Saturday, April 01, 2023

04/01 Links: Big business: the monetization of antisemitism; Thanks to Biden Administration, Iran's Mullahs Winners of Russia Invasion of Ukraine; Three Israelis injured in car-ramming attack in Judea

From Ian:

Big business: the monetization of antisemitism
In a 2020 report, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British non-profit organization with offices in London and Washington, DC, found that “Facebook and Instagram [were] hosting dozens of accounts that sell neo-Nazi merchandise to fund far-right extremism.” Both social media behemoths are owned by Meta Platforms and the organization accused “tech giants” of providing purveyors of hate with “a platform to reach mainstream audiences and generate funding.”

Similarly, Cooper warned in December 2022 that “the monetizing of antisemitism” was one of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s greatest concerns regarding the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment.

“We have to fight very hard to make sure [monetization] doesn’t become mainstream, so that someone’s going to get on a United Airlines flight wearing the swastika and say what’s wrong with that?” he said at the time.

“The sale of goods with antisemitic messaging and Nazi memorabilia is an issue of deep concern for Jewish communities,” European Jewish Congress Executive Vice-President & CEO Raya Kalenova tells The Media Line, calling it a “rising and lucrative phenomenon” with uneven responses that need to be regulated more tightly across countries and retail organizations.

“In some EU member states like Germany, Austria and France, it is illegal to sell Nazi ‘collectibles’,” she says. “In some other countries, there is a gray area to the advantage of large online retailers. Therefore, we must call for a systematic legal framework banning the sale of National Socialist symbols or other objects with clear antisemitic messages across Europe.

“Famous auction houses like Christie’s or Sotheby’s refuse to sell Nazi memorabilia; eBay also has an ‘offensive materials policy.’ It is important that giants like Amazon or smaller online retailers enforce clear guidelines regarding the sale of these forbidden items, using efficient AI searches and trained employees to remove them swiftly. At a time where hate speech and hate crimes are on the rise, it is up to the online marketplaces to ensure that their platform is not used to promote racism and antisemitism,” according to Kalenova.

Rich says that most of the mainstream payment services such as PayPal have done “a lot of work” to make sure that their services are not used by such sellers, but concedes that some will have “slipped through the net because it's just such a big ecosphere.”

Cooper also argues that the internet has enabled antisemites to monetize their hate. “Whenever there's a new tweak in internet technologies, you can be sure the antisemites will be there,” he says.

According to Rich, it is not just through merchandising that antisemitism and hate make money in the darker recesses of the internet, but also through ad revenue created by clicks on videos and other online media.

He gives the example of British extremist Tommy Robinson, founder of the xenophobic and Islamophobic English Defense League, whom he says has made a “pretty enormous income stream” from online videos.

“These people are content creators,” Rich says, “and they're following the same economic model as all content creators who make money that way, but that content is hate.”

Kalenova also accuses the media of benefiting from antisemitic expressions through “sensationalist” reporting that draws readers in. This increases traffic on their websites – and potentially ad revenue as well.

“Some news outlets serve as a daily clickbait platform for recognized antisemites to share their opinions and thoughts in an unrestricted way,” Kalenova tells The Media Line.

“The internet is a breeding ground for the spread of antisemitic rhetoric and certain media outlets take advantage of this dynamic to share all kinds of sensationalist articles,” she says. “Just recently, a lawsuit has been brought against French newspaper Le Monde for spreading a negative image of Sephardic Jews.”

Cooper argues that the only way to combat the current rise in antisemitism, including its monetization, is for Jews to stand firm and stand together and “find creative ways to hold internet companies accountable.”

“As long as there's no price to pay, this is just going to expand and expand and expand,” he said.


Thanks to Biden Administration, Iran's Mullahs Winners of Russia Invasion of Ukraine
Russia also reportedly wants to buy ballistic missiles from Iran, which has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. The Iranian regime therefore should officially be considered an accomplice to Russia's war crimes.

The Iranian regime, probably because it knows that the Biden administration will not take any action, is ratcheting up its engagement and weapons exports to Russia.

"President Biden's leadership is non-existent.... Look at what's happening right now with unemployment — eight million jobs are unfilled right now, and President Biden just ushered through a partisan bill to pay people billions of dollars not to work when eight million jobs are unfilled right now. We're paying people not to work, and they're borrowing money from our kids and our grandkids to do it.... We're seeing inflation starting to go through the roof. Our country is less secure. Look at what's happening around the world — the Middle East, Iran — who the President wants to let back into an agreement to get a nuclear weapon. [The Iranians are] helping funnel these bombs that are being shot into Israel. I mean where is the President's leadership on any of these crises?" – US Rep. Steve Scalise, Fox News, May 2021.
US indictment: Russian spy sought to gather intel on Israelis, including party head
A Russian intelligence operative who entered the US under a fake identity to gather information on American citizens also visited Israel with the same aim and managed to meet with the leader of a political party, according to an indictment filed by the US Justice Department earlier this month.

Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, 37, moved to the US under the guise of attending graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in 2018 under the alias Victor Muller Ferreira, the charge sheet released last Friday said. He had previously established the alias in Brazil, where he pretended to be the son of a deceased Brazilian national.

While in the US, Cherkasov allegedly connected with a State Department employee, a Capitol Hill staffer, an “Israel expert,” a US Naval Academy professor and others to gather intelligence about US policy regarding a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine in the months and years leading up to the war, the indictment alleges.

“I was working with my contacts… to find out what the academic community, political advisers and analysts think about the recent Russian military build-up near the Ukrainian border,” the indictment alleged he wrote in one message to his handlers.

In January 2020, Cherkasov visited Israel as part of a trip with a university. The indictment said while there, he texted his handler a list of names of people he met. These included “literally every single” staffer at the US Embassy, including its “LGBTQ adviser,” in addition to a security expert identified as “N.G.” along with the head of an Israeli political party who he described as a “kingmaker” with the initial “L.”

The visit came ahead of the March 2020 Knesset elections, when Yisrael Beytenu chair Avigdor Liberman was seen as a kingmaker because his party held the balance of power between the rival political blocs. The Times of Israel contacted Liberman’s office for comment but has not yet received a response.
‘April 1 absurdity’: Russia takes over rotating presidency of UN Security Council
Russia assumed the rotating presidency of the United Nations’ Security Council on Saturday for a month, a move decried as an April Fool’s Day joke by critics.

“As of 1 April, they’re taking the level of absurdity to a new level,” said Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s permanent representative, according to The Guardian.

“The security council as it is designed is immobilized and incapable to address the issues of their primary responsibility, that is, prevention of conflicts and then dealing with conflicts,” said Kyslytsya.

Ukraine is not a member of the council but has been called to speak on matters related to the Russian invasion, however the envoy said Kyiv would not be represented at the body except in the case of an “issue of critical national security interest.”

Russia will be permitted to hold its own sessions at the council, and The Guardian said Moscow was planning to hold three.

The first will be on “risks stemming from the violations of the agreements regulating the export of weapons and military equipment,” at which it is expected to attack allies for supplying arms to Ukraine.

In addition, it will hold two sessions on “effective multilateralism” and on the situation in the Middle East, to be led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry is reportedly concerned by a hardening of Moscow’s rhetoric toward Jerusalem after Israel was said to have authorized the sale of defensive military equipment to Kyiv for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.


The Chinese Thinker Who Claims That the Jews Are His Country’s Number-One Enemy
In a 2022 essay, the Beijing-based journalist and public intellectual Zheng Ruolin—who made his bones working for Chinese state-run media in Paris in the 1990s—outlined an anti-Semitic theory of the global political order. Using such evasions as “many people even directly associate Jewishness with transnational financial capital,” rather than articulate his anti-Jewish ideas straightforwardly, Zheng draws on anti-democratic, anti-American, anti-globalization, and Marxist themes to portray a world where evil forces maliciously paint Russia and China as enemies of the West to distract from the latter’s supposed decay. Tuvia Gering writes:
The article was published on June 10, 2022 by the popular nationalist platform Guancha, which is funded by the billionaire Eric Li and occasionally publishes egregiously anti-Semitic or simply racist articles by firebrand Chinese pundits in order to generate clicks. . . . According to Zheng Ruolin, Xi Jinping’s China has accepted the challenge of leading mankind toward a “community of shared future.” This has made it the number-one adversary of transnational financial capital, which is driven by Jews on their mission to establish a world government over which they will rule.

Gering provides a complete translation of the article, which contains such passages as the following:
When it comes to dealing with China, however, Western transnational financial capital has a strategy of collaborating with industrial capital. In a speech at the 2019 Davos Economic Forum, the American Jewish financial tycoon George Soros went so far as to call the competition between China and the West “a battle for the future of the world.”

China’s community of shared future for mankind represents yet another direct challenge to the “world government.” Will capital establish a “world government” it dominates, or will China be able to lead mankind toward a community of shared future? This is a challenge with such historic ramifications that China has emerged as transnational finance capital’s number-one adversary.
Bill that would bar Congo’s only Jewish politician from presidency resubmitted
Backers of a law that would bar the Democratic Republic of Congo’s only Jewish politician from becoming president are trying again to get it passed, in a move decried by Jewish leaders abroad.

The law, reintroduced to the African nation’s parliament in Kinshasa this week, would bar anyone without two Congolese parents from ascending to the presidency.

Its main effect would be to block Moise Katumbi from succeeding in his presidential bid underway now. Katumbi is the son of a Congolese woman from a local royal family and a Greek Jew, Nisim Soriano, who fled to what was then a Belgian colony during the Holocaust.

“The controversial bill on nationality has been considered by the opposition as a means of blocking the way for Moise Katumbi, the leading candidate in the 2023 presidential election and who is considered to have the best chance of defeating the incumbent president,” a spokesman for Katumbi told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

It’s not the first time Katumbi has come up against the bill, known as the Tshiani Law, after its proponent Noel Tshiani, a rival politician. Tshiani introduced a similar bill in 2021, when Katumbi was also running, citing concerns about foreign meddling in the country’s elections.

“Any mercenary could no longer slip to the top of the Congolese state,” Tshiani said in defense of his bill. On Twitter, he likened the legislation to a biblical command, specifically that in Deuteronomy 17:15, which states, ”You may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother.”
The Israel Guys: We Went to the PROTESTS in Tel Aviv to Ask the Protestors WHY They Are Protesting
We went to the protests in Tel Aviv to talk to the protestors and find out what the average person knows about what they are fighting against.

Due to the craziness of the backlash and protests in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to halt Judicial reform proceedings for now. Just one problem though, it seems like the protesters don’t even know what they are protesting.




Three Israelis injured in car-ramming attack in Judea
Three Israelis were wounded on Saturday night in a car-ramming attack near the village of Beit Umar, located northwest of Hebron in Judea.

Magen David Adom emergency medical personnel treated the victims, all men in their 20s, before evacuating them to the hospital.

One of the men was in serious condition, another was moderately wounded and the third was lightly hurt.

The terrorist was “neutralized,” the Israel Defense Forces said.

“Once again our enemies raised their heads and tried to murder Jews, just because they are Jews, and reminded us of the palpable threats against us,” said Yesha Council head and Gush Etzion Regional Council chairman Shlomo Ne’eman.

“It’s unfathomable how a religious holiday [Ramadan] turns into a holiday of terrorist attacks. We will continue to build and develop throughout Judea and Samaria and travel on Israel’s roads without fear. We wish those injured a speedy recovery and will pray for them,” he added.

Israeli forces remain on high alert during the monthlong Ramadan holiday and following a series of terrorist attacks.
Arab-Israeli Man Shot Dead after Snatching Police Gun Outside Jerusalem’s Temple Mount
An Arab Israeli man was shot dead by Israeli security forces at a checkpoint in Jerusalem early on Friday, after snatching an Israeli guard’s gun and managing to fire out two shots.

No Israeli police were hurt in the incident, which unfolded outside the flashpoint Temple Mount site.

Some local media reported that the man, identified as a 26-year-old Muhammad El-Asibi, a medical student from southern Israel, intended to perpetrate a terrorist attack. Others said his outburst came in response to a rough treatment of a veiled Palestinian woman by Israeli guards, and it cannot be determined whether he intended to carry out an armed assault. Israeli police say there wasn’t a woman involved.

Contesting the official version of events, El-Asibi’s family said that he “was no terrorist” and the incident should be thoroughly investigated. They demanded that Israel provide security camera footage of the incident.

Following the incident, Israeli forces closed the entrance gates to the Temple Mount. This comes amid the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, typically a time of violent riots instigated by Palestinian worshippers.
Israel Probes Lethal Police Shooting at Flashpoint Jerusalem Holy Site
Israel Police shot and killed Israeli-Bedouin Muhammad al-Osaibi near the Chain Gate of the Temple Mount early Saturday, saying he attempted to steal an officer’s weapon and commit a terrorist attack.

Osaibi’s family has rejected the claim, saying he was a “normal kid, a medical student in Romania who returned for a month.” Ynet said he was 26 from the village of Hura.

A police officer who fought with Osaibi said he asked him to leave the area because the gate was closed and Osaibi began arguing with him.

“At a certain point, the terrorist turned to me, grabbed the weapon that was secured and managed to get it out of the holster and fire several bullets at the officers,” said the officer. “I managed to take control of him in a matter of seconds to take the weapon out of his hands and neutralize him, along with the other police officer who was with me. I was sure that he intended to shoot all the police officers who were operating at the scene because he aimed at the officers and shot at them, but luckily he didn’t hit anyone.”

Israel Police stated that because the incident happened behind the closed gate, it was not caught by security cameras in the area. Police published footage of the gate during the incident showing the gate closed and people suddenly running, possibly after shots were fired.

Footage of Osaibi walking on the Temple Mount was also published.

The police added that the body cameras of the officers were also not on.

Osaibi’s family rejected the claims made by police, calling on the police to get to the bottom of the incident. The family also demanded an autopsy of the body.


Lebanese Runner Withdraws From International Race to Avoid Israeli Opponent in Solidarity With Hezbollah
A Lebanese runner and Hezbollah supporter pulled out of a race in an international competition taking place in Poland after he discovered that an athlete from Israel would also be participating.

Mazen Chreim was set to compete in the World Athletics Masters Indoor Championships in Toruń, Poland, from March 26-April 1 in the 200 meter, 400 meter and triple jump races in the age category for athletes between 40-44 years old. However, he withdrew from the 200 meter that was scheduled for day two of the competition because the race included an Israeli runner, the Iranian-owned news network Press TV reported on Friday.

Chreim announced his decision on Facebook, saying it was made after speaking with the Lebanese Athletics Federation, and said he was taking the same position as the late Hezbollah leader Sheikh Ragheb Harb, who refused to even shake hands with Israelis and was ultimately assassinated by Israeli forces in 1984. Chreim wrote, “shaking hands with the enemies means recognizing them.”

He also told Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television channel that he considers his withdrawal from the championship “a victory.” He added that he supports Hezbollah and does not formally recognize Israel, and thus will not participate in any sports competition with Israeli athletes, according to Press TV.

The organizers of the championship reportedly said they were disappointed in Chreim’s decision, insisting that political views should remain separate from sports and that the tournament hopes to unite athletes from around the world.
Iran’s Judiciary Chief Threatens to Prosecute ‘Without Mercy’ Unveiled Woman
Faced with an increasing number of women defying the compulsory dress code, Iran’s judiciary chief has threatened to prosecute “without mercy” women who appear in public unveiled, Iranian media reported on Saturday.

Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei’s warning comes on the heels of an Interior Ministry statement on Thursday that reinforced the government’s mandatory hijab law.

“Unveiling is tantamount to enmity with (our) values,” Ejei was quoted as saying by several news sites. Those “who commit such anomalous acts will be punished” and will be “prosecuted without mercy,” he said, without saying what the punishment entails.

Ejei, Iran’s chief justice, said law enforcement officers were “obliged to refer obvious crimes and any kind of abnormality that is against the religious law and occurs in public to judicial authorities”.

A growing number of Iranian women have been ditching their veils since the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in the custody of the morality police last September. Mahsa Amini had been detained for allegedly violating the hijab rule.

Government forces violently put down months of nationwide revolt unleashed by her death.

Still, risking arrest for defying the obligatory dress code, women are widely seen unveiled in malls, restaurants, shops and streets around the country. Videos of unveiled women resisting the morality police have flooded social media.
Iranian pours yogurt on 2 women in shop for not wearing hijab; the women are arrested
Iranian authorities ordered the arrest of two women, the judiciary said Saturday, after a viral video show them being attacked by a man for not wearing the hijab.

Video footage widely shared on social media in Iran showed the two female customers, who were not wearing the mandatory hijab or headscarf, in a shop being assaulted by a man after a verbal altercation.

The footage shows the man pouring a container of what appears to be yogurt on the two women’s heads before he is confronted by the shopkeeper.

Authorities issued an arrest warrant against the man “on charges of committing an insulting act and disturbance of order,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.

But police also arrested the two women for “committing a forbidden act” by removing their headscarves.

“Necessary notices have been issued to the owner of the shop where this happened in order to comply with legal and Sharia principles according to the regulations,” it added.


University of London professor fired for antisemitic insults at students
Professor Rob Singh was recently fired from Birkbeck, University of London for antisemitic rhetoric directed at students. He will be allowed to finish the rest of the academic year at the institute.

According to the university's website, "Rob is a specialist in contemporary US politics and the politics of American foreign policy. He is the author of eleven books - including, most recently, In Defense of the United States Constitution (Routledge, 2019) - and numerous articles and book chapters."

Singh’s firing was the result of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) which claimed to have submitted evidence against Singh.

Singh allegedly made statements to students like: “Too bad you live down to stereotypes,” “Is it difficuybeing a Jew?” [sic] and “Are you pretending to be a Jew?”

Singh is also accused of using profanities and slurs specifically targeting black people, and other racist terminology, such as referring to people as apes.

Professor Singh will be leaving his position as the Professor of Politics and Director of Education in the Department of Politics on July 31, according to CAA.


French Politician Files Legal Complaint Against Newspaper Le Monde For ‘Racial Insult’ Against Sephardic Jews in Israel
A Jewish former member of the French parliament has filed a complaint against Le Monde, one of the country’s leading newspapers, over an allegedly antisemitic opinion piece that referred to the “lack of manners” among Sephardic Jews in Israel.

Lawyers for Meyer Habib — a vocal supporter of Israel whose election to the French National Assembly was annulled by the country’s constitutional court earlier this month, after it cited ballot “irregularities” and other violations of electoral conduct — announced on Thursday that the complaint was based on a perceived “racial insult” against the Sephardic community, “(who were) described with contempt.” Habib, a member of the center-right Les Republicains Party, had served as the parliamentary representative for French citizens living abroad in Greece, Turkey, Italy and Israel for the last 10 years.

The offending piece — written by Christophe Ayad and Louis Imbert, Le Monde’s Jerusalem correspondent — mocked Habib, a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for having been removed from his parliamentary position as the Israeli leader arrived in Paris for talks with President Emmanuel Macron. Describing a meeting with business leaders, Ayad and Imbert noted that Habib was standing alongside Netanyahu wearing “a crumpled white shirt and blue tie — the colors of the Israeli flag.”

The piece then observed that what “was to be the day of glory of Mr. Habib was the end of his mandate. That’s too bad.”

However, the authors warned that Habib could make a bid for re-election in the coming months.

“He has a chance to win, as his lack of manners and his excesses seduce a French electorate in Israel which leans more and more to the right, and where the Sephardim have more and more weight,” they claimed.
Reviewing BBC News website reporting on shooting attacks in Huwara
The first of those paragraphs relates to reports of violence in Huwara on March 27th but does not mention additional reports concerning later stone-throwing incidents in which four Israelis were apparently injured.

The third paragraph relates to violent incidents on February 26th which were reported in three dedicated BBC news website reports – two written and one filmed – and also covered in two additional reports on other topics. Readers may recall that the earlier terror attack in which the brothers Hillel and Yagel Yaniv were murdered did not receive any stand-alone coverage but was mentioned to one extent or another in five reports about other topics.

As we see, none of the three shooting attacks against Israelis (two of which have been claimed by the PFLP) that have taken place in Huwara in just over a month has been the topic of stand-alone reporting on the BBC News website: the platform that is portrayed by the corporation as ‘permanent public record‘.


UK hosts emergency meeting on millions of unclaimed Holocaust property stolen from Jews, others
Victims and relatives have yet to claim millions of belongings that Nazi authorities stole from Jews and others during the Holocaust, a British official said on March 28 during an international conference of Holocaust representatives in London.

Eric Pickles, the United Kingdom government’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, complained that international auctioneers are profiting from stolen artwork and other valuable artifacts as survivors who can identify their previous possessions dwindle.

“We need to get a grip on this in the next five years, or it will be too late,” he warned.

The Conservative parliamentarian spoke at the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office during the inaugural meeting on Holocaust-era property restitution. Pickles planned the event with Mark Weitzman, chief operating officer of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, a global body that represents world Jewry pursuing claims for recovery of Jewish properties in Europe outside of Germany and Austria.

More than 20 representatives from more than 10 countries attended, including Ellen Germain, U.S. special envoy for Holocaust issues; Croatian Ambassador to London Igor Pokaz; and Wesley Fisher, director of research at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
UK increases funding 7.1% to protect Jewish institutions
The United Kingdom announced on March 30 that it will increase funding to protect synagogues and Jewish schools in 2023-24 by 7.1%—from 14 million pounds (about $17 million) last year to 15 million pounds (a little more than $18.3 million)

The British government also announced plans to implement a task force on Jewish community police, crime and security. The funding will reportedly be used for new surveillance systems, alarms and guards.

Antisemitic incidents are down 27% in the United Kingdom, according to a recent report, but they still remain at high levels. Government hate-crime statistics for 2021-22 indicate that 23% of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the United Kingdom were against Jews, who make up less than 1% of the religious population there.

Last year, a poll found that 34% of Britons aged 18 to 24—and 20% of the general population—think to one degree or another that Jews possess inordinate control over the world’s banking and financial systems.

British Interior Minister Suella Braverman said recently: “We must go further to ensure the vile criminals who threaten the peace and safety of Jewish communities feel the full force of the law.”
New York City Police Charge Man Accused of Graffitiing Swastikas on Jewish Daycare and Synagogue
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) charged a man with a slew of hate crime charges on Wednesday after he allegedly painted swastikas on a synagogue, the office of a Jewish daycare, and an apartment building across several neighborhoods in the Queens borough.

The Queens County District Attorney said on Wednesday that thirty-four year old Antoine Blount committed the spree of offenses between March 22-23. He is charged with aggravated harassment as a hate crime and criminal mischief as a hate crime.

“Cowardly acts of hate, especially in front of a house of worship, have no place in our diverse borough and won’t be tolerated,” Katz added. “We have charged the defendant with hate crimes for these antisemitic attacks.”

Blount targeted the Reform Temple of Forest Hills and an apartment building in the same neighborhood, as well as Sholom Day Care in Kew Gardens. He also, in two unrelated incidents, assaulted two men at the intersection of Jamaica Avenue and 102nd Street. He faces a total of ten counts of criminal charges and is scheduled to again appear in court on May 8.

According to StopAntisemitism, a nonprofit organization, the NYPD is also seeking information leading to the arrest of two men suspected of graffitiing, in red paint, what multiple reports have described as “antisemitic symbols” on a window of a building in the Civic Center in Lower Manhattan. The suspects were described as light complexioned and wearing dark clothing.


Junior hockey commentator fired after using antisemitic slur during radio broadcast
A broadcaster for a junior hockey team in Canada was fired after using an antisemitic slur during a game Wednesday night

The Okotoks Oilers are based in Okotoks Alberta, Canada, and play in the Alberta Junior Hockey League.

During the playoff game Wednesday between the Oilers and the Brooks Bandits, which was broadcast on The Eagle 100.9 radio station, analyst Mark Frank used a word the American Jewish Committee says is "rooted in the false stereotype that Jews are cheap or stingy," according to the Alberta Report.

“During the March 29th, 2023 game broadcast of the AJHL playoff game between the Okotoks Oilers and Brooks Bandits, the colour commentator for the Okotoks Oilers made a discriminatory comment and as such has been permanently removed from the broadcast crew. The Okotoks Oilers and Alberta Junior Hockey League apologize to all those who heard the comment and will not tolerate this type of behaviour.”

Frank's picture was taken off the Okotoks Oilers website and the word was removed from the video of the play-by-play action, according to the Alberta Report.
How a run-in with Guillermo del Toro led to NYC’s first Mexican Jewish Film Festival
When Deborah Koenigsberger Gutierrez attended a small cocktail reception with the celebrated Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro last December, she didn’t expect to leave with an idea for a synagogue fundraiser.

But in a conversation with del Toro and a few other guests at the event, which was in honor of the premiere of his latest feature, “Pinocchio,” the famed filmmaker made a remark that stuck with her.

“He said something that really hit my heart,” recalled Koenigsberger Gutierrez, the president of Tribeca Synagogue. “He said, ‘Every Mexican outside of Mexico is an ambassador of the culture of Mexico.’”

Koenigsberger Gutierrez, who was born in Mexico City, had been on the lookout for creative ways to engage young families at her congregation, something beyond a traditional silent auction and gala dinner. She landed on a program that would draw an audience and pay tribute to del Toro’s craft, and began organizing the synagogue’s first-ever Mexican Jewish Film Festival, which will begin on Sunday, April 2.

“I basically said to myself, ‘How can I make a big event that brings in people and also celebrates Mexican Jews?’” Koenigsberger Gutierrez said. “And everybody loves going to the movies.”

The festival will feature 10 films with English subtitles over the course of three days, all of which were directed, made, written or acted in by Mexican Jews. The Jews highlighted in the festival come from a variety of Jewish backgrounds, including Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Syrian, and the films span a variety of genres, including horror, comedy and drama.

In addition to movie screenings, the festival will feature Q&As with two of the directors: Guita Schyfter, who directed “Like a Bride,” a coming-of-age story about two young women in 1960s Mexico City; and Isaac Ezban, who directed two horror movies, “Evil Eye” and “The Similars.” It will also feature a performance from the Nashir! chorus, pop-up artisan shops in the social hall, coffee from Mexico’s Chiapas region and cocktails and kosher Mexican food from the restaurant Carlos & Gabby’s.




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