Germany is accused of downplaying anti-Semitic attacks by Muslims
The annual al-Quds Day march in Berlin is often cited as a prime example of the rise of so-called new anti-Semitism in Europe: hatred of Jews in connection with Israel, often by people from Muslim societies.‘American Jews Forgot To Tell Their Children’
Despite attempts by organizers in recent years to suppress some expressions of anti-Semitism, the march by hundreds of participants features frequent calls about killing Israelis, Zionist conspiracies and chants of “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” Flags of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are on display, and imams regularly preach anti-Semitic verses from the Quran to the crowd in Farsi and Arabic.
“Under the guise of ‘Israel criticism,’ they use classic anti-Semitic stereotypes, identifying Israel as having ‘Jewish characteristics’: ‘domineering,’ ‘greedy’ or a ‘child killer,’” sociologist Imke Kummer observed about the marchers.
(Iran launched al-Quds Day in 1979 to express support for the Palestinians and oppose Zionism and Israel, and international events of support have followed. Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.)
Such agitation is seen worldwide. To many, it’s especially troubling on streets where the persecution of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators was so brutal that it moved whole societies in Europe to vow “Never again.”
Curiously, however, some of the incidents documented at the al-Quds Day march in Berlin have been classified by authorities as forms of far-right anti-Semitism, independent watchdog groups have discovered.
Critics say the march example and other mislabeled incidents are facilitating attempts to politicize anti-Semitism and complicating the apparently losing battle to solve it.
“It means we can’t really use the official statistics on anti-Semitism in Germany,” Daniel Poensgen, a researcher at the Department for Research and Information on Anti-Semitism, or RIAS, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
There’s a brief but quite telling scene in the remarkable documentary, “From Slavery To Freedom,” that recently premiered at a Jewish film festival in Washington, D.C.Jewish refugees to be debated at Westminster
The film is about Natan Sharansky, the most famous of the hundreds of Soviet Jewish “refuseniks,” referring to those who were refused exit visas to emigrate to Israel in the 1970s and ’80s. They lost their jobs, and many were imprisoned. Sharansky’s dramatic plight became the central rallying call for the Soviet Jewry movement. A well-known human rights activist in Moscow, he was accused of being a CIA spy, convicted in a sham trial and sentenced to 13 years of hard labor. He spent nine years in the Soviet gulag, much of that time in solitary confinement, before being released in a prisoner exchange in February 1986 and emigrating to Israel.
In the scene I referred to, Sharansky is shown in 2017 re-creating for the camera crew his walk to freedom across the famous Glienicke bridge, known as the “Bridge of Spies,” connecting East and West Berlin, where he was released by the KGB to U.S. officials on the other side. As he narrates his memories of the emotional moment, he is suddenly recognized by a middle-aged American Jewish tourist who happens to be walking by.
“Natan?” the man asks, stunned to see this iconic figure standing before him.
“Yes,” Sharansky answers.
“Oh, my God,” the man says, his mother at his side. “We marched for you in Philadelphia in 1980,” he exclaims excitedly.
A bemused Sharansky smiles and shrugs it off.
But in a phone interview this week with The Jewish Week from his home in Israel, Sharansky, who recently retired from his nine-year post as head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, acknowledges being “upset” with American Jewry for failing to educate its youth about one of the most successful human rights campaigns in history. (h/t IsaacStorm)
The UK Parliament is for the first time to devote an hour-long debate to Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. The debate has been called by MP Theresa Villiers and will take place on Wednesday 19 June at 16:30 in Westminster Hall.
"This is a neglected aspect of the Israel/Palestine conflict and this debate is a long-overdue attempt to give this issue equal prominence with the far more familiar issue of Arab/Palestinian refugees," says Lyn Julius of Harif, a UK organisation representing Jews from the MENA.
Some 850,000 – a larger number of Jewish refugees – were driven out from Arab countries at the same time. The majority found a new home in Israel, but some tens of thousands were resettled in the UK .
In 1947-48 (and in some cases much earlier) Arab countries deliberately targeted their Jewish populations. In all Arab countries, violence, expropriations and expulsions ensured that Jewish communities, which in many cases had existed for thousands of years, ceased to exist. Most who left were forcibly deprived of their property.
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At the time this injustice was recognised by international actors: the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) recognised on a number of occasions that the plight of the Jewish refugees fell within its remit. This is also why UNSC Resolution 242 refers to “a just settlement of the refugee problem” without specifying the “Arab” or “Palestinian” refugee problem.
Some countries today, namely the US and Canada, have also recognised this refugee issue as the injustice it is.