Friday, September 30, 2016

UK: "It was the first time I’d seen anti-Semitism, kids chasing after you in a park and calling you a bloody Jew"


Via Times of Israel:
Being out of Israel — where, he says, he felt “protected” — and in Leeds, Charney says he felt “vulnerable. It was the first time I’d seen anti-Semitism, kids chasing after you in a park and calling you a bloody Jew. Israel gives you a sense of security, and especially in the army, there’s a feeling of collective strength. You can do, you can protect, you can defend. It’s a very different mentality.”
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Poland: Prosecutors absolve priest who called Jews ‘cancer’

“Bialystok investigation discontinued! Zero tolerance for ‘Jewish cowardice’. Salut!”
Via Times of Israel:
The Prosecutor’s Office in Bialystok has ended an investigation of a Polish priest who spoke of Jews being a “cancer” during a sermon, determining that no hate crime had been committed.

In a sermon on April 16 in Bialystok, Father Jacek Miedlar spoke of the “cancer which swept Poland,” apparently meaning Jews. He stressed that political correctness and tolerance enslave Poles.

According to the prosecutor, Miedlar “referred to the historical content and the Bible, pointing to examples of negative behavior of the representatives of the Jewish community from the time of slavery in Egypt, and generally referring to modern times.” The speech did not stigmatize a particular nationality, the prosecutor said Tuesday.

On the same day Miedlar, a known nationalist, wrote in response to the decision on Twitter: “Bialystok investigation discontinued! Zero tolerance for ‘Jewish cowardice’. Salut!”

He attached a picture showing Poles performing a Nazi salute taken on the night of June 23, 1936, when a group of Polish nationalists seized the city of Myślenice for several hours. During the siege, the nationalists beat Jewish residents and destroyed Jewish shops.

After a few hours Miedlar removed the post.

Miedlar also withdrew from the Congregation of the Missionaries, a religious order founded in 1625.

“The persecution of gay, liberal and Jewish groups led me to the fact that I can’t do my pastoral work,” he said, according to the Onet.pl website.

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UK: Man convicted for shouting antisemitic abuse at Jewish volunteeers helping burglary victim


Via Campaign Against Antisemitism:
A man has been convicted of racially aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress after shouting antisemitic abuse at members of Shomrim, London’s Jewish neighbourhood watch patrol.

The incident took place on 5th November 2015 when volunteers from Shomrim were called to a burglary. Whilst they assisted the Muslim victim, Mark Zahra saw the scene and assumed that Shomrim were reporting the Muslim victim to the police and shouted at Shomrim’s volunteers: “F***ing Jewish scum. Why do you keep calling them [the police], because he’s Muslim?”

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France: Jews feel they can give their children a better future in Israel

Many French Jews also go to the United States and Canada.

From US Today: 
Yael Haccoun and her family are Orthodox Jews from the working-class Paris suburb of Sarcelles, but they flew to Israel in late September to start a new life and escape the anti-Semitism around them.

“French people think that it’s natural when Jews are targeted” in terror attacks, said Haccoun, 33, as she waited with her husband and their three children here at the airport. "The fact that the army must protect Jewish schools and synagogues isn’t normal.”

She said her family watched in horror in July 2014 as a demonstration protesting Israel’s war with Hamas turned into an anti-Semitic rampage. Dozens of young men chanting “God is great” in Arabic and “death to the Jews” attacked Jewish-owned businesses with clubs and fire bombs.

The number of French Jews immigrating to Israel rose from 1,900 in 2011 to nearly 8,000 last year, said Jacques Canet, president of La Victoire, the great synagogue of Paris. He said the country’s 500,000 to 600,000 French Jews — the third largest Jewish population in the world — “feel threatened."

“Increasingly, Jews in Paris, Marseilles, Toulouse, Sarcelles feel they can’t safely wear a kippah (yarmulke, or skull cap) outside their homes or send their children to public schools, where Muslim children bully Jewish children,” Canet said.

A poll by the French Institute of Public Opinion in January showed 43% of France's Jewish Community are considering a move to Israel, and 51% said they have "been threatened" because they are Jewish.
Those with enough money have moved to more upscale areas within France or to Canada, England or the United States, Canet said. The wealthy, staunch Zionists and those who can’t afford to send their children to private Jewish schools go to Israel.
Moshe Sabbag, rabbi of La Victoire, believes “100%” of France’s Jews are thinking of moving, but that prospect is daunting. The majority of France’s Jews immigrated to France in the 1950s and 1960s from North African Muslim countries.
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Russia: Opponents of Chabad synagogue bury pig's head at site



Via CFCA:  In Perm, opponents to the new Chabad synagogue buried a pig's head on the site where the synagogue is to be built, and uploaded a clip of them doing so to youtube.

The clip claims that this Chabad center will serve like the Chabad center in Dnipropetrovsk, which was where the "head of Chabad in Ukraine", Ihor Kolomoyskyi, commanded the elimination of Russians in Novorossiya (ie, Ukraine).


See also: Synagogue vandalized with racist stickers, Opponents of Chabad synagogue say movement is anti-Christian, funding war in Ukraine, Protesters demand ban on Chabad movement

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Ukraine: Radical Party leader demands Israeli president apologize for saying Ukrainians participated in Babi Yar massacare


Via Pravda Report:
Iryna Herashchenko, First Deputy Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament, claimed that speech of the Israeli President on aiding and abetting crimes against Jews by he Ukrainian nationalists during the WWII were 'inappropriate'.

'While speaking at the Ukrainian Parliament, the Israeli President took the liberty to make incorrect and non-diplomatic estimations regarding certain pages of the tragic Ukrainian history, the OUN in particular. This stance was not wise,' Herashchenko wrote on her Facebook.

According to her, a number of heads of countries still use 'cliches of the Soviet propaganda when the tragedy of Babyn Yar used to be silenced'.

Leader of the Ukrainian radicals Oleg Lyashko demanded the President of Israel Reuven Rivlin to apologize. 'Rivlin's speech humiliates the Ukrainians, thus I call on the Israeli President to apologize to our state and our people. And the Knesset to ultimately recognize Holodomor (famine) as genocide of the Ukrainian people,' he stated.

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UK: Jacqueline Walker apologizes for causing offence, blames Zionists for twisting her words


Jacqueline Walker posted the following explanation / apology for any unintended offence caused:
A number of people made comments in a private training session run by the Jewish Labour Movement. As we all know, training sessions are intended to be safe spaces where ideas and questions can be explored. A film of this session was leaked to the press unethically. I did not raise a question on security in Jewish schools. The trainer raised this issue and I asked for clarification, in particular as all London primary schools, to my knowledge, have security and I did not understand the particular point the trainer was making. Having been a victim of racism I would never play down the very real fears the Jewish community have, especially in light of recent attacks in France. In the session, a number of Jewish people, including me, asked for definitions of antisemitism. This is a subject of much debate in the Jewish community. I support David Schneider's definition (https://twitter.com/davidschneider/status/780107628500381696) and utterly condemn antisemitism. I would never play down the significance of the Shoah. Working with many Jewish comrades, I continue to seek to bring greater awareness of other genocides, which are too often forgotten or minimised. If offence has been caused, it is the last thing I would want to do and I apologise.

To sum up: she is not an antisemite, how can anybody believe that she is?

David Schneider's definition of antisemitism says that antisemites believe in a Jewish conspiracy.  She would never be so racist.  She just believes in a Zionist conspiracy.



In case you had any doubt as to who's at fault, on her Facebook, one of her supporters wrote: "I think this is the price of politics. You have to watch every word lest it be twisted against you."

Walker replied:  "Tell me that it is not just the Zionists who behave in this way please"

h/t Alex Wickham

Denmark: 4 acquitted in synagogue attack


Via JTA:
Four Danish citizens accused of assisting the gunman in two deadly attacks in Copenhagen last year, including one outside a synagogue that left a Jewish security guard dead, were acquitted.

On Tuesday, a Danish court found that the actions of the four men were “not of such a character that the actions can lead to a conviction for complicity,” according to the verdict, the French news agency AFP reported.

Bhostan Khan Hossein, Liban Ahmed Saleban Elmi, Ibrahim Khalil Abbas and Mahmoud Rabea were accused of helping Omar El-Hussein carry out the attack against Copenhagen’s main synagogue on Feb. 15, 2015. They had faced life in prison if convicted.

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UK: 87% of Jews think Labour party is too tolerant of anti-Semitism



Via JNS:
A majority of British Jews believe the Labour party is too tolerant of anti-Semites amongst their own party, according to a new study by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA).

CAA's Anti-Semitism Barometer study, in cooperation with Jewish community groups, surveyed 1,864 British Jewish adults about their feelings toward political parties’ tolerance of anti-Semitism among parliament leaders and members and supporters.

Among British Jews 87 percent believe the Labour party is too tolerant of anti-Semitism compared to its rival, the Conservative party at 18 percent. Other parties, including the Liberal Democrats, UKIP, Greens and SNP parties, ranged from 37 to 49 percent of British Jews saying they were too tolerant of anti-Semitism.

CAA said the comparison is important because left-wing parties are traditionally known for fighting racism. But now British Jews consider them to be strongly lacking in their stance against anti-Semitism.

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Belgium: Thief defecates on kippahs


Via La Capitale:

The car of Christophe Goossens, a Jewish lawyer from Uccle was broken into Monday night.  Besides stealing various items, the thief took out two kippah, turned them over and defecated on them.


Wednesday, September 28, 2016

UK: Leading Labour activist questions whether Jews really need special security


This took place at a session for training activists to challenge anti-Semitism.

Via Huffington Post (h/t glykosymoritis):
A leading Labour activist was heckled at an anti-Semitism meeting on Monday after she wrongly criticised Holocaust Memorial Day for not including non-Jewish genocide victims.

In secret footage obtained by HuffPostUK Jackie Walker also stirred anger as she questioned the need for security at Jewish schools, and said she hadn’t heard an anti-Semitism definition she could “work with”.

To jeers, the Momentum vice-chair said “wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust day was open to all peoples who’ve experienced Holocaust?”

When told the day was indeed for all post- World War II genocides, she said “in practice it is not circulated and advertised as such.”

Speaking at a Labour conference fringe, which was set up to train activists to challenge anti-Semitism, Walker also said extra security measures in Jewish schools in the UK were not due to fear of anti-Semitic attacks.

“I was a bit concerned... at your suggestions that the Jewish community is under such threat that they have to use security in all its buildings”, she said.

“I have a grandson, he is a year old. There is security in his nursery and every school has security now. It’s not because I’m frightened or his parents are frightened that he is going to be attacked.”

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Germany: Man pushed onto train tracks because he 'smelled like a Jew'



Via CFCA:
Nuremberg - Nuremberg subway station “Langwasser”: A 49 years old man pushed another passenger on the tracks and claimed, that he has smelled, that the victim was Jewish. He used hate speech against Jews and obtained the victim from reentering the platform by booting his fingers.

An employee of the Nuremberg transport company stopped the subway traffic and rescued the victim’s life. It is not clear, if the victim was really Jewish.
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Netherlands:Airbnb banishes Amsterdam-based host for discriminating against Israelis

This European woman is subjected to a constant barrage of anti-Israel criticism in the media,  NGOs, from academics, politicians etc. and obviously she trusts and believes them.  That's why she doesn't want her lodgings to be defiled by Israeli Jews, but welcomes all other human beings.

From the Algemeiner:

The discriminatory email from a former Airbnb host to an Israeli customer. Photo: Screenshot.
Online vacation rental giant Airbnb acted quickly to ban a vendor after it came to light that she was refusing service to Israeli customers, The Algemeiner learned Tuesday.

The company removed the Amsterdam-based host named “Maria” from the website after she rejected a request by four Israeli tourists with the following explanation: “I support the BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] movement and will therefore not accept guests of Israeli citizenship until there has been a significant change in the question of Palestine. So unless you are well documented activists who work for a peaceful solution to the problem (for whom I will be very happy to make an exception) you will have to look elsewhere.”

An Airbnb representative told The Algemeiner that, “Discrimination like this has no place on the Airbnb platform and our policies prohibit hosts from declining a guest because of who they are, where they come from, how they worship or whom they love,” adding that the company “acted to permanently ban this host from our community approximately two hours after we learned of this incident.”
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Spain: Police tell Jew targeted for harassment to be 'less visibly Jewish'



The following was posted by a Spanish Jew:
So this morning I found this in the corner of my garage door. When I called the police they just told me it were probably just a random act of kids but just in case I should try to be “less visibly jewish” (not wearing a magen David/ hamsa, not having my name in the mailbox) and not tell people that I’m Jewish…

“Do your neighbours know you’re Jewish?”


UK: Jewish Labour member heckled while speaking on anti-Semitism


Via Times of Israel:
A Jewish member of UK Labour addressing a party conference Tuesday on his concerns over rising anti-Semitism in the party was heckled during his speech, with a protester reportedly dismissing his claims as unfounded.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has faced allegations that his pro-Palestinian politics and endorsement of anti-Semites has encouraged hate speech against Jews. He has been accused of doing too little to curb anti-Semitism among party members and lawmakers, some of whom have been suspended for making racist and anti-Semitic statements in public or on social media.

As Mike Katz, vice chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement, called on delegates to adopt tougher laws to deal with anti-Semitic incidents, a man began to heckle from the audience.

“It makes me weep,” Katz said. “The party…that has done more than any other to promote tolerance and inequality, the party to which the Jewish Labour Movement has been affiliated since 1920, is not seen as a welcoming home for Jews.”

According to the Daily Mail, the man shouted at Katz that he was not speaking for all Jews, and that his claims of an increase in expressions of hate were “rubbish.”
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Europe: Ex-CIA Officer on Islamic antisemitism in Europe (video)

From Daphne Anson blog:

Former CIA operative Clare Lopez (full biography here) is a strategic policy and intelligence expert specialising on such issues as the Middle East, national defense, waepons of mass destruction, and counterterrorism.  Vice President of the non-profit forum the Intelligence Summit,  she teaches courses at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI Centre) on the Iranian Intelligence Services, and the expanding influence of Jihad and Sharia in Europe and the U.S. She's co-author of two published books on Iran.

At the current OCSE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Conference in Warsaw regarding Human Rights she pulled no punches in attributing the "resurgent and savage waves of antisemitism" in Europe, especially France, to Muslims and cites as a driver "scriptural writing of the Islamic canon".

more on the conference here

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Poland: "We don’t want to kill them, we just don’t want them to have a big influence on the country"



Via The Star:
Instead, blatantly anti-migrant, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic marches have become regular phenomena throughout the country. Many are organized by the National Radical Camp — a party outlawed in 1934 for promoting hatred.

They often resemble military brigades, featuring marching men wearing armbands and waving Polish flags. Their slogan is “Poles for Poland.” One march last year included the burning of an effigy of a Hasidic Jew, and at another last April marchers burned a photo of the town’s mayor wearing a Jewish skull cap. (A march guard commander with the National Radical Camp, Szymon Mailian, says the person who burned both was not a party member. But he would not condemn the act. Asked if his group is anti-Semitic, he responded: “We are not Nazis. We don’t want eugenics. We don’t want to kill them. We just don’t want them to have a big influence on the country.”)

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UK: ‘Anti-Semitic, Racist’ Leaflets Distributed Outside Momentum Event


Via Huffington Post:
Leaflets distributed outside a meeting on religious hatred by the left-wing pressure group Momentum are “anti-Semitic and undeniably racist”, a Labour MP has said.

Wes Streeting, co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group of British Jews, has criticised the literature which called for the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) to be disbanded.

The leaflets claimed that the JLM acted as “a representative of a foreign power, Israel” and called for it to be disaffiliated from the Labour party. They were issued by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and handed out to attendees at an alternative Labour conference by Momentum, running in tandem to the main event.

The leaflets also asked “why is there so much emphasis on anti-Semitism, rather than other much more prevalent forms of racism?” and suggested the issue was being “exploited for factional goals”.
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Ukraine: Man who participated in anti-Roma pogrom explains Jews deserved it too


Via Times of Israel:
When asked to compare Gypsy pogroms in today’s Ukraine to the Jewish pogroms that took place here 100 years ago, a 39-year old Loshchynivka resident who participated in the pogrom (he did not give his name because he feared for his safety), said that the pogroms against Jews and Gypsies “have a lot of similarities,” because “the problems were the same.”

According to him, that’s because the victims of the pogroms were not honest people.

“The reason for the pogroms was not ethnic but economic,” he alleged. “A person can’t live without working. It means that he is a thief.”
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France: Car of Jewish family vandalized with antisemitic, pro-Palestinian message




Via Le Monde Juif:

Dozens of cars in the Paris suburbs of Cachan were vandalized.  One car belonging to a Jewish family was hit really hard and left with the message "dirty Jew, free Palestine".

UK: Lib Dems says it's not racist to claim 'Jewish power' controls Labour

In short: the Lib Dems believe Jews and Israel control British politics, so they can't see what's wrong with saying so.


Via Jewish News:
By sharing an article about “Jewish power” in British politics, former Lib Dem peer Baroness Jenny Tonge was not being racist, according to the Liberal Democrats.

The ruling, from the party’s Regional Parties Committee, follows a complaint from Gary Spedding, a liberal activist in Northern Ireland, who took issue with Tonge sharing an article by Israeli musician Gilad Atzmon.

Tonge, who is a strong critic of Israel, is no longer a Lib Dem peer and sits in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher. While she remains a member of the party, she does not speak for it in an official capacity.

Relaying the decision, a Lib Dem spokeswoman says: “Having reviewed your complaint, our view is that an opinion can be controversial – and even offensive – but still fall short of being racist.”
She explained: “We are a liberal party that places immense value on freedom of speech… That includes the freedom to criticise in the strongest terms the actions of states and governments and the causal effects of their policies… Any desire not to offend also needs to be balanced against the right to criticise in the strongest terms the actions of states and governments.
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France: Archaelogy - historian slams Israel on France Culture radio



Véronique Chemla reported on her blog that during a programme, Concordances des temps on the subject of "the destruction of the memory of the other as a weapon of war", aired on France Culture on September 10, Israel was yet again slammed.  

The host Jean-Noël Jeanneney discussed with Maurice Sartre, a professor of ancient history at the University of Tours, the destruction of Palmyra by Daech.

Professor Maurice Sartre claimed, without citing a single example, that Israelis destroy the "Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank" to connvey the idea that there was no Palestinian presence in the West Bank, or that if there was one it only very marginal.   

Maurice Sartre further added that the State of Israel does not respect the Convention of The Hague of 1954. Archaological searches are carried out by Israeli teams on the "occupied" West Bank and in the "occupied" Syrian Golan - the latter for the last 30 to 40 years.  

He explained that a book published in Israel on the subject had elicited smiles from many archaeologists and historians.  It presented all ancient unidentified buildings in the villages as synagogues. The purpose was to show that in Antiquity the Golan was inhabited by Jews. Professor Sartre acknowled that this is partially true and that there were large Jewish communities in the Golan.  But the way things are presented is a political maneouvre to appropriate historically a territory which has been the object of conflicts between two countries at war for close to 70 years. 

Jean-Noël Jeanneney did not dispute this. 

Véronique Chemla points out that neither historian mentioned the destruction of Jewish archaeological remains by the Palestinian Authority, including the WAQF on the Mount Temple, nor the influence of Nazism on archaeological research in Germany and France nor the role of archaeology in scientific French diplomacy.

read the whole piece in French on Véronique Chemla's blog 

This gives a pretty good idea of how Israel is presented by academics in France.

Monday, September 26, 2016

EU court asked to drop Hamas from terror list

From the American Thinker:
Young enrollee at Hamas
summer camp
An adviser to the European Union's top court says Hamas and the Tamil Tigers should be dropped from the EU's list of terrorist organizations.

The reason?  It's not because the adviser thinks Hamas is no longer conducting terror attacks against Israel.  It's because the adviser says the procedure for placing the terror groups on the list in the first place wasn't followed.  
Wall Street Journal: 

 [...]  In 2014, the EU’s second-highest court ordered both Hamas and the Tamil Tigers to be struck off the bloc’s terror list in two separate decisions.
It said at the time that Hamas’s listing wasn’t based on evidence that had been properly examined and confirmed by national authorities, but on “factual imputations derived from the press and the internet.”
The European Council, which represents EU governments in the bloc’s lawmaking process, had appealed that judgment, arguing that it was relying on a 2001 decision by the U.K. that designated both Hamas and the Tamil Tigers as terrorist groups, as well as the terror listing for both groups in the U.S.
Thursday’s opinion rejects that argument, following similar reasoning as the 2014 decision. “The council cannot rely on facts and evidence found in press articles and information from the internet,” Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston said. [...]
Did the court think to ask EU member intelligence agencies for their opinion?  It wouldn't be evidence from "newspapers" or "the internet."  The evidence would be based on cold, hard facts.
But even that isn't necessary.  It may be a novel approach, but maybe they should ask Hamas about annihilating the Jews.  Or perhaps ask Hamas why they celebrate the spate of knife attacks on Israeli citizens attacks they encourage.

But to the bureaucrats in Brussels, all the paperwork has to be in order, all the is dotted and ts crossed while the truth be damned.

The danger is, if Hamas is taken off the terror list, a flood of money will flow into its coffers.  It will be earmarked for "economic development" but will somehow magically end up funding terrorist attacks.  A child is aware of this probability, but that doesn't appear to matter to the fools who are playing with fire by legitimizing Hamas.
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Sunday, September 25, 2016

Germany: Munich cancels BDS event due to antisemitism


Via Jerusalem Post:
Munich’s cultural affairs department pulled the plug on an anti- Israel lecture slated for Friday in a city-subsidized building, because the talk would have crossed the line into antisemitism.

Stefan Hauf, a spokesman for the mayor, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that the city’s cultural commissioner intervened to stop the lecture on “Antisemitism Today” organized by the Salam Shalom Working Circle Palestine-Israel association.

Munich’s cultural commissioner, Hans- Georg Küppers, said in a letter to Eine-Welt- Haus – where the lecture was to be held – that it was probable that “during the event the line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism will be crossed,” the Merkur news outlet reported.

Salam Shalom – a hardcore anti-Israel group – promotes the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign on its website targeting the Jewish state. ”Salam Shalom has no right to be in city rooms. Salam Shalom would be better located in the NPD headquarters,” Green Party city councilman Dominik Krause told the Merkur.

The NPD is the man neo-Nazi party in Germany.

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France: Antisemitic graffiti on kosher butcher shop





Via Europe-Israel, CFCA: Antisemitic graffit on kosher butcher shop in Paris: "Juden" (Jews) and swastika.

Russia: Sole liberal opposition MP accused of Jewish-Ukraininan conspiracy


Via VOA News:
Days before an election expected to extend Kremlin dominance over Russia's parliament, the sole liberal opposition member, Dmitry Gudkov, is waging what he fears is a losing battle for political survival.

His re-election campaign ran out of money this week, he cannot get TV air time, his meetings are disrupted by people shouting him down, and a fake newspaper handed out to voters has cast him as a U.S. stooge involved in a shadowy Jewish-Ukrainian conspiracy to seize power.

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UK: "People who didn't know that I could understand them sometimes said very harsh things against Jews"



An interview with a Jewish Polish-Russian family who recently made Aliyah to Israel.  The family had lived in the UK for a few years, when their son decided he's moving to Israel. 

The mother says: "This reminded us that there had also been various unpleasant incidents in London.  When we walked in the park, seven thugs threw Avraham's hat off and laughed, for example. There was antisemitism. I know Polish and Russian and people who didn't know that I could understand them sometimes said very harsh things against Jews.  And there was once a march of 70,000 people who wanted London free of Jews."




Norway: Theater boycott video like "the sick brainchild of Goebbels’ propaganda" and collaborators Quisling and Hamson

What you will probably never see is a video by a Norwegian artist condemning Palestinian violence against Israelis. 

From the Times of Israel:
Israeli diplomats on Saturday fumed over a video posing as an official statement by the Norwegian National Theater, that calls for a cultural boycott of Israel’s National Theater, Habima. 

The short clip, which was uploaded to YouTube Thursday after being aired at the biennial International Ibsen Festival in Oslo, shows an actress posing as the national theater’s spokeswoman. In it she calls for a boycott of Habima. 

The actress in the film, Pia Maria Roll, says the theater would like to “publicly apologize for our shameful collaboration with Habima, the national theater of Israel,” adding that the cooperation served in “normalizing the Israeli occupation.” She called Israel a state “based on ethnic cleansing, racism, occupation and apartheid,” and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “colonial” — “it’s not some passionate feud between the Montagues and Capulets.”

The film said the theater would join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), and concluded with “Free Palestine and long live the national theater of Norway.”

Norwegian news site Vartoland said Roll and fellow actor Marius von der Fehr were behind the film, which expressed their opinion. Roll said their intention was to trick people into thinking the statement was made by the theater.

Norway’s National Theater said in a statement on its website that the film didn’t represent the institution’s policies and that it believes in cooperation with various nations abroad. It stopped short of condemning the video, calling it an expression of free speech.

Habima’s director said the film was made “behind the back of the administration” and that the national theater “guaranteed us that they would send a letter of clarification to me that [the message] broadcast in the film is not the stance of the theater.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry, however, said the video was reminiscent of “the sick brainchild of [Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph] Goebbels’ propaganda, the Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, and the Norwegian collaborators [Vidkun] Quisling and [Knut] Hamson.”

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Germany: City of Munich cancels BDS event due to antisemitism

From the Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):
Munich’s cultural affairs department pulled the plug on an ­anti-Israel lecture slated for Friday in a city-subsidized building because the talk crossed the line into antisemitism. 

Stefan Hauf, a spokesman for the Mayor of Munich, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday by email that the cultural commissioner intervened to stop the lecture titled “Antisemitism Today” organized by the association Salam Shalom Working Circle Palestine-Israel.

It is probable that ”during the event the line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism will be crossed,wrote Munich’s cultural commissioner, Hans-Georg Küppers, to the  Eine-Welt-Haus—the location of the lecture—according to the Merkur news outlet.

Salam Shalom — a hardcore anti-Israel group — promotes the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign on its website targeting the Jewish state.

”Salam Shalom has no right to be in city rooms. Salam Shalom would be better located in the NPD headquarters,“ said the Green Party city councilman Dominik Krause to the Merkur.  The NPD is the main neo-Nazi party in Germany.

A kind of whack a mole approach to shut down the anti-Israel event unfolded in Munich on Thursday and Friday. After the Eine-Welt-Haus cancellation, Salam Sh­­alom relocated the lecture to the GOROD cultural center. GOROD — an organization created for the integration of Russian migrants — then walked back its invitation.

Salam Shalom then announced that the catholic institution KKV Hansa as the lecture space.

Christoph Kappes, a spokesman for Reinhard Marx, the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, wrote The Post by email on Friday stating that the “event will not, according to information of the KKV Hansa München, take place at KKV.”

He added that Cardinal Marx, who is also the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, “rejects every forms of antisemitism, racism and defamation and does not give these positions any platform.”

In a letter obtained by The Post from Richard Quaas, a Munich city councilman from the Christian Social Union party, to the mayor, he wrote that if the talk took place "it would be grist for the mill of antisimites in our country — from the left and the right— and with support from the city."
 read more


Friday, September 23, 2016

EU offers free trips to the West Bank for journalists

If this offer shocks Elder of Ziyon, it doesn't seem to shock anyone in Europe, not even friends of Israel at the EU or Jewish leaders.

From Elder of Ziyon:
From the EU and Palestinians Facebook page:
If you are interested in participating, please send a short CV/bio with a special focus on any work you have done in the Middle East, no later than 30 September 2016.
If a European based journalist has written critically about the Palestinian Authority - its corruption, its misuse of international aid, its support for terror by paying salaries to murderers and making them into heroes - do you think he would get this free trip? Or will it only go to "journalists" who will write only positive things about the Palestinian Authority? Do you even need to ask?

There are two ethics violations here. One is that the EU is manipulating the media for its own ends. OK, everyone tries to do that, but by creating a litmus test as to which journalists can take advantage of an all-expenses paid trip to the territories, this is a bit egregious.
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Turks Tweet Their Jew-hatred, Following an Attempted Stabbing at the Israeli Embassy


Via Algemeiner:
On September 21, an attempted stabbing took place at the Israeli Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, when a Muslim man armed with a knife tried to attack before being shot in the leg by a local police officer. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, none of the Israelis at the embassy were involved or hurt in the incident.

Turkish police at the scene told Reuters the assailant shouted “Allahu Akbar” outside before he was shot.

The Turkish news site, Avlaremoz, which covers Jewish-related affairs, reported that many Turks rushed to Twitter to proudly and openly show off their Jew-hatred.

Here are some examples of what users wrote:

“We want to hear gunshots not outside, but inside of the Israeli Embassy.”

“Has anyone been croaked? This is what we want to learn.”

“[It will] Get even worse, the Israeli embassy.”

“A prostitute was asked: ‘Do you have children?’ The prostitute responded: ‘All of the population of Israel is my children.’”

“Suicide bombers always target innocent people. Just enter that Israeli embassy and explode it! What the hell is a knife?”

“They call the man who says ‘I did this to stop the bloodshed in the Middle East’ an ‘attacker’. He is the hero of the day. I think he is rational.”

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UK: Anti-Semitic, white supremacist slogans at Exeter University event



Via +972:
Students attending an off-campus Exeter University party on Tuesday were seen sporting t-shirts with anti-Semitic and white supremacist slogans, +972 has learned.

(...)
The Tuesday night event, hosted by the local Snow Sports society at the Timepiece nightclub, saw guests use magic markers to scribble slogans and drawings on each other’s uniform white t-shirts. Most scribbles ranged between the bantering and the generically sexist — belaboured innuendos on the word “slope” appear to have been in vogue during the evening — but two rather different slogans stood out: “Don’t speak to me if you’re not white,” and, “The Holocaust was a good time.”
Pictures of the shirts were taken by Palestinian student and posted on Facebook. “Making light of genocide and white privilege is not ‘banter’, you f*** imbeciles,” the student wrote.

She said that the slogans were drawn on the back of the t-shirts, and it’s unclear if the students wearing them were also the ones who wrote the comments.

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Belgium: Unraveling the Belgian BDS connection

It should be noted that Brigitte Herremans is not the only one - there are many like her in Belgian society who are passionately devoted to Palestinians and indifferent to the fate of Jews.  You would be hard put to find NGOs that would be willing to defend Israel - but you will find many engaged in Israel-bashing.  The media was totally behind Brigitte Herremans and so were the people they interviewed.  The fact is that Jews are being increasingly sidelined in Europe and whereas friends of Palestinians are to be found everywhere it's hard to find anyone who defends Jews or Israel.

Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor @ Times of Israel:
On September 9, Brigitte Herremans arrived at Ben Gurion airport, planning to lead an “alternative tour” of political activists, as she had done many times before. But this time, the polite-sounding Belgian activist was not given the usually automatic tourist visa. Instead, by her own account, she was unceremoniously denied entry and turned back.

Brigitte Herremans is in many ways typical of Western European leaders of BDS and demonization campaigns. Her official title is Policy Officer for the Middle East at Broederlijk Delen (BD) meaning “fraternal sharing”– an influential and semi-official Belgian Flemish Catholic aid organization. (She plays a similar role in another Catholic NGO — Pax Christi.) They claim to combat poverty and inequality by working with local organizations, but are tainted with a radical political agenda that includes intense demonization of Israel. Out of the €6 million annual budget provided by Belgian taxpayers, €264,000 goes to political projects in “Israel/Palestine” that have nothing to do with aid. This is Herremanns’ radical mini-empire.

The blatant anti-Israel agenda and Palestinian victimization narrative reflects the Western European norm, including strong Christian theological echoes and a patronizing neo-colonial relationship with Palestinians. BD’s website states: “Unlike the Palestinian people, the Israeli people has more than 60 years of statehood, established on 78% of historic Palestine” a standard slogan that erases the history of wars, terrorism and hate. Herremanns is not a terrorist — she echoes the soft form of warfare, and in this spirit, BD held a public event on “Peaceful resistance in Palestine and Israel” in May 2016. “Resistance” is the goal – not peace and security based on mutual recognition and compromise.  [...]

Upon her return to Belgium, Herremans immediately provided further evidence of her deeply ingrained hostility. In an interview on Flemish Radio 1 on 12 September, Herremans repeated her support for “sanctions against Israel” and demanded that Israeli citizens who come to Belgium (actual tourists, not activists) be subject to “interrogation.” 

 In the same interview, when asked about reports that showed a rise in antisemitism in Belgium, Herremans accused “Israel’s allies” of “inflating” the level of antisemitism in order to “distract from its treatment of Palestinians.” Following the standard script particularly in Europe, Herrremans was criticized by Michael Freilich, the editor-in-chief of the Jewish newspaper Joods Aktuel, and she was defended by Emmanuel Stein, a member of the far-left group A Different Jewish Voice in an op-ed in the De Morgen daily in which Stein said he was “deeply ashamed” over Freilich’s words.

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Europe: Likud becomes member of the 3rd largest political group in the European Parliament

From the European Jewish Press:
The Likud party, headed by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, became a member of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR), a conservative and euroskeptic European political grouping with 22 member parties and four independent members across 20 countries, including the ruling British Conservative party. [...] 

The Likud joins other regional members from outside Europe, including the American Republican Party, Australia’s Libéral Party and Canada’s Conservative Party.

The AECR was founded on October 1, 2009 and officially recognized by the European Parliament in January, 2010. It is the third-largest group in the European Parliament and the fastest growing, bringing together 75 European Parliament members.

“The agreement is historic, because it is the first time that an Israeli Center-Right party has been accepted as a regional partner of a European party,” Elie Hazan, Likud’s Foreign Affairs Director , said. “It’s even more significant because the signing happened when Israel is fighting for its international image. There’s no doubt that this is further damage to the boycott Israel movement.” 

The bond will enable the Likud to participate in AECR party meetings and actively influence decisions connected to Israel. Hazan invited all 76 AECR parliament members for a formal visit to Israel hosted by the Likud.

he AECR’s president is Czech member of the European Parliament Jan Zahradil, and its secretary-general is British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the Likud tried unsuccessfully in the past to join the European People’s Party, the largest in the European Parliament, but was turned down because the EPP preferred to sign a deal with Kadima under Tzipi Livni. Since then, EPP members have supported requiring labels on Israeli products from over the Green Line while AECR members oppose the move.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Germany: Nationalist Leader Seeks Renewed Use of Nazi-Era Term


Via ABC News (h/t glykosymoritis):
A leading member of Alternative for Germany, the nationalist party whose recent elections successes have shaken the country's political system, faced fierce criticism Monday after calling for a racially charged term favored during the Third Reich to be rehabilitated.

Party co-chairwoman Frauke Petry said in an interview published Sunday that words such as "voelkisch" shouldn't be taboo any longer. The term refers to people who belong to a particular race and was frequently used by the Nazis — their party paper was called Voelkischer Beobachter.

"We should finally regain a relaxed, not uncritical but normal way of dealing with our nation and terms such as 'Volk' and words that are derived from it," she told weekly Welt am Sonntag. Asked whether she would include the word "voelkisch," Petry responded that she doesn't use the term herself but dislikes the fact that it is only used negatively.

"Let's work on giving the term a positive connotation," she said.

Her remarks prompted a swift backlash from politicians, commentators and historians who warned that Petry's party — known by its acronym AfD — was trying to legitimize ideas that were once at the core of Adolf Hitler's Nazi ideology.
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UK: London gang tells schoolboy to remove skullcap or face violence


Via Campaign Against Antisemitism:
An 11-year-old Jewish boy has escaped shaken but unhurt after a gang of teenagers surrounded him on a London street and forced him to remove his kippah (Jewish skullcap). According to Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood watch patrol, the boy was approached by at least four black teenagers who told him that unless he removed the kippah, they would beat him. The boy refused to comply and instead managed to escape and run home.
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UK: 'I've never seen anti-Semitism in Labour like this, it's normal now'






It's very hard today to tell a right-wing antisemite from a left-wing antisemite.  Both often use the same language and images.

Via Evening Standard (h/t glykosymoritis):
"I don’t want to be known as ‘the Jewish MP’,” says Ruth Smeeth, East End accent still audible from a childhood in London. “I am an MP who happens to be Jewish. One of the things that makes me most angry about this whole thing is that I’ve ended up as the Jewish MP. Worse: a victim and a target. I should be the MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, a hard-working, lifelong member of the Labour Party.” She describes herself as “a Labour, socialist, Jewish, woman” in that order. “Actually, British first: British, Labour, socialist, Jewish, woman.”

Smeeth, 37, is the MP who walked out of the launch of the Chakrabarti report, an inquiry into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, after being harassed by a member of Momentum, the activist group behind Jeremy Corbyn.

Since then she has been called a “yid c***” (among other racial slurs), a “CIA/ MI5/Mossad informant”, a “dyke”, and a “f***ing traitor”. In all she’s experienced more than 25,000 incidents of abuse, much of it racial. As a result two people are being investigated by counter-terrorism police — one of whom penned a 1,000-word essay on how he would kill her.

Given her previous work with Hope Against Hate, an anti-racism charity, “I initially assumed [the author] was from the far-Right. And then someone rang to inform me it was a Corbynista.”

(...)

She might wear a gold Star of David under the neckline of her dress, “but I don’t talk about Israel or Palestine. This [abuse] is not about anything I’ve said on Middle-East politics. I don’t participate.” She describes herself as “culturally Jewish” — her husband is Irish Catholic.

Her political concerns reflect her immediate constituency, one of the poorest in the country. If anything, the furore over her religion distracts from more pressing issues.

There were rare flashes of anti-Semitism under Ed Miliband, who is Jewish, “but not like this. I’ve never seen anti-Semitism in Labour on this scale. There were one or two incidents before and the reason why they were so shocking is that there were only one or two.  Now the sheer volume of it has made it normal.”

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Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Italy: Israeli fans blocked from stadium by Palestinian protesters



Via Jerusalem Post:

Israeli fans who traveled to Italy to watch soccer team Hapoel Beersheba play in the UEFA cup against Italian powerhouse Inter Milan were blocked from entering the stadium by a pro-Palestinian protest on Thursday.

One of the Israeli fans, Tal Lavi, a media manager for The Jerusalem Post, said that local police and stadium security for San Siro Stadium told Israeli soccer fans that they would not be allowed to enter the premises due to security concerns.

Video taken by Lavi shows protestors near the stadium waving Palestinian flags and shouting chants in opposition to the soccer match.

Lavi said that an estimated 1,200 fans of Hapoel Beersheba were restricted to an enclosure far from the stadium by stadium security and local authorities.

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UK: Jeremy Corbyn campaign video dismisses antisemitism accusations



Via Jewish Chronicle:
A video produced by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign team has received an angry response from British Jews after it appeared to dismiss accusations of antisemitism.

The clip, which has been shared on all of Mr Corbyn’s official social media channels, was titled: “Five questions Corbyn supporters are tired of hearing.”

It features supporters of the politician explaining why they are backing his campaign. The final question asked: “Do you support antisemitism?”

(...)

A third Corbyn supporter adds: “When you actually boil it all down, what they mean is ‘we’re losing the political argument and we’ve got nothing to fight back with other than these accusations’.”

The video concludes with the clip of the man throwing the paper over his shoulder.

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Turkey: Attack on Israeli embassy


Via Independent:
A man wielding a knife has been shot after attempting to attack the Israeli embassy in Turkey.

The suspect was shot in the leg and detained after trying to carry out a stabbing attack on Wednesday.

Authorities are believed to be investigating links to Islamist terrorism after police told Reuters the man was shouting "Allahu Akbar", meaning "God is Great" in Arabic, during the incident.

(...)

Police have launched a terror investigation into the attack, which comes after calls by Isis and al-Qaeda for supporters to launch "lone wolf" attacks in countries perceived as enemies.

The arrested man was locally identified as a 38-year-old construction worker from Karaman province, who was said to be mentally ill.
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Europe: 15 years since Durban - the conference that ushered in an era of Israel-demonization

One of the main players at demonising Israel at Durban was Belgian Pierre Galand (Socialist Party, Oxfam, Russell Tribunal on Palestine etc). From NGO Monitor 2004:
Immediately before the notorious UN Durban conference on racism took place in September 2001 Galand’s activities were a central part of the preparations. In a speech disseminated through the website of the Maoist Parti du Travail de Belgique (Workers Party of Belgium), and again at Durban, Galand declared: "Palestine has become the new Vietnam, the symbol of the unjust war. A people deprived of its rights, just like the Vietnamese of 50 years ago, the Palestinians represent in the eyes of a growing number of peoples, … a heroic people, who defend their basic rights and above all their dignity, in the face of an aggressive Israel …."  

Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor @ Algemeiner:
For both supporters and detractors of the state of Israel, no single conference of the past 15 years has had a more enduring impact on the evolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict than the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa.

The event, which took place in September 2001, was hijacked by many of the over 1,500 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in attendance, as well as by governments that reject Israel’s right to exist. Multiple instances of antisemitic imagery and language were reported at the UN-sponsored NGO Forum, and Jewish attendees were intimidated and excluded. Even the initial governmental draft, prepared at a UN preparatory conference in Iran, sought to demonize Israel, reinstating the antisemitic slander that Zionism equals racism. In the mainstream Jewish community, the overwhelming majority of which professes the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, there were no delusions as to whom was being targeted as a whole when the term Zionist was used in such a derogatory context. [...]

Since 2001, this declaration has served as a blueprint for the well-financed NGO network, aiming to demonize and isolate Israel internationally. The grossly unfounded accusations have exhaustively been repeated by anti-Israel groups, which lobby to influence the foreign policies of Israel’s allies, especially in Europe, and pursue investigations by UN bodies, the International Criminal Court and national justice systems of supposed Israeli “war crimes.”

Likewise, Durban marked , trade unions, media outlets and on many college campuses.
a turning point with the emergence of BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaigns, which are rooted in the strategy set out in the NGO Forum’s Final Declaration. The situation has progressively worsened as Israel is obsessively targeted for boycott, prosecution and condemnation in the UN, European capitals

For many observers, the “Durban Strategy” marked the coming out party for a “new antisemitism.”
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UK: "Jew" rant at LibDem conference

From Guido Fawkes:
I want to make a bold pitch to progressive voters in the Jewish community and say, we are for you,” Tim Farron told the Jewish Chronicle as conference began in Brighton this week. How serious is he? Taking pride of place in the middle of the conference exhibition centre is disgraced former MP David “The Jews” Ward, manning the LibDem Friends of Palestine stall. This is what they’ve been posting on Facebook during conference:
 Then there’s this charming post:
Why don’t they just join the Labour Party?
UPDATE: Luke Akehurst, director of We Believe in Israel:
“It is shocking that former MP David Ward, who made grotesquely offensive and prima facie antisemitic comparisons between Israel’s actions and the Holocaust, has been staffing the Lib Dem Friends of Palestine stall at the Lib Dem conference. The insinuations in recent Lib Dem Friends of Palestine Facebook posts that “Jews” (note the generalised smear against all Jews, let alone all Israelis) are never kind to Palestinian children, and that Jews play upon victimhood are unacceptable. Lib Dem Friends of Palestine should be trying to advance peace and coexistence between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, not using stereotyping and tropes about Jewish people in this crude way.”
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