UK Jews are between a Rock and a Hard Place with Labour.If Labour wins it will be like 1935-38 Germany with Kristallnacht or worse and if Labour losses then it will be like Germany in the early 1930s with all the Antisemitic attacks on Jews.British Jews have a choice:Stay in the UK withORMake Aliyah (Immigrate) to Israel |
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Watch the Labour election advertisement that says every British minority is “worthy of equality” except the Jews |
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01December2019-https://antisemitism.uk/watch-the-labour-election-advertisement-that-says-every-british-minority-is-worthy-of-equality-except-the-jews/ |
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The Labour Party has released an advertisement for the general election that presents a montage of images accompanied by a speech by the Shadow Minister Dawn Butler as the narration.
In the narration, almost every conceivable minority is mentioned, including religious minorities by reference to those who “wear a hijab, turban, cross”. All of the groups mentioned are, the viewer is told, “worthy of equality”, “dignity” and “respect”. Ms Butler’s narration also says that each has “a future” and that “a Labour government will value you”. But the narration conspicuously does not mention Jews, nor are there any images of Jews. The slogan of the advertisement is “Our diversity is our strength”. Ms Butler is the Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary. A spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “It either did not occur to the Labour Party to include the Jews in this diversity advert, even though the Party is being investigated for institutional antisemitism, or the Jews have deliberately been excluded. Both explanations are appalling, and neither does anything to change the impression that the Labour Party is ‘for the many not the Jew’. In fact, it increasingly appears that the Party has grown comfortable with its anti-Jewish animus.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right, and that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is the party leader of choice for those who hold multiple antisemitic views.
On 8th December, regardless of religion, race or politics, Jews and non-Jews alike will gather in Parliament Square to declare that they stand together against antisemitism in the face of Jew-hatred in politics and mounting anti-Jewish hate crime.
On 28th May, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.
In recent months, thirteen MPs and three peers have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members.
Over 58,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”
Dawn Butler | This Is Our StrengthPremiered Nov 29, 2019 |
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How bad is antisemitism in Britain?Comparatively, Britain is one of the best countries in the world in which to be Jewish, but we must fight to keep it that way. Britain is at a tipping point: unless antisemitism is met with zero tolerance, it will continue to grow and British Jews will increasingly question their place in their own country.
Information and ResearchCampaign Against Antisemitism produces information, research and reports about antisemitism in Britain. Comparatively, Britain is one of the best countries in the world in which to be Jewish, but we must fight to keep it that way. The research below shows that Britain is at a tipping point: unless antisemitism is met with zero tolerance, it will continue to grow and British Jews will increasingly question their place in their own country. Effects on British Jews1 in 3 British Jews has considered leaving Britain in the past two years due to antisemitism with concern mounting over failures to tackle antisemitic crime and antisemitism in politicsEveryday AntisemitismEveryday Antisemitism is a project of Campaign Against Antisemitism which invites Jews to share their everyday experiences of antisemitism instead of suffering in silence and allowing some to question whether antisemitism is a real problem.Leftists ostracise Jews at antisemitism vigil
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CAA and KCL study finds far-left Jew-hatred has now overtaken far-right in Britain and two-thirds of Corbyn’s vanguard of strongest supporters hold antisemitic views |
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01 December2019-https://antisemitism.uk/caa-and-kcl-study-finds-far-left-jew-hatred-has-now-overtaken-far-right-in-britain-and-two-thirds-of-corbyns-vanguard-of-strongest-supporters-hold-antisemitic-views/ |
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Today, Campaign Against Antisemitism is releasing the results of our Antisemitism Barometer research, a multiyear study by Campaign Against Antisemitism which was designed and analysed by one of the foremost academics in his field from King’s College London. The study makes shocking findings about antisemitism in the Labour Party and British society, and how Jews are reacting.
The research has revealed that:
In the report, Campaign Against Antisemitism calls on the Government to urgently implement a series of recommendations on law enforcement, and for all political parties to adopt our manifesto for fighting antisemitism.
Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “Far from being the champion of anti-racism that it holds itself out to be, the far-left is now home to even more anti-Jewish bigotry than the far-right. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the Labour Party, whose Jeremy Corbyn is now the politician of choice for antisemites. If the battles of old against the far-right tell us anything, it is that if we fail to unite against this toxic hatred, it will spread to threaten other minorities too.
“People will find it utterly chilling that in 2019, large swathes of the Jewish community are considering the drastic step of leaving the country they love because they fear racism in our politics. I believe in the people of our deeply decent country and I hope that this study will encourage them to stop and think how they can show their Jewish countrymen that regardless of politics, race or religion we stand together against antisemitism, that the Jewish community is not alone.”
The full report is available at antisemitism.uk/barometer.
YouGov was commissioned to survey the British population’s attitudes towards Jews in 2018 and 2019. The YouGov survey was designed and analysed by Dr Daniel Allington of King’s College London. The polling was conducted prior to a General Election being called. Campaign Against Antisemitism also separately worked with partners to survey British Jews’ responses to antisemitism in 2018 and 2019. Dr Allington also designed and analysed the survey of the Jewish community, which was also conducted prior to a General Election being called. YouGov sample sizes for the survey of the British population were 1,606 in 2018 and 2,040 in 2019 (including boost samples from the ‘very left-wing’ and ‘very right-wing’ of 197 and 204 respectively). Campaign Against Antisemitism sample sizes for the surveys of British Jews were 2,103 in 2018 and 2,695 in 2019.
On 28th May, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.
In recent months, thirteen MPs and three peers have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members.
Over 58,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”
On 8th December, regardless of religion, race or politics, Jews and non-Jews alike will gather in Parliament Square to declare that they stand together against antisemitism in the face of Jew-hatred in politics and mounting anti-Jewish hate crime. |
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Influential Corbyn-supporting Facebook page run by HamasThe “We Support Jeremy Corbyn” Facebook page, which has 72,000 members, was run from the Gaza strip from 2017 until recently.By DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS 9DECEMBER2019 https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism/Influential-Corbyn-supporting-Facebook-page-run-by-Hamas-from-Gaza-610306
An Open Letter to Critics of Israel
Hamas officials in both Gaza and London are working in support of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, ahead of the UK general election on Thursday.
According to Tazpit Press Service (TPS), the “We Support Jeremy Corbyn” Facebook page, one of the largest and most influential Corbyn support networks globally with some 72,000 members, is managed from the Gaza strip.
For over two years the page was managed by Walid Abu Rouk, a resident of Khan Yunis in the Gaza strip, after Labour Party members added him as a page manager in June 2017, declaring him “our man in Gaza.” Abu Rouk confirmed to TPS that he served as the page’s manager until recently.
However, Rouk also has clear ties to the heart of Hamas’ propaganda efforts. A source in the strip who wished to remain anonymous told TPS “Abu Rouk serves Hamas’ information campaign and is guided by it.”
The official said that Rouk is a key link in Hamas’ English language propaganda service thanks to his excellent command of the English language, and is operating under guidance from Hamas officials.
In recent years, Hamas has taken to placing its people in strategic media locations, including as managers of Facebook pages. Gaza does not have a free press system; rather, news outlets in the strip are required to hand management of their social media accounts over to Hamas to control.
Speaking with TPS, Rouk said that he writes for Al Jazeera, the Qatari owned news network affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, for PALESTINE 24, and for Middle East Eye. He is also the founder of the GP+ media site based in Gaza, which is run by Muhammad Ibrahim Madun, a journalist often quoted internationally as a Hamas affiliate.
But his links extend beyond the Middle East and into London: he also writes for London-based Memo Monitor, thought to be one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s media outlets. Memo Monitor often publishes pro-Corbyn and Labour Party content.
Another senior reporter at Memo Monitor, Motasem Dalloul, also resident in Gaza, edits the Hamas-affiliated website Days of Palestine. According to a source in Gaza, Dalloul also edits the English content on Hamas’ official al-Risala website, and is a key figure in Hamas’ English language propaganda efforts.
Rouk also advocates for a boycott of Israeli media, and said he only agrees to co-operate with Israeli outlets if it channeled through the Memo office in London. Under his direction, members of Corbyn’s support page were prohibited from posting any links to British tabloid papers the Daily Mail and the Sun, both of which have favoured the Conservatives in recent times.
He has further promoted the so-called Freedom Flotillas to the Gaza strip which aimed at breaking Israeli security measures in the Mediterranean Sea. The flotillas were run by Viva Palestina, an organisation set up by disgraced former politician George Galloway, who was expelled from the Labour Party under previous leadership for antisemitism.
Hamas – Suzan Ziyada Facebook Account Viva Palestina, which is registered in the UK, operates under instructions from Zaher Birawi, who has been identified by Israeli security as one of Hamas’ top officials in the UK. A source in the Gaza Strip told TPS that Birawi runs all Hamas-UK relations, and that he is known to hold the “Corbyn-Hamas file”. |
Labour Party Councillor was on Homeland Security watchlistBy David 5 December 2019 http://david-collier.com/labour-party-councillor-homeland-security-watchlist/
Labour Councillor Margaret Corvid’s antisemitism was exposed on this website just a few days ago. It doesn’t get much more blatant that supporting the antisemitic play ‘Perdition’ or suggesting ‘Zionists control the Holocaust narrative’. Corvid acts as a Councillor in Plymouth and since the news broke, Corvid has been suspended from her role. Since the suspension she has publicly given some details that only cloud the matter further. Corvid announces her arrivalCorvid’s Labour party membership came as a result of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership election victory. My research has exposed many antisemitic extremists, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers and other disenfranchised elements of society who jumped into the Labour Party for Jeremy Corbyn. Corvid is another one of those. Corvid openly describes herself as ‘hard-left’ and says she has been a ‘Trotskyist’ since she was sixteen years old, In an early Stateside interview with Galloway she spoke up the value of the ‘red-green alliance’, seeking advice from Galloway about how to create a prosperous alliance in the United States, similar to the one Galloway had created in his far-left Respect Party.
In that interview Corvid openly praised ‘symbolic gestures’ and the ‘cultural currency’ of radical Islamist Iranians handing over the Israeli embassy to the PLO – and their renaming the street of the British Embassy after an IRA terrorist. When she arrived in Scotland, she naturally gravitated towards the Socialist Workers Party. A hatred that is more recent than Councillor Corvid wants people to believeCorvid claims in her apology that she does not hold these views anymore. I am not sure how true this is. Corvid has an issue with her memory. In fact she says she did not remember the Perdition episode at all. That would be astonishing. It was an event in her life that embroiled her in masses of unwanted publicity. She was forced to resign from the local solidarity campaign. It is fair to believe that it may have been behind one of the times she changed her name. It may be the reason she left Scotland. Yet she does not remember it?
The amnesia spreads far. When being interviewed by the Daily Mail in March 2017, she tells the reporter she moved to Plymouth from the US ‘eleven years before’. This would make that move in 2006. Which would be odd since she lived in Scotland in 2007 when the Perdition row occurred. She was an activist for the SNP as late as 2009. Maybe she just completely forgot she went to Scotland at all.
Which makes me doubt her current ‘opinion’ story too. Whilst canvassing for election to be councillor in early 2018, she apparently became engaged in an argument with a British Zionist Jew. Eventually the person she was standing alongside, another potential councillor seeking election, needed to hold her back and calm her down because she was ‘ranting about anti-Zionism’. A councillor On the Homeland Security watchlistSo it is no surprise to learn that authorities in the United States knew of her before she came. In fact Corvid herself, in an on air interview, admits to having been on the ‘Homeland Security‘ watchlist, who in her words, considered her to be a ‘terrorist’. See this clip for evidence of that exchange:
Labour Party councillor was on Homeland Security watchlistThe Plymouth Councillor was on the US watchlist from a department set up ‘to secure the nation from threats’. In Corbyn’s Labour she became a representative of the people. These are the type of people Corbyn has attracted to his Labour Party. This is not a one-off. Yesterday, Investigative Journalist Iggy Ostanin published footage of Jeremy Corbyn advisor Andrew Murray expressing sympathy and solidarity with forces fighting against NATO. Later the same day, footage emerged of Corbyn himself, calling NATO ‘a danger to world peace and a danger to world security’. This is a dangerous anti-western mindset that poses a danger to all of us.
Threats and Labour PartyIt gets even more troubling. When I was doing research for my initial piece, I found that some people had publicly contacted Corvid making the accusation she was a terrorist sympathiser and antisemite. Corvid responded with threats. She told the accuser that the ‘Labour Party is aware’ and if they didn’t stop making the accusations, she or they (the message is not clear) will take legal action. Publicly she called people who approached her over antisemitism – ‘trolls’. Whatever else is in this message – the threatening tone is clear and Corvid is explicitly saying that by this point – the Labour Party knew about her antisemitic actions and her extremism and were ‘backing her’: So, who knew she was an extremist and had promoted the play Perdition? Local Labour leader Tudor Evans was tagged into tweets on the subject of Margaret the extremist Councillor in March 2019, but it goes back even further. In Corvid’s recent statement she is explicit. She says this: ‘I reported them to Deputy Council Leader Pete Smith and Chief Whip Eddie Rennie in November 2018 in a face to face meeting.’ she goes on to say she has ‘kept them informed’. Which means we need to ask Pete Smith and Eddie Rennie why action wasn’t take against Margaret Corvid until my research in this blog exposed the story?
This is the problem with Labour and antisemitism. Every single time. Why does it need us to drag them screaming before they take action? Councillor Corvid posed with Corbyn. I have lost count of the number of people in antisemitism scandals that I have seen in selfies with Jeremy Corbyn. I was told Corvid played an important part of Luke Pollard’s re-election campaign. This has to be after the party already knew about the problems with her.
Plymouth local mediaAnd then there is the local media. I am an investigative journalist. Corvid was elected to represent the people of Plymouth. How is nobody performing the most basic of checks on their own representatives? It isn’t like nobody knew who Margaret Corvid was. In fact, she is something of a celebrity in Plymouth. I have found four seperate female journalists who promote Corvid as something of a role model. The first was Katie French. Katie worked in Plymouth but was also working for the Mail. So Corvid gets plugged in the Daily Mail. Corvid’s election was in 2018, so no doubt this celebrity status did her no harm.
Worse still, in March 2018, the local newspapers put together a list of ’70 of the most inspiring women in Devon.’ This was just two months before the May election. For whatever reason, Rachael Dodd and Anita Merritt listed Corvid as one of the inspiring women for International Women’s Day. That certainly didn’t do her case for election any harm. A year later, in the local ‘Plymouth Live ‘Katie Timms listed Corvid as one of ‘the most incredible Plymouth women’.
Katie French, Rachael Dodd, Anita Merritt and Katie Timms. It took me 10 minutes to realise there was a problem with Corvid’s backstory. Not one of these people even bothered to check the history of Margaret Corvid – of their local councillor – even as they strengthened her chances of election or promoted her as a role model. At one point Margaret Corvid was apparently considered a ‘terrorist’ by US Homeland Security.
I live a long way from Plymouth and Corvid didn”t escape my attention. So my question to these ‘journalists’ (and I use the term loosely) is how did she escape theirs? |
UK Chief Rabbi: Concerns about anti-Semitism remainThe election may be over, but anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry remain, warns Chief Rabbi of UK.Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, 13December2019 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/273117 At the polls yesterday, we conferred upon our Members of Parliament the heavy responsibility of answering the profound social and economic challenges that our country faces. The election may be over, but concerns about the resurgence of antisemitism very much remain. Islamophobia, racism and other forms of prejudice continue to afflict our communities and, as has been well publicised, even our political parties. It is vital that we now bring the country together, ensuring that the voices of people from across our society are heard and respected. We must focus on our shared values and leave all hatred and prejudice far behind us. Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis is the Chief Rabbi of UK
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Diehard supporters of Jeremy Corbyn turn their attention to the world’s oldest scapegoatBritain has resoundingly rejected the politics of hate, albeit that millions still backed an institutionally antisemitic political party. However, the Jewish community must now brace itself for a potential backlash. Campaign Against Antisemitism has urged the Jewish community to be vigilant in case, as has happened so often in Jewish history and as the last few years and months foretell, the Jews may become a scapegoat as the more ardent of Mr Corbyn’s followers, many of whom hold antisemitic views, now search for where to cast the blame. As the Chief Rabbi, whose courageous intervention two weeks ago articulated the concerns of the Jewish community, has also noted: “The election may be over, but concerns about the resurgence of antisemitism very much remain.” While votes were still being counted, notorious Jew-baiter Ken Livingstone already reportedly noted that “The Jewish vote wasn’t very helpful”. Labour frontbencher Dan Carden also claimed that Jeremy Corbyn is “one of the most attacked and smeared leaders of a party we’ve ever had in this country.” Asa Winstanley, who called the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) an “Israeli Embassy proxy” and was reportedly suspended from Labour in March, pending an investigation, observed: “The manufactured ‘antisemitism crisis’ spreads from Labour to a state-backed McCarthyist witch hunt. It was a fatal mistake to indulge these lies, and indulge liars like [former MP] John Mann [the Government’s independent antisemitism advisor].” Meanwhile, a perusal of Twitter reveals how some frustration with the result is finding expression in worrying tropes, for example a journalist at the Irish Times describing the election as a “great result for Zionism: monsters are roaring their delight”. In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism has shown that Jeremy Corbyn is personally responsible for 24 incidents of antisemitic discourse, which is equal to fifteen percent of all recorded incidents involving parliamentary candidates and party leaders. Overall, Labour Party candidates for Parliament account for 82 percent of all incidents. Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right, and that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is the party leader of choice for those who hold multiple antisemitic views. On 28th May, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.
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Political auto-immune disease among diaspora Jews19December 2019 Melanie https://www.melaniephillips.com/political-auto-immune-disease-diaspora-jews/ Why are so many diaspora Jews doing the dirty work of their mortal enemies for them? In the United States, most Jews still support the Democratic Party despite the refusal by some politicians — namely, the four freshmen congresswomen who call themselves “the Squad,” and have made anti-Jewish and anti-Israel remarks — to distance themselves from the Jew-baiting Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. American Jewish leaders are also deeply reluctant to speak out against black or Muslim Jew-hatred, of which there have been some shocking recent examples. Immediately after the New Jersey atrocity where three civilians and a police officer were murdered in a kosher supermarket, local black people were videoed blaming the Jews for the shooting and calling on them to get out of the neighborhood. A school-board member then bizarrely accused local Jews of selling body parts and attacking the black community. This was followed by a physical attack on a Jewish woman in the New York subway by a black woman ranting “Allahu akbar!” and “It’s good they killed Jews in New Jersey; they should have killed all of you.” In Britain, there’s an even worse problem. Not only are there horrific anti-Jewish attitudes on the left that have all but consumed the Labour Party, but in a political equivalent of auto-immune disease some leaders of the Jewish community are attacking its defenders and siding with some of its foes. This week, I found myself at the sharp end of that phenomenon when I was attacked over a column I wrote for Britain’s Jewish Chronicle, with Jewish leaders helping fuel the frenzy against me. I had argued in my column that, while real prejudice against Muslims should be condemned, the charge of Islamophobia was a concept developed by Islamists to silence any criticism of the Islamic world. I further argued that it was terribly wrong to equate antisemitism with Islamophobia, the accusation of which provided cover for Muslim antisemitism. Twitter and social media then erupted into a firestorm, accusing me of “peddling Islamophobia”, supporting “conspiracism” and being an “Israeli regime propagandist.” This conflagration was ignited by Daniel Sugarman, a former Jewish Chronicle journalist who currently works for the community’s main representative body, the Board of Deputies. Writing in a personal capacity, he tweeted in response to my column that while working at the paper, his “favorite four words ever to appear in print were ‘Melanie Phillips is away.’ Her presence as a monthly columnist diminishes a wonderful paper. She is a disgrace.” All this could have been brushed aside as just customary Twitter abuse. Far more important and disturbing, however, was the reaction of the Board of Deputies itself. For rather than disavowing Sugarman, it actually tweeted its own attack on me thus: “The publication of this piece was an error. Anti-Muslim prejudice is very real and it is on the rise. Our community must stand as allies to all facing racism.” So in response to my argument that the accusation of Islamophobia was being used to silence those telling the truth about Islamic extremism and Muslim antisemitism, the board said I should have been silenced. It has thus become the patsy of those wishing to harm the Jewish people and the West. Other Jew Dave Rich, policy head at the Community Security Trust that does essential work in guarding the security of British Jews, tweeted that my column “mirrors the worst writing from antisemitism-deniers in recent years … replicating some of the nonsense written about antisemitism and directing it at Islamophobia.” His argument was shallow to the point of absurdity. The difference between “antisemitism-deniers” and those rejecting the term “Islamophobia” is that Jew-hatred is real, indisputable bigotry—and while there is certainly real anti-Muslim prejudice, Islamophobia is a concept that is often used for sinister ends. This was well understood by the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, who has called Islamophobia a “semantic racket.” Two years ago, he wrote in Tablet that it was developed as a weapon to silence both Westerners and liberal Muslim reformers. More than that, claiming equivalence with antisemitism was an attempt to enable Muslims to replace the Jews as the apparent prime targets of global bigotry. “Once the equivalence between Judeophobia and Islamophobia is established,” wrote Bruckner, “the next step is to put in place the principle of elimination—a subtle but effective process of symbolic expropriation. It is our turn, say the Islamic fundamentalists.” They could then present themselves as the people to whom the entire Christian and Jewish world was indebted to repair the wrongs done to the world of Islam. Rich’s claim is also in direct contradiction to remarks made at an Oxford conference last summer by Haras Rafiq, chief executive of the Muslim anti-extremist Quilliam Foundation. A practicing Muslim himself, Rafiq warned against using the term “Islamophobia” which he said was invented by the Muslim Brotherhood and was the wrong way to describe anti-Muslim prejudice. Which is pretty well what I wrote. By equating me ludicrously with people denying Jew-hatred, Rich merely revealed he understands neither “Islamophobia” nor why antisemitism is unique. Nor is all this toxic froth confined to the community’s lay leadership. On his Facebook page, a London Chabad rabbi, Herschel Gluck, responded to my column with defamatory remarks including calling me “a hate preacher.” This was bizarre. I am a journalist and, arguably, one of Britain’s most prominent defenders of Israel and the Jewish people. “Hate preacher” is a term used by the British police, among others, to describe Islamist fanatics who inspire others to blow people up. Gluck is said by those who know him to have devoted his life to good works. So it’s not surprising that he’s committed to interfaith initiatives, in which Jews and Muslims try to build bridges around shared experiences. Indeed, it would appear that Gluck’s commitment to interfaith initiatives is so profound that he has now actually transposed the characteristics of Islamic jihadi fanaticism onto a Jew. Belief in interfaith within the British rabbinate is so unshakeable that Orthodox rabbis are in the forefront of equating antisemitism with Islamophobia. They have thus become the useful idiots in the Islamist extremists’ strategy of religious war. The distinction between antisemitism and Islamophobia is as crucial as it is poorly understood. People think Islamophobia is just a word for prejudice against Muslims. It’s not. It’s a term used specifically to silence people who criticize the Muslim world. After all, the term “phobia” isn’t applied to prejudice against Sikhs or Hindus or anyone else. “Islamophobia” deliberately appropriates the key aspect of antisemitism — that it is truly deranged — and falsely turns all criticism of the Islamic world into a psychological disorder, thus making that world unchallengeable. The difference between antisemitism and Islamophobia is between truth and lies. The Muslim world is deeply jealous of the unique status of Jew-hatred as the ultimate bigotry. Some in the wider community are similarly jealous because they think it confers ultimate impunity for misdeeds. And that is a fundamentally antisemitic belief. But the Jews who equate it with Islamophobia can’t bear the uniqueness of Jew-hatred either. That’s because in the diaspora, many Jews don’t want to be unique. They want to be just like everyone else. They are frightened that uniqueness will make them the targets of hatred. So they deny the uniqueness of antisemitism, and thus its true evil. And that’s why, although Jeremy Corbyn has now been defeated, the leadership of Britain’s Jewish community is itself marching it towards the edge of the cultural cliff. |
Three Lessons From The UK ElectionsTyler Durden 16December2019 – https://www.zerohedge.com/political/three-lessons-uk-elections The results of the UK elections have shown something that I have commented on several occasions: The widely spread narrative that British citizens had regretted having voted for Brexit was simply incorrect. We already had the evidence in the European elections, where the Brexit Party won with 31.6% of the votes, but the general elections have been even clearer. The Conservative Party won by an absolute majority (more than 360 seats and 43.6% of the votes).
The failure of Labour’s radicalism led by Jeremy Corbyn has been spectacular, and his interventionist messages, reminiscent of the terrible Harold Wilson period, added to his vague stance on Brexit and how to finance his promises of “everything free at any cost” have led the party to its worst results since 1935 and losing key seats in constituencies that always voted Labour since 1945. Up to 18 Labour historical footholds passed to a conservative majority including Blyth, Darlington, Workington, Great Grimsby or Bassetlaw. In Wales, the Conservative party snatched six seats from the socialists. The transfer of Labour votes to conservatives exceeded 4.7%, according to the Press Association. The interventionist and extremist proposals of Jeremy Corbyn have caused them to lose votes even in pro-Remain districts (-6.4% according to the BBC). Months of attempts to whitewash the image of Jeremy Corbyn by parts of the media have not been able to eliminate his history of extremism and interventionism, his refusal to apologize for cases of anti-Semitism and his incompetence in explaining the economic program. Corbyn led a traditionally moderate and social-democratic formation to the most retrograde and interventionist proposals of its recent history. Johnson won by absolute majority with a much more moderate, positive and pro-growth message, but, above all, unquestionable in terms of delivering Brexit. Johnson has not only reached a much wider spectrum of voters but Corbyn has annihilated his options with Labour’s own more moderate voters by radicalizing his message in a country where any citizen over 45 remembers the economic disasters of socialism. The UK elections should be an opportunity for everyone to learn several lessons.
The opportunity of these elections is enormous. The European Union can strengthen its project and implement the agreement signed with the Johnson government in a beneficial way for all member states. It is a pity that the United Kingdom does not want to continue in the European Union, but we have to look to the future. For the UK, it is clearly an opportunity to strengthen the economy focusing on job creation and attraction of capital. The United Kingdom will implement growth policies and competitive taxation. This is not just good for UK citizens. It is a much-needed reminder for the European Union to abandon its most interventionist temptations and focus on being competitive, attractive and productive. The European Union faces significant economic, demographic and technological challenges. The UK can develop its competitiveness and investment appeal and, by doing so, the European Union can benefit. The United Kingdom is not a threat. It’s an example. A partner for all member states and a reminder of which policies work and how socialism and interventionism are never the answer. Johnson is not a danger. He is the prime minister of an allied country and partner that will continue to be so. The danger to the European Union is not Johnson, it is interventionist temptation. Let’s fight it. |
Yes, Democrats, It Can Happen HereEx-British MP Ian Austin talks about the encounters with Holocaust survivors that shamed him into leaving the Labour PartBy James Kirchick
“I was ashamed,” Austin confessed to me recently during a visit to the United States. Since his far-left colleague Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader in 2015, Austin had been one of his most outspoken critics in the party’s parliamentary caucus, lambasting Corbyn for his extremism, sympathy for anti-Western dictatorships and terrorist groups, and decadeslong association with anti-Semites. But it was not until he was confronted by a survivor of the anti-Jewish genocide at the very cynosure of its industrialized, mass extermination that Austin understood his protests—no matter how effective coming from one of Corbyn’s own MPs—were insufficient.
The sense of shame was compounded by a similar encounter, occurring within weeks of the Auschwitz visit, in London’s Parliament Square. At an unprecedented protest against Labour anti-Semitism organized by the U.K. Jewish community, Austin saw another Holocaust survivor whom he had met years earlier at a commemoration event in his constituency. “The first political demonstration in her life and it was against the Labour Party,” Austin said, the humiliation still evident in his voice nearly two years after the fact. “And it was just obvious. How could you ever stand in an election with Jeremy Corbyn as the candidate for prime minister?”
It was not until the following February that Austin finally resolved that dilemma by quitting the party he had joined at the age of 16, and to which he had tied his political fortunes for almost four decades. “I joined as a teenager 35 years ago to fight racism,” Austin said, recalling the days when members of the fascist National Front terrorized immigrants in the economically depressed Midlands and northern England. “I can’t believe I had to leave it to fight racism.” Austin’s departure came amid a succession of fellow MPs abandoning Labour, all of them citing the anti-Semitism of Corbyn and his supporters as a major reason. Austin went one, albeit significant, step further, crossing party lines to endorse Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party in last year’s general election as the only way to stop Corbyn from entering 10 Downing St.
What effect these high-profile defections had on Labour’s disastrous loss in that election—it’s worst result since 1935—is impossible to quantify. But the belief that Corbyn was unfit to be prime minister (and that his anti-Semitism formed a crucial part of that unfitness) predominated. According to a post-election poll, for a plurality of traditional Labour voters who did not support the party in the last election, Corbyn’s leadership was the determining factor.. And if it was misgivings about Corbyn’s character which prevented Labour from assuming power, then Austin can claim a good share of the credit for giving substance to those doubts.
“In large parts of Britain there are no Jewish people, most people in Britain do not know any Jewish people, do not know the theory, the detail and the history of anti-Semitism,” Austin explained. But “when you talk to them about anti-Jewish racism, they get it, they know when something has gone wrong. … Ordinary, decent people stood up for the Jewish community. It was certainly a factor in what was a shattering defeat for Labour.”
While it’s inspiring to hear that the mainstream (which happens to be the moniker of a new campaigning organization against extremism Austin founded) of British society was repulsed by Labour’s anti-Semitic putrefaction, there is little sign that the party itself fully comprehends the moral depths from which it needs to emerge in order to become a respectable party capable of governing again. Three out of four members say the anti-Semitism controversy was “invented or wildly exaggerated by the right-wing media” and Corbyn’s opponents to discredit him. None of the candidates running to succeed Corbyn has explicitly condemned the outgoing leader for allowing such a toxic culture to fester within the Labour Party, a culture that shows no signs of leaving. And it’s difficult to see how any of them credibly could. As Austin pointed out, “if you spent four years in Jeremy Corbyn’s top team and you’ve been saying you agree with Jeremy Corbyn 100% and just a few months ago you were asking people to make him prime minister, I think that disqualifies you.”
For Austin, the anti-Semitism that has infected his erstwhile political home is personal: His adoptive father was a Holocaust survivor from the industrial city of Ostrava in Czechoslovakia. Though he was not raised Jewish, Austin has long been close to the U.K. Jewish community and was always an outspoken opponent of anti-Semitism. So when an anti-Semitic movement took his political party hostage, Austin knew he would have to speak out.
In their campaigns to succeed Corbyn, the Labour leadership candidates are expressing contrition to British Jews and promising that the nightmare they endured over the past four years will not be repeated. But with Corbyn’s acolytes occupying prominent positions throughout the party ranks, it’s difficult to see how anything short of a full-scale purge reversing what Corbyn wrought can redeem what was once Britain’s leading force for social and economic justice. “I think the Labour Party has got a huge amount of soul-searching to do,” Austin said. “It’s not like you had a policy that the public didn’t agree with. This was what had been a mainstream political party—a hugely important institution to our democracy—poisoned with racism against Jewish people. And there’s got to be the most profound apology. You can’t just sort of gloss over that and pretend it was someone else. This was a complete and utter disgrace.”
As is the case with any prominent Corbyn critic, Austin has been subject to vicious attacks by the leader’s cultlike followers. “I’m routinely told that I’m being paid by Mossad, that I’m part of some conspiracy,” he said. While he was still an MP, Corbyn supporters would protest outside his weekly constituency advice sessions and scream at him in meetings. “The hard truth is that they’re angrier at the people complaining about racism than the racists themselves,” Austin says of the hard-left faction that continues to dominate the party’s organizational structures. When I asked Austin if he thought Corbyn himself is an anti-Semite, a designation the mainstream media and even Corbyn’s many critics are extremely reluctant to apply, he bluntly answered, “What do we normally call people who say and do things that are racist?”
If what transpired in Britain sounds eerily familiar to liberals and Democrats on this side of the pond, Austin has a warning. “Five years ago, six years ago, nobody would have thought that what happened to the Labour Party was possible,” he said. “The idea that an institution as robust as the Labour Party and as important to Britain’s democracy could be so vulnerable to takeover by extremists and racists was unthinkable. But that should serve as a stark warning to people in the States that if that can happen to the Labour Party in the U.K., it can happen here.”
The far left, he said, “can’t be engaged with or tolerated in the way one normally deals with people with whom one disagrees.” The hallmarks of the hard left—the “secretive, closed, doctrinaire” methods, the “obsession with purity” and “rooting out internal enemies,” the “factionalism”—make compromise futile. (“It’s very important for us to create a black list of every operative who works on the bloomberg campaign,” an American progressive organizer with a large following declared in a since-deleted tweet, aping the Corbynista-style pronunciament
Over two years later, however, Corbyn is on his way back to the parliamentary backbenches, not least because Austin did what practically no one in politics today had the guts to do: He acted in accordance with his professed values. In the summer of 2016, soon after Corbyn became leader, 75% of his fellow Labour MPs tried to remove him via a vote of no confidence. What they were in effect telling the country was that their own leader was unfit to lead Her Majesty’s Opposition, much less the nation. Yet at the moment of truth, when the electorate was presented with the chance to make Corbyn prime minister, hardly any of these MPs took the next logical step and withheld their endorsement.
Back in 2016, when Donald Trump was slandering Muslims and Mexicans, threatening to dissolve NATO, promising to “lock up” his political opponent, inciting his followers to violence, and generally rubbing salt in the country’s deepest collective wounds, many elected Republicans declined to endorse his presidential aspirations. But when the once-far-fetched prospect of political power suddenly became attainable, they too fell into line, which is where they have dutifully remained through each and every indignity, crime, and moral outrage of his presidency. “The appeal for unity is a powerful one,” Austin replied when I asked him why so few of his colleagues followed his courageous example. “The tribal loyalty. The desire for a quiet life. The hope that you can keep your head down and survive.”
Ian Austin did the right thing. Perhaps that’s why his political career is over. *** |
Unholy alliance: Bernie Sanders campaigners are aiding anti-Semitic UK Labor Party head Jeremy CorbynBy Thomas Lifson 29 November 2019 https://tmp.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/unholy_alliance_bernie_sanders_campaigners_are_aiding_antisemitic_uk_labour_party_head_jeremy_corbyn.html
The U.K. Guardian, a left-wing newspaper, reports:
Foreign interference in domestic elections doesn’t seem to be an issue when left-wingers are involved. Where’s the outrage? Caricature by Donkey Hotey Emily Zanotti of The Daily Wire points out that the two political factions of Corbyn and Sanders have a lot in common:
Pamela Geller rhetorically asks:
British Jews are terrified of Corbyn; 40% of them say they will consider leaving Britain if he is elected.
Is Corbyn’s Bid for UK Prime Minister a Serious Concern for Jews? |
Speaking about bad friends:
Can a Jew be an anti-semite? Bernie Sanders proves YES
Bernie Sanders is the American Jeremy Corbyn
Bernie Sanders Praise of Fidel Castro and other tyrants
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If you don’t think Jeremy Corbyn can do what Hitler did, Just read below:Top doctor’s chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year
By Steve Doughty PUBLISHED: 23:08 GMT, 19 June 2012 | UPDATED: 12:07 GMT, 26 October 2012 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000-elderly-patients-year.html NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday. Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly. He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country. It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent. There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP. Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’. He cited ‘pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients’ as factors. Professor Pullicino revealed he had personally intervened to take a patient off the LCP who went on to be successfully treated. In the example he revealed a 71-year-old who was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia and epilepsy was put on the LCP by a covering doctor on a weekend shift. More…
Professor Pullicino said he had returned to work after a weekend to find the patient unresponsive and his family upset because they had not agreed to place him on the LCP. ‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant resistance,’ he said. ‘His seizures came under control and four weeks later he was discharged home to his family,’ he said. Professor Pullicino, a consultant neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, was speaking to the Royal Society of Medicine in London. Distressing: The professor has claimed an approved technique of looking after the terminally ill is not being used in all hospitals He said: ‘The lack of evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway makes it an assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway. ‘Very likely many elderly patients who could live substantially longer are being killed by the LCP. ‘Patients are frequently put on the pathway without a proper analysis of their condition. ‘Predicting death in a time frame of three to four days, or even at any other specific time, is not possible scientifically. This determination in the LCP leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The personal views of the physician or other medical team members of perceived quality of life or low likelihood of a good outcome are probably central in putting a patient on the LCP.’ He added: ‘If we accept the Liverpool Care Pathway we accept that euthanasia is part of the standard way of dying as it is now associated with 29 per cent of NHS deaths.’ The LCP was developed in the North West during the 1990s and recommended to hospitals by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in 2004. Medical criticisms of the Liverpool Care Pathway were voiced nearly three years ago. Experts including Peter Millard, emeritus professor of geriatrics at the University of London, and Dr Peter Hargreaves, palliative care consultant at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, Surrey, warned of ‘backdoor euthanasia’ and the risk that economic factors were being brought into the treatment of vulnerable patients. In the example of the 71-year-old, Professor Pullicino revealed he had given the patient another 14 months of life by demanding the man be removed from the LCP. Professor Pullicino said the patient was an Italian who spoke poor English, but was living with a ‘supportive wife and daughter’. He had a history of cerebral haemorrhage and subsequent seizures. Professor Pullicino said: ‘I found him deeply unresponsive on a Monday morning and was told he had been put on the LCP. He was on morphine via a syringe driver.’ He added: ‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant resistance.’ The patient’s extra 14 months of life came at considerable cost to the NHS and the taxpayer, Professor Pullicino indicated. He said he needed extensive support with wheelchair, ramps and nursing. After 14 months the patient was admitted to a different hospital with pneumonia and put on the LCP. The man died five hours later. A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘The Liverpool Care Pathway is not euthanasia and we do not recognise these figures. The pathway is recommended by NICE and has overwhelming support from clinicians – at home and abroad – including the Royal College of Physicians. ‘A patient’s condition is monitored at least every four hours and, if a patient improves, they are taken off the Liverpool Care Pathway and given whatever treatments best suit their new needs.’ |
‘Things have only gotten worse’: French Jews are fleeing their countryFacing record levels of anti-Semitism, members of Europe’s largest Jewish population seek a new life in Israel—and face new challenges.By Yardena Schwartz Photographs by William Daniels PUBLISHED November 20, 2019 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2019/11/french-jews-fleeing-country/ Growing up in Paris, Esther Coscas felt safe. Her home was in the heart of “Little Jerusalem,” a neighborhood in the suburb of Sarcelles dotted with kosher restaurants and shops bearing Hebrew names. Jews and Arabs lived side by side. While there was occasional friction, Coscas, who is Jewish, never feared for her life.
That changed in the summer of 2014, when pro-Palestinian demonstrations disintegrated into attacks on the Jewish community. Chanting “Death to the Jews,” protestors smashed windows and burned Jewish businesses, barricading congregants inside a synagogue and attempting to burn it down. Coscas, now 30, had just become a mother. She began to fear for her family’s future in France. Her siblings had already moved to Israel, but she wanted to stay near her parents. Then, a year ago, the cloud of anti-Semitism came so close to home that she could no longer avoid it. Her best friend, who lived on the same street, was attacked on her way home by a group of young men who called her a dirty Jew and punched her in the face, breaking her nose. That night, Coscas knew that she would be moving.
Facing record levels of anti-Semitism, many French Jews are joining an exodus to Israel. A third of all the French Jews who’ve emigrated to Israel since its establishment in 1948 have done so in the last 10 years, according to data from the Jewish Agency, which facilitates Jewish immigration to Israel. The 1950 Law of Return enables any Jew from around the world to become an Israeli citizen entitled to numerous government benefits, including financial aid, tax breaks, free Hebrew courses, and a free flight to Israel. In 2015 alone, nearly 8,000 French Jews made what is known as Aliyah—ascent to the Holy Land—the largest number from any Western nation in a single year. On a scorching July afternoon in Paris, a Jewish Agency Aliyah flight is set to take off for Tel Aviv, and Coscas is on it. “We want to open a new page,” she says. Her two-month-old baby sleeps in his bassinet, while her four- and six-year-old daughters frolic through the aisles. Her family packed their entire life into 130 cardboard boxes and 24 suitcases “because we want to live our Judaism freely and openly, far away from anti-Semitism.” Now her parents, and her husband’s, have no children left in France. “Spreading like poison”France is home to Europe’s largest Jewish population, the third largest in the world after Israel and the United States. Yet this historic community—dating back to the Roman conquest of Jerusalem and expulsion of the Jewish population 2,000 years ago—is in the midst of an existential crisis.
France’s interior minister has warned that anti-Jewish sentiment is “spreading like poison.” President Emmanuel Macron declared that anti-Semitism was at its highest levels since World War II. Amidst a string of attacks, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe admitted that anti-Semitism is “deeply rooted in French society.”
Eighty-nine percent of Jewish students in France report experiencing anti-Semitic abuse, according to a poll published in March. In 2017, Jews were the target of nearly 40 percent of the violent incidents classified as racially or religiously motivated, despite making up less than 1 percent of the French population. In 2018, anti-Semitic acts rose by nearly 75 percent.
The current wave of immigration began in earnest after the 2012 Toulouse massacre, in which a French-born Islamic extremist opened fire at a Jewish day school, killing a young rabbi who was shielding his three- and six-year-old sons, then shooting to death both boys and an 8-year-old girl. Three years later, a gunman pledging allegiance to ISIS killed four customers at a kosher supermarket in Paris. “In the days after that, we received thousands of calls from people saying they wanted to leave,” says Ouriel Gottlieb, the Jewish Agency’s director in Paris. “Of the four people murdered at Hyper Casher, three of the families moved to Israel.” A memorial poster of Jonathan and his sons is displayed in Sandler’s home in the Paris suburb of Le Chesnay.Nearly every year since has seen another deadly anti-Semitic attack, from the beating and defenestration of 65-year-old Sarah Halimi in 2017 to the gruesome killing of Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll in 2018. Less frightening, but just as damaging to this fragile community, are the constant smaller-scale incidents, such as the desecration of Jewish cemeteries and memorials, or attacks on boys wearing yarmulkes. Such attacks have led many here to hide outward appearances of their faith. Others choose to leave.
Those who’ve stayed say it’s only a matter of time before the next grisly headline. “Things will only get worse,” says Samuel Sandler, the father of the rabbi who was killed in Toulouse. Sitting in a Paris cafe, Sandler recalls how his parents fled Nazi Germany seeking a better future for their children in France. His grandmother, cousin, aunts, and uncles were killed in Auschwitz. “I used to think, ‘The war is finished,’” he says, “‘We are in France now. We are safe.’”
A new form of hatred?From the expulsion of Jews in 1306 to the Dreyfus Affair of 1894 to the Vichy government’s cooperation with the Nazi extermination of 75,000 French Jews, France has a long history of anti-Semitism. Today hate comes from both the far right and far left. Some Yellow Vest protesters have accosted prominent French Jews and called President Macron “a whore of the Jews.” A new era of anti-Semitism in FranceBeginning in 2000 with the Second Intifada, a period of heightened Israeli-Palestinian violence, France witnessed an increase in reported anti-Semitic incidents, ranging from graffiti and desecration of cemetaries to threats and violent attacks. While following years saw spikes related to specific events, the level of incidents in general has remained high. Immigration to IsraelRising anti-Semitism has driven some French Jews to relocate to Israel. Yet the Jewish community has also flourished here. France granted equal rights to Jews in 1791, inspiring other nations to follow. France has had three Jewish prime ministers. One of them, Leon Blum, helped establish the Jewish Agency with other Jewish luminaries, including Albert Einstein.
These days, however, many French Jews see a new form of hatred. This new anti-Semitism, they say, is deeply intertwined with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Listing every deadly anti-Semitic attack since 2003, Robert Ejnes, executive director of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), concludes, “Twelve people have been murdered for the sole reason that they were Jewish. All of them by radical Islamists.”
The two major Muslim organizations in France declined to comment for this story. But in an open letter published in Le Monde last year, 30 imams condemned the growing extremism and anti-Semitic attacks, while also defending their faith. “We are also Muslims, like the rest of our co-religionists, peaceful Muslims, who suffer from the confiscation of their religion by criminals,” they wrote. “This radicalism or radicalization must be fought intelligently by all concerned, from politicians to imams through families, schools, and security.”
“It was totally different.”Sarcelles, a suburb of hulking housing complexes, was built to house the North African immigrants—Jewish, Muslim and Christian—who arrived in droves from former French territories in the 1950s and 60s. The new immigrants spoke the same language, came from the same countries, and shared the same culture. Although many of the Jews were fleeing violence in Muslim countries, for a while everyone got along.
But it didn’t last. “Relations between these two minorities changed notably as Jews were integrated as citizens into the French state while Muslims were integrated as outsiders,” says Maud S. Mandel, a historian and author of Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict. While there was already a Jewish community in France with organizations that could help them acclimate, the Muslim arrivals didn’t have that kind of welcome. “That set them up for very different relationships with each other,” says Mandel, who is president of Williams College in Massachusetts. “Various triggers [such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] started to happen that placed them on opposing sides.” “What hurts most is that we grew up together,” says Moise Kahloun, who immigrated from Tunisia in 1969 and is president of Sarcelles’ Jewish community. Standing inside the synagogue where he was among those barricaded by protesters in 2014, he says, “When we came it was totally different. For 40 years, community life in Sarcelles was the symbol of ideal Jewish life in France.”
After the attack on the kosher supermarket in 2015, France deployed 4,700 troops to guard 717 Jewish institutions across the country. While such measures surely prevented more massacres, they have also perpetuated feelings of insecurity. Esther Coscas avoided synagogue in Sarcelles because she couldn’t bear the site of armed soldiers outside.
Though French officials have acknowledged the crisis of anti-Semitism, many French Jews feel their words are empty. In July, a French judge ruled that the man who murdered Sarah Halimi in 2017 was unfit to stand trial because he was high at the time. That echoed another ruling from 2010, when the man who killed a Jewish DJ was found unfit for trial due to mental instability.
“The government isn’t doing anything to fight anti-Semitism,” says Yohanane Elfersi, 64, who is leaving France because the ongoing exodus has emptied his neighborhood synagogue. “When things happen they say, ‘Oh no, this is so sad, we are with the Jews.’ But then the guy goes to trial, and they say ‘Oh no, he was crazy, it’s not his fault.’”
Some say the government’s neglect is driving them to leave even when they’d prefer to stay. Stella Bensignor fled one suburb of Paris for another after she was targeted twice. In one case, someone broke into her home and knocked over all her Jewish items. Two months later someone scratched “JEW” in giant letters on the side of her car. The police told her to move to another neighborhood. An anti-racism organization suggested her family move to Israel. “We don’t want to flee France, but this was two years ago and things have only gotten worse,” says Bensignor. “I know we will end up in Israel.” French bakeries and Hebrew lessons“Welcome home to the land of Israel,” announces the captain as the flight lands in Tel Aviv. Passengers clap. Some kiss the ground as they descend to the tarmac, where a giant tent filled with hundreds of people awaits to celebrate their arrival.
France is the third largest source of immigration to Israel, after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The massive influx of French immigrants in Israel has given rise to neighborhoods filled with French bakeries, cafes, and real estate agents catering to French clientele. Yet Aliyah from France is slowly declining. In 2018, 23 percent fewer French Jews moved to Israel than in 2017, which was 25 percent lower than 2016, according to Jewish Agency data. This decline is not for lack of desire. The hardships faced by immigrants in Israel has led many to stay in France. According to a recent survey by Qualita, an organization serving French immigrants in Israel, 10 percent move back to France within three years. Many struggle to adjust to what is an extremely different society. The Jewish Agency is aware of this, and is lobbying the government to improve its services and make integration easier, says Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog. “The French live in a very developed country, and they expect that they will have the same quality of life here,” he says. That expectation often falls too far from reality.
Many of the immigrants on the flight in July planned meticulously to avoid the mistakes of those who returned to France. Yael and Thierry Zeitoun, who immigrated with two teenage sons, spent three years preparing. They saved money, researched work opportunities, and now plan to spend one year focusing on learning Hebrew and living frugally. “We know it won’t be easy,” says Thierry.
Uriel Hertzberg encountered difficulties even before he arrived. He and his wife thought they had closed on an apartment in Tel Aviv months ago, but the deal fell through at the last minute due to bureaucratic issues. Two hours after landing, he passed out from heat exhaustion and had to be wheeled out of the tent on a stretcher. Now he’s wrestling with the cost of living in Tel Aviv, which was recently rated the world’s 10th most expensive city.
“Everything is more expensive here, and everyone makes less here. I don’t understand,” says Hertzberg, as he walks to his son’s apartment for Sabbath dinner, past crumbling buildings draped in graffiti and dripping air conditioning units.
Despite it all, he is elated to be reunited with his sons, who moved in the past few years. “For me, Israel is hope. Hope that everything for a Jew is possible,” says Hertzberg, eyes gleaming. His parents escaped the Nazi invasion of Poland, and his wife’s parents fled Algeria and Morocco. “Our parents and grandparents had no choice,” he continues. “Today we come by choice, at least at the moment. I hope it will always be like this.”
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Victims of Paris Kosher Supermarket Attack Remembered, Five Years Laterby by Barney Breen-Portnoy 09January2020 https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/01/09/victims-of-paris-kosher-supermarket-attack-remembered-five-years-later/ Thursday marked the fifth anniversary of a deadly terror attack at a kosher supermarket in Paris. On the afternoon of Jan. 9, 2015, shortly before the start of Shabbat, Amedy Coulibaly — who had pledged allegiance to ISIS — burst in to the Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes in the French capital’s 20th arrondissement and took more than a dozen hostages. A multi-hour standoff with police ensued, at the end of which the heavily-armed Coulibaly was killed in an exchange of fire. Four hostages were found murdered inside the store. The victims — all Jews — were Philippe Braham, 45, Yohan Cohen, 22, Yoav Hattab, 21, and François-Michel Saada, 64. The attack occurred two days after 12 people were massacred by a pair of Islamist gunmen at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. A memorial ceremony — organized by the French Jewish communal organization CRIF — was held on Thursday evening in front of the Hyper Cacher. The Paris office of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) tweeted an homage to those who lost their lives at the supermarket, saying, “Remember their names and faces, rather than the terrorist who cowardly murdered them simply because they were Jews.”
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France’s Chief Rabbi Fears Sarah Halimi Murder Trial Decision Amounts to ‘License to Kill Jews’by Ben Cohen December 26, 2019 12:04 pm https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/12/26/frances-chief-rabbi-fears-sarah-halimi-murder-trial-decision-amounts-to-license-to-kill-jews/ France’s chief rabbi has slammed the “tragic” and “grotesque” decision of Paris prosecutors to excuse from trial the alleged antisemitic murderer of Sarah Halimi — the 65-year-old Jewish woman viciously beaten and thrown out of the window of her own apartment in April 2017. In an open letter to French Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet, Rabbi Haim Korsia argued that the decision not to try Halimi’s accused killer, Kobili Traore, on the grounds of criminal irresponsibility caused by his heavy cannabis intake marked “a grave breach of trust” for the country’s judicial system. Korsia’s letter — published on Wednesday in the daily newspaper Le Figaro — urged the French judiciary to “heal the wounds” caused by the decision by “establishing the guilt of a suspect and by imposing a sentence commensurate with the seriousness of the acts committed.” Traore — who lived in the same public housing project in eastern Paris as Halimi — broke into her apartment during the early morning hours of April 4, 2017. Terrified neighbors who alerted police after hearing Halimi’s cries for help reported that Traore had shouted the words, “Allahu akhbar,” and, “Shaitan” (Arabic for “Satan”), as he rained kicks and punches on his victim, before picking up her bruised body and throwing her out of the window. Police investigations later revealed that Halimi had told relatives that she was scared of Traore, who insulted her visiting daughter as a “dirty Jewess” a few weeks before the killing. Prosecutors based their long-awaited decision on Dec. 19 on two psychiatric assessments of Traore that claimed his intake of cannabis had resulted in acute delirium, and that therefore he could not be held responsible for murdering Halimi — a crime he admitted to and apologized for during a preliminary hearing in November. In his letter, Korsia encouraged Belloubet to explain “how deliberately taking considerable quantities of drugs exonerates an individual from responsibility?” Korsia went on to point out that if it was correct that smoking cannabis “exacerbated his antisemitic impulses, it means these impulses already existed!” The chief rabbi then asked: “Should it be inferred from this decision that every drug-addicted individual is licensed to kill Jews?” In a separate interview this week with the French-language Israeli broadcaster i24 News, William Attal — Halimi’s brother — accused the French judiciary of having “humanized” her killer. “They forgot that he [Traore] had lived as a delinquent for 10 years, that he was convicted 22 times on drugs charges,” Attal said. Attal added that the rights of Halimi’s family had not been respected during the investigation into the murder. “There was a serious miscarriage of justice, the investigation was nowhere near comprehensive enough,” Attal asserted. “The examining magistrate refused all the requests for an investigation into the murder — all of them,” he emphasized. |
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Four European Countries Might Be Added to Anti-Semitism WatchlistJosh Christenson – 09January2020 https://freebeacon.com/issues/four-european-countries-might-be-added-to-anti-semitic-watchlist/ Anti-Semitism watchdogs are calling on the Trump administration to designate France, Sweden, Germany, and the United Kingdom as countries of concern due to the rapid rise of anti-Jewish hate crimes. At a hearing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on Wednesday, notable Jewish and human rights activist, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, advised the commission to add the four major European countries to its Tier II watchlist for anti-Semitism. Each of the four countries identified by Cooper—associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a global human rights organization committed to confronting anti-Semitism—saw alarming increases in anti-Semitic assaults and hate crimes committed in recent years. In all instances, he said, the states failed to decisively respond. David Rutz breaks down the most important news about the enemies of freedom, here and around the world, in this comprehensive morning newsletter. The addition of these countries would mark a milestone in American efforts to combat anti-Semitism abroad, Cooper said. In France, Cooper denounced a judiciary “policy of appeasement” that in multiple cases released violent, anti-Semitic assailants without a trial, with French authorities deeming them mentally unfit to stand trial. In one case, an assailant stabbed two different Jewish persons in the French city of Strasbourg in 2010 and 2016. In both incidents, the attacker was let off for being mentally ill. In Sweden and Denmark on Nov. 9, the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, neo-Nazi stickers littered numerous Jewish sites, homes, and cemeteries. Anti-Semitic hate crimes have increased 53 percent from 2016 to 2018 in Sweden. In Germany on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, a neo-Nazi tried to open fire on a synagogue in the city of Halle. He failed to break through the security door, shooting two nearby citizens and injuring two others. While visiting Berlin last year, Rabbi Cooper heard that an Israeli student had recently been assaulted in the streets for speaking Hebrew. The rabbi has urged German chancellor Angela Merkel to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization, claiming the designation would quell the group’s courting of young Muslims in Germany. In the United Kingdom, anti-Semitism spread to the electorate through Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Hate crimes spiked and the lasting effects will likely be felt for some time, the rabbi said. Before beginning his testimony, Rabbi Cooper also identified two other factors that have led to the international rise in anti-Semitic sentiment: social media and the state-propagated denial of the Holocaust in Iran. “We’re being too kind to the social media giants,” the rabbi said. The horrifying live-streamed massacre of 50 Muslim worshippers in two mosques in New Zealand was claimed by the Halle synagogue attacker as a primary influence. Rabbi Cooper appeared today alongside several panel witnesses, including State Department special envoy Elan Carr, U.N. special rapporteur Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, and former Pakistani ambassador to the United Kingdom Akbar Ahmed. Many witnesses also spoke about the dangers of anti-Semitic propaganda in textbooks provided to children in schools throughout the United States and Europe. They all agreed: Defeating anti-Semitism requires a quick and decisive response by all nations. Four European Countries Might Be Added to Anti-Semitism Watchlist |
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French Jewish students encouraged to head to Israel due to antisemitism“Jewish Experience in Blue and White” project brings 1,000 school-aged French Jews to the country.By ILANIT CHERNICK 19December2019 https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/French-Jewish-students-encouraged-to-head-to-Israel-due-to-antisemitism-611472 A group of French Jewish students visiting Israel with Israel Experience pray on top of Masada. (photo credit: Courtesy) As antisemitism continues to rise in France, emphasis is now being put on encouraging Jewish students to study in Israel after school.
The program exposes participants to Israeli universities, academic opportunities and options for aliyah. Participants also tour the country. Paul Fitoussi, director of the Yavne school in Marseille, stressed: “All Jews should move to Israel. France is not our home anymore. The younger generation must do this. My two daughters immigrated to Israel and learn in Beersheba, and I am encouraging my third daughter to do the same.” Yoni Elimelech, deputy director of the Otzar Torah School in Paris’s 13th District, echoed those sentiments. “While this may sound strange, for us the fact that we encourage our guys to immigrate to Israel is perfectly natural. I think every 18-year-old [Jewish] boy or girl living in France should immigrate to Israel.” Fitoussi and Elimelech, who are both on the tour with the students, described the rise of antisemitism in France. “Because of the increased antisemitic attacks,” Fitoussi said that he decided “not to allow students to eat or have sports classes outside of school building. “Often, stones are thrown at students or they yell slurs like ‘dirty Jews’ towards them,” he said. Elimelech added that only last week, his school received a transfer student from a public school in the 19th district “due to antisemitic attacks” the child had to endure. According to Israel Experience, to date, over 40% of participants in each program have immigrated to Israel. Some of the students, who asked that their full last names not be used for safety reasons, recalled difficult antisemitic experiences they have endured while living in France. Audrey T, of Ort Marseille Jewish School, said that last September she was sitting with a friend on a bench in front of their school when suddenly three thugs grabbed him by the hair. “They hit him, and then they started beating him,” she said. In shock by the whole situation, she and another person that was there just froze. Finally, one of the teachers came and helped them. Their complaint to the police was ignored. Since then, Audrey said that “I am afraid every time I get onto a bus or if I’m sitting in a park. I’m afraid to also be attacked like that. In the past, I didn’t think so much about my Jewish identity but since [last September], I think about it a lot.” Another student on the trip, Lena S, also from Marseille, said that she now “hides the necklace I wear with the Star of David and Jewish symbols. I don’t want to be that religious Jew [who is] attacked in the metro or one of the less safer neighborhoods.” She added she is “always equipped with pepper spray.” Eitan Z of the 12th district of Paris said he only wears a kippah on Shabbat and Jewish holidays, “and even then I walk fast out of fear for being attacked. It does not matter Saturday or weekday. There is always a fear that I will be attacked because I am a Jew.” He added that although he was born and raised in Paris, only in Israel do “I feel at home.” Yoav Z, who is a student at a Jewish school in Strasbourg, said that when the cemetery in the nearby village of Westhoffen was desecrated a few weeks ago, he realized that “there are neighborhoods that I can’t enter with a kippah on my head. When I saw the desecration of the cemetery, I thought I have nowhere else to go but Israel. But, at the same time it’s not that simple to make the move,” he said. Yonah G. of the 19th borough in Paris said she is unsure about her future in France. “I am thinking of staying in France but I will only know after I start studying,” she said. “There is a different atmosphere in Paris and I feel much safer here. But it’s very hard to decide what to do because if I move to Israel, there are problems I worry about, like integration into Israeli society, language and integration issues and the different nature of the Israelis.” During the trip the students went up Masada, visited the Dead Sea, and visited several universities including the University of Haifa and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, among others. Amos Hermon, CEO of the Israel Experience, said it a statement that “in recent years we have seen an increase in the trend of antisemitism in Europe as a whole, and in France in particular. The Israeli Experience works to encourage the youth in France to get to know Israel better, and to our delight many decide to come here,” he said.
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French Jewish principals urge their students to leave France‘France is not our place anymore. My project is to make sure that all my students emigrate to Israel.’Arutz Sheva Staff,22December2019 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/273509 Principals of Jewish schools in France are urging their students to move to Israel due to the increasing amount of anti-Semitic attacks in the country, Ynet reported on Sunday. “I think all Jews should move to Israel,” Paul Fittousi, the director of Yavne School in Marseille said. “France is not our place anymore. The younger generation must do this. Two of my daughters have already moved and are learning in Be’er Sheva, and I’m encouraging my third to do the same.” It’s not just the principals who feel that France isn’t safe for Jews anymore – the students feel it too. Yoav Zanuv, a student at Akiva School in Strasbourg, an area that has been particularly plagued with multiple anti-Semitic attacks lately, said that he doesn’t always feel safe in France. “Because of the Muslims, there are neighborhoods you can’t enter with a kippah [skullcap],” he said. Lena Salem, a 17-year-old from Marseille, says she “hides her star of David necklace and other Jewish markers. I don’t want to be the religious Jewish girl who gets attacked on the Metro or in one of bad neighborhoods. I always carry a can of pepper spray with me.” “When I saw the desecration of the Jewish cemetery, I thought I have no place to call my own other than Israel,” Salem added. Fitoussi said that he doesn’t allow his students to “eat or have gym lessons outside of the school. More than once someone has thrown stones at students or called them ‘dirty Jews’. Nowadays, France’s Jewish community lives in a ghetto. If you’re in the Jewish area of town, you’re all good. But if you walk out a little bit – you might get it.” “Although it might sound strange, to us the fact that we are encouraging people to move to Israel is completely natural,” said Yoni Elimelech, deputy headmaster of Otzar Ha’Torah school in Paris’ 13th arrondissement. “I think any 18-year-old boy or girl living in France should move to Israel.” Moshe Twito, another principal of a Jewish school, said that a few of his students were attacked outside during a gym class. “Several young people walked up to them, one them holding a knife and stabbed a student who has since migrated to Israel. There are many students who transferred to us from other public schools because of anti-Semitism. My project is to make sure that all my students emigrate to Israel.” Fitoussi, Twito and Elimelech are currently on a trip to Israel as part of the “Bac Bleu Blanc” program in which hundreds of Jewish high school seniors from France visit Israel. In the course of their visit, they are exposed to the academic settings available in Israel to encourage them to move. Past trips have resulted in 40% of the students moving to Israel. The students are visiting universities such as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and will meet with French immigrants who work in high-tech in Israel. |
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Pomp and circumstanceAs touching as all the speeches for Jews six feet under, the abstaining, Iran-supporting, Abbas-funding Europeans would look authentic if they ended their anti-Israel bias, instead of wiping off that single crocodile tear to the sound of Hatikvah.Valerie Sobel, 22January2020 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25072 Valerie Sobel
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As the stupendously well-attended ceremonies marking the liberation of Auschwitz in Israel take place on Thursday and four days before the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, one can expect the usual melancholic pout by all the usual characters on prime time channels. Forefront will be the well-dressed Europeans with their chorus of proclamations against general racism and fascism and the always best-selling favorite “Never Again” reprise.
Nothing makes a perfumed, silk-scarfed European official feel better about himself than to rub shoulders with a Holocaust survivor or two at a ceremony for dead Jews, on one day of the year. The Germans might even sport a crocheted hankie under a fallen tear. The fact that all this pomp and circumstance will be broadcast to millions watching on screens around the world is nothing if not icing on their ultimate virtue-signaling cake.
For the last 75 years, the apex of European moral righteousness has been the well-organized, visibly official sadness over Jewish corpses by the very public whose ancestors caused it. It has just about the same weight of sincerity as incoming words of “sorrow” from American AOC and her pal, Ilhan Omar, voted 2019 Antisemite of the year.
Never mind the optics of the annual sideshow that deserves its own category of “Best Acted by an Official or a Group” at the Academy Awards. Just as notable, but a hell of a lot more sincere, resonant, and consequential, is the annual non-televised version of a different drama by the same actors. Only here it’s inconveniently centred around live Jews. Ergo, it happens behind closed doors and away from cameras.
Enter the most consistently antisemitic court of official policy towards breathing Jews, the United Nations. That’s where the same perfumed Europeans from annual voguish ceremonies have the opportunity to support same number of live Jews today (6 Million in Israel) as the ones they murdered in perfect silence and complicity yesterday.
Only here, oddly enough, their tear-shedding stops and Israel bashing begins.
Over the course of more than 4 decades, every year since 1977, European voting bloc has ensured the mandating of a special “Division for Palestinian Rights” inside the UN Secretariat, devoted for fierce promotion of the Palestinian narrative against Israel.
This resolution isn’t some toothless impeachment asterisk against a country of Jews; it’s a set policy that allocates UN’s budget and human resources to promote active anti-Israel agenda.
The resolution mandating a “Division for Palestinian Rights” is just one of a package of 20 annual anti-Israel resolutions that have passed in the UN General Assembly since the 1970s. That’s approximately 900 discriminatory, libellous anti-Israel declarations by the same sorrowful, Holocaust-mindful Europeans and their crying violins.
In the court of public opinion, by way of complicit liberal media (BBC, The Guardian, to name a few), this consistent anti-Israel stance by the European Union harvests not only complacency to antisemitism but its justification. The loud majority of the UN voice incentivizes and empowers the Islamist world that decrees to wipe Israel of the map. It legitimizes Hamas as freedom fighters, perpetuates the “occupied lands” narrative, enables Israel Apartheid weeks on campuses, stamps approval on academia’s incessant anti-Israel vitriol, condones harassment of Jewish students, and singles out the Jewish nation as a pariah state.
To Europe, status quo against Israel is sacred. All with the exception of Hungary, which broke ranks at the UN in 2018. On a good day, a handful of Europeans abstain from the anti-Israel vote, a move they know all too well.
In turn, these UN-born anti-Israel platforms are what propels antisemitic events into the stratosphere of crime statistics we see today. What begins with a closed-door vote at the UN is precisely that which also aids and abets Islamic terror and crime against Jews of Europe. On the same continent that only 75 years ago birthed Hitler out of its womb of generational antisemitism, a new bar of Jew-hatred is being set with the arrival of Islamic hatred, right before our eyes. The repercussions are evidentiary, real and tragic.
The chest of anti-Israel resolutions, all written by the Palestinians and the Arab countries, are customarily brought to the European Union before they are presented to the General Assembly. The EU proceeds to scribble over a few semantics before expeditiously voting to adopt them, each and every time.
Out of the annual 20 hate resolutions against the Jewish State at the UN, three are not merely declarative but are actual organizations that have staff and budgets – the “Division for Palestinian Rights” is one of them.
To Europe, status quo against Israel is sacred. All with the exception of Hungary, which broke ranks at the UN in 2018. On a good day, a handful of Europeans abstain from the anti-Israel vote, a move they know all too well. In the 1940s, all but Denmark and Bulgaria abstained from confronting the Third Reich over the murder of six million of their own citizens, which apparently gives them the moral high ground to cry over the same genocidal crime tomorrow and on the 27th.
As of the last hate-fest vote against Israel at the UN in December of 2019, 11 EU countries voted “Against”. A first, by all accounts. The resolution still passed by a whopping 87-23, with 54 abstentions.
Amongst these 11 “No’s”, of Europe’s economic powers, only Germany and Netherlands mustered enough fortitude for calibration with their Holocaust Remembrance Day despondency. Amongst the 14 abstaining Europeans were France, the UK, and Italy. Undoubtedly in the days ahead, the trio will be erect on the podium of Holocaust town-crier Olympics with tissue boxes for everyone.
While the popular wailing over dead Jews plays out in Europe, France continues to enjoy a 70% increase in antisemitic crime compared to previous years. In Germany, anti-Semitic crime averages four per day, including an average of one violent weekly attack for a total of 1500 documented incidents per year. In the UK, 1,652 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in 2018, including 123 involving violence. These are notoriously underreported figures, the real figures in these and other EU states are much higher.
Not to be outdone by its stats of Jew-hatred, EU is a proud collaborator with Holocaust-denying Iran with billions in export-import contracts by the governments of U.K., Germany and France. Yet these Europeans will have no trouble looking solemn at Yad Vashem on Thursday. Macron will even visit the “martyrs”-paying Abbas in Ramallah, just as soon as he washes the mask of Holocaust doom and gloom off his face.
EU holds a VIP seat in De Hague’s international court, accusing Israel of “war crimes” by funding Palestinian NGO’s: the French, British, German, Belgian, Swiss, Dutch, and Swedish – all put significant funds in the pockets of Israel’s mortal enemies. Mahmoud Abbas, the premier purveyor-employer of PA’s pay-to-slay terror against Israeli citizens is the beneficiary of an annual $250,000,000 gift from the EU.
Heck, Europe can’t even get behind the idea of Jerusalem, the eternal home of Abraham, King David and Judaism itself, as the home of the Jews. But this Thursday will only be too happy to stay at the King David Hotel in “occupied” Jerusalem, while protected by the “occupier”, Israeli security…for dead Jews and all.
As touching as all the speeches and violin strings will echo for Jews six feet under on the 27th of January, the feckless, abstaining, Iran-supporting, Abbas-funding Europeans would look a hell of a lot more authentic if they used that Balenciaga scarf to strangle its own anti-Israel bias, instead of wiping off that single squeezed crocodile tear to the sound of Hatikvah and bright lights.
If Europe wants to repent for past sins against Jews and stand shoulder to shoulder with Holocaust survivors at ceremonies, it can start by ending its 75 year political-financial crusade against Holocaust descendants and their country. And not a moment too soon, not that we expect a volte-face.