Latest update January 22nd, 2020 10:43 PM
Apr 25, 2018 Amnon Peery Judaism 0
Illustrative. Photo: David Berkowitz via Wikimedia Commons.
Attacks on Jews in Germany are directed against “all of us,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Wednesday in a call to join nationwide rallies in support of the Jewish community amid growing concern about antisemitism.
Jewish groups are trying to harness public outrage about an attack last week on an Israeli Arab who wore a Jewish cap, or kippa, in Berlin as an experiment. He ended up being subjected to verbal abuse by three people and was lashed with a belt by a Syrian Palestinian. A video was posted on the internet.
That attack followed reports of bullying of Jewish children in schools and prompted the head of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, to advise Jews not to wear kippas in big cities.
Thousands of people are expected to don kippas at rallies in cities across Germany in the evening to stand with the country’s Jewish community. Tagesspiegel daily even printed a photo of a skullcap for readers to cut out and wear.
Some 20 protesters disrupted a speech by an Israeli ambassador at Syracuse University in New York on Tuesday, raising concerns…
“If young men here are threatened just because they are wearing a kippa, we must make clear: they are not alone,” Maas told Tagesspiegel.
“No one may be discriminated against because of their origin, the color of their skin or their religion,” he said.
Germany is not alone in its struggle against hostility to Jews. France was shocked by the murder last month of a Holocaust survivor in a suspected antisemitic attack, and Britain’s main opposition Labour Party is embroiled in an antisemitism row.
However, the legacy of the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed at least six million Jews, has left Germans with a special sense of responsibility.
Since 1991, the number of Jews belonging to a religious community has more than tripled to more than 100,000, boosted by an influx from the former Soviet Union. About the same number are non-practicing Jews or people with Jewish roots in Germany.
This compares to about 600,000 before the Nazi Holocaust and just 10,000 at the end of World War Two.
Tagesspiegel daily, citing government figures, has reported that four antisemitic crimes were reported on average per day last year, around the same level as in 2016. The majority — 1,377 of 1,452 — were committed by right-wing radicals.
The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) blames the influx of more than 1.6 million migrants, many from the Middle East, since 2014.
“We sounded warnings very early about the huge strength of Muslim antisemitism,” said senior AfD member Georg Pazderski.
Schuster from the Central Council of Jews also called on Muslim groups to stand up to antisemitism. “There can be no tolerance of intolerance,” he said.
Germany’s Central Council of Muslims and Turkish groups have backed the rallies.
“If you want to fight Islamophobia, then you can’t tolerate antisemitism either. And we know where antisemitism ended up in German history,” Gokay Sofuoglu, head of the Turkish Communities in Germany, told the Berliner Zeitung.
In an attempt to assuage concerns, Germany has appointed an antisemitism commissioner, former diplomat Felix Klein, who starts work next month, but critics say Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has done too little.
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Menachem Begin in December 1942 wearing the Polish Army uniform of Gen. Anders’ forces with his wife Aliza and David Yutan; (back row) Moshe Stein and Israel Epstein
(photo credit: JABOTINSKY ARCHIVES)
During the inauguration of a memorial to the victims of the Siege of Leningrad in Jerusalem’s Sacher Park on January 24, 2020, before the climax of Holocaust remembrance events at which Russian President Vladimir Putin was given a central platform, we were stunned to hear a rendition of The Blue Kerchief (Siniy
Giant figures are seen during the 87th carnival parade of Aalst February 15, 2015
The annual carnival in Aalst, Belgium, is expected to take place on Sunday with even more antisemitic elements than in previous years.
Aalst’s organizers have sold hundreds of “rabbi kits” for revelers to dress as hassidic Jews in the carnival’s parade. The kit includes oversized noses, sidelocks (peyot) and black hats. The organizers plan to bring back floats similar to the one displayed in 2019 featuring oversized dolls of Jews, with rats on their shoulders, holding banknotes.
Pope Francis waves as he arrives at the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in the southern Italian coastal city of Bari, Italy February 23, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli.
Pope Francis on Sunday warned against “inequitable solutions” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying they would only be a prelude to new crises, in an apparent reference to US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace proposal.
Francis made his comments in the southern Italian port city of Bari, where he traveled to conclude a meeting of bishops from all countries in the Mediterranean basin.
Palestinians walk past a shop selling fruits in Ramallah, Feb. 20, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Mohamad Torokman.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have reached an agreement to end a five-month long trade dispute, officials said on Thursday.
The dispute, which opened a new front in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, began in September when the PA announced a boycott of Israel calves. The PA exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank under interim peace deals.
Antisemitic caricatures on display at the annual carnival in Aalst, Belgium. Photo: Raphael Ahren via Twitter.
Disturbing images emerged on Sunday of the annual carnival at Aalst, Belgium, showing an astounding number of antisemitic themes, costumes, displays and statements.
Israeli journalist Raphael Ahren documented people dressed as caricatures of Orthodox Jews, a fake “wailing wall” attacking critics of the parade, blatantly antisemitic characters and puppets wearing traditional Jewish clothes and sporting huge noses.
The stench of anti-Semitism always hovers over Switzerland’s Lake Geneva when the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is meeting there. The foul emanations reached a new nadir last week with UNHRC’s publication of a “database” of companies doing business in the disputed territories in Israel.
Following the publication of the list, Bruno Stagno Ugarte, deputy director for advocacy of NGO Human Rights Watch, stated, “The long-awaited release of the U.N. settlement business database should put all companies on notice: To do business with illegal settlements [sic] is to aid in the commission of war crimes.”
One of the many things that annoys me about politicians is how sure they are of themselves. Everything is black and white. Every idea is good or bad. Take globalism, for example. You either love it or hate it. It works or it doesn’t.
Another thing that annoys me is how so much of a politician’s life revolves around power: Do everything you can to get it, and everything you can to keep it.
Why am I ranting? Because, while our politicians have been consumed with power and the media with the fights over power, a threat to our nation has been virtually ignored.
Blue and White Party leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid are establishing their diplomatic credentials in the immediate run-up to Israel’s March 2 election with an insult to a U.S. administration that has arguably provided Israel with more diplomatic gains than any previous administration.
The Times of Israel reported that at a campaign stop in front of English-speaking Israelis, Gantz accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “of neglecting bipartisan ties in favor of exclusive support from U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” under the headline “Gantz pledges to mend ties with U.S. Democrats if elected.”
Bipartisanship was in short supply at the State of the Union address earlier this month—with one notable exception.
Nancy Pelosi had been looking dyspeptic, shuffling the papers she would later rip to shreds, when President Donald Trump reminded his audience that “the United States is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.”
Suddenly, the House Speaker applauded. Trump then introduced “the true and legitimate president of Venezuela: Juan Guaidó.”
The law professor Alan Dershowitz has thrown a legal hand-grenade into America’s political civil war by claiming to have evidence that former President Barack Obama “personally asked” the FBI to investigate someone “on behalf” of Obama’s “close ally,” billionaire financier George Soros.
He made his cryptic remark in an interview defending U.S. President Donald Trump against claims he interfered in the prosecution of his former adviser, Roger Stone.