Thursday, October 27, 2022

10/27 Links Pt2: Marking 4 years since Tree of Life massacre, Biden rues ‘ugly rise’ of antisemitism; Melanie Phillips: The unholy alliance between Republicans and Islamists; BigLaw’s Jewish Problem

From Ian:

Marking 4 years since Tree of Life massacre, Biden rues ‘ugly rise’ of antisemitism
US President Joe Biden led memorial messages and vows to combat antisemitism on Thursday, marking four years since a gunman shot dead eleven Jewish worshipers and injured seven others at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“A quiet Shabbat morning was shattered by gunfire and hate, and a place of sanctuary became a place of carnage,” Biden said in a statement.

“As we grieve this deadliest act of antisemitism in American history, we stand with the community of Squirrel Hill — and Jewish communities across America and around the world — in resolving to combat antisemitism and hate in all of its forms,” he said.

“This is especially true as we witness an ugly increase in antisemitism in America.”

Listing action the administration has taken to confront antisemitism, Biden noted the appointment of Holocaust expert Deborah Lipstadt as Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, an ambassador-level role.

He also cited the largest-ever increase in funding for security for synagogues and other religious institutes, and other actions announced last month at the United We Stand Summit.

“The rabbis teach that ‘what comes from the heart, enters the heart,'” Biden said, citing the eleventh Century Rabbi Moses ibn Ezra.

“On this difficult day, our hearts are with the families of the victims, the survivors, and all those impacted by the Tree of Life shooting. May their memories be a blessing, and may we continue to bridge the gap between the world we see and the future we seek.”


US Antisemitism Envoy: France ‘Ground Zero’ for European Antisemitism
France has become the epicenter of 21st century antisemitism in Europe — a phenomena which is now beginning to replicate in other countries around the world, the US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism has warned.

“I think that in many ways France has proven to be ‘Ground Zero’ for European antisemitism, in part because of the large Muslim population,” the envoy, Deborah Lipstadt, told a panel hosted by the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) and the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Paris on Monday. “If we’d been having this conversation 15 years ago, I would have said France is a unique situation – sadly, it’s not unique anymore.”

In her remarks, which follow a week-long trip to Belgium and France to meet with EU officials on combating antisemitism, Lipstadt cited some of the deadly antisemitic and terrorist attacks that have plagued France over the last twenty years, among them the 2006 kidnapping and murder of Ilan Halimi, a young cellphone salesman, by an antisemitic gang known as “The Barbarians”, as well as the 2012 and 2015 respective gun attacks on a Jewish school in Toulouse and a kosher supermarket in Paris.

Other incidents included the 2017 murder of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish woman who was beaten and thrown to her death from the third-floor window of her Paris apartment by her neighbor, Kobili Traore, during a frenzied antisemitic assault. French Jews were outraged in April 2021 when the country’s highest court upheld an earlier decision that Traore could not be held criminally responsible for Halimi’s death because his intake of marijuana on the night of the killing had rendered him temporarily insane.

Lipstadt warned the evolution of antisemitism which once limited to France had now spread to other countries, including the United States. “I think that in many respects, France emulates what we’ve seen in other places, because it’s not just Islamist extremist antisemitism, it’s also from the right and from the left,” she said.

Lipstadt also noted that the convergence of antisemitic criticism of Israel from the fringes of both right and left wing ideologies is occuring not only in France, but in the US and UK as well.


Melanie Phillips: The unholy alliance between Republicans and Islamists
The tacit alliance between the Western left and the Islamists—Muslims intent upon conquering the West for Islam—has long been a source of deep concern.

Left-wingers, who exercise outsize influence over Western culture, sometimes make common cause with Islamists over their mutual aim of destroying the West and the State of Israel. This is even though the Islamists’ theocratic denial of democracy and human rights, their oppression of women and their persecution of gay people and dissidents run wholly contrary to the Western left’s professed values.

As if that axis isn’t dangerous enough, there’s now disturbing news of a parallel attraction developing between Islamists and conservatives. In a long and important article in Focus on Western Islamism, Sam Westrop has detailed a burgeoning alliance between Islamists and American Republicans.

This has some precedents. In the 2000 presidential election, according to some estimates, as many as 70 percent of Muslims voted Republican.

After the anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist argued that socially conservative Muslims formed a natural GOP constituency, the Republican Party—dismissing the threat to America of Islamist entryism—reached out to people who turned out to be radical Islamists. Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

After 9/11, that alliance foundered. Conservative alarm over Islamism peaked in 2007 when the Holy Land Foundation trial saw many prominent American Muslim organizations and their leaders and activists named as “unindicted co-conspirators.”

Enraged by the war in Iraq, Islamists turned for support to the left which denounced all concerns about the Muslim world as “Islamophobic.”

Now, writes Westrop, this is changing again. Many Islamists no longer regard the left as a useful ally but rather as a harmful influence because of its agenda of gay rights, transgender identity and sexual license that it is pushing so aggressively.

A small but growing number of Muslim activists, says Westrop, are promoting the idea that American conservatism makes a better fit with Islamic principles of family life and faith.

In Berkeley, California, Abdullah bin Hamid Ali, the head of Zaytuna College’s Islamic Law Council, has urged American Muslims to join him in a “new political vision” that rejects “neoliberalism” and paints conservatism as a more natural home. His Twitter feed includes dozens of Tucker Carlson clips and comments about the follies of anti-capitalist and anti-racist protest movements.
The Hypocrisy of the "Friends of the Jewish State"
During an August 16 press conference in Berlin alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts.” Scholz, despite his repeated calls to stand up against all forms of antisemitism, remained silent and took some 24 hours before expressing his condemnation of Abbas’ statements. And in spite of Abbas’ perverse comparison, Germany announced another € 340 million aid package for the Palestinians that very day. In doing so, Germany effectively signaled to the Palestinian leadership that their radicalism pays off.

But Chancellor Scholz isn’t the only high-profile German rewarding Palestinian extremism.

For example, on September 5, the city of Munich commemorated the 50th anniversary of the 1972 terrorist attack on Israel’s national Olympic team, during which Palestinian terrorists murdered eleven Israeli athletes and a German policeman. One of the speakers at the remembrance ceremony was the International Olympic Committee (IOC) President, Thomas Bach, himself a former German Olympian. In his speech, Bach referred to the attack as the “darkest day in Olympic history.” According to Bach, he “shared the pain” of the relatives and stated that “the barbaric attack fills us with horror, shame and disgust.” He also spoke of “Olympic values,” which he claimed stand for “unity of humankind in all our diversity, regardless of political or cultural differences.”

Bach’s words were strong, and he shook hands with the families of those who had been murdered, making his supposed honesty and sincerity all the more believable. It was also announced that he would be attending a separate remembrance ceremony as a guest of honor in Tel Aviv in late September. What few knew, however, was that Bach was also planning to spend the two days prior to the commemoration in Ramallah.

There, he met with Maj. Gen. Jibril Rajoub, with whom he held a joint press conference. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Bach expressed his support for Rajoub's proposal to create an Olympic stadium in “Palestine,” and vowed that the IOC will “continue to support the POC's (Palestinian Olympic Committee) efforts to prepare its athletes for the Paris 2024 Olympics.” Bach also met athletes at Ahmed Al Shugairi Hall. Who exactly is Rajoub, as well as Ahmed Al Shugairi, for whom the hall Bach visited was named?

Al Shugairi is a Palestinian “hero”; a leader behind the “construction of the military apparatus under the name of the Palestine Liberation Army.” He was one of the founders and first president of the Palestine Liberation Organization, widely regarded as a terrorist organization at the time.

Similarly, Jibril Rajoub is anything but a man of peace. He is a supporter of Palestinian terrorism and an antisemite who violates the most important humanistic values, in addition to violating the principles of the IOC that Bach claimed to hold in such high esteem.
Is 'globalist' an antisemitic dog-whistle? Well it depends who's using it
Readers however may not have realised what a very particular choice the UnHerd editors had made in consulting Hazony. He may be a Jew but he is one carefully curated Jew. A philosopher (and oh, philosophy, what nonsenses are uttered in thy name!) whose principal contribution to historical revisionism seems to have been to argue that Hitler was an imperial internationalist, and not a nationalist - an absurd analysis, not shared as far as I know by any of the many great historians of Nazi Germany.

This kind of insight is then deployed in support of a form of radical conservatism based on a majoritarian cultural nationalism that regrets, for example, an emphasis on gender, race and faith equality. Recently he addressed an audience of American right-wing conservatives, telling them “When you say: we've had enough. We're going to restore Christian public life in this country - that's the day we start rolling back woke neo Marxism.”

Meanwhile, GB News excused its presenters by claiming that when deploying the word “globalist, Farage and Wootton “were referring to the Oxford English Dictionary definition of the term globalist, meaning ‘advocating the operation or planning of economic and foreign policy on a global basis’.”

This is disingenuous rubbish. Grant Shapps, for example, advocates no such thing. And in Farage’s and Wootton’s utterances the use of the word is always used as a term of disapprobation, usually linked to other words such as “Remoaner” and “unlimited immigration” and now invariably associated with the word “coup”.

Coups, of course, are plotted; thus Globalists are plotters. Globalists like Shapps, Farage is clearly saying, plot to bring in immigrants to undermine our sense of nation and to subordinate us to outside powers. And what kind of person does that? Apart of course from George Soros the “Hungarian” who Farage accused in 2018 of wanting “to break down the fundamental values of our society (because), in the case of Europe, he doesn’t want Europe to be based on Christianity”.

Does Farage carry in his mind prejudices about Jews? During his political career, he has consorted with people who have moved in and out of antisemitic parties. I have no window, though.

Underneath that unbylined Hazony interview, the first comment is from an R. Wright. Who says that it baffles him “that those claiming to represent the Jewish community seem to instinctively lash out when terms like this are used”. Such reactions, he says, “end up feeding the very conspiracy theories they are subject to”.

Ah right, R Wright. I get you.
Black Lives Matter Is Driving Anti-Semitism
Progressive politicians argued that the militarization of U.S. police forces occurred because of training exercises with Israel, although the nature of the training and whether it led to the deaths of any Black people had been discounted for any who bother to read past the headlines. Regardless, the perception that the Jewish State may have been connected to the deaths of Black Americans was often repeated by Blacks, Muslims and anti-Zionist progressives.

The Southern Poverty Law Center assimilated the narrative. Even though Jews suffered more hate crimes per capita than any other group, SPLC highlighted attacks against Blacks and Muslims, and those committed by Whites. Jewish victims were a small footnote.

The BLM narrative continued to churn whereby it was determined that Black people could not even be considered racist as they lacked power, and any actions taken against White people was simply “punching up.” Hate speech and actions by minorities was thereby given a clean bill of health, a double-“O” license for racism. The power afforded by that twisted reasoning became so ingrained, that SPLC openly stated that it objected to FBI’s Hate Crime numbers for Black people, since “Black separatism was born out of valid anger against very real historical and systemic oppression…. Black separatism is a response to white supremacy and white nationalism,” and therefore could not be counted as a hate crime. SPLC contended that the FBI’s calling out Black racism was “used to justify the over-policing and surveillance of communities of color,” and they would therefore not highlight it.

When Jews were killed in Jersey City, NJ, a Black member of the school board said that the Black killers had a point in killing Jews since they were “brutes” aggressively moving into the neighborhood. Black community leaders rushed to her defense when she was lambasted for her anti-Semitism about murdered Jews. SPLC also tried to come to the defense of the Black killers. And then, with the gas-lighting complete, the city’s un-murdered Jews appallingly handed out gifts to the Black residents of the city on Christmas, apologizing if their blood dirtied the local streets.

Amidst the attacks on Jews, the Democratic Socialists of America called for demonizing Israel and singling it out as a litmus test for endorsement. Not Iran, China, Saudi Arabia or North Korea – but the one liberal and Jewish state in the middle east and north Africa region. The DSA principally endorses non-White and non-Jewish candidates, with the exception of their champion Bernie Sanders, who is completely secular and an anti-Zionist.

So Blacks gather even more allies to the BLM movement. Muslims, progressives and anti-Zionists who all feel victimized by “pushy” White Jews. Validating their victimized status, they can no longer be accused of anti-Semitism or racism, and demand reparations.

This is the storm of Jew hatred that weighs on the Black-Jewish relationship today. The BLM movement and intersectional approach have taken aim at people they perceive as privileged and racist. For them, no group encapsulates having more than their fair share, stealing the fruits of others, than White Jews – both in the U.S. and Israel – in a warped worldview that has infected way too much of the Black community.
BigLaw’s Jewish Problem
The Jewish community has finally awakened to antisemitism on the college campus and in the streets — only to find it seeping into the corporate boardroom and, more recently, BigLaw.

Last week, White & Case LLP, a major international law firm, confirmed sponsoring a controversial conference on “Racism and the Crime of Apartheid in International Law,” featuring Omar Shakir. Shakir, a human rights activist, was once forced out of Israel by an expulsion order. The event was presented by the American Branch of the International Law Association, and was accused of promoting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

It was not a one-off. White & Case has also reportedly admitted — after initially denying — that it had sponsored a University of Chicago event earlier this month in which Shakir was invited to speak on Israel’s alleged “crime of apartheid.”

Historically, White & Case faced criticism for defending foreign governments and the German railway against lawsuits filed by Holocaust survivors. Allegations have also recently resurfaced that this firm once relegated its few Jewish lawyers to back-office research work, and forbade them from interacting with clients.

White & Case is the same law firm that the Morningstar financial services firm retained to review alleged anti-Israel bias within its research arm, Sustainalytics. To its credit, the firm found bias, leading Morningstar to drop one of its products and to speak with various groups, including the Brandeis Center, about cleaning up its shop.

Nevertheless, they provided Morningstar with ammunition to fend off pressure from attorneys general in over a dozen and a half states. Now, White & Case will face significant questions about whether it has any credibility as an independent reviewer of anti-Israel bias, when it has been exposed as a source of this very problem.

And the problem extends beyond this one firm.

StandWithUs has exposed several BigLaw firms for bankrolling Berkeley Law’s anti-Zionist bylaws. Four of the student groups that adopted antisemitic bylaws have publicly acknowledged their financial backers. The list includes some of the country’s leading law firms: Morrison & Foerster, where I formerly practiced, as well as Latham & Watkins, Covington & Burling, Debevoise & Plimpton, Skadden Arps, Wachtell Lipton, and Weil Gotshal.
These Law Firms Don't Know What They're Doing—Hopefully
The ongoing attempts by campus student organizations to marginalize Jews have garnered significant attention recently, most notably an August 2022 incident at the University of California Berkeley Law School in which nine law school student groups, led by the efforts of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP) adopted a bylaw agreeing not to invite "speakers that have expressed and continued to hold views ... in support of Zionism."

The bylaw was immediately condemned by Jewish law students, who explained the marginalizing impact of the bylaw on Jewish students whose "identities are intertwined with the existence of Israel as an ancestral Jewish homeland" and expressed concern about the bylaw's potential "antisemitic impact . . . on the Berkeley Law community." Similarly, Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky issued a statement of condemnation, correctly noting the antisemitic nature of the bylaw and its chilling impact on campus speech.

What was not expected—but StandWithUs recently discovered and exposed—is that some of the most prominent U.S. law firms have been, likely unknowingly, providing some of these same student groups with financial support. For instance, four of the student groups that adopted the antisemitic bylaw at Berkeley—the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA), Law Students of African Descent (LSAD), the Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association (MENALSA), and the Womxn of Color Collective (WOCC)—publicly list some of the nation's most distinguished law firms as their financial sponsors. Thelist includes: Latham & Watkins; Covington & Burling; Debevoise & Plimpton; Morrison Foerster; Skadden, Arps; Munger Tolles; Wachtell Lipton; and Weil, Gotshal, among others.

Some of the firms sponsoring these groups were founded as havens for Jewish lawyers who could not gain entry as Jewish applicants at more "white shoe" firms. One wonders whether Jewish partners at these law firms know that they are now sponsoring decidedly anti-Jewish agendas at law schools. While these law firms have likely (indeed, hopefully) been sponsoring these groups in good faith, one assumes that they were ignorant of their recently declared antisemitic agenda. One also wonders whether the firms will now take the appropriate steps of clearly condemning the anti-Jewish bigotry and dissociating themselves from these student groups and their bigotry.
When “Human Rights” Activists and Lawyers Fear Dissent
For all their high-minded rhetoric about free speech and expression, some “human rights” activists and lawyers seem zealously opposed to allowing debate. As a recent conference panel demonstrated, this is particularly true among those who seek to besmirch the Jewish state with substantively empty accusations of “apartheid” and “racism.” However, after efforts by CAMERA and others to counteract this behavior, purveyors of the libel – and their sponsors – now know they will not be left unchallenged.

As CAMERA has already exposed, Human Rights Watch (HRW) – under the imprimatur of the American branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) – was recently allowed to organize a panel on “Racism and the Crime of Apartheid in International Law” during ABILA’s annual International Law Weekend. The panel, held on October 22, featured four anti-Israel partisans, all on record accusing Israel of “apartheid,” and just one late addition, opposing panelist (Barrister Josh Kern). Despite continued inquiries and expressions of concern, no additional effort was made by the organizers to foster a more balanced, serious discussion.

A screenshot of the language originally used in the program’s description of the panel, accusing Israel of “systematic oppression of Palestinians.”

There was even a late addition in the form of law professor Milena Sterio as a moderator, which is where some irony is introduced. Sterio’s background includes writing favorably of the infamous Goldstone Report that accused Israel of atrocities.

As luck would have it, Richard Goldstone, the former South African judge who chaired the commission which authored the report, was participating in the conference as a keynote speaker. Though his speech was sharply critical of the United States, it is Goldstone’s position on the charge of “Israeli apartheid” that is relevant.

While HRW goes to great lengths to create a false impression of a “growing consensus” that Israel is committing “apartheid,” such as through organizing one-sided panels, Goldstone serves as an example of how there isn’t even consensus in HRW’s own ideological circles

In addition to famously disowning his own report against Israel, which Sterio nonetheless described as an “invaluable contribution,” Goldstone has also openly opposed what he calls the “apartheid slander” against Israel. Had HRW or ABILA President Leila Sadat actually been interested in balance, perhaps they simply could have invited Goldstone to stick around for another hour.
Author reverses tour cancelation after BDS threats, ‘son deserved to die'
After a targeted harassment campaign by anti-Israel activists that mocked the passing of her late son pushed her to cancel her Israel book tour, popular romance author Chloe Walsh announced on Thursday that she would indeed come to Israel in February.

Safrut She'nogaat, the Israeli romance book publisher that organized the event with Walsh, said that the author confirmed her attendance in February and sent a message to her supporters.

"I am not a politician. I'm an author. I come from love, and yesterday the enormous hatred directed towards me and toppled me,” said Walsh. “I guess I'm naive because I didn't believe that such evil existed in the world.My supportive family never allowed me to give in and give up. And this morning I woke up braver and stronger and I won't let terror win! I will not allow a handful of extremists to silence and control me by fear. I'm coming to Israel!Tell my readers that I love them and I'm coming to see them. "

Chloe Walsh bullied into canceling
Walsh had uploaded an Instagram story saying how grateful she was to her Israeli supporters after her three-day tour sold out within six minutes. In response, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) activists began to attack her, demanding she not go on the tour.

Death threats and bullying
The Irish author lost one of her twins during pregnancy only a year ago. Activists said in their messages that the child had passed because of Walsh's association with Israel. She also received death threats against her and her family, fans reported.
MSNBC Invites Prominent Anti-Semite To Discuss Why Anti-Semites Should Be Canceled
What happened? MSNBC's Morning Joe invited Al Sharpton to discuss his thoughts on Adidas cutting ties with Kanye West in response to the rapper's blatantly anti-Semitic comments. "‘Do you have a moral compass?' every company ought to ask," Sharpton said after slamming Kanye's "intentional" anti-Semitism.

Seriously? Yes.

Al Sharpton? The prominent anti-Semite? Yes. That's the one. The racist provocateur and tracksuit icon who inflamed the Crown Heights riots of August 1991, one of the worst outbursts of anti-Semitic violence in modern American history.

Sharpton delivered a eulogy for Gavin Cato, the seven-year-old whose accidental death intimated the violence that followed, during which he ranted against Jews. "Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid," he said. One funeral attendee held a sign that read, "Hitler didn't finish the job."

Weeks earlier, Sharpton had publicly defended Leonard Jeffries Jr., a professor of black studies at City College of New York who accused Jews of financing the slave trade and creating "a system of destruction for black people." Sharpton held a rally and blasted the professor's critics. "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house," he fumed.

What the hell? Indeed. Speaking of which, that's how Sharpton described the Jewish state of Israel during a brief visit while attempting to make a citizen's arrest. Like being "in hell."

Sounds like Al Sharpton's anti-Semitism was "intentional," right? It definitely was. During his interview on Morning Joe to discuss the Kanye West situation, however, Sharpton alluded to his past anti-Semitism by suggesting he had accidentally said some "things that are harmful and could be interpreted wrong." He didn't really "mean it," unlike Kanye.
NBA Legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Honored for Standing up to Anti-Semitism; Addresses Kanye West’s Anti-Semitism
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was honored at the annual Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Spirit of Hope event in Toronto before he addressed a crowd of 1,200 about his longstanding work in advocating for social justice and human rights, being a steadfast ally in the fight against anti-Semitism and building bridges between communities.

NBA legend and social activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar receiving the first annual Ally Against Anti-Semitism award by Canada’s Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC).

Abdul-Jabbar began his remarks by echoing his recent blog post strongly condemning the repeated anti-Semitic comments of US rapper Kanye West. He also addressed the reactions he’s received for his criticism of West and of anti-Semitism in general. “The principal lesson is we can never go to sleep, we can never stop being vigilant and let bad things to fester,” said Abdul-Jabbar.

“I get condemnation from people who don’t want to see any progress, and I get support from people who understand that what people like Kanye West have to say is intolerable,” Abdul-Jabbar told the audience. “We can’t have our people who set the standards and who everybody wants to emulate… talking like that. That’s not what we’re supposed to be about, especially in America where we say that all men are created equal.”

He also spoke out about the delayed condemnations from celebrities and companies in response to West’s anti-Semitism, saying, “Look what happened in the time it took for all the people who ended up condemning Kanye, look how long it took for them to get around to saying what they had to say. In the meantime, Jewish kids were intimidated and bullied and had to deal with a whole lot of violence or violent thoughts directed at them because someone like Kanye West says it’s okay. It’s not okay.”

Abdul-Jabbar delved into some of his most prominent works – including his op-ed in The Hollywood Reporter, “Where Is the Outrage Over Antisemitism in Sports and Hollywood?,” his book Brothers in Arms, and the documentary film, for which he was the Executive Producer, for the History Channel called "Fight the Power: The Movements that Changed America," which focused on the impact that key protests have had on the evolution of the United States.
Spotify criticizes Ye's comments, keeps his music
As corporations around the world including Adidas AG (ADSGn.DE) cut ties with Kanye West, music streaming service Spotify Technology SA(SPOT.N) said it would not remove the rapper's music unless his label requested it.

Music from the artist now known as Ye did not violate anti-hate policies, Spotify chief Daniel Ek told Reuters.

Recent antisemitic remarks made by the rapper are "just awful comments," and would have warranted removal from Spotify for violating its policies, which prohibit hate speech, if they had been on a podcast or recording, Ek said.

But none of that content can be found on Spotify.

"It's really just his music, and his music doesn't violate our policy," said Ek, adding, "It's up to his label, if they want to take action or not."

That has not happened.

Universal Music's Def Jam label, which owns the copyright to West's recordings from 2002 through 2016, and continued distributing his releases until last year, issued a statement condemning Ye's remarks, saying "There is no place for antisemitism in our society".

It did not ask for the removal of Ye's recordings, many of which are critically acclaimed works. The music also can be found on Apple Music and YouTube Music.


PreOccupiedTerritory: No Major Holidays Till Spring: Professor Must Wait To Screw Over Jewish Students With Scheduling Conflicts (satire)
A faculty member at Columbia University who proudly asserts his courses in Middle East Studies promote an “anti-colonialist” and “anti-racist” ethos, and who demands any Jewish students absorb his abuse of them as proxies for Israel, also insists he abhors antisemitism, and that he regrets that the recent end of the Jewish holiday season means he can only force those students to choose between their own religious traditions and sitting for his exams will in faraway April, when Passover presents the net opportunity.

Yusuf Masoud shared his lament Thursday with colleagues in the Middle East and Islamic Studies Department, several of whom nodded and murmured their empathy. “This method for fostering the right political consciousness in young minds will have to wait, unfortunately,” he mused with a shake of a head, to general agreement among four other lecturers. “I know we all did what we could over the last month or so, but so early in the term it’s hard to contrive credible assignments or classroom events with critical weight in the student’s grade, to coincide with Jewish observances that preclude classroom participation.”

This year Rosh HaShanah, the two-day Jewish new year observance, occurred on a Monday and Tuesday, as did the first and last days of the Sukkot festival. In between, Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement and the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar, occurred on a Wednesday. Each of those, in particular Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, involve lengthy synagogue services and, among the more stringently observant, avoidance of regular weekday activities such as writing and the active use of electricity. Those restrictions provided ample weekday occasions this past month to stick it to Jews suspected as Zionists until they demonstrate sufficient contrition on behalf of their coreligionists. In some years, however, Rosh HaShanah and both ends of Sukkot coincide with Saturday and Sunday, depriving Masoud and his like-minded warriors for justice of every occasion that season except Yom Kippur to impose that crucial didactic choice on Jewish students.
Fighting the BBC’s Biased Coverage of Jews and Israel
Demands and petitions against the BBC
Six weeks ago, we launched an open letter demanding that Atwan no longer appears on the BBC, as well as asking for a more impartial approach toward reporting on Israel and Jews.

The letter was signed by 36 distinguished parliamentarians, public figures and all major Jewish communal groups. Signatories included Lord Michael Howard, the former leader of the Conservative Party; Lord Alex Carlile, the government’s former terror specialist; Baroness Ruth Deech, a former BBC governor; Lord David Triesman, the former Labour minister in charge of the BBC World Service; eminent historians Simon Sebag Montefiore and Andrew Roberts; and playwright Steven Berkoff.

The BBC ignored the letter.

Or at least, it ignored it until last week, when we launched a public petition demanding a parliamentary inquiry into BBC coverage of Jews and Israel. As luck would have it, on the same day as we started the petition, hapless prime minister Liz Truss was forced to resign. The BBC director-general chose that moment to respond, meaning that his letter did not “cut through” the maelstrom of political news in the way it normally would.

Astonishingly, the letter insisted that including Atwan as a commentator was “in the public interest.” It was described as “vacuous” by Baroness Deech, while Liberal Democrat peer Lord Palmer called it “pathetic,” saying: “The BBC seems to feel that it’s OK to give a platform to extremists.”

MP Robert Halfon observed that the letter “appeared to have been written by Sir Humphrey [a fictional comedy civil servant]”, while Lord Carlile said he was “very disappointed by a response that is plainly mostly characterized by obfuscation.”

Readers, we need your help. Our petition has started off nicely, but it needs more support. Please consider signing it so that together we can force our beloved BBC to return to the values on which it was founded: accountability, accuracy and, above all, impartiality.


BBC News continues to promote partial ‘deadliest year’ theme
In his portrayal of the Lion’s Den terror group, Berg avoids telling readers of its record of attacks and attempted attacks in the BBC’s own words:
“The Lion’s Den group was formed following near daily arrest raids by Israeli forces targeting militants, concentrated in the northern West Bank. It is believed to number a few dozen members and has carried out, or attempted, attacks around the Nablus area and as far afield as Tel Aviv, according to the Israeli military.”

As has been the case in previous BBC reports, Berg refers to “a wave of deadly attacks against Israelis earlier this year” but fails to clarify that such attacks – some fatal – have continued since then.

“There has been an intensification of violence between Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank in recent weeks amid an ongoing Israeli operation to root out militants following a wave of deadly attacks against Israelis earlier this year.”

Berg closes his article with a chorus that the BBC has chosen to amplify repeatedly in recent weeks:
“The raid came amid a broader, ongoing operation launched by the IDF named Break the Wave after 17 Israelis and two Ukrainians were killed by Palestinian and Israeli Arab attackers earlier this year.

On the Palestinian side, more than 100 people, including militants, attackers and civilians, have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since January amid the upsurge in violence, making this year one of the deadliest for Palestinians since 2015.”

The significance of the date 2015 – a previous wave of Palestinian terrorism – is not made clear to readers.

As of the end of September 2022, twenty-one fatalities resulting from Palestinian terrorism had been recorded and a further two occurred during October. That means that this year is also the “deadliest” for Israelis since 2015 – but the BBC is clearly less interested in that statistic.

This article promotes two previous reports by the BBC Jerusalem Tom Bateman, neither of which provides the background necessary for full understanding of this story but the second of which similarly focuses audience attentions on the topic of Palestinian casualties:
LinkedIn Fails to Remove Antisemitic Content, Internet Watchdog Says
The LikedIn, Microsoft's business and employment App, failed to remove antisemitic content from its platform, said a survey by a group monitoring antisemitism online published Wednesday.

According to the Fighting Online Antisemitism non-profit (FOA) survey, in a space of three months, 100 posts with inciteful antisemitic and anti-Israel content were detected, including calls for violence against Jews and Israelis and posts comparing Israel to the Nazis.

The survey based its determination of hate speech based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) classification of antisemitism.

The FOA informed LinkedIn of all posts identified as antisemitic, but claimed it found that for every post that was removed, three others were allowed to stay online - despite the platform's contention that it does not allow posts promoting violence and antisemitism.

"The disturbing problem with posting antisemitic content on LinkedIn is that those posting it present themselves with academic degrees and other professional accolades," Said Barak Aharon, a monitor at FOA. "LinkedIn, like other social networks, claims to fight such phenomenon, but sadly, our survey shows a reality much different than what we had been promised," he said.

LinkedIn said in response that antisemitism and violence has no place on its platform or in its communities. "We are committed to a high standard and a safe conversation on our platforms and will take all necessary action in response to content and behavior that is contrary to our community's professional policy. It is important that we continue to develop features and tools to keep our platform safe."
Five Antisemitic Incidents Reported Daily in Germany, as High Levels of Jew-Hatred Refuse to Abate
The German authorities disclosed on Tuesday that an average of five antisemitic outrages have been reported every day during 2022, continuing the trend of rising levels of Jew-hatred registered in previous years.

Data gathered by the Federal Criminal Police Office showed a total of 1,555 reported antisemitic incidents this year. The data was provided in response to a formal request from a group of German parliamentarians.

A total of 55 crimes against Jews were classified as “violent,” with the remaining offenses including incitement to hatred and displaying the symbols of proscribed far right and neo-Nazi organizations. According to the data, a total of 936 suspects have been identified, but not a single arrest warrant has been issued.

The Federal Criminal Police Office pointed out that the numbers released on Wednesday were provisional and could be subject to revision. According to the Welt news outlet, the calculations for the first quarter of this year have already been corrected upwards, with 683 antisemitic crimes recorded and not the original figure of 459.

The revisions led some German politicians to express frustration with the data-gathering process. “In view of the general increase in antisemitism, I would wish for the correct recording to be carried out more quickly,” Petra Pau, the vice-president of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, told Welt. “Only then can politicians and the authorities recognize threatening developments in a timely manner.”
2 Nazi-looted paintings, returned to heirs of owner, to be auctioned for charity
After a years-long battle to reacquire two paintings the Nazis stole from their ancestor before he became one of their early victims, the descendants of Austrian Jewish cabaret performer Fritz Grunbaum will auction the Egon Schiele works off at Christie’s in November.

The proceeds will go to support up-and-coming performing artists from underrepresented backgrounds, starting with a student from a Washington, DC, arts high school who will play the piano at an event celebrating the sales.

The two paintings, “Woman in a Black Pinafore” and “Woman Hiding Her Face,” are expected to fetch as much as $2.8 million together.

Grunbaum was said to be the inspiration for a character in the 1972 film “Cabaret,” and was also a real-life collector of the works of Schiele, an Austrian expressionist artist.

Grunbaum owned 81 pieces created by Schiele as part of his massive collection of artwork, which also included works by Albrecht Dürer, Auguste Rodin, and Camille Pissarro.

Grunbaum performed as a master of ceremonies and wrote songs and operettas.

But he was also known for his political activity: In 1910, when an Austrian officer made antisemitic remarks, Grunbaum famously slapped him and was challenged to a duel, in which he was injured.

After the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, he became a vocal critic both in his performances and in a weekly column for a Viennese daily newspaper.
Hitler painting shredded by Jimmy Carr for Channel 4 television programme reportedly a fake
A painting by Adolf Hitler that was reportedly purchased by Channel 4 with a view to letting comedian Jimmy Carr destroy it in a new television programme has been deemed a fake.

The concept of the programme, titled Jimmy Carr Destroys Art, is to let an audience decide on whether artwork from “problematic” artists should be destroyed following a debate surrounding the ethics of separating the art from the artist.

The other artists include Pablo Picasso, Rolf Harris and sexual abuser Eric Gill.

In a statement, Channel 4 said: “Jimmy Carr Destroys Art is a thoughtful and nuanced exploration of the limits of free expression in art, and whether work by morally despicable artists still deserves to be seen. It speaks directly to the current debate around cancel culture and is in a long tradition of Channel 4 programming that seeks to engage a broad audience with the biggest and thorniest ethical and cultural questions.

“In relation to the Hitler painting; the artwork, should the audience decide, will be shredded. Not torched.”

However, Bart Droog, who has written extensively in fake paintings attributed to Hitler, has reportedly said that the piece of art in question is not a genuine painting by Hitler.

“This is a clear fake. It doesn’t even resemble any known authentic Hitler watercolour.


Matti Friedman: Israel’s French New Wave
The rumblings of Jewish history take many forms, and in this case the form was a disk of lemon filling, the dough brittle, meringue slightly browned. I was at Gagou de Paris. Across the street was the rival patisserie L’Artisan. I was called jeune homme by a manager graciously rounding down, and heard French at three of the four outdoor tables adjacent to mine. But hurrying by us on the sidewalk were the familiar capotes, the e-bikes, the skinny jeans on Arab teens, the religious girls with hair wrapped like African queens—it was Jerusalem.

Because the condition of Jews is a barometer of events anywhere, and because Israel has always been a barometer of Jewish life in other places, in Israel you can sense events far away. Even without ever watching the news this year, for example, you’d notice unusual numbers of Ukrainians around, and young Russian speakers with fashionable sneakers just off the plane from Sheremetyevo, bewildered and traveling light, and you’d know that something fateful is happening in and around the Russian Federation.

In the same vein, what does it mean that when I walk down a short stretch of Bethlehem Road in south Jerusalem, near my own street, I now pass the new butcher shop Le Charolais, and then the even newer bakery Delices de Paris, before reaching the restaurant Rendez-Vous? Discussing French affairs through cuisine is a cliché, yes, but the altered gastronomical landscape of the neighborhood is hard to miss. And what about the families erupting from Sephardic synagogues around here on Shabbat by the dozens, shouting arrête Ayala! and viens Eitan! Or the fact that of the kids in my son’s kindergarten last year, a quarter had parents recently arrived from Paris or Marseilles? I would never claim to understand the soul of a culture whose language I don’t speak, or of a place where I’ve never lived. But even through the limited lens of this city, it’s clear that something is happening, and that it’s linked to the increasingly unsettled feeling of Jewish life in these times.

At Le Charolais, under a few sides of beef hanging elegantly from hooks and by shelves stocked with imported preserves, I met Avraham Haim, 61, who spoke to me while dismembering red slabs with an enormous knife. Haim, who has a beard and a black kippah, trained at Potel et Chabot, the 200-year-old Paris caterer. This butcher shop, which opened three years ago, serves many French customers who are professionals, he said, people who are used to high standards from home and can pay. “The people who come here know what they want,” he said. He came to Jerusalem 15 years ago and commutes from the neighborhood of Har Homa, which is now heavily French. When I asked why he moved to Israel, he said it was because his wife wanted to. When I asked why French Jews were moving in general, he mentioned the fear of violence, the sense that the country no longer seems itself: “It isn’t France anymore, it’s Muslim.” I asked if he thought Jews had a future in France. He paused with his knife. “I am not a prophet,” he said.

Down the street, the chef at Rendez-Vous had a different take. Yoni Markezana, 34, grew up in Marseilles, son of a father with old family roots in the city and a mother from Algeria. The new arrivals in Israel are overwhelmingly of North African extraction, as France’s Jewish community, estimated at about 440,000, mostly hails from the old colonial possessions of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. The same is true of French Muslims. “We came with them, and I grew up with them,” Markezana said of the Muslims of Marseilles. His parents moved the family to Israel when Yoni was 14. The move was due not to fear, but to Zionism. “It was their dream,” he said.

I asked about concerns of violence committed by Muslim radicals, the kind of events that make the international news. He sees this as a more pressing concern in Paris than in Marseilles. “People say there are lots of Arabs in France, but ...,” he grinned, and gestured around at the city. More than a third of Jerusalem’s residents are Arab Muslims. If you’re fleeing a threat from radical Islam in Europe, where you’ve already fled from your ancestral home in Muslim North Africa, does it really make sense to choose the heart of the Arab Middle East?

There have always been French Jews in Israel, but the sense in recent years is that a “wave” of immigration is under way, and that this population has assumed a critical mass that didn’t exist before. It’s not quite the Russian wave, which brought a million people to Israel in the 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed; since 1972, the first year for which the Absorption Ministry has records, the number of arrivals from France is a tenth of that number—106,775. But of those, a remarkable 41,860 have come in just the last 10 years.
Israel Breaks Two Decade Aliyah Record, Expects 64,000 Immigrants By End of Year
A record number of immigrants are moving to the Jewish state amid regional conflict and Aliyah efforts, in a trend that Israeli officials expect is more likely to accelerate than reverse.

Nearly 60,000 people immigrated to Israel during the Hebrew calendar year 5782, which began on September 7, 2021 and ended on September 25, 2022, Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption shared in an updated report on Wednesday, surpassing a two-decade high.

By the end of December 2022, Israel may greet more than 64,000 new immigrants, the Ministry stated. In comparison, some 323,000 immigrants made Aliyah in all of the last decade.

It would be the largest number of immigrants to Israel in a single year since 1999, when the country welcomed more than 76,000 newcomers — a figure that dropped steadily following the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000.

Of the immigrants who arrived in the past year, 47 percent came from Russia, while 25 percent came from Ukraine, six percent from the United States, four percent from France and Latin America each, two percent from Ethiopia, and 12 percent from the rest of the world.

The Ministry indicated that it expects immigration to remain at an elevated level amid geopolitical developments in former Soviet Union countries and continued fighting in Ukraine.

A smaller number of immigrants — some 1,500 — are also expected to arrive from Ethiopia before the end of 2022 as part of “Operation Tzur Israel,” an initiative launched in December 2020 to unify Ethiopian Israelis with family members who remained in Ethiopia, which has brought some 3,500 immigrants to Israel to date.
Halina Silber, Holocaust Survivor Saved by Oskar Schindler, Dies at Age 93
Helen “Halina” Silber, who attributed surviving the Holocaust to being transferred from Auschwitz to an ammunition and enamelware factory owned by the German industrialist, Oskar Schindler, died on Tuesday. She was 93.

Born in 1929, Silber and family fled their home in a rural area of Kraków, Poland, to a ghetto in Słomniki when she was just ten years old. After hearing that the Nazis would relocate Jews living there, Silber’s mother told her to travel alone back to Kraków and voluntarily join the Płaszów labor camp, where her siblings were already interned. She never saw her mother again.

“I saw endless rows and rows of barbed wire. I could smell the stench of burning flesh,” she described arriving at Auschwitz to members of the Young Israel Shomrai Emunah synagogue in 2019. “I felt to myself; there is no more room here for hope. There is no room here for miracles.”

Not having identification papers delayed Silber’s registration at Płaszów, but she was eventually assigned to laundry duty. Later, she was selected by the camp’s Gestapo officers to work in Schindler’s factory.

“My job was to carry the heavy pots and pans to the oven to bake in the enamel,” she told the audience at Young Israel. “The heat and weight were unbearable. I didn’t believe I would survive for very long.”

After observing Silber’s plight, Schindler reassigned her to cleaning the factory’s offices. When it was closed in 1944, Schindler, delivering what became memorialized as “Schindler’s List,” ensured his workers’ transfer to another factory he owned in Brünnlitz. By the time the missive arrived at Auschwitz in the hands of his secretary, Hilde Albrecht, Silber and three hundred other women had endured several weeks at Auschwitz.

Silber said she was No. 16 on Schindler’s List. Speaking in 2015 at a Holocaust Remembrance Day event at a Maryland school, she described Schindler as one of “three miracles” that saved her life, with the other two being her reassignment to cleaning offices and her escape from the Słomniki ghetto.




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