Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Germany: Man receives suspended sentence for inciting against Jews, leftists


Via netz-gegen-nazis, thueringen-rechtsaussen.net:

A man was sentenced to a suspended sentence of five and a half months and a fine of 1800 euro for Facebook incitement, more than the prosecution demanded.

The man, from Nordhausen, incited against Jews and leftists and posted an image saying "The government exalted us as Nazis, now we're going to act like it".  The man wrote about Antifa, ISIS and Jews that they must be eradicated.

Germany: Culture minister reverses decision, will add Jewish member to commission on stolen Nazi art


Via Jerusalem Post:
Monika Grütters, Germany’s minister of culture, reversed her opposition to including a Jewish member on a commission set up to return cultural property stolen by the Nazis.

Speaking Sunday to The Jerusalem Post from New York City, Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal confirmed the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician’s decision. He said “she is strongly considering including a Jewish member. She is personally for it. The final decision has to be an agreement with the 16 German states for the Limbach commission.”

Teichtal, a rabbi in the Berlin Jewish community, met with Grütters on Tuesday and is on his way back to Berlin.

The commission to assess the restitution of stolen property during the Holocaust is named after Jutta Limbach, the former head of the German Federal Constitutional Court. According to a March New York Times report, Grütters justified the exclusion of Jews from the panel, saying: “We did not do this, and for good reason,” because a Jewish committee member “would be the only voice who would be prejudiced.”
Teichtal told the Post that he asked her about the Times interview. He said that Grütters claimed it was a “misunderstanding” and the she did not wish to express “such a meaning.”

He also said: “I do not know what happened during the interview. She never had that intention to be biased.”

He added: “the way she described it in the New York Times did not express how she felt. She was never against it from the beginning.”

read more

Germany: Borussia Dortmund fans chant antisemitic songs after German Cup loss


Via Die Welt:

Various antisemitic incidents took place on a train of Borussia Dortmund fans after the championship game in which their team lost in the German Cup finals.

Thirty hooligans sang antisemitic songs.  The train entered the station next to the Berlin Zoo with cants of "Jewish pigs".   The fans also vandalized the train.

UK: British men perform Nazi salute at Buchenwald concentration camp



Via Metro:
Two British men allegedly performed a Nazi salute at a German concentration camp where 56,000 people were killed during the Second World War.

Police in Germany are investigating. It is thought the men are believed to be members of British neo-Nazi group National Action.

The group posted a blurry image of two people holding a National Action flag and raising their arms in salute at the former Buchenwald concentration camp, Bild reported.

read more

UK: 40% support boycotting Israel, 50% think it's antisemitism



65% of British Jews think boycotting Israel is antisemitic.

Via Globes:
The survey, carried out by Ipsos among 1,100 respondents in the US, finds that 33% of the population of the US think that a boycott of Israel is a justifiable measure. A similar survey in the UK found that an even greater proportion, 40%, agree that boycotting of Israel is a legitimate act.

Nevertheless, 62% of respondents in the US and 50% in the UK consider the BDS movement to be a modern form of antisemitism.
read more

Monday, May 30, 2016

Turkey; Jewish wedding draws anti-Semitism clamor


Via Arutz 7:
The small Jewish community in Edirne, in northwest Turkey, has waited patiently since 1976 for a wedding in its local synagogue – and when it finally occurred yesterday, the response it drew from other Turks was less than celebratory.

The wedding was set to be such a significant and joyous event that it was decided to broadcast it via Periscope and Twitter – a particularly popular social medium in Turkey. However, it drew the attention of anti-Semites in the country, and the bride, groom and Jewish community in general were told, "Too bad Hitler didn't finish the job" and the like.

(...)

Then began the upswing. In 2013, the synagogue was renovated, and last year it was opened to the public. Its first wedding, yesterday, drew many members of the budding Jewish community, and the joy was great. Community leader Yitzchak Ibrahimzadeh even decided that it should be shared with the public at large, via Twitter. The happiness turned to consternation, however, as the responses began tweeting in: "Kill the Jews!" "Get out of occupied Palestine!" etc.

Ibrahimzadeh did not lose heart. "Many anti-Semites expressed their hatred on the Periscope broadcast," he tweeted back. "Together, hand in hand, we will overcome them." He proudly included pictures of a synagogue, church, mosque and Turkish flag, symbolizing his hope that unity would win the day.

read more

France: Jews’ situation worst since 1945

Ilan Halimi
The problem is that we have been hearing for years that the fight against antisemitism is a priority - all sorts of organisations etc fight antisemitism but the situation keeps deteriorating, as is acknowledged by Mr Kalifat and his predecessorss Roger Cukierman and Gérard Prasquier.  Jews are leaving France in large numbers.

In an attempt to fight antisemitism, three films have been released in the space of a few weeks: Yvan Attal's comedy about anti-Semitism "They Are Everywhere", Richard Berry's "Tout, Tout de Suite" ("Everything now") a fiction based on the murder of Ilan Halimi in 2006, and Elie Chouraqui's "The Origin of Violence"

JTA reports:
French Jews are experiencing the most difficult situation they have encountered since the end of World War II, the newly-elected president of France’s umbrella of Jewish communities said.

Francis Kalifat, 64, said Sunday that his first priority as president of CRIF is to fight against the anti-Semitism that he said was responsible for the situation he described.

“The fight against anti-Semitism is our main cause because French Jews are in the most difficult situation they have experience since World War II,” Kalifat said during an interview with Radio J shortly after his unanimous election to succeed Roger Cukierman as president.  [...]

His presidency, which will become effective next month, comes at a time of record emigration by Jews from France, partly because of anti-Semitic violence that included hundreds of anti-Semitic incidents annually in recent years, and dozens of physical assaults. Since 2012, attacks on Jewish targets by French Islamists in France and Belgium claimed the lives of 12 people. Last year, roughly 8,000 French Jews left for Israel — the highest number on record for any year, which made France for the second year straight Israel’s largest provider of newcomers.

“I think all of our force needs to be united to fight against this anti-Semitism in all its forms, because we see this new anti-Semitism advancing under the guise of anti-Zionism,” added Kalifat, a businessman and longtime activist for Zionist and Jewish causes who is CRIF’s 11th president.

read more

Belgium: 'Palestine' used as a rallying cry against discrimination, Western oppression


Europeans see that groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda use the Palestinian issue as a recruiting tool.  Their conclusion is that if they only solve the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, they will solve the underlying cause of all Middle-East unrest.

But the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not the reason why Muslim youth feel oppressed in Europe.  It is not the reason why European Muslims heads to Iraq or Syria to wage Jihad against what they see as Western oppression.

The Jews, as always, are just an excuse.  

Via Haaretz:
Divided ethnically from Belgian society, these largely Salafist groups created an alternative rhetoric of Muslim unity as their rallying call. “The question of Palestine was the decisive element in convincing my son Anis, aged 18, to leave Belgium to fight with ISIS in the battlefields of Syria,” says Geraldine, a mother of a terrorist from Molenbeek. “With the heavy police presence in the area, young people often compare the constant identity checks they conduct to living under occupation in Palestine,” confirms the deputy mayor. Karim Amezian, a manager of an independent association aiming to deradicalize youth in the area, says that there is nothing like Israeli checkpoints when it comes to upsetting young people in disadvantaged areas of Brussels and Belgium as a whole.

“My son, like many others, remained unemployed, afflicted by an implicit rejection from society by being unable to enter the labor market,” explains Geraldine. The same story is repeated by other mothers of jihadi fighters from Belgium, who know these men and their journey to radicalization best. Annalisa Gadaleta, a local official working in education for the municipality, adds how “the youth here in Molenbeek are frustrated in both identity and socio-economic terms."
read more

Serbia: At rehabilitation trial, historian claims that Nazi-puppet Leader ‘Did Not Kill Jews’


90% of Serbia's 16,000 Jews were killed between August 1941 and May 1942.




Via Balkan Insight:
Historian Bojan Dimitrijevic told the Belgrade-based Higher Court on Monday that the Nazi backed WWII-era puppet government led by Nedic never physically murdered any Jews, as killings were only carried out by German occupation troops in the country at the time.

The Jewish question was not within the competence of Nedic’s government, but rather the German forces. In implementing this policy, Nedic’s government merely made statistical records of the Jews in Serbia,” Dimitrijevic said.

“All the activities of arresting [people], putting [them] in concentration camps and killings were carried out exclusively by German forces,” he added.

Asked by the judge whether the Nedic government published anti-Semitic posters, Dimitrijevic admitted that it did use propaganda against Serbia’s Jewish community.

“There were some elements of that, but that is not the same as killing people,” Dimitrijevic said.

(...)

Nedic, who was prime minister from 1941 to 1944, was declared a war criminal by the Yugoslav Communist authorities after the Nazi occupation of the country ended, but his great-grandson and his allies are hoping that the court will posthumously clear his name.
read more

Germany: Bremen city-owned facilities used to wage BDS

Via Jerusalem Post:
A group conducting an aggressive anti-Israel boycott campaign has its headquarters in Bremen city-owned property that has received federal funding, an investigation by The Jerusalem Post found.

“The Bremen Peace Forum has already publicly supported the BDS movement for some time. This [BDS] is nothing other than an anti-Israel, yes, anti-Semitic idea. It intolerable when such institutions are still publicly supported,” Gitta Connemann, a leading Bundestag deputy and a member of the German-Israel parliamentary group, told the Post on Thursday.

According to the Bremen Peace Forum’s website, “it is the time to boycott merchandise from Israel, some of which is produced in Israeli settlements, but also other goods that come directly from Israel.”
(...)
In an email to the Post, André Städler, the spokesman for the Social Democratic Mayor Carsten Sieling, said, “The City of Bremen, as the owner of the Villa Ichon [where the Bremen Peace Forum has its headquarters], agreed to a leasehold contract with the management company of the Villa Ichon.”

Städler said that the agreement expires in 2031 and cannot be cut short. He declined to send the Post a copy of the agreement. The spokesman said the City of Bremen condemns calls to boycott Israel.
(...)

In 2013, the Villa Ichon was embroiled in a scandal because it barred Jewish music teacher Noemi Köster and Israeli student Maor Shani from attending a lecture on anti-Semitism.

The event was organized by various peace activists and a local Left Party group.

The doorman at the event insulted Shani, who was wearing a kippa, and Köster, saying “Everything belongs to you already anyway, also the media,” the Bild newspaper reported.

Bremen is the center of anti-Israel activity in Germany.

read more

Germany: 'Jew' used as an insult


Via RIAS:



A passer-by reported he saw several men argue in Arabic in Berlin, and one of them used the phrase "you fucking Jew" (in German) as an insult. 

Though it was most probably not aimed at a Jew and shows how the word 'Jew' is used as an insult.

Poland: Warsaw Ghetto memorial vandalized with swastika


Via CFCA:

A swastika was drawn on a memorial sign to the Warsaw Ghetto, at Mirowski park in Warsaw.

Sunday, May 29, 2016

UK: Anti-Israel speech wins charity's regional contest


Speakers Trust, who run the competition, decided against sending Mohamad to the Grand Final.



Via Edgar Davidson's Blog:
How do you win an award with a British Charity whose mission statement is

    To enable young people (aged 11 – 25 years in London and Essex), to achieve their potential by inspiring, investing in, developing and promoting activities that increase their personal, social, emotional and physical development.  

Obviously, you make a hate speech containing nothing but blood libels against the State of Israel (a speech that also includes the statement "Islam is perfect" and ends with the raising of the Palestine flag and the call to "Free Palestine" which is wildly applauded).
read more

Italy: "Burn the banks" graffiti on Holocaust memorial



Via CFCA:
Red spray paint reads, “Burn the bank” on a Holocaust memorial opened just this year in Bologna. This happened just one month after the monument’s debut.

read more

Greece: Nazis claim refugee activist is Mossad agent working to destabilize Europe


Zougla.gr allows readers to post whatever they wish on their blog.

Via Against Antisemitism, Get The Trolls Out:
Greek pro-Nazi Hellenic National Socialist Found blog has reposted an article from the popular news website Zougla.gr claiming that Achilles M. Peklaris, a well-known activist supporting and helping refugees in Greece, is an agent trained by Mossad, the Israeli secret services, to destabilize Europe by encouraging the arrival of refugees. Zougla.gr has meanwhile removed the article.
read more

UK: Labour activist reinstated to party after ‘anti-Semitic’ comments investigation


The Labour Party sure takes antisemitism seriously.

Via Metro:
A senior Labour activist who was suspended over making alleged anti-Semitic comments on Facebook has been reinstated to the party.

Jackie Walker was one of a number of Labour members to be suspended shortly before the local elections earlier this month.

The Kent activist, who is vice chair of the pro Jeremy Corbyn Momentum movement, had written about ‘the African holocaust’ and called Jews ‘chief financiers of the slave trade’.
Speaking to the BBC she said the last few weeks had been a ‘living nightmare’.

She added: ‘I am glad this investigation has fully cleared me of any wrongdoing.

‘I am not a racist, but I robustly defend my right and the right of others to speak openly and frankly about matters of grave political and historical importance.’

News of her reinstatement was condemned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism.

Director of communications, Jonathan Sacerdoti, said the annoucement called in to question the party’s inquiry into anti-Semitism.
read more

France: AFP employing anti-Israel head of Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate

Nasser Abu Baker, wearing a Palestinian Authority military uniform. Photo: Facebook, Jan. 31, 2016.
Via Algemeiner:
A leading media watchdog organization issued a report on Tuesday strongly criticizing French news outlet Agence France Presse (AFP) for betraying its self-described “rigorous neutrality,” by employing a reporter who was appointed in January to chair the anti-Israel Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS).

According to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), Nasser Abu Baker – who previously held the title of deputy chairman at PJS — has been covering Israeli-Palestinian affairs for AFP for more than a decade and continues to do so. This, said CAMERA, is in spite of the fact that PJS is a “leading force for the boycott of Israeli journalists and media.”

read more

Germany: Prosecutors probe publisher planning to reprint Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’


Via Times of Israel:
German prosecutors said Thursday they were investigating whether to bring charges against a publisher who has promised to print a version of Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic manifesto “Mein Kampf” without annotations.
Re-publishing the original tract is illegal under German sedition laws against inciting racial hatred, although a version for historians with thousands of critical commentaries was allowed to go on sale this year.

Prosecutors said “we are investigating whether to level charges” against publisher Der Schelm, based in Leipzig in Germany’s formerly communist east, national news agency DPA reported.

The publishing house is taking orders on its website for an “unaltered reprint” of the 1943 edition published by Hitler’s Nazi regime.

read more

Friday, May 27, 2016

Netherlands: Amsterdam to pay Jewish community $11M for Holocaust survivor taxes


Via JTA:
The city of Amsterdam will give its Jewish community $11 million as compensation for taxes imposed on Holocaust survivors who returned home to the Dutch capital following World War II.

Upon their return, according to an article in The Telegraph on Monday, the survivors were made to pay a tax because their homes were left empty during the Holocaust. They also had to pay back taxes for the years they had been taken away from the city, as well as insurance fees.

The taxes were discovered by a student in 2013, and that year, Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan said the city should “put it right,” according to The Telegraph. On Friday, the city said it would pay the $11 million — an estimate of the total taxes paid by survivors following the war.

read more

Spain: Lawmaker calls Barcelona Jewish community head 'a foreign agent' of the Zionist lobby


Via JTA (h/t CFCA):
Spain’s main Jewish group threatened legal action against a local lawmaker for calling a community leader “a foreign agent.”

Benet Salellas espoused “the most repugnant form of anti-Semitism” and used speech that “is wholly illegitimate in diplomatic discourse,” FCJE said Tuesday in an unusually harshly-worded statement. The group said that unless Salellas apologized and walked back his statements, it would press charges against him for hate speech.

During a May 12 debate in Catalonia’s parliament, Salellas accused Uriel Benguigui, president of the Jewish Community of Barcelona, of being a “foreign agent” and part of a “Zionist lobby,” local media reported.

Salellas — a member of the Popular Unity Candidacy, a left-leaning movement in favor of independence for the Catalonia region — apparently objected to Benguigui’s presence at the meeting of the parliament’s foreign relations committee.

read more

Salellas' party, the Popular Union Candidacy (CUP), published the following clip on their YouTube page, showing him "standing up to the pressure of the Zionist lobby on the Catalan parliament".

Italy: 15 year-old harassed for wearing a kippah


Via CFCA:

A 15 year-old boy was attacked in Milan by a group of teenagers his age, because he was wearing a kippah.

Police say this was a case of bullying and not a hate crime.

The teenager, a visitor from Rome, was hanging out with friends in the park when the group approached him and started making fun of him.  After he left the park, one of the bullies, approached and slapped him.

France: Ken Loach calls for the boycott of Israel at Arab Institute in Paris

British filmaker Ken Loach is known for his relentless Israel-bashing.

After receiving the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his film I, Daniel Blake, Loach attended the opening ceremony at the Arab World Institute in Paris of the Festival Ciné Palestine, where he lashed out against Israel.  As this video shows (in English and French) the audience went wild when he called for the boycott of Israel..


By the way, the head of the Arab World Instiute is Jack Lang, a French politician whose his father was Jewish.  Several Jewish celebrities support the festival.

More @ Times of Israel (in French)

European governments support UN motion singling out Israel as world's sole violator of health rights



Via Algemeiner:
A recent United Nations resolution singling out Israel as the world’s only violator of global health rights reveals how the international body is “completely disconnected from reality,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN told The Algemeiner on Thursday.

Danny Danon was referring to a resolution — co-sponsored by the Arab Group and the Palestinian delegation — accusing Israel of violating the “mental, physical and environmental health” of the Palestinians. The motion, which received support from France, Germany, the UK and various other EU states, was passed during the World Health Organization’s (WHO) annual assembly on Wednesday. The US and Canadian delegations both voiced their strong objections to the resolution.
According to the Geneva-based watchdog group UN Watch, no resolutions were passed against any other country. The assembly did not address other major health crises, such as the bombing of hospitals in Syria by pro-regime and Russian warplanes, or the Saudi-led bombing and blockade in Yemen, which is denying millions access to food and water.

Various Arab countries also used the WHO assembly to lob further accusations at Israel. Iran claimed that Gaza is under “an inhumane blockade,” while Egypt alleged that Israel shows a “disregard for basic human rights.” Pakistan charged Israel with carrying out a “wave of terror against the Palestinian civilian population.” 

read more

Thursday, May 26, 2016

UK: History professor turns down Israeli award


Via Jewish News:
A London university don has turned down her share of Israel’s prestigious $1 million Dan David Prize for political reasons, to the cheer of boycotters.

Historian Professor Catherine Hall of University College London (UCL) said she declined an estimated £250,000 which was to be awarded to her for her work.

She told the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) that it was “an independent political choice, undertaken after many discussions with those who are deeply involved with the politics of Israel-Palestine, but with differing views”.

Awarded annually, the prize was set up with a $100 million endowment by Bucharest-born Israeli businessman Dan David, with awards in three categories, to those whose work covered the Past, Present or Future.

Prof. Hall, a distinguished feminist historian, was due to receive the Past award for her “impact on social history, as a pioneer in gender history, race and slavery,” with particular reference to her work on women’s history in the 1970s.
read more

Czech Republic: Many people believe Jews are behind the 'Islamization of Europe'


Via Watch: Antisemitism in Europe:
The online radio Radio Praha published an article about the recent situation of antisemitism in the Czech Republic. Two main issues of this short comment are that the web plays a huge role in nowadays antisemitism as well as a lot of people believe crude conspiracy theories like 'the Jews are behind the so-called Islamization of Europe'.

read more

Netherlands: Amsterdam kosher restaurant stabbing not a hate crime, police say


Via JTA:
The stabbing of a woman at a kosher restaurant here was not a hate crime, police said.

The attack Monday night at Grand Cafe Rimon, which resulted in moderate injuries to the victim and ended with the arrest of the suspected assailant, was the act of a person who appeared mentally unstable, a spokesman for the police told JTA Tuesday.

Security camera footage shows the man, a Brazilian national who was not named by police, sitting at the restaurant in the southern part of the city, exiting and returning shortly thereafter, the spokesman told JTA. He then stabbed the woman and sat back down at the table, urging staff to call an ambulance. He told police during questioning that voices in his head told him to stab the woman. He had bought the knife at a nearby supermarket.

The victim, Victoria Warenholt, wrote on Facebook Wednesday that initial reports in Dutch media that she was stabbed in her arm were inaccurate, and that in fact the knife punctured one of her lungs.

“I was having dinner with a dear friend when suddenly I felt a punch in my back and I saw the man trying to stab my friend in her face. My friend was not hurt, but unfortunately the knife punctured my lung on the right side,” she wrote, adding that she was in pain but recovering. She neither knew the attacker nor spoke to him, she wrote.

“He appeared completely deranged and it’s not clear whether he even knew he was at a kosher, Israeli restaurant,” the police spokesman said. “This does not appear to be an anti-Semitic incident, though in the current atmosphere we had, of course, immediately suspected that it was.”
read more

France: At Cannes disgraced actor Mel Gibson presents film award to ‘virulently anti-Israel’ director


The Algemeiner reports:
Controversy erupted on Sunday after disgraced actor Mel Gibson presented an award to an anti-Israel director at the Cannes Film Festival in France, according to the New York Post’s Page Six.

Gibson presented the Palme d’Or to British director Ken Loach for his film I, Daniel Blake — a move that one Hollywood insider called “blatant and boorish,” especially in light of the fact that antisemitic attacks are on the rise in France. The insider also called Loach a “virulently anti-Israel director.”

After Loach won the same award in 2006, he called for a cultural boycott of Israel. In 2009, he condemned the Toronto Film Festival for selecting Tel Aviv for its “City to City” section, and pulled his film Looking for Eric from a Melbourne festival when he discovered that Israel was a sponsor of the event.

Gibson is notorious for spewing antisemitic remarks at a Los Angeles police officer in 2006, when he was arrested for drunk driving. He ranted, “F***ing Jews… the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Shortly after his DUI arrest, Gibson issued an apology “specifically to everyone in the Jewish community” for his “vitriolic and harmful words.”
read more

Belgium: Flemish weekly Knack publishes jew-hatred from Abou Jahjah


Zakia Belkhiri, a Belgian Muslim woman, made headlines when she took a selfie of herself at an extreme-right demonstration.  However, it was then discovered that she's full of hate herself.
In one tweet dating from November 2012, she wrote: "Hitler didn't kill all the Jews, he left some. So we know why he was killing them."
And in another Facebook post from March 2014, she used an expletive to describe Jews before adding: "I hate them so much." 
Dyab Abou Jahjah, a famous antisemite himself, rushed to her defense.




Guest post by Dr Rudi Roth, Investigative reporter and scientist  (edited by blog admin):

Here what is going on in Belgium after the famous selfie woman affair.

1. VRT rightly removed an article by Abou Jahjah  

Abou Jahjah published an article on the site of the public media, VRT.

The article was taken offline in less a than a minute by the VRT.  Abou Jahjah claimed VRT violated his freedom of speech when they prevented him from comparing Israel to Islamic State.

But the article was picked up by the weekly Knack.

It is "very delicate" from the weekly knack.be to publish a Jew-hatred article from that permanent antisemite just after the 2nd commemoration of the antisemitic attack on the Jewish museum in Brussels on May 24th, 2014!

It may be the wish of the Knack management to reinforce the antisemitic feeling in the country so as the create some local Mohammed Merahs that would also kill Jewish toddlers in Jewish schools as happened in Toulouse.

2. The reason for Jahjah's article are these facts:

Just a few days ago it turned out that the Muslim girl making selfies at an extreme-right manifestation in Antwerp and therefor considered as a real hero, was herself a real antisemite.

 The quite complete story can be read here (BBC) and also here in Dutch (Joods Actueel) where it is explained by studies of several organisations (from Anti-Defamation League and another by VUB professor Elchardus) that antisemitism is common with young Muslims in Europe and in particular in Belgium. And that this phenomena is reinforced by the extreme anti-Israel statements from the extreme-leftist organisations, including Movement X, led by Abou Jahjah and Karim Hassoun.

Joods Actueel's editor published a call to partner with moderate Muslims; in complete contrast to the the hate statements by Abou Jahjah and his calls for maximum discord.

Abou Jahjah's objective, in addition to creating maximum discord, is to make Jew-hatred socially acceptable under a very light veil of  supposed anti-Zionism.

 Knack apparently committed to publish his article, after the public media VRT removed it, probably for its hate-incitement and because VRT didn't want to pollute the commemoration day of the major antisemitic attack in Belgium on May 24th performed by a young Muslim extremist.

While most Belgian media mentioned today the commemoration day, Knack seems to have skipped it. Accident? Or on purpose?

More on the planned Abou Jahjah article below (in 4. & 5.)

3. Not the first time that Knack publishes Jew-hatred articles. Candidate as successor of Der Stürmer?

It is not the first time that Knack publishes Jew-hatred articles. A previous article written by a close relation of Abou Jahjah, Yassine Channouf, was taken offline after a short time when it became clear that is was based on neo-Nazi pseudo-historical and revisionist information. Even extreme-left historians close to the Abou Jahjah groups approved the removal and were therefore seriously insulted by the Abou Jahjah teamers.

More recently, Knack published also an article signed by Karim Hassoun, the successor of Abou Jahjah in his Arab European League (AEL).

Karim Hassoun's 'hate-resumé" is published here in Dutch and Knack is fully aware of it and even censured all posts mentioning it on their Facebook pages. Great democratic behavior.

He is the organisor of the manifestation in Antwerp on July 12th, 2014 were the crowd shouted "cut the throats of the Jews" and other "nice intentions". (Note, they probably also meant "Zionists" instead of "Jews"... Funny the way the Arab word "yahoud" gets different "translations" since some time)

Hassoun also glorified the Hezbollah child-murderer Samir Kuntar on his Facebook wall (link in the article)

In addition he, together with Abou Jahjah, whose second in command he still is, organized a fake commemoration for an antisemitic Hamas terrorist in front of the Jewish museum for deportation and resistance in Mechelen.  (Jewish museum, not "Zionist" museum...)

Commeorating Arab terrorist in front of Jewish museum, AEL site


4. Abou Jahjah - inciting teenagers to hate Jews

One of the major elements of Abou Jahjah's defence of the antisemitic selfie girl  is that she was only 18 years old when she made these antisemitic statements and needed to be educated.

Lets have a closer look to Abou Jahjah's educational qualities and values.

In 2003, the AEL forum was run by Jessica Jessie Kerkhove, a Belgian convert to Islam, who posted as follows:



"Palestine back to the Arabs.  The Jews have to get off our land.  Out of it or in it" (ie, buried in it).

This is exactly the statement Abou Jahjah uses himself: in French "la valise ou le cercueil" (the suitcase or the casket).

The moderator of the AEL forum of Abou Jahjah, Jessie was then only 16 years old.

The "education" she received from Abou Jahjah led her to write that kind of hate-text.

After some time she changed her text to:
 "Palestine back to the Arabs. The Israelis must get off our land. Out of it in or it"  (with an eye-rolling smiley and a "jeez, people")


But in fact it was still the same.  She meant: "THE JEWS out or get killed"

 

5. Abou Jahjah's "difference" between Jews and "Zionists"

Abou Jahjah pretends that one has to make the distinction between "Jews" and "Zionists" and that he always used "Zionist".

He forgets to mention that he uses "Zionist" because Jew-hatred is illegal in Belgium and that he mainly means and thinks "Jews".

When the mayor of Antwerp, Bart De Wever, decided to call the assistance of the army after the terror attacks in Paris in order to protect the Antwerp Jewish schools, he called him "a Zionist sucker" ('zionisten-pijper') and he clearly meant Jews. (There are of course no "Zionist" schools)

He also thereby approved in his article the "correction/apologies" made by the selfie girl that she meant "Zionist" and not "Jews" in her statement about Hitler.

“Hitler didn't kill all the Jews, he left some. So we [would] know why he was killing them”

What would read then

“Hitler didn't kill all the Zionists, he left some. So we [would] know why he was killing them”

Hitler's actions happened in 1940-1945 and then that extermination would be acceptable for Abou Jahjah, approving Hitler, such as the Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem.

Interesting "logic"


(click to enlarge)



In a earlier made screenshot (texts are from August 15 & 16, 2009) about "la valise ou le cercueil" and which became public some months ago, he wrote these sentences:
Jew or no jew, we will still chase them out of our land. Fatah is corrupted anyway so why is anybody surprised.   La valise ou le cerceuil.!
and then
And again, Palestine is our land and we will take it back, it doesn't matter who did what there. If you are on Palestinian ground you are an invader and the resistance should deal with you. And Palestinian ground is the whole of historical Palestine. And spare me the lamentation about being a refugee cos once again I couldn't care less. I have onlu one phrase to all the Zionists invaders in Palestine: La valise ou le cerceuil.
 and (only partly on the screenshot):
Regarding Gaza, it is a concentration camp created by the Zio-Nazis and there is a total blockade against the people there because they elected Hamas as their democratic choice. So do not speak about Gaza as if Hamas made it like that. And before saying the name of a glorious resistance movement like Hamas in your mouth you better go wash it first from all the zionist dirty propaganda you are spreading.

When he states in his hate-article to be published by Knack: 
... because I realize that in my situation as an example to many (sic!) and thus my responsibility to make people conscious that it is not an ethnic nor religious conflict.
It is clear from his own statements that he is the first one to make it an ethnic conflict against Jews, and not only in Israel but also against the Jews in Europe!

And he is an example: an example of an antisemite for present antisemites and antisemites to be created by him.

"Thank you" Knack, reminding Belgian and European Jews that Jew-hatred in the Flemish press is back again since the 1940's.

Switzerland: Parliament launches inquiry into anti-Israel NGOs


The Jerusalem Post reports:
The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) has allocated funds in the millions to anti-Israel NGOs linked to terrorism and working in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, according to a report that appeared in Switzerland’s Basler Zeitung on Monday.

The front-page story by veteran journalist Dominik Feusi, headlined “Resistance in Parliament against money for Israel-critical campaigns,” stated that MP Christian Imark had introduced a motion supported by 41 lawmakers from across the political spectrum calling on the FDFA to stop all direct or indirect funding to organizations that sponsor “racist and anti-Semitic actions” or are involved in BDS campaigns.

The move could bring about a sea change in Swiss funding for scores of anti-Israel NGOs operating in Israel and in the disputed territories.

Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, spoke with the The Jerusalem Post about the development.

“The detailed and unprecedented article... reflects the concerns of many MPs in Switzerland, who were surprised to learn of the very negative and counterproductive impact of their government’s funding for radical anti-peace NGOs,” Steinberg stated.

“As in the case of the EU and many individual states, the funding process, which supports Al-Haq [an NGO based in Ramallah] – the leader of the 'lawfare' campaign – and Breaking the Silence, as well as other Israeli groups, has been strictly hidden from the media and MPs until now,” he said.

Steinberg, along with Olga Deutsch, head of NGO Monitor’s Europe research desk, briefed Swiss MPs in Bern in March on the alleged misconduct of certain NGOs and their financial irregularities.


“As noted in the [Basler] article, additional Swiss funding goes to Islamic Relief Worldwide,” he continued. “Earlier this year, HSBC cut all ties to this NGO due to concerns about its involvement in terrorism. Israel declared IRW a terrorist-supporting entity in 2014, citing funding to Hamas. The Swiss government must now review this funding.”

The article alleged that the FDFA funneled the equivalent of nearly $182,000 to the IRW last year. It also noted that Swiss funds had been sent directly or indirectly to 44 NGOs that “are opposed to negotiations with Israel and peace, and work for a boycott of Israeli products.” [...]


According to the article, the Bundesrat, the executive council of the Swiss government, is required to respond to the motion submitted by the MPs.

“The revelations include cases of ‘double dipping’ – funding from different Swiss government agencies for the same NGOs, which was made possible by extreme secrecy,” Steinberg added.

 He added that Swiss public debate that crosses party and ideological lines has helped spark similar debates now taking place in Holland, Denmark and other countries that might be involved in the large-scale funding of radical NGOs. 
read more

Europe: Brussels blasted for 'ignoring' Israel as it panders to Erdogan


The usual European double standards applied when dealing with Israel and Muslim countries. Never ever say "thank you" to Israel.

Express UK reports:


Officials in Brussels promised £2.5billion and visa-free travel by June if it clamps down on the number of migrants making their way into Europe through its borders.

As EU bureaucrats continue to thrash out a deal, Tom Wilson, a Fellow at the Centre for the New Middle East at The Henry Jackson Society, says Brussels is oblivious to Israel’s efforts to stop illegal migration from Africa. 

Mr Wilson said: “For now, at least, and for an extortionately high price, Turkey’s co-operation seems to have been bought.
“But while Europe is being blackmailed into offering a whole host of concessions to Turkey, there is another country that has done a great deal to prevent the flow of illegal migration towards Europe, whose role is widely ignored.

“For some years now Israel has been serving as a buffer preventing illegal migration that would potentially flow towards Europe.  [...]




(ISIS) is also thought to be a threat in the Sinai peninsular with Egypt and Israel working together to stop the region becoming a stronghold for the Islamist militants. 

The Foreign Office currently advises Britons against travelling to North Sinai as Egyptian armed forces conduct military operations against extremist groups in the area.

Mr Wilson said: “The Sinai had become a particularly lawless and ungoverned space, with Salafist militants in the area that have more recently aligned themselves with Islamic State. But this move also shut off the path of illegal migrants.

“Israel acts as a natural buffer between the African continent and the Middle East, as well as to the West more generally. 

“Without this, the way would be left open for those coming north to pass through Israel to join the throngs that have been attempting to make their way to Western Europe through Greece and the Balkans.”
Mr Wilson added that while “Turkey is rewarded for threatening Europe with a flood of migrants, Israel’s role in blocking illegal migration has gone unacknowledged.”
read more

Spain: Tribunal rules BDS is unconstitutional, discriminatory


The Jerusalem Post reports:
Citing anti-discrimination laws, a Spanish constitutional tribunal recommended scrapping a local government motion calling for a boycott against Israel.

The Ministerio Fiscal, an advisory judicial authority charged with guaranteeing equality in the judiciary, made the recommendation this month, according to a statement by ACOM, a Spanish pro-Israel lobby. The recommendation comes after ACOM sued the northern municipality of Gijon for declaring itself “a space free of Israeli apartheid.”
Demonstrators with Palestinian flags during a protest against the Israeli
offensive against Gaza, in Valencia, Spain. (photo credit:REUTERS)
 The motion, passed in January, also said the city would not pay for services of firms implicated in “human rights violations” in Palestinian territories. It said the city supports the BDS movement, which calls for boycotts, sanctions and divestment against Israel. Gijon, a city of 270,000 residents, is located 290 miles north of Madrid.

But the Ministerio Fiscal said in its nonbinding recommendation that the objectives of Gijon’s boycott “violate the constitution as well as the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights.” The motion’s clauses, according to the tribunal, “jeopardize the fundamental right to equality without discrimination on the bases of appearance, ethnicity and religion.”

A motion similar to the one passed in Gijon was defeated last week by a majority of delegates in Tarragona, an eastern Spanish city with 130,000 residents. Tarragona is the fifth Spanish municipality where BDS motions have failed in recent weeks, while motions supporting an Israel boycott have passed in four Spanish municipalities.

Spain’s government has repeatedly expressed its opposition to BDS, which is illegal in neighboring France because it is deemed discriminatory. Britain’s ruling party is formulating similar legislation, officials said earlier this year.


Long seen as a hub of anti-Israeli lobbying in Europe, Spain has recently taken actions that angered BDS promoters, including a January offer of $107,000 in compensation for damages caused to an Israeli West Bank university due to its exclusion from a scientific competition for political reasons.
read more

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

When the EU Finances Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism


Dovid Katz (h/t Watch: Antisemitism in Europe):
In recent days, a skillful unit, the “Prague Platform,” financed by European Union governments and various EU funds and budgets, has launched a new initiative designed to undermine the narrative of the Holocaust (and what Fascism brought to Europe) and replace it with the far-right’s “Double Genocide” model of history, whereby Communism and Nazism are in principle totally equal, and their victims must be remembered in a unitary jumble. For this movement, entrapping naive Western (often Jewish) fellow travelers to grant the cover of presumed legitimacy is a strategic imperative on the road to universal acceptance. The Platform, whose full name is Eurospeak’s “Platform of European Memory and Conscience,” has on its website the foundational constitution of the new revisionism, the 2008 “Prague Declaration,” which boasts the word “same” five times, in reference to Nazism and Communism, and (this one is quite Orwellian) demands that “all European minds” accept the proposed equivalence. There is by now a long and principled trail of opposition. We of the DefendingHistory.com team based in Vilnius were exceptionally proud, back in 2012, to co-draft the European parliamentary rejoinder, the Seventy Years Declaration, in partnership with Professor Danny Ben-Moshe, who the same year completed a documentary on these matters.

This week, in keeping with its red-brown, mix-and-match hodgepodgization, the Platform trumpets a brand-new exciting European Union competition for designs for a new memorial in Brussels that must in and of itself include “victims of National Socialism, Fascism, and Communism.” And who are the Platform’s two partners in flaunting the new memorial to be built in Brussels (not, Prague, Riga or Kiev, mind you…)? The Slovak presidency of the Council of the European Union, quite expectedly, and then the shocker: The European Shoah Legacy Institute. Peradventure, its current leaders, were caught unawares, and will hasten to withdraw from a project that is intended to diminish the Holocaust in the context of a major political movement that has some corollaries.

For the uninitiated in East European politics, it can sound rather innocuous, but the empirical evidence collected over the years makes clear what those corollaries include: Mandatory equalization of those who committed genocide at Auschwitz with those who liberated it. Plans to effectively replace Holocaust Commemoration Day with a mix-and-match day for Soviet and Nazi crimes together (knowing that Europe won’t need two memorial days for these things). Inflation of the term “genocide” to include an array of (genuinely horrific) Soviet crimes as deportation and imprisonment; propagation of the notion that many of the victims were at other times criminals themselves (recently pronounced by the head of the Platform’s Vilnius-based partner whose name is even more Orwellian: “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania”).

Now headed for Brussels (under cover of a "Jewish" institution recruited for legitimization)? Eastern Europe's red-equals-brown iconography samples include (clockwise from top): Estonian and German presidents celebrating Tallinn museum's keynote sculpture in 2013; entrance to Budapest's "House of Terror" museum; collectible Lithuanian postal service envelope. (Photo montage by Defending History.)

Then there is the most distasteful of all: the state-sponsored (or encouraged) glorification of Holocaust perpetrators on the grounds that they were anti-Soviet (which in Eastern Europe they were indeed; the Soviet Union, for all its many crimes and outrages, was the only serious force in Eastern Europe combatting Hitler’s rule from the onset of genocide in late June 1941 to war’s end). The “pro-Western” parts of Europe, including Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine are littered with memorials for Holocaust perpetrators. It’s hard to think of what could be more “far right” than that, bearing in mind the far right’s sophisticated, educated wing of elites in politics, academia and public institutions who know how to show naive Westerners a darned good time, and who have little in common with skinhead thugs who come to Western minds in association with the concept of the “far right.”

read more

Cyprus: Parliamentary vote puts far-right in parliament



Via Cyprus Mail (h/t glykosymoritis):
Cyprus’s ruling conservatives took the lead in Sunday’s general election, results showed, while a far-right party won its first seats in the legislature amid voter disillusionment after a 2013 financial meltdown.

With the voting tally at 100 percent, and an unprecedentedly high abstention rate, the right-wing Democratic Rally party was ahead with 30.6 percent of the vote followed by Communist AKEL with 25.6 percent.

Compared to the previous elections of 2011, those two main parties on the Cypriot political scene suffered setbacks. AKEL’s Communists lost up to seven percentage points while Democratic Rally lost 3.7 percentage points.

By contrast ELAM, an extremist party forged on the coat-tails of Greece’s Golden Dawn, scraped past a newly-imposed 3.6 percent electoral threshold and won up to two seats, according to preliminary estimates.

“It’s sort of a kindergarten version of Golden Dawn,” said political analyst Hubert Faustmann, referring to the party formed in 2008. “All the big parties lost.”

read more

UK: Labour will take no action against MEP who compared Israel to the Nazis

The Jewish Chronicle reports:

Afzal Khan
MPs and Jewish communal groups have called on Labour to take action against an MEP who compared Israel to the Nazis.
Afzal Khan made the comment during the Israeli military action in Gaza two years ago, it has emerged.  He tweeted in August 2014: “The Israeli government are acting like Nazi’s in Gaza”.

Labour said yesterday that Mr Khan had been “reminded of his responsibilities as a Labour representative”, but that he would face no disciplinary action.

Conservative MPs Andrew Percy and Sir Eric Pickles had urged Labour to suspend Mr Khan, who was appointed a CBE for his community and interfaith work and is co-founder of The Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester.  They described his comments as “deeply offensive”.

Joan Ryan MP, chair of Labour Friends of Israel, told the Telegraph: “As the European Forum on Antisemitism has made clear, drawing comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis is totally unacceptable.”
read more

France: Politician probed for tweets mocking, denying Holocaust and stoking anti-Jewish hatred


The pictures on this post come from Inglorious Basterds blog (in French) 

The Times of Israel reports:
Djamel Boumaaz and Dieudonné


City prosecutors in southern France are investigating a local politician for his Twitter account, which was marked “forbidden to dogs and Jews” and featured tweets mocking and denying the Holocaust.

The Montpelier prosecutors were notified Monday by municipal officials about the account, which belongs to Djamel Boumaaz, a former member of France’s far-right National Front party, the Liberation daily reported. Boumaaz, a Muslim who quit the party last year over what he termed anti-Muslim sentiments by party leader Marine Le Pen, said someone had hacked his account and posted the tweets, the news site Infos H24 reported.

The Montpelier prosecutors were notified Monday by municipal officials about the account, which belongs to Djamel Boumaaz, a former member of France’s far-right National Front party, the Liberation daily reported. Boumaaz, a Muslim who quit the party last year over what he termed anti-Muslim sentiments by party leader Marine Le Pen, said someone had hacked his account and posted the tweets, the news site Infos H24 reported.

Another tweet read: “My son has nightmares from your Holocaust. I told him not to be afraid of imaginary things.”

A known associate of Holocaust denier Alain Soral and anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, Boumaaz was second on the National Front list for the municipal elections in Montpelier in 2014.


"Israel is not a victim of terrorism, the free world is a victim of Israel and of Judaism."

"Your aim is to conquer the World, but the world neither likes Israel nor the Jews"

read more

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Germany: BSG Stahl Riesa fans wear antisemitic shirts



Via Watch: Antisemitism in Europe:
A few weeks ago supporters of the football club BSG Stahl Riesa were seen wearing shirts with antisemitic codes printed on the chest. "JDN CHM" in the style of classic Run DMC shirts was addressed to the 'enemy' club of BSG Chemie Leipzig. It said "Juden Chemie" ('Jews of Chemie') with vocals left out.

read more

UK: Scottish golf club accused of discriminating against Jews


The incident mentioned is from the the early 1980s, when it wasn't that unheard of for golf clubs to ban Jews.  The question is whether this policy continued into the 21st century.

Via Daily Mail:
An anti-Semitism row has hit sexist Muirfield golf club after Lord Grade claimed he was banned for being Jewish.

The East Lothian course has been savaged by critics after it refused to admit women members in a vote last week.

And now the former BBC chairman, 73, has branded the backward club anti-Jewish, slamming golf as rife with anti-Semitism.

He was invited to the course in the early eighties by Sir William Brown, the former boss of Scottish Television, who rang him to arrange a game when he was visiting the Edinburgh festival.

'About a week or so later he rang again and said he needed to give them the name of my home club and my handicap, and I told him it was 17 and Coombe Hill,' Lord Grade told The Telegraph.

Coombe Hill, near Kingston, Surrey, was renowned for having a largely Jewish membership, he said.

'He rang back a day later and said 'I don't know how to tell you this, but as soon as I said Coombe Hill the invitation was withdrawn'. I asked him if there was a particular reason, and he said, "You know why, Michael."'

Lord Grade added that on another occasion his friend put his name forward to a club with a 'No Jews' policy to test them out, and sure enough they rejected him.

He said he now avoids clubs with anti-Jewish reputations.

read more

Germany: Die Linke's antisemitism



Via Political Critique (h/t glykosymoritis):
Not uncommon, and unequivocally worthy of criticism is the party’s anti-Semitism. There has been a certain unwillingness among the party’s leaders to address anti-Semitism within their ranks, even more so since long-time leader Gregor Gysi stepped down as parliamentary leader in 2015. Gysi has always been much more careful about accusations of anti-Semitism than most of his fellow party members. It’s particularly odd that an allegedly democratic socialist party would have members organizing a pro-Hamas demonstration, including chants of “Death to Jews,” glorification of Adolf Hitler and Nazi crimes, as well as swastikas and Al-Qaeda flags.

But that’s just a fraction of the anti-Semitism within Die Linke. There’s Inge Höger, member of the Bundestag, who publicly wore a scarf upon which a map omitting Israel was printed (denying Israel’s right to exist is widely considered as anti-Semitic in Germany), on another occasion the party refused to join a multi-party appeal against a call to boycott Israeli products. Such a call is reminiscent of Nazi campaigns against patronizing Jewish shops in the 1930s.

Occasional transgressions – like a swastika entangled with a Star of David on a local party website ­– can be put down to singular individuals, but in 2008, eleven members of Die Linke in the Bundestag refused to support a resolution against anti-Semitism, a dangerous decision for any German party to make. There are numerous party members who have shown that they have highly problematic stances on various issues – and then there’s Diether Dehm. Why this particular party member is worth special attention becomes clear with an appraisal of some of the dubious things he’s said and done. Dehm was involved in the so-called vigils of peace, a movement out of which the xeno- and Islamophobic Pegida evolved, and where anti-Semitic, right-wing populist sentiments are more than common. One of his friends at those demonstrations was Ken Jebsen, Germany’s leading conspiracy theory devotee, who once said the “Holocaust was invented as a PR stunt”. He is friends with Kathrin Oertel, founder of Pegida. His assistant in Parliament is a former Red Army Faction terrorist, and he has compared the choice between the current and previous German president to choosing between Hitler and Stalin. To be fair, Diether Dehm is only one of 64 of Die Linke‘s Members of Parliament, but the fact that none of his controversial outbursts has provoked even one comment from the parliamentary leadership suggests that these issues may have their roots deep within the party.

read more

Hungary: 'In Hungary, Jewish Is a Derogatory Term'


Via Haaretz:
The Hungarians were and still are anti-Semitic. It’s not pleasant. I’ve lived there for 15 years, but it’s only in the past two years that I’ve started to feel it, and it’s starting to bother me. There’s a word in Hungarian, zsidiozm, that’s said about someone or something Jewish. For the Hungarians it’s a curse word. Like “nigger.” I’m a makeup artist at a club, and once a few girls who worked with me came and asked whether I would do them. A guy at the club said, “Probably their Jew-boss was too tightfisted to pay for their makeup” – using that derogatory word. I cringed. didn’t react at that moment, but afterward I thought that there were so many things I could have said. It’s possible that if I’d told him I myself was Jewish he would have been embarrassed, but there was no longer any point. I’m not sure it was really spoken as an insult ... but they don’t really know who or what a Jew is, it’s just something they hear.
read more

Netherlands: Jewish woman stabbed in kosher restaurant


Via i24News:
A Dutch-Jewish woman was injured in a stabbing attack at a kosher restaurant in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam Monday night.

She suffered lightly to moderate injuries and was taken to a local hospital for treatment.

Ronnie Eisenmann, president of the advisory board of the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI), a Dutch monitor, told VIN News that the attack took place at approximately 8 PM local time, when an unidentified English speaking man walked into the Rimon Grandcafe in the city’s Jewish Quarter.

According to Eisenmann, the man left ten minutes later, crossing the street and going into a grocery store.

Amsterdam’s AT5 News reported that the man purchased a knife at the store before returning to Rimon.

The man then ordered a coffee and entered into a discussion with two women seated nearby, before pulling out a knife and stabbing one of the women in the back.

He then told restaurant staff to call the police and turned himself in without resistance.

Waitresses in the restaurant said that the man appeared to be confused and did not speak Dutch.

While the motive for the attack appears unknown, members of the local Jewish community are concerned for their safety.

read more

Belgium:Anti-racism activist blames Israel for Muslim hatred of Jews, compares Zionism to ISIS ideology


Dyab Abou Jahjah is an extremist antisemite.  He's also a minority-rights activist, a distinguished columnist in one of Belgium's top papers, and a respected partner for Belgium's anti-racism organizations.  The ones tasked with fighting antisemitism.

Belgians find it perplexing when Jews say he's antisemitic, because he only wants to kill all Jews in Israel (a sentiment he's shared quite a few times).   A decade ago he also organized pogroms in Jewish neighborhoods in Belgium, but apparently that doesn't make him an antisemite either.

Yesterday, Abou Jahjah posted a post in English on his Facebook in which he blamed Israel for Muslim and Arab antisemitism.  He then went on to compare Israel to Islamic State (also a recurring sentiment by him).  Except Israel is much worse, because most Jews support Israel, while only a fraction of Muslims support ISIS.
 


When young Arabs and Muslims express hatred towards Jews it is 99% of the time an echo of Israel portraying itself as the Jewish state and them believing it. This is very regrettable but it is not antisemitism. It is a lack of politisation and can only be remedied by explaining Zionism to them as a political racist movement that hijacks the identity of the Jews just like "Daesh" hijacks that of the Muslims.



With the clear difference that support for Israel and Zionism is unfortunately mainstream among jews. While support for Daesh is marginal among muslims. Not only that, Arabs and muslims are waging war against Daesh. But either way, yes young people say stupid uninformed things often out of emotionality.

I wrote about this Belgian hypocrisy in the past, but it's worth repeating. 

It is not surprising that a Hezbollah activist in Belgium hates Jews.  It's not surprising that he led riots in Jewish neighborhoods in which protesters burned Jews in effigy, or that he posted Holocaust cartoons accusing Jews of making it all up, or that he supports Holocaust deniers, or that he supports the genocide of Jews in Israel.

I really don't expect much from people like Abou Jahjah.

What is surprising is that the Belgian establishment supports him, including those people whose job it is to protect Jews from antisemites.   The city of Ghent invited him to speak about racism, as did Amnesty International and the Belgian Human Rights League.   He also has a weekly column in De Standaard.

The Belgian Human Rights League got really upset at me for calling them out on their support of antisemites.  Because the people whose job it is to fight antisemitism in Belgium prefer to team up with a Hezbollah terrorist, rather than to listen to Jews who complain about it.


It really doesn't matter how many times Belgian politicians say that they are serious about fighting antisemitism.  As long as Belgian society and Belgian anti-racism organizations accept Abou Jahjah as one of their own and as an acceptable voice in society - they are sending a clear message to the  Jews in Belgium: You are on your own.

Monday, May 23, 2016

France: Getting results - Health site now gives Israel positive rating

Background: France: Popular online doctor site strikes Israel off the map 

Docteurclic.com has changed the maps and no longer claims that Israel is a primitive and dirty country (you know those dirty Jews...).

The "Warning" section now reads: "Sanitary and hospital infrastructures in Israel are excellent. ("Israel est un pays où les infrastructures sanitaires et hospitalière sont excellentes.")   It had warned that sanitation was very poor: "In addition, the low level of sanitation does not allow the traveller to ensure optimum safety in terms of the management of health problems. Sanitation infrastructures are poor or very degraded." ("De plus, le faible niveau sanitaire ne permet pas d'assurer au voyageur une sécurité optimale sur le plan de la prise en charge des problèmes de santé. Les infrastructures sanitaires sont médiocres, voire très dégradées.")

The site no longer advises travellers to avoid visiting Israel and now rates it green  instead of amber - the rating given to Yemen.  Egypt, Jordan and Syria were all rated green...  This has been changed too.. 

Elder of Ziyon also reports:

EoZ readers wrote to the site to complain, and Alyssa Cohen Kaplan received this reply:
There is no willingness on our part to take a position for or against anyone . Some of our country sheets certainly require revision . We have company. Thank you for pointing out some inconsistencies.
They changed the maps for both Israel and "Palestine" to this one:

It is a start.  I don't know if anyone wrote to them from the stories about the topic in The New Antisemite and Dreuz.Info but since Alyssa received the reply, it looks like we did get results.

UK: Labour anti-Semitism tsar's praise for militant who says the 'crimes' of Israel are worse than the Taliban's

The Daily Mail reports:
  • Shami Chakrabarti appointed to lead inquiry into anti-Semitism in party
  • Once described Moazzam Begg as 'wonderful advocate… for human rights'
  • He went to Afghanistan to build schools for children of Al Qaeda fighters
  • Mr Begg recently caused a storm on Twitter by declaring: 'Israel's crimes far outweigh Taliban's who are in their own country. Zionist Israelis aren't'
Shami Chakrabarti
The head of Labour's inquiry into anti-Semitism in the party heaped praised on a militant linked to Jihadi John who once said that the 'crimes' of Israel outweighed those of the Taliban. 

Shami Chakrabarti – who has been appointed by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – was accused of 'lacking credibility' after it emerged that she had once described Moazzam Begg as a 'wonderful advocate… for human rights and in particular for human liberty'. Mr Begg, who was imprisoned in Guantanamo after travelling to Afghanistan to build schools for children of Al Qaeda fighters, recently caused a storm on Twitter by declaring: 'Israel's crimes far outweigh Taliban's who are in their own country. Zionist Israelis aren't.'

read more