Showing posts with label Baha'i. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baha'i. Show all posts

Monday, January 09, 2023

From Ian:

‘The great unpunishment’: How, why so many Holocaust perpetrators got away with it
After spending 18 years bringing “Getting Away With Murder(s)” to fruition, British filmmaker David Wilkinson faced wall-to-wall rejections when he shopped the documentary to global broadcasters and subscription services such as Netflix.

Clocking in at three hours, Wilkinson’s film is a detailed indictment of the so-called “great unpunishment” faced by nearly all of the Holocaust’s perpetrators. The film focuses on specific German war criminals — and non-German collaborators — to explain how so many mass murderers avoided accountability.

“The lack of justice for the victims of the Holocaust is the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of mankind,” Wilkinson told The Times of Israel. “The world needs to know this,” he said.

“Getting Away With Murder(s)” will finally land on several US streaming platforms on January 27, which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The film has been airing in 11 European countries since July, said Wilkinson.

“It has been a slog all the time with this documentary,” said Wilkinson, who has produced or distributed 125 films in a career spanning more than four decades.

“In some ways, ‘Jews Don’t Count’ should have been the name of this film,” said Wilkinson, who had to fund much of the documentary himself, along with his wife, costume designer Amy Roberts of Netflix’s “The Crown.”

Even Israeli broadcasters, said Wilkinson, were not keen on supporting the sprawling Holocaust documentary.

“I was told a few times that Israel has more Holocaust documentaries than any other country,” said Wilkinson, whose film was also rejected by the Berlin Film Festival.

However, after the slew of commercial rejections, “Getting Away With Murder(s)” became a favorite of British critics. Wilkinson has been compared favorably to Claude Lanzmann of “Shoah” fame, and the influential “Guardian” voted the film its top documentary of the year.

“It was the power of the free press. Without them championing the film, I really do think it would have been ignored,” said Wilkinson.


The Need to Curb Black Anti-Semitism
In fact, Irving has neither apologized for any unintended incitement nor even acknowledged the phenomenon of growing animosity and violence toward Jews—especially among American blacks. If he had actually wanted to defuse the hold of these ideologies on some of his fans, he might have tried saying something like this:
There is no truth in the claims in Hebrews to Negroes that there was no Holocaust or that today’s Jews usurped Judaism from blacks and should be punished for it. In fact, roughly 6 million Jews were murdered for being Jews during World War II; there is no historical support for a religious usurpation; and it is never okay to harass or attack Jews. If your religion tells you that they deserve it, then your religion is despicable.

And he might have added:
Jews make up about 2 percent of the U.S. population but routinely suffer 60 percent of religion-based hate crimes. Here in New York City, nearly half of all hate-crime victims are Jewish—in a city only around 7 percent Jewish—and in cases where the attacker’s race is known, 42 percent of attackers are black. Brooklyn has experienced 186 hate crimes so far this year, at least 74 of these against Jews. This is shameful, and anyone who commits crimes against Jews needs to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

If anything, Irving’s peace-and-love non-apologies served as a dog whistle to those whose ideologies he refrained from condemning. On his reinstatement day, scores of Black Hebrew Israelites, outfitted in the uniform of the group Israel United in Christ, amassed in military formation in Grand Army Plaza shouting: “Hey Jacob, it’s time to wake up. We have good news: we are the real Jews.” Still shouting, they army-marched to the nearby Barclay’s Center, where Irving was finally back on court, to distribute fliers promulgating the same brand of libel against Jews that Irving could have explicitly countered, but didn’t. Nothing that Irving has said or done since has stopped Hebrews to Negroes from becoming the best-selling book in multiple Amazon categories or delegitimized its hateful message.

Perhaps conscientious education can cure people of prejudice; certainly, dialogue is a critical and healthy part of civics. Anti-Semitism, however, is an age-old malignancy that leapfrogs bias to become something irrational, suffused with magical thinking and the potential for violence. Maybe to combat this growing surge, we need to focus less on explaining why anti-Semitism is not nice and more on discovering what forces of misplaced grievance and fear in the black community are inflaming it now.
UAE will teach Holocaust education in national school curriculum
The UAE will be adding Holocaust education to its school curriculums, the UAE Embassy in the US confirmed on Twitter last week.

"In the wake of the historic Abraham Accords, the UAE will now include the Holocaust in the curriculum for primary and secondary schools," was written in the tweet which added a quote by one of the Emirati brokers of the Accords Ali al-Nuaimi.

"Memorializing the victims of the Holocaust is crucial," he said. "Public figures failed to speak the truth because a political agenda hijacked their narrative, yet a tragedy on the scale of the Holocaust targets not only Jews but humanity as a whole."

The UAE is the first Arab state to officially include Holocaust education in its school curriculum.

"This means a lot," said US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides in a comment to the UAE Embassy's tweet. "Great to see it coming to fruition."

'Holocaust education is imperative for humanity'
"Pleased to see this important step being taken by the United Arab Emirates," wrote the US Special Envoy to Monitor Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt. "Holocaust education is an imperative for humanity and too many countries, for too long, continue to downplay the Shoah [Holocaust] for political reasons. I commend the UAE for this step and expect others to follow suit soon."

“The United Arab Emirates has been leading the way in peace and tolerance education in the region for some years,” said CEO of Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) Marcus Sheff. "IMPACT-se is delighted that they have taken this important step in educating about the Shoah and humbled to have partnered with the Ministry of Education.”

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

A guest post from Kweansmom.

Linda Sarsour, outspoken Palestinian-American activist, never has anything good to say about Israel, calling it an oppressive occupier and an apartheid state. Yet during a recent visit to her relatives on the West Bank, she also spent some time in pre-1967 Israel and visited one of its most ethnically and religiously diverse cities, Haifa. Is it any wonder she was silent about it? 


According to publicly available social media posts from others in her touring group, Linda Sarsour walked along Rehov Yefe Nof (literally, the Street with the Beautiful View) from where she could view the Haifa Bay  and almost all of Haifa itself. The view includes the spectacular Bahai Gardens and the spiritual center of the Bahai faith. The Bahai sect originated in Iran, where it is persecuted, but in Israel, the Bahai enjoy full freedom of religion.  Naturally, this fact doesn’t fit in with Sarsour’s “Jewish Supremacy” explanation of Israel’s founding, so she’ll never admit that she personally witnessed it. 


Ms. Sarsour also took a boat tour near the port of Acre. Both Acre and Haifa are mixed ethnically and religiously, having a significant non-Jewish population.  She might even have seen or heard about the University of Haifa, whose student body and faculty about 40% Israeli Arab. Also in Haifa is the Technion, where Arab Israeli student populations have  tripled in the past two decades thanks to active campaigns to increase Arab participation and graduation. But facts like these don’t support her “apartheid” narrative, so she left them out of her public posts. 

 Ms. Sarsour spent most of her time during her recent trip in the Palestinian Territories of the West Bank, where by her own admission she saw that her family and friends are free to practice their religion, commemorate their heroes and celebrate their happy family occasions.  That’s not to say that Palestinians in the West Bank experience no hardship, but her narrative contains no nuance about who is responsible for it. In her telling, Palestinian joy is only because of their “resilience” and Palestinian suffering is only due to Israeli “oppression”.  There is no terrorism, only “resistance”, and Palestinian leaders have no agency.



Ms. Sarsour was very impressed by the presence of signs posted on trees in Palestinian towns reminding passersby to say blessings upon the Prophet Mohammed. It made me wonder what the street signs would say in her utopian vision of a binational state for all citizens of Palestine which she hopes will one day replace Israel. Will Palestine respect all religions, as Israel does? Or will it depend on whether “public order and public morals” are jeopardized, as written in the Constitution of Palestine? 



A short time after she returned to the US from the PA, she proudly went to speak at a conference in Turkey, which has been occupying Northern Cyprus for nearly 50 years. Apparently occupation is only bad if Israel is doing it. For a comprehensive analysis of the human rights double standard for Israel vs. Turkey, see Elder of Ziyon’s excellent essay on that topic. 

When I first posted on Twitter that Ms. Sarsour was in Israel, some people responded that they shouldn’t have let her in. And I’ll admit, I used to think that Israel was right to keep BDS activists out of the country. But despite her best efforts, Linda Sarsour got to see with her own eyes that Israel isn’t the hateful, racist country she likes to say it is. Despite her attempt to keep her visit a secret, a few telling photographs were leaked. So maybe it’s for the best if the haters are allowed in to the country and given the opportunity to witness the truth.  Maybe one day she and others like her will have to publicly admit what their own eyes have seen.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, August 03, 2022

Baha'i family in Iran whose home was burned down
From Iran International:

Security forces laid siege to a village in northern Iran Tuesday and started demolishing houses and farms belonging to members of the persecuted Baha’i faith.

Simin Fahandej, a spokeswoman for the Baha’i International Community, told Iran International Tuesday that over 200 security forces were deployed to block the roads leading to Roshankouh, a village in Mazandaran Province, and begin demolition of the houses and farms belonging to Bahai’s.

According to Fahandej, security forces arrested some Bahai’s who tried to stop the operations, confiscated mobile phones of some villagers to prevent them from recording videos and publishing them on social media, and warned locals not to take any photos or videos of their operations.

A video posted on social media by the Baha'i International Community Tuesday shows security forces using heavy construction machinery to demolish buildings in Roshankouh.

Since early June security forces and the judiciary of the Islamic have intensified pressure on the followers of the Baha’i faith, raiding over a dozen households, arresting tens including three of the former leaders of the community, and shutting down businesses.
Iran's persecution of Baha'i fits Human Rights Watch and Amnesty's definitions of apartheid far better than Israel's treatment of Palestinians. This was pointed out in an article by South African Winston Nagan  for PBS back in 2012: "Having grown up with the indignities of the apartheid system in South Africa, I bristle whenever I hear anyone equate a government's treatment of a portion of its citizenry to apartheid. Usually, the claims are exaggerated. But in Iran today, the government's treatment of the Baha'i community bears striking similarities."

He pointed out:

Both Blacks in South Africa and Baha'is in Iran have been excluded from being legislators.

Both have been excluded from universities.

Both have been limited under the law from building their own educational institutions.

Both have been excluded from certain jobs.

Both have had their property confiscated for no reason.

Hundreds of members of both groups have been executed for their political beliefs.

Iran has even banned Baha'i from burying their dead according to their laws. It has demolished Baha'i cemeteries and built parks and cultural centers on top of them.

Since that article, things have only gotten worse
Under Iranian law, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians are the only religious minorities accepted. Baha'is are considered to be "unprotected infidels," according to a July 2019 report by the UN special rapporteur to Iran, Javaid Rehman.

Despite facing persecution, Bahai's are forbidden by their faith to lie about their religion. This means that the new identity card application prevents them from applying for and obtaining official identification, as they cannot claim affiliation to one of the three legally recognized minority religions.
Iran's policy towards the Baha'i is arguably worse than that of apartheid-era South Africa towards Blacks, because it is meant to ultimately ethnically cleanse them from the country altogether - something that is nearly complete in Yemen.

Even though Israel has none of the discriminatory laws against Arabs that Iran has towards the Baha'i,  major human rights NGOs have decided to declare only Israel guilty of apartheid. This hurts the Baha'i because these NGOs resist using the term anywhere else for their own anti-Israel propaganda purposes. This means that the Baha'i are not able to easily use that appellation to pressure Iran to treat them better.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Tuesday, August 02, 2022

Last week I noted that Iran's claim that a Zionist spy ring that they supposedly caught had been in contact with the head of the Mossad was quite ridiculous, and it makes one think that many of their claims of catching spies are more for the sake of honor than the truth.

Their latest claim of catching "Zionist spies" is even more ridiculous.


The Ministry of Security said in a statement today, Monday: "The cadres of the Ministry of Security arrested a number of members of the central cell of the Baha'i Espionage Party," and added: "The arrested suspects were directly connected to the Zionist center called 'House of Justice', which is based in occupied Palestine." .

The statement continued: "The results of the intelligence documents indicate that the aforementioned center has conveyed to the detained network the strategy of reviving the deviant Baha'i sect organization in Iran ..."

He added: "They were also assigned the tasks of spreading the teachings of Bahai-made colonialism on a large scale and infiltrating educational environments at various levels, especially kindergartens throughout the country. In addition to that, the arrested cell members had several meetings with the central staff of the Zionist Party abroad and were presenting periodic reports on the above-mentioned missions, especially the organized promotion of the fight against the veil in Iran, to the conspiracy center in occupied Palestine."
The Baha'i are persecuted mercilessly in Iran.The Baha'i International Community website says:
Baha’is, who are Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority, are routinely arrested, detained, and imprisoned. They are barred from holding government jobs, and their shops and other enterprises are routinely closed or discriminated against by officials at all levels. Young Baha’is are prevented from attending university, and those volunteer Baha’i educators who have sought to fill that gap have been arrested and imprisoned.  
Israel provides refuge for the Baha'i, whose beautiful headquarters is in Haifa. But if someone wanted to spy against Iran, Baha'i would be the last people one would recruit! A good spy is invisible, not a member of a hated minority.

Iran's credibility has always hovered around zero. To use Israel as an excuse to persecute the Baha'i is pretty low, though. 

UPDATE: Baha'i news sources are reporting that there is a huge escalation of persecution against them. The "Zionist spy" story seems to be an attempt to cover it up.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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