Wednesday, May 04, 2016
Netanyahu vows: There will not be a second Holocaust
Each year, Israel stops for one day to remember the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and to tell the stories of the survivors.The Holocaust Without Jews
On Wednesday, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, there will be a state memorial ceremony at Warsaw Ghetto Square at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will both speak at the ceremony, where Holocaust survivors will light six torches as part of the memorial service.
A Knesset memorial ceremony titled "Every Person Has a Name" is set for Thursday. During the ceremony, which will be held in the Chagall Lounge, Knesset members will read out the names of the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. Rivlin, Netanyahu, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and Supreme Court President Justice Miriam Naor will all be present for the ceremony.
On Thursday, Israel will mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah. As has been the custom for over six decades, a 2-minute air raid siren will be blared across the entire country and citizens from all walks of life will interrupt their daily routines for a moment of solemn reflection. Jan. 27 of this year also marked the decade anniversary of the United Nations-designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which member states are encouraged to commemorate. Though an Israeli initiative, International Holocaust Remembrance Day has gradually been subjected to the universalizing prescriptions of those who would water down the particularly Jewish aspect of the Nazi extermination of the Jews.
The evolution of two different days of Holocaust commemoration and the ways they increasingly run counter to each other are symptomatic of the seizure of Jewish history and suffering for ulterior purposes. This victim displacement appropriates the most traumatic experience in Jewish history, pointedly erases the specificity of the events supposedly being commemorated, and then harshly chides Jews for inserting their own particularistic concerns into the discussion. At a certain point, these phenomena become a continuation of a specific form of oppression and erasure rather an antidote to “hatred.”
Imagine a remembrance of slavery that did not acknowledge the suffering of African-Americans—or a commemoration of the AIDS epidemic omitting the experiences of gay men. Such acts of dissociation would be inconceivable, the subjects of rightful denunciations and outraged protests. Yet in recent years, that is precisely what has been going on with regard to the Holocaust and its chief victims, the Jews. Last month, Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS)—which claims to represent some 7 million students across 600 campuses—debated whether it should even commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. That this was a subject for argument is absurd enough; the actual proceedings were scandalous. “Of course there shouldn’t be anti-Semitism,” said a student speaking against the measure, offering the sort of throat-clearing assertion from which anti-Semitism almost inevitably follows. “But it’s not about one set of people.”
How Holocaust Denial Shaped Mahmoud Abbas’ Worldview
Global leaders hope that the longtime president of the Palestinian Authority can reach a peace agreement with the Jewish state. But his historical beliefs about Israel’s founding—and the Zionist movement’s alleged complicity in the murder of millions of Jews—may call that into question.Nazi Propaganda returns in Palestinian incitement
The Israeli Foreign Ministry posted a video on YouTube last December in which it accused the Palestinian Authority of using Nazi propaganda against Israel. The video shows racist caricatures created by Goebbels and Hitler in the 1930s and ‘40s that are now used by the Palestinians to incite terrorism against Jews and attack the legitimacy of the state of Israel.
The images presented in the video are horrifying, but this is by no means the first time the Palestinians have used Nazi propaganda against Jews and Israel. Palestinian and Arab media in general are saturated with anti-Semitic images, conspiracy theories, and libels. The Palestinians regularly downplay the significance of the Holocaust and sometimes deny it ever happened at all. When they do admit it, they blame it on the Jews themselves.
This anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial comes from the top. Although it is either unknown or denied in the West, PA President Mahmoud Abbas is profoundly fascinated by Nazi propaganda and has employed it in his own writings, particularly in his doctoral dissertation on the subject of the Holocaust, “The Other Face: The Secret Connections Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement,” which he wrote in Moscow in 1982. Two years later, Abbas published a book based on his dissertation. It is written in Arabic and, tellingly, has never been translated into any other language.
There is a reason for this: The book is inspired by and based on the work of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust. While he was a fugitive in Argentina, Eichmann formulated and disseminated Nazi propaganda according to which the Holocaust was a Jewish-Nazi conspiracy that sacrificed Jewish lives in order to create a Jewish state in Palestine. In his book, Abbas adopts this worldview wholesale, and the result is the subject of this article, which is, I believe, the first in-depth examination of the book to appear in English.
Righteous Among the Nations, At Home in Israel
The Jewish people have a debt they can never fully repay to those who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. But the Jewish state has gone some way to provide for them in their old age.The World Is Forgetting the Holocaust
In a Jerusalem apartment, an elderly woman misses a roommate like no other. Together, the two of them cheated fate and formed a bond that would make a Jewish woman and a priest’s wife inseparable.
Galina Imshenik once used her status as a respectable Christian to shelter a young Jewish child, Elena Dolgov, during the Holocaust. Decades later, they ended up together in Jerusalem.
A set of three pictures on the wall of their apartment tells two life stories and one shared fate. There is a picture of the village in Belarus where Galina and her husband protected Elena throughout the Holocaust. There is a picture of St. Petersburg, where Elena lived afterwards. And there is a picture of Jerusalem, which the two women made their home in 1992.
For a few decades after World War II, the sheer monstrousness of the Holocaust made it unthinkable as a subject for jokes. But that, too, has gone by the boards, along with the brief postwar taboo that banished rank anti-Semitism from polite society. Now Holocaust jokes proliferate. “Tasteless and mean-spirited, some of these have become part of the repertoire of popular stand-up comedians,” writes Alvin Rosenfeld, a scholar at Indiana University. “By ridiculing and mocking Jewish suffering, comics like France’s Dieudonné, Norway’s Otto Jespersen, Ireland’s Tommy Tiernan , and their counterparts in other countries look to laugh away Hitler’s Jewish victims by deriding them.”Prominent scholars blast theory tracing Ashkenazi Jews to Turkey
The world’s conscience was shocked, after the fact, by the scope and ferocity of the Holocaust. In the face of such monumental evil, “Never Forget,” like “Never Again,” may have seemed the only possible decent response. “After the war,” Elie Wiesel said, “we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka . . . to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again.”
But it wasn’t. Accounts of what was done in Treblinka did not prevent mass murder in Cambodia or Bosnia or Rwanda. Holocaust remembrance has not inoculated human beings against treating other human beings with brutality. Museums and films and college courses about the Shoah have not made genocide unthinkable — not even another Jewish genocide, as the regimes in Iran and Gaza frequently make clear.
Holocaust remembrance has not prevented the onset of Holocaust forgetfulness.
For survivors like my father, and for the sons and daughters they raised, it goes without saying that “Never Forget” remains an ineradicable moral imperative. I have always taken the Holocaust personally, and always will. But the world, I know, will not. Eventually, everything is forgotten. Even the worst crime in history.
Prominent scholars of Jewish demography dismissed the findings of a newly published genetic study suggesting that today’s Ashkenazi Jews originate from converts to Judaism in what today is Turkey.Dear French President Hollande, don’t support UNESCO decision
Titled “Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz,” the study by the University of Sheffield geneticist Eran Elhaik and three other researchers appeared in March in Oxford University Press’ prestigious scientific journal Genome Biology and Evolution.
It is based on an analysis of the genomes of 367 people, mostly from the United States, who reported having Ashkenazi lineage. Using a tool called geographic population structure, the researchers compared their genomes to those of non-Jews from German lands, south Russia and the Middle East. A match was found between the Jewish group’s genetic information and that of populations in northeastern Turkey.
In an interview with JTA, Sergio DellaPergola, a prominent demographer of the Jewish people from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, called the study, which was widely reported in mainstream media, “one of the big canards of the 21st century,” citing what he regarded as an exceedingly small study population and the absence of genetic analysis of Sephardic Jews, which he said would have undermined the findings.
Mr. President of the Republic,Melanie Phillips: Hatred of Israel and Jews can’t be separated
On April 16, France voted in favor of a UNESCO resolution, proposed by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Uman, Qatar and Sudan, denying any historical link between the Jewish people and its two holiest sites in Jerusalem: the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. This vote generated deep outrage among all the friends of Israel, in France and around the world, and shocked every citizen attached to historical truth. This decision is a moral failure and a political mistake that will undermine France’s credibility.
Naturally, I consider Jerusalem, which has been the capital city of the Jewish people for 3,000 years, as the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel.
This view is, alas, not the official position of France, which defends the concept of a shared capital between two states. Still, to me, it sounds incredible that France would associate itself with a process of history falsification exclusively aimed at depriving the Jewish people of its historical and religious heritage.
This UNESCO resolution is a complete intellectual sham, which refers to the Temple Mount as an exclusively Muslim site and takes the absurdity so far as to rename the Western Wall with an Arab name: “Al-Buraq.” We must remember that this is not the first try by UNESCO to Islamize the historical legacy of Israel. In 2010, the organization had already decided to declare as part of Islam’s cultural heritage the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.
The current uproar over antisemitism is truly a wonder to behold. For the past three decades and more, antisemitism was the prejudice that dared not speak its name. It was deemed to have been stamped out, other than among cranks on the far right.JCPA: British Policy, Jews and Israel
Anyone rash enough to protest that the anti-Israel animus in progressive circles was a mutation of ancient Jew-hatred was told they were “waving the shroud of the Holocaust” to sanitise the crimes of Israel. There could be no connection. The left was institutionally anti-racist, wasn’t it?
On the contrary, the left is institutionally anti-Israel and the connection is irrefutable. For sure, many who loathe Israel may not be hostile to Jews as people. Nevertheless the narrative of Israel to which they subscribe is inescapably anti-Jew....
Among the educated classes, Israel, the target of decades of Arab exterminatory aggression, is almost universally presented as the villain and the Palestinians as its victims. Israel is held to be responsible for the absence of a Palestine state and thus the obstacle to solving the Middle East conflict.
The fact that the Arabs turned down proposals or offers of a Palestine state alongside Israel in 1937, 1947, 2000 and 2008, responding instead with terrorism or war, is ignored. The repeated statements of the Palestinian leadership that its real aim is to capture all of Israel are also ignored. It is never reported how the Palestinian Authority-controlled media and educational materials routinely incite Palestinian children to hate Jews, murder Israelis and capture every Israeli city.
Instead, Britain is told that the Israelis are child-killers. During the 2014 war in Gaza, when Israel finally responded to years of rocket attacks by launching airstrikes against Hamas, broadcast and print media claimed Israel was recklessly or deliberately killing hundreds of Palestinian children and other civilians.
Recent comments by members of the British Labour party have prompted a much needed and overdue public debate regarding anti-Semitism among British politicians, its festering within the British establishment, and its effect on British policy towards Israel.Europe has failed to learn lessons of anti-Semitism, Shaked says, pointing finger at UK Labor
These unpleasant comments – ranging from associating Hitler with Zionism to blood libels claiming the Islamic State is an Israeli creation – do not necessarily reflect, however, a change from the traditional British mindset or the political bon ton.
The position of the British government is and has been pro-Arab since the early days of the British Empire. Britain is responsible for crowning and educating many members of the Middle East’s royal families and founding many of the region’s post-colonial monarchies, as well as establishing many of their national petroleum companies that are strategically designed to cater to British interests. These relations are maintained through a constant flow of economic, military, political and cultural exchange initiatives. For decades, the majority of Gulf and Arab royalty and military elite have been educated in Oxbridge and Sandhurst, leading to strong personal connections with the British upper class. Britain is also heavily invested in Middle Eastern economies and politics. British citizens, technicians, managers and investors may be found in every oil-producing country in the region from Iraq to Oman. Late model British weapon systems and aircraft are found in Arab states’ order of battle.
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked called Wednesday on UK Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn to take a loud and clear stand and end the political career of any member of his party guilty of anti-Semitism, which she said was alive and well in Europe today.MK Michaeli says Livingstone "abused Holocaust for political needs, tried to downgrade the atrocity."
"I call on the United Kingdom Labor Leader Jeremy Corbyn to state clearly the Labor’s commitment to fighting anti-Semitism. Mr. Corbyn must clarify that anti-Semitic comments are not within legitimate political debate, and that anti-Semitic views should end a politician’s career and disqualify from any future public office," Shaked said, referencing the recent scandal in thee labor party over anti-Israel comments made by former London mayor Ken Livingstone, MK Naz Shah and others.
She also called on European leaders to "heed the British lesson and affirm that anti-Semitism is unacceptable."
"Make no mistake," she said in comments that appeared to be directed at certain European countries, "the Israeli government cherishes our strong and warm relationship with friendly nations ....but we will not compromise our sovereignty. We will maintain our might, defend our borders and secure our citizens."
'My grandfather did the inconceivable - negotiated with Nazis - to save Jews'Anti-Semitism in the UK Labour Party
MK Merav Michaeli (Zionist Union) said she learned from her grandfather, Rudolph Kastner, to take action and not be a victim, in her remarks at New York Reform synagogue Temple Emanu-El’s Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day ceremony on Sunday.
Remarking on a recent comment by former London mayor Ken Livingstone saying that Hitler was a Zionist, which led to his suspension, Michaeli said: “There will always be those who will try to downgrade the tragedy and atrocity of the Holocaust. There will always be those who will try to abuse it for political needs, as Ken Livingstone painfully reminded us this week.”
However, Michaeli added: “That doesn’t make Israel a victim. It means that Israel must be even more committed to fighting hate and racism, and accepting others.”
How has this happened in a country that defeated Nazism? One explanation may be found in the assumption that Muslims are victims of the capitalist, colonialist West -- a concept that gelled perfectly with Communist and wider liberal opinion about how world economies work. Growth, or "win-win," economies, in which "a rising tide carries all ships" evidently was never even considered."New" anti-Semitism has taken an elusive form, brewing under the "legitimate" guise of hatred for Israel's "policies."
According to Britain's Campaign Against Antisemitism, in its National Anti-Semitic Crime Audit 2014-2015, the growth of anti-Semitism in the UK is "a core part of far-left and Islamist ideology." It is worth adding that existing anti-Semitism within the British establishment, not least the pro-Arab Foreign Office, the lure of Saudi oil and Qatari investment, and Britain's growing weakness in the Middle East, means that little is done even by conservatives to tackle this Jew hatred on the left.
When anti-Israel campaigners use traditional anti-Semitic tropes such as the blood libel (such as the lie that Israelis harvest the organs of Palestinians or Haitians); Jewish conspiracies to take over the world (such as the lie that the Jewish "lobby" controls UK politics); or the way Jewish wealth supports Israel and Zionism, it is abundantly clear that they have learned not a single thing from Europe's long history of Jew-hatred or, above all, the anti-Semitism of Hitler and his acolytes.
Today, Britain's Labour party is collapsing. The far left elements in the party will, if they do not abandon their anti-Israel postures and policies, leave Britain's second party less electable than it was in last year's general election. The only hope of saving Britain's two-party system will be for this awareness to act as a wake-up call for Labour's moderates. Sadly, there is little chance that the self-appointed anti-Israel morality police and the BDS campaigners are interested in either facts or insight.
The shock felt over the anti-Semitism expressed by some members of the British Labour Party cannot be overstated.Hitler and the Nazis' Anti-Zionism
Former Blackburn Mayor Salim Mulla believes Israel was behind the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, MP Naz Shah thinks Israel should be relocated to the United States, and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone asserts Hitler's so-called support of Zionism as historical fact. Behind the scenes, 50 Labour members were suspended for anti-Semitism and racism over the past two months, while on the front line, British media came together to censure this blatant anti-Semitism and side with the Jews.
These expressions of anti-Semitism were horrifying because they cannot be written off as sporadic expressions by a radical fringe. No, they symbolize a blatant, organized penetration of anti-Semitism into the political establishment and the British seat of power.
Symbolically, this has come to light near Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the historical relevance is cause for concern. The events in the U.K. should make us all lose sleep, especially since Britain is not the exception to the rule. Anti-Semitism is prevalent in many places worldwide. For the most part it has taken an elusive form, brewing under the "legitimate" guise of hatred for Israel's "policies." As such, it has become a legitimate part of public conversation, and it evokes no shock or censure.
Livingstone appears ill-informed about the decisive role that British anti-fascism in World War II played in defeating Nazi Germany’s efforts to murder the almost one million Jews of North Africa and the Middle East. One of the great successes of the Cold War propaganda campaigns waged by the Soviet Union, its Warsaw Pact allies, Arab states most hostile to Israel as well as the Palestine Liberation Organization was its suppression of the actual history of Nazi anti-Zionism and even the role the Soviet Union played in helping to defeat it. In the immediate postwar years, before Soviet leaders sought to drive out Western influence in the Middle East and gain control over Western Europe’s supply of oil from the region, the Soviet Union supported the establishment of the state of Israel. After the “anti-cosmopolitan purges” of the early 1950s, the history of Soviet Zionism became as embarrassing as the actual history of Nazi anti-Zionism. Neither fit into the dogmas of Communist anti-imperialism which, it appears, have now filtered into some ranks of the Labour Party.The problem of antisemitism is not invented by Jews to smear the left
Anti-Semitism, like all forms or racism and religious hatred, is built on lies and distortions about the past and present. Around the world, London stands for worldliness, cosmopolitanism and often for an understanding of history. When the former Mayor of this city reveals how little he knows about World War II and Britain’s role in it, one has to wonder what has happened to the qualities we admire in British intellectual life.
But there is antisemitism on the left. The campaign to exclude Israelis, and only Israelis, from the global academic, sporting, artistic and economic community is antisemitic. It singles out Israel for unique punishment and it finds all Israelis, and the Jews who are said to support them, guilty of the crimes, real or imagined, of their state. Huge and emotional hostility to Israel creates antisemitic discourse and fosters an institutional antisemitism of norms and practices in the left. This has been manifested recently in a number of clear examples.What is anti-Semitism? A quiz for Ken Livingstone
The election to leader of the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn:
Presented a show on Press TV, Iran’s antisemitic propaganda channel.
Was Patron of the “Palestine Solidarity Campaign” which fights for a boycott of Israel and which tolerates antisemitism within its ranks.
Says that Hamas and Hezbollah are dedicated to the good of the Palestinian people and to social and political justice.
Jumped to the defence of antisemites, Raed Salah who indulged in medieval blood libel and Stephen Sizer who said that Israel was behind 9/11.
Does not say anything when a 911 truther and associate of David Duke, who he’s sharing a platform with, defends Palestinian suicide bombing.
Continued to support “Deir Yassin Remembered” even when it was well known that it was run by a Holocaust Denier.
Agreed to speak alongside Carlos Latuff, 2nd prize winner in Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial cartoon competition.
Agreed to speak alongside Azzam Tamimi, who said that he’d like to have been a suicide bomber against Israel.
Addressed a LaRouche front organisation in Australia.
Called for an official inquiry into “pro-Israel” influence in the Foreign Office.
Are you Ken Livingstone? If so, my condolences. It must be awful.Guido Fawkes on GaleZahal talking about UK Labour Party Jew hatred antisemitism 2016 05 04 (h/t Yoel)
Anyway: it seems that you’re having difficulty understanding why quite a lot of people are a bit cross with you at the moment. After all, you didn’t do anything wrong, did you?
Fortunately, help is at hand. Simply take this quick quiz, and all should become clear.
A BBC radio presenter asks you whether you seriously think the Facebook post wasn’t Islamophobic. How do you reply?
a) Apologise. Of course you can see that the Facebook post was Islamophobic. It called for the forced deportation of several million Muslims to a land where they would be more “welcome”.
b) Repeat that it wasn’t Islamophobic, insist that you’ve never heard anyone in Labour say anything Islamophobic, and point out, a propos of nothing, that Hitler spoke favourably about Islam, and once said that “The peoples of Islam will always be closer to us than, for example, France.”
Cameron demands Corbyn renounce his ‘friends’ Hamas, Hezbollah
British Prime Minister David Cameron publicly demanded Wednesday that opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, who heads a Labour party currently battling repeated accusations of anti-Semitism among its ranks, renounce his declared friendship with Palestinian terror group Hamas and Lebanese organization Hezbollah, both sworn to Israel’s destruction.
The heated confrontation between the two party leaders took place during Prime Minister’s Questions, a weekly session in the House of Commons in which the premier takes questions from MPs. Cameron repeatedly returned to the ongoing storm over anti-Semitism in Labour, and demanded clarification from Corbyn about the two terror groups, revisiting a comment Corbyn made during his time as a backbench MP when he invited “our friends” from Hamas and Hezbollah to speak at an event in Parliament.
“He referred to Hamas and Hezbollah as his friends. He needs to withdraw that remark,” Cameron said of the opposition leader sitting across the chamber from him.
“Are they your friends or are they not? Because these organizations in their constitutions believe in persecuting and killing Jews… not only in Israel but around the world,” the prime minister continued. “They are anti-Semitic organizations, they are racist organizations.”
“He must stand up and say they are not his friends.”
Labour Councillor Defends Comparing Jews to Hitler
Suspended Labour councillor Shah Hussain has been on the Daily Politics to defend comparing a Jewish footballer to Hitler. Apparently he is the victim of a “witch-hunt”: “I’m a Muslim councillor and therefore my comments have been taken out of context”. He may need a better defence when he appeals his case to the NEC…Shah Hussain on Being Suspended from Labour for Alleged Anti-Semitism
UK Chief Rabbi comes out swinging against far-left anti-Semites
In his remarkably forceful article - entitled "Ken Livingstone and the hard Left are spreading the insidious virus of anti-Semitism" - Rabbi Mirvis takes to task in particular the "figures on the hard Left of the British political spectrum presuming to define the relationship between Judaism and Zionism despite themselves being neither Jews nor Zionists."UK councils face court challenge over Israel boycotts
He described attempts to drive a wedge between the Jewish people and their movement for national self-determination - Zionism - as a "myth" which "has poisoned public discourse on anti-Semitism and Israel for decades."
Anti-Semites on the far-left, he noted, were making a concerted effort to lecture the Jewish community about their own ancient traditions - ironically, with the sole aim of undermining that very heritage.
Rabbi Mirvis singled out former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and the recently-appointed head of the UK National Union of Students Malia Boattia, as example of non-Jewish extremists on the Left who presume to "feel qualified to provide such an analysis of one of the axioms of Jewish belief."
"But let me be very clear. Their claims are a fiction," Mirvis insisted. "They are a wilful distortion of a noble and integral part of Judaism.
"Zionism is a belief in the right to Jewish self-determination in a land that has been at the centre of the Jewish world for more than 3,000 years. One can no more separate it from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain."
A Jewish group has launched a lawsuit against British local authorities that called for boycotts of goods from Israeli settlements, claiming the actions are anti-Semitic.Two More Labour Councillors Ranted About “Jews”
Jewish Human Rights Watch — an organization devoted to monitoring efforts to boycott Israel — is asking the High Court to rule against three councils: Leicester in England, and Swansea and Gwynedd in Wales. It claims the authorities have failed to consider “the impact of their actions on the Jewish community.”
Leicester and Swansea councils say their resolutions calling for sanctions are nonbinding, apply only to illegal settlements and are not attacks on the State of Israel.
Leicester’s motion, passed last November and submitted by council member Mohammed Dawood, called for boycotting products from the West Bank “in so far as it is legal,” citing Israel’s “continuing to ignore and breach international law” and “continuing its occupation” of Palestinian territories.
Miqdad Al-Nuaimi is a Labour councillor in Newport. As you can see above, Cllr Al-Nuaimi has repeatedly compared Israel to the Nazis, he also describes the “connection” between Israel and ISIS as “very interesting”. Guido has just spoken to him on the phone – Cllr Al-Nuaimi confirmed this was his Twitter account, he said he could not comment on tweets he made in the past but added he thinks there is a link between Israel and ISIS. Goodbye councillor…Sadiq Khan does the sums over Muslim votes
Terry Kelly, above right, is a Labour councillor in Renfrewshire. On his blog Cllr Kelly repeatedly rants about the “Jewish lobby”. In a blog about Joe Biden failing to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza he writes: “if you ever wondered how powerful the Jewish lobby is in America there is an example for you right there”. In a post about Obama’s policy towards Israel Cllr Kelly writes: “Have you stopped to ask why? It’s because the American Jewish Lobby is extremely powerful and it has it’s boot on Obama’s neck”. In another post he claims the Jews are trying to rig the Oscars: “it might not happen because there is a powerful Jewish lobby campaigning against the film”. A fourth post sees him describe “a vicious campaign by the all powerful American Jewish Lobby”. Cllr Kelly also compared the actions of Israelis to the Holocaust, going on to criticise Jews worldwide: Update: Two More Labour Councillors Suspended
He’s an artful one, Sadiq Khan. Labour’s London mayoral candidate told the Observer: “I accept that the comments that Ken Livingstone has made make it more difficult for Londoners of Jewish faith to feel that the Labour Party is a place for them, and I will carry on doing what I have always been doing, which is to speak for everyone.” Mr Khan also said, although he is well ahead in the polls: “This is a neck-and-neck race. It is all about turnout.”London Is About To Elect A Muslim Mayor Who Has Defended Islamists, 9/11 Terrorists, And Who Is Endorsed By Anti-Semites
It’s worth paying exact attention to these words. First, Mr Khan blames everything on Mr Livingstone, not on any wider problem of Labour anti-Semitism.
Second, he paints himself as the moderate. Third, he assumes that only voters “of Jewish faith” will be put off, and says nothing to welcome Jewish voters. He speaks as if the row were a rather obscure subject which need not trouble other voters. If he can narrow it down to practising Jews with votes in London, he is talking about not much more than 100,000 people, most of whose votes he probably had not got anyway.
The Muslim population of London, however, is more than a million people. By emphasising that Jews might be upset, and then emphasising the importance of turnout, he is blowing a dog-whistle for Muslim voters.
Few Muslim leaders in London stand out against anti-Semitism, and many ignore it or even express it themselves. If they can make Muslim voters feel that the Jews, by protesting, are preventing a Muslim becoming Mayor of London, then Mr Khan will get more Muslim votes.
In 2001 he was the lawyer for the Nation of Islam in its successful High Court bid to overturn the 15-year-ban on its leader, Louis Farrakhan.ISIS Urges UK Labour Party to Tone Down Anti-Semitic Rhetoric (satire)
In 2005 and 2006 he visited terror-charged Babar Ahmad in Woodhill Prison. Mr. Ahmed was extradited to the U.S. in 2012, serving time in prison before being returned to the UK in 2015. Mr. Ahmed pleaded guilty to the terrorist offences of conspiracy, and providing material support to the Taliban.
And Mr. Khan also campaigned for the release and repatriation of Shaker Aamer, Britain’s last Guantanamo detainee, who was returned to the UK in November.
The ConservativeHome website lists even more concerns, including:
A letter to the Guardian in the wake of the 7/7 terrorist bombings on London, blaming terrorism on British Government policy;
His legal defence of Zacarias Moussaoui, a 9/11 terrorist who confessed to being a member of Al Qaeda;
His chapter in a book, entitled ‘Actions Against the Police’ which advises on how to bring charges against the police for “racism”. This is the same police force that Mr. Khan as London mayor would exercise authority over;
His defence of Islamist extremist Azzam Tamimi. When Dr. Tamimi told a crowd that the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed would “cause the world to tremble” and predicted “Fire… throughout the world if they don’t stop”, Mr. Khan, who shared a platform with him, dismissed the threats as “flowery language”;
His platform-sharing with Suliman Gani, a south London imam who has urged female subservience to men, and called for the founding of an Islamic state.
In a rare call for restraint from the terrorist group, ISIS’ leadership has criticized the UK’s Labour party for its anti-Semitic rhetoric, calling recent comments and online posts from the party’s leaders “a bit much.”Kuwait Airways halts inter-European flights after charges by Israelis
“Listen, we hate the Jews as much as anyone, but you can’t just go around calling for Israel to be relocated to America, or saying Hitler was a Zionist,” ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told The Mideast Beast. “You have to show some sensitivity. Hell, one guy even compared Israel to ISIS. I take that personally – we go out of our way to be the biggest shits on the planet, and I’m not letting some British bigot take that away from us.”
The Labour party in the UK has been in turmoil amid revelations that at least 50 members were suspended for anti-Semitic or racist comments. While the controversy has earned the group the backing of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, other terrorist groups have sought to distance themselves.
“There’s no place in the radical jihadi world for extremists like Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone,” al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri proclaimed. “If you want to say rabidly anti-Semitic things, you’ve got to be a bit subtler about it. Maybe use the term ‘interest rate lobby’ instead of ‘Jews?’”
Kuwait Airways, the national airline of Kuwait, has halted all inter-European routes in order to avoid “further civil and criminal charges” in Europe for its refusal to allow Israeli citizens fly on its airline, according to the Lawfare Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit legal think tank that has challenged the airline's policies in European courts.Pro-Israel Alumnus Calls Defeat of BDS Resolution at Vassar a ‘Watershed Moment’
In mid-April, Lawfare Project Swiss Council Philippe Grumbach filed an administrative complaint with the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation as well as a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor General against Kuwait Airways Corporation on behalf of an Israeli national living in Switzerland who was denied a ticket on the Kuwait Airways flight from Geneva to Frankfurt, Germany.
The complaint was based on the airline’s violation of the Swiss Penal Code as well as the Swiss constitution, which protects individuals from discrimination based on race, religion and ethnicity, the Lawfare Project said.
Earlier this year Kuwait Airways dropped its route between New York City and London rather than transport Israeli citizens between the two cities. That decision came after the U.S. Department of Transportation found that the airline’s refusal to allow Israeli citizens to fly on the route amounted to “unreasonable discrimination” because Israeli passport holders have the legal right to travel between the United States and the United Kingdom.
“Ironically, the Arab League boycott of Israel was instituted with the stated goal of delegitimizing and bankrupting the Jewish state,” the Lawfare Project said on its website.
“This victory sends a loud and clear message to Arab League governments and corporations that the legal and financial risks of refusing to deal with Israelis will be disproportionately painful for the boycotters," the project also said.
The Thursday defeat of a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement resolution at Vassar College is a major turning point at a school known for its widespread anti-Israelism, a key figure in a Vassar alumni group told The Algemeiner on Monday.British Jewish Campus Activist: Cambridge Referendum on Severing Ties With National Union of Students Is a Statement Against Antisemitic Rhetoric
Dr. Mark Banschick — who graduated from the university in 1978 and played a significant founding role in the Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) organization — said, “The recent defeat of BDS resolutions in a student-wide referendum at Vassar may be a watershed moment at a school that still fails to acknowledge its anti-Israel bias. After all, Vassar’s the place where 39 professors publicly supported a boycott of Israel, and where, this past February, eight departments and programs sponsored a speaker who made reference to the notion that Israelis harvest Palestinian bodies for organs.”
As reported by The Algemeiner, in March, the Vassar Student Association (VSA) council passed a resolution endorsing the BDS movement. An amendment to the BDS resolution prohibiting the use of student funding from what it labeled various pro-Israel companies, including Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, failed to pass.
Two days before the official vote, VSA’s Executive Board informed the student body in an email, “Student Activity Funds used to fund VSA may be taken out of the control of VSA should the BDS [amendment] be adopted…The Board of Trustees and senior level administration of the college have publically stated they do not approve of the BDS movement, and that they are concerned with potential legal consequences of using funds to support a boycott.”
Cambridge University is affirming its stance against antisemitism with the passing of a student council referendum Monday evening that will put the cutting of ties with the National Union of Students (NUS) over the election of its controversial new president to a vote, a founder of the referendum told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.Washington Post CAIR Cover-Up Fails Readers
“Cambridge has made a statement by passing this referendum to say that we will not stand back as antisemitic rhetoric flourishes and we will allow people to make a choice,” said Adam Crafton, a Jewish student who was one of the first at Cambridge to join the “NUS: Let Cambridge Decide” campaign.
In a debate that lasted four hours and was attended by some 150 people, Cambridge University’s Student Union (CUSU) Council overwhelmingly passed a resolution — 36 in favor, six against — calling for a campus-wide vote on the future of the school’s NUS affiliation. The vote comes in response to the election as president of Malia Bouattia, who is facing a firestorm of controversy for past antisemitic comments and calls for armed resistance against Israel. Bouattia has vehemently denied the accusations. A second part of the motion includes sending a CUSU-sponsored letter to Bouattia, condemning her comments about Israel and Jews.
“This is a great decision from the CUSU Council. The assembled representatives of over 22,000 students at the University of Cambridge have said in the strongest terms that they condemn the language used by the new president of the NUS,” Crafton said.
CAMERA has made The Post aware of CAIR’s history, both in several unpublished letters to the editor and in correspondence to the papers’ reporters. In addition to sending CAMERA’s Special Report “The Council on American Islamic Relations: Civil Rights, or Extremism? (July 2009), CAMERA has also sent to The Post documents such as FBI Assistant Director Richard Powers statement to members of the U.S. congress. Powers wrote that the bureau was ceasing official cooperation with CAIR or its executives until it could resolve “whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas”—a U.S.-designated terror group.CNN's Cooper Invokes 'Jewish Extremists' As Argument Vs. Muslim Ban
However, The Post continually fails to print CAMERA’s letters to the editor regarding CAIR—despite the paper relying on the unindicted co-conspirator as a source. In the few instances where the paper has noted CAIR’s history, it obfuscates, asserting that CAIR is not a “terrorist organization” as has been alleged by “right-wing U.S. news sites” and “some American lawmakers.” Yet, this is not the issue as CAMERA’s communications to The Post have made clear. It obscures CAIR’s connections to the HLF trial, numerous documented apologias for terrorist group’s by CAIR officials and, as noted above, the members and associates of the organization who have been connected to terror-related investigations.
That The Post continues to misinform readers about CAIR raises questions, as does the paper’s seeming unwillingness to publish letters identifying the organization. As CAMERA noted before, “The Washington Post made its reputation, in part, by exposing cover-ups like Watergate. Why cover up for CAIR?”
On Monday's Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, after New York magazine's Andrew Sullivan slammed Donald Trump's proposal for a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants, host Anderson Cooper grasped at straws to suggest an equivalence with banning Jews because "Jewish extremists" have "committed acts of terrorism against Israeli leaders" as he pushed back against conservative CNN commentator Kayleigh McEnany's support for Trump's plan.Jewish leader urges Sweden to prioritize anti-Semitism fight
After McEnany argued that such a temporary Muslim ban is justified because of terrorist attacks like those in San Bernardino, California, and Paris, Cooper posed: "So Andrew's argument, if a candidate was saying, 'Don't allow Jewish people in the country,' would that be acceptable?"
After McEnany responded, "Well, there's not a problem -- we don't have a problem with Jewish people right now. We have a problem with radical Islam," the CNN host, presumably referring to the 1995 assassination of then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, made a weak counter-argument as he followed up: "Well, there are extremist Jews who've committed acts of terrorism against Israeli leaders."
The president of the European Jewish Congress says Sweden needs to be vigilant of anti-Semitism among some refugees seeking shelter in the Nordic country.'Decrease of violent attacks against Jews, but rise in institutional anti-Semitism in 2015'
Moshe Kantor on Tuesday said that while Muslim refugees also face bigotry and racism, “anti-Semitism remains a significant problem in Sweden” and should be prioritized.
Kantor spoke to The Associated Press after a meeting in Stockholm with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven.
Sweden has received more asylum-seekers in recent years than any other European country, except Germany. Most come from predominantly Muslim countries including Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Violent attacks against members of the Jewish community dropped significantly worldwide in 2015 despite an increase in institutionalized anti-Semitism, an annual report released Wednesday found.Lithuanian Holocaust monument vandalized on Hitler’s birthday
According to the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, recorded cases of anti-Semitic violence decreased substantially throughout the world by 46 percent. The report said that during 2015, 410 violent cases were recorded, compared to 766 in 2014.
“The year began and ended in a sea of blood and terror, with the massacres at the Charlie Hebdo offices and the Hyper Cacher in Paris during January and the slaughter of 130 people in Paris during November,” Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress and the report's sponsor, said during a press conference at Tel Aviv University Wednesday.
“However, the number of violent anti-Semitic incidents worldwide decreased quite dramatically during 2015, especially after the first months of the year, in comparison to 2014.”
The report attributed the drop to a "massive amount of security around Jewish institutions" in the wake of the January attacks in Paris.
A Holocaust monument in Lithuania was vandalized on the anniversary of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s birthday.Israeli App Uses IDF Technology to Detect Skin Cancer
The monument in Vilkaviskis, a city located 90 miles west of the capital Vilnius, was stripped of its marble tiles and smashed in several parts on April 20, according to a report posted seven days later on the Facebook page of the city’s tiny Jewish community.
Lithuanian police have been informed of the incident and are investigating.
The unfenced monument was vandalized once before, in 2012. A suspect was arrested based on eyewitness accounts, the news website suduvis.lt reported last year. However, police have not arrested any of the thieves who regularly strip marble tiles off the monument.
Every child gets a vision and hearing check in school on a regular basis. Dr. Moshe Fried, an Israeli plastic surgeon, believes an annual skin check is necessary as well, starting in the teens.The Israeli invention that could end period pain
This is why he agreed to be the medical consultant for Emerald Medical Applications’ DermaCompare, a free smartphone app that can detect changes in marks and moles over time. The app alerts the user to changes that ought to be screened for cancer.
“The skin is the biggest organ in the body,” said Fried. “The need for this comparative system came from the concept that as dermatologists and plastic surgeons we have to check everyone throughout life to look for changes in moles—the medical term is ‘nevi’—for signs of skin cancer. This is quite difficult to do. We think that together with this application we can accomplish this goal.”
The public company, founded in Petah Tikva in 2013, has distribution agreements in Israel, Australia (where one of out seven people get skin cancer), the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, New Zealand, and Brazil. In April, the Brazil Chamber of Commerce selected DermaCompare as the Israeli technology “most likely to succeed in Brazil.”
If, as many believe, Adam and Eve were deposited in the Land of Israel when they got booted out of the Garden of Eden — and Eve was cursed with the pain of childbearing — then it would appropriate if the Land of Israel were the place where that pain was finally conquered.70 years on, Holocaust survivors get bar mitzvahs in Jerusalem
And conquered it will be, believes the team behind Livia, a new invention termed by its makers “the off-switch for menstrual pain.”
It’s a bold claim, but to prove it, the Livia team has undertaken a bold marketing ploy — distributing free Livia products to female journalists for review. And the reports have been rave. Top women’s publications the world over, from Cosmopolitan to Seventeen to Glamour to everything in-between — not to mention tech and consumer electronics magazines and sites — describe Livia as “a life-changing technology that ends period cramps for real”; “a genius invention that could provide an ‘off-switch’ for cramps”; and “the best wearable I have ever tried.”
Those are strong words, but period cramps are a strong force that no man can ever know or understand. Yet it’s something women go through on a regular, often monthly, basis.
According to its inventors, CEO Chen Nachum and his father, Dr. Zvi Nachum, the Livia device provides instant relief from cramps, and lasts up to 15 hours on a single charge, long after anti-pain pills have worn off.
Fifty Holocaust survivors who were prevented from getting a traditional Jewish coming-of-age ceremony finally received it during an emotional event at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Monday.Light a candle, but help Shoah survivors too, video urges
The septuagenarians and octogenarians were given bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah ceremonies, which are normally staged for male and female Jews at age 12 or 13, in an event held ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day.
The 13 men and 37 women had mostly missed their ceremonies due to the war and its after effects, so Israel’s government organized a joint one at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.
The men and women filed into the two separate parts of the gender-divided site.
As Holocaust Remembrance Day 2016 draws near, a haunting video launched by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews calls on Israelis to change the way they remember the victims, asking them to give charity for elderly survivors living in poverty in Israel.
It’s the first time the primarily Christian-funded organization has turned to Israelis to open their wallets, said a spokeswoman for the fellowship.
“The expectation is less about the amount given than the awareness,” she said. “The Holocaust is always about remembering, but we’re saying remember the survivors. We do home visits and we really see what’s going on in some survivors’ homes. We wanted to reframe Holocaust Remembrance Day.”
The fundraising campaign aims to raise money for the 45,000 survivors living below the poverty line in Israel.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
