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Tuesday, December 27, 2022

12/27 Links Pt2: How did black, Jewish communities go from friendship to tension?; Making sense of the great Mizrahi exodus; Dishonest Reporter of the Year Awards 2022

From Ian:

How did black, Jewish communities go from friendship to tension? - opinion
The events over the last couple of months involving the black and Jewish communities have triggered a lot of thought-provoking questions and concerns. During my entire time working for Jewish non-profits, leaders of these organizations encouraged us to use the strong history of solidarity between black and Jewish communities as part of our outreach.

When educating Jewish university students, we always discussed the special relationship between Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Heschel. We used quotes from influential black leaders to showcase how these figures were supporters of Zionism at a time when Israel was vulnerable.

Looking back now, I realize that historically, the relationship between both communities is a lot more complicated, and today is no different. While black and Jewish solidarity during the civil rights movement sounds beautiful, those stories don’t resonate with my generation because it’s not our reality anymore. Historically the black and Jewish communities supported one another, but clearly, things are different now.

So what happened? How did we get here?
Since the civil rights movement, different events have caused friction between our communities, which have dampened the good relationship which black and Jewish people once shared. Over time, antisemitism and racism have infested both groups. In addition, various events, like the Crown Heights riots, created tension. Hate also spewed from extremist groups and organizations like the Nation of Islam, causing more friction.

Today, black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan and his followers are normalizing antisemitic rhetoric. And now, prominent figures like Kanye West openly spreads antisemitic conspiracy theories while promoting extremists from the Black Hebrew Israelite community who openly support Hitler and the Nazis on the streets of New York.

The black and Jewish communities have, in the past, worked together as vulnerable groups to fight for equality. Over the years, they lived as neighbors in segregated neighborhoods in the US.

Their alliance had some profound moments. Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald teamed up with Booker T. Washington to create schools for black children in the south. Rosenwald donated $70 million to build 5,000 schools for black children.

Black colleges also stepped in during World War II to rescue Jews from Germany. After the Nazis took power, the US failed to take immediate action, thus administrators from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) saved 50 Jewish-German scholars by hiring them.


Lyn Julius: Making sense of the great Mizrahi exodus
Sixty years ago, Algeria declared its independence from France after a bloody war that is thought to have claimed over a million lives. In the course of throwing off the French colonial yoke, Algeria divested itself of 800,000 “white settlers” or pieds noirs. But along with the settlers went 130,000 native Algerian Jews.

There was a reason for this: Within a year of independence, it was clear that there would be no place for non-Muslims in the new Algeria. Indeed, the country’s constitution stipulated that only those with a Muslim father or grandfather could acquire Algerian citizenship.

The Jewish refugees, who held French citizenship, were “repatriated” to France, where they had never lived. One of them was Shmuel Trigano, then 14-years-old. Within two days and with two suitcases in hand, his life changed forever. Uprooted from the only home he had ever known, he was left permanently scarred.

However, it was only relatively recently, when he saw Palestinians brandishing the keys to homes they had left in 1948, that Trigano realized there was a political dimension to his trauma.

“We also had keys,” he says of the 900,000 Jews forced to flee Arab countries. “But we were too modest. We did not make claims—and because we were silent, we allowed a false narrative to fill the vacuum.”

In order to counter what he calls a massive distortion of the facts, Trigano set about applying the tools of his trade as a professor of sociology. He constructed a conceptual framework to make sense of the post-1940s Jewish exodus from 10 Arab countries over a period of 30 years.
David Collier: Gazan scams the anti-Zionists – antisemitism makes people dumb
A Gazan has just scammed anti-Zionists out of £1000s. Pete Gregson, the Scottish man who ran the campaigns has even just admitted it. The truth here is that this is a cycle; The lies of anti-Israel propaganda creates anti-Zionists, anti-Zionism embeds antisemitism, and antisemitism makes people targets for scams. And trust me on this, the people in Gaza and the West Bank are fully aware of it.

A Gazan scammer – the backstory
Keeping this part short: Those who read this blog will know that throughout 2022, I ran several articles on the relationship between Pete Gregson, an active antisemite from Scotland, and a Gazan by the name of Mohammed Almadhoun. Gregson put out an endless stream of fundraisers to help Almadhoun and even ran the Gaza- Edinburgh twinning campaign alongside him. I went digging (as did one or two friends), tracking down Almadhoun and all his claims. It took a while, we had to dig deep – and I even ended up speaking to an Egyptian surgeon referenced in one of the campaigns (who denied ever operating on Almadhoun). My research showed beyond doubt that not only did Almadhoun’s family have ties to both Islamic Jihad and Hamas, but that the fundraising campaigns were a scam.

A Christmas Eve notice and the Boxing Day email
Pete Gregson carried on with his campaigns, ridiculing my research and standing by his Gazan ‘friend’. Until on Christmas Eve the latest campaign was suddenly closed. Then yesterday (Boxing Day), Pete Gregson personally sent an extraordinary email to all those that had contributed. It began like this (full email – see image) :
“It greatly pains me to admit to our having been victims of a humongous scam “

He even openly admitted that I had been right:
Gregson explains that he now knows that Almadhoun, the Gazan scammer will ‘tell lies with impunity if he can scam money‘
Let Jews Arm Themselves to Keep Their Synagogues Safe
Since 2018, there have been three violent attacks on worshippers at American synagogues; numerous others were attempted, threatened, or successfully foiled by law enforcement. Under these circumstances, Jewish communities have adopted various protective measures, including arming themselves. State laws in Maryland and New York, however, specifically prohibit carrying weapons in houses of prayer. Stuart Halpern and Tevi Troy argue against such regulations:

Legally speaking, the laws appear to violate the Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms. Indeed, the New York law was challenged on that basis, and the Maryland law may face a legal challenge as well. But the laws could also be subject to a First Amendment challenge, as they could be seen as an unreasonable burden on the free exercise of religion. After all, if you can’t worship safely because of the threat of anti-Semitic violence, how can you be free to practice your religion?

Legalities aside, there is a larger problem here: these laws may be well-meaning, but the fact remains that, if enacted, potential victims will comply with the law, while their potential attackers won’t. As a result, the attackers will remain armed and dangerous, while potential protectors will be disarmed and limited to the run, hide, and fight directives of local synagogue security committees. These committees do great work, but they necessarily tell congregants, as a last resort, to throw a siddur (Jewish prayer book) at an attacker. A siddur, alas, is a poor substitute for a gun in a firefight.

The 3,000-year-old Jewish tradition has examined the tension between sanctity and safety in the synagogue. In the book of Exodus, the Almighty offers instructions for building a sacrificial altar—what would become a central component of the holy sanctuary. The Israelites are told that it is not to be made of hewn, or carved, stone. Using a sword—a weapon—in the construction of a ritual object, the Bible makes clear, would profane what is meant to be sanctified. Yet the Jewish tradition also recognizes instances of violence as necessary in defense of holy places. The book of Kings recounts how the rebellious Joab, after a failed coup, tries to avoid capture from King Solomon by grasping the sanctuary altar. Solomon ordered him executed there nonetheless.


Eli Cohen’s daughter to ask UAE for help retrieving Israeli spy’s body
Eli Cohen’s daughter said on Monday that she plans to formally appeal to the United Arab Emirates to help secure the return of the notorious Israeli spy’s body to the Jewish state.

“I am asking the Emiratis, who occupy a greater place… in the international arena, to help us mediate, and to ask and reach agreements with the Syrians to return my father’s body,” said Sophie Ben-Dor in an interview with the i24NEWS Arabic-language station.

“It seems to me that it’s an unusual channel; it’s also an Arab channel. And I think we will get clearer answers … There will be an official appeal from the family to the Emirati ambassador in Israel [Mohamed Al Khaja],” she added.

Cohen, who was born in Egypt, served as a spy for Israel in Syria under the alias Kamel Amin Thaabet, even moving to Argentina to establish his identity as a Syrian businessman. He befriended top Syrian officials and became an adviser to the Syrian defense minister, passing secret information to Israel that ended up being vital to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War.

Cohen’s true identity was discovered in 1965; he was subjected to a hasty trial and publicly hanged.

In 2019, New Zealand’s Newshub reported that Khalid al-Hafidh, the son of ex-Syrian President Amin al-Hafiz, had offered to help the Mossad find Cohen’s remains, but was turned down by the spy agency when he asked for $1 million in exchange for his services. Al-Hafiz was in power in Syria when Cohen was executed.

According to the report, al-Hafidh did not claim to know where Cohen’s remains were, but said he was the son of the “only person on this planet” who did know and was willing to “try” to help find the body.


How does the White House report on antisemitism? - opinion
For the purpose of this article, the working definition of antisemitism by The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is as follows: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

I am a Christian journalist covering the White House. Besides news reporting on antisemitism, there is the crucial role as educator to White House staff and fellow news reporters on this topic. Reporting on antisemitism involves hateful expression toward Jewish people and Israel either directly or indirectly, whether it is in forms of discrimination against Jews in speech or actions, or anti-Israel expressions by enemies of Israel (such as Iran), or funding of the Palestinian Authority with their “Pay-to-Slay” policy and the antisemitic curriculum in the schools of the United Nations Relief and Works Authority (UNRWA).

The defunding of UNRWA brought attention to their school curriculum and textbooks portraying Israel as the occupier and training children to hate Jews. The key player in the investigation of UNRWA is US Senator James Risch. In 2017, Risch, who then headed the Near East Subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, successfully requested an investigation by the GAO (General Accounting Office) into how US tax dollars funding UNRWA are being used.

The resulting GAO investigative report, issued when Risch assumed the chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, revealed that UNRWA was lying to the State Department on how funds were used, resulting in president Donald Trump defunding UNRWA.

Expressions of antisemitism are addressed in numerous news reports that emanate from the White House. A kick-off question regarding UNRWA was featured on Channel 20 on January 25, 2017, during the first week of Trump’s White House press conferences with press secretary Sean Spicer.

Next, the most prominent opportunity to comprehensively address key components of antisemitism occurred when President Joe Biden’s White House press secretary Jennifer Psaki responded to questions on April 25, regarding the Palestinian Authority’s “Pay-to-Slay” program, UNRWA, and the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Vilnius. This cemetery was desecrated by the Russians at the end of World War II. Jewish people constantly rally at this site and plea for protection for this sacred cemetery from further desecration by Vilnius city officials.

Current White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded on December 7, to a reporter’s question disputing her statement that the Biden administration is opposed to antisemitism in any form.

Another experience took place when Biden’s National Security Council member Rear Admiral John Kirby also answered questions on June 23, 2022, regarding Russia’s aggression toward Israel. Furthermore, General John Kelly addressed questions regarding US funding of UNRWA.
Republican elected to Congress admits lying about Jewish ties, family fleeing Nazis
Republican George Santos, who in November was elected to represent New York’s third congressional district, admitted on Monday to lying on the campaign trail, including falsely claiming that his mother is Jewish and his grandparents fled the Nazis.

In an interview with The New York Post, Santos said that he “never claimed to be Jewish. I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”

On his campaign website, Santos had claimed his maternal grandparents were refugees who fled the Nazis to Brazil. He also spoke of his mother’s “Jewish background beliefs.”

“I am not a criminal,” Santos said during the interview. “This [controversy] will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good.”

In a subsequent interview with the City & State outlet, Santos added, “It just strikes me as so odd that people are rushing to disinherit me from being Jewish or for even allowing [me] to care for Israel and Judaism in a time and era where antisemitism is at an all-time rise.”

He continued to recount a story in which, after the controversy broke, he had received a message from a friend saying, “George, I don’t care what they say, you’re still a M-O-T” (Member of the Tribe).

Santos also confessed he had “never worked directly” for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, a misunderstanding he said had been caused by a “poor choice of words.”

He also admitted to never graduating from any college, despite previously claiming to have received a degree from Baruch in 2010.
Pretend Jews win votes by lying about themselves
Four years after then 27-year-old candidate and now state Sen. Julia Salazar, born and raised in a tony part of South Florida, just a few years after arriving in New York as a right-wing pro-Israel Christian, introduced herself to voters as an impoverished Jewish immigrant of color and progressive anti-Zionist in a shanda for leftists willing to look past that mess, and her own family’s emphatic denials of her life story — not to mention identity theft allegations that, according to Salazar’s own civil court filings, also including a claim that she’d had an affair, which she’s denied, with her neighbor and Mets and Seinfeld legend Keith Hernandez — to back the new socialist’s winning bid to defeat a real-estate friendly incumbent Democrat in North Brooklyn whose son still represents the same area in the Assembly, a Republican newly elected to Congress representing parts of Queens and Nassau County just told her to hold my beer.

Salazar and Santos, pseudo Jews.

This time, yadda yadda, voters didn’t choose to look past a candidate’s bizarre biographical issues, once again involving a concocted claim of a Jewish family history since the New York Times’ blockbuster report on how basically nothing in Trumpy 34-year-old George Santos’ biography — including where he went to school, the big-name businesses he says he worked at while he was actually doing customer service for the Dish Network, or the animal rights rescue group he claims to have led — checked out in a campaign he ran largely off of his biography, conveniently omitting the parts about his conviction in Brazil for fraud and his involvement with a Florida company that ran what the SEC alleged was a $17 million Ponzi scheme — didn’t get published until after he’d won a House seat in America’s first-ever general election face-off for federal office between two openly gay candidates to become the first-ever openly gay non-incumbent Republican elected to Congress.

That Times story was followed by a Daily Beast story about how Santos had, in fact, been married to a woman until 2019, the year before he first ran as an openly gay candidate with no mention of that marriage.

And a Forward story about how his telling of his family’s Holocaust story (his campaign bio began with the claim “George’s grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII”) doesn’t match up with genealogical and other records showing that they were, in fact, both born in Brazil and never fled from anywhere in Europe. Also his mother who supposedly was Jewish, had social media accounts that never mentioned Jews or anything Jewish-themed but “regularly shared posts with Catholic themes and images of Jesus” before she passed away in 2016.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the people who were furious about Salazar back in 2018 have had little to say in 2022 about Santos, who frequently identified himself during the campaign as “Half-Jewish” and a “Latino Jew.”
The insidious nature of Holocaust Denial - taking on Whoopi
Motivation
What motivates Holocaust deniers? Historian Yehuda Bauer suggests deniers are trying to create the preconditions to deny the Jewish people the right to live in the post-Holocaust world.

Walter Reich, a former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, asks “what better way to rehabilitate antisemitism than to make antisemitism arguments seem once again respectable in civilized discourse and even make it acceptable for governments to pursue antisemitic policies than by convincing the world that the great crime for which antisemitism was blamed simply never happened—indeed that it was nothing more than a frame-up invented by the Jews, and propagated by them through their control of the media? What better way, in short, to make the world safe again for antisemitism than by denying the Holocaust.” This theme is also found in Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s book Assassins of Memory: “One revives the dead in order to strike the living.”

Duty to Respond
Unfortunately, the deniers have convinced some in the media that this is a free speech issue, which it is not. No one is asking the government to prevent the deniers from speaking or publishing their literature. We need to know who they are, their objectives and what they are espousing. But we are under no legal or moral obligation to publish and promote their work or provide them with venues to facilitate their hatemongering activities.

As part of their attempt to assert their legitimacy, the deniers allege they are revisionists. By making this claim, they falsely bestow upon themselves an air of erudition and authenticity. The problem is they selectively choose what suits their position and ignore or discount the rest. Genuine revisionists are historians who revise or modify a theory based on new information, or provide a new interpretation of an event, rather than fabrication or omission.

A Hoax
Deniers justify their claim that the Holocaust is a hoax on the three points that define the Holocaust.

1.The Holocaust was a highly technical, well-organized and systematic program using gas chambers and crematoria, among other instruments and methods, to murder Jews.

2. An estimated six million Jews were murdered.

3. There was an intention to commit genocide of Jews based primarily on racial ideology.

Definition of the Holocaust
When we refer to the Holocaust, we mean the systematic bureaucratically administered destruction by the Nazis and their collaborators of six million Jews during the Second World War. The Jews were found “guilty” for being Jews. The Nazi state orchestrated the attempted mass murder of every person with at least three Jewish grandparents.

Having interviewed Holocaust deniers, Michael Shermer and I know that no amount of evidence will persuade them to abandon their belief that the Holocaust never occurred. Those using the Holocaust to portray Israel as behaving like Nazis are equally determined and incorrigible.

Our task is to learn how to respond to those seeking to deny the Holocaust and using it to defame Israel.
Whoopi Goldberg under fire for repeating Holocaust remarks
Jewish activists and community members demanded Goldberg face termination from The View over the weekend after she doubled down on past Holocaust remarks, saying that the Holocaust wasn't a matter of race but "white-on-white violence".

Goldberg's controversial statement came amid an interview promoting her new movie Till.

“My best friend said, ‘not for nothing is there no box on the census for the Jewish race. So that leads me to believe that we’re probably not a race,'” Goldberg told UK paper The Sunday Times.

“It wasn’t originally” about race, Goldberg continued, saying the Nazis also killed people they believed to be “mentally defective.”

Goldberg said it was wrong to use the Nazi definition that they considered Jews a race. “The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?” she insisted.
"So, after supposed ‘apology’ earlier in year, Whoopi Goldberg doubles down on her vile remarks that the Holocaust was not about race, and instead ‘white on white’ violence. Someone get this ignorant fool off the air!"
Arsen Ostrovsky
Not Goldberg's first antisemitic rodeo

The comment occurred just 10 months after Goldberg was suspended from ABC’s daytime talk show for insisting that the Holocaust was "not about race." Goldberg showed little remorse for her past statement, arguing again that the estimated 6 million Jews who were systematically killed in the Holocaust were not targeted based on their race.

The View co-host also claimed that the Nazis targeted people of African descent in addition to Jews because they were physically different. Furthermore, she suggested that Jews had an easier time blending in with white people and hiding from the Nazis than black people did at the time of the Holocaust.

After much pushback and a suspension from ABC as a result of the first quandary, Goldberg eventually gave a semi- apology. “I get it. Folks are angry. I accept that and I did it to myself. This was my thought process and I will work hard not to think that way again,” she said earlier this year. “I get it. I’m going to take your word for it and never bring it up again.”

But with the repetition of these claims, some are calling for The View co-host's termination.


The cost of hate: Adidas stuck with $530 million of Ye merch
Hip-hop mogul Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, is not the only one taking a huge financial hit from the fallout of his series of antisemitic remarks.

Following the plunge in the rapper’s estimated net worth from more than a billion to $400 million, a recent analysis by the Financial Times shows that Ye’s former partner Adidas also faces severe financial consequences.

Adidas has $530 million worth of Ye merchandise, which it hopes to unload at a steep discount. How the shoe company will manage that remains a mystery. Adidas employees have worried for years that the shoe giant was too reliant on the Yeezy brand.

The company previously announced it expected to lose $246 million in profit this year due to canceling the arrangement with Ye. Yeezy provided Adidas with an estimated $1.7 billion in annual revenue in 2021, or 8% of the total.

Adidas also revealed it had opened an investigation into Ye after reports surfaced that he had acted inappropriately with employees, showing them explicit photos of his ex-wife Kim Kardashian.


Morningstar slow to implement promised anti-bias measures, observers say
Nearly two months have passed since U.S. investment firm Morningstar reached an agreement with pro-Israel organizations to alter its methodology in assigning risk ratings to companies doing business in and with Israel.

Yet none of the ratings have changed, even as Morningstar and a leading American Jewish interlocutor say the company is working towards its stated pledges, including the hiring of an independent expert to advise Morningstar on its assumptions and processes.

Even so, some are not convinced Morningstar is serious about changing its ways after coming under fire for its risk ratings methodology and the inherently biased sources it uses when dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

“The same process just gets reinvented every few months with no changes made. They had pressure, so they hired [independent law firm] White & Case and came back with a few tweaks. They thought it would pacify people. No one was fooled by it,” Rich Goldberg, senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Morningstar critic, told JNS.

“They went into a multi-month engagement with leading Jewish experts, leading foreign policy experts, BDS experts, ESG [environmental, social and governance movement] experts. And they came out of that process with a series of commitments, with no changes made. Now they’re digging in to have an independent consultant,” he said.

Goldberg questioned how much effort it takes “to say these few dozen Israeli companies will no longer have ‘controversy’ ratings attached to them related to this issue. That doesn’t seem like it’s that hard.”

Morningstar told JNS, “We are in the process of implementing the recommendations from the third-party report as well as the additional commitments made October 31, 2022. All controversies have now been reviewed, and we will complete the process of removing any references to divestment and agreed sources before the end of the year.”
Texas and Virginia Commissions: BDS Plays Key Role In Fomenting Antisemitism
Two state commissions issued reports on anti-Semitism this month. The Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission (THGAAC) and Virginia’s Commission to Combat Antisemitism evaluated the level and impact of Jew hatred in their respective states and offered suggestions for how the states can oppose it more effectively. In particular, both emphasized the role the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) plays in fomenting anti-Semitism and included opposing BDS prominently among their suggestions.

The Texas commission was set up by state law in 2021 to “help identify and root out antisemitism and ensure that all Texans are able to exercise their religious freedom without fear.”

Since then, the Secure Community Network (SCN), the official safety and security organization of the Jewish community in North America, reported that incidents against the Jewish community in Texas more than doubled between 2020 and 2021. And the Anti-Defamation League tracked 95 incidents in Texas in 2021, up from 23 two years earlier. Both groups see evidence that the numbers are even higher in 2022.

Particularly notable Texas anti-Semitic incidents described in the report included:
In Colleyville in January, a gunman demanding the freedom of a Muslim extremist with links to Al Qaeda held hostage a rabbi and his congregants during Shabbat (Sabbath) services for 10 hours. The standoff ended when the rabbi used the security training he had received from SCN to throw a chair at the attacker and break free. The FBI, at first, did not acknowledge that this attack was antisemitic.
In Austin in October 2021, a synagogue was set on fire in an incident linked to a man with white supremacist beliefs, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the sanctuary and building. The congregation has continued to worship in its parking lot, social hall, and other locations.
On college campuses, students have been targeted and harassed for their support of Israel, sometimes by backers of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. These included an unprecedented effort by anti-Israel students at one Texas university to erase the internationally accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism from use by Student Government. That definition recognizes the inherent antisemitism of many condemnations of Israel.

The report had this to say about BDS:
Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) as a Tool of Antisemitism
BDS is a global campaign that has gained momentum on many U.S. college campuses. It calls for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel on economic, cultural, and academic fronts. Its inherent antisemitism is evident in multiple ways, as documented by the group Stand With Us:
BDS singles out Israel alone for boycotts while ignoring the world’s worst human rights violators.
BDS places all pressure to end the conflict on Israel while failing to hold Palestinian leaders accountable for promoting hatred, incitement, and terrorism.
A leading BDS activist has openly stated, “The real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel… Justice and freedom for Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the state of Israel.”

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin created the commission by executive order on his first day in office. The Virginia commission acknowledged the particular impact of Charlottesville:
Most notable, however, was an incident from five years ago, the Unite the Right Rally, which took place in Charlottesville in 2017 and led to death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was killed when a white supremacist attending the rally intentionally crashed into dozens of counter-protestors.

“The painful memory of the Charlottesville tragedy significantly impacted both national and Virginia politics in the following years,” the report added.

Basically, the report said, Virginia is in the middle of the pack when it comes to anti-Semitism – could be worse, but hardly something to boast about.
Though Virginia is certainly not among the worst states for antisemitic incidents, it also is not among the very best. In recent years, Virginia has had fewer incidents than neighbors in Maryland and DC, but the national trend of increasing antisemitic incidents has not spared Virginia, and some of the most high-profile antisemitic incidents in recent history have occurred in the Commonwealth. Generally, while the Commonwealth has not seen antisemitic assaults take place since 2018, there has been an increased frequency of antisemitic harassment and antisemitic vandalism at levels which have remained constant from 2018 to 2021. In 2021, 411 reported antisemitic incidents impacted residents of the Commonwealth. These incidents showed a 71% increase over the 292 reported incidents in 2020.


Dishonest Reporter of the Year Awards 2022
As we get ready to wave goodbye to 2022, it is a good opportunity for us to look back and reflect on what was an eventful year for Israel in the international media. There was the mini conflict with Islamic Jihad in August, Kanye West’s antisemitic rants about Zionists, and liberal media pundits handwringing over the Israeli election results. All in all, we were kept busy over here at HonestReporting.

Some Israel-related media incidents, however, were more significant than others. These were the anti-Israel moments that were so outrageous and so alarming that they shocked even us.

Indeed, so gloriously bad were these stories, comments and clips that we felt they deserved some special recognition. To that end, we bring you the Dishonest Reporter of the Year Awards. Sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Dishonest Reporter of the Year
We had a lot of contenders this year for the prestigious Dishonest Reporter prize. From resident New York Times reporter Raja Abdulrahim, who thinks Israel is to blame when Palestinian suicide bombers blow themselves up, to the BBC’s Yolande Knell and the scarily partisan pieces she pumps out on an almost daily basis, we had our share of options.

Indeed, we had so many in the running that we struggled to choose just one, which is why we have decided that an entire news outlet — in particular, several of its esteemed journalists and commentators — deserved the title of Dishonest Reporter of the Year.

So, without further ado, our winner is… MSNBC and its team of overpaid talking heads whose anti-Israel agenda is so blatant they wear it as a badge of honor.

In fact, any attempt at journalistic impartiality (an almost mythical notion in the media world these days) has long ago been abandoned by the likes of Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Peter Beinart, whose obsessive hatred of the Jewish state colors their view on basically everything else.

For example, when Mehdi interviewed Peter about the war in Ukraine in May, the conversation somehow still managed to come back to Israel in one of the most beautiful examples of a straw man argument (see here for the infuriating video in question).

This wasn’t even the first time Mehdi embarrassed himself by using the Russian invasion of Ukraine to take potshots at Israel, having been quickly and decisively rebuffed by a Ukrainian politician when he attempted to compare Palestinians to her country’s plight. Highly recommended viewing for those who have not seen it.


OUR 10 MOST POPULAR POSTS IN 2022
As in most years, posts about bias and disinformation about Israel (and Jews) at the BBC and Guardian were among our most popular posts in 2022. Here’s the top 10 list of CAMERA UK’s most popular articles of the year, measured by number of page views from January 1 – December 27:
1. BBC issues decision on reporting of Oxford Street antisemitic incident
2. BBC News website presentation of the Texas synagogue story
3. Guardian invents new anti-Israel smear: “sportswashing”
4. MP falsely accuses Israel of separating Palestinian babies from their mothers
5. Amnesty’s map that lies
6. Justin Welby’s accusation against Israel continues to unravel
7. Guardian obfuscates Palestinian desecration of al-Aqsa Mosque
8. The Guardian on the ‘dark side’ of Israel’s baby boom
9. BBC corrects Jeremy Bowen’s inaccurate Abu Akleh claim
10. The BBC’s latest ‘comedy show’ gratuitous Israel slur
BBC News uses Christmas tourism report to promote chosen narratives
Compared to some previous years, BBC News website reporting on the topic of Christmas 2022 was quite low-key.

The main item was a report by the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Yolande Knell together with Mattea Bubalo which appeared on the website’s ‘Middle East’ page on December 24th under the headline “Bethlehem sees Christmas tourism boost after two-year Covid hiatus”.

However, as was already apparent in the fourth paragraph, Knell and Bubalo did not confine themselves to reporting on the topic of the post-Covid return of tourists to Bethlehem:
“Festivities follow a deadly escalation of violence in the occupied West Bank and Israel.”

Among the report’s descriptions of the celebrations and observations on the revival of tourism, readers find the following, together with a link to a problematic recent BBC report about a government which has yet to be sworn in.
Google labels 'Jew' as offensive slur, defines as 'petty,' 'miserly'
If you searched the word "Jew" on Google throughout the day on Tuesday, you might have been surprised to find that the definition given was an ancient antisemitic stereotype.

The word "Jew," according to this Google result with data derived from Oxford Languages, does not list someone as being a member of the Jewish people. Rather, it is listed as a verb marked offensive, defined as "to bargain with someone in a miserly or petty way."

Looking further after clicking "translations and more definitions," the Google result includes several conjugations of this verb, such as "jewed" and "jewing." It further reveals that the origin of the verb "Jew" is from the 19th century in reference to how Jewish people work with moneylending and trading.

Only after that, however, is the noun "Jew" shown as an option by Google, which is far less offensive and far more accurate.

By Tuesday evening, the Google definition had been reverted back to its original definition, leading with the noun, rather than the verb.


Poland refuses to confront its 1968 antisemitic pogrom against Jews - opinion
History does not make appointments, it just happens. Fifty-four years ago, the venom of antisemitism was unleashed against Poland’s all but last 15,000 Jews, among them my parents and grandparents, who were forced to leave the country, terrorized, broken and excommunicated for no other reason than being Jewish.

The antisemitic state-sponsored pogrom in March 1968, initiated by the then-communist Polish government, led to the forced exodus of renowned figures in the arts and sciences, less than a quarter of a century after the Holocaust.

Following Israel’s victory in the Six Day War with its Arab neighbors, Warsaw Pact member states, with the exception of Romania, broke their diplomatic ties with Israel. The developments in Poland soon took a more dramatic course. In response to the war, Władysław Gomułka, the first secretary of the governing Polish United Workers’ Party, began a bigoted campaign against Polish Jews.

The last remaining survivors of the Holocaust in a country that before World War II had more than three million Jewish citizens were declared to be foreigners, cosmopolitans, Zionists, and Poland’s enemies and were denounced as a “fifth column.” The significance of Gomułka’s fifth-column remarks can hardly be overestimated. It invoked a conspiracy theory centered on Poland’s small Jewish community, which counted no more than 30,000 members out of a population of 32 million, in 1967.

Gomułka’s comments launched a propaganda campaign where anti-Zionist resolutions were passed in more than 100,000 public meetings in factories, party offices and even in sports clubs all over the country. Poles of Jewish descent were then subjected to systematic harassment and prosecuted for defaming the Polish state. The victims were ultimately expelled from their jobs and campuses, had their citizenship revoked and were forced to emigrate.

In Lodz, where the antisemitic campaign raged with brutality, the city’s newspapers dismissed Jewish journalists while the local eye clinic administration demanded baptism certificates from physicians. The local communist propaganda bureau published educational materials quoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. After less than two months, Lodz, once a flourishing center of Jewish culture, was judenrein.

Mieczysław Rakowski, the last prime minister of communist Poland, recalls how a woman from Krakow with two sons and a sick husband asked Gomulka in a letter how she should tell her children that they had now become pariahs in their own country.

“Do me a favor and send some poison capsules,” she wrote. “I have no strength to live anymore and I do not want my sons to spend their whole lives paying for having a Jewish father.” In this atmosphere, which, according to Polish historian Dariusz Stola, amounted to a symbolic pogrom, dozens committed suicide after they had found themselves publicly vilified and socially isolated.

Physical violence accompanied the brutal campaign, which ran parallel to the main event of March 1968: mass protests initiated by students against the state. Poles of Jewish origin were accused of having instigated the rebellious calls for democratic reforms. They were arrested, beaten and subjected to torture and detention.
Leading Brazilian economist derides Jewish colleague with antisemitic tropes
Jewish groups in Brazil are demanding a retraction after a prominent economist questioned the loyalty of a Jewish economist during an interview streamed by a widely viewed Brazilian news organization.

The comments were directed against Ilan Goldfajn, a Brazilian-Israeli economist who was recently elected president of the Inter-American Development Bank, which promotes economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr., a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund, said during the interview on Jornal GGN that Goldfajn is hostile to the government of Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and included his Jewish background as one of the reasons. Batista’s argument invoked multiple antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and dual loyalty.

“He is essentially a financier, connected to the US Treasury, to the Jewish community. He is actually Jewish-Brazilian, born in Haifa, Israel. And the Jewish community has a strong presence in the US Treasury, in the Monetary Fund, in international organizations, not only in private banks,” Batista said. “As a Brazilian, all he has is his passport.”

Batista also mocked Goldfajn’s last name, calling it “unpronounceable” for not having a Portuguese origin.
NY Firefighter Arrested for Allegedly Vandalizing and Urinating on Sukkah; Ice Menorah Destroyed
A New York City Fire Department (NYFD) firefighter has been arrested for allegedly vandalizing in October a sukkah put up by the Manhattan-based Chabad Israel Center of the Upper East Side.

On Friday, according to PIX 11, 37-year-old Marty Party was charged with criminal mischief for kicking the sukkah and urinating on it. Party was highly intoxicated and off duty during the incident, the outlet added.

The NYFD has suspended him for four weeks, without pay.

“We thank the NYPD for doing a superb job investigating this crime and we are glad it has been resolved. In the spirit of Chanukah we urge everyone to do their part in illuminating the world by doing a good deed today,” Rabbi Uriel Vigler told The Algemeiner on Monday in a statement. “This is the most effective tool we have in our possession. Let’s ignite the world with good deeds.”

In another incident reported by StopAntisemitism, a menorah that Chabad Israel Center had sculpted from ice and mounted on 93rd Street and Second Avenue was destroyed.

“This was definitely a malicious and intentional act. The ice was smashed from both sides,” Rabbi Vigler told the group. “The forces of hatred will never be victorious! Even though we no longer have this ice menorah we still plan to light the 5th tonight and pray that light will win over darkness like it always has for the Jewish people.”

The vandalism incidents occurred during a massive surge in antisemitic hate crimes in New York City. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) recorded 45 antisemitic hate crimes in November 2022. In November 2021, it recorded 20. According to the data, Jewish New Yorkers were the most targeted group, accounting for 60 percent of all hate crimes that occurred.
StandWithUs: Light overpowers darkness
On November 29th, 2021, a group of 40 young Jews were subjected to an #antisemitic attack while aboard a bus in London.

This year, they returned to the site of the hateful incident to celebrate #Hanukkah. Light overpowers darkness.


Concert featuring Holocaust songs to be performed at Carnegie Hall
The day Elie Wiesel died, something came over composer and music producer Ira Antelis.

“I thought, who carries on the message of the Holocaust? Because in my life, he was the figure for me. And I started just researching some things about him,” Antelis told JNS.

That endeavor led Antelis to a book Wiesel wrote the forward to called We Are Here: Songs of the Holocaust, a collection of songs written in the ghettos and concentration camps of Nazi-occupied Europe. After locating the songbook, Antelis decided to organize a concert in his hometown of Chicago, based on the music. It never came to fruition due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But following the lifting of restrictions and a decision by Antelis to re-launch his efforts, he searched online and stumbled upon an article by Bret Werb, staff musicologist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, called Fourteen Shoah Songbooks.

“I said to myself: There’s a concert. We’re going to do a concert on these 14 songbooks—one song from every book, and honor the writers and people who put the songbooks together,” said Antelis, who produced the concert at Temple Sholom Chicago in April in conjunction with Yom HaShoah, the annual Holocaust day of remembrance.

Antelis, determined to bring the concert to New York, revived the pandemic-era idea with an old Chicago friend, Rabbi Charles Savenor, who serves as director of congregational education at Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue. The two had a chance encounter in New York fifteen years after their last meeting when Antelis presented Savenor with his vision.

“I’m not musical at all. I can’t carry a tune. I have no rhythm. I knew about the music of the Holocaust, but when Ira started telling me what his mission was and about the music, it completely aligned with something that I was passionate about, interested in, and I’d already been researching,” Savenor, who had recently taught a course on Holocaust memoirs, told JNS. “This form of resistance is something that really spoke to me. And it felt like something really sacred that we needed to commemorate.”
Israel to excavate City of David's historical Pool of Siloam
The City of David Foundation will begin excavating the Pool of Siloam and open it to the public, the Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday.

The Pool of Siloam is an archaeological and historical site within the City of David which was part of the Jerusalem water system during the reign of King Hezekiah and was constructed some 2,700 years ago.

The pool served as a reservoir for the Gihon Spring from which water was diverted and stored in underground tunnels. Some archaeologists believe that it was used as a ritual bath (mikveh) for pilgrims to purify themselves before continuing to visit the Temple.

In 1880, an inscription written in ancient Hebrew recording how the water was diverted to the pool from the Gihon Spring was discovered at the site and is currently located at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. The inscription dated back to the times of Hezekiah. The IAA's plans for the excavations

Over time, the Pool of Siloam became a target for research and excavations by archaeologists around the world, but the IAA’s excavation aims to fully expose the pool for the first time since it was built.

Throughout the excavations, visitors will be able to see the site and the progress being made in exposing it. The Pool of Siloam will be added to a route that begins in the City of David and ends at the footsteps of the Western Wall.

“The Pool of Siloam in the City of David National Park in Jerusalem is a site of historic, national and international significance,” said Jerusalem’s Mayor Moshe Lion. “After many years of anticipation, we will soon merit being able to uncover this important site and make it accessible to the millions of visitors visiting Jerusalem each year.”




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