Friday, November 15, 2019

11/15 Links Pt2: Yair Lapid: Same Old Anti-Semitism, Different Jews; Democrats and Israel: Nothing but Daylight; Caroline B. Glick: Our European 'friends'; Christine Rosen: The Return of the Badges

From Ian:
Yair Lapid: Same Old Anti-Semitism, Different Jews
I do not talk about the "return" of anti-Semitism, because it never left. It just waited for the right time to rise again. Anti-Semitism thinks this is its time. But while the anti-Semites might be the same as they always were, the Jews are not. We won't stay silent. We've got no intention of trying to appease them.

The anti-Semites say, "the Jews are different from us, that's why we're allowed to attack them." Too many Jews in too many places say: "you are wrong, we're not different. All people are the same." It doesn't help because it isn't true. We are different. We have a different religion, we're part of an ancient and unique culture. There is a covenant between us. We're proud of it. Loving your brother isn't a crime. Being different isn't a crime.

We don't need to pretend we're not different. We need to fight for the principle that you don't discriminate against people because they're different. You don't kill people because they're different. Anti-Semitism never admits to what it really is: xenophobia, which is simply the hatred of what you don't understand because you don't understand it.

I'm no pacifist. I don't believe in facing hate with love. You don't fight hate with love, but with organizational ability, clear messaging, with determination and strength. You fight it in TV studios and on the battlefield. You fight it by telling the truth. It's not a debate about Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians. It's an ancient attempt to destroy a small and talented people that insists on maintaining their unique identity and unique voice.


Matthew Continetti: Democrats and Israel: Nothing but Daylight
Three of the four highest-polling Democratic presidential candidates are talking about Israel in language other politicians reserve for rogue states. It’s the latest and most worrisome sign that a growing number of Democrats place a higher value on pandering to progressives than on Israeli sovereignty and security. The aggressive rhetoric is another reminder of the energy on the political left. Bernie Sanders’s political revolution may be in trouble, but his foreign-policy revolution in how the Democratic Party sees Israel is going swimmingly.

Bernie is capitalizing on long-running trends. In his recent book We Stand Divided, Daniel Gordis notes that relations between Israel and the American Diaspora have often been fraught: “For most of the time since Theodor Herzl launched political Zionism at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, the relationship between American Jews and Herzl’s idea, and then the country it created, has been complex at best and often even openly antagonistic.”

What many assumed was a durable pro-Israel consensus was in fact a consequence of specific historical circumstances. The American left’s goodwill toward Israel was based in large part on images: Israel the scrappy underdog, Israel the land of social democracy and the kibbutzim, Israel the participant in Camp David and the Oslo Accords. The picture today is different.

For the left, the state created in the aftermath of the Holocaust and invaded by Arab armies has become a conquering power. The nation of communes has become the nation of start-ups. The governments of David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin have become the governments of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Americans who belong to the millennial generation or to Generation Z have no memory of the Middle East “peace process.” Nor can they recall the second intifada or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Many American Jews express their identity not through religious practice and Zionism but through social-justice activism and tikkun olam. To them, Israel is an oppressive state with un-egalitarian religious and political systems. In a 2007 study, fewer than half of American Jews age 35 or younger said, “Israel’s destruction would be a personal tragedy.”

The following year, Barack Obama won two-thirds of the millennial vote and 78 percent of the Jewish vote. While he was sure to pay obeisance to the imperatives of Israeli security, Obama’s actions as president created the space for anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activism within the Democratic Party. “When there is no daylight [between Israel and the United States], Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arabs,” he said in 2009.
Bernie Sanders remarks on Gaza rocket fire draws ire from Israelis, Palestinians
Bernie Sanders - who is vying for the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2020 - drew ire from Jew and Palestinians when he weighed in on Israel’s ongoing conflict with Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

In a tweet posted Thursday night, Sanders said that Israelis “should not have to live in fear of rocket fire.” However, in the same breath, he also remarked that “Palestinians should not have to live under occupation and blockade.”

He then called on the US to “lead the effort” to bring peace between Israel and Gaza.

The statement, made well after several Democratic Party heavyweights already chimed in and backed Israel’s right to defend itself, was seen by Jewish groups and Israeli politicians as drawing a false moral equivalence between Israel and terrorists.

Israel’s former ambassador to the US, Danny Ayalon, slammed Sanders's statement.





Caroline B. Glick: Our European 'friends'
Just as permitting the inherently hostile ECJ to adjudicate issues related to Israeli Jewish exports from Israeli-controlled territory was a mistake that harmed Israel, so Israel’s legitimization of the ICC will come back to haunt it.

Berg, Goldstein and their associates insist that they were compelled to act because the Israeli government refused to lift a finger against the EU. Their allegation of government inaction is valid. The government has an obligation to aggressively respond to Europe’s hostile behavior.

To this end, the time has come to end the tax-exempt status of hostile European-funded and directed NGOs.

It is also time for Israel to act in the legal arena in jurisdictions that are not inherently hostile to the Jewish state. For instance, Israel should seek justice against the EU’s hostile and unfair trade practices at the World Trade Organization’s arbitration bodies and in US courts.

But before Israel can do any of these things, government officials have to abandon their delusion that Europe is Israel’s enlightened ally with whom Israel can reason.

Europe is not enlightened and it is not Israel’s ally. It is not susceptible to reason and evidence.

It is a hostile post-national governing structure that is conducting political, diplomatic and economic warfare against Israel to harm the Jewish state and assist its enemies.

So long as our leaders and our officials refuse to accept this basic truth, we will continue to experience defeat and discrimination as individuals and collectively at the hands of our European “friends.”
Melanie Phillips: ‘Labeling’ Israel as an unequal player on the world stage
As Israel came under attack this week with hundreds of rockets raining down from Gaza, and as it steeled itself for even worse, the Israel-bashers were up to their old tricks.

On Tuesday, the European Court of Justice issued its ruling in the Psagot winery case.

It said that the origin of any foodstuffs, such as Psagot wine, made in an Israeli settlement in the “occupied territories” must be described as such. This was to enable consumers to make “ethical considerations and considerations relating to the observance of international law,” which could “influence consumers’ purchasing decisions.”

What’s unethical here is not the behavior of Israel but the ECJ. Singling out Israel like this creates a discriminatory double standard. No other country with a territorial dispute or whose behavior is subject to criticism has its products labeled in this way.
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As Eugene Kontorovich, a scholar of international law, tweeted: “Products around the world are made in many situations that raise ‘ethical’ and legal questions, from Chinese prison labor factories to Moroccan drilling Sahrawi oil. Only such concern that requires labeling in E.U. is Jews living in neighborhoods where they are not ‘supposed’ to be.”

Moreover, the court has discriminated against Jews by singling out Israeli businesses from Arab ones. Its ruling is deeply politicized and disreputable, owing everything to boilerplate European prejudice against Israel, and nothing to law and justice.
JPost Editorial: Shame on Europe
This singling out of Israel is exactly what former Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky meant when he wrote in 2004 of the “three Ds” distinguishing antisemitism from legitimate criticism of Israel: delegitimization of Israel, demonization of Israel and subjecting Israel to double standards.

There is no denying that the European Union is engaging in a double standard toward Israel as opposed to other territories.

There is no similar labeling mandate for other areas under territorial conflict, like Tibet, Northern Cyprus or Western Sahara, as former justice minister Ayelet Shaked pointed out. In fact, rather than singling out their products, the EU even has an agreement with Morocco allowing European boats to fish in territorial waters off Western Sahara.

Beyond the formal definition of antisemitism, Europeans have a long history of telling Jews where they can – and more often, can’t – live, and with whom they can do business, going back centuries.

Labeling products from Judea and Samaria will encourage boycotts, something Jews were subjected to in the darkest period of Europe’s history.
And by declaring Jewish businesses – the implication being Jewish life – in Judea and Samaria as illegitimate, the EU is acceding to the Palestinian-driven idea that certain spots on the map need to be “Judenrein,” free of Jews.
While jihadists target Israel,the EU is busy bashing Israel
The EU is perfectly happy to continue lavishing funds on the most anti-Israel “human rights” groups, including Al-Haq, LAW, Adalah, the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, and an outfit called the Middle East Center for Legal and Economic Research, which has received hundreds of thousands of euros “to identify and appraise Palestinian refugee real estate holdings in Israel.”

But EU commissars are determined not to indirectly fund any more scientific research or to abet productive commercial activity by Israelis who live or work over the Green Line. They won’t allow wine or plastic chairs produced in Judea and Samaria to be sold in Paris or Brussels without a yellow star of Jewish “occupation” opprobrium.

The EU is obviously pleased with the long distance (sic) toward “moderation” that the Palestinian Authority has traveled over the past 25 years. Europe is much less royally pleased with the distance traveled by Israeli governments, even though Israel has moved from rejecting Palestinian statehood to begging for it – and offering to cede much of the West Bank and all of Gaza.

But in the warped Weltanschauung of the European Union, it is nevertheless logical to pressure and “label” Israel while coddling the Palestinians. Even while hundreds of missiles are being fired from Gaza into Israeli civilian neighborhoods.

Old habits, it seems, die hard. European countries have a historic knack for judging Jews, depriving Jews of scholarships, and restricting Jews to specific pales of settlement – and tagging, branding and labeling them.
Christine Rosen: The Return of the Badges
With its decision, the E.U. has revealed that it, too, is happy to have its professed human rights principles applied unequally. The E.U. has not outlined similar labeling requirements for goods coming from China, for example, despite the fact that the Chinese government is currently in an ongoing territorial dispute with Tibet (to say nothing of the fact that it has created a dystopian surveillance state complete with detention and re-education camps where the country’s minority Uighur population now suffer).

The E.U. might pat itself on the back for giving a prominent Uighur human rights activist its Sakharov prize, but why hasn’t the European court demanded labels for Chinese goods akin to those it now requires of Israel? As a lawyer for the Israeli winery owners who originally brought the case told the Washington Free Beacon, “Can you imagine a situation where plastic cups imported from China must be labeled ‘this country has a one-child policy,’ or gas from Russia must be labeled, ‘This is gas from a country that illegally occupies Crimea,’ or products from the United States require the labeling ‘the U.S. engages in capital punishment and is building an illegal border wall?’ Product labels will have become political billboards depending on the whims of E.U. politicians, and every E.U. importer will shoulder liability for not complying with arbitrary labeling laws.”

Israel’s former justice minister Ayelet Shaked was even more blunt, telling the Jerusalem Post that the decision bore the “stench of anti-Semitism.” Several U.S. Senators, including Bob Menendez, Benjamin Cardin, and Rob Portman, as well as Rep. Juan Vargas, agreed. They wrote letters to the E.U. expressing their concerns about the case.

Meanwhile, on college campuses in the U.S., the BDS movement continues to insist that it is the victim of pro-Israel bullying. At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst this week, a panel titled “Criminalizing Dissent: The Attack on BDS & American Democracy,” featured a merry-go-round of ideologically one-sided complaints from professor Cornel West, Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King, Palestinian Legal founder Dima Khalidi, and, via Skype, one of the co-founders of BDS, Omar Barghouti.
A new book explores the ties that no longer bind the Jews. It’s a good start
Daniel Gordis peels back some of the surface layers of the divide between Israeli and American Jews to reveal a deeper chasm of identity and history

Anyone who has paid any attention to the Jews in recent years could not have missed the latest anxiety-inducing truism sweeping through Jewish life: that a rift has developed between Israeli and American Jews, and that it is growing at an alarming pace. Old attachments are fraying, we are told, and the reason is obvious.

Rendered by the left, the thesis goes something like this: Right-wing Israel, locked in conflict and occupation, grates against the moral sensibilities of liberal American Jews. Religiously conservative Israel, in thrall to an increasingly assertive and illiberal religious establishment, regularly insults and even delegitimizes American Jewish cultural and religious life.

There is a right-wing version too: American Jews, living lives of privileged luxury and safety in distant America, cannot comprehend the compromises that a cutthroat Arab Middle East demands from any minority that wishes to survive in it. It is Americans’ profound ignorance of the hard truths of the region, of Israeli history and of the real intentions of Palestinian political movements, and not their liberal values, that is turning them away from Israel.

Though they blame different sides of the rift for its existence, both sides take for granted that it exists, that it’s growing, and that the chief cause is essentially political. An Israel once seen by most American Jews as heroic and necessary no longer meets their political and moral expectations, and that fact — so the locus communis now goes — is tearing the Jewish people apart.

There’s just one niggling little problem with this conventional explanation for the rift: It cannot be true.
Survivors, scholars say threat of another Holocaust is not to be ignored
Over the past five years, the world has seen record high numbers of antisemitic incidents in the United States and across Europe. Holocaust survivors say verbal and physical attacks against Jews and their property in 2019 are in many ways akin to what they experienced in Germany in the 1930s, which has created a deep-seated fear that another Holocaust is possible.

During a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in New Jersey last year, German-born Holocaust survivors spoke of their concern about rising antisemitism.

Adela Dubovy, who has four grandchildren at various universities, said she is “scared” about the rising antisemitism even in her own retirement home, according to a report by AFP.

“Now I don’t wear my Star of David,” she continued. “I tell my grandkids: don’t wear your kippah in the street. You don’t want to be attacked.”

“It’s now out in the open that it’s okay to pick on the Jews all over again,” Hanna Keselman told attendees. She was born in Germany in 1930 and spent a large part of the war in France and Italy.

“They [antisemites] are very strong, even in colleges,” said Auschwitz survivor Roman Kent.

Polls done on the subject of antisemitism in Austria and the United States have yielded frightening results.

In the US, 58% of Americans believe that something like the Holocaust could happen again.






‘Terror-supporting shill’ Rashida Tlaib tries to stir up sympathy for Palestinian terrorists firing rockets at Israeli civilians
Earlier this week, the Israel Defense Forces launched a successful “precision strike” that left a Palestinian Islamic Jihad senior leader dead. Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have retaliated by firing rockets into Israel to target and kill civilians. The IDF is currently defending Israel against attacks from Gaza, where children are regularly used as human shields and sacrificed for purposes of terrorist propaganda.

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, who, according to her Twitter bio, is a member of the PLO Executive Committee — yeah, that PLO — used a photo of one child today to paint the IDF as bloodthirsty, child-murdering oppressors of the Palestinians:


Congress Releases Messages Showing Tlaib Asked Campaign For Personal Money, Announces Investigation Into Her
The House Ethics Committee announced on Thursday that it is investigating Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI) 0ver internal messages that she allegedly sent in 2018 asking her congressional campaign for money for personal expenses, which is a potential crime.

The announcement came in response to a referral that the committee received from the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), which alleged:

Rep. Tlaib’s campaign committee, Rashida Tlaib for Congress, reported campaign disbursements that may not be legitimate and verifiable campaign expenditures attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes. If Rep. Tlaib converted campaign funds from Rashida Tlaib for Congress to personal use, or if Rep. Tlaib’s campaign committee expended funds that were not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes, then Rep. Tlaib may have violated House rules, standards of conduct, and federal law.

The OCE recommended that Tlaib be investigated “because there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Tlaib converted campaign funds from Rashida Tlaib for Congress to personal use or Rep. Tlaib’s campaign committee expended funds that were not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes.”
CAIR’s Goal: 30 Islamists into Congress
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) recently held its 25th Annual Gala in Washington, D.C, in which CAIR’s executive director announced a goal of pushing more Islamists into Congress.

As the Investigative Project on Terrorism reports, CAIR’s executive director Nihad Awad shares the “formula” he believes will secure Islamists greater political power:

“A strong CAIR equals a strong community. A strong community will produce a strong and confident and successful Muslim … “So I’m telling you tonight we are going to work in the next years, inshallah (God willing], to elect at least 30 Muslims in the Congress. This number is equivalent to our size and our potential as American Muslims. Including at least two [U.S.] senator Muslims.”

In addition, Awad envisions Muslim judges, including a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, along with an Islamist extension of Hollywood.

No matter that Awad got his numbers wrong, this has been the Islamist agenda since at least the 2000s, when I heard the same professional targets outlined at national conventions. But as Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes wrote in 2003, it goes further.

Pipes documents how, in 1998, CAIR’s Chairman Omar M. Ahmad told a crowd of Muslims in California: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant.” (h/t MtTB)
U.S. human rights group sued for funding Palestinian balloon terror
A newly filed $90 million US lawsuit has charged a Palestinian human rights group with financing hundreds of acts of environmental terrorism along Israel’s southern border with Gaza.

The lawsuit, filed at midnight Israel time on Wednesday, exposes an alleged conspiracy between the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR, also known as Education for a Just Peace in the Middle East) and Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other designated terrorist organizations.

“This landmark case exposes a shocking and multi-layered planned conspiracy and campaign aimed at manipulating the public,” said Adv. Yifa Segal of the International Legal Forum.

Her group developed the evidentiary basis for the litigation, filed in federal court in Washington by the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) and 12 American citizens living in Israel.

It seeks to hold the American based 501(c)3 USCPR liable for conspiring to provide financial aid that supported a massive wave of Palestinian-launched incendiary balloons from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, sparking hundreds of fires throughout the area and causing physical and mental harm to local residents.

“It cannot be that Hamas maintains its aggression toward Israel without those who provide material support to Hamas being responsible for paying for its violent acts of terror; not only for attacking Israeli citizens, but for also committing hideous environmental terror against Israel’s nature and wildlife, devastated by these fires,” said KKL-JNF World Chairman Daniel Atar. “The whole world is worried about the environment, trying to plant more and more trees, and these terrorists are destroying them with their kites.”
Warwick defends lecturer accused of sharing ‘antisemitic conspiracies’
A sociology professor accused of sharing “antisemitic conspiracies” during a lecture has advised her students to consult Jewish Voice for Labour’s website.

The talk, entitled “Viral and Transnational (Palestine),” was delivered on 12 November as part of a module called “Transnational Media Ecologies.”

Dr Goldie Osuri, an associate professor in the sociology department, characterised claims of antisemitism in the Labour Party as “very much an Israeli lobby kind of idea” in a recording obtained by Jewish News.

She said: “So the next time they say that the Labour Party is antisemitic, or you know there are some people possibly that are possibly antisemitic, but the idea that the Labour Party is antisemitic is very much an Israeli lobby kind of idea, the idea that you want to discredit the Labour Party because there is support for Palestine among some members of the Labour Party.”

The Union of Jewish Students and Warwick Jewish Israeli Society said the remark “belittles and diminishes the fears, experiences and concerns of the Jewish community and spreads the antisemitic conspiracy that Jews control the media.”

Notes accompanying a slideshow for the lecture shown to Jewish News contain the following quote: “Palestinians are entirely entitled to resist and oppose the occupation and theft of their homeland by any means they deem necessary.”
Jewish Student’s Complaint Starts US Probe of NYU Anti-Semitism
The Federal Department of Education said its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is investigating an April complaint by Adela Cojab, 22, an NYU senior, that Students for Justice in Palestine, an on-campus pro-Palestinian group, has created a “hostile atmosphere” for Jewish students, and that NYU has allowed “extreme anti-Semitism” to proliferate.

On Wednesday, the Department of Education notified Cojab’s attorneys that it had opened a full-scale investigation into her allegations.

The initial complaint said that “SJP is a radical organization affiliated with terror groups, bent on adopting a policy of anti-normalization of Jewish groups, and on isolating, demonizing and ultimately destroying the Jewish state.” It also suggested SJP “serves as the leading student arm of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the United States.”

Cojab, who was the president of the Israeli American Council at NYU before she graduated in May, told Fox News on Thursday: “The reason why I filed this complaint is so that no student has to go through what I went through.”

She also insists “the administration was very much aware of the situation on the ground where Jewish students felt unsafe.”

Cojab said that in the spring of 2018, 53 out of 360 clubs at NYU agreed to boycott two pro-Israel groups on campus. “Coupled with an anti-Israel resolution and a threatening flier and a week’s worth of protesting, Jewish students felt they could not publicly display their Jewish identity for fear of violent action at the hands of their peers,” she said.

She told Fox News: “It was breaking my heart and I immediately went to the administration from the very time SJP put Zionism in the same equivalent as Nazism. I told the administration that SJP was creating an unsafe environment where students felt they were being threatened and targeted. The administration essentially told me that they were supportive of the Jewish community, but no concrete actions would be taken against SJP.”
Viral Video Prompts GW Students to Push for Adopting Definition of Antisemitism
Student groups at George Washington University in Washington, DC, have called on the school to adopt the US State Department’s definition of antisemitism in the aftermath of a viral video displaying a student saying that Israel should be bombed.

Leaders from GW for Israel, the Jewish Student Association, GW College Republicans, GW College Democrats and the university’s student association wrote a joint letter to GW President Thomas LeBlanc to “express our grave concern about the persistent, undeterred presence of antisemitism amongst our community,” adding that Jew-hatred has occurred on campus, for example, in the “past refusal of the Student Association to hold this form of intolerance to the same level of scrutiny as other forms of hate, because the intolerance is directed towards Jews.”

The letter also mentions that antisemitism on campus has included anti-Israel rhetoric.

In April 2018, the GW Student Association passed a resolution calling on the university to divest and boycott firms doing business in Israel.

Earlier this month, a Snapchat video showed an apparently intoxicated student being asked by a male, “What are we going to do to Israel?”

She responded, “We’re gonna f***ing bomb Israel, bro. F*** outta here Jewish pieces of s***.”


Europe: The New Political Weapon of 'Islamophobia'
The objective of using the word "Islamophobia" appears to have been to make Islam untouchable by placing any criticism of it as equivalent to racism or anti-Semitism.

The word "Islamophobia" deliberately intends to transform the critique of a religion -- a fundamental right in Western societies -- into a crime.

"The term 'Islamophobia' serves several functions....Above all, however, the term is intended to silence Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce their religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and dogmatic." – Pascal Bruckner, in his book, Un racisme ordinaire : Islamophobie et culpabilité, Grasset, 2017 [English version: An Imaginary Racism: Islamophbia and Guilt, Polity 2018]

It is not Muslims people "hate," any more than they hate Hindus or Buddhists or Shintos. It is the violence and coercion that some adopt -- what is known as jihad or holy war -- that people reject.

In the attacks at the Bataclan Theater and other sites in 2015, terrorists murdered 131 persons and wounded 413. Is it irrational to remember who was calling those shots?
Jewish leaders call on German auction house to nix Hitler memorabilia sale
Adolf Hitler’s top hat, Eva Braun’s dresses and a silver-covered edition of “Mein Kampf” are among the items being put up for sale by a German auction house, prompting protests from Jewish leaders.

Munich-based Hermann Historica will be selling 147 items from the Third Reich on November 20.

Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association, has written to the auction house asking for the items to be withdrawn from sale.

“We believe the sale of such memorabilia has little intrinsic historical value but instead will be bought by those who glorify and seek to justify the actions of the greatest evil to affect Europe.

“The trade therefore in such items should simply not take place,” Margolin wrote, adding that the auction itself was “not illegal, but it is wrong.”
Arrest Made in Egg-Throwing Attacks on Jews in Brooklyn
An arrest was made on Wednesday night in a case of egg-throwing attacks on Jews in Brooklyn, NY.

Mohib Hoque, 18, was apprehended and charged with three hate crimes for being part of a group of teens that threw eggs at a 50-year-old woman on Saturday, also the Jewish Sabbath, in the Borough Park neighborhood. She was hit in the back.

Later, the group hit a man with an egg.

He then threw eggs at Congregation Bnei Torah Sanz between the neighborhoods of Flatbush and Borough Park as worshippers were leaving.
November 15, 2019 2:06 pm
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Jewish Historic Sites in Venice At Risk as Floodwater Rises in Historic Italian City

Jewish institutions in Italy reported on Friday that the catastrophic flooding in Venice had impacted many of the city's sites...

There were no injuries in the incidents, according to police.

The incidents exemplify the spike in antisemitic hate crimes in Brooklyn in recent months.
Police investigate threats against Jewish students at Massachusetts school
Police are investigating reports of threats against Jewish students at a middle school in western Massachusetts.

Officials at Monument Valley Regional Middle School told parents that there is no credible threat to the Jewish students’ safety, The Berkshire Eagle reported.

“We are very concerned by this and the unfortunate reminder that antisemitism and racism remain part of our community in South County and in our school,” Monument Valley principal Ben Doren wrote in an Oct. 31 letter to parents.

It is the second report of antisemitism at a Massachusetts middle school in recent weeks.

A student had been telling Jewish students that he was going to “nuke the Jews,” and that “I have a list and you’re on it, and all the other Jewish kids are on it, too,” the newspaper reported, citing the parent of a child in the school. Another parent said students had made Nazi salutes at her child.
Far-Right German Politician Booted From Key Parliamentary Post Following Antisemitic ‘Judas’ Tweet
The far-right chairman of the German federal parliament’s legal committee has been booted from his post by fellow legislators following a furor over an antisemitic tweet.

In an unprecedented move, Stephan Brandner — a leading representative of the far-right “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) party in the Bundestag — was brought down on Wednesday after all the parties in the parliament bar his own voted to remove him as chairman of its Legal Affairs Committee.

No dismissal of this kind has occurred before in the 70-year history of the Bundestag.

In a tweet on Oct. 31, Brandner invoked the biblical figure of Judas Iscariot to condemn Udo Lindenberg, a popular musician in Germany who has attacked the AfD’s ultranationalist agenda. A state medal awarded to Lindenberg was denounced by Brandner with the German pejorative “Judaslohn” — “Judas wage.”

As the disciple who betrayed Jesus to the Roman authorities in exchange for financial gain while remaining a devout Jew, according to Christian tradition, Judas became a potent symbol of inherent Jewish deceitfulness during the Middle Ages.


IDF Soldier Meets Canadian Whose Life He Saved
When Eitan Zabow joined the IDF, he had every reason to believe he’d be helping to save the lives of his fellow Israelis. He had no idea that he would also end up saving the life of a Canadian living half a world away.

Eighteen years ago, Torontonian Jack Mandelker was diagnosed with a rare form of bone marrow cancer and was given an ominous prognosis: he had two years left to live – and one of them would be spent in a hospital.

“During a regular check up, my doctor said, ‘There is something funny about your blood,’ ” explained Mandelker. “He sent me to the hospital where I was diagnosed with polycythemia vera leukemia. He explained to me the common course of the disease is, after 15 years, it turns into something called myelofibrosis … which is the death of your bone marrow.”

Before a donor was found, Mandelker had been told that he had four days to live. “I had gotten an e-coli infection,” he said. “I had pneumonia, my liver was diseased up to 487 – the number should never be more than 30.”

Meanwhile, Zabow, the deputy commander of the IDF’s Nahal Infantry Brigade Training Base, had taken time out of his busy schedule to do an act of kindness. “In the middle of my military service, during combat drills, I came to the hospital to donate my stem cells,” said Zabow. He was found to be a match and his bone marrow saved Mandelker’s life.
Australian Jews bake world’s longest challah
A kosher bakery in Sydney, Australia, has broken the Guinness world record for longest challah.

Grandma Moses Bakery, in partnership with the Jewish National Fund chapter in New South Wales, broke the record on Thursday, according to a Facebook post from the group.

The record-setting challah clocked in at more than 32 feet long and required over 150 pounds of dough and ten hours to bake.

The previous record, set in Brooklyn in 2015, was a 20-foot challah.

Messi and Argentina to play soccer game in Israel after Gaza fighting subsides
The highly anticipated Argentina-Uruguay soccer match, featuring superstars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, will go ahead as planned in Tel Aviv next week, the Argentinian team confirmed Friday after an end to fighting in Gaza.

“After the game with CBF Futebol [Brazil], the Argentine team will practice this Saturday in Riyadh and on Sunday it will fly toward Tel Aviv, Israel,” the team said in a tweet.

Argentina beat Brazil 1-0 in a friendly in Saudi Arabia on Friday, with Messi grabbing the winner.

The friendly match against Uruguay had been in doubt due to the 48 hours of intense fighting between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad earlier this week that saw hundreds of rockets fired into Israel, including at Tel Aviv.

Also Friday, the Polish team arrived for their Euro 2020 group G qualifying soccer game against Israel.

Israel has a lot to lose from the cancellation of the Argentina-Uruguay match, planned for Tel Aviv’s Bloomfield stadium.

It is possibly the highest-level game ever to be played on Israeli soil, and it features Messi, a player widely regarded to be the world’s best against his Barcelona team mate Suarez.
‘Schindler’s List’ producer and Holocaust survivor Branko Lustig dead
Branko Lustig, the Oscar-winning producer of the Holocaust film “Schindler’s List,” has died.

Lustig died Thursday at his home in Croatia at the age of 87. His death was announced by the Festival of Tolerance, a Jewish film festival held in the Croatian capital of Zagreb for the last 13 years.

Born to a Jewish family in 1932, Lustig was imprisoned in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Much of his family was killed by the Nazis, including his father and grandmother.

He began his film career in the Yugoslavian film industry in the 1950s and worked as a production supervisor on the 1982 Hollywood film “Sophie’s Choice,” part of which was shot in Yugoslavia.

Lustig’s work on American films helped him move to Los Angeles in the 1980s, where he met Steven Spielberg, who directed “Schindler’s List.” The film won the Oscar for best picture in 1994.

“My number was 83317,” Lustig said in an emotional speech at the award ceremony. “I’m a Holocaust survivor. It’s a long way from Auschwitz to this stage.”

Lustig went on to recall the people he saw die in the camps, who urged him to be a witness to their murder.
“By helping Steven to make this movie, I hope I fulfill my obligation to the innocent victims of the Holocaust,” Lustig continued. “In the name of the 6 million Jews killed in the Shoah, and other Nazi’s victims, I want to thank everyone who acknowledge this movie.”




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