Has Hatred of Jews Morphed into Mania/Mass Hysteria?
I think Jew hatred has now reached a worldwide case of hate-based insanity. Here is the definition of insanity: madness, and craziness characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. And we can add mass hysteria, culturally acquired psychosis, and the internalization of a Jew hating cultural meme. It could even be a dissociative disorder; a mental disorder that involves experiencing a disconnection and lack of continuity between thoughts, memories, surroundings, actions and identity. People with dissociative disorders escape reality in ways that are involuntary and unhealthy and cause problems with functioning in everyday life. Or perhaps it is collective obsessional behavior or a “phenomenon of collective suggestion” or “moral panic.” This is a sociological concept that refers to the phenomenon of masses of people becoming distressed about a perceived — usually unreal or exaggerated — threat portrayed in catastrophizing terms by the media.
Social media has allowed this “mental illness” to spread everywhere; right into your living room and bed room. No corner left untouched.
After two hours of speeches and prayers at the vigil for the Muslim family that was killed, Imam Munir El-Kassem of London’s Islamic Centre of Southwest Ontario was invited to the stage to give closing remarks, in front of PM Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh and other elected officials and went on to attack the JEWS.
“There’s a reason why they say the world is a small village. Every country has a foreign policy. I just want to say, whatever is happening in Jerusalem and Gaza is related to whatever happened in London, Ontario. Period.”
The crowd could be heard cheering following El-Kassem’s remarks. No stone left unturned when it comes to the Jews.
Does that mean If Israel did not exist – this Muslim family would be alive?
This has to be a case of hate-based insanity. Right? Because if it is not insanity then it is brazen, pure, unedited, unadulterated hate for Jews for the crime of being Jewish.
Jew hatred has been with us for as long as the Jews have been a people – about 3500 years. Today, it’s different. Because today we have social media and the hate is at your fingertips 24/7.
One would have thought that after the Holocaust Jew hatred would go away – or at least move underground. But, no. It is everywhere. There is no shame in Jew hatred-no calls of racist. No doxing or canceling. No naming and shaming. It must be mental.
Antiracism and Antisemitism
Last month, the Manhattan Institute invited Bari Weiss and me to participate in an online discussion about the relationship between two growing trends in the U.S.: antiracism and antisemitism. It was a productive and at times provocative conversation. We ranged from midcentury antisemitism in Chicago to the recent conflict in Gaza, from Gayle King and Michelle Obama to Alice Walker’s regrettable antisemitic statements.
In other words, we had a lot to talk about. You’ll find a video of the conversation below, as well as a short transcript where we address the uncomfortable issue of antisemitic and anti-Asian acts perpetrated by Black people.
Israel Advocacy Movement: Fighting antisemitism with Arsen Ostrovsky, David Collier, Sussex Friends of Israel and IAM
Former US Antisemitism Envoy: US Lawmakers Need to Call Out Antisemitism
Gender Studies and Hamas - a contradiction in terms
Seeming to give proof to Orwell’s observation that some ideas are so stupid they could only have been thought of by intellectuals, yet another group of academics—this time faculty in some 120 Gender Studies departments—has, after the latest conflict in Gaza, followed the lead of various student governments, faculty, and other academic organizations by launching yet another attack in the cognitive war against Israel.Gracie to Tel Aviv? Eric Adams says he wants retirement home in Israel
With the characteristic pseudo-intellectual babble that currently dilutes the scholarly relevance of the social sciences and humanities, a “solidarity statement” issued by the Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC) pretentiously announced that “as gender studies departments in the United States, we are the proud benefactors of decades of feminist anti-racist, and anti-colonial activism that informs the foundation of our interdiscipline.”
“We center global social justice in our intersectional teaching, scholarship, and organizing.,” these moral termagants continued. “From Angela Davis we understand that justice is indivisible; we learn this lesson time and again from Black, Indigenous, Arab, and most crucially, Palestinian feminists, who know that ‘Palestine is a Feminist Issue.’”
"Palestine" may be a feminist issue in the addled minds of these academics, but, tellingly, they conveniently make no mention in their statement of the terrorist group Hamas which is singularly responsible for initiating the latest clash with Israel and which commits a war crime each time its militants launch a rocket toward civilian neighborhoods with the intention of murdering Jews.
And while these gender studies activists seem so concerned for the emotional and physical welfare of Palestinian Arab women, they do not mention any Israeli women in their statement or commiserate with the reality of living with a genocidal enemy at one’s border.
Eric Adams wants to spend his final days in the Promised Land!
The leading mayoral candidate says he loves Israel so much that he wants to buy a plot of land and retire in the Jewish State.
A Jewish weekly publication, Mishpacha, asked the Brooklyn borough president if he would be an advocate for Israel as have other mayors.
“I’ve visited Israel twice, I am going back again, and I am going to try to find a plot of land so it can be my retirement place. I love the people of Israel, the food, the culture, the dance, everything about Israel,” said Adams, who is vying with Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia in a tight three-way race where the Jewish vote could be a factor.
Asked what part of Israel he would choose, Adams said with a laugh, “In the Golan Heights.”
Israel captured the mountainous area from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and it remains part of the Jewish state. (h/t Jzaik)
I would watch a reality show of Eric Adams living in the Golan Heights. https://t.co/lBFLbWwMso
— Greg Pollowitz (@GPollowitz) June 22, 2021
‘109 Soon 110’: Jewish New York State Senator Anna Kaplan Targeted With Sinister Antisemitic, Misogynist Abuse
A Jewish New York State Senator has been targeted with viciously antisemitic and misogynistic hate mail in response to her promotion of COVID-19 vaccinations in the Long Island community she serves.Jewish Democrats Rise to Defend Rep. Ilhan Omar Over Israel, Hamas Comparison
Democratic Senator Anna Kaplan, who represents Nassau County in the Albany legislature, had recently mailed her constituents an information sheet regarding vaccines to counter the pandemic. One of the mail pieces was sent back to her office with a handwritten note that cited a coded antisemitic threat — “109 soon 110” — used by white supremacists.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the phrase refers to the false claim that Jews have been expelled in the past from 109 countries, and that the US or another country will shortly become the 110th.
The message accused Kaplan of lying about the vaccinations, recycling a conspiracy theory currently being pushed by anti-vaccination activists that more than 5,000 people died after receiving the shot. The anonymous writer then showered Kaplan with misogynistic abuse, calling her a “stupid, dumb, evil c__” and signing off with the antisemitic “109 soon 110” threat.
In a statement responding to the threat, Kaplan highlighted her background as the first refugee to be elected to the New York Senate. Born into a Jewish family — the Monahemis, in the Iranian city of Tabriz — Kaplan’s parents, fearing for their daughters safety, sent her to the US as an unaccompanied child refugee shortly after the 1979 Islamist revolution.
“This incident is a sad reminder that Nassau County is not immune to hatred and white supremacy, and it’s our responsibility as a community to forcefully reject this evil whenever it reveals itself among us,” Kaplan said on Tuesday. “As a former religious refugee who fled antisemitism in my birth country, I have seen first-hand how antisemitism begins to permeate a society and ultimately lead to violence against Jewish people.”
She continued: “That experience has taught me the importance of sounding the alarm against hate at every opportunity, and I hope this incident can be a teaching moment for all of us to remember that we can never stay silent in the face of hate.”
A number of Jewish Democrats leapt to the defense of Minnesota Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar in comments to Politico on Tuesday, over her prior comparison between Israel, the US, Hamas and the Taliban.Labour in freefall in Batley & Spen over ‘Starmer Zionist’ claim
On June 7, Omar shared video on Twitter of a prior exchange with Secretary of State Antony Blinken during House testimony, while adding, “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the US, Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice.”
The comments quickly drew criticism from members of both parties, including a group of 12 Jewish Democrats — who in a June 9 statement called the comparison “as offensive as it is misguided,” and argued that “false equivalencies give cover to terrorist groups.”
But without any penalty from her party and with other Democrats defending Omar’s remarks, left-wing Israel critics like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) have cast the aftermath as a foreign policy “victory” for them, Politico reported.
In 2019, when Omar made antisemitic statements about a Jewish conspiracy funding US support for Israel, a move to censure Omar was blocked by progressive Democrats and members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
This time, a handful of Democrats rose to defend Omar, including several Jewish members who did not sign the June 9 statement.
Labour is haemorrhaging support among previously loyal Muslim voters ahead of a crucial by-election over claims that Sir Keir Starmer’s party is “Zionist” and “supporting Israel every way it can”.Batley and Spen residents won’t vote Labour because of the ‘Zionist lobby’ and ‘lesbianism’
A Jewish News investigation on Tuesday discovered that in one key area of the West Yorkshire constituency of Batley and Spen, the number one issue at stake for the vast majority of the electorate is that of Palestine.
Batley – the seat’s largest town, and once a Labour stronghold – is now awash with pro-Palestine posters, along with campaign material in support of the notorious anti-Israel activist George Galloway.
One ex-Labour local voter claimed: “I’m voting for George because of his stance over Palestine.
“Starmer has been bought out by the Zionist lobby. They are the ones who backed his campaign to take over from Corbyn.
“People aren’t stupid. You can read about it on the internet.”
Another Batley resident admitted on Tuesday they had concerns that Galloway “was exploiting it (Palestine) for his own personal gain.”
But the man added: “It is Muslim thing – we are all passionate about freeing Palestine.
“I wouldn’t say it is a hatred of Israel. We just want to free Palestine. There can be two states.”
Meanwhile, another male insisted: “Georgeis a good thing – he is supporting Palestine.
“Labour is not backing them, they support the Israelis in every way.”
Residents in Batley and Spen have told the JC “lesbianism” and the “Zionist lobby” are reasons why they will abandon Labour at the constituency’s upcoming by-election.
One voter also criticised the Labour candidate Kim Leadbeater because she “spoke against Palestine”, adding that her sister, the murdered Batley and Spen MP Jo Cox, had spoken “favourably of Muslims and Palestine” but “they gave an English a pistol to kill her”.
Over two days the JC spoke to residents across the West Yorkshire constituency, covering areas including Hyrstand Road, Albion Street, Market Place, Town Street and Oak View.
One voter said that Labour leader Keir Starmer “follows the Zionist lobby” and that the party’s candidate Ms Leadbeater was promoting “male to male relations” within schools.
Residents – several of whom were speaking in Urdu - also voiced strong support for the independent candidate George Galloway.
Mr Galloway, who has previously heaped praise on the Assad regime in Syria, was sacked by talkRADIO over an alleged antisemitic tweet last year.
The former MP for Bradford West also declared the city an “Israel-free zone” in 2014, prompting West Yorkshire Police to interview him under caution.
...But it's not actual Zionism of actual Jews which is demonized, it's imaginary Zionism which is constructed by antisemites in their imaginations and which is then pushed as being true. It is a Zionism which is equivalent to racism, apartheid, Nazism, genocide, and pure evil...
— David Hirsh (@DavidHirsh) June 23, 2021
If anyone is in any doubt, watch the video. https://t.co/dJtKBzvHdp
— David Hirsh (@DavidHirsh) June 23, 2021
Success for CAA as High Court quashes regulator’s decision that ‘Al Quds Day’ march leader Nazim Ali’s comments were not antisemitic, demanding regulator hold a new hearing
The High Court has today ruled that a decision by the General Pharmaceutical Council’s (GPhC) Fitness to Practice Committee in the case of Nazim Ali must be quashed and “determine[d] afresh” after an appeal by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) at the request of Campaign Against Antisemitism.
Mr Ali is the leader of the annual pro-Hizballah ‘Al Quds Day’ march in London who made antisemitic statements during the 2017 march. Since Mr Ali is a pharmacist Campaign Against Antisemitism brought a complaint to his professional regulator, the GPhC.
Last year, the GPhC’s Fitness to Practise Committee found that Mr Ali had brought the pharmaceutical profession into disrepute, following a two-week hearing that culminated on 5th November. Although the Fitness to Practise Committee had found that Mr Ali’s words were offensive, it did not find that the words had been antisemitic, and the panel let him off with only a formal warning.
Following the GPhC’s ruling, Campaign Against Antisemitism made representations to the PSA, which oversees disciplinary decisions made by the GPhC. We asked the PSA to use its statutory power to appeal the GPhC’s decision to the High Court under the National Health Service Reform and Healthcare Professionals Act 2002, on the grounds that the decision made by the GPhC panel was insufficient to protect the public because it was “irrational and perverse”.
In particular, we asked the PSA to review the GPhC’s ruling that Mr Ali’s statements were not antisemitic, including by attempting to distinguish between “antisemitism” and “antisemitic”. We have asked the PSA to consider the International Definition of Antisemitism, which has been adopted by the British Government, and the Guidance to all Judiciary in England and Wales produced by the Judicial College that makes clear that the word “Zionist” or “Zio” as a term of abuse has no place in a civilised society.
Breaking:
— David Collier (@mishtal) June 23, 2021
Nazim Ali is an antisemitic pharmacist who leads the chants at pro Hezbollah hatefests in London.
The Pharmaceutical Council had a sham hearing -found his words were not antisemitic.
The Professional Standards Auth just threw that vile judgment out.
Do over!
Win!
Sheffield Labour councillor under investigation for allegedly beseeching “O Allah, destroy Israel” on social media and claiming “Even the real Jews are anti-Zionists”
A Labour Party councillor in Sheffield is reportedly under investigation for allegedly posting on social media: “O Allah, destroy Israel. O Allah, have mercy on us Muslims.”Articles - Rubio, Manchin Reintroduce Legislation to Combat Anti-Israel BDS Campaign
Campaign Against Antisemitism previously reported that two anonymous Labour councillors in Sheffield were under investigation by the council and the Labour Party, and it appears that Cllr Abdul Khayum may be one of them.
Cllr Khayum, who is also a magistrate, is reported to have shared another post as well with the caption: “Even the real Jews are anti-Zionists.”
Sheffield Council releases a list of complaints to the standards board every year but does not name individuals.
The Director of Legal and Governance at Sheffield Council said: “All complaints received are taken seriously. We are unable to confirm details of any complaint or individuals identified in order to protect all affected parties.”
Sheffield City Council has adopted the International Definition of Antisemitism.
"U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) reintroduced the Combating BDS Act of 2021, legislation to help state and local governments stand up to the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to delegitimize the Jewish state of Israel by inflicting economic damage and starve it of commerce. The bill would increase protections for state and local governments in America that divest from, prohibit investment in, or otherwise restrict contracting with firms that knowingly engage in commerce-related or investment-related BDS activity attacking Israel, as well as persons doing business in Israel or Israeli-controlled territories...Zara’s Head Designer Says She’s Receiving ‘Thousands’ of Death Threats for Comments About Middle East Conflict
'The boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement is the single most destructive campaign of economic warfare facing the Jewish state of Israel today,' said Rubio. 'Amid a rising tide of anti-Semitism, it's critical that we stand shoulder to shoulder with our closest democratic ally in the Middle East. This bipartisan bill, which previously passed the Senate, would mark an important step toward bringing an end to the BDS movement's discriminatory efforts.'
'The bipartisan Combating BDS Act is a step towards ensuring individual states have the right to pass laws that prevent business transactions with the anti-Israeli BDS movement,' said Manchin. 'I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join this bipartisan legislation to support individual states and our valued ally, Israel.'"
Vanessa Perilman, the Jewish head designer of Zara’s women’s department, told The Algemeiner on Friday that she has received a torrent of death threats following her conversation last week with a Palestinian model about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which prompted a condemnation from the Spanish apparel company and calls for a boycott.Palestinian-American doctor draws harsh criticism for anti-Israel posts
On June 9, Perilman, who lives in Spain, engaged in a private conversation on Instagram with Berlin-based Palestinian male model Qaher Harhash about tensions between Israel and the Palestinians. She responded to an Instagram post Harhash uploaded about Hamas and said it contains “lies” about Israel. She added, “Maybe if your people were educated, then they wouldn’t blow up hospitals and schools that Israel helped to pay for in Gaza. Israelis don’t teach children to hate nor throw stones at soldiers as your people do.”
She also told him she was “very upset that you are spreading lies about Israel” and wrote comments in support of the Jewish state. She later publicly apologized in an Instagram story.
Harhash took screenshots of some of their dialogue and shared the images on his Instagram stories, some of which he now has saved as an Instagram highlight. Shortly after, social media users began calling for a boycott of Zara and Perilman’s firing from the company.
In a post she published on several networks earlier this week, Wishah wrote: "You will not censor us anymore. Bomb our media buildings, we have phones. Bribe the mainstream media, and we have our little social platforms. From our streets, from the windows, from the destruction, we will expose you to the world."Philadelphia food festival canceled after backlash over Israeli-owned vendor
She proceeded by accusing Israel of perpetrating genocide against the Palestinian people and "killing Palestinian children."
"Through our small platforms, we undress your ugly souls and watch your barbaric and desperate reactions. We feel your fear. Fear of a crash. A country based on atrocities, inhumanity, racism and cannibalism will not survive long," she wrote, concluding the post with a threat: "Hey Israel, your end will come sooner than you think."
Wishah is the daughter of the former head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Jaber Wishah, who was imprisoned in Israel between 1985 and 1999 for involvement in the murder of an Israeli soldier.
The hospital said in a statement it was investigating the matter.
In another post, Wishah revealed she had been called in for a conversation with Human Resources and wrote: "I told my boss I would not stop writing posts or talking about Palestine. This is my life and this is my struggle. The false accusations against me and my labeling as antisemitic will not lead them anywhere."
She also posted a picture of herself crying and wrote: "It hurts to be accused of lying just because I dare to tell the truth. The Zionists have a large and influential lobby that supports them in the US and everything is based on money buying everything, even my silence."
A food festival in the Kensington section of Philadelphia was canceled Sunday after controversy over an Israeli-owned food truck that was scheduled to take part in the event.
Nonprofits Eat Up the Borders and Sunflower Philly, both organizers of the "Taste of Home" festival, disinvited Moshava from participating after being told about planned protests and threats of violence regarding the Israeli vendor's involvement.
After the decision not to include Moshava sparked outrage, organizers decided to cancel the entire event.
"Our mistake this time, with not only our event partners but in general, was not educating ourselves. And not properly making sure that everyone is properly represented," said Melvin Powell, executive director of Sunflower Philly. "So that's where we made the decision to cancel the event."
Sunflower Philly wrote on Instagram that it will "continue to host events with people of all races, nationalities and sexual orientations who are aligned with our mission."
Moshava, which serves Israeli cuisine, posted in a statement on its Instagram page: "Although we were disappointed with how the situation was greatly mishandled, we do not believe the organizers' intention came from an antisemitic place, but the threats they were receiving to their event were.
They promote the view that Israel is a unique evil, is inherently and essentially racist and apartheid, should be dismantled and boycotted.
— David Hirsh (@DavidHirsh) June 22, 2021
And that effort to oppose antisemitism is Zionist conspiracy to silence criticism of Israel.
They are partly responsible for the result. https://t.co/AYxOjaRccA
A student speaks at @WheatleySchool Graduation event & slips in an #antisemitic claim about #Palestinian “Ethnic Cleansing”. #Jewish students are horrified. The school apologizes & comes under attack for doing the right thing! Let us all #SpeakUp & CALL OUT the LIES! @benshapiro pic.twitter.com/zx9WbMmnad
— Shahar Azani (@ShaharAzani) June 23, 2021
PreOccupiedTerritory: Palestinian Activist Thinks Image Of Plant On Coin Means Place Belongs To Plant (satire)
An advocate for removing Jewish sovereignty from the Holy Land in favor of an Arab Islamic state, who also believes that the existence of British-issue currency from the Mandate period before Israel declared statehood – currency that features the word “Palestine” – establishes an irrefutable claim on the land, now argues, therefore, that two-thousand-year-old mintages depicting grain, trees, and other agricultural bounty demonstrate unassailable evidence that Palestine must be ruled by the descendants of those plants, and that of course Palestinians are those descendants.Jonathan Tobin: Journalism is dying in broad daylight
‘Ablah Makhdue, 30, has long adduced British Mandate of Palestine coins with the world “Palestine” on them in three languages – Arabic, English, and Hebrew – as proof that a country called Palestine predates the State of Israel, established in 1948, and that Israel therefore has no legitimacy because it took Palestine’s land. But his discovery of ancient coins stamped with the likenesses of wheat and other produce of the land, such as date palm trees, has forced him to modify the claim of Palestinian precedence: instead of the land belonging to a country called Palestine, as twentieth-century coinage suggests, the ancient currency indicates that the produce possesses title to the land, and that Palestinian Arabs, axiomatically entitled to the place no matter what, must therefore be descended from those original cereal and fruit crops.
“I’ve always known that the argument from pre-state-of-Israel coinage is simplistic,” he acknowledged. “I know it’s really more complicated than that, but the point stands: the coins show what was here first. If that means we have to modify our national claim to fit the older coins, so be it. Changing our national claim of origin and indigeneity is old hat for us: we’re Philistines, no wait we’re Canaanites, no wait we’re divinely-sanctioned rightful Islamic conquerors, no we’re actually the same people the Jews claim to be because we never left and they’re Khazar fakers from Europe. Switching to ‘we’re wheat and dates’ isn’t any more incredible.”
For the last 40 years, many activists have worked hard to monitor press coverage of the Middle East and to call out anti-Israel bias masquerading as objective news. For many years, those who performed this task were routinely met with denials by journalists who sought to turn the tables on those criticizing their work.The NY Times Casts Violence Against Jewish Civilians as “Resistance”
Many in the press responded by saying that those who discerned unfair, ignorant or blatantly false information in their articles or broadcast segments weren't advocating for fairness. What they actually wanted, they responded, was coverage whose bias was for the Jewish state, rather than against it.
There was some truth in that. Most consumers of journalism, regardless of the topic, tend to prefer outlets that confirm their pre-existing biases and opinions as opposed to that which challenges them or at least makes them examine their assumptions.
But that defense didn't stand up to scrutiny.
The trouble wasn't just that the press was faced with a tough task in telling stories about events in which many people have a vested interest. With respect to a great deal of the coverage of Israel, and especially about the conflict with the Palestinians, the problem was that the accounts were frequently based on a false narrative in which the Jews were oppressors of downtrodden Arabs.
Instead of presenting their audiences with a coherent view of a complex century-long war against Zionism and an effort to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet, many in the press served up easy-to-understand stories about underdogs and bad guys.
Taken out of the context of history – and by that, I don't mean just what happened in the 1920s or even in 1948 or 1967, but also the Palestinians' repeated rejections of peace and an independent state in 2000, 2001 and 2008 because it would have meant accepting Israel's permanence – what you often get is a caricature of reality that ignores anything beyond images of Palestinian victims.
The fact that it reinforced myths that essentially demonized or delegitimized Israelis and Jews while robbing Palestinians of any agency about their fate was more often a consequence of lazy journalism and a lack of detailed knowledge about the subject.
How might the paper have referred to attacks on the kibbutz, if not as “resistance”? Many describe armed assaults on a civilian community as “terrorism.” It was certainly an “attack.” And indeed, those are the words the same newspaper used in its contemporaneous reporting on such incidents. “Terror in Palestine Causes More Deaths,” read the headline to a December 1938 New York Times piece that spoke of a revival “in Arab terrorism in Palestine” and reported the ambush and killing of three Jewish supernumeraries. An April 1938 Times piece detailing “an attack…by armed Arabs on Tel Amal” explained that “four armed Arabs tried to penetrate the settlement while thirty others began firing from near-by hills.” The attackers were described as “brigands.” These were among of several deadly attacks on the kibbutz.Financial Times fails to correct clearly false claim over marching 'settlers'
When we do hear attacks against innocent Jews described as “resistance,” it normally doesn’t come from news reporters that promise objectivity, but rather in the laudatory self-descriptions of antisemitic terror groups like Hamas, whose leader recently spoke of the “resistance” targeting Israeli cities with indiscriminate rocket fire, and which has dubbed its suicide bombings against crowded buses as legitimate “resistance.”
This isn’t the first time the New York Times sterilized anti-Jewish actors. The newspaper, for example, once scrubbed the word “terror” from a story about the killing of the leader of a terrorist group. Last year, Kershner and another Times reporter described a notorious partnership between Nazi Germany and Amin al Husseini, a virulently antisemitic Palestinian leader that shared Nazi goals, merely as a collaboration targeting “Zionism” as opposed to Jews. And several years ago, a Times reporter referred to a balisong (or butterfly knife) waved by a Palestinian attacker as a “boy scout” knife.
On June 16th, we complained to the Financial Times over an article by their Jerusalem correspondent Mehul Srivastava published that day (“Israeli PM Naftali Bennett orders fresh air strikes in Gaza Strip”) which included the following:Fearing attacks, Jews to build 'City of Torah' near Mexico City
As we argued in our complaint, it’s of course impossible to know where the thousands of Israelis who participated in the march reside, and the chance that all of the marchers live in settlements is practically zero. In fact, the last sentence of the article included a comment from an marcher who noted that he traveled to the event from an Israeli coastal city. We’ve sent two emails to the Middle East editor, Andrew England, neither of which elicited a response. Note that though Financial Times opted out of being regulated by IPSO, their Editorial Code of Practice states that their journalists and editors are held accountable to the the code of practice used by IPSO, which includes the following:
The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.
A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected promptly and with due prominence, and – where appropriate – an apology published.
Jews in Mexico are building a so-called 'City of Torah' for young observant Jewish families and students who cannot afford an apartment in the capital.Polish Draft Bill Could Limit WW2 Property Restitution Claims
Ciudad de la Tora is being built on an area that was purchased outside the Ixtapan de la Salle town, 120 km (70 miles) south of Mexico City.
Another reason for establishing the new city is the situation in the capital, which boasts Mexicos' largest Jewish community. Jewish residents there say their children are afraid to leave their homes lest they become targets of antisemitic attacks.
Some 120 houses are to be constructed on the property, all of which have already been registered for by Jewish families.
The community held a cornerstone laying ceremony for the community on Sunday. Some 5,000 residents of Mexico City attended the ceremony, as well as rabbis and Jewish leaders from the United States and prominent Haredi singers.
The new town draws inspiration from Rabbi Aharon Kotler, who brought several yeshiva students from New York to study in Lakewood, New Jersey, in the 1940s and turned it into a hub of Orthodox Judaism.
Developers plan to build a yeshiva on the site, Torat Eliyahu, and dorms for students to live in.
Poland’s parliament will discuss on Wednesday a bill which could make it harder for Jews to recover property seized by Nazi German occupiers and kept by postwar communist rulers, potentially straining Warsaw’s relations with Israel and the United States.Belgium to remove military protecting Jews even amidst rising antisemitism
Poland was home to one of the world’s biggest Jewish communities until it was almost entirely wiped out by the Nazis during World War Two. Jewish former property owners and their descendants have been campaigning for compensation since the fall of communism in 1989.
Poland is the only EU country that has not legislated on property restitution despite repeated calls to do so from the United States.
In 2015, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that there must be a deadline set, after which faulty administrative decisions can no longer be challenged. In March, a parliamentary committee proposed a bill to implement that ruling with deadlines ranging from 10-30 years. Critics say that would put a time limit on requests for restitution.
The US chargé d’affaires expressed his concerns in a letter to the parliament speaker, Polish media reported.
“Our understanding is that this draft bill would effectively make restitution or compensation for Holocaust or Communist era property unobtainable for a large percentage of claims,” Bix Aliu wrote, according to Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily.
The parliamentary press office confirmed it had received such a letter, though it did not release the text. The US embassy did not comment.
The Belgian government announced on Wednesday that it will remove military security from Jewish institutions across the country. The move comes amidst rising antisemitism across the country, especially following the coronavirus and Israel's conflict with Gaza last month. The government provided no alternative plan to protect the institutions, such as placing responsibility for security on the Belgian police. Troops began protecting Belgian cities in 2015 after the terrorist attacks at the Charlie Hebdo offices and a kosher supermarket. In 2020, the new Belgian government came to power on a campaign platform of a "gradual withdrawal" of the military from urban centers.Retired French General Investigated for Letting Out Antisemitic ‘Dog Whistle’ on Live TV
However, members of the Jewish community in Belgium expressed fears over the decreased protection.
Regina Slozny, president of the Forum of Jewish Organizations in Antwerp, stressed that "the decision of the Belgian government increases the threats and strengthens the feeling of insecurity among the Jewish population in Belgium."
In addition, the chairman of the Association of Jewish Organizations in Europe (EJA), Rabbi Menachem Margolin, wrote a letter to Annelies Verlinden, the Minister of the Interior of Belgium, urging her to reconsider the decision "precisely when the antisemitic threats are at its peak and the harassment of Jews is becoming a daily struggle."
"In the Corona year, and especially in light of the security incidents between Israel and Hamas last month, we are witnessing a significant increase in threats and assaults against Jews in Belgium as well as across Europe. We do not understand the decision and the timing and are particularly concerned about the Belgian precedent," Rabbi Margolin said in response.
A retired French army general is facing possible criminal charges following an appearance on a popular TV show in which he let out a crudely antisemitic “dog whistle” in front of a shocked presenter.Investigation finds Massachusetts high school football team, whose coach was suspended over antisemitic on-field calling, may have been using anti-Jewish racist language for a decade
The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday that it was opening an investigation into Gen. Dominique Delawarde, following his comments last Friday on the “Morandini Live” program on French broadcaster CNews.
Delawarde made his inflammatory remarks during a live exchange about ownership of the media. Smiling broadly, he told journalist Claude Posternak, “You know who controls the media pack in the world and in France. Who controls the Washington Post, the New York Times, BFMTV and all the newspapers.”
Delawarde then added sarcastically: “Who are these people?”
Pressed by Posternak as to whom he was referring, Delawarde answered, “This is a community that you know very well.” At this point, the program’s main presenter, Jean-Marc Morandini, intervened to take Delawarde off the air.
French Jewish organizations denounced the former general’s comment. Delawarde had shown “his true face — racist and antisemitic,” the French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) tweeted.
An independent investigation has found that a high school American football team in Massachusetts whose coach was recently suspended after the team used antisemitic language during a game may in fact have been using anti-Jewish racist language for a decade.153 Texas medics fired or quit after comparing vaccine order to Nazi experiments
Duxbury High School, 30 miles from Boston, “severed ties” with Head Coach David Maimaron earlier this year following the allegations. Mr Maimaron, also a special-needs teacher, was placed on paid administrative leave pending the investigation. The school also hired attorney and educational consultant Edward Mitnick to assist its investigation into reports that team members used the offensive language – including a reference to Auschwitz – in its on-field play-calling. The words “rabbi” and “dreidel” were also heard.
In recent years Duxbury has been one of the most successful teams in Massachusetts, with five state championships since 2005. In a statement, the administration said: “The outrage is real, warranted, and we hear it. The fact that members of our school community used such offensive language…is horrifying and disappointing.”
District Superintendent John Antonucci noted that the offensive words had not been directed at the opposing team or at a particular player.
Mr Maimaron released a statement in which he apologised for “the insensitive, crass and inappropriate language used in the game on 12th March.” The language was “careless, unnecessary…hurtful and…inexcusable,” he said.
Mr Mitnick conducted the investigation at the request of Duxbury Public Schools. After interviewing dozens of witnesses, he released a 56-page report tfinding that there was “sufficient credible evidence to conclude that offensive and inappropriate conduct occurred” in violation of numerous school district policies, and that the problem was systematic and potentially dated as far back as 2010. It is believed that plays called “rabbit” soon evolved in “rabbi”, and other Jewish terms followed.
More than 150 employees at a Houston hospital system who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine have been fired or resigned after a judge dismissed an employee lawsuit over the vaccine requirement.
A spokesperson for Houston Methodist hospital system said 153 employees either resigned in the two-week suspension period or were terminated on Tuesday.
The case over how far health care institutions can go to protect patients and others against the coronavirus has been closely watched. It’s believed to be the first of its kind in the US. But it won’t be the end of the debate.
Earlier this month, a federal judge threw out the lawsuit filed by 117 employees over the requirement. The hospital system’s decision in April to require the vaccine for workers made it the first major US health care system to do so.
The Houston Methodist employees who filed the lawsuit likened their situation to medical experiments performed on unwilling victims in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. US District Judge Lynn Hughes called that comparison “reprehensible” and said claims made in the lawsuit that the vaccines are experimental and dangerous are false.
@Eve_Barlow kosher restaurant on Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles that was vandalized on Tuesday morning pic.twitter.com/fHP5muFFVV
— Jeffrey Rabin (@jeffreyrabin) June 23, 2021
Roma Boys Help Restore Forgotten Slovak Jewish Cemetery
A local enthusiast and several boys from the Roma community have started restoring a forgotten Jewish cemetery in the Slovak village of Vinodol, bringing back a piece of the village’s history.Influencers from Abraham Accord countries find common ground with Israelis
The cemetery, neighbouring a Catholic one in Vinodol, 50 miles east of Bratislava, was overgrown and tombstones had fallen and been submerged below ground. It had been disused since before World War Two.
Like many others in the central European country, the community was wiped out in the Holocaust and the site had been left neglected and possibly also damaged.
About 105,000 Slovak Jews were killed in the Holocaust, according to the Central Association of Jewish Communities, and today the community numbers around 3,000.
Vladimir Spanik, a 73-year old member of the town council, discovered the cemetery and leads the restoration effort, joined by volunteering Roma children. Like Jews, Roma were targeted by Nazis in the Holocaust, which Spanik said gave the work an extra dimension.
Yousif Mohamed, 20, of Manama, Bahrain is also known as @Yousifmohd2 on Instagram, and has around 1,300 followers combined on various social media platforms. He is also one of the first Bahrainis to visit to Israel. The social media influencer, who lives with his family in the kingdom’s capital city and hopes to work on tourism development overseas, is used to documenting his life over the internet and has braced for the repercussions of posting pictures of himself in Israel.Israeli Researchers Produce Water from Air in Polluted Area, Comply with WHO Drinking Water Standards
“I am young, but you're never too young to want to try and change the world,” he told The Media Line. “I faced a bit of pressure and criticism online probably due to being one of the first Bahrainis to visit Israel, but I think it's expected that people need some time to open their minds.”
“Ignorance can sometimes hinder us and it was because of this that I decided to visit and see things for myself, and I'm really happy that I've taken that step,” he added.
Mohamed is one 25 social media influencers from three of the four countries that signed the Abraham Accords who met in Israel to find common ground with Israelis and act as emissaries for peace.
In a trip that was originally scheduled during last month’s Gaza-Israel flare up, young people from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco flew back from the Jewish state Sunday after a week-long tour of the country organized by Eyal Biram, founder of the Israel-Is organization, a nonprofit founded four years ago to enhance Israel’s relationship with other countries through young people meeting each other on a personal level.
In a first-of-its-kind study conducted at Tel Aviv University, researchers found that water generated from the air in the heart of an urban area, the city of Tel Aviv, complied with all of the strict drinking water standards set both by the State of Israel and by the World Health Organization (WHO).Quentin Tarantino Talks About Living in Israel During Pandemic, Shows Off Hebrew Skills on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’
The researchers examined the quality of the water produced from the water vapor in the urban atmosphere, which is characterized by industry and massive construction, and found that it was suitable for drinking.
The test was performed using a machine developed by the Israeli Watergen company, which partnered in the study.
The study was conducted by a team of experts from the hydrochemistry laboratory at the Porter School of Environment and Earth Sciences at Tel Aviv University, led by graduate student Offir Inbar and supervised by Prof. Dror Avisar, Head of TAU’s Moshe Mirilashvili Institute for Applied Water Studies. Also participating in the study was Watergen’s research and development team, Prof. Alexandra Chudnovsky, and researchers from Germany.
The researchers explained that the growing global shortage of clean drinking water requires “thinking outside the box” and developing new technologies for producing potable water. The Earth’s atmosphere is a vast and renewable source of water, which may be an alternative drinking water resource. The atmosphere contains billions of tons of water, 98% of which is in a gaseous state as water vapor.
Film director Quentin Tarantino said on Tuesday night that he was glad to be stuck in Israel during the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than another country.Quentin Tarantino on Baby Boy, Living in Tel Aviv & Movie Guessing Game
The “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” filmmaker was a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and talked about currently living in Tel Aviv with his wife, Israeli actress Daniella Pick, and their 15-month-old son, Leo. He said he originally planned on splitting his time between Israel and Los Angeles, but due to the coronavirus pandemic he was forced to remain in Israel.
After Kimmel praised Israel for getting COVID-19 under control “pretty quickly,” Tarantino replied, “Well look, I would rather not have been out of my own country against my will for a year. However, if I’m going to be in another country, the country that handled COVID the best is probably the best country to be in.”
Quentin also discussed learning Hebrew alongside his son. He said he joins Leo in watching Hebrew-language TV programs for babies, and has already learned how to say various animals in Israel’s native language. Tarantino added that so far his son can only say “aba,” the Hebrew word for dad.
Quentin talks about his amazing fans, living in Tel Aviv, learning Hebrew, his fifteen-month-old son, writing the book “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” after making the movie, some of his favorite novelizations, and he attempts to guess old movies by only hearing the description on the back of the VHS box.
