authors including Boris Akunin and Boris Sokolov.

In 2016, Ukraine passed a law that banned books imported from Russia if they contained “anti-Ukrainian” content, with an “expert council” assessing titles for such content. It is almost four years since Russian president Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, during which time around 10,000 people have died, and more than 1.7m have been displaced.

Serhiy Oliyinyk, head of the Ukrainian Committee for State TV and Radio Broadcasting’s licensing and distribution control department, told Radio Free Europe (RFE) that the ban was imposed because of a passage that details how 90 Jewish children were shot by Ukrainian militia “to save the feelings of the Sonderkommando”, the work units made up of the Nazis’ death camp prisoners.

“It’s a provocation,” he told RFE. “When we checked the sources he used, we found out he used reports of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. It was enough to discuss the issue at expert council and we are happy they supported us.”

Americans more likely than Europeans to stand up to anti-Semitism, experts say

Via Times of Israel:

It’s better in America: That was the message of a panel of experts considering the rise of the extreme right and of anti-Semitism in the United States and Europe.

That was the good news at the forum Monday sponsored by Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization. No one, however, could quite pin down why Americans were more resistant to anti-Semitism than Europeans.

“It’s far from perfect,” said Ira Forman, until January the international anti-Semitism monitor for the State Department. “We do it now better than we did 50 years ago, there’s no guarantee we will continue to do it, and frankly, we do it better with anti-Semitism than with anti-Muslim rhetoric and with racism.”

Forman cited American communities that spontaneously rallied to counter anti-Semitism in their midst, notably the citizens of Whitefish, Montana, who a year ago demonstrated ahead of a planned neo-Nazi march targeting the town’s tiny Jewish community, and Oklahoma civic leaders in 2013 who called on a state lawmaker to apologize for using the phrase “jew down.”
People gather in Chicago, Illinois on August 13, 2017 to protest the alt-right movement and to mourn the victims of Charlottesville, Virginia. (Scott Olson/Getty Images/AFP)

In both cases and in many others, he said, the drive to counter anti-Jewish rhetoric came in communities with few Jews and seemed driven more by non-Jews who were repelled by the rhetoric.

Austria Investigates Fraternity's Nazi Songbook

Via Haaretz:

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Wednesday prosecutors are investigating a student fraternity whose songbook contains Nazi lyrics.

Kurz wrote on Twitter that there should be "zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, racism or praising Nazi tyranny."

His comments come after a report revealed a Freedom Party candidate for state office, Udo Landbauer, was a member of the fraternity with the songbook. Many have raised concerns about Kurz's decision to form a new coalition government with the nationalist, anti-migrant Freedom Party.

The book contains the line "step on the gas, you old Germans, we will reach seven million" — an apparent reference to the 6 million Jews the Nazis killed in the Holocaust.

UK: East Yorkshire MP reveals second anti-Semitic attack since becoming a Jew

Via Hull Daily Mail:

An East Yorkshire MP has revealed the “torrent” of anti-Semitic abuse he received at the hands of two people while out shopping before Christmas.

Andrew Percy, Conservative MP for Goole and a recent Jewish convert, said he was accosted by a man and a woman while in Doncaster shopping.

The ex-Hull City councillor previously alleged, as reported by the Mail, that he was targeted during the snap general election last summer, with two individuals said to have “screamed” at him for being “Israeli scum” and “Zionist scum”.

The backbencher is vice-chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel and has defended Israel’s foreign policy in the past.

Russia: Moscow University Student Removed From Exam for Jewish Headwear

Via Moscow Times:

A Jewish student at Moscow State University was barred from taking an exam this week after he declined to take off his religious headgear at the request of a professor.

Lev Boroda was asked by geography professor Vyacheslav Baburin to remove his Jewish religious cap, called a yarmulke or kippah, or leave the classroom, the SOVA Center monitoring group reported Tuesday.

Boroda, who later took the exam with a different professor, has reportedly filed a complaint about the incident with university administrators.

The film student recalled an earlier incident in which the university’s gym teacher told him to “cross himself” when he asked for permission to skip class during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the SOVA Center reported.

Sergei Dobrolyubov, the dean of the geography department, lauded the professor for following the university’s rules, which prohibit headgear from being worn on campus. He pointed to Baburin’s request last year for female Muslim students to remove their headscarves before exams.

European Parliament invites Iranian official said to have links with bombing of Buenos Aires Jewish center

Via European Jewish Press (Yossi Lempkowicz):

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has protested the invitation made by the European Parliament to an Iranian senior official who is said to have links with the 1984 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, who is the Chairman for the Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security of the Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran, was invited for an ‘’exchange of views’’ at Tuesday’s meeting of the European Parliament foreign affairs committee (AFET) where is was due "to present further information on the Iranian position on regional developments, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the current political situation in Iran."

According to Simon Samuels, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Boroujerd is an Iranian alleged associate of top Hezbollah officials and of former Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, who is sought under an Interpol red notice arrest warrant for alleged complicity in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Centre which left 85 dead and over 300 wounded”.

Czech Republic: Miloš Zeman and the Czech tradition of supporting Israel when it matters

Via The Tablet (Edward N. Luttwak):

The only European leader who starkly defied the protesting chorus to applaud Donald Trump’s recognition of Israel’s capital was the President of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman.

By so doing, Zeman was renewing a peculiar tradition of his office that started with the founding president Thomas Masaryk, a philosophy professor who first became a public figure in Austro-Hungarian days by powerfully defending Leopold Hilsner, a Jewish tramp tried and convicted of the ritual murder of a girl in 1899. To the fury of the Catholic prelates who had incited mobs against Hilsner, the imperial authorities intervened from Vienna to stop Hilsner’s execution. A long campaign ensued till Hilsner’s liberation, and, in the process, Masaryk won over many Czechs to his view that anti-semitism was a pernicious pack of lies at a time when it was almost Catholic doctrine ( Viennas’s mayor Karl Lueger kept been re-elected till his death in 1910 on an explicitly anti-semitic platform, strongly backed by the Church). (...)

All through this, the Czechs–Israel’s one and only suppliers–were bombarded with American and British complaints, outright threats, and offers of inducements, but they stood firm, just as Miloš Zeman stood firm when Federica Mogherini, Arafat’s ex groupie and Rouhani enthusiast (not one word from her about the recent Iranian protests) and now Europe’s farcical “High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy“, chose to lead the outcry over Jerusalem.

Zeman is up for re-election against Jiří Drahoš, a nice man and a perfectly respectable scientist, but it is clearly Zeman who upholds the Masaryk tradition when it comes to Israel. He received 38 percent of the vote in the first round as against 26 percent for Drahoš, but faces a maximum effort from the Mogherini set in the concluding vote next week (for more on the election see here). He is worthy of support.

UK "must end this appeasement and ban Hezbollah"

Via The Times (Richard Kemp):

Hezbollah is the most powerful terrorist organisation in the world. Yet Britain has proscribed only part of it: its military wing. This Thursday the MP Joan Ryan will lead a parliamentary debate aimed at designating the whole organisation, as the US, Canada and the Netherlands already do. Her chances are slim. The film Darkest Hour has reminded us of British ministers’ penchant for appeasement and, like Churchill, that is what she’s up against.

Hezbollah, the creation of Iran, emerged onto the world stage in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 US Marines and 58 French paratroopers in the most devastating terrorist attack before 9/11. Since then it has attacked in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East and planned strikes from Cyprus to Singapore. Last summer US authorities charged two Hezbollah terrorists with planning attacks in New York and Panama. Hezbollah is fighting to keep Assad in power in Syria and maintains an arsenal of 100,000 rockets in Lebanon, pointed at Israel.

France: Broadcaster blasted for prime-time Holocaust joke by Belgian comedian

Yet another Belgian woman being so clever (after scientist Sigrid Vertommen, now Laura Laune) ... Jews denied entry to eugenics libel event by Belgian academic at the University of Warwick

Via JTA:

A public broadcaster in France is being criticized for airing a Belgian comedienne’s joke about the Holocaust.

France 2 aired the joke by Laura Laune, 31, on Friday in its 8 p.m. news journal. A winner of the 2017 season of the French version of “America’s Got Talent,” she was seen saying on stage: “What do sneakers and Jews have in common? They’re more common in 39 than in 45.”

World War II, during which six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust in Europe, began in 1939 and ended in 1945. The European shoe sizes of 39 and 45 translate to 8.5 and 11 in U.S. sizes, respectively. The flattering profile reportage on Laune noted her “boldness” and her popularity in the stand-up comedy scene in France.

Gilles-William Goldnadel, a well-known lawyer in France and a former member of the executive board of the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities, called the joke “horrific” on Twitter and accused France 2 and French media in general of pursuing a double standard on black humor that permits its application to Jews but not women.

“Public broadcaster: They sell the boldness of a joke by a woman on the Holocaust while they kick out Tex for a joke about women.”

The comedian Tex, whose name is Jean-Christophe Le Texier, last month was fired from France 2 for telling a joke about domestic violence against women during an appearance in November in a show on the private channel C8.

UK: Amnesty International withdraws from event with Jewish community, citing support for BDS

Via The Algemeiner:

JNS.org – Amnesty International sparked outrage among the UK Jewish community after citing support for the anti-Israel BDS movement in its withdrawal from an event it had organized with the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC), an umbrella group of major British Jewish organizations. The event, a panel discussion on Israel and the United Nations Human Rights Council, was scheduled to take place Wednesday at Amnesty International’s London offices.

Human rights lawyer Danny Friedman was slated to chair the panel, with speakers Fred Carver of the UN Association and Hillel Neuer of UN Watch joining the discussion.

Amnesty withdrew from hosting the event last Friday, citing its campaign “for all governments around the world to ban the import of goods produced in the illegal Israeli settlements.”

“We do not, therefore, think it appropriate for Amnesty International to host an event by those actively supporting such settlements,” the group stated.

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