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Antisemitism Tag

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on August 26, 2016 1 Comment
A few days ago, we covered how in early August 2016 the Student Council at Leipzig University in Germany passed a resolution taking a strong stand against calls to boycott Israel, declaring them to be anti-Semitic, READ: German university student council resolution declaring BDS anti-Semitic:
The Student Council condemns anti-Semitic boycott campaigns such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] and stands against the execution, participation in, and promotion of such campaigns and events at the University of Leipzig. Therefore, the Student Council will not support BDS Campaign or settings (events, exhibitions, demonstrations etc.) in which BDS Movement is involved. We consider international cooperation vital for the Academics. As a Student Council we stand against anti-Semitic measures such as disinviting of Israeli academicians from conferences in the context of the boycott campaign, and [council will] publicise whenever it happens — thereby contributing to the clarification of the matter and preventing such an occurrence.
The student council has produced a chronicle of its rejection of BDS (pdf.) which includes a citation to my translation of the resolution:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 23, 2016 7 Comments
Hebron is a hot spot in many ways. Hebron and its immediately surrounding Arab areas are the single largest source of terror attacks during the so-called Knife or Stabbing Intifada. It's also a place where anti-Zionist and left-wing "liberal Zionist" American Jews love to gather to protest the Jewish "settlers" who live in a tiny section of the city. That section is under Israeli military control by agreement with the Palestinian Authority, with good reason. Hebron has a long history of violence directed at Jews. Hebron also is the place of the Cave of the Patriarchs, which I visited in 2015. [caption id="attachment_129734" align="alignnone" width="600"][Cave of Patriarchs - Abraham] [Cave of Patriarchs - Abraham][/caption]Hebron had one of if not the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world, dating back several hundred years at least. Until 1929. On August 23, 1929, the Arabs attacked the Jews of Hebron along with numerous other Jewish communities.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on August 21, 2016 3 Comments
Students at Germany’s leading academic institution, the University of Leipzig, have passed a resolution rejecting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and calling it anti-Semitic. According to a copy of the resolution obtained by the Legal Insurrection from the Facebook pages of student groups, Leipzig University’s Student Council declared the BDS movement as being blatantly anti-Semitic, saying “even the basic aim of the BDS movement, the complete boycott of the State of Israel, fits seamlessly with the anti-Semitic campaigns of past centuries, and explicitly with that of the National Socialism; Nazi slogan “Don’t Buy From the Jews” is once again being expressed here.” [lines 109-112] The resolution passed by the Leipzig University’s Student Council earlier this month declares [author's translation]:

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on August 16, 2016 9 Comments
As a casual observer of German and European media, regular display of anti-Israel bias doesn’t surprise me anymore. But the report aired Sunday by Germany’s state-run broadcaster Tagesschau (ARD) during prime time was disturbingly biased -- even by usual European standards. A video report titled “Dry Faucets in West Bank” was broadcasted on Germany’s most watched news show. The video clip accused Israel of ‘rationing the water supply’ of the Palestinian and diverting water resources to the neighbouring ‘Israeli settlements’. The report narrated by ARD’s Israel correspondent Markus Rosch talks to a resident of a small Arab town of Salfit, who says, “We need water to live. Now there isn’t any. How can this go on like this?” The camera then switches to his little daughter who says she can’t go the holiday camps anymore due to water scarcity.

Posted by Miriam Elman on August 07, 2016 1 Comment
On Sunday, July 31, 2016, I drove down to Ithaca, NY to give a talk titled “Hate Speech and the New Antisemitism: Why Anti-Zionist Extremism is on the Rise and What We Can Do to Stop It”. The lecture was sponsored by the Ithaca Area United Jewish Community (IAUJC). The Ithaca Coalition for Unity and Cooperation in the Middle East (ICUCME), a local grassroots anti-racism organization, assisted with the event logistics and publicity. A video of my 60 minute lecture is now available on You Tube (full embed lower in the post). Below I highlight its main themes, breaking the hour-long lecture into segments so that readers can click on to those portions of the talk that are of most interest.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 20, 2016 7 Comments
It was one of the most notorious statements of the academic boycott movement against Israel. Shortly after the American Studies Association adopted the academic boycott of Israel in December 2013, and a firestorm of condemnation by University Presidents and associations erupted, then ASA President Curtis Marez justified singling out Israel because "one has to start somewhere":
The American Studies Association has never before called for an academic boycott of any nation’s universities, said Curtis Marez, the group’s president and an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego. He did not dispute that many nations, including many of Israel’s neighbors, are generally judged to have human rights records that are worse than Israel’s, or comparable, but he said, “one has to start somewhere.”
In that single phrase, "one has to start somewhere," was the hypocrisy and essential anti-Semitism of the BDS academic boycott movement laid bare.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 12, 2016 2 Comments
Palestinian incitement to hate and attack Jews has been a frequent topic here lately. It is not just a key cause of the current so-called "Knife Intifada" (which also involves shooting and other forms of attack), but also an impediment to any chance of peace. It is a top-down (from the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, and Hamas) and bottom-up (social media) phenomenon that is particularly focused on young children and teens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBtEDMsl_SM Here is another example, from PalMedia Watch:

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 27, 2016 8 Comments
People inside the Labour Party have accused party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his office of hampering the party's campaign to keep Britain in the European Union. From The London Times:
Alan Johnson, the former home secretary, said that it often felt as if figures in the leader’s office were “working against the rest of the party and had conflicting objectives”.

Posted by Miriam Elman on June 19, 2016 5 Comments
Since 1967 — when Israel liberated the Jewish holy sites in eastern Jerusalem — the Temple Mount has been administered by agreement through the Islamic Waqf, a Jordanian-funded trust which oversees the site’s day-to-day religious functions. The Temple Mount is the most sacred site in Judaism, sanctified as the place where the Jewish Temples existed in biblical times. It’s a place where Jews should have basic rights, including the freedom of movement and worship. But as we’ve noted in several prior posts (see here, here, here) because of the profoundly discriminatory “status quo arrangement” set in place in 1967 and subsequently upheld by Israel’s courts, Jews are prohibited from praying there for fear of potentially upsetting Muslim worshippers, stirring up tensions, and triggering violent Muslim backlashes.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on June 16, 2016 2 Comments
What should be first of its kind, a leading German bank has shut down an account connected to the anti-Israel boycott campaign -- also know by the acronym of BDS. Commerzbank, Germany’s second largest bank, closed the account of anti-Israel and pro-BDS website “Der Semit”. The action is expected to have implications for other banks providing services to groups affiliated to the BDS campaign throughout Germany. Israeli Minister for Public Security Gilad Erdan welcomed the decision taken by Commerzbank and urged other European banks to take similar steps against anti-Israel and anti-Semitic groups raising funds and carrying out transactions in Europe.

Posted by New Neo on June 13, 2016 11 Comments
Not long after being introduced to the internet about 20 years ago, I realized that despite the internet's many wonders, anti-Semitism was also rife online. The internet gave this old hatred with a long pedigree new and sturdy legs. Do a search for some topic connected with the Holocaust, for example, and pretty quickly you'll encounter the manifold Holocaust deniers and websites devoted to spreading anti-Semitic lies about all manner of Jewish things and all points of Jewish history. These sites are slick, numerous, and wide-reaching, and I have little doubt that they have increased the number of anti-Semitic people in the world who are firmly convinced that they are privy to the truth about Jews.

Posted by Dexter Van Zile on June 08, 2016 2 Comments
For the past decade, anti-Israel activists in the United States and Europe have called on pension funds, universities and churches to sell their stock in companies that do business with Israel, particularly its defense establishment. They have also called for people and governments to boycott Israel, its products and services. It’s part of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign that seeks to isolate Israel from the international economy and force the Jewish state to make concessions to the Palestinians. BDS proponents say they want to promote human rights and peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but it’s hard to ignore that their criticism is nearly always directed at Israel while groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are given a pass. The effect is not to promote peace, but to portray Israel’s efforts to defend itself as immoral and indefensible.

Posted by David Gerstman on May 31, 2016 12 Comments

Singling Out Jews in Yellow

Shortly before the Senate vote on the nuclear deal with Iran was supposed to take place (but was filibustered by Democratic supporters of the deal), The New York Times *helpfully* provided a list letting everyone know which Jewish lawmakers were against the deal, with the names highlighted in yellow.

New york times congressional jew tracker iran deal senate

The New York Times, after the expected (and deserved) outrage, removed the "Religion" column from the list but acknowledged no wrongdoing, "[under] Times standards, the religion or ethnicity of someone in the news can be noted if that fact is relevant and the relevance is clear to readers." Nonetheless due to readers' outrage, it adjusted the list.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 22, 2016 12 Comments
It was the selfie heard round the world. Zakia Belkhari, a young Belgian Muslim woman of Morrocan descent, took a series of selfies in front of a group of anti-immigration protesters last week. The images went viral on social media and across the progressive media. Vox.com termee it a "brilliant" symbol of peace and defiance in the face of "Islamophobia" and "hate." http://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11692306/muslim-selfies-islamophobia-protest-antwerp-belgium
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