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A European Union revision to a controversial resolution by the UN’s cultural body on the Old City of Jerusalem had Israel “concerned” on Thursday, with the Foreign Ministry saying the new text still downplays Jewish historical ties to its holiest site.read more
A statement from the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem expressed “concern’ over the EU revision to the UNESCO resolution, which it said “nullifies the bond and relationship of the Jewish people to the Temple Mount.”
“The EU proposal still denies the connection of the Jewish people to the Temple Mount,” the Foreign Ministry statement said.
The text of the proposal has not yet been released by the EU.
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| Carpentras synagogue |
Bastille Day is meant to be a moment of celebration in France. But when my wife and I had dinner on Thursday evening with neighbours near our French home in the Loire region, we encountered visceral despair about the state of the Gallic nation. The company was charming, the hospitality magnificent, yet parts of the conversation were profoundly sombre. This was hours before the news of the Islamist atrocity in Nice emerged, but our friends' concern for France's future was palpable.
Mass immigration, the relentless growth of the Muslim population, the alarming spread of jihadism and the enfeebled stance of President Hollande's socialist government had left them with a feeling that their country is increasingly under siege.
[...] One night I woke up to the smell of acrid smoke in the air [the author lived in Carpentras]. Looking out from my bedroom window, I saw to my astonishment that five cars had been set on fire in our street.On another occasion, while out in the countryside with my wife, I was menaced by a Muslim armed with scythe.When, slightly shaken, I told this to a neighbour, who was a French army veteran, he recounted how a local Muslim had one day threatened to slit his throat.Let's be absolutely clear: most of the Muslim population were thoroughly decent people who wanted nothing more than to live their lives in harmony with other peaceful French people.That said, the religious and racial tension in Carpentras was palpable in everyday life.Carpentras has the oldest synagogue in France, and the town's Jewish roots were another source of this tension.My wife and I went one night to a choral concert at the town hall by a renowned Israeli choir, but because of Islamist threats of violence, security was as tight as it might have been for a visiting foreign leader, complete with guard dogs and armed troops.It was partly because of the death of our Provencal dream that we sold our Carpentras house three years ago and moved further north. [...]
Until recently, violent anti-semitism in France was largely seen as the preserve of the far Right, a dark legacy of Vichy France's collusion with the Nazis during the war, but today it is another weapon of Islamist intimidation.
German Holocaust memorials and research centres are concerned about how players are able to catch Pokemon right at sites meant to honour those murdered by the Nazis.
Pokemon Go has only been available in Germany as of sometime before noon on Wednesday and already it’s causing controversy.
The Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe told The Local that the Holocaust memorial in Berlin has been reported as a site where people could find and catch Pokemon creatures through the augmented reality game.
“This is a memorial space for the six million Jews who were murdered and it is inappropriate for this kind of game,” said foundation spokeswoman Sarah Friedrich, adding that she hoped the company would remove the memorial as a possible location.
A reporter for The Local did not find Pokemon at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews in Berlin, but did find two at the memorial for the genocide of Roma and Sinti people by the Nazis - one Diglett and one Jynx.
Amid a public debate about the complicity of Poles in the murder of Jews in the Holocaust, Poland’s education minister implied that historical accounts of such atrocities are inconclusive.
In an interview Wednesday with the TVN24 network, Anna Zalewska spoke of “biased opinions” in describing Jedwabne, where on July 10, 1941, at least a few dozen Poles killed a minimum of 340 of their Jewish neighbors, according to the Polish government’s own Institute of National Remembrance. Many were burned alive in a barn.
“It is a historical record in which there have been many misunderstandings, many very biased opinions,” Zalewka, of President Andrzej Duda’s right-wing Law and Justice Party, when asked whether Poles carried out the murders. “The tragic situation that took place in Jedwabne is controversial. Many historians, eminent professors, show completely different scenarios.”
Several Polish presidents, including Duda, have acknowledged that Polish gentiles killed Polish Jews at Jedwabne, though the Institute of National Remembrance is pushing for an exhumation of the mass grave at Jedwabne to settle some questions, including some raised by the discovery of bullet shells at the scene.
Jedwabne is one of approximately 20 sites where Polish non-Jews killed a total of 1,500 to 2,500 of their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust or directly after it, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel director, Efraim Zuroff. While complicity in the genocide occurred in Poland on a lower scale than in some of its neighboring countries, many Poles find this complicity difficult to accept because of a “deep-rooted and largely justified perception by Poles as being primarily victims during World War II,” Zuroff told JTA.
The EU coordinator on combating anti-Semitism, Katharina von Schnurbein, met with one of the leading purveyors of antisemitism in the PLO, Hanan Ashrawi, where she was told that Israeli Jews are the real racists.
Yes, this really happened.
One day after a meeting in the Knesset where von Schnurbein said that she recognized that anti-Semitism often lies behind anti-Zionism, she met with Exhibit A.
And Ashrawi didn't disappoint, going on a rant about "the racist culture of hatred that is being fed by the occupying power."
It will be recalled that Ashrawi's Miftah organization had articles on its website that said that Jews eat matzoh made with Christian blood on Passover, and defended it, calling me names for exposing it, before the world media started to notice it and Miftah then "apologized" (but only in English, while the antisemitic article was in Arabic.)
After that I discovered that Miftah also questioned whether there were any Jewish Temples in Jerusalem, that it supported terror attacks and glorified suicide bombers, It also condemns any sort of programs that encourage dialogue between Palestinians and Israeli Jews as "normalization," in direct opposition to the EU which funds several such programs.
But years after I exposed these antisemitic articles, and after the US and EU continue to fund Hanan Ashrawi's Miftah, is there still antisemitism on their website? Of course there is!
This article says "History has taught us that the culture and mentality of Judaism is a culture of complaint and accusation against the other (goyim)"
The article goes on to say that the Talmud is a racist work, but the quotes it uses to prove that actually show how the Palestinians do not want to accept Jewish history. The article quotes the Talmud as saying "Why is Israel compared to an olive tree? To learn that just as the olive tree does not lose its leaves in the summer or in the winter, so too the children of Israel will never disappear completely from this world or the next." You can see how that would be offensive!
Or similarly, a medrash that says that God compared all the cities of the world to place the Temple and He chose Jerusalem. This is another example of "Jewish racism" which in fact reveals that Palestinian Arabs refuse to accept historical facts of the Temples in Jerusalem and the Jewish nation.
Oh, and it praises Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.
This article castigates the US for passing a bill to monitor antisemitism, saying that the Arabs are the only Semites. [...]
So, yes, the EU's official in charge of fighting antisemitism decided that it would be useful to get the perspective of someone whose organization has been responsible for spreading antisemitism.read more
Police in 14 German states reportedly conducted raids on 60 individuals in an attempt to root out the sources of anti-Semitic and other hate postings on the internet.read more
The raids on Wednesday marked the first time that Germany has conducted a nationwide hunt for internet hate purveyors, according to German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, who said he hoped the operations would send a strong message that criminals cannot hide from the law in the seemingly anonymous internet.
According to German news reports, the raids followed months of observing one Facebook group that glorified National Socialism and broke German laws against promoting hate.
Suspects were accused of posting anti-Semitic, extremist and xenophobic messages, including denial of or relativizing the Holocaust, celebrating aspects of National Socialism and using Nazi symbolism, and calling for attacks on refugees and politicians. Evidence was seized at several locations.
Israel has responded with anger to a reported meeting between the French foreign minister and members of the Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah, suggesting the move was comparable to meeting with representatives of the Islamic State group.
Jean-Marc Ayrault met with a political delegation of Hezbollah in Lebanon on Tuesday, according to local media reports.
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The Lebanese news site al-Joumhouria quoted “well-informed” sources who said the delegation that met with Ayrault included lawmaker Ali Fayyad, from Hezbollah’s political party Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc, as well as the head of Hezbollah’s international relations, Ammar al-Musawi.
Ayrault arrived in Lebanon Tuesday for a two-day trip in order to help the country move past the political paralysis that has prevented the election of a new Lebanese president since 2014.
Among Europeans, Greeks have some of the most negative attitudes towards Jews, a new Pew Research Center study revealed on Monday.read more
According to the study — which analyzed the ideological divides across the EU on views about minorities, diversity and national identity, fifty-five percent of Greeks have an unfavorable view of Jews.
Hungary ranked second, with 32% of its citizens expressing negative opinions about Jews. One in five or more in Poland, Italy and Spain also have unfavorable attitudes towards Jews.
The authors of the report noted that, compared to Roma and Muslims in Europe, “Negative attitudes towards Jews are much less common” and have remained “relatively stable since 2015. Additionally, “a median of only 16 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Jews in their country.”
Bradford Council is reviewing its priorities around equalities, and Cllr Cooke had put forward a motion calling on it to consider its “awareness and response to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia”; as well as support for new migrant communities facing prejudice, challenging the demonising of white working-class communities and addressing homophobia.
Cllr Cooke told the chamber that “for the benefit of David Ward and others” he wanted to explain anti-Semitism - a reference to Cllr Ward’s past as an MP in which comments he made about Israel saw him suspended from his party.
Cllr Cooke said his son had recently brought up the Holocaust with him, saying: “My son said to me, they would have killed me and mum, wouldn’t they?”
He condemned the use of the term ‘Zio’ and said people should be alarmed by anyone calling for the Jews to be run out of Israel.
Cllr Ward responded by saying: “One thing is absolutely damn certain, he would not have been killed by a Palestinian.”
To cries of ‘shame’ from some councillors and applause from others, Cllr Ward said: “Palestinians have children, many of whom have been slaughtered by the state of Israel.”
He said it was not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel and that it was “completely wrong to use the Holocaust” to protect Israel from criticism.
Betty Purcell, a member of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, is best known for her former role as a current affairs producer at RTE, Ireland’s public service broadcaster. Purcell is a television producer of longstanding, who wrote a book called Inside RTÉ: A Memoir about her thirty-three year career at the Broadcasting institution, which indicated the extent to which she influenced RTE’s political culture.
Purcell trenchantly advocated against the Jewish State in the mainstream media, in the aftermath of a supposed fact-finding tour of Judea and Samaria/West Bank, organised by the Bethlehem branch of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association). Purcell’s staunch anti-Zionist claims, as expressed in an Irish Examiner article, letters, and during an RTE interview, echo most of the normative propagandistic talking points found when anti-Israel tourism activists share their insights with the international media. This article uses Purcell’s commentary as a starting point to closely critique these broad talking points.
On November 2nd, 2015, the Irish Examiner published an opinion piece by Betty Purcell, entitled ‘A boycott of Israel can help end the injustice’.
Purcell’s screed begins with a description of the appearance of a field of olive trees, near Bethlehem:
“It should be an idyllic scene. But we are with the farmer who owns the field, and his story is tragic.”
Purcell does not name the farmer and his family, upon which several of her claims are based. The absence of an identifying source for Purcell’s claims soon becomes significant. Of the farmer, it is said:
“Coming down the hill towards him is a massive Israeli settlement (illegal under international law, and condemned by the International Court of Justice in 2004). It has already led to the confiscation of half of his land.”
Numerous invalid claims have been made in the media about the confiscation of land and property that was supposedly owned by Arab-Palestinians. Purcell does not even deem it necessary to name the area where the farmer lives, but it appears to be near the security barrier, in the environs of Bethlehem. It is difficult to deduce the “massive” Jewish settlement that Purcell references. It might be Efrat, or the neighbourhood of Gilo, which Purcell may deem a settlement but it is merely a suburb of East Jerusalem. Purcell describes this settlement as almost a living thing, coming after the unfortunate farmer, but these urban centres typically develop inward rather than outward, and do so at a relatively slow pace due to the controversy that such developments garner internationally. [...]
When naming the security barrier the “Separation Wall”, Purcell demonstrates a clear propagandistic intent. The term evokes the notion of apartheid and negates the historic circumstance in which the development occurred, namely the Second Intifada, in which the civilian Israeli populace was subjected to approximately four years of terrorism, that largely originated in Judea and Samaria/West Bank. It led to the death of nearly a thousand Israelis, the majority of which were Jewish civilians, along with many thousands of non-fatal casualties.
Purcell’s article introduced a rather extraordinary claim:
“The Wall is built in the West Bank, and when it is completed will annex a further 47% of West Bank territory.”
This claim was challenged by a representative of Dublin’s Israeli Embassy:
“Ms Purcell states that the separation wall, when it is completed, will gobble up 47% of Palestinian territory. This is a lie; the wall is expected to take up about nine per cent of the territory. Ms Purcell does not explain why it was built in the first place: to keep potential terrorists out of Israel.”
However, Purcell stood by the charge in a letter of response:
“…there are varying estimates as to the amount of West Bank land the Separation Wall will seize. The YMCA for instance predicts the incursion will be 47%.”
read moreIf there are varying estimates, then why did Purcell choose to go with the most extreme estimate in her article? Purcell’s 47% claim is so absurd that the reader might be forgiven for thinking that she has never seen a map of Judea and Samaria/West Bank!
A march in support of genocidal antisemitic terrorist group Hizballah went ahead in London on Sunday, after Campaign Against Antisemitism’s talks with the Metropolitan Police Service and the Crown Prosecution Service failed.
Hundreds of demonstrators festooned themselves and their children with Hizballah flags, and then marched through the streets of the capital in support of the terrorist group which strives for the annihilation of Jews worldwide and has perpetrated terrorist attacks against Jewish targets around the world for decades.
Members of our evidence team were made to leave for asking demonstrators about Hizballah’s policy of murdering Jews, whilst the demonstrators paraded in front of police officers with printed placards reading “We are all Hizbullah [sic]”, as they have done in previous years.
Bianca Jagger, a human rights activist and ex-wife of Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, apologized for tweeting a link to a neo-Nazi website and later said she was “mortified.”
Jagger tweeted the link, which includes a list of British lawmakers who voted for the Iraq War, early Tuesday to her 54,000 followers. The tweet said “List of UK #MPs who voted for #IraqWar – Please read it carefully, understand why they want @jeremycorbyn out.”
The list was on the Metapedia website, which was founded by a Swedish neo-Nazi in 2006 and describes itself as an “alternative encyclopaedia.”
In addition to saying how each lawmaker voted, the list includes a notes section in which they are each identified by descriptions such as “Jewess,” “Connected to Labour Friends of Israel,” “married to Jew,” “openly homosexual,” “Negro” or “Negress.”
(...)
Jagger tweeted an apology two hours later after her first post, which had been set to automatically retweet.
“I’m terribly sorry for posting a despicable tweet by mistake, I posted it at 4.15 in the morning and didn’t properly read its content,” the tweet said.
Jagger, 71, runs the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation and also serves as a Council of Europe goodwill ambassador.
