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Antisemitism Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 03, 2015 2 Comments
We have documented many times the role in the spread of anti-Semitic violence in Europe played by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The gross demonization and dehumanization of Israeli Jews by BDS contributes both directly and indirectly to acts of anti-Semitism. We have seen it on the streets of Copenhagen, Malmo, Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, The Hague, London and elsewhere. It's why Walking While Jewish is dangerous in many cities in Europe.  In Paris, Reporting While Jewish is risky as well. While in theory anti-Zionism can be distinct from anti-Semitism, in reality on the streets of Europe they have merged. Now there is yet another example, via Algemeiner, 40 Person Mob Assaults 2 Jews on Paris’ Boulevard Voltaire:

Posted by Daniel Mael on April 23, 2015 23 Comments
On Thursday, the State of Israel is celebrating her 67th birthday. Naturally, pro-Israel college students nationwide have organized celebratory gatherings - ranging from guest speakers to culturally (read: food) oriented events. On Massachusetts Institute of Technology's campus, the planned celebration was not without controversy and dissent. On April 20th, the student group Palestine@MIT issued an "open letter" decrying an Israel Independence Day celebration scheduled to take place during SpringFest. Palestine@MIT went as far as to claim that the event makes them feel "unsafe."
The Israeli Independence Day raises politically sensitive questions given that it just so happens to represent the 1948 Palestinian Exodus, also known as the "Nakba". This is a day of extreme tragedy and traumatic loss for millions of people, including many students here at MIT. As Palestinians and supporters of Palestine in the MIT community, we are alarmed by the fact that the UA are endorsing this event, given that the UA represents us as well. We feel unsafe in an environment that celebrates a catastrophic day for one nation at an official school-wide capacity by a body that represents all students equally, with no regards or sympathy towards our tragedy. We direct this message to the entirety of the student body with a request for change. We request the UA to detach the carnival from SpringFest, and to refrain from sponsoring and/or publicizing it at a school-wide capacity.
Palestine@MIT, promoting a narrative of victimhood, suggested that the celebration of Israel's independence threatened their community standing.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 18, 2015 8 Comments
We have run several posts about Walking While Jewish in European cities, and the resulting street harassment. Here is another example. Call it "Reporting While Jewish" in Paris. Miri Michaeli Schwartz is a reporter for Israel Channel 10 News. She was doing a report on the streets of Paris regarding the search for the downed Green Wings flight a number of weeks ago, when some Arab men noticed the Hebrew lettering on her microphone. They surrounded her and began to harass her. She just recently posted the short video, which only show a small part of the incident, on her facebook page (if the Facebook video does not load in your browser, try this YouTube link):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 14, 2015 7 Comments
We have written several times before about the effort by Jewish Voice for Peace activists in Ithaca, NY, where Cornell is located, to advance a referendum at the GreenStar Food Coop to boycott Israeli products. The Greenstar Council is considering whether, under its bylaws, there are grounds to reject the referendum petition, or whether it is obligated to let the referendum go to a full membership vote in early November 2015. The GreenStar Council takes no position on the merits of the boycott, and seems aware that the referendum process itself, not to mention if it passes, will do serious damage to GreenStar itself. Yet the referendum is being pushed hard by the JVP activists, particularly Ariel Gold (who works as an organizer for the anti-Israel Friends of Sabeel - North America) and Beth Harris (a retired Ithaca College professor long active in the boycott movement). Gold and Harris tried hard to and did manage to get themselves arrested at the 2015 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference as part of a Code Pink-led protest. The boycott push, though just starting, has been marred by incendiary rhetoric from the pro-Boycott side. Last fall, the group promoting the boycott (the Central NY Committee for Justice in Palestine - CNYCJP) posted on its Facebook page a horrible photoshop of Nazi concentration camp inmates holding anti-Israel signs. The photoshop was taken down after I called attention to it and people began to complain. CNYCJP claimed it was done by a former member and without group permission, but it refused to identify the person.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 07, 2015 7 Comments
Just the other day we noted how Bosnian soccer fans in Vienna joined a "pro-Palestinian" protest, and waived Palestinian flags as the chant "Free, Free Palestine" turned into "Kill, kill the Jews." On the streets of Europe, and in the minds of open anti-Semites, there is no practical difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. As similar event just happened at a Dutch soccer match, where chants of "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas" were mixed in with chants praising Nazi burning of Jews. The Jewish Forward reports:
A Dutch soccer club is working to identify fans who chanted anti-Semitic slogans about the Holocaust during a match with a rival team from Amsterdam. The chants were documented on Sunday at Galgenwaard Stadium in Utrecht, a city situated 40 miles southeast of the Dutch capital Amsterdam, during an honor division match between Amsterdam’s Ajax team and FC Utrecht, the De Telegraaf daily reported. Utrecht supporters chanted the slogans to insult rival fans, whom they often call “Jews” because of the historical Jewish presence in Amsterdam, which is sometimes colloquially called “Mokum” after the Yiddish word for “place.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 04, 2015 11 Comments
This is becoming all too common. An anti-Israel protest, often under the banner of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, turns outright anti-Semitic. The gross demonization and dehumanization of Israel and Israeli Jews by the BDS movement is the mother's milk of modern anti-Semitism. We saw it throughout Europe in the summer of 2014, as well as in multiple U.S. cities. And we have seen anti-Zionism easily morph into blatant anti-Semitism on many campuses. It's why in Europe Walking While Jewish is so dangerous. And it just happened again in Vienna, Austria. The Times of Israel reports:
Bosnian soccer fans joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Vienna on Friday and shouted anti-Semitic epithets in one of the city’s central plazas, Austrian newspaper Der Standard reported A video posted to YouTube shows several dozen pro-Palestinian demonstrators waving Palestinian flags in Stephansplatz and calling “free, free Palestine!” The Bosnian fans dressed in blue, yellow and white are seen standing among the protesters and joining them in their cries, before setting out on a chant of their own: “Ubij, ubij Židove!” or “Kill, kill the Jews!” .... A wave of anti-Israeli and often anti-Semitic rallies hit European capitals in the summer of 2014 during the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The frequent protests, ostensibly calling for an end to Israel’s actions against Palestinians, often devolved into racist demonstrations in which the mob called out anti-Semitic slogans.

Posted by Miriam Elman on March 29, 2015 7 Comments
In a few days the world’s Christians and Jews will celebrate Easter and Passover. It’ll be a weekend of good food (and at my seder, plenty of good Israeli wine)—but most of all it’ll be an affirmation of freedom and faith, an expression of joy, hope and renewal. But for many people across the planet it’ll be an opportunity to indulge in a bit of Jew-bashing. Brace yourself as the planet’s anti-Semites engage in their annual rite-of-hate, when the internet will soon become awash in the crazy notion of the blood libel. It’s a centuries-old mad idea that Jews kill gentile children for making matzo, the unleavened bread that’s eaten during the Passover holiday. As Lord Jonathan Sacks, emeritus Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, and one of the leading intellectuals of our time, recently wrote in an important article on the resurgence of global anti-Semitism (it’s behind the Wall Street Journal paywall, but his remarks are also captured in this CNN interview):
The idea [of the blood libel] is absurd, not least because even the tiniest speck of blood in food renders it inedible in Jewish law.”
As explained by Sacks, the libel was an English invention, originating in Norwich around 1144. It was introduced into the Middle East in the 19th century, where it helped instigate the targeting of innocent Jews in Lebanon and Egypt (and, most famously, in Syria with the Damascus trials of 1840). This violence and hatred against Jews happened decades before the first wave of persecuted European Jewish refugees arrived in pre-state Israel seeking refuge in their ancient homeland. Zionism didn’t provoke it.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 27, 2015 3 Comments
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, conceived at the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban NGO Conference and rolled out with a 2005 boycott call from "Palestinian Civil Society," is a weapon to isolate, demonize and dehumanize Israel and Israeli Jews. As documented here hundreds of times, the goal of BDS is the destruction of Israel, though it is packaged in vague social justice language that leads many naive and ill-informed progressives to think it is only about the "occupation" of the West Bank. In fact, the leadership and founders of the BDS movement consider all of Israel "occupied" territory which must be liberated. That's why a leading chant at rallies is "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free." The BDS movement has gained a lot of public attention in the past couple of years and is a hot topic of discussion, particularly at academic organizations like the American Studies Association, which have been taken over by anti-Israel faculty activists. The BDS movement's relentless false and defamatory propaganda against Israel is a key factor in the rise of anti-Semitic violence in Europe and even on some U.S. campuses. When a Synagogue in Paris was attacked in the summer of 2014, it started with a BDS rally. BDS is, in my terminology, the mother's milk of modern anti-Semitism.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 22, 2015 10 Comments
We have documented the rise of anti-Semitism throughout Europe, including the problem of Walking While Jewish, No Jew Go Zones, and the attacks on Jewish institutions, such as a Paris Synagogue. Add another incident to the list. London police responded to an attack on a synagogue last night as a mob of drunk people smashed windows and tried to force their way inside, with shouts of "kill the Jews" heard. The Telegraph reports:
A drunken mob of more than 20 thugs shouted "kill the Jews" as they stormed into a north London synagogue while young worshippers celebrated the end of the sabbath. The anti-Semitic abuse was hurled by the group of men and women as they first beat up a young man outside before chasing him inside, breaking windows and attacking others.
The Times of Israel reports:
Six men were arrested in London early Sunday morning after a large crowd of party revelers attacked a synagogue, breaking windows and trying to forcing their way inside According to The Mirror tabloid, trouble started after an intoxicated gang of around 20 young men and women, who had been at a party in a nearby house, tried to enter the synagogue on Craven Park Road in the heart of London’s Stamford Hill area, home to Europe’s largest ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. One Jewish man suffered light injuries to his face as he tried to prevent the gang from entering the premises. He was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 18, 2015 14 Comments
In August 2013, we noted that Jews in Europe past their expiration date, based on the superb article You Only Live Twice by Michel Gurfinkiel in Mosaic Magazine:
There is no future left for Jewish communities in Europe. That’s the inescapable conclusion of You Only Live Twice by Michel Gurfinkiel in Mosaic Magazine. The lengthy article is a long trip down the death during World War II and then rebirth of Jewish communities in Europe, and how that rebirth is being snuffed out by renewed anti-Semitism from multiple directions, particularly leftist demonization of Israel and Islamist anti-Semitism. This Leftist-Islamist coalition, centered around hatred of Israel, is a topic we’ve explored here many times in connection with anti-Semitism in Malmö, Sweden, on British campuses, in the BDS movement, in the academic boycott movement, among other places. The fact is that while intellectually one can distinguish anti-Israeli fervor from anti-Semitism, in reality, on the streets of Malmö and Paris, and elsewhere in Europe, they are one and the same.
That was a year before the 2014 Gaza conflict, which so many blame for the rise of anti-Semitic violence in Europe. Anti-Semitism and violence directed at Jews in Europe are not about Gaza.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 10, 2015 3 Comments
On a few occasions we've touched upon the toxic anti-Israel rhetoric from Max Blumenthal, son of Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal: In his earlier days, Blumenthal turned his wrath on James O'Keefe, Andrew Breitbart and others he deemed part of the vast right-wing conspiracy: (language warning) Then he turned on Israel with a viciousness of propaganda rarely seen.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 09, 2015 12 Comments
We have posted several times about what it is like to be Walking While Jewish in various places in Europe, including Paris, Copenhagen, and Malmö, Sweden. The fact is that in many places in Europe, it is dangerous to be seen Walking While Jewish. Including in Britain, as The Daily Mail demonstrated (h/t Isreally Cool):
With as many as 45 per cent of British Jews fearing they 'may not have a future in Britain', according to a survey by the Campaign Against Antisemitism - and following an experiment by Israeli Zvika Klein on the streets of Paris, British journalist Jonathan Kalmus decided to test the levels of prejudice in two British cities with shocking results. Volunteers in Copenhagen and Rome also suffered some abuse, as well as welcoming reactions, while Jewish journalists in Stockholm and Berlin walked for hours without incident. 'You Jew' was the anti-Semitic scream which came from a passing car. My shaken wife tried to explain it away to my seven-year-old daughter as a very large sneeze. They were simply playing in a local park in Manchester a few weeks ago when the incident ripped through what should have been a peaceful and wholesome time for any mother and child.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 07, 2015 11 Comments
One thing I've learned over the years is to screen shot, save on Wayback Macnine, or download any key evidence found on the internet.  Too many times I've gone back to a link and it's gone, and Google Cache can't be counted on to have preserved the evidence. So when I learned in early February that a UCLA student applying for a student judicial board slot was questioned by the Student Council as to whether she could be fair because she was Jewish and involved in Jewish groups, I wrote it up, UCLA student gov’t candidate challenged for being Jewish (February 12, 2015). I also downloaded the over 4 hour live feed, and excerpted the approximately 40 minute segment, which I uploaded to YouTube. As mentioned yesterday, discriminatory questioning of the Jewish student by the UCLA Student Council has gone national, Mainstream media wakes up to BDS-Anti-Semitism connection. It's a good thing I saved the evidence, because the Student Council took down the original live stream video, as HuffPo explains, UCLA's Student Council Tries To Hide Video Of Its Members Questioning A Jewish Student (emphasis added):
The university's [Undergraduate Students Association Council] typically posts recordings of its meetings on YouTube. But the student government took down the footage of a Feb. 10 meeting where several students questioned whether Rachel Beyda, a Jewish candidate for the school's judicial board, could be "unbiased" given her religion. Various news reports on the controversy this week prompted the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to call on the university to put the video back online Friday. But the university told The Huffington Post that the decision to pull the video was made by the USAC's internal vice president's office.... The group StandWithUs, a pro-Israel education and advocacy organization, is circulating a clipped video of the controversial meeting. Legal Insurrection, a conservative blog, has uploaded the full video of the meeting as it pertains to Beyda's nomination.
The networks are using our video as their source:

Posted by Julius Kairey on March 04, 2015 6 Comments
If Israel were an Arab country, it would receive near-universal praise as a paragon of justice. Its robust protections of freedom of speech, along with frequent and open elections, would make it the only Arab state in which people have a real say in the operation of their government. Israel would be celebrated as the only gay-friendly state in a region of rampant anti-gay persecution. Its strict prohibition of the traditional practice of honor killings — where women accused of disgracing the family name are murdered by their male relatives — would be lauded as proof of its progressive and egalitarian values. And its modern capitalist economy, driven by a dynamic high-tech sector, would be the model for other Arab nations seeking to lift their people from the depths of poverty. Of course, Israel isn’t an Arab nation, and it is treated according to this double-standard. It is the world’s only majority-Jewish state, and it is surrounded by Arab theocracies, dictatorships and monarchies, each of which have gone to war in a failed bid to end its existence. And yet, Israel’s remarkable history of repeated triumph in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity receives little sympathy among some “left-wing” segments of communities across the nation. It is not immediately obvious why this is so. Israel’s history reads like a liberal success story.

Posted by Miriam Elman on February 22, 2015 6 Comments
One day before the terror attacks in Copenhagen, during a Friday, February 13 sermon, Hajj Saeed, the imam of the city’s Al-Faruq Mosque rejected inter-faith dialogue with Jews calling it a “malignant idea”. There can be no reconciliation with the Jews, said Saeed; it would be like trying to “reconcile Truth with Falsehood”. It’s easy to dismiss Saeed’s words as the rantings of a hater. In fact, that’s what people involved with interfaith organizations tend to do. Everyone pretends as if Muslim preachers the world over aren’t saying these things. The only problem is that they’re getting harder to ignore. These days it seems like a week doesn’t pass without hearing about some hostile imam or sheikh shouting “death to the Jews”, or some angry mob harassing Jews on the streets.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 16, 2015 11 Comments
"Walking while Jewish" is a phrase I have been using quite a bit lately, when it comes to the rise of anti-Semitic street harassment and violence in Europe, often masquerading as anti-Zionism and frequently by Muslim young men. A Swedish reporter made a film recently of how he was harassed in Malmö, Sweden, while walking with a Kippa (Yarmoulke), and we have discussed Kippah Walks to protest street harassment in Copenhagen. An Israeli film crew from NRG news produced a video 10 Hours of Walking in Paris as a Jew (embedded below). The NRG website explains many of the comments, some of which are on the video, some of which are not:
"Go f*** from the front and the back," "Viva Palestine," "Hey you, with the kippa, what are you doing here?" these were only a few of the remarks sent my way as I was walking through the streets of Paris wearing a tzitzit and a kippa. Welcome to Paris 2015, where soldiers are walking every street that houses a Jewish institution, and where keffiyeh-wearing men and veiled women speak Arabic on every street corner. Walking down one Parisian suburb, I was asked what I doing there. In modern-day Paris, you see, Jews are barred from entering certain areas.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 12, 2015 16 Comments
The student government at a university in South Africa recently voted to expel Jews:
The vice chancellor of Durban University of Technology (DUT) in South Africa on Wednesday rejected the student council’s call to expel Jewish students who do not support the Palestinian cause. University Vice Chancellor Professor Ahmed Bawa released a statement calling the demand “outrageous, preposterous and a deep violation of our National Constitution and every human rights principle.” He added, “No student at DUT will be discriminated against on the basis of religion, race, gender, political affiliation or sexual orientation.” Bawa also told South Africa’s Daily News that the request was “totally unacceptable.” The demand to expel all Jewish students, especially those who do not support the Palestinian agenda, was made by the university’s Students Representative Council and Progressive Youth Alliance.
This is the logical progression in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. It's fitting that the vote took place in Durban, the scene of the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban Conference that created the BDS movement. While expulsion of Jews will not happen here, the BDS movement is moving towards a de facto bar on Jews who are not anti-Israel by alleging that taking subsidized trips to Israel or attending conferences and training through major pro-Israel Jewish organizations constitutes a conflict of interest. That standard would exclude a high percentage of pro-Israel Jewish students from participating in student government (not to mention excluding many leading non-Jewish pro-Israel students).

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 02, 2015 9 Comments
This is a theme we have explored exhaustively here, in connection with the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement and anti-Semitic rallies and violence in Europe. There is a theoretical difference between being anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. But that theoretical distinction has been completely lost on the street and campus thugs in Europe and elsewhere, who use anti-Zionism as cover for hate of Jews. That they are urged on by some left-wing Jews doesn't change the reality on the street or campus. That's why anti-Zionists attack Jews for appearing Jewish (what I call Walking While Jewish). The Prime Minister of France called it what it was:
“There is a new anti-Semitism in France,” he told me. “We have the old anti-Semitism, and I’m obviously not downplaying it, that comes from the extreme right, but this new anti-Semitism comes from the difficult neighborhoods, from immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, who have turned anger about Gaza into something very dangerous. Israel and Palestine are just a pretext. There is something far more profound taking place now.” In discussing the attacks on French synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses this summer, during the Gaza war, he said, “It is legitimate to criticize the politics of Israel. This criticism exists in Israel itself. But this is not what we are talking about in France. This is radical criticism of the very existence of Israel, which is anti-Semitic. There is an incontestable link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Behind anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”
And now a German Judge has also, via Times of Israel, German judge rules: Anti-Zionism is code for anti-Semitism:
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