Friday, June 07, 2019
John Podhoretz: De Blasio’s whitewashing on anti-Semitism
According to a recent report by the New York Police Department, the city has seen an 82-percent increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes—which make up more than half of all hate crimes— since last year, despite a reduction in violent crime overall. Most of the violent incidents are attacks on Orthodox Jews by African-American men. But in a press conference this week, New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio emphasized that, regarding attacks on Jews, “the violent threat, the threat that is ideological, is very much from the right.” John Podhoretz comments:David Collier: The day YouTube banned (and restored) my channel
No rational person would argue that Jew-hatred has not been and does not continue to be a feature of the extreme right. It is, as the lone monsters who staged the assaults on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue and the Chabad House in Poway, California made clear in their Internet postings. But no person other than a fool . . . would simply erase left-wing anti-Semitism and Muslim anti-Semitism and act as if they didn’t and don’t exist.
The Soviet Union was an institutionally anti-Semitic regime, as were most of its satellites and puppets before the fall of the Berlin Wall. . . . The earliest and most dedicated Palestinian nationalists, who vowed to throw the Jewish people into the sea, were not Islamists but secular radicals like Yasir Arafat and George Habash, a Marxist-Leninist whose particular specialty was hijacking planes. The 2015 anti-Semitic attacks in Paris, to which de Blasio bizarrely alluded, weren’t staged by right-wing Europeans following in the footsteps of the Nazis. They were attacks by Muslims who had aligned themselves with the Islamic State. . . .
[I]n New York City, there have been 110 anti-Semitic hate crimes this year out of 164 such crimes in total. Not a one of them, so far as I can tell, was committed by a man in a MAGA hat.
De Blasio spoke commendably at the same press conference about how the present hatred of Jews makes the existence of the Jewish state a matter of vital importance. But to speak as though the progressivism he claims to represent has nothing for which it needs to account when it comes to the rise of anti-Semitic acts is, quite simply, an act of shameful ideological whitewashing.
But Holocaust denial is okayMelanie Phillips: Jewish dismay increases after the Peterborough by-election
In it’s statement, YouTube said that it was banning Holocaust denial. Yet a simple search for ‘H-o-l-o-h-o-a-x’, the most basic way to find such material, still returns material. Here is David Irving, ‘debunking the Holocaust in 3 minutes‘. Elsewhere, you can learn about how ‘wonderful’ the treatment of the camp inmates was in this Holocaust denial video. The channel behind it has been freely peddling hate on the platform for four years.
Speeches by Jew-hating Holocaust denier Eustace Mullins are widely available, but if his American accent puts you off and you seek a more authentic Nazi accent, there is always Ernst Zundel. You can even watch him giving a ‘stark warning‘ to Jewish people. The channel that uploaded the Zundel video appears to have spreading anti-Jewish hate on YouTube for over six years.
There is little point linking to hundreds of such videos that I quickly found, and this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. Brother Nathaneal isn’t a hate-preacher? He is okay – but I am not? And Rothschild Conspiracy? The very pillars of Rothschild Conspiracy rewrite history in order to place the blame for WW1 & WW2 at the feet of the Jewish people. What is that, if not an attempt to cleanse the Nazis, turning the Germans into innocent people that the evil Jews provoked. There are 1000s if not 10000s of such videos on the platform.
I went back to my 2018 Palestine Live report, which listed dozens of hard-core videos spreading hate, to see how many have been removed. Sadly, far too many of these videos are still live, years after they were originally uploaded.
Generally speaking, those trying to avoid capture, frequently change names and locations in order to continue doing whatever they are doing for as long as they can. That does not seem neccessary on YouTube. There are channels who have been openly peddling hate for a decade. YouTube may talk about fighting Holocaust denial and Jew-hatred but it still seems as if only antisemitism campaigners and historians really have to be concerned by the new crackdown.
Even worse, however, than the Labour party’s indifference towards or connivance with the Jewish-conspiracy ravings in its ranks is the attitude of the British public. For the by-election result shows that the stench of antisemitism is failing to repel the voters. Either they don’t care or, worse, they may actually be sympathetic – perhaps because they don’t like what they perceive as people ganging up on someone. That’s a very British thing.
And heaven help us, too many do view the antisemitism furore as the Jews ganging up on Jeremy Corbyn. How can they possibly believe that, you may ask, given the unambiguous hatred, fear and loathing of the Jews that party members are either directly expressing or, in their supposed myopia or absent-mindedness, appearing to endorse?
The answer is probably that, in addition to those who actually do believe this poison, there are many who don’t notice it to be poison. And that’s because too many don’t think antisemitism is unambiguously bad.
They know nothing about the Jewish people or their history, nothing about the unique characteristics and historic reach of anti-Jewish hatred, nothing about the moral sickness of any society that fails to stamp it out. They don’t understand why the Jews always seem be going on and on about it. Doesn’t this mean, they ask themselves, that they must be doing something bad to attract so much dislike?
To them, these antisemitic remarks are just background noise, no different from all the other insults and aggression and vile outbursts that have now come to define public debate and which they mainly just tune out. Many have never even met a Jew. So why should they care about them any more than anyone else?
Before yesterday, British Jews could hardly have been in any greater dismay about the toleration of Jew-bashing on the left. The Peterborough by-election will have increased it, however, still further.
Auschwitz Is Not a Metaphor
Having visited the new Auschwitz exhibition at New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, Dara Horn “found it everything an Auschwitz exhibition should be.” But when she reached the part explaining the mechanics of the gas chambers, she began asking herself about the purpose of “knowing all these obscene facts [about the murder of Jews] in such granular detail,” and this led to more troubling reflections:Holocaust Survivors’ Torment After Liberation
At the end of the [exhibit], onscreen survivors talk in a loop about how people need to love one another. While listening to this, it occurs to me that I have never read survivor literature in Yiddish—the language spoken by 80 percent of victims—suggesting this idea. In Yiddish, speaking only to other Jews, survivors talk about their murdered families, about their destroyed centuries-old communities, about Jewish national independence, about Jewish history, about self-defense, and on rare occasions, about vengeance. Love rarely comes up; why would it? But it comes up here, in this for-profit exhibition. Here is the ultimate message. . . .
That the Holocaust drives home the importance of love is an idea, like the idea that Holocaust education prevents anti-Semitism, that seems entirely unobjectionable. It is entirely objectionable. The Holocaust didn’t happen because of a lack of love. It happened because entire societies abdicated responsibility for their own problems, and instead blamed them on the people who represented—have always represented, since they first introduced the idea of commandedness to the world—the thing they were most afraid of: responsibility. Then as now, Jews were cast in the role of civilization’s nagging mothers, loathed in life and loved only once they are safely dead. . . .
And I find myself furious, being lectured by this exhibition about love—as if the murder of millions of people was actually a morality play, a bumper sticker, a metaphor. I do not want my children to be someone else’s metaphor. (Of course, they already are.)
For many Holocaust survivors, their torment didn’t end after the Allies defeated Nazi forces in May, 1945 and liberated the camps. Shockingly, it took two Jewish privates in the U.S. Army to make sure the United States lived up to its obligations and save the lives of thousands of concentration camp survivors.
In many sectors, American troops overseeing the concentration camps continued to imprison starving Jewish inmates. “What’s the difference between you and Americans and the Nazis” a concentration camp survivor asked a young soldier named Robert L. Hilliard, a few months after the Allies’ victory “except that you don’t have gas chambers?”
Robert Hilliard wrote about his experiences in his memoir Surviving the Americans: The Continued Struggle of the Jews After Liberation and has spoken about his struggle to help Jewish survivors publicly.
In 1945 Pvt. Robert Hilliard and his friend Pvt. Ed Herman were two low-ranking young recruits who were stationed with the American Army in Bavaria. Hilliard was tasked with editing an army newspaper and on May 27, weeks after American troops had liberated Nazi concentration camps and death camps throughout Germany, he went to cover a “liberation concert” being given by concentration camp survivors in a hospital being operated on the grounds of a monastery called St. Ottilien, near Munich.
The hospital housed 400 concentration camp survivors, as well as some German soldiers who’d ostensibly been wounded. In reality Pvt. Hilliard found some of the German soldiers were using the hospital as cover to evade reprisals for their role in the war, and the Jews were occupying part of the hospital grounds unofficially. They were denied any medical care and both the German hospital staff and American troops governing the area turned a blind eye to these emaciated survivors, ignoring them and refusing to help them in any way.
Dr. Zalman Grinberg, a recently liberated concentration camp survivor himself, organized the unofficial hospital at St. Ottilien with no help from Allied forces.
In fact, Hilliard described, the “hospital” he ran - with no supplies - was the only hospital in all of Germany devoted to caring for concentration camp survivors in those crucial weeks after liberation.
Italian newsreel footage from 1936. This is what it was like for Jews in the Holy Land. There was no warm welcome. There was no sanctuary. Only antisemitism & terrorists.
— 𝘼𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙕𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙞𝙨𝙢 (@americanzionism) June 6, 2019
Caption:
"After the first few days of serious anti-Semitic and anti-British riots that bloodied Palestine" pic.twitter.com/hkJ2zCjO50
John Hagee: Anti-Semitism has been dangerously rebranded – and it’s not just a Jewish problems
One would think that this bigotry would be easily recognized for what it is and shunned once again. But that is not what has taken place. Just this year, instead of clearly taking a stand, leaders in the House of Representatives felt the need to “water down” a resolution that was supposed to be aimed at condemning anti-Semitism. But, in the end, the resolution was nothing more than a word salad filled with moral equivalence and of no real consequence.The Lion of Jerusalem
Anti-Semitism is not just a Jewish problem, it’s everyone’s problem. And it is not just the world’s oldest hatred, it is sin, and Bible believing Christians must respond accordingly. We cannot sit idly by as this darkness casts a shadow over our society. We must shine a bright light on anti-Semitism wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.
That is why we at Christians United for Israel have chosen to very publicly reemphasize the need for our members and Christians around the world to fulfill their God-given mandate to stand with their Jewish brothers and sisters, be they neighbors down the street or allies in Israel.
And that is why at our upcoming Washington Summit we will make the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act our top legislative priority. This bill, which focuses on anti-Semitic acts associated with the unlawful harassment of Jewish students, is an important first step, but it is by no means enough.
God and history will judge harshly those bigots who espouse hatred of Jews. But make no mistake, God and history will be no less kind to those who sit by and watch that ancient hatred spread once again. As Americans, as people of faith and conscience, we must be intolerant of intolerance. And regardless of how uncomfortable or hard we may find it, we must never hold our peace.
When he became mayor of Israel’s capital in December, the fifty-seven-year old Moshe Lion was a relative outsider who had first run for public office only five years earlier. He is the first Sephardi Jew to hold the post—his father was born in Thessaloniki—and unusual in that he is a religious Zionist who was elected thanks largely to ḥaredi voters. Having interviewed Lion, Tal Kra-Oz writes:Ilhan Omar's Decision To Join The Congressional Black-Jewish Caucus Is A Hypocritical Stunt
Lion’s [electoral] victory did not come easily. When I asked him about his policy for the handful of city businesses that operate on the Sabbath, he was adamant that he was a staunch supporter of the existing status quo, which allows for restaurants and bars to operate seven days a week in certain areas, but volunteered that his opponents had always accused him [of wanting to shut down these businesses on the Sabbath].
During his first run for office in 2013, Jerusalem residents knew only that Lion’s candidacy was the result of a political deal between his two unlikely patrons: Avigdor Liberman of [the staunchly secular] Yisrael Beytenu and Aryeh Deri of [the Mizraḥi and ḥaredi] Shas. The two master politicians who, at least publicly, agree on very little, decided to mount a joint effort to place their friend at the helm of Israel’s capital. When Lion finally prevailed in last November’s elections, it was in no small part thanks to his success in securing wide swaths of the ultra-Orthodox vote in backroom deals. None of Lion’s candidates made it into the city council. But of the 32 elected council members, fifteen are ultra-Orthodox and form the core of his coalition. . . .
Lion is charged with the well-being of some 900,000 residents. Upward of a third are Arab, and nearly another third are ultra-Orthodox, making him mayor of the largest Arab and ultra-Orthodox city in the country. Though the remaining non-Orthodox Jewish population is still sizable, it has gotten smaller. . . . Lion . . . plans to spend billions on overhauling eastern Jerusalem’s much-maligned roads and sewers, and on revolutionizing its schools, many of which are run by the Palestinian Authority.
When we combine the two indisputable facts that Ilhan Omar is an outspoken anti-Semite and that she transparently does not take international (i.e., radical Islamic) terrorism seriously, we are left with only one conclusion.
Her support of the Black-Jewish Caucus is not rooted in a desire to fight anti-Semitism. If it were, then she would presumably speak out against terrorist groups — like Hamas — who have openly and repeatedly expressed a desire to see a Jewish genocide. Instead, she supports and fundraises for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has long had close organizational ties with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In reality, her support is rooted in her disingenuous desire to redirect all criticism — as well as any criticism of her compatriots — by hiding behind a cherry-picked group of victimized Jews.
For Ilhan Omar, anti-Semitism is a convenient political vehicle. She has no intention to fight anti-Semitism. Instead, she is willingly ignoring radical Islamic anti-Semitism to advance her own goals.
Ilhan Omar claimed that “Israel has hypnotized the world.” The truth is that the only people being hypnotized are the people who believe Ilhan Omar’s support of the Black-Jewish Caucus is motivated by anything other than the goal of weaponizing anti-Semitism.
This new Caucus is a positive, bipartisan push to build bridges between 2 groups. Be helpful, accurate & better. Unite; don’t divide or try to poison like this latest personal attack. This is bigger than us & we have to be better than this. https://t.co/1Ai7jzScKp
— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) June 6, 2019
Head of ‘Palestinian Solidarity Campaign’ speaks at D-Day protest in Portsmouth
The UK’s Palestinian Solidarity Campaign has sunk to a new low today after its director said he was “proud” to speak at the D-Day protest in Portsmouth.We Should Have Appeased Hitler and Disarmed DURING WW2, Corbyn Argued
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of the British Armed Forces, described Ben Jamal as “a disgrace” after the pro-Palestinian activist addressed the rally that coincided with D-Day commemorations on Portsmouth’s Southsea common.
He said, “You are a disgrace. Event in Portsmouth is to commemorate the brave British, American & Canadian soldiers who set out from there & other ports to the Normandy beaches, risking & in many cases forfeiting their lives to liberate Europe. You’re spitting on their graves. Disgusting.
The commemoration of the 75th anniversary D-Day was attended by the Queen, Prime Minister Theresa May, as well as President Trump and other world leaders.
Portsmouth councillor, Jane Warburton, told the BBC ahead of the event, “For many of the veterans, having the President of America attend the event will bring international focus to this global commemoration and present a once in a lifetime opportunity for the veterans.
One person wrote online: “Today we honour those that are braver than you or I will ever be. If you are coming here to Portsmouth to protest. Please don’t. That’s not what today is for.”
One of the counter-protesters, Steve Cross from Portsmouth, said: “These guys protesting today, it’s just the wrong day. Today is about remembering and paying respects.
This morning Jeremy Corbyn is in Portsmouth attending a D-Day commemoration. He commended the “unimaginable heroism” of the men who “laid down their lives in the fight against fascism.” Since we are dwelling on the Second World War today it is relevant to note that Corbyn has previously praised Hitler-appeaser George Lansbury, and quoted his call to disarm during the Second World War as a “lesson for today.”Tory candidate: Corbyn would be ‘first anti-Semitic Western leader since WWII’
Unbelievably, Corbyn wrote in a 2003 article titled “Lansbury’s lessons for today” that Lansbury’s call for Britain to give up its weapons after World War II had already started was “wonderful”.
“As war broke out in 1939 [Lansbury] wrote ‘I am also quite certain that the first great nation that declares its willingness to share the world’s resources, territories and markets and also disarms will be the safest in the world’. I hope Tony Blair, on his travels on behalf of George Bush, reads at least that part of this wonderful work.”
Corbyn presumably has not contemplated the consequences had Chamberlain, Churchill, or Attlee followed “this wonderful work”…
Corbyn further wrote that Lansbury was “one of the labour movement’s great figures”, despite Lansbury having met with the Nazi leader and saying “I think history will regard Hitler as one of the great men of our time.” Is it any surprise that Corbyn is so happy to hang around with murderous tyrants..?
A senior UK Conservative party member said Wednesday that if Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn were to be elected British prime minister, he would be “the first anti-Semitic leader of a Western nation since the Second World War.”Labour MP holds PM serves ‘Zionist Slave Masters,’ wins Parliament seat
Health Secretary Matthew Hancock, who is running to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May who resigned over her inability to carry through Brexit, made the comments in a meeting with party activists, warning them of the consequences of not picking the right leader.
“The Conservative party has to get this right. If we don’t, we could end up with the first anti-Semitic leader of a Western nation since the Second World War,” the Guardian quoted him as saying.
Jewish groups have accused Corbyn, a far-left politician, of allowing a massive surge in anti-Semitism within the ranks of the party that was once considered the natural home of British Jewry. Thousands of cases of alleged hate speech against Jews have been recorded within Labour since 2015, when Corbyn was elected to lead the party.
A Labour Party candidate who opposed the definition of antisemitism formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance [IHRA] and endorsed a Facebook post that accused Theresa May of having a "Zionist Slave Masters agenda" has won a seat in the British parliament.Protests as Labour candidate wins Parliament seat despite anti-Semitism charges
Labour candidate Lisa Forbes won with 10,484 votes, while the Brexit Party, who were the bookmakers' favorite, came second on 9,801 votes and May's governing Conservatives came third with 7,243 votes in the by-election in Peterborough on Thursday, Reuters reported.
The Peterborough by-election followed the removal of a Labour MP, Fiona Onasanya, who was expelled after her conviction for perverting the course of justice. Onasanya lied to police to avoid being prosecuted for speeding.
“Labour has consistently failed to take a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Jewish hate. This has encouraged a culture to develop where not only is it acceptable for someone who has shared racist material and rejected the internationally accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism to be a member, but they can advance politically and gain public office,” the Jewish Labour Movement commented in a statement.
“Labour’s newest MP is the perfect example,” it added.
A Labour candidate who had apologized for liking an anti-Semitic post on social media narrowly won a closely watched by-election for the British Parliament, results on Friday showed.
Lisa Forbes squeaked past Brexit Party candidate Mike Green in the special election in the eastern English city of Peterborough Thursday, as the new Euro-skeptic party helmed by anti-EU populist Nigel Farage failed to win its first seat in Britain’s parliament.
Forbes had drawn criticism earlier this week after it emerged she had liked a Facebook post that said British Prime Minister Theresa May had a “Zionist Slave Masters agenda.”
She also commented: “I have enjoyed reading this thread so much” on a post that repeated the conspiracy theory that the Mossad and CIA are behind the Islamic State terror group.
In response, the Jewish Labour Movement said it would not campaign for her.
Forbes said it was a misunderstanding and apologized, adding that she would nevertheless take anti-Semitism awareness training.
However, a joint statement by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust said this week that her excuse that she had not seen the anti-Semitic content “stretches the limits of credulity, especially given the high profile problems in Labour and the previous anti-Semitism scandals in Peterborough Labour circles.”
WATCH: THIS IS YOUR NEW LABOUR MP - LISA FORBES
— The Core (@SocialM85897394) June 7, 2019
"Zionist Rats"
"I'm deeply sorry"
Andrew Neil takes her apart for it.
I'm ashamed that Britain has elected this woman.
LABOUR ANTISEMITISM IS GROWING pic.twitter.com/cbHl7MiMyN
Ex-UK Labour Leader Ed Miliband Wishes ‘Best of Luck’ to Candidate Accused of Antisemitism
Former UK Labour party leader Ed Miliband wished “best of luck” on Twitter on Thursday to a candidate recently caught up in an antisemitism scandal.Another BBC antisemitism backgrounder promotes Livingstone Formulation
Posting a picture of himself with two Labour activists on Twitter, Miliband tweeted, “Out on the #labourdoorstep in Peterborough today with two of the best organisers in the Labour Party. Best of luck to @LisaForbes.”
Forbes, the Labour candidate in Peterborough, was found to have “liked” and praised two virulently antisemitic posts, one a rant about “Zionist Slave Masters” and another that claimed the Mossad created and funded ISIS and other Muslim extremist groups.
The writer of the posts, Ismail Ibn Saeed, said in one, “Unfortunately our leader Theresa May feeds off this rhetoric to keep her Zionist Slave Masters agenda alive.”
In another rant, Saeed wrote that the Mossad helped establish ISIS and other Islamist groups, citing alleged “evidence in hand of the funding and creation of such extremists by the CIA and Mossad supported by British Imperialism.”
In response to the post, Forbes wrote, “I have enjoyed reading this thread so much. So much that trys [sic] to divide us, but there is far much more that unites us all.”
The BBC fails to give a proper definition of Zionism and refrained from clarifying that negation of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination is antisemitism.
“Zionism refers to the movement to create a Jewish state in the Middle East, roughly corresponding to the historical land of Israel, and thus support for the modern state of Israel.”
Readers then saw the latest example of BBC promotion of the Livingstone Formulation.
“Some say “Zionist” can be used as a coded attack on Jewish people, while others say the Israeli government and its supporters are deliberately confusing anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism to avoid criticism.”
Immediately after that paragraph readers are provided with a link billed “Read more about the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism” which leads to a highly problematic and uncredited BBC backgrounder produced in late April 2016. As was noted here when that backgrounder was first published:
“…the article focuses on promoting the inaccurate and misleading notion that anti-Zionism is the same thing as expressing criticism of the policies and actions of the Israeli government. […] To make matters even worse, the article amplifies the ‘Zionism is racism’ canard and the ‘apartheid’ fabrication…”
That backgrounder also gives heavy promotion to the Livingstone Formulation, the purpose of which was described by the person who named it, David Hirsch, as follows:
“the use of the Livingstone Formulation is intended to make sure that the raising of the issue of anti-Semitism, when related to ‘criticism of Israel,’ remains or becomes a commonsense indicator of ‘Zionist’ bad faith and a faux pas in polite antiracist company.”
#AskGalloway what did you do with the funds raised, @georgegalloway? Besides handing it over to the terrorists of Hamas https://t.co/4SwrkG9Wvv
— Ozraeli Dave (((דיויד לנג))) (@Israellycool) June 6, 2019
Campus activists call-in ‘reserves’ to counter new anti-Israel tactics
Every spring, pro-Israel and Jewish students across American college campuses brace themselves for a slew of anti-Israel activity. Dubbed “Apartheid Season,” the months of March to May are rife with anti-Israel protests, lectures and the notorious Apartheid Week.350 rally against antisemitism in Boston area
But as the strategies of pro-BDS groups have become ever more sophisticated, so, too, has the response from pro-Israel student groups.
“There is currently a division on how to best counter the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and Apartheid Week,” Amit Deri, CEO of Reservists on Duty (RoD) recently told JNS. “There are those who would ignore it and take a passive approach, but we believe in taking a more proactive approach. This is a threat that isn’t simply going to go away, and if it goes unopposed, it will only continue to grow.”
During the past school year, pro-Israel groups have documented a change in tactics among BDS groups away from physical and verbal attacks and towards a more sophisticated approach.
“This year we have seen a more sophisticated and united front from pro-BDS groups, specifically Students for Justice in Palestine. It is clear that they have changed their usual tactics and have opted for a more organized and timely approach,” said Deri.
More than 350 people gathered for a rally against antisemitism and hate in Peabody, a city on Boston’s North Shore, after motorists shouted antisemitic slurs at two Chabad rabbis out walking on Shabbat.French Universities Minister Announces New Educational Sanctions Against Antisemites on Campuses
Wednesday’s rally was called by Mayor Ted Bettencourt to support Rabbi Nechemia Schusterman of Chabad of Peabody and Rabbi Sruli Baron of Tobin Bridge Chabad in Chelsea, a city just outside of Boston.
The two friends were out on a walk on Saturday, May 25, when a group of about three or four pickup trucks slowed alongside them, Schusterman reported to the Peabody police. The driver of the lead truck shouted an antisemitic obscenity and hurled a penny out of his window, yelling “something to the effect of ‘go pick up the penny [expletive] Jew,” Schusterman reported.
The rabbi later wrote about it publicly on his Facebook page and in “Yes, I look Jewish: Hate on Lowell Street,” a front page essay published last week in the North Shore’s Jewish Journal.
France’s minister for universities has unveiled plans to hold college students guilty of antisemitic or racist offenses “accountable” for their actions with sensitivity training and community work.Zachor to court: BDS is the latest phase in ancient hate against Jews
Frédérique Vidal, the French minister of higher education, announced on Thursday that offenders would now face a range of “educational” sanctions.
“Students guilty of racism or antisemitism must now participate in ‘solidarity, culture or training activities, whether to visit a place of remembrance, or to devote time to an association fighting against discrimination,'” Le Figaro newspaper reported.
The paper highlighted a poll conducted in March by the French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) that revealed nine out of 10 Jewish students “had been victims of antisemitic acts, a sign that this violence was becoming commonplace.”
Alongside rising antisemitism on French campuses, there is also a climate of racism. In one incident last April that received national attention, black students were the target of racist jokes and videos exchanged by sociology majors on a private messaging service.
Addressing “the proliferation of racist and antisemitic messages in the university, especially on social networks,” Vidal announced the creation of a “National Day Against Racism in Higher Education,” to take place each March 21.
The Zachor Legal Institute acted as a friend of the court [amicus curiae] and filed a brief linking Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel to the ancient hate-filled ideology of antisemitism. The appeal went to the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals, which is now deciding the legality of Act 710 in Arkansas, according to a release.South Africa BDS Protesters Wave Hezbollah Flags, Urge Gov’t to Honor PFLP Hijacker
Briefs submitted to the court by amicus curiae do not obligate the court to consider them in its ruling and are meant to provide it with further information about a specific situation.
In its brief, Zachor argues that BDS was formed by, and acts in accordance with, “foreign terror organizations.”
“Discriminatory boycotts of Jews can be traced back thousands of years,” the press release reported, “and BDS is simply the latest incarnation of that hate-filled ideology.”
“Act 710 doesn’t prevent speech critical of Israel,” Zachor argued, “but it does allow the state of Arkansas to not be a financial party to discriminatory acts and ideologies.
Zachor further stated that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argues in court that the Jewish people do not make a nation, “a line of argument that is nothing less than science and history denial," and that if it accepted “all other state anti-discrimination laws that protect minority populations will necessarily have to be struck down as well.”
Act 710 in Arkansas prohibits public entities from contracting with and investing in companies that boycott Israel and was submitted by Republican Senator Bart Hester and Arkansas Republican State Representative Jim Dotson. It became law in 2017.
Members of the South African boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel urged local officials in Johannesburg last Friday to rename a street after Palestinian hijacker Leila Khaled, while expressing support for the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah.Protesters ignite smoke bomb in front of Jewish community center in Ukraine
The Johannesburg City Council last year adopted a resolution to honor Khaled by renaming Sandton Drive, where the US Consulate General is located.
Khaled rose to notoriety following her involvement in two airplane hijackings in 1969 and 1970 on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization in Europe and the United States that has killed scores of Israeli civilians since its establishment in 1967.
The group’s bloodiest attacks include a massacre of 26 people at Lod Airport in 1972, multiple suicide bombings that claimed more than 100 casualties during the Second Intifada, and a 2014 massacre of five worshipers and one police officer at a Jerusalem synagogue.
BDS South Africa has accused Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba and his allies in the Democratic Alliance party of delaying the street name change, which was championed by the ruling African National Congress and far-left allies.
Footage from Friday’s rally showed many demonstrators donning keffiyas and Palestinian flag scarves, chanting “Free, free Palestine,” and holding flags bearing the distinctive logo of Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy committed to Israel’s destruction.
Ultranationalists in Ukraine protested outside a Jewish community building.Film to Be Made About Nuremberg Trials 99-Year-Old Prosecutor Ben Ferencz
Men from the National Corps group, a namesake of a unit of the Azov Battalion militia set up in 2014 by the Ukrainian government, set off smoke grenades Monday in front of the building in Kharkiv.
Protests outside Jewish institutions are rare in Ukraine, which saw some of the worst pogroms perpetrated against Jews anywhere before and during the Holocaust.
The protesters spray-painted the words “Feldman thief” on the sidewalk in front of the building. Alexander Feldman, who was born in Kharkiv, is a Jewish philanthropist and president of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee group.
Separately, the Israeli and Polish ambassadors to Poland signed a joint letter to the mayor of the Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankisvsk protesting the unveiling there of a monument honoring Roman Shukhevych, a collaborator with the Nazis who is implicated in the murder of countless Jews and ethnic Poles.
Poland and Israel rarely speak out out on the rampant glorification of collaborationists in Ukraine, a country which is seen by many in the West as a key buffer against Russian expansionism. Joint Israeli-Polish action on the issue is rarer still — especially since the eruption last year of diplomatic crises over disputed allegations of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
A film about the head prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials following World War II will be made.Tel Aviv University team finds biomarkers that could diagnose Parkinson’s early
Producers Barry Avrich and Patrice Theroux have acquired the film and television rights to the life story of Ben Ferencz, now 99 years old.
“I am honored to take this journey,” said Ferencz. “I never dreamed as a 27-year-old standing in a Nuremberg courtroom prosecuting Nazis that my life would be the subject of a film. I am now in my hundredth year; let’s get this done!!”
Ferencz, a Harvard University Law School graduate and a lifelong advocate of “law not war,” became lead prosecutor, at 27 years old, in the Einsatzgruppen case at Nuremberg, which has been called the biggest murder trial in history, after witnessing Nazi concentration camps shortly after liberation.
The trials lasted from Nov. 20, 1945 to Oct. 1, 1946.
In his first trial, all 22 Nazi officials who were tried for murdering more than 1 million people were convicted.
Ferencz went on to advocate for restitution for Jewish victims of the Holocaust and later assisted in the establishment of the International Criminal Court.
Researchers at Tel Aviv University, together with colleagues from the UK and Germany, said they have found biomarkers in mice that help detect the buildup of a protein that is linked to the development of Parkinson’s disease.Israeli Doctors Develop Method of Using 3-D Printers to Simulate Operations
The discovery could enable early detection and treatment, helping potentially to “significantly delay” the progression of the debilitating illness, the researchers said.
Parkinson’s disease is a debilitating neurodegenerative disease affecting everything from speech, posture and gait to digestion, sleep, impulse control and cognition. Current treatments are able to alleviate some symptoms, but there is still no cure for the disease, which affects close to a million Americans and 10 million people worldwide.
By the time a patient is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, 50 percent to 80 percent of the cells in the part of the brain called substantia nigra — which is responsible for coordinating movement — are already dead, possibly due to development of toxicity as result of the build-up — or aggregation — of the alpha-synuclein protein, a hallmark of the disease.
Israeli doctors have developed a method of using a 3-D printer to facilitate delicate and complex operations.Israeli innovation makes an impact in Africa
According to Makor Rishon, physicians at the Galilee Medical Center in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya used the technique to treat a woman whose eye socket was badly damaged in a car accident.
The doctors scanned the patient’s face and then used a 3-D printer to produce an exact replica, or “simulation,” of her skull.
This allows the physicians to plan the complex restorative operation, practice on the model and create the specific implant to be used to repair the eye socket.
Professor Samer Srouji of the hospital’s Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Center said of the technique, “Once you have a complicated case, a very complicated fracture, and you want to know how to approach it and treat it, you can print the broken parts, ‘operate,’ and connect the parts outside, prepare the plate for transplantation, and then do the surgery in a much more predictable and less complicated way.”
In contrast to more cumbersome, invasive procedures used in the past, he said, today “we open a small incision and immediately put the prepared implant in it.”
When I started this weekly column, it was clear to me that I wanted it to be a little bit different than all the other columns about Israeli technology. Enough has been written about Waze, Mobileye, and all the other incredible consumer and business startups being built in Israel. I figured I would focus on impact technology, innovation that is making the world a better place.Israeli film 'When the Smoke Clears' available on Amazon Prime
However, if it was going to be a column about impact technology, this organization should have been the first one that I featured. Innovation: Africa (http://innoafrica.org/phone/projects.html) is the ultimate manifestation of what it means to be a “Light Unto the Nations!”
Innovation: Africa is an NGO with a mission to bring Israeli solar and water technologies to rural African villages. Read that sentence again.
Founded in 2008 by Sivan Ya’ari, the organization provides solar energy to schools and medical centers and pumps clean water throughout villages across Africa.
I have met Ya’ari at multiple events and panels over the years. This woman and the team she has built around her and her vision are simply outstanding.
Innovation: Africa takes inspiration to a whole new level. At the risk of sounding even more like I work in their marketing department, I encourage you, I challenge you to watch one of their YouTube videos and not cry.
Israeli award-winning documentary When the Smoke Clears: A Story of Brotherhood, Resilience, and Hope is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime.
The film tells the account of three young IDF soldiers, who, after encountering psychological and physical wounds, manage to find contentment and optimism while reintegrating into normal, civilian life.
It was featured in 14 film festivals and won the “Best Documentary Feature” at the 2018 San Diego GI Film Festival.
Rebecca Shore, who produced, directed and wrote the film, based the story on three young men: Gil, Ofer and Elad.
These IDF combatant soldiers experience the depths of anguish and pain while doing their national service and – through empathizing with others also in need – manage to overcome their trauma and find a deeper level of inner peace.
Even though they have gone through the bleakest period in their lives, they are able to stay optimistic and positive by finding a way to perceive themselves as heroes, both on and off the front line.
Shore, from Imagination Productions, has written and directed several productions reflecting on Israeli society, including Israel Inside: How a Small Nation Makes a Big Difference; the Netflix film Beneath the Helmet: From High School to the Home Front; Mekonen: The Journey of an African Jew; and Hummus! The Movie.
I believe Morgan Freeman deserves credit for this...so I am giving it to him! https://t.co/suWOxQYj54
— Ozraeli Dave (((דיויד לנג))) (@Israellycool) June 7, 2019
Israel to ally with Arab neighbors around Red Sea in bid to save world’s corals
In a race to save the colorful corals that dot the shores of the Red Sea, Israel has joined a unique regional collaboration along with seven other majority-Muslim countries, many of whom do not have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
The Red Sea Transnational Research Center, to be managed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, will study the Red Sea’s vast coral reefs and how they have managed to resist bleaching effects that have led to the imminent collapse of other reefs around the world.
The alliance will include all the countries that border the Red Sea: Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Israel only has diplomatic relations with Jordan and Egypt.
The Swiss institute will act as a “neutral umbrella,” to oversee the research and liaison between the countries, according to Israeli researcher Professor Maoz Fine, a marine biologist from the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar-Ilan University.
In 2017, Fine and the Swiss University, known by its French initials EPFL, announced that coral in the northern Red Sea was highly resistant to the bleaching effects that come from rising global temperatures. “In the last 30 years we have lost 50% of the coral around the world,” said Fine.
When water temperatures rise with global warming, coral cannot survive, leading to huge swaths of coral dying. As the coral dies, the millions of fish that depend on the coral for protection and food also perish. “Now in French Polynesia and Sri Lanka and other places there are huge bleaching events, it’s really happening in a very small time frame that we’re losing the corals,” said Fine.
But the Red Sea has acted as a type of “thermal refuge,” with corals able to withstand experiments that exposed them to higher and higher temperatures and acidification, mimicking what future summer conditions could entail. The same type of corals that live in the Red Sea are also found in other parts of the world experiencing widespread bleaching.
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