Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Nazi Germany

Showing posts with label Nazi Germany. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 06, 2023

Hundreds of Jews were saved by (illegal) Latin American passports and papers during the Holocaust

Bergen-Belsen

From the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, How Latin American Passports Were Used to Save Lives during the Holocaust, by Efraim Zadoff.

This is a bit different than most stories of diplomats issuing papers to Jews. In this case, even the Germans often knew that the papers were issued illegally (and indeed many Jews with these papers were sent to extermination camps.) But the Nazis were keen on prisoner exchanges with the Allies and they sometimes used these Jews as bargaining chips to sweeten the terms of the swaps.

As many as a thousand Jews were saved this way. And the diplomats who saved the Jews were almost all punished by their governments.

Excerpts:

The use of Latin American passports during the Holocaust has yet to receive the attention it warrants in Holocaust historiography.

This article is based on a wider study aimed at shedding light on the identity of the individuals who served Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Chile (Samuel del Campo), Costa Rica, Ecuador (Manuel Antonio Muñoz Borrero), El Salvador (Arturo Castellanos), Guatemala, Honduras (Alfonse and Isabelle Bauer), Haiti (Johan Schluchin, J. Bruner), Paraguay (Rudolf Hügli), and Peru (José María Barreto and José Gambetta). These officials operated in a number of countries and under widely varying circumstances. Some were posted to Switzerland (Bern, Geneva, and Zurich), Sweden (Stockholm) or Portugal (Lisbon)—three European countries that maintained neutrality throughout the war. Others were situated in Axis-aligned Romania (Bucharest and Czernowitz) and Japan (Kobe) or in the Americas, in countries such as Bolivia, Paraguay, Costa Rica, and the United States. One operated out of German-occupied Poland. Most of these individuals risked and eventually lost their jobs for consciously taking action that ran counter to the instructions and policies of their superiors and of their own governments regarding the rescue of Jews during the war.

In some cases, these once-trusted diplomats were placed under surveillance and subjected to police interrogations in the countries in which they served. This diversity among the diplomats involved in the endeavor to save Jews with Latin American documents also characterized the individuals and entities behind that effort. In most cases, a broad group of Jewish activists with disparate orientations—Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and Orthodox rabbis, Zionists and non-Zionists, officials of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), entrepreneurs and businessmen—led the struggle to get Latin American diplomats on board and obtain the required documents from them. Occasionally, non-Jewish individuals and officials, such as the Polish diplomatic team in Bern, cooperated in this effort and even actively supported it. The result was the rescue of many hundreds of Jews (probably over 1,000).

Three primary types of documents were used in such rescue efforts. The first was a passport, which indicated that the person named was a citizen of the country of issue. The Ecuadorian passport took the form of a hardbound traditional booklet, whereas those of Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, and Paraguay generally consisted of standard sheets of paper. Both contained a photo of the person or persons in whose name the passport was issued (sometimes such documents were issued to an entire family). In some cases, Jews received copies bearing notary certification, which lent additional credibility to the document; the original was stored in the archive of the organization that had sent it in case its retrieval became necessary.Footnote6

The second type of document used in this context was a certificate of protection, which indicated that its bearer enjoyed the protection of the country of issue, as in the case of documents issued by El Salvador and others by Paraguay.

The third type of document issued was known as a promesa (Spanish for “promise”), which, as reflected in its name, constituted a guarantee that when the bearer arrived at a consul of the state in question, he or she would be issued an immigration visa.

In all cases, both the diplomats who issued the documents and the Jews who received them were cognizant of the fact that they were not legal and unrecognized by the state in question and therefore could not be used for immigration purposes....The reason for securing such documents was that they provided a degree of protection for Jews by transforming them into the subjects of neutral or enemy states. ...Such documents were primarily used to help enable the Germans to hold hostages whom they could then swap for their compatriots held in Allied countries.

...The prisoner exchange between Germany and the Allied countries took place at the beginning of 1945. On January 21 of that year, a train left Bergen Belsen carrying 301 Jews holding Latin American passports. Before the train crossed the border into Switzerland, some Jews were removed due to their poor physical condition and were sent to the camps at Biberach and Wurzach in southern Germany. Some of the members of this group did not survive. Those who arrived in Switzerland underwent the required medical examinations and treatments, and were subsequently transferred by US hospital ship from the French port of Marseilles to the Jean d’Arc transit camp in Philippeville, Algeria.

The consuls serving in Sweden, Switzerland, and Romania who issued these documents were placed under surveillance and subjected to police interrogations in the countries in which they served. At the same time, upon receipt of information regarding the issuance of passports, the foreign ministries of the countries represented by the consuls decided to punish those diplomats by removing them from their positions in the foreign service.

Read the whole thing.

This is only a taste of a relatively unknown facet of the Holocaust.

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!

An example of 1941 Nazi antisemitism that has re-emerged today

In September 1941, AP reported on the latest Nazi war crime - and the excuse given for it

Herding Jews Into Chapel Of Cemetery

HANNOVER Germany, Sept 8 (AP)
German authorities began herding Hannover's Jews into the mortuary hall of the Jewish Cemetery here tonight following the mayor's order evicting them from their homes on 24 hour's notice.

Scores of men, women and children were conducted to this fastcrowding provisional abode. The eviction orders also provided for the sale of their property, the proceeds to be turned over to them "at a given time."

The orders cited, as one reason for the ousters, a book written by "The Jew Kaufman in New York," ("Germany Must Perish" by Theodore N. Kaufman) demanding "sterilization of all Germans and employment of German soldiers as coolies in foreign lands."

So because an obscure Jew wrote an anti-German book, all Jews must be punished. In the end, nearly all the Jews of Hanover were murdered.

The book itself was self-published by Kaufman, an advertising man. It received a little coverage because Kaufman sent copies to newspapers and magazines with a miniature coffin to drum up publicity. I can find no one who took the book seriously or praised it.

It was mentioned in Time magazine where Kaufman was dismissed as a nutjob who, in 1939, suggested that all Americans be sterilized "so that their children might not become homicidal monsters."

The book itself, more a pamphlet, does not mention the word "Jew" once. It was an obscure text by a publicity-seeker whose eugenics ideas were no more accepted in the West than those of the Nazis he opposed.

But today's Nazis are resurrecting the book - not mentioning that it was used as an excuse to murder Jews.

A scumbag named Keith Woods (who boasts 50,000 followers on Twitter as well as on Youtube) resurrected the Nazi propaganda for today's antisemites, blaming Jews for German suffering, just like the Nazis did.

Nearly a thousand people "liked" this incitement against Jews.

Antisemitism is alive and well, and Jew-haters are as open about it as they were in the 1930s.

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!

Nazis put an academic face on Jew-hatred. Now their heirs have "The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism."

The Nazis famously subverted academia by creating an entire new field of “Jewish research” (Judenforschung) where respected academics from various fields produced a corpus of academic papers to justify the Nazi policy of genocide of Jews. One early example of this perversion of academia is described in Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism inNazi Germany by Alan E. Steinweis:

Early in the [Nazi] regime, when the universities’ embrace of antisemitic Jewish studies still seemed tentative, Nazi supporters decided to fill the gap by creating their own free-standing Jewish studies institute. The main force behind this initiative was the historian Walter Frank. In 1935, with support from high-ranking Nazis such as Alfred Rosenberg and Rudolf Hess, Frank founded the Institute for History of the New Germany (Institut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands), the purpose of which was to infuse a National Socialist perspective into German historical scholarship. A short time later, this so-called Reich Institute established its special Research Department for the Jewish Question, based in Munich, and placed it under the direction of the historian Wilhelm Grau. ..Operating under the administrative protection of the Reich Education Ministry, during the second half of the 1930s the Research Department occupied a central position in the emerging field of Nazi Jewish studies. It sponsored research projects at universities, convened conferences that drew participants from a variety of academic disciplines, and published the conference proceedings in a scholarly yearbook, Forschungen zur Judenfrage (Research on the Jewish Question).

What's old is new again.

Modern heirs of Nazi antisemitism have just created their own pseudo-academic institution, the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.

Don't be fooled by the phrase "critical study." It is just as intellectually dishonest as the Nazi academic studies of Jews were.

The Mondoweiss article "Why we created the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism" proves that this institute is a masquerade for making antisemitism academically acceptable in its very first paragraph:

In recent years, the Israeli flag has increasingly appeared around the world alongside racial supremacist political messaging– for instance, at the January 6th riot in Washington D.C., Hindutva rallies in India, Nazi rallies in Europe, and, most potently, in anti-Palestinian pogroms in the West Bank. At this point, it could not be clearer that Zionism is a political ideology tightly enmeshed with racism, fascism, and colonial dispossession.

It doesn't take a graduate level logic course to understand that "racists embrace the Israeli flag" does not mean "Zionist are racist." That's like saying that KKK use of crosses prove all Christians are racists.

But the intent of this new "Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism" is not detached academic study of Zionism. It is purely political - and it is antisemitic.

The very first of the group's "Points of Unity" is an antisemitic lie: "Zionism is a settler colonial racial project. Like the US, Israel is a settler colonial state. The Institute opposes Zionism and colonialism."

Zionists don't define themselves this way. Only anti-Zionists do. "Critical studies" of a topic are impossible when you pre-determine the results of the studies. These are no "studies" at all - just compiling evidence, no matter how flimsy, on one side of the scale and ignoring any counter evidence.

Zionism is the self-determination movement of the Jewish people. It seeks the return of Jews to their ancestral lands. It is anti-colonialist. It is not racist. However, denying that Jews are a people with national rights - and labeling those Jews who assert those rights as being inherently racist - is indeed antisemitism.

Their political agenda and disinterest in objective studies is made clear in other "points of unity:" "Academic research is not politically or morally neutral....The Institute’s project is to support research from below, produced by a community led by people who are the targets of Zionist and state repression, with a research agenda determined in collaboration with communities resisting repression."

In other words, if you believe that Jews have rights - rights to a state, rights to self-defense, rights not to be murdered by Palestinian terrorists - you are not welcome in this space.

This is not "critical studies." It is anti-Zionist propaganda. And once you get past their name, they don't even pretend to hide it. To study Zionism, they demand that you reject Zionism and Jewish peoplehood as a prerequisite.

This section of the manifesto is most enlightening:

Studying Zionism through such a comprehensive [sic!] lens means, for instance, looking at the role of Zionist institutions in arenas beyond Palestine as well as the range of Jewish communities, organizations, and institutions where it is not as readily transparent.

These modern Jew-haters are embracing David Miller's paranoid concept of looking for, and magically finding, links between Jewish organizations and whatever they are hating today. It presupposes that Zionist Jews have a single, nefarious agenda, all controlled by a small group of Jews who secretly direct all these projects -and always with immoral aims.

The entire project is putting an academic face on pure hate. Its basic principles are based on bigotry and lies.

Antisemitism is becoming mainstream, and it is people like this who are in the forefront.

(h/t Andrew)

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!

Nazis insisted on humane cattle cars - for cattle, not Jews. The logic behind it is relevant for "human rights defenders" today.

Haaretz reports:

In the summer of 1942, Fritz Sendel, chief of staff of the German Order Police in occupied Poland, sent a message to the force’s commanding officers. Its subject: protecting the rights of animals that were transported on trains. “In the spirit of the Reich Animal Protection Act, I order, with immediate effect, that the officers of the stations (German and non-German) intervene immediately in cases of cruelty to animals, put a stop to it and report the offenders,” he wrote.

Sendel noted that “the majority of cases involving the cruelty to animals until now have been observed in regard to the horses used by the police forces.” On top of this, “the crowded conditions in the railway cattle cars, especially for animals being sent to slaughter, have also led to many credible complaints.”

The document in question was found in Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance by Eliyahu Klein, a PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University, whose dissertation, under the supervision of Prof. Havi Dreifuss and Dr. David Silberklang from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, focuses on the relationship between Jews and non-Jews under the German occupation in Poland and elsewhere.

Sendel added an appendix containing precise instructions, ordering the police officers to take action to prevent cruelty to animals and to report on any colleagues who mistreated them. The recommendations included reducing the number of animals per railcar, allowing them to have time to rest and monitoring their condition.

“The text mentions the need to oversee the conditions of the animals being transported,” Klein says. Officers were urged to ensure that the railcars were properly ventilated, to take note of the capacity of the cars and keep track of the number of animals loaded onto each one, and to make note of their physical condition, including details of injuries, respiratory problems and other symptoms. In addition, the German personnel were to see to it that the animals were not struck unnecessarily while being loaded onto the train, and asked to report on cases of sickness or death during the transport.

Klein mentions an exchange of correspondence in the summer of 1942 between two high-ranking Nazi figures. In it the deputy transport minister of Nazi Germany, Albert Ganzenmueller, updated Karl Wolff, chief of staff of Gestapo head Heinrich Himmler, about the transports to Treblinka from the Warsaw Ghetto. In response, Wolff wrote, as quoted in Kerstin von Lingen’s 2013 book “Allen Dulles, the OSS, and Nazi War Criminals”: “I note with particular pleasure after reading your communication that a train with 5,000 members of the chosen people has been running daily [to Treblinka] for 14 days and that we are accordingly in a position to continue with this population movement at an accelerated pace. ..."

Notice how Ganzenmueller sarcastically refers to Jews as the "chosen people" in a way not dissimilar to how we see the term used by today's anti-Zionists.

The seeming contradiction between how Nazis treated Jews and how they treated animals is not a new topic. I found a very interesting 1992 article that tried to explain this dichotomy in terms of Nazi ideology and its German antecedents.

It would be easy to dismiss the apparently benevolent Nazi attitude toward animals as “hypocrisy,” but this would be a facile way of evading an examination of the psychological and social dynamics of Nazi thinking and behavior. Rather than questioning the authenticity of the motivations behind Nazi animal protection—a question that is unanswerable—it may be more useful to ask how such thinking was possible and what significance it had.

One motivation was the German desire to distinguish themselves morally from Jews. The practice of Jewish ritual slaughter was attacked in the 19th century by German animal rights activists and banning kosher slaughter was one of the first acts of the Nazi government. Propaganda films that attempted to show how cruel Jews were to animals were widely distributed. Moreover, Nazis framed animal experimentation as a "Jewish" practice which should be curtailed (although laws to that effect had many loopholes.)

More interestingly, the paper argues that while there was no consistent Nazi ideology, to a large extent Nazis regarded all humans as animals, with Aryans as the highest form of animal that had to be protected from intermixing with lower forms such as Jews (untermenschen.) It quotes one SS document:

The subhuman—that creation of nature, which biologically is seemingly quite identical with the human, with hands, feet, and a kind of brain, with eyes and a mouth—is nevertheless a totally different and horrible creature, is merely an attempt at being man—but mentally and emotionally on a far lower level than any animal. In the inner life of that person there is a cruel chaos of wild uninhibited passions: a nameless urge to destroy, the most primitive lust, undisguised baseness… But the subhuman lived, too… He associated with his own kind. The beast called the beast… And this underworld of subhumans found its leader: the eternal Jew!

In the hierarchy of the animal kingdom, the Jews occupied the lowest possible position:

When groups of people, most commonly Jews, were likened to specific animal species, it was usually “lower” animals or life forms, including rodents, reptiles, insects, or germs. Hitler (1938), for instance, called the Jews a “pack of rats,” and Himmler, in order to help soldiers cope with having just shot one hundred Jews, told them “bedbugs and rats have a life purpose…but this has never meant that man could not defend himself against vermin” (Hilberg 1961, 219). The propaganda film Triumph of the Will superimposed images of rats over presumed “degenerate people” such as the Jews, and the 1940 film The Eternal Jew portrayed Jews as lower than vermin, somewhat akin to the rat—filthy, corrupting, disease carrying, ugly, and group oriented (Herzstein 1978, 309). ... Jews were also likened to bacteria and “plagues” of insects (Herzstein 1978, 354).

But the Germans even regarded Aryans, in a sense, as animals. Nazis proposed ways to breed superhumans the same way that animals are bred, reducing even Aryan human beings to little more than breeding stock:

Much of Himmler’s knowledge about animal breeding practices was directly applied to plans for human breeding to further Aryan traits (Bookbinder 1989). One of Himmler’s obsessions was the breeding of many more superior Nordic offspring (Shirer 1960, 984). Financial awards were made for giving birth if the child was of biological and racial value, and potential mothers of good Aryan stock who did not give birth were branded as “unwholesome, traitors and criminals” (Deuel 1942, 164–65). Encouraging the propagation of good German blood was seen as so important that several Nazi leaders advocated free love in special recreation camps for girls with pure Aryan qualities. In one of Himmler’s schemes, he argued that if 100 such camps were established for 1000 girls, 10,000 “perfect” children would be born each year (Deuel 1942, 165). Despite the criticism of the Reich Minister of the Interior, who opposed the “idea of breeding Nordics” when it reached the point of “making a rabbit-breeding farm out of Germany” (Deuel 1942, 203), plans were developed for a series of state-run brothels, where young women certified as genetically sound would be impregnated by Nazi men. The intent was to breed Aryans as if they were pedigreed dogs (Glaser 1978).

This viewpoint of all living beings as on the same continuum where the higher animals must be protected from the lower animals is, on its own terms, a coherent moral philosophy that was twisted into a monstrous reality.

It is all too simple to relegate Nazis to cartoonish villains as being evil for evil's sake. But the frightening part is that they justified their evil in the language of ethics. Their position towards animal rights were the most advanced in the world at the time and (unconsciously) influences animal rights activists' philosophy today. Similarly, Nazi Germany was in the forefront of medical ethics, using the same kind of logic described here to justify persecuting Jews as an ethical imperative to protect Aryans.

We see this same perverted twisting of ethics in the 21st century.

Today, there is an unmistakable singling out of Jews as the world's worst violators of ethics, just as the Nazis positioned Jews as morally reprehensible in their treatment of animals.

And today we see "human rights defenders" justifying murdering Jews as an ethical imperative of "resistance.".

Today's supposed "human rights" leaders believe that they have the moral high ground and cannot even see their own bigotry is being justified by their bizarre, twisted sense of ethics. Like the Nazis, they are writing long, seemingly well-researched papers to justify their foregone conclusions in the name of social justice.

Their justifications for attempting to destroy Israel are an eerie echo of the Nazis' ethical justifications for destroying the Jewish people.

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!

An epidemic of pseudo-intellectual antisemitism

As my Twitter account gains followers (over 1500 in the past month), it is also attracting a new breed of antisemite - one that many other Zionist social media stars have seen for years.

It is not only that these people cannot stand any posts that are pro-Israel. But they also cannot stand posts that mourn dead Jews - they predictably respond with mentions of dead Arabs or other alleged Israeli atrocities, as a kind of justification for murdering Jews.

But there is another class of people who respond to pro-Israel posts. These are the ones who cite "experts."

They quote UN resolutions, or book authors, or articles that have footnotes, or NGOs, as proof positive that Israel is in the wrong, every time.

These are the people who say that international law allows Palestinians to murder Jews as "resistance."

They quote Shlomo Sand saying there is no such thing as a Jewish people. They quote Amnesty and Human Rights Watch saying Israel is guilty of "apartheid." They love Ilan Pappe's history of 1948. They claim that there was no Arab antisemitism before Zionism. They call Zionism "colonialism." They claim that Zionists tried to stop Jews from being saved in the Holocaust if they weren't going to Israel and they colluded with the Nazis. They toss off terms like "Jewish supremacy" the exact same way Germans used to but it is OK because "human rights" experts say it, too. They claim that Israel has scores of laws that discriminate against Arab citizens. They insist that Israel has "Jewish-only roads" in the territories.

All of these claims have one thing in common: they are easily debunked, as my links here show.

The mindset of the modern antisemite is that Israel and Zionist Jews are evil ab initio. But they don't want to be tarred as antisemites, because antisemitism is bad and something that only the far-Right is guilty of. Therefore, when they see articles that seem to have a sheen of validity that confirm their pre-existing hate, they are happy to accept them and spread them without any skepticism.

We have a small set of intellectual antisemites - many of them Jewish themselves - who craft opinions that carefully choose the facts that support their bigoted positions, and hide the much larger set of facts that shred their arguments. Then there is a much larger set of antisemites who enthusiastically accept this core of intellectual antisemitism as gospel, and shut their ears to any proof that they are fraudulent.

These new antisemites pretend that they are basing their hate on facts when the reality is that they choose their facts to justify their hate.

There is no greater proof than watching how they seethe so much at anyone condemning the murder of Jewish civilians in Israel that they feel they must bury any possible sympathy for the families of the victims with an avalanche of propaganda.

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!

03/08 Links Pt2: Expedia, Tripadvisor urge tourists to visit biblical heartland in ‘Palestinian territory’

From Ian:

Remembering The Scorpion Pass Massacre of 1954

March 17 this year will mark 69 years since one of the worst terrorist attacks on Israelis since the establishment of the State in 1948. Although I was only nine years old, this episode, called the Scorpion Pass Massacre, has a prominent place in my memory, perhaps because of the intense discussions it aroused in the Jewish community of Montreal that I was a part of, or perhaps because I was the same age as the Israeli boy who was severely injured. Or, perhaps it was the exotic name of the site of the attack, Scorpion Pass (Maale Akrabim).

The name obviously comes from the common appearance of scorpions (akrabim in Hebrew), venomous animals with two pincer claws and an articulated tail and stinger. Scorpions resemble crustaceans such as lobsters or crayfish, but are in fact related to spiders, mites and ticks. With an evolutionary history going back hundreds of millions of years, they were certainly around in biblical times. Maale Akrabim appears three times in the Tanakh (Numbers 34:3, Joshua 15:3 and Judges 1:36), as an indicator of the southern boundary of the Land of Israel.

The attack took place in 1954, when the population of Israel was 1.6 million and the southern port of Eilat, Israel’s only connection to the Red Sea, was a small development town with 500 inhabitants. As is true today, travellers from Eilat to central Israel could either fly (Arkia began flying from Eilat to Lod Airport, now Ben Gurion Airport, in 1950), or drive the 150 miles to Beersheba. In 1954 the drive to Beersheba was a lonely one that included a long and narrow grade with 18 hairpin turns, known as Ma’ale Akrabim. The ascent, about 60 miles south of Beersheba, is a 1000 foot escarpment that connects the Arava Valley of the south-eastern Negev to the central Negev plateau.

The attack was carried out in the middle of the day on an Egged bus (Israel’s largest bus company) containing 14 passengers plus a driver. The attackers shot at the bus as it was travelling very slowly around one of the hairpin bends, killing the driver. They then boarded the bus and shot most of the passengers. Eleven riders (ten passengers and the driver) were killed and three passengers were injured. One of the injured a nine year-old boy, Chaim Fuerstenberg, survived in a semi-conscious and paralysed state for 32 years, dying in 1986.

Morningstar lowers investment ratings of 28 Israeli companies for operating in contested territory

(This article has been taken down by the Jerusalem Post, apparently for inaccuracies.)

The Jerusalem Post has learned that Morningstar, a financial services firm that rates companies’ investment potential, has reduced the ratings of 28 Israeli companies due to their operations in what the firm’s ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) rating subsidiary Sustainalytics considers to be Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Of the 28 companies, 15 have been given a human rights score of “category 3” (significant controversy) or higher. The list includes several leading companies such as Elbit Systems and Caterpillar, as well as Israel-operating banks and telecommunications companies including PayPal Holdings and Motorola Solutions, which have been given their high controversy ratings due to their operations within East Jerusalem, the West Bank and/or the Golan heights — which Sustainalytics considers to be a human rights abuse.

Considering Morningstar’s significance within the financial ratings market, its negative rating of these companies is cause for concern to those who consider such actions to be in-line with BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) activity.

As well, over 30 American states have laws that prohibit investment or contracts with companies that cause economic harm to those based in Israel. As such, even if just one Israeli company is unfairly targeted on a Morningstar watchlist, it could potentially violate state laws.

Morningstar is now in the process of consulting with human rights experts in order to determine how to proceed with its assessment of these companies.

Dem Senators Blasted Ticketmaster Over Taylor Swift Debacle. They Have Nothing to Say About It Raking In Cash From Farrakhan Hate Rally.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) last fall trained their fire on Ticketmaster after bungled sales for Taylor Swift's concert tour led to price-gouging and automated scalping, calling on the Department of Justice to investigate the ticketing giant. But when the company doled out tickets to Louis Farrakhan's rally—in which the Nation of Islam leader defended Adolf Hitler and predicted another Holocaust against Jews—the Democratic duo had nothing to say.

Blumenthal went on a crusade against Ticketmaster in November, saying "consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior." Klobuchar said she had "serious concerns" about Ticketmaster's failure to get the so-called Swifties tickets efficiently and wrote to the company's chief executive officer demanding answers.

Neither Blumenthal, who has warned that the "horrors of the Holocaust" could happen again if Americans don't fight anti-Semitism, nor Klobuchar, who has pledged "to confront anti-Semitism," have criticized Ticketmaster for profiting off of the Farrakhan ticketing sales. The two senators, who sit on the Senate's Task Force for Combating Anti-Semitism, did not respond to requests for comment.

Farrakhan during his speech claimed that Jews control the levers of power in Washington, Hollywood, and global finance and are using these powers to corrupt the world. "Somebody has to take on the synagogue of Satan," he said. "We cannot let them take the country." Critics had urged Ticketmaster, which charges service fees on each ticket it sells, to drop the Farrakhan event from its sales platform, but the ticket giant did not budge.

Among House Democrats, there has also been silence from lawmakers who criticized Ticketmaster in the past. Last November, more than two dozen House Democrats sent a letter to Ticketmaster, saying it "strangled competition for ticketing in the live entertainment marketplace." The Washington Free Beacon reached out to 28 members who signed the letter and are still in Congress to get their thoughts on Ticketmaster’s decision to sell seats at the Farrakhan event. None of them responded.

Democrats who signed the letter included Rep. Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.).