Prof. Phyllis Chesler: 'High-minded culture' is now rife with antisemitism
People say that it is usually calm before a storm but I feel uneasy, unbalanced, uprooted, and set adrift in a dangerously familiar sea.Skyrocketing Attacks On NYC Jews Ignored Because Of Race
An American rabbi put it this way: “I never thought it could happen here. The Pittsburgh shooting made me angry. The San Diego shooting made me afraid.”
Wherever I turn, Israel and the Jews are being falsely accused, defamed, and attacked. Some of us cover the campuses, others cover the media, the internet, national and international politics, the Islamic world, and increasingly, the local attacks on American Jews who are visibly Jewish.
Tragically, those American Jews who are not, have not sprung to the defense of the haredi Jews who are being thrown to the ground and pummeled by young men, usually men of color; or shot down on the Sabbath while at prayer by white supremacists.
As for myself? I cover what high-minded literary types as well as feminists have to say. Doing so never fails to break my heart or strengthen my resolve. Jew hatred has, octopus-like, permeated every nook and cranny of what was formerly considered “high” culture.
Imagine that members of a religious minority were being frequently physically assaulted in America’s largest city at alarming rates. Imagine if members of that minority were being cold-cocked or spit on randomly for doing nothing more than being who they are and dressing how they dress. Imagine what a powerful and important story this would be to our country, how mobilized the media and government would be to stop it. But what if I told you that this is happening in New York City right now, and nobody seems to care very much? How can this be? I’ll explain it.Long Before the Holocaust, Palestinian Antisemitism Spilled into the Arab World
Orthodox Jews in New York City, specifically in Brooklyn, have experienced alarming rates of physical assault over the past year. The New York Police Department says that hate crimes in the city are up 67 percent this year. Of those, a whopping 80 percent have been anti-Semitic hate crimes. Just this week an Orthodox Jew just walking down the street was attacked from behind, punched in the head by an attacker who then ran away. In another incident this week, an Orthodox Jew was attacked by a group of men, one of whom shouted “You (expletive) Jew.”
This is an all too familiar story in Brooklyn these days, and there is a reason it isn’t being treated as a crisis by our media or government. That reason is that many if not most of the assailants are black or Hispanic men. In an article in The New York Times last October that was careful to point out, although without much evidence, that people of all descriptions are committing acts of anti-Semitism, Ginia Bellafante writes (emphasis mine), “In fact, it is the varied backgrounds of people who commit hate crimes in the city that make combating and talking about anti-Semitism in New York much harder.”
We should be clear about what this means. It means that if these assaults were being committed by white men in hoods or MAGA hats, it would not be “hard to talk about.” It would be a clear-cut case of bigotry that needs to be fought with every tool in our arsenal. Instead, journalists are wringing their hands about intersectionality, and careful not to indulge the narrative that these physical attacks are coming from blacks and Hispanics in bordering neighborhoods, even though that narrative is absolutely true. (h/t Failexa)
The Jewish world is justifiably in an uproar about comments made over the weekend by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). In an act of monumental chutzpah, Tlaib has made the claim that the Palestinians helped create “a safe haven” for Jews fleeing the Holocaust — a thought, she said, that gave her a “kind of calming feeling.”
Scholars and journalists have rebutted her revisionism by drawing attention to the pivotal role that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, played in the Holocaust and persecution of Jews — to the Arab-Nazi alliance he spearheaded, and to the antisemitic propaganda he broadcast during the four years he enjoyed Hitler’s hospitality in Berlin. They have pointed out that the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs were Nazi sympathizers; that the Arabs pressured the British to curtail Jewish immigration into Palestine that could have saved millions of lives; and that the Arab leadership led an antisemitic campaign within Palestine as early as the 1920s.
But few critics of Tlaib’s words have observed that the mufti, as well as other Syrian and Palestinian nationalists, began to sow the seeds of virulent antisemitism outside Palestine as early as the 1920s. The result was the mass displacement of 850,000 Jews from the Arab world, most of whom resettled in Israel after 1948. Does this forced exodus, directly attributable to Arab antisemitism, also give Tlaib a “calming feeling”?
Wherever the mufti went in the Arab world, persecution and mayhem against the local Jews followed. In 1921, Yemenite Jews in the Yishuv claimed it was due to Palestinian Arab pressure that the decree forcing Jewish orphans in Yemen to convert to Islam was reinstated. This, they said, had come about after a Palestinian Arab delegation had visited Yemen to demand that the Imam stop all immigration to Palestine. The Orphans’ Decree, argues scholar S.D. Goiten, was the single most important reason Jews were desperate to flee Yemen.
David Collier: In the beginning there was an Arab with a knife 180 years of excuses (V2)
In just the last few days, the BBC deliberately mistranslated the use of the word ‘Yehud’ as ‘Israeli’ instead of ‘Jew’ and Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib made comments distorting the history of Arab violence. Both of these recent incidents are connected to a wider movement that excuse and whitewash anti-Jewish violence. In 2015 I wrote an article on the subject. This is version two.BBC Doubles Down On Translating 'Jew' As 'Israeli' In Palestinians' Anti-Semitic Comments
During the height of the second Intifada, the media and politicians in general were adamant, only total desperation could cause one human being to walk onto a bus full of innocent civilians and blow himself up. This twisted logic unashamedly blames the victims for the act of violence that kills them. It removes personal responsibility from the terrorist, a logic that only applies in Israel. We find the same media and the same politicians have no trouble identifying the true cause of the brutal violence when it hits closer to home.
On April 30th 2003, at about 00:45, 22-year-old Asif Muhammad Hanif entered Mike’s Place, a live music tourist pub on the Tel Aviv beachfront. Asif, from London and his friend, Omar Khan Sharif from Derby, had been born, grew up and were educated in the UK. Upon entering the pub, Asif detonated his bomb, killing 3 and injuring 50. One of the fatalities was 29-year-old French born Dominique Haas, a personal friend of mine. It would be difficult to argue that Asif and Omar were any more desperate than you or I. Young, British and university educated, they had their whole lives before them, but simply believed there was more to gain from murdering Jews in Tel Aviv instead.
It is now May 2019 and Jews are again being murdered on the streets of Israel. Just recently hundreds of rockets were fired from Gaza at Israeli communities. Over the past year, western media have been falling over themselves to paint violent demonstrations at the Gaza border as ‘peaceful resistance’. Many of the Arab fatalities were terrorists, armed with guns and knives, who attempted to cross into Israel. The excuse given for the recent murders was the ‘pressure cooker’ that exists in Gaza because of the blockade. Let us embark on an historical exercise and follow this logic to its obvious conclusion.
Lyse Doucet, chief international correspondent for the BBC, argued the translation was justified given advice that translators in Gaza gave the BBC.JPost Editorial: Shameful rewrite
“We talked to people in Gaza, we talked to translators. When [the children] say ‘Jews,’ they mean ‘Israelis,'” Doucet said. “We felt it was a better translation of it.”
Jewish advocacy groups decried the decision as an attempt to cover up blatant Antisemitism.
“The anti-Jewish racism in the phrase ‘rip a Jew’s head off’ is there for all to see. The BBC should explain why viewers were given a subtitle in which the word Jew was substituted for Israeli,” said Sheila Gewolb, senior vice president of Board of Deputies of British Jews. “Does the BBC believe that its job is to protect the perpetrators from their own racism?”
Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt also denounced the BBC’s translation as “yet another blatant example of the failure to take the scourge of antisemitism seriously.”
Poland has to recognize its past and stop running away from it. That is once again the lesson from what happened earlier this week when a delegation of Israeli government officials landed in Warsaw and was told to turn around, get back on the plane and return home.U.S. Democrats Follow U.K. Labour Party Down The Anti-Semitism Rat Hole
The Israeli delegation was led by Social Equality Ministry Director-General Avi Cohen, and its members were supposed to have met with senior officials in the Polish government to discuss the establishment of a mechanism to coordinate the thorny issue of Holocaust restitution.
The Polish Foreign Ministry issued a short statement on its website saying that the visit was canceled, “after the Israeli side made last minute changes in the composition of the delegation, suggesting that the talks would primarily focus on issues related to property restitution.”
This is not the first crisis with Poland regarding the Holocaust. In February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went there for a summit on the Middle East and Iran. While there, he was quoted as saying that “the Poles cooperated with the Nazis” during the Holocaust. Warsaw interpreted this to mean that Netanyahu was referring to Poland as a nation, another delicate issue for the country.
Much like the cult of Corbyn and its perversion of the U.K. Labour Party, there is a cult of unimpeachable progressivism poisoning the American Left. The Democrat Party has demonized any objection to the cult by using a litany of “-isms” to denigrate much-needed critique. Omar (D–MN) has accused Rep. Liz Cheney (R–WI), Rep. Lee Zeldin (R–NY), and anyone else who dares to criticize her or Tlaib (D–MI) of anti-Semitism as “Islamophobic.”Caroline Glick: Why Democrats Keep Defending, and Promoting, Rashida Tlaib
This tactic is useful because it allows the leftist-dominated media to feel guiltless as they rush to protect and rationalize the actions of those accused of anti-Semitism. A glance at the Washington Post’s headlines (here and here) might very well make your stomach turn. Watching Seth Meyers conduct damage control for Omar might make you wonder when, if ever, we’ll reach the disgusting crescendo where popular media figures will no longer excuse anti-Semitism. The actions of those within the mainstream media subversively suggest that anti-Semitism is capable of rationalization. It is not.
The U.K. Labour Party’s slow collapse should offer warning bells to Pelosi, who has allowed the far-left to dictate the course of her party. I am not sure what level of Holocaust revisionism or Farrakhan-cavorting it might take for Democrats to realize their party is ill. I can only hope that there are Democrats who are willing to change the party from within in—and if not, are willing to leave the party itself.
As Bridget Prentice suggested in her letter, there comes a point when a party mutates so greatly that it no longer deserves its original name. Perhaps for the American Democratic Party, this is now the case.
In the new world of progressive politics of the Democratic Party, the “truth” is whatever is ideologically convenient, rather than reality. In that new world, Tlaib can defend her lies with the claim that her critics have a “racist and hateful agenda,” and that “The truth will always win.” Because in the Democratic party today, “truth” means progressive dogma rather than actual truth.Rashida Tlaib Reaps the Rewards of Anti-Semitism
Evidence of this state of affairs is everywhere to be seen. Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube practice ever-escalating censorship of conservative voices. Conservatives are banned from their platforms, and shadow-banned from their followers. Conservatives’ websites are decommercialized and hidden in Google searches. The silencing of conservatives has little to do with the truth or falsity of the positions those censored express. Rather, conservatives are silenced simply because they aren’t progressive voices.
“Fact-checkers” in Democratic media outlets pronounce conservatives liars for stating facts that the progressives don’t want to hear. At the same time, the fact-checkers are struck mute when progressives make laughable claims such as that the end of the world is nigh (only twelve years away).
When Tlaib invents an entirely fake history of the Holocaust, painting the Jews as Nazis and Palestinians as their victims, Tlaib is stating a new progressive “truth.” She is defended because while her claims are both false and bigoted, they express an already accepted progressive dogma. Her stated goal of destroying the home of the world’s largest Jewish community is simply the logical conclusion to her fake anti-Jewish understanding of the world.
In the anti-fact, anti-reality environment that now dominates the Democratic Party, it made sense for Pelosi and Hoyer to defend her. And the situation will only get worse, faster than anyone can imagine.
Would the Democrats be willing to forego some percentage of the Jewish vote in New York and California, states they are all but guaranteed to win by double digits even with a dent in that voting bloc, if they can mobilize enough Muslim voters in Detroit to take back Michigan? Absolutely. Michigan’s 16 electoral votes matter — a lot. If Trump had failed to win that state his electoral total would have been 288 to Clinton’s 243. If Trump fails to hang on to Michigan in 2020 and also loses Pennsylvania — whose Muslim population is by no means negligible — that puts him below the 270 — even if he wins everywhere else he won in 2016.
And Muslims vote heavily Democratic. Pew Research reports that, in the 2018 midterms, the vast majority voted Democrat: “Among those who identify with faiths other than Christianity and Judaism (including Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and many others), 73% voted for Democratic congressional candidates while 25% supported Republicans.” The good news for Republicans is that the U.S. Muslim population is very young. According to a survey conducted by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, 37 percent of voting-age Muslims in America are under 30, and are even less likely to vote than other millennials.
Nonetheless the Democrats are clearly making a play for their votes. Ironically, by allowing an unapologetic anti-Semite to preside over the House of Representatives, they have provided a useful reminder of what their party is about. Its congressional caucus includes a sitting representative who refers to Jews as “termites.” Its leading presidential contender is a well-documented pro-segregationist. It boasts a sitting governor nicknamed “Coonman” pursuant to his affinity for donning blackface. And it goes without saying that they have no realistic agenda for the future. The Democrats need another — very long — stint in the wilderness.
.@jdforward once again goes beyond the pale https://t.co/wvLfbfGLvi
— Ozraeli Dave (((דיויד לנג))) (@Israellycool) May 15, 2019
Here's hoping detestable antisemite and terror supporter @resistance48 IS banned from #Canada https://t.co/BltqAJBSk9
— Ozraeli Dave (((דיויד לנג))) (@Israellycool) May 16, 2019
Here's the emblem of the Arab Liberation Army in Mandatory Palestine post-Holocaust. Just screams "safe haven for Jews" doesn't it? pic.twitter.com/AOQbniwECu
— The Mossad: Elite Parody Division (@TheMossadIL) May 15, 2019
Jewish Group Pushes Greater Jexodus from Democratic Party
A group of pro-Trump, pro-Israel Jews gathered outside the Capitol Hill building to protest the Democratic party and its perceived anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views among its young faces. But with the Democrats winning 80 percent of the Jewish vote in the 2018 Midterms, will they convince enough Jews to change their minds? Our Mounira Al Hmoud has the story.
Philly Muslim Leaders Apologize After Video Emerges of Kids Singing About Decapitation
The Muslim American Society initially called the incident "an unintended mistake and an oversight" after the video was published.Europe’s Youngest ALS Patient Faces Wave of Online Hate After Seeking Treatment in Israel
In the video, one girl says "we will chop off their heads" to "liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque" in Jerusalem.
"We will defend the land of divine guidance with our bodies, and we will sacrifice our souls without hesitation. We will lead the army of Allah fulfilling his promise, and we will subject them to eternal torture," a girl reads.
Children also sang about the "blood of martyrs" and "Rebels, rebels, rebels."
Officials said a volunteer aide selected the songs to represent Palestinian people, but added she "feels terrible she made a mistake" and has stepped down.
"The children did not understand this song as their command of Arabic is not advanced," the statement said. The speech, it said, "was likewise a selection that primarily sought to highlight the children's capacity to read and project Arabic rhetoric; however, they have not yet mastered enough grammar to comprehend the words."
Europe’s youngest ALS patient has become the object of vicious online abuse after he attempted to raise money for a new treatment in Israel.UC Davis Student Leaders Repeal ‘Unconstitutional’ Israel Divestment Resolution
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a degenerative nerve disease that destroys motor neurons, slowly paralyzing and ultimately killing those afflicted with it. Its most famous sufferer was the physicist Stephen Hawking.
According to Hebrew news site Mako, the young patient, Paolo Palumbo, who lives in Italy, was accepted into a treatment program at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. It is believed that due to Palombo’s young age, the treatment could not only arrest the progression of the disease but also lead to remission.
The treatment, however, costs 900,000 euros. Palumbo, who cannot eat or breathe on his own, turned to online crowd-funding in order to pay for it, but was met with a wave of hatred.
“Your efforts are pointless,” said one, “you will die before you reach Israel.”
Another read, “You are a bastard and someone who gives you money is a bastard.”
The student government of the University of California, Davis unanimously struck down a divestment resolution targeting Israel on Monday, calling the measure “unconstitutional.”US Republicans launch bid to force House vote on BDS
Senate Resolution #17 (SR17) — originally passed with a vote of 10-0 and two abstentions in May 2015 — called for divestment from four companies over their ties to Israel and complicity in alleged human rights violations against Palestinians.
An earlier divestment resolution was adopted by the Associated Students of UC Davis (ASUCD) in January 2015, but was repealed the following month for violating the student government’s constitution.
Yet SR17 — which, like its predecessor, was seen as an extension of the anti-Zionist boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign — was upheld until this semester, when students Sydney Hack and Daniella Aloni petitioned the ASUCD Judicial Council to overturn the measure.
A ruling delivered by the Council’s majority on Monday, following a hearing on May 8th, confirmed that SR17 contravened a section of the ASUCD Constitution that commits the Senate to “promote the welfare and interests of the members of the ASUCD.”
“The ASUCD Senate must promote student welfare, meaning it cannot hinder the welfare of any student,” the ruling stated. “While this Resolution caters to the welfare of a group of students, it does so at the expense of the welfare of other students.”
Republicans want to force a vote on a controversial bill meant to oppose the anti-Israel boycott.German parliament to denounce boycott movement as ‘anti-Semitic’
The bill, which earlier this year passed the Senate, has been held up in part because the Democrats, who control the US House of Representatives, say it poses a threat to First Amendment free speech protections.
The bill would uphold the right of states to ban Israel boycotters from doing business with the states, and protect the states from lawsuits.
Florida Rep. Brian Mast on Wednesday filed a discharge petition to get a majority of House members — 218 — to back bringing it to the floor, one of the only means the minority party has of forcing a vote.
Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the minority whip, must now persuade the entire GOP caucus and at least 21 Democrats to back the petition. He is backed by the minority leader in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, and the majority leader in the Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Other notable backers of the effort include Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranked Republican in the House, and the only two Jewish Republican lawmakers, Reps. Lee Zeldin of New York and David Kustoff of Tennessee. (h/t vwVwwVwv)
Amid growing controversy, the German parliament is set to pass a resolution on Friday condemning the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The text condemns BDS as anti-Semitic and urges the government not to fund or support groups or activities that question Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself.PayPal shuts down services to BDS group with terror links
This non-binding resolution is sponsored jointly by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian-Democratic Union and the Social Democrats — the Bundestag’s two largest parties, which make up the governing coalition — as well as two opposition parties: the Greens and the pro-business Free Democratic Party.
In addition, lawmakers will also vote on two other resolutions against BDS, proposed by two opposition parties: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), and the far-left Die Linke, respectively.
The AfD draft, the only one that calls on the government to outlaw the boycott movement, has little chance of garnering a majority. The Die Linke text is the softest of the three, sufficing with urging Berlin to condemn “anti-Semitism within” the BDS movement. It, too, has virtually no chance of passing.
PayPal has joined other major online payment systems in shutting down services to Samidoun, a nongovernmental organization and proponent of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement with close ties to Palestinian terror groups.Lawyer who was ordered to undergo diversity training for calling anti-Israel group 'scummy racists' wins appeal
Over the last several weeks, the International Legal Forum, along with the Zionist Advocacy Center, successfully petitioned PayPal, along with Donorbox and Plaid, to shut down financial services to Samidoun.
Yifa Segal, director of the International Legal Fund, commended PayPal and the other online-payment systems for their decision.
“The evidence against Samidoun is overwhelming. It paints a clear picture of a terror organization trying to create a seemingly legitimate operation under the guise of human-rights activism; to spread its message, recruit supporters and raise funds,” he told JNS.
Segal said “PayPal has done the right thing by shutting down their account. In fact, it made the only reasonable choice. I believe PayPal, as well as the other financial platforms [that] complied with our requests and shut down Samidoun’s accounts, are sincerely interested in preventing terror financing. That’s their strongest motive.”
A Jewish lawyer, who was ordered to undergo diversity training for calling an anti-Israel campaign group “scummy racists”, has won his fight to have the decision overturned on appeal.PreOccupiedTerritory: Worldwide Protests Against China’s Repression Of Muslims Continue Not To Occur (satire)
Matthew Berlow was sanctioned by the Scottish Law Society last October for calling the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) “scummy racists, bullies and cowards” and saying that, with its protests against an Israeli shop owner, it had “simply found a soft Jewish target to aim your bile at”.
He was ordered to pay a fine of £1,750 and undergo diversity training after a pro-Palestinian campaigner complained to the lawyer's professional body.
Mr Berlow later tried to raise funds through JustGiving for the costs of the appeal he was lodging but people connected to the SPSC managed to it closed down after complaining that raising funds for a legal case violated the website's terms of service.
But he was then contacted by Adam Solomon, a Jewish London-based QC who read about the case in the JC.
Throngs of demonstrators refrained in droves from attending a mass rally in the French capital and numerous other locations around the globe today in support of the millions of Uighur Muslims imprisoned by Beijing and subject to “reeducation,” marking ten thousand days in a row during which such demonstrations have not materialized.Poisonous Cartoon Crosses the Line?
Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and various Islamic groups repeated their abstinence from calling for international pressure on China to cease its persecution of Uighur Muslims, with each organization not sending any representatives to the nonexistent rallies or contributing organizational support to the non-initiatives.
“We cannot reserve all of our resources to focus on Israel,” declared none of the groups. “There are far worse, far more numerous, and much longer-occurring violations of human rights than whatever Israel is doing, and if we wish to maintain integrity we must call out those violations with at least the same level of vehemence that we have opposed Israeli construction of housing for Jews.”
Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell has plenty of previous form when it comes to producing poisonous anti-Israel imagery that crosses the line into antisemitism.
His latest cartoon “Mike Pompeo’s prayer for Middle East peace” raises similar questions.
We see caricatures of US President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But it’s the second box that needs further examination. Behind the barbed wire is Gaza. The barbed wire itself is a crude representation of the Israeli flag with the Star of David in the center.
Is Bell deliberately conflating Gaza with a Nazi concentration camp where Israelis are the Nazis? The imagery certainly invokes those thoughts, which could well be reinforced by the sinister third box that portrays Israeli soldiers in a particularly dark and threatening manner standing in front of a barbed wire fence.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism has been adopted and endorsed by a growing number of governments and organizations (including HonestReporting). It includes: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
Hateful @Guardian cartoon appears to suggest that anti-Muslim hatred drives Israel's conflict with terror organization Hamas, and features a barbed wire Star of David.
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 16, 2019
BBC’s Bateman promotes false equivalence with Gaza report
Bateman then returned to his usual practice of describing the ‘Great Return March’ violent rioting as “protests”. He failed to clarify that what he described as “a series of…flare-ups” have in fact been exclusively the result of the decision by Gaza Strip based terrorists to attack Israeli civilians with military grade projectiles.US Special Envoy Carr Warns About Antisemitism From Three Different Directions
Bateman: “I have been in and out of the Strip over the past year as one story of Palestinian protests at the fence evolved into another; a series of ever more intense military flare-ups. While Israel and Hamas exchanged blows, they have also exchanged demands. Israel wants quiet. Hamas wants the blockade eased. These are old enemies: they don’t talk. So the head of Egyptian intelligence tries to broker calm one day and cash from Qatar via Israel to help relieve Gaza’s appalling poverty the next. The situation feels as desperate as it is lethal and there are few realistic political solutions on the horizon. Some say Islamic Jihad calculated that Israel wouldn’t go to war in the days leading up to the Eurovision Song Contest being held in Tel Aviv. So the moment was chosen to extract maximum concessions.”
Failing to mention the fact that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is backed by Iran and choosing to ignore statements and threats made by its leader days before his report was broadcast, Bateman went on to tell listeners of ‘ominous’ warnings from Israel’s prime minister.
Bateman: “The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned ominously that Israel’s campaign is not over. Few can feel optimistic. Rafat Nasser, struggling to find work, told me he had taken out a mortgage to buy his apartment in Gaza. Now he no longer has a home but he still has the loan to repay. In Ashdod I asked Ephraim Cohen, in his wrecked apartment, whether the ceasefire would hold. ‘It will hold’ he told me. ‘It will hold when the messiah comes’.”
Tom Bateman’s main messaging in this report was obviously a false sense of equivalence between events in Israel and events in the Gaza Strip. That was achieved by the use of euphemisms such as “flare-ups” and avoiding the fact that all the recent rounds of conflict have been sparked by rocket attacks by terror groups in the Gaza Strip. In addition Bateman failed to adequately clarify to listeners that while Israel targets terror related sites in its response to rocket attacks, the Palestinian terrorists’ rocket attacks are aimed at civilian targets. Moreover, he failed to inform BBC audiences that while all four Israeli victims of the latest round of conflict were civilians, some 74% of those killed in the Gaza Strip were members of terror factions.
US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Elan Carr warned on Tuesday about antiSemitism from three different directions.Court rules German public TV must air neo-Nazi campaign ad
“In Europe, we have a confluence of antisemitism, from ultra-right ethnic supremacist movements to the ultra-left anti-Israel, anti-Zionist movements, to radical Islam,” he said at the general convention for the Conference of European Rabbis in Antwerp, Belgium.
“These are movements that should hate each other far more than they hate anything else,” continued Carr. “And yet they are united in this age-old sickness of humanity, antisemitism—what [US] President [Donald] Trump calls the vile poison of antisemitism.”
“Antisemitism isn’t only about the Jews,” he added. “Antisemitism is history’s greatest barometer of human misery, and a society that has imbibed its poison is rotten to the core.”
Carr reiterated that the Trump administration is “committed in an unprecedented fashion to the Jewish people, to the fight against antisemitism in the world or to the state of Israel.”
He added that the kosher-slaughter bans in places, such as in Belgian regions Wallonia and Flanders, as “nothing other than a forced expulsion of the Jewish community from the countries that adopt this kind of legislation. It is intolerable.”
The Flanders ban took effect on Jan. 1, while the Wallonia one will take effect in September.
Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Slovenia all ban religious slaughter without pre-stunning.
A German neo-Nazi party won a bid Wednesday before the country’s highest court to force a public broadcaster to show one of its TV campaign advertisements for European Parliament elections on the network.Australian comedian has his Netflix deal cancelled for crude Holocaust joke and for telling a Jewish audience member: 'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the oven'
The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that broadcaster ARD must air the advertisement by the right-wing extremist National Party of Germany (NPD) on free speech grounds.
After earlier court defeats for the NPD, it found there no firm evidence that the group’s reworked TV spot was illegally inciting racial hatred, as claimed by ARD’s Berlin regional broadcaster RBB.
In its latest commercial, the NPD asserts that Germans had become “victims almost daily” because of the “uncontrolled mass immigration.”
The NPD has seats in many town halls in Germany’s ex-communist east but negligible poll ratings at the national level.
A stand-up comedian has had his lucrative comedy special deal with Netflix come unstuck after it was deemed too offensive.Bob Hawke, ex-Australian PM and advocate for refuseniks, dies at 89
Australian comedian Isaac Butterfield was slammed after a performance at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival on April 11 in which he made jokes about millions of Jews being killed in the Holocaust.
After the show, a Jewish woman, who was part of the audience, emailed him to express her concern at the jokes, to which he replied, 'if you can't stand the heat get out of the oven.'
The email from the woman, who did not wish to be named, to Mr Butterfield read in part, 'Sitting there hearing about Jews being gassed, eight million perished including children, watching family members being gassed or tortured or shot, is not remotely funny,' according to the The Herald Sun.
Bob Hawke, Australia’s longest-serving Labor Party prime minister, whose charisma and powers of persuasion earned him near-folk hero status among many Australians, died on Thursday, his wife said. He was 89.Israeli economy grew at 5.2% in Q1 2019
The former union leader dedicated much of his political career to trade union issues, and he was widely regarded as a man of his people. He had a down-to-earth attitude, a passion for sports and legendary status among beer lovers for once drinking himself into the record books.
He won four terms as prime minister, serving from 1983 to 1991 before being ousted by his own center-left party when the economy soured. Only two other prime ministers served Australia longer, and both were members of the conservative Liberal Party.
He had been actively supporting Labor’s campaign for elections on Saturday after six years in opposition. He also said he doubted he would survive to see the Labor victory predicted in opinion polling.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Hawke had transformed Australian society and protected the environment, a reference to his government preventing the damming of a wild river in Tasmania state to generate electricity in a major environmental conflict in 1983.
“We have lost a favorite son. Bob Hawke loved Australia and Australia loved Bob Hawke,” Shorten said.
Economic growth was boosted by an exceptionally large rise in vehicle imports, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports.Thousands expected at Los Angeles Celebrate Israel event
There was a sharp rise in GDP growth in Israel in the first quarter of 2019, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports. According to the first estimate the economy grew 5.2% on an annualized basis in the first quarter. This compares with 3.9% in the fourth quarter of 2018 and 2.8% in the third quarter of 2018.
After deducting the import of vehicles and the income from tax on those vehicles, the economy grew 3.7% in the first quarter of 2019 and 3% in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Expenditure on vehicles for private use grew almost 600% on an annualized basis in the first quarter of 2019 after rising 40.4% in the preceding quarter, due to the imminent reduction of tax benefits as part of the green tax law.
A pro-Israel festival will take place in Los Angeles this Sunday to celebrate Israel's Independence. Fifteen thousand people are expected to attend the event which will include live music, arts and crafts and family friendly activities.
The StandWithUs organization will host a 1-mile “Celebrate Israel Walk” followed by a concert featuring best-selling Israeli singer Lior Narkis and hosted by veteran actor Mike Burstyn, star of the classic Kuni Leml series.
Also scheduled to attend will be Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Senator Holly Mitchell, Senator Ling Ling Chang, City Controller Ron Galperin, City Attorney Mike Feurer, Councilmembers Lindsey Hovath and Paul Koretz and Assemblymen Jesse Gabriel and Richard Bloom.
Unique to this year's event will be a special exhibit called "Heroes: Jewish Trailblazers Experience" an interactive exhibit sponsored by the Museum of the Jewish People.
A "shuk" or marketplace will feature local vendors and artists from Israel and selling crafts, jewelry, and Judaica.
