Thursday, February 18, 2021
NYPost Editorial: New hate-mongering scandals at UN agency that Biden means to send millions
President Biden, in his obsession with reversing every Trump policy, means to reinstate funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars a year for an agency that teaches Palestinian children to hate “the Enemy” Israel and believe “Jihad is the road of glory.”Castles in the Air? The American Return to the UN Human Rights Council
UNRWA began producing its own educational material last year to aid at-home learning during the pandemic — and some of its content is more venomous than Palestinian Authority propaganda.
The Jerusalem-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education blew the lid off the scandalous teaching materials in November, revealing they glorified terrorism in the cause of destroying Israel. Canada and Australia opened investigations, but UNRWA claimed it had dealt with the matter internally and replaced the “inappropriate” material.
It didn’t. Though UNRWA blocked access to its material, IMPACT-se found it and released a report Wednesday showing the agency still teaches hate and intolerance to more than 320,000 Palestinian children.
A math problem asks students the number of martyrs from the first intifada. A grammar exercise includes the sentences “The Occupier commits all kinds of torture” and “We are an occupied people.” An Arabic-language lesson has kids write out a text read by a family member that says that “our Arab relatives have sadly recognized our Enemies and began interacting with them,” referring to the Abraham Accords, and insists one day “our Enemies will be banished, God willing, as failing losers.”
The Biden Administration has decided to bring the U.S. back into the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), first as an observer until the end of the year, and presumably as a member beginning in 2022. Secretary of State Blinken explained: "The best way to improve the Council, so it can achieve its potential, is through robust and principled U.S. leadership."Netanyahu mourns radio host Limbaugh as ‘a great friend of Israel’
Yet the evidence provides little ground for optimism. In 2009, President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, expressed similar hopes, which were quickly and decisively proven to be unfounded. As a Council member, the U.S. was unable to steer the UN framework into confronting, or even addressing, the horrendous human rights abuses in Syria, Venezuela, China and elsewhere.
In parallel, the anti-Israel demonization exceeded even the previously absurd levels. When the U.S. voted against the latest anti-Israel resolution, it made no difference in the outcome. And when U.S. raised objections after anti-Semitic slurs or the use of the term "Zionist entity" from an Iranian or Syrian official, nothing happened. The structure of the UNHRC is largely impervious to change, reflecting the built-in majority for autocrats and dictatorships.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mourned Thursday the death of the US conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh in a tweet from his official account.
“I send my heartfelt condolences to the family of Rush Limbaugh,” Netanyahu wrote.
Though Limbaugh was not focused on foreign policy, he was still staunchly pro-Israel, seeing the country as an ally against terrorism. Netanyahu said, “He was a great friend of Israel and he stood by us through thick and thin, always firm, never wavering.”
“We shall miss him dearly,” Netanyahu said.
In 2001, Limbaugh urged the George W. Bush administration to allow Israel to crush its enemies, citing America’s own suffering following the 9/11 attacks that year.
“Bush is right about ‘defeating’ the Taliban, al Qaeda and other terrorist networks,” Limbaugh wrote at the time. “It is, therefore, necessary that in the pursuit of real and lasting peace, Israel also be free to destroy its enemies — meaning the terrorists and, yes, their sponsors, who are at war with her, and that she do so before they obtain devastating weapons of mass destruction.”
Limbaugh died at the age of 70 Wednesday of lung cancer. He had announced the diagnosis in February 2020.
Zev Chafets, a Jewish biographer who earned rare access to Limbaugh for his 2010 book “An Army of One,” said Limbaugh’s outsize influence and his friendliness with Israel set an example for other talk radio conservatives.
Unflinchingly conservative, wildly partisan, bombastically self-promoting and larger than life, Limbaugh galvanized listeners for more than 30 years with his talent for vituperation and sarcasm.
Will Biden Take On the New Anti-Semitism?
Leftist ideologues in the West have also been inspired by Soviet anti-Zionism. Angela Davis, a long-time leader in the Communist Party USA and a recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1979, continues to this day to preach the lie that Zionism is a form of racism and that therefore intersectional justice requires resistance to Israel. One of her supporters, Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired from CNN for publicly calling for the destruction of Israel, has carried this anti-Semitic relic of the Cold War into 2021. In 2016, he traveled to Israel with the group the “Dream Defenders.” The group published a video of one of their staged protests online. Staring directly into the camera, Hill proclaimed the following:Rashida Tlaib Speaks at Kashmir Event Featuring Jihad Supporters
We came here to Palestine to stand in love and revolutionary struggle with our brothers and sisters. We come to a land that has been stolen by greed and destroyed by hate. We come here and we learn laws that have been co-signed in ink but written in the blood of the innocent and we stand next to people who continue to courageously struggle and resist the occupation. People who continue to dream and fight for freedom. From Ferguson to Palestine, the struggle for freedom continues.
Hill said this while standing in Nazareth, a city in Israel, not in the disputed territories. Hill was referring to Israel itself as an occupied land, and his words were clearly, directly or indirectly, inspired by anti-Zionist communist propaganda. “From Ferguson to Palestine” indicates that for Hill, this is not a local conflict but rather a global struggle against injustice, a crusade against the devil in our midst, an evil so powerful and influential it even corrupts American police officers, training them to brutalize Black Americans.
Hill’s statement is not criticism of the Israeli government; it is the expression of a perverse and potentially genocidal worldview that lays the world’s ills at the feet of Israel, the Jewish state. This is a new evolution of anti-Semitism for the modern world, and it’s building support among the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has repeatedly insisted that Israel is a racist state and therefore opposes U.S. support of the country. She supports the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, which is explicit in its goal of eradicating Israel. Tlaib has retweeted the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” This is a genocidal war cry from PLO terrorist organizations and jihadist groups, but Tlaib, relying on the theory that the Jews are racist, believes this call for mass murder and terror should be inverted to a progressive and moral position.
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) has also called Israel an apartheid state and has claimed that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a “hate group.” With Israel and the Jews tagged as racists, she’s able to make conspiratorial and absurd claims — for example, suggesting the Iraq War was sold to Americans with lies from “Israeli neocons,” which she once claimed on the floor of the United States Congress.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has taken advantage of the modern progressive demonization of Jews. In an email to her followers, she solicited money and support on the basis that “AIPAC is coming after” them (the Squad) because they oppose money in politics and are critical of American foreign policy.
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) statements about Israel and Jews having “hypnotized the world,” manipulated the United States government with Jewish money, and harbored dual loyalties are all consistent with a conspiratorial worldview and antipathy towards Jewish people.
The members of the Squad, including Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, and Omar, are the prominent tip of the anti-Semitic iceberg within the Democratic Party. The inspiration for the Squad’s radicalism can be found at universities across the country. In local politics, chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are working hard to fill city councils with radical candidates who are at times pressured to sign pledges in support of the boycott and eradication of Israel. The result is an institutional bias against American Jews.
In a 2015 speech to the Union of Reform Judaism, then-Vice President Biden declared, “The bigoted attacks, the efforts to delegitimize Israel, are nothing short of anti-Semitism. Plain and simple.” He was correct, and now he’s on a collision course with those very people he once spoke out against. Good luck, Mr. President. Your confrontation with the new anti-Semitism is coming.
A Kashmir Solidarity Day event drew the radicalized son of a prominent jihadist — as well as a sitting member of Congress.NGO Monitor: EU Funding Campaign in Attempt to Trigger UN Sanctions Against Israel
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) spoke at the February 5 webinar sponsored by Justice for All, the activist arm of the Chicago-based multimedia company Sound Vision. Sound Vision is an offshoot of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).
Tlaib discussed a 2019 voiding of a 70-year-old “temporary” provision that divided the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) into two federally-administered territories that are now governed directly by New Delhi.
Tlaib’s comments fit into a broader campaign to misrepresent and exaggerate the situation in J&K. Although India imposed political detentions, Internet and media restrictions, and other measures after the status change to maintain order, many of those restrictions have since been lifted and mainstream political figures released. Local-level elections were successfully conducted in the union territory in December.
Tlaib introduced a resolution in Congress “condemning the human rights violations taking place in Jammu and Kashmir and supporting Kashmiri self-determination.” The resolution has not advanced.
Palestinian Authority and international NGOs, funded by European governments and working in tandem with the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), have launched a campaign seeking to trigger U.N. sanctions against the Jewish state, according to a report published on Thursday by NGO Monitor.Fauci champions Israel's 'remarkable' vaccination drive
According to the Israel-based watchdog group, UNICEF’s Gaza and West Bank branch has “built an extensive campaign, using false charges of abuse of Palestinian children in the effort to trigger sanctions against Israel.”
“A core goal is to have the IDF included on a list of child rights abusers, published annually by the UN Secretary General as an annex to the report on Children and Armed Conflict,” the report states. It warns that such claims can then be used to lobby the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis.
In January 2018, NGO Monitor published “UNICEF and its NGO Working Group: Failing Children,” detailing joint NGO-U.N. efforts to demonize Israel and blacklist the IDF. The watchdog noted that several of the NGOs in this “working group” promote BDS, and a number of members are closely linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union, Canada and Israel.
Since then, these NGOs have continued their efforts under U.N. auspices and buoyed by substantial financial and project support from the European Union and European countries. The report states that UNICEF sought $3.35 million to fund its activities on the matter between 2018 and 2022. The funds were earmarked to engage “human rights mechanisms … to hold Israel accountable for its obligations under international law”—a reference to pushing for sanctions against Israel.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to US President Joe Biden, had the highest praise for Israel's record-setting vaccination drive.Dexter Van Zile: The World Council of Churches Must Come Clean About Support for BDS
On Tuesday, Israel passed another key milestone in its campaign against COVID-19, delivering the country's four-millionth prime jab.
"When you look at the amount of vaccinations per hundred people, Israel is way up there," he said in a press conference, a segment from which Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted to his Twitter account on Thursday.
"Israel has a remarkable diminution in cases, associated with the efficiency of their vaccine," Fauci added.
Fauci told reporters that in addition to protecting people from the virus, a new study from Israel showed that vaccines also appeared to reduce the viral load of people who were asymptomatically infected.
"The vaccine is important not only for the health of the individual to protect them against infection and disease, including the variants... but it also has very important implications from a public health standpoint, for interfering and diminishing the dynamics of the outbreak," he said.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) had a chance to draw a line in the sand. It had a chance to show the world that it took the plague of antisemitism seriously, and understood that ugly dishonest polemics about Israel undermine the ability of Christians to promote peace in the Holy Land.Study Finds Increase in Anti-Zionism at U.S. Universities
The organization also had a chance to come clean and admit that, yes, the WCC has been an ardent and persistent supporter of the BDS campaign that falsely portrays Israel as a singular human rights abuser on the world stage — and in so doing, has fomented a plague of hostility towards Israel and Jews.
Instead of pretending that the WCC never supported BDS, the group could have declared that it is now doing what it can to distance itself from the bigoted and discredited movement that it previously embraced.
WCC officials also had a chance to admit that by singling out the Jewish state for condemnation — while ignoring actual crimes against humanity in places like China and Syria — their organization had given Jews throughout the world every reason to regard Christians and the ecumenical movement with suspicion.
But instead of engaging in an act of metanoia, the WCC’s leaders in Geneva (and one of its activists in South Africa) hardened their hearts against the truth, and doubled down on the lies they’ve told about events in the Holy Land (and themselves as peacemakers).
With their refusal to confront their mistakes, leaders and staffers at the WCC have demonstrated once again that Jewish survival and self-determination are stumbling blocks to Christians who purport to follow Jesus — a Jew himself.
Most U.S. campuses are not awash in anti-Semitism, nor are they hotbeds of anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism. Yet on hundreds of campuses, a new set of realities has emerged for Jewish students.Long Beach City College Board of Trustees Criticized for Not Voting on IHRA Resolution
Far-left anti-Semitism that expresses a view of Israel that traffics in anti-Jewish conspiracies has increasingly become normalized on U.S. campuses, where Jewish students are being demoralized as imperialists, racists, and even Nazis and white supremacists.
Students have increasingly reported that they are afraid to express their Jewish identity, including their support for Israel, lest they be excluded from campus life and the causes that they care deeply about.
Hillel International reported that anti-Semitic incidents reached an all-time high during the 2019-2020 academic year.
Jewish groups are criticizing the Long Beach City College Board of Trustees for not voting on a resolution adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism during their January 27 meeting.How Jewish Students Can Explain Antisemitism to Non-Jews
During the meeting, which was the same day as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Trustee Sunny Zia alleged that the nonbinding resolution was pulled from the meeting agenda at the last second to have the board’s legal team and the college’s Academic Senate review it; Zia claimed that past resolutions haven’t been subjected to the same level of scrutiny.
Zia added that past resolution discussions have waived the 20-minute limit on public comment, but that limit remained intact for public comments about adopting the IHRA definition. “When it comes to my [Jewish] community, things are different,” Zia said. “Just feels that way.”
Trustee Vivian Malauulu later told Zia that the treatment of the resolution has nothing to do with her community; it had to do with “respect for the time and it has to do with the authenticity of the comments being made.” Zia then accused Maluulu of questioning the authenticity of the public comments, which she said was “quite distasteful.” Zia also asked the board’s president, Uduak-Joe Ntuk, when the resolution would be brought up for the vote and he didn’t give a specific date, but he did assure her that it would be back at some point.
Jewish groups criticized the board’s actions.
“With the U.S. State Department on record embracing the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, and more than 200 Mayors across America signing on to [American Jewish Committee]’s ‘Mayors United Against Antisemitism’ Campaign, it seems incredulous that the Long Beach Community College District (CCD) would descend into partisan bickering and recrimination over the authenticity of this proposed measure as well as impugn the credibility of its proponents,” American Jewish Committee Los Angeles Regional Director Richard S. Hirschhaut said in a statement to the Journal. “This is a shameful and regrettable blot on the integrity of the CCD that can best be erased by adoption of the IHRA definition. It is a useful resource and tool for understanding antisemitism and, in this instance, can be a ‘teachable moment’ for the CCD as well.”
Even as anti-Semitism is rising, its common understanding seems to be falling apart. As the Jewish community looks at how the demographics of America has changed, we also must recognize that a lot of our communal messaging—often geared towards white people—fails to explain the complexities of anti-Semitism. It also lacks resonance with Gen Z and younger generations that are increasingly ethnically diverse and have a different relationship to history than previous generations.The Malignant Tradition of UC Irvine’s Hate-Israel Activists
So, how can young Jewish and Zionist students—perceived at-large as white, even though one in six American Jews are Jews of color and many other Jews live in communities of color—explain the world’s oldest hatred to the youngest generational cohorts?
While reducing anti-Semitism requires a multifaceted approach, I believe that there’s actually a simple solution, and one that alumni can help with: a starting point of defining what anti-Semitism is. You can’t try to stop anything unless you know what it looks like. When you combine this with the work of listening and engaging, you can truly start to curb hate.
The first step to engage marginalized groups is for Jewish and Zionist students to empathetically and actively listen to their non-Jewish peers talk about their own struggles with issues like racism, classism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry—issues that many Jewish and Zionist students can also relate to and even identify with. In doing so, students not only learn more about how bigotry, stereotypes and hate hurt people we care about, but also form relationships, bound by empathy, that will make it easier to talk about the pain they experience because of anti-Semitism.
One distinct challenge for Jewish and Zionist students is that they already come into conversations about bigotry with a disadvantage because of the way that anti-Semitism manifests as an iteration of the “model minority” myth. As we know, anti-Semites say that Jews or Zionists are “too powerful”—with people on the far-left and far-right falsely claiming that Jews secretly control the government, media or banks. That hatred trickles down so that people of all backgrounds have the bias that Jews are white, wealthy and powerful, even though that is not the case for the vast majority of Jews in America, much less around the world. In other words, it can be very difficult for marginalized groups to understand how anti-Semitism operates when only using the way that racism operates as a baseline.
If any area of the United States can be identified as the epicenter of anti-Israelism on campus, California, the nation’s most populous state, can certainly be said to have earned that dubious distinction. In fact, observers of out of control anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic activity on campuses consider California’s universities to be the veritable ground zero of such vitriol, with particularly troubling and persistent problems of radical student groups, venom-spewing guest speakers, annual hate-fests targeting Israel and Jewish students, and a pervasive mood on campus in which Jewish students and other pro-Israel faculty and students experienced visceral and real “harassment, intimidation and discrimination,” as a Zionist Organization of America’s (ZOA) complaint to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights described the situation on one campus, the University of California at Irvine.
In fact, UC-Irvine has for two decades been the epicenter of anti-Israel activism in California—and as a result, in the entire country—and this month, the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) continued that noxious tradition by successfully pushing a BDS resolution through the student government, a bill entitled “UC Divestment from Apartheid 2021,” which, in addition to once again leveling the mendacious charge of apartheid against Israel, suggested that “Israel has terrorized, displaced, and killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from its founding,” and that “Israel continues to follow the methods of terror from its founding until the present day.”
As anti-Israel activists are fond of doing, the resolution was replete with references to the apartheid alleged to exist in Israel, and, in fact, the resolution asserted without hesitation that “Israel is an apartheid state based on this definition [‘a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race’] and its similarities to the South African apartheid . . . .”
To punish Israel for perpetrating and maintaining the alleged racism inherent in apartheid, the resolution targeted specific companies that, it was claimed, benefit from doing business with Israel and should, in the name of social justice, be divested from the UC-Irvine portfolio. What is the rationale for such actions? Normally, it is to punish companies that continue to do business with Israel after they have been singled out for opprobrium, and, additionally in this case, these specific companies are involved in supplying Israel with material and equipment necessary for the Jewish state’s defense. But either because they do not understand how divestment even works, or they have created a new narrative in which the university’s funds are to be reallocated for socially-responsible purposes, the authors of the resolution claimed that “The UC investments in corporations that enable apartheid are a misuse of student tuition funds,” and “the millions spent on apartheid should be redirected to students who do not have their basic needs addressed.”
Watching tonight’s antisemitism panel from Pittsburgh, we can say the following:
— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) February 18, 2021
1. We will continue to expose antisemitism regardless of source
2. We appreciate @jasiri_x apologizing and wish him luck on his journey in becoming a better ally to the Jewish people. https://t.co/6qrrGBSNa4 pic.twitter.com/tPkREUFqLL
Also very odd that Bend the Arc's Sophie Ellman-Golan has blocked us on Twitter?
— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) February 17, 2021
Sophie is very good friends with Linda Sarsour and shockingly Jay Golan's daughter (he used to be the CEO of Birthright, the organization she rallies against). pic.twitter.com/JRY5JcJ5Yh
Austrian prosecutor finds no crime in providing architectural services in occupied territory. @UIA_Architects, will you condemn? https://t.co/ssxINpxs0n
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) February 17, 2021
Sarah Silverman: Jared Kushner Could Act as Nazi in a Movie
Jewish actress and comedian Sarah Silverman said that if a film was looking to cast someone to play a Nazi, former White House senior adviser and fellow Jew Jared Kushner could be considered for the role.Radio-Canada Turns BDS Propaganda into Anti-Israel Article
“If you were casting a Nazi [in a movie] he’d be called in,” she said on “The Sarah Silverman Podcast” on Feb. 11.
Silverman, 50, made the comment in response to a question from a caller who expressed frustration at Kushner, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, for not speaking out against the inappropriateness of Holocaust-related garments worn by some neo-Nazis who stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6.
The caller referenced in specific a rioter who wore a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt, which also featured the inscription “work brings freedom,” a translation of the German phrase “arbeit macht frei” that hangs over the entrance of the concentration camp in Poland. She also referenced an image, widely circulated after the Capitol riot but which was later shown to have been taken at an earlier event, of a man in a black T-shirt that said “6MWE,” an acronym for “6 million were not enough.”
“How does Jared Kushner not address this, speak out against this [or] resign? Anything, anything, when his own grandmother was in Holocaust,” asked the caller. “What kind of person is this? Does he just not care? Does he not have a soul? Does he not care what his grandmother went through to survive?”
On February 16, Radio-Canada published an article to its website about how the anti-Israel organization CJPME, has called on Canada “to cancel its $36-million purchase of an Israeli-made civilian maritime surveillance drone over concerns about the manufacturer’s human rights record.”Inverted Reality: Reuters Paints Israel as Aggressor Against Hezbollah Terror Group
The report by Radio-Canada’s Levon Sevunts (pictured right) masquerades propaganda as legitimate reporting and was press release journalism at its worst.
CJPME is a fringe Canadian NGO which calls for boycotts of a number of Israeli products and of various stores in Canada over their business relationships and activities in Israel, and Judea and Samaria, the “West Bank”. Its past chairman, Dimitri Lascaris, was rebuked by all of Canada’s major political parties for engaging in antisemitism.
CJPME is known for ignoring Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians, including frequent rockets fired from Gaza. Its efforts ultimately deny Israel’s right to self-defence and CJPME regularly demonize Israel for allegedly committing “war crimes”.
Radio-Canada’s article quoted Michael Bueckert, vice president of CJPME saying: “Canadian taxpayer dollars should not be going to bolster the profits of an Israeli weapons company which builds drones to monitor and target Palestinian civilians under occupation.”
This inflammatory and unfounded claim that Israel uses drones to intentionally “monitor and target Palestinian civilians” depicts Israel as a country that engages in state terrorism. In sharp contrast, Israel solely targets terrorists and terror-infrastructure and the Israel Defense Forces have been lauded for doing more to safeguard civilian life than any other army in history.
Radio-Canada’s allowing such an allegation to be published and to not be rebutted was tantamount to journalistic malpractice and this runs counter to RCI’s Journalistic Standards and Practices.
Reuters, Take Note: Hezbollah Is An Iranian-Backed Terror Group
Fact: Hezbollah has perpetrated countless ruthless terrorist attacks worldwide, including the AMIA bombing and the Burgas bus attack. Between 1982 and 1986 alone, 659 people were killed in suicide attacks by Hezbollah operatives. Another fact: The United States, European Union, Arab League, and most other countries have designated the Lebanese organization as a terror group.
Such background information is highly relevant to readers of this Reuters piece. Israel is not facing an enemy that adheres to the rules of warfare and international law. Yet, these basic elements about Hezbollah are nowhere to be found. The words “terrorist” or even the watered-down “militant” do not appear in the Reuters story once.
Another important fact that is left out is the Iran-Hezbollah connection. Hezbollah is one of Tehran’s primary weapons against Israel and Western interests in the region. Iran helped found, organize and train Hezbollah and has previously given the group up to $700 million a year, in addition to an estimated $300 million after the war with Israel in 2006, although US sanctions have pushed this figure down. The Islamic Republic also continues to provide arms to the group, despite the demands of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
By not giving readers the whole truth about Hezbollah, Reuters leads its readers to believe that the Israel-Hezbollah conflict is one between two equal sides. In reality, Israel is fighting an Iranian-backed terror group that is dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the map.
Just months ago, HonestReporting critiqued the news agency for a similar blunder. Reuters, a leading news organization that dedicates itself to upholding the Thompson Reuters Trust Principles – which call for “freedom from bias in the gathering and dissemination of information and news” – must be kept to higher standards.
A speaker on @BBCInOurTime just referred to “a shrine of a boy in Norwich supposed to have been killed by Jews.” William of Norwich was not only not killed by Jews; it was the beginning of the blood libel lie which killed many Jews. Not sure all that lifting is done by supposed.
— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) February 18, 2021
London’s Chelsea FC Soccer Club Launches ‘Say No to Antisemitism’ Website
Famed British soccer team Chelsea FC announced on Monday the launch of its “Say No to Antisemitism” website that will feature all the club’s updates, events and resources related to its antisemitism campaign.Jewish Group Applauds Arrest of Canadian Nationalist Party Leader Advocating Hate
The new website is part of Chelsea FC’s “Say No to Antisemitism” campaign, which launched in 2018 to raise awareness and educate players, staff, fans and the wider community about the issue. The initiative, funded by club owner and Jewish Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, is an extension of the club’s on-going work through the Chelsea Foundation’s Building Bridges campaign.
The site will provide information about Chelsea FC’s antisemitism programs and community events, and will also highlight recent related activity — such as the club’s pre-match light display and tribute for Holocaust Memorial Day, and their collaboration with British-Israeli street artist Solomon Souza for an art exhibition about Jewish athletes who died in the Holocaust.
“There can be no place in our game, nor our society, for antisemitism or any form of discrimination — and we remain determined to continue to raise awareness and provide the resources needed to inspire others around us to join this vital cause,” Chelsea FC said in its announcement of the new website.
Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) applauded the arrest of Canadian Nationalist Party leader Travis Patron, who has been charged with the willful promotion of hate in connection to an antisemitic video he created and circulated on social media.How and why did a Talmud Tractate wind up in Hitler's bunker?
In the video, which first appeared online in 2019 and was titled “Beware the Parasitic Tribe,” Patron claimed that Jewish people “infiltrate the media, they hijack the central bank, and they infect the body politic like a parasite,” and “what we need to do … is remove these people, once-and-for-all, from our country.”
The Canadian National Party is a far-right white nationalist party founded by Patron in 2017. It unsuccessfully ran three candidates in the 2019 Canadian federal elections.
FSWC filed a criminal hate speech complaint last year with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the attorney general in Saskatchewan in response to a flyer posted on the Canadian Nationalist Party social media pages that quoted the video, as well as called Jews “a tribe of parasites” and “liars and deceivers.”
The video, which was first reported to the RCMP by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network in June 2019, also resurfaced on the social media pages. A number of other ally organizations have also been engaged in the case.
One of the Nazi deceptions involved coopting the customs and tragedies of Jewish history.‘The Ravine’ unpacks rare WWII photo to illuminate massacre of Miropol Jews
In that context, a mystery emerged at the end of the war concerning the discovery of the Pesachim Tractate of the Talmud inside Hitler's bunker. It was found shortly after the bunker fell into Allied hands,
Why would a tractate of the Talmud be in Nazi hands? And why that tractate? What could have interested the Nazis in that particular tractate?
Why is this tractate different from all other tractates?
During this period of time, when Jews learn the Daf Yomi daily Talmud study cycle, the tractate that is being studied and taught is none other than Pesachim, which deals with every possible aspect of Passover, along with relevant aspects of Jewish lore and Jewish history.
On February 16, 2021,page 87 of Tractate Pesachim was taught in the Daf Yomi learning cycle. And I think I found the answer.
On page 87b, the Talmud recalls the persecution that Jews suffer in each generation, followed by a famous Talmduc observation that God's grace to the Jews js that Jews were not exiled to only one place, so that when Jews are persecuted in one venue, they can thrive in another locale.
The discussion's conclusion echoed the words of a prominent Roman who said that he dreams that the day will come when they will be able to indeed kill all of the Jews.
At the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2009, historian Wendy Lower was shown a disturbing image of a Jewish mother and child being executed by several men. Lower immediately knew she was looking at rare visual evidence related to the open-air shootings in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. During this phase of the genocide, Germans and their collaborators massacred Jews in broad daylight.Auction House Halts Sale of Historic Burial Registry After Jewish Community in Romania Claims Ownership
The single photograph from the so-called “Holocaust by bullets” reveals many aspects of the Nazis’ genocidal ideology, according to Lower. The image was initially held in the security files of the Czech Communist regime.
In “The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed,” Lower meticulously probes the background of the photo, which was dated October 13, 1941 and labeled “Miropol.” During a decade of research, she unearthed eye-witness testimony to clarify the image, a process recounted in Lower’s new book, published on February 10.
“In The Ravine, I combined this micro and macro approach, zooming in and out on the photograph as a singular source that spoke to the larger phenomenon of testimony, the family, material culture, acts of resistance, and memory,” said Lower in an interview with The Times of Israel.
Lower, who directs the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College in California, has authored several books about the Holocaust in Ukraine. Since 1992, she has visited sites of “Einsatzgruppen” massacres in Ukraine on numerous research trips.
Although Miropol was a town with only 1,500 Jews on the war’s eve, it achieved notoriety as the location of the legendary “Dybbuk” tale about a malevolent spirit. Lower visited Miropol several times and — at the Holocaust site — she searched for bullet shells and found human bones.
A leading New York auction house specializing in rare Judaica has withdrawn from sale a historic document originating from the Jewish community in the Romanian city of Cluj, after learning that the item may have been stolen during the Holocaust.Israeli Government Flies 6-Year-Old Boy From Ethiopia for Cardiac Treatment
The auction of the 19th-century-era handwritten memorial register of Jewish burials in Cluj was due to have taken place in New York on Thursday afternoon.
However, auctioneers Kestenbaum & Company canceled the sale following an outcry from Jewish leaders in Cluj.
Daniel Kestenbaum, a director of the company, said that the auction house, which has “specialized in the care of rare Judaic material culture for 25 years,” took the “matter of title to be one of the utmost importance.”
“Any item that passes through our hands is subject to detailed investigation in this regard,” Kestenbaum told The Algemeiner in an email on Wednesday afternoon. “Consequently, in respect to recently acquired information, Lot 33 will be withdrawn from our Judaica auction scheduled for Thursday February 18th.”
An open letter from the Jewish community in Cluj — published by the Romanian magazine Baabel — stated that the register had been “illegally appropriated by unidentified persons.”Because the item was stolen, the letter argued, it “falls under the provisions of the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty and the 2009 Declaration of Terezin.”
The Israeli NGO Save a Child’s Heart (SACH), along with the medical team at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, has provided life-saving treatment to thousands of children from around the world in the past 25 years. Despite travel limitations caused by the coronavirus pandemic, this year has been no different, as it continues to help kids like 6-year-old Benjamin, who landed in Israel on Feb. 12 from Ethiopia in order to receive urgent cardiac treatment.Findings at Timna change what we know of biblical history
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, SACH has continued its mission, conducting medical efforts in accordance with Israel Ministry of Health guidelines. The work has been made more difficult by the implementation of the “closed skies” policy, and ultimately, the shutting down of Ben-Gurion International Airport in January with the aim of curbing the spread of COVID-19 variants.
In spite of these restrictions, SACH has continued its work, providing the Health Ministry with requests on behalf of a number of critically ill patients who require immediate care.
Although not a member of Ethiopian families immigrating to Israel, Benjamin was able to join a recent group flight from Ethiopia sponsored by the Jewish Agency for Israel.
He is currently being hosted at the organization’s Legacy Heritage Children’s home while he undergoes an initial examination that will enable doctors to determine his treatment.
So a few weeks ago, a very exciting paper was published about the discovery of the royal purple at timna. Can you tell us a little more about this discovery?Amazing Detective Work Reunites Best Friends Thought Murdered in the Holocaust
We have been excavating in Timna Valley for the past eight years. Every year for a few weeks. As you know, Timna is next to the city of Eilat, it's deep in the desert. And it's an ancient copper-mining area. People came to this area to mine copper. And one of the unique things about this area is the preservation of organic materials. So it's one of the only places where we excavate in Israel and we can find organic remains like textiles and leather and ropes and other things like that that you usually don't find in regular excavations. And every year, we've had a little bit of textile fragments coming out of the excavation.
So we knew that we have this unique collection of textiles and fabrics, and some of them were with a little bit of color. But the big surprise came from the lab. We're working with Dr. Naama Sukenik from the Israel Antiquities Authority, and we take the materials from the excavations and we try to understand what was the color made from, what was the dying stuff that they were using to color the fabrics. And one day, like about a year ago or less than a year ago, she called me into the office saying "You know, we found the royal purple here in Timna from a fabric that is dated 3,000 years old." I said "That's impossible, it's too early for that, it's deep in the desert," and you need to understand this color is the most expensive color at the time. It was made out of see snails in a very sophisticated process of manufacturing, so it didn't make sense that it was real purple. But we checked it again and again in the lab, and it is indeed the true purple, which is mentioned in the bible many times. In Hebrew, it's called the Argaman.
So it's very interesting evidence in a copper production site which is dated to the period of the kings David and Solomon. So it's all quite very interesting of who were the people in Timna at that time, who was wearing this garment made out of true purple, can we connect it to the stories in the Hebrew Bible, and all of that became certainly interesting.
And a few weeks ago, the academic publication was in print after a lot of work, and we shared this discovery with the scholarly community and everyone else because it's really interesting to have a real textile a real piece of garment from the biblical time colored with the true purple that is still very clear today.
When they parted ways in 1939, two Jewish girls from Berlin promised to keep in touch. One family fled to Chile, while the other made its way to the United States via Shanghai.
Eighty-two years after the nine-year old girls said goodbye in a German schoolyard, Ana María Wahrenberg and Betty Grebenschikoff connected with each other again on Zoom. The unexpected reunion was facilitated by Holocaust testimony indexer Ita Gordon, whose sharp memory linked the women.
“In her [USC Shoah Foundation] testimony, Betty said she had been actively searching for her long-lost friend for her entire life; she even specifically mentions Ana María’s name in the hopes that this will help her find her best childhood friend,” said Rachael Cerrotti, who works as a creative producer for the foundation.
Founded by Steven Spielberg, the USC Shoah Foundation’s archive has more than 55,000 video testimonies from survivors and witnesses of genocide. After hearing Wahrenberg speak at a virtual Kristallnacht event, Gordon made the connection between Grebenschikoff’s testimony — given to the foundation 24 years ago — and Wahrenberg.
“What followed was a series of phone calls between USC Shoah Foundation and the Museo Interactivo Judio de Chile, where Ana María has long been involved in a range of activities,” said Cerrotti.
“We needed to be absolutely certain that we were correct in believing that these two woman were childhood friends,” said Cerrotti. “Ita Gordon’s research proved to be done impeccably well and soon enough we connected with Betty and looped in the Florida Holocaust Museum, where Betty is a regular speaker,” said Cerrotti.
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