Friday, April 17, 2020
MEMRI: Google Algorithm Continues To Spread Antisemitism And Holocaust Denial – Contrary To Google's Claim That It Has Removed Such Material
On Google's image search (images.google.com), benign search terms relating to Jews or Yiddish phrases yield alarmingly hateful and inciting results. Antisemitic and racist caricatures appear among top search results leading to white supremacist and conspiracy websites. Moreover, Google's search algorithm, which suggests additional search terms for the user to click on in order to narrow the search, includes primarily white supremacist and antisemitic terminology, leading the user toward further misinformation and other hateful content.CAMERA Researchers Speak at National Religious Broadcasters Convention, on Podcast
The following report shows the terms suggested by Google image search after inputting the Yiddish exclamation of surprise "oy vey," along with the terms "Shoah" – Holocaust – and others.
"Oy Vey"
After searching images.google.com with the term "oy vey", the engine suggests numerous additional related search terms. The first suggestions include: "merchant," "shoah," "6 trillion," "shlomo," and "6 million." Many of the images yielded by the search originate on platforms that are popular with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, including 4Chan, 8Chan, Reddit, and others. Clicking on these images will direct the user to those websites.
One of the antisemitic images that appear among the first search results for the term "Oy Vey," originally from the online forum Reddit, shows popular white supremacist meme Pepe the Frog, here depicted as a Jewish caricature, with the text: "Knowing you would jew your own friends in a heartbeat."
The Happy Merchant
The first suggestion, "merchant," is paired with a thumbnail depicting a popular antisemitic caricature of a Jew, called the happy merchant, or simply the merchant. Clicking on the suggestion yields endless iterations of the antisemitic meme.
The results after clicking the suggested term "merchant."
Some examples of the images include the merchant character being sprayed with a can marked with a Star of David and the text "Jew-B-Gone." The merchant is depicted as weeping and saying "Oy Vey! It's like second Shoah!" The text on the bottom of the image reads: "Exterminates 99.99% of pesky rodents!" This image appears twice in the first three rows of search results. When clicking on the image, the Google algorithm suggests similar images, including one titled "Backstabbing Jew", depicting the Merchant hugging another figure and brandishing a knife behind their back.
One of the first results yielded by adding the suggested term "merchant."
Another result in the search above is a comic strip depicting the merchant brokering a trade of African slaves to the U.S. Africans are also represented in the comic with a racist stereotype,
Another of the first results yielded by adding the suggested term "merchant" is a racist and antisemitic depiction of the Jew as slave trader.
"Shoah"
"Shoah," referring to the Jewish Holocaust, is accompanied by a thumbnail of the same merchant caricature rendered on a pizza in a reference to the conspiracy theory known as Pizzagate.[1] Clicking on the suggestion yields similarly antisemitic results.
One of the first images is a caricature of a grotesque Jewish figure, shown with a bag of money labeled "Your tax dollars," standing in a crematorium. The text around the image reads: "If you see this image while scrolling the first page you have been visited by the JEW OF OTHERWORLDLY GREED[;] Great riches and prosperity will come to you but only if you post 'Muh six million, it's a whole new shoah!' in this thread[.] Oy very, it's a whole new shoah!"
CAMERA researchers Tricia Miller, Ph.D. and Dexter Van Zile recently spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. They spoke at Media Summit organized by Proclaiming Justice to the Nations led by Laurie Cardoza-Moore.When Human Rights Supports Terrorism
Miller spoke about how Palestinian Christians have offered a distorted view of the Arab-Israeli conflict and have promoted an anti-Jewish replacement theology in their campaign to delegitimize Israel. Van Zile spoke about how Christian peace organization such as the World Council of Churches and Churches for Middle East Peace have facilitated the spread of antisemitism in the United States and Europe. Other speakers included Sandra Alfonsi, Andrew Bostom, Rev. Jeffrey Jemison, Rabbi Jonathan Hausman, Jan Markell, and Carol Swain.
Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a Christian organization dedicated to countering the demonization of Israel has posted the videos of the talks from the media summit on its YouTube channel.
In addition to these talks, CAMERA researchers Sean Durns and Dexter Van Zile spoke recently about Rick Steves’ indifference toward the suffering of Baha’is in Iran.
Dexter Van Zile speaks about the role churches and Christian peacemaking organizations such as Churches for Middle East Peace and the World Council of Churches have helped mainstream Jew-hatred in a post-Holocaust world.
Last week, the New York Times published an exposé on Hind Khoudary, a Palestinian researcher and journalist who informed Hamas about a peace activist's 'crime' of hosting Zoom calls with Israeli peace activists. The New York Times failed to mention that Khoudary was an employee of Amnesty International. This is not the first time employees of the "human rights" organization have supported terrorists. Context matters. Details matter. And the media owe the public all the facts.
Why There Is No Credible Alternative to the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
The internationally recognized Working Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) emphatically affirms that criticisms of Israel and antisemitism are not mutually exclusive. The IHRA is made up of 33 democratic countries, including Australia.Lessons from a Jerusalem Pogrom
The IHRA definition says that when criticism of Israel: is couched in terms which employ or appeal to negative stereotypes of Jewish people generally; or denies the Jewish people their right to self-determination; Â or applies double standards by requiring of Israel standards of behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation; or holds Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel; then the line has been crossed. It's antisemitism.
So, when law-abiding Australian Jews who support Israel are accused of being more loyal to Israel than Australia, it's antisemitism. When Jews are said to have inordinate control over the media, economy, and government as a means of supporting Israel, it's antisemitism.
Claiming that the State of Israel is a racist endeavor - smearing Israel as an "apartheid state" - is a way of denying the legitimacy of a Jewish state and thus denying Jewish people their right to national self-determination.
On April 4, 1920, the Nebi Musa riots in Jerusalem, named for the Muslim festival memorializing the birth of Moses, left five Jews dead, 211 injured, and at least two women raped. As Bruce Hoffman documented in his 2015 book Anonymous Soldiers: "A large Arab crowd had gathered just outside Jaffa Gate. Egged on by tendentious speakers from the nearby Arab Club, the crowd began to chant the rhyming Arabic couplet: 'Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs!'"The British Doctor Who Fought Typhus and Starvation at Bergen-Belsen
When trying to make sense of Arab violence in the Middle East, Western analysts tend to fall back on predictable cliches: riots result from resentment, oppression, poverty, or perhaps "ancient hatreds"; where the riots involve Palestinians, they are also the result of frustrated national aspirations.
In the case of the Nebi Musa riots, none of these explanations fit. To the extent that national aspirations were involved, they had nothing to do with Palestinian statehood, and everything to do with the incorporation of Palestinian Arabs into Greater Syria. The riots were an attempt to influence Arab opinion by showing support for Syrian rule of the territory.
Moreover, the British rewarded Haj Amin al-Husseini, who addressed the crowd before the riots, by creating the position of grand mufti of Jerusalem for him. He concluded that the risks of instigating pogroms were low, and resorted to this tactic in 1929 and then again from 1936 to 1939.
Within days of becoming the first Allied Medical Officer to enter the German "horror camp" of Bergen-Belsen, Brigadier H.L. Glyn Hughes set about creating the largest hospital in Europe. In the course of fighting typhus and starvation at Bergen-Belsen, the British officer began using an unusual set of parameters in making his plans: death rates, alongside numbers of mass graves and typhus-infected barracks. In her new book, All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, author Bernice Lerner juxtaposes the feats orchestrated by Hughes with the plight of her own mother, one of the inmates liberated by the officer.What does the BBC tell audiences about the San Remo Conference?
When Hughes arrived with the British army, he was forced to make immediate decisions about triage. In addition to the corpses stacked everywhere, there were 60,000 survivors who needed urgent medical attention. "His highly focused plan involved placing inmates into one of three categories," wrote Lerner. "Those likely to survive, those likely to die, and those for whom immediate care would mean the difference between life and death." Assisted by army staff and 97 British medical students, Hughes coped with hundreds of daily fatalities well past the camp's April 15 liberation.
The army took control of a hospital near the camp and emptied its German patients to make room for camp victims. Hughes also authorized "tours" of Bergen-Belsen for German leaders from the region, hundreds of whom were forced to witness what had been done in their name.
"Belsen was unique in its vile treatment of human beings," said Hughes after the war. "Nothing like it had happened before in the history of mankind. The victims of this infamous behavior have been reduced to a condition of subhuman existence, and there we were, a mere handful of war-weary men trying to save those who could still be saved and to allay the sea of suffering and the depths of agony."
The BBC’s brief descriptions of the San Remo conference in the above timelines do not clarify that the Mandate for Palestine created at that conference under the Covenant of the League of Nations (and subsequently included the Treaty of Sèvres) incorporated the Balfour Declaration. The BBC’s claim that Britain’s task was “to prepare it [Palestine] for self-rule” erases the fact that the text of the Mandate charged the Mandatory with creating conditions “as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home”.Congresswomen to Speak at Anti-Israel Group’s ‘Online Gala’
Two and a half years ago the BBC devoted copious coverage to the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, overwhelmingly framing it as an ‘injustice’ and promoting the view that Britain should apologise for the century-old document.
To date, however, BBC audiences have seen no coverage of the centenary of the San Remo Conference at which the Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the Mandate for Palestine that was unanimously approved two years later by the Council of the League of Nations.
Obviously BBC audiences cannot fully understand the history behind the much reported Arab-Israeli conflict if they are denied the information which explains how an expression of British policy – which the corporation did consider it appropriate to cover very widely in the autumn of 2017 – became a binding international agreement.
Islamist groups, like many others, are doing what they can to adjust to life during the coronavirus. Conferences and fundraising dinners are off the table, so many are turning to online gatherings.Omar Funnels Nearly $300,000 More to Her Husband’s Firm
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a group that in many ways mirrors the defunct Hamas-support network in the US, is holding an “online gala” Saturday evening. Despite the rhetoric common at AMP events, the “Beyond Quarantine: Palestine Connects Us” event will feature two Democratic congresswomen.
Debbie Dingell of Michigan and California’s Barbara Lee appear as speakers on AMP’s promotions for the gala. Neither representative responded to requests for comment.
AMP has co-sponsored rallies featuring the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” In that vision, Israel is erased from the map.
AMP’s fall convention featured the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) equating “racism, Islamophobia and Zionism.” Antisemitic political activist Linda Sarsour, who has blamed Jews for police shootings of unarmed black people, spread another lie when she told the same AMP convention that Israel was “built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else.”
A year earlier, CAIR San Francisco chapter director Zahra Billoo told the AMP convention she was, “not going to legitimize a country [Israel] that I don’t believe has a right to exist.”
Democratic representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) continues to push cash from her campaign committee to her now-husband's consulting firm.
Omar's new committee filings, posted Wednesday afternoon, show that during the first three months of the year, the campaign paid $292,905 to the E Street Group. E Street is a political consulting firm owned by Omar's husband, Tim Mynett. The cash, which reportedly went toward an array of services that included fundraising and advertisements, accounted for over 40 percent of the campaign's $674,892 in disbursements. Omar raised $456,374 during the quarter.
Omar's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Omar campaign also doled out $525,000 last year to Mynett's firm, its top vendor. At the time, Omar and Mynett were married to different people, but Mynett's wife alleged they were having an affair. The two denied that they had a romantic relationship. Omar's campaign and the E Street Group also faced accusations of using campaign funds on personal travel.
Rumors of an affair between Omar and Mynett garnered headlines after divorce papers from Mynett's ex-wife, Dr. Beth Mynett, were made public last summer.
"Days prior to defendant's devastating and shocking declaration of love for Rep. Omar and admission of their affair, he and Rep. Omar took the parties' son to dinner to formally meet for the first time at the family's favorite neighborhood restaurant while plaintiff was out of town," the divorce papers said. "Rep. Omar gave the parties' son a gift and the defendant later brought her back inside the family's home."
Omar denied the affair and said she was not separated from her then-husband Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi. "I have no interest in allowing the conversation about my personal life to continue and so I have no desire to discuss it," she said.
Likewise, Mynett denied the affair and claimed the rumors were an attempt to ruin his career. "Since the time of Mr. Mynett’s departure from the marital home, Ms. Mynett began a negative campaign against Mr. Mynett, seemingly in an effort to ruin his career and permanently damage his relationship with [his son] and his step-daughter," court papers said.
Omar announced via an Instagram post in March that she and Mynett were married.
.@RashidaTlaib: "Environmental racism" explains why minorities are disproportionately dying from Coronavirus pic.twitter.com/hZixXLLlKV
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 15, 2020
Tory councillor and former Lord Mayor of Portsmouth suspended after reportedly baking a swastika into a hot cross bun and posting the image on social media
A Conservative councillor and former Lord Mayor of Portsmouth has been suspended by his Party after reportedly baking a swastika into a hot cross bun and posting the image on social media.Psychologist Group Considers Joining BDS Campaign
Cllr Lee Mason baked a batch of the oven pastries over Easter, each emblazoned with an expletive or symbol, and put a photograph on Snapchat.
However, he denied that he baked a hot cross bun with a swastika and insisted that the photograph must have been altered online somehow. He admitted that the other buns, words and symbols were unaltered.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Next week the Jewish community will be observing Yom HaShoah, remembering the six million Jewish men, women and children slaughtered during the Holocaust just for being Jewish. Whether the emblazoning of a swastika on a hot cross bun was meant as a celebration of the abominable Nazi regime or a joke, the Jewish community and local residents in Portsmouth expect better from their representatives, and the Conservative Party must investigate this councillor’s conduct immediately. We welcome his suspension pending that investigation.”
In yet another instance of a civil society institution in the US becoming infected with the virus of anti-Zionism, a group called “Psychologists for Social Responsibility” (PsySR) is currently holding a vote to determine if it should enlist in the campaign to target Israel with boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS).BBC Travel article on Bethlehem promotes Nazi analogy
The Chicago-based organization, which was founded in the early 1980s as a response to the threat of nuclear war, recently promoted and hosted a Zoom presentation where its members were indoctrinated into the ideology of BDS.
Sadly, there is no evidence that Psychologists for Social Responsibility has promoted any real discussion about the issue; instead, they have allowed anti-Israel activists to promote their one-sided and distorted narrative about the Jewish state.
The story PsySR is telling its members about BDS is that it is a call from “Palestinian civil society for those in solidarity to join in the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement to bring international pressure for Israel to end its oppression and brutal military occupation of Palestinians.”
Let’s get real. “Palestinian civil society” is a junk phrase used to describe the front organizations that the Palestinian Authority uses to sell its anti-Israel message to gullible Westerners. These organizations are not independent, but operate under the thumb of Palestinian Authority functionaries — or worse.
The membership of the Palestinian BDS National Committee includes an umbrella group called Palestinian National and Islamic Forces. Members of this group include Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or the PFLP for short. These are terrorist organizations whose members have murdered Israeli civilians.
The essence of Morgan’s article is evident in two paragraphs which include overt Nazi analogies:The Times fails to correct claim Israel has ‘swept aside’ democracy
“This kind of counterintuitive renaissance is surprisingly commonplace where people feel their human rights are under intense restrictions. At Melinka, a former Chilean prison camp, prisoners ran a weekly circus. At Heart Mountain, a US Japanese internment camp, captives sumowrestled and performed Bon Odori folk dances. Even amid the infamous Nazi horror of Auschwitz, prisoners passed around poetry and composed music, risking torture if they were caught. As Salsaa put it: “As soon as there is a space to live, people will fill it with life.”
Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, agrees. “Liberty of mind becomes important when liberty of movement is gone. It’s like a rejection of detention. It’s not surprising that this accelerated in Bethlehem after the wall went up. If my life is limited, it’ll be the fullest life possible within those limits,” she said. “The restrictions are used to break the will, so it feels almost like a foundational assertion of humanity to still be people capable of adding to the world.”
The implied comparison of Bethlehem to a concentration camp and the suggestion that the anti-terrorist fence was built to limit “liberty of movement” and “break the will” rather than to protect Israeli citizens from Palestinian terrorists is of course both factually inaccurate and deeply offensive.
This is far from the first time (see ‘related articles’ below) that BBC Travel has published partisan politicised articles presented under the veneer of ‘life-style’ content. Usually written by freelancers, such reports often fail to meet the BBC’s supposed editorial standards of accuracy and impartiality.
An April 10th article in The Times (“How coronavirus will change the world forever”) by their Diplomatic Correspondent Catherine Philp included the following sentences:
The leaders of Israel and Hungary have seized for themselves powers almost unthinkable in a democracy, sweeping aside the authority of parliament, the courts and elections. Will they ever give them back?
As we tweeted to the journalist, and argued in a complaint to Times editors, there is absolutely no truth whatsoever to Philp’s assertion that Israel has swept aside the authority of the Knesset, courts and elections.
Here are a few basic facts that are more than sufficient to disprove Philp’s claim:
The Knesset:
A new Knesset (following the early March elections) was sworn in on March 16 and, on April 7, voted to pass a NIS 90 billion virus aid package.
In what way has the Knesset’s authority been “swept aside”?
The Courts:
Though the courts are only partially functioning, due, of course, to COVID-19, the Supreme Court has been active, and, as you no doubt recall, ruled against Netanyahu’s party in late March with regard to the refusal of Yuli Edelstein to hold a vote to choose his successor. Though Edelstein resigned to avoid following the court’s order, the court then overruled the Knesset rule that such a resignation only takes effect after 48 hours, suspending his powers immediately, and temporarily transferring them to Labour’s Amir Peretz. Despite the drama of that legal battle, the Supreme Court’s authority prevailed.
It what way has the court’s authority been “swept aside”?
You won't believe what happens next. No, really https://t.co/FZufby1NWH
— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) April 17, 2020
Satanist who tried to torch church said behind Maryland synagogue vandalism
A Maryland man accused of painting a swastika on a local synagogue had firebombed a nearby church as part of his plan to target multiple houses of worship to worship Satan, police said.Massachusetts Judge Criticized for Releasing Man Charged With Attempted Arson Attack on Jewish Assisted-Living Home
Andrew Costas, 28, of Rockville was arrested this week in connection with the anti-Semitic vandalism on March 28 at the Tikvat Israel Congregation in his hometown and the hurling of firebombs on April 8 at St. Catherine Laboure Roman Catholic Church in Wheaton. He is a facing a hate crime charge among other charges.
Police say Costas told his girlfriend that he was the Antichrist and planned to cause damage to 10 churches and three synagogues. The total, 13, has symbolic significance in Satanist circles and literature.
According to police, Costas is the individual seen in a surveillance camera video parking his car outside the synagogue, walking up and spraying paint on the outside wall. Police said the man painted swastikas and hateful slogans.
Costas and his girlfriend, Rebecca Matathias of Brookville, Maryland, are facing second-degree arson charges. He is being held until his trial. Matathias, who is in her early 20s, also was arrested but is out on bail.
Costas was charged with damaging property because of a person’s religious beliefs – a hate crime — and defacing a religious facility and malicious destruction.
A prominent US Jewish civil rights group criticized a judge’s decision on Friday to release a man accused of attempting to burn down a Jewish community-run assisted living facility into the custody of his mother.Ford Taps Israeli Military Intelligence Colonel to Lead Big Data
John Michael Rathbun, 36, was charged on Wednesday in a criminal complaint in a federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts, with two counts of attempted arson. Rathbun is alleged to have ignited a five-gallon plastic gas canister outside Ruth’s House, an assisted-living home in Longmeadow, on the morning of April 2.
Federal prosecutors said that Rathbun’s DNA matched bloodstains that were found on the handle of the canister and on a partly-charred Christian religious pamphlet that had been stuffed in the nozzle as a fuse. Rathbun’s mother told federal agents that she prints and distributes Christian pamphlets, but did not recognize the one in the gas canister found outside Ruth’s House.
Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson’s decision to return Rathbun to his mother’s home was strongly criticized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which pointed out that she resided within a five-minute drive of Ruth’s Place, in addition to three synagogues and a Jewish community center.
Calling Robertson’s decision “irresponsible,” the ADL said that the allegations against Rathbun meant that he remained a “clear and present danger to the community.”
“Releasing this individual whose DNA-evidence was found at the scene, and who allegedly engaged in on-line platforms that included antisemitic and racial threats of violence, undermines the safety and security of the entire community,” the ADL’s New England office said in a statement.
Ford Motor Co. has hired IDF Col. (ret.) Gil Gur Arie, 44, to become chief of Ford's global data insight and analytics on May 1.Jewish liberator of Nazi camp, wife of 78 years die hours apart
Ford equipped all new vehicles with cellular connectivity last year and has said it will outfit new models with high-speed 4G LTE modems this year.
The connections provide a portal into the vehicle for drivers to receive software updates and marketing information, while giving automakers a huge cache of data on how its vehicles are operating.
Analyzing that data smartly gives carmakers an edge in deciphering what drivers desire and will pay for in their cars.
A World War II veteran and his wife of nearly eight decades who had tested positive for COVID-19 died together on the same day.Israel’s 1st virus death: Hid in hay bale after saved by Wallenberg in Holocaust
David and Muriel Cohen died within hours of each other at a Longmeadow nursing home on April 10.
Muriel, 97, had tested positive for the virus and David, 102, had been sick but his test results came back negative.
The couple decided to remain together even as the Jewish Nursing Home tried to transfer residents who were infected to a separate unit.
Fran Grosnick, their daughter, gave the nursing home permission to let her parents stay together.
“The only time they’d ever been separated was when my father served in World War II, and when my sister and I were born,” she told The Boston Globe. “Otherwise they were always together.”
David Cohen served as a radio operator in the Army during World War II. He was also a liberator at the Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany. Photos he took during the liberation are displayed at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.
As a child in Hungary, Arie Even survived the Holocaust by taking shelter along with his mother and brother after his father was shipped to a notorious concentration camp.
Even’s well-connected grandfather found them refuge in a Swiss-protected home in Budapest before they were rushed to another shelter, under the cover of night, thanks to the Swedish embassy and the efforts of famed diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved tens of thousands of Jews before mysteriously disappearing. The next day, Even’s grandfather was shot to death and his body was dumped in the Danube River.
Later in life, Even overcame multiple heart attacks, surgeries and even a brush with a cholera epidemic during a family visit to Spain. But he couldn’t escape the wrath of the global coronavirus pandemic that has been plaguing the globe.
On March 20, the 88-year-old became Israel’s first coronavirus fatality after he was infected by a visiting social worker at his Jerusalem assisted-living facility.
Despite building a thriving family of his own in Israel, with four children, 18 grandchildren and a great-grandchild, Even died alone. His loved ones were forced to keep their distance from his infectious virus and had to say goodbye over the phone.
In keeping with the Jewish practice of burying the dead quickly, his funeral was carried out the following day, at the end of the Sabbath. His youngest child, representing the family, was one of only a handful of people who were allowed to attend — from a distance — as he was lowered to the ground by Jewish religious authorities wearing biohazard suits.
It's impossible to picture six million people; to read six million names; to know six million stories. But by reading one story, saying one name, sharing one person’s legacy, you keep a memory alive. Share the stories of persecution, of survival, and of resilience as #WeRemember. pic.twitter.com/f7qhSHIgMY
— US Holocaust Museum (@HolocaustMuseum) April 15, 2020
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