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Monday, April 04, 2022

04/04 Links Pt2: The incredible shrinking MESA; ‘March of the Living’ Resumes After 2-Year Hiatus: ‘Almost the Last Opportunity to March With Holocaust Survivors’

From Ian:

Martin Kramer: The incredible shrinking MESA
The membership of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has endorsed a resolution to boycott Israeli academe. The general referendum took place over nearly two months, and the final count came to 768 for a boycott, 167 against.

My longtime readers won’t be surprised. I saw it coming eight years ago, and just wish it had happened sooner. That’s because I’m not a member or a well-wisher of MESA. I’m pleased it’s finally been exposed for what it’s mostly become: a pro-Palestine, anti-Israel political society whose members just happen to be academics.

I’m not the only one who saw it coming. MESA has a category for institutional membership—mostly university Middle East centers, which pay $1,100 a year for the privilege. A growing list of institutional members has always been a badge of prestige for the association. In 2013, MESA’s institutional members included 53 North American universities and university-based programs. As of this moment, there are no more than 31, and maybe less.

Most of the dropouts are state universities. Over the past decade, many state legislatures have adopted anti-boycott laws, which prohibit state funding for boycotters. Paying dues to MESA with taxpayers’ money might become a problem, and while the anti-boycott laws are open to interpretation, who wants to contest one over MESA? I imagine many of these institutions saw the MESA boycott coming, and decided to slip out the back door, by not renewing their membership.

As a result, MESA has been totally swept out of the southwest. The universities of Texas, Utah, and Arizona, all seats of major Middle East centers, left MESA, as did Brigham Young, a major center for Arabic study. Arizona, it’s worth noting, had hosted the headquarters of MESA since the early 1980s; a few years ago, it gave MESA notice. (The state of Arizona has perhaps the strongest anti-boycott legislation in the country.)




Why Chinese Media Keeps Referencing the Holocaust
China’s Shanghai Holocaust narrative leaves out important facts that do a disservice to survivors, Ainslie said.

“The reason why the Jews of Shanghai were able to survive was not due to the Chinese state,” she said.

The current Chinese state — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — did not exist until 1949. The city at the time had been ruled by several different powers under the Shanghai Municipal Council, Shanghai’s joint governing body at the time. But the influx of Jews arrived in 1938, as power over the city shifted from Chinese to Japanese hands.

“​​In short, the chaos created by the war in China made the Jewish refugees’ flight to Shanghai possible,” Gao Bei of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, wrote in 2011.

The number of Jews China claims to have rescued — 30,000 — also differs from the number most scholars agree upon: around 20,000, according to the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum.

China began exhibiting a renewed interest in the Holocaust and Judaism after 1992, when China and Israel established official diplomatic relations. At the time, China’s main native Jewish group, a community of fewer than 1,000 in the city of Kaifeng, were able to practice their religion relatively openly and receive visits from Westerners who traveled there to teach them Hebrew.

In 2007, a museum commemorating the Shanghai Jewish refugees opened at the Ohel Moshe synagogue. In 2020, it expanded to more than double its previous size, likely a bid for better international recognition of the site, experts say. Since its opening, the museum has served as a platform for constructing links between Israel and the PRC, either cultural or economic.

The Kaifeng Jews have since been forced underground as a result of government repression of many religious groups.

“At all points, official Chinese interest in Jews and Jewish history and the Holocaust had a political connection with state policies,” Hochstadt said.
Guardian promotes terror-affiliated Gaza NGO
In fact, the Guardian fails to reveal that though Youni’s group, Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, claims to promote human rights, its board members, officials and employees, NGO Monitor has documented, “include members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Hamas”, both designated as terrorist organisations by the US and the EU.

In October 2016, Younis himself led a meeting which included representatives from several terror groups, including Hamas and PFLP.

Board members, officials and employees of the NGO also speak frequently at PFLP events, with some posting material on their social media accounts promoting terror and using antisemitic imagery. One Facebook post by top Al-Mezan official Hussein Hammad on October 22, 2015, during the Stabbing Intifada, showed a caricature of a Jew looking behind his back in fear of a stabbing attack (snapshot below).

Hammad added his own comments:
“When the settler looks behind his back on all the streets… When the occupying power encourages its residents to acquire weapons… when an occupier intentionally kills another occupier for suspicion… It means that we are on the right track. The uprising has begun and will not stop… Glory to the martyrs.”

You can read this NGO Monitor report demonstrating how Palestinians affiliated with Al-Mezan have clear ties to Hamas and PFLP, with additional examples of them praising and promoting terror attacks against Israeli civilians.

There are, thankfully, many genuine rights defenders around the world, brave advocates for justice who risk their lives taking on totalitarian regimes – to promote democracy, free speech, tolerance and other truly liberal values. Al-Mazen’s band of terror supporting crusaders who actively oppose the human rights of Jews represent the polar opposite of such human rights advocacy.
Haaretz Corrects After Misidentifying Israeli Arab Victim as Palestinian
CAMERA’s Israel office yesterday prompted correction after Haaretz‘s English edition misidentified an Israeli Arab killed by an explosive device as Palestinian. The English edition’s digital headline had stated: “Palestinian Killed by Explosive Device, Found Dead on Side of Road in Israel.”

Similarly, the headline in yesterday’s English print edition (page 2) stated: “Palestinian killed by explosive device, found dead by road.”

The text of the article itself also misidentified the victim as Palestinian, with the opening sentence erring: “A Palestinian man was killed by an explosive device and found dead on the side of the road on Thursday.”

But as the next paragraph accurately reported, the “Palestinian” in question was “Amir Bedas from the village of Jatt in the Triangle area.” In other words, he was an Israeli Arab, not Palestinian.

Haaretz‘s international English-readers are not necessarily well informed about Israeli geography, and might have no clue that Jatt, and the Triangle Area, are inside Israel, not the West Bank. The inaccurate “Palestinian” label further confounds and misleads this less knowledgeable readership.

The Hebrew edition refrains from calling him Palestinian, precisely referring to him as a “resident of Jatt.”
BBC report portrays UK designated terror group as ‘militants’
A report headlined “Three Palestinian militants killed by Israeli forces in West Bank clash” appeared on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page on the afternoon of March 2nd.

Despite the fact that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has been a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK for over two decades, in that headline and in the report itself the operatives and the organisation to which they belonged are portrayed using the terms “militants” and “militant group”, with the sole use of the word terrorism in the entire report coming in a reference to a counter-terrorism unit.
“Three Palestinian militants have been killed in a gun battle with Israeli security forces near Jenin in the occupied West Bank, Israeli police say.

A statement said the Palestinians were on their way to carry out an attack in a car on Friday night and that they fired on a counter-terrorism unit that was trying to arrest them.

Four Israeli troops were wounded in the ensuing clash, one of them seriously.

The Islamic Jihad militant group confirmed the dead men were members.”

The BBC’s report recycles the often-seen notion of different ‘wings’ to terrorist organisations while uncritically amplifying the PIJ’s incitement:
“”We mourn our heroic martyrs and we assert that our fighters will continue to combat the enemy,” it [sic – the PIJ] armed wing said.”

The article also recycles a theme previously seen in reports about recent terror attacks:
“The violence comes amid heightened tensions at the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan”

“The violence has come in the run-up to a sensitive time when religious holidays will overlap for Muslims, Jews and Christians. Saturday is the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.”

Once again no mention is made of terror groups’ use of Ramadan to incite violence.
Wire Cutters What LA Times, Guardian Snipped About Palestinian Casualties
Most news outlets rely on wire services to supplement their own journalists’ original reporting. News agency clients are free to alter wire copy, and often shorten the article to fit the constraints of print publications, or round out the story with additional information provided by their own reporters.

But what about the removal of key facts that are essential to the article’s main point?

There’s no journalistic justification to do so. Worse, such steps can grossly mislead readers about the story’s basic information.

Take, for example, the Guardian and Los Angeles Times treatment — or, more precisely, abuse — of wire agency articles about Palestinian terrorists killed in recent gun battles with Israeli troops. Both media outlets published copy which removed essential facts from the original wire service stories indicating the casualties’ status as combatants.

Thus, as activist Yisrael Medad tweeted March 31, The Guardian ran the following headline above an Associated Press article: “Israeli forces raid a refugee camp in the West Bank, killing two Palestinians.” Strikingly, the original AP headline highlights the fact that the two were killed in a gun battle, and thus were not innocent Palestinians, as one could wrongly conclude from The Guardian‘s incomplete and therefore misleading headline. AP’s informative headline reads: “Israel raids West Bank, 2 Palestinians killed in gun battle.”

At 13 words, The Guardian‘s less informative headline is longer than AP’s more fact-filled headline (10 words), so brevity cannot possibly be cited as motive for the faulty editing.

After Medad called out The Guardian for the excision of key information, the British news outlet subsequently revised the headline to acknowledge: “Two Palestinians die in gun battle as Israel raids Jenin refugee camp.”
CBC Radio Program Whitewashes and Ignores Palestinian Terrorist Attacks
Over the last two weeks, 11 innocent people in Israel have been murdered in terrorist attacks. The attacks have included a car-ramming and stabbing spree in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva which killed four, a shooting in the port city of Hadera saw two murdered, and a Palestinian terrorist fired a machine gun at passersby, murdering five of them, in the city of Bnei Brak.

But listeners to the April 2 episode of “Day 6,” a CBC Radio program guest hosted by Peter Armstrong (former Middle East bureau chief), would not have heard any of that. The segment entitled “Digitizing Palestinian music from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s,” featured an interview with Palestinian actor Mo’min Swaitat, who in 2020 uncovered a trove of Palestinian music from the 1980’s, including the song “Intifada” by Palestinian singer Riad Awwad.

Even before the interview began, Armstrong introduced the segment with a significant whitewashing of recent events. He started by telling listeners that two Palestinians were recently killed in the city of Jenin as a “new wave of violence hits the region,” and that the topic was timelier than ever. But not once did Armstrong mention the three recent terror attacks, or the 11 people in Israel murdered by Arab terrorists. All listeners were told by Armstrong were Israeli claims that (emphasis added) “Israel targeted what it said were militant networks involved in a series of deadly attacks in Israel.” Nor did Armstrong give any context to the two Palestinians killed in Jenin, such as that they were engaged in a firefight with Israeli soldiers, and that troops had entered Jenin to search for specific suspects related to the recent attacks in Israel.

Rather, listeners were given the impression that two presumably innocent Palestinians “kids” were killed in Jenin with no apparent rationale, and that Israel acted seemingly unprovoked.
Vote for Orban or party with neo-Nazi record? Hungary’s Jews torn on Sunday election
Hungary is holding one of the most dramatic general elections in its history, so Peter Pretz has given some serious consideration to how he’s going to vote on April 3.

The 64-year-old Jewish father of five from Budapest has finally reached a decision: He’s voting for the Two Tailed Dog Party, which was created in 2006 as a parody, with campaign promises of free beer and eternal life.

“I’d rather vote for a real party,” said Pretz, who said he takes “the right to vote very seriously” because he grew up under communism. “But for the first time, I’m left without a choice.”

This sentiment, which many Hungarian Jews seem to share, is the result of a new political reality in Hungary.

The right-wing populist government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban is in a tight race for power with a newly established alliance of opposition parties — whose largest contingent comes from the far-right Jobbik party, which many consider a neo-Nazi movement.

The alliance, called United for Hungary, includes groups from across the political spectrum, and it has taken the unorthodox step of announcing a prime minister candidate before the election, selecting a centrist without a lot of political baggage in a clear signal that it intends to govern from the middle if it unseats Orban.

But that doesn’t change the fact that success for the opposition alliance would give Jobbik, Hungary’s second-largest party, more power than it has ever amassed before.

Jobbik, whose critics charge is institutionally racist, is responsible for multiple antisemitic scandals, and Mazsihisz, Hungary’s largest Jewish group, has called the party “antisemitic” and “fascist.”
Ahead of Passover, Homeland Security Ups Efforts to Protect US Jewish Institutions
The United States federal government is ready to help ahead of the Passover holiday as too many Jewish institutions are wondering if they'll be next. Too many in Brooklyn, NY, and elsewhere already deal with the reality of antisemitic attacks that keep on coming.

Marcus Coleman, director of the US Department of Homeland Security Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, sat down one-on-one with JNS to explain what resources are available for those looking to secure their facilities and worshippers, and what steps can be taken to ensure that this Passover is a safe one for American Jews.

"We had a conversation last week with faith leaders and really focused on practical steps to do self-assessment for facilities – how to take care of your people – and then just some reminders. I think one of the things that I've been humbled by in speaking with faith leaders across the country is that a lot of places still are operating at maybe 50% capacity, or they have just a few people coming in,"

"We know those folks are preparing for the spring. They're expecting big crowds. So, we want to provide all available resources from the federal government to help make sure that they can gather safely," said Coleman, who hosted a webinar last week titled, "Protecting Places of Worship: A Religious Observance Briefing on Safety and Security."

He indicated that as many as 1,200 people attended the webinar – one of a number of engagements on the issue of synagogue security. More than 1,800 people have attended an ongoing webinar series on the Nonprofit Security Grant program since the start of the calendar year. 'Increased threats on the Jewish community'

Coleman told JNS that the focus for religious leaders, including those preparing for Passover, Easter and Ramadan, should be one of three areas of concern, the first being the threat landscape.
Young French Jewish man beaten by gang, killed by tram, family claims
The family of French Jewish man Jeremy Cohen, who died after being hit by a tram two months ago, stated: "Jeremy's death is linked to an attack of which he was the victim - by a gang of young people immediately before being hit" according to a report by Radio Shalom in France.

Cohen, according to the report, was hit by a tram in Bobigny, a town in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France in February.

"You've probably heard of it, a young Jew dies when run after being hit by a tram in Bobigny" the radio's site stated on Monday, "Jeremy Cohen died after being hit by a line 1 tram. The victim, taken to the hospital in a state of emergency, did not survive his injuries. Against all odds, his brothers set out to find testimonies."

According to Radio Shalom, who interviewed the family, Cohen's family "distributed flyers around the city, asking the public for witnesses to come forward and collect videos of the young man's death."

The French Jewish news site added that "It turns out that he was attacked by a gang just before the facts" – according to testimony by his father Gérald, his brother Raphaël and other representatives of the community in an interview by Bernard Abouaf.

Far-Right Jewish French presidential candidate Eric Zemmour tweeted about the case, writing: "These images are chilling. The death of yet another of our children and the deafening silence on the facts revolt me. Did he die to escape scum? Did he die because he was a Jew? Why is this case hushed up?"

French MP Meyer Habib: "The circumstances of the death of Jeremy Cohen, a 31-year-old religious Jew, appear to have been much more dramatic. The victim, who according to all the evidence wore a skullcap on his head, tried to escape, as the video clearly shows, from a gang of thugs who attacked him. As he runs away from them, he did not see the train traveling in his direction. The pictures are awful. It breaks everyone's heart. Today I turned to the interior minister who confirmed to me that the authorities take the issue very seriously and that the case is being dealt with by the justice system. I also contacted the Justice Ministry and I am waiting for his answer on the subject."
Germany: 93-year-old Holocaust denier sent back to jail
The notorious neo-Nazi Ursula Haverbeck was sentenced to a 12-month prison sentence in Berlin on Friday for denying the murder of over a million Jews at the Auschwitz death camp.

The court rejected an appeal by the 93-year-old for convictions in 2017 and 2020 handed to her for repeated instances of Holocaust denial.

"You're not a Holocaust researcher, you're a Holocaust denier," the presiding judge said in the courtroom, adding "it's not knowledge you're spreading, it's poison."

Serial Holocaust denier
Haverbeck was sentenced to six months in prison in 2017 after repeatedly denying the historic facts of the Holocaust during an event in Berlin.

She then received a further 12-month-long prison sentence in 2020 for publishing an interview online in which she again made statements that denied the Holocaust.

The judge said Haverbeck's actions came from her own beliefs and that the decision to jail the 93-year-old had been necessary as there was no alternative.

"There's nothing that will stop you," the judge told Haverbeck. "We won't have any impact on you with words."
USA – Illinois police officer placed on leave after racist, antisemitic posts emerge on social media
A Springfield police officer has been placed on unpaid leave after allegedly posting racist and anti-semitic posts on social media.

Springfield opened an investigation after online reports identified officer Aaron Paul Nichols, 46, as the person responsible for racist and antisemitic postings on multiple social media forums.

The website Anonymous Comrades Collective, which describes itself as “dedicated to exposing Nazis, racists, and fascists”, says it pieced together clues from various anonymous accounts to identify Aaron P. Nichols as a nearly 20-year veteran of the Springfield police force. The accounts, under names including “Magic Dirt Farmer” and “We Will Win,” praised Hitler while demeaning Jews and people of color.

As of Friday, the officer has been placed on unpaid leave and stripped of police powers while the investigation continues.

In his posts, made from accounts with the name “WeWillWin” and “MagicDirtFarmer,” Nichols not only praised Hitler but also disparaged Jews and people of color. In one post, Nichols said the convicted vigilante killers of Ahmaud Arbery “did nothing wrong” and were only charged “because of Jews.”

Arbery’s killing made national news almost two years ago after a cellphone video showed the 25-year-old unarmed Black man being gunned down by three white men in Brunswick, Georgia. His killers were sentenced to life in prison earlier this month, after having been convicted of his murder in November 2021.

Nichols has also claimed he knows “where the Jews live” and has made violent threats against Jews time and again. Here are some of the posts:


A Yiddish book center in Queens lives on, just like the language it celebrates
New York Jewish Week — In a rickety warehouse in Long Island City, reached only by a footbridge that crosses underneath the Long Island Expressway, some 80,000 Yiddish books are stacked on shelves in a large, sunlight-filled room that overlooks the Pulaski Bridge, Midtown Manhattan to the west, and Downtown Brooklyn in the distance.

This is the CYCO Yiddish Book Center, whose roots date back to 1938, when it began as a space in Manhattan to give Yiddish writers and readers a safe haven just as antisemitism was rising in Europe and the future of the language was being altered forever.

Throughout its more than eight decades of operation, the Central Yiddish Cultural Organization was — and still is — a place for ideas, for collaboration and for celebration of all things Yiddish.

It is not a bookstore, said Hy Wolfe, the stalwart Brooklyn-born Yiddish actor who runs the organization, but a book center, where New York can celebrate Yiddish culture, authors and artists. CYCO also operated as a publishing house for many years, with nearly 300 titles bearing its imprint.

But all that history seemed in peril last fall, when the Atran Foundation, which has been funding CYCO through grants since 1956, decided to cut off its stipend. Dianne Fischer, who had been the president of the foundation for 23 years, retired, and the current board decided that CYCO was not reaching enough people, nor making enough money (only $3,000 to $5,000 a year in book sales, according to Wolfe) to continue funding it in perpetuity.

Wolfe was able to secure more funding from the Azrieli Foundation, which has been the other major supporter of CYCO, but he knew that time was running out. He needed to raise $30,000 to cover the year’s rent and upkeep.

“I am not a good businessman. It’s just the truth. I will never ask somebody for money,” Wolfe said. “Plenty of students come in that don’t have money. I say to them, ‘When you make it and you have a job, you need to remember your commitment to us and send us a donation.’ That’s who I am on a handshake.”

The son of Holocaust survivors, Wolfe grew up surrounded by Yiddish, and has watched the language fade as the children and grandchildren of secular Yiddish-speakers turned to English. Today Yiddish is a first language — a growing one, at that — only among Hasidic and Haredi Orthodox Jews in various New York neighborhoods.
Doctors in Israel reconstruct severed ear in unique surgery
In a show of Israeli medical innovation, doctors at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem utilized an experimental technique to replace the ear of a patient who saw it severed in a workplace accident.

A 55-year-old carpentry shop employee recently came to the Shaare Zedek emergency room after a wood pallet fell on him, slicing off the upper half of his ear, the hospital said Sunday.

“At first I did not feel that my ear was missing, I thought it just was a bleeding cut. I took a rag and pressed down to stop the bleeding. It was only when I arrived at the emergency room that the extent of the trauma became clear. The ear was cut in half,” the man said, according to a statement from the hospital.

“I asked the carpentry shop owner to quickly bring the ear to the medical center. It took a while, but in the end, the missing half was found.”

Emergency physicians at the hospital initially attempted to stitch the piece of the ear back on using conventional methods, but found that due to lack of blood supply it could not be saved.

Switching course, doctors in the plastic surgery department at the hospital decided to perform reconstructive surgery, utilizing advanced technology in an attempt to rebuild the detached body part.
Daniel Gordis Podcast: Meet the Orthodox ‘settler’ who created a program to assist Israeli Arab soldiers
Sapir Ganz Eldar is a student at Shalem College. She comes from a settlement over the green line, is Orthodox, went to an all-girls religious high school, her father was opposed to her serving in the army (he wanted her to do National Service)…. So we think we get the picture, right?

Yet we don’t, because the picture is always more complicated. Sapir did join the army, over her parents’ objections, and once an officer, created a program to assist Israeli Arab soldiers.

“Israeli Arab soldiers”? That, too, might sound surprising. This is an excerpt of our conversation.


British Company Produces 1 Million Kosher-For-Passover Matzahs for Ukraine
A British kosher food manufacturer devoted its entire factory this week to produce a million matzahs for Ukraine’s Jewish community and refugees in time for Passover following a request from the Orthodox Union, reported Jewish News.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in extreme shortages of matzah for Passover for both Jews in the country and those who have fled, the OU told the news outlet. To help with the issue, the OU contacted KLBD—the kashrut division of the London Beit Din—and asked if the Leeds-based company Rakusen’s would be able to produce extra kosher-for-Passover matzah.

Roughly 70,000 boxes were ordered, which comes out to nearly 1 million matzahs; the packages will be sent to Hungary and then transferred to Ukraine. All the costs for the extra flour that Rakusen’s had to buy, plus packaging for the boxes and hiring of extra staff, was covered by the OU and Va’ad Hakashrut, according to Jewish News.

“Rakusen’s finished their main matzah run two weeks ago, but given the huge suffering in Ukraine, we knew we had to help out to ensure Jewish refugees and those still in Ukraine have matzah for Pesach,” said KLBD’s Rabbi Moshe Royde.

“Despite the huge time pressure, we have managed to achieve a very high standard of kosher-for-Passover production. We were able to recruit enough mashgichim [kosher supervisors] to help us oversee the baking,” he explained. “We have also been able to label each box manually so it’s clear the matzah is for Jewish refugees.”
‘March of the Living’ Resumes After 2-Year Hiatus: ‘Almost the Last Opportunity to March With Holocaust Survivors’
The International March of the Living will resume its annual pilgrimage to the remains of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in Poland this month following a two-year hiatus, with organizers calling it “almost the last opportunity to march alongside Holocaust survivors.”

Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, which borders Poland, the march will be limited in scope, organizers said. Only around 2,000 people will attend.

It will take place on April 28 to coincide with Yom HaShoah, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial day.

“In the last few years, the International March of the Living and the world as a whole have lost many Holocaust survivors,” the organization’s leadership said in a statement. “This is almost the last opportunity to march alongside Holocaust survivors. It is our responsibility to carry the torch of their memory even in the face of the tragic ongoing war in Ukraine.”

Eve Kugler, a survivor who will participate in the march, also warned of the dwindling number of living witnesses to the Holocaust.

“We survivors are becoming an increasingly rare breed,” she said. “And this should worry you more than it worries me. It should worry you because hatred of Jewish people and Holocaust denial are still prevalent.”

“If this is how the memory of the Holocaust is treated — or dare I say abused — when those who suffered it are still here to tell our story … then how much worse will it be when the survivors are no more than a distant memory?” Kugler asked.

Eitan Neishlos, the grandson of Holocaust survivor Tamar Zisserman, emphasized the responsibility of youth to carry on the memory of the Holocaust and its survivors.




 

 

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