David Collier: Pro-Palestinian activism. Violent, intolerant, dangerous and racist
Pro-Palestinian is anti-Israel, anti-JewishEvelyn Gordon: Germany Redefines Most Anti-Semitism Out of Existence
I titled this blog with the use of the term ‘Pro-Palestinian’. I did so deliberately to highlight the stupidity of people using it. There is nothing ‘pro-Palestinian’ about any of this. These are racist, violent thugs, who target Jews because of their identity, and are willing to hound them out of business and violently attack them. Anti-Israel, or anti-Jewish (or both) are the best names for this activism. We have to stand up to them, and to anybody who gives them cover. Our opposition needs to be relentless.
These racist thugs, turn to the tiny minority of Jews (the 5%) to artificially give them cover. Just this week, a Scottish Blog called Bella Caledonia, incredibly published a piece that tried to excuse people posting material from white supremacy websites. The piece was written by one of the 5%. It actually blamed the victims of racism for the racism. A horrific, disgraceful piece, that highlights how twisted these people are willing to become to protect their fetish. Bella Caledonia actually gave cover to Nazis. Imagine what you could do to any minority, if it was legitimate to find their 5% to use as a cover to attack them.
What is clear, is that these groups are dangerous. For decades they have collected money across the UK. They do so by pushing tragic pictures of the ugly face of conflict. But they are thugs, they are intolerant, they are racist and they are dangerous. Their motivation, just as with the attacks on Nisan, is all about the Jews.
One other thing to remember too. For all the money they have collected, for all the claims that they are doing it for the betterment of Palestinians. The number of Jewish businesses they have successfully forced to close in the UK, is larger than the number of Palestinian refugees they have helped out of refugee status. More Jewish businesses closed, than schools or hospitals built. It isn’t about making things better for the Palestinians at all, it is about making things worse for the Jews. Think about that.
A debate rages among American Jews as to whether right-wing or left-wing anti-Semitism poses the greater danger. Germany has come up with a novel solution to this dilemma that will undoubtedly delight denialists of the left-wing version: Simply redefine Jew-hatred as a “politically motivated right-wing extremist crime,” and by definition, you’ve eliminated all other kinds of anti-Semitism.UN Watch: Moral Courage: Mexico’s Former UNESCO Ambassador Receives Human Rights Award
Last week, the German Interior Ministry released a report on anti-Semitism which stated that during the first eight months of this year, a whopping 92 percent of anti-Semitic incidents were committed by right-wing extremists. That sounded suspicious for two reasons, which I’ll get to later, but since I don’t speak German, I couldn’t scrutinize the report for myself. Fortunately, the German daily Die Welt found the results equally suspicious, and this week, Benjamin Weinthal of the Jerusalem Post reported on some of the problems it flagged.
Weinthal explained that in a federal report on anti-Semitism issued by the German government earlier this year, “the crime of ‘Jew-hatred’ is classified in the category of ‘politically motivated right-wing extremist crime.’” But once Jew-hatred has been declared a right-wing crime by definition, most of its perpetrators will inevitably be classified as far-right extremists, even if they shouldn’t be.
Die Welt cited one particularly blatant example from summer 2014 when Israel was at war with Hamas in Gaza. The war sparked numerous anti-Israel protests, and during one, 20 Hezbollah supporters shouted the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil” at pro-Israel demonstrators in Berlin. Hezbollah supporters are Islamic extremists, not neo-Nazis, even if they chose to taunt German Jews by hurling Nazi slogans at them. Nevertheless, the incident was classified as a far-right extremist crime, thereby neatly removing a case of Islamic anti-Semitism from the statistics.
There are two good reasons for thinking the linguistic acrobatics, in this case, represents the rule rather than the exception. First, a 2014 study of 14,000 pieces of hate mail sent over a 10-year period to the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Israeli embassy in Berlin found that only three percent came from far-right extremists. Over 60 percent came from the educated mainstream–professors, PhDs, lawyers, priests, university and high-school students. And these letters were definitely anti-Semitic rather than merely anti-Israel; they included comments such as “It is possible that the murder of innocent children suits your long tradition?” and “For the last 2,000 years, you’ve been stealing land and committing genocide.”
United Nations Watch, the Geneva-based non-governmental human rights group, today presented Dr. Andres Roemer, the former Ambassador of Mexico to UNESCO, with its 2017 Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, at a ceremony held in Geneva, Switzerland, next to the United Nations human rights office.
Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, addressed the ceremony to pay tribute to Roemer, as did Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Aviva Raz-Shechter.
Dr. Roemer is a renowned public intellectual, humanitarian, and author of 16 books. Click here for bio.
In October 2016, while serving as his country’s representative to UNESCO, Roemer refused to obey instructions from Mexico City to vote for an Arab-drafted resolution that denied the Jewish and Christian heritage of Jerusalem, and which referred to the Temple Mount only with Islamic and Arabic names.
Instead, in an unprecedented move, Roemer stood up for his beliefs and walked out of the room. His principled defiance cost him his job, but ultimately Mexico changed its position, announcing its withdrawal of support for the biased resolution.
“It was personally moving to see you leave the room during the vote in order to actively avoid the vote against your conscience,” wrote Amb. Shama-Hacohen, Israel’s UNESCO ambassador, in October, who posted a photo of the two after the vote.
“I am at peace with what I did,” said Roemer, after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month in Paris. “These votes do not have a place in an educational and cultural organization, and hurt us all.”
“It is now a great honor to receive this recognition and award from UN Watch, a leading voice for human rights,” added Roemer.