Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada hit another record high in 2007, according to the League of Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada. The 2007 total of 1,042 incidents represented an 11.4% increase over the previous year, and was nearly double the 586 incidents reported in 2003: (more…)
In what is being termed as a “dramatic shift” in US policy, Congress granted, for the first-time ever, refugee status for Jews from Muslim countries.
The bill (click here for the full text) was introduced by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Joseph Crowley (D-NY), and Mike Ferguson (R-NJ) and declares that it would be “inappropriate and unjust for the United States to recognize rights for Palestinian refugees without recognizing equal rights for former Jewish, Christian, and other refugees from Arab countries”. Some 900,000 Jews were displaced from Muslim countries, with 850,000 Jews being expelled from “10 Arab countries” following Israel’s creation in 1948.
One of the main proponents of the legislation, the organization Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), was quick to note that this is not about financial compensation or ulterior motive:
The organization’s executive director, Stanley Urman of West Orange, called the resolution “a historic milestone.”
“It may be the first fundamental change in U.S. Middle East policy,” said Urman in a separate interview with NJJN. “Previously virtually all U.S. focus on Middle Eastern refugees was exclusively on Palestinians. It may be the first fundamental change in U.S.-Middle East policy. This expresses the sense of Congress that Palestinians were not the only Middle East refugees.”
“This is not about compensation,” said Urman. Rather, the resolution will help ensure that “2,500 years of Jewish life in what is today the Arab world is not erased from history. The Jews are an indigenous people in the Middle East. In a peace process that seeks to resolve a half-century of conflict, these victims and their rights must also be resolved.”
Rep. Ros-Lehtinen told the Jewish Week that the legislation is “an attempt to redress a critical imbalance”:
“Discussions of Middle Eastern refugees inevitably focus exclusively…on the plight of those of Palestinian descent,” said Ros-Lehtinen. But Jewish refugees “lost their resources, their homes and their heritage sites, fleeing in the face of persecution, pogroms, revolutions and brutal dictatorships.”
(Ignoring Ms. Ros-Lehtinen’s omission of “Christian refugees”…) I applaud this legislation, and as Ehud Olmert has already said, this is US policy, not Israeli policy (unlike critics who imply that this is some flipside of the Palestinian claim to right of return). I hope that the US government stays true to its word and provides refuge and asylum for all victims of the wars in the Middle East.
And may there be an end to those wars, b’m'heira b’yameinu.
The Washington Post today reposted the transcript of a webchat with Ayman Al-Zawahiri, one of the world’s most media-exposed terrorists, known for his being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda affiliates in Iraq and elsewhere.
In his chat session, al-Zawahiri is challenged by one person, who says he “challenges [al-Qaeda] to do that in Tel Aviv”, referring to the bombings in Algiers, which claimed the lives of up to 60 people. The organization blamed for the attack was the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which according to the BBC is “now known as al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb.”
Exasperated at the implication that “al-Qaeda has to do everything”, Mr. al-Zawahiri’s replied to his challenger by saying:
“Hasn’t the questioner heard that [al-Qaeda] struck the Jews in Jerba, Tunisia, and struck the Israeli tourists in Mombasa, Kenya, in their hotel, then fired two missiles at the El Al airliner carrying a number of them?”
The rest of the session is also notable, but this particular quote shows — to this man, killing Israeli tourists in their hotels in Kenya is a noble act. How are Israeli tourists “enemies of Islam”?
Unless he, of course, means to imply that all Jews are enemies of Islam — a case which, given the Qur’an’s speaking of “appointed festivals” for varying peoples of the world, seems to be textually flawed at best — in which case, he has effectively said the same thing as Hezbollah’s Nasrallah: every kippa-covered head is a target around the world.
Al-Zawahiri ends his chat by saying that even if Osama bin Laden is not ill as media has reported, he one day “must die”, but “All-h’s religion will remain until All-h inherits the earth.”
My main question is: why, to these people, is mass murder what All-h wants?
So yeah this is disgusting.
Zsolt Bayer, a journalist of self-described Jewish descent, has published a piece Hungary’s Free Democrats party describes as “proudly anti-Semitic” in the conservative Hungarian daily newspaper Magyar Hirlap, saying that Hungarian Jewish journalists “are vilifying the Arabs and [main opposition] Fidesz, and us all. Because they hate us more than we hate them… their mere existence justifies anti-Semitism.”
I hate Islamophobia wholeheartedly, as all observant Jews should — as it is written, “can one love the Creator and not love His creations?” The Mishnah in Sanhedrin (4:5) clearly forbids all forms of racial and ethnic hatred for Jews, and the Ramba”m and his son R’ Avraham both speak of Islam as being non-idolatrous and a kosher form of non-Jewish worship. To say that vilification of Arabs is wrong is a good call by all accounts.
But to say Jewish journalists are “urinating into the national swimming pool,” and “sully the reputation of Hungary”? When he says Jewish journalists are vilifying “us all” — he clearly shows: his Jewish ancestry is no bar to his making inflammatory statements which could have far-reaching ramifications for all Jews in the media industry in Hungary.
The leader of Hungary’s Conservative Party called Bayer’s statements “bewildering, revolting and scandalous” and condemned the article, saying:
“Magyar Hirlap has stepped beyond a line which no one should cross.”
Mr. Bayer also reportedly “openly declares himself an anti-Semite” according to Hungary’s MTI.
Magyar Hirlap has now, G-d willing, justifiedly lost a “senior contributor”. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I feel like a broken record but I had to chronicle this little piece of Jewish-Muslim unity, from the Monthly Review Foundation’s MR Zine.
Jewish TV producer Harry De Winter has blasted Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam film aspirations with a provocative advertisement on the front page of the Dutch de Volkskrant:
TV Producer Harry de Winter, President of the board of the foundation Een Ander Joods Geluid [Another Jewish Voice], today placed a remarkable advertisement on the front page of the newspaper Volkskrant. De Winter puts Geert Wilders’s criticism of Muslims in the same category as anti-Semitism…
What is your message?
[De Winter:] “We Jews know better than anyone else what this sort of discrimination can lead to. Wilders claims that the Muslims must be dealt with and that the Koran is a fascist book. That’s how the persecution of Jews once started, by generalization. Therefore, it is time for a sharper criticism from the Jewish community. If you say the same thing about the Jews or Israel, you are considered an anti-Semite and ostracized. It is good that this feeling of justice is so strong, but, for me, there is no difference between the yarmulke and the headscarf.”
“If Wilders had said the same thing about Jews (and the Old Testament) as he does about Muslims (and the Koran), he would have been ostracized a long time ago and accused of anti-Semitism.”
Anti-religious prejudice — whether Islamophobia or anti-Semitism — is never OK and baruch Hashem Mr. De Winter has come out publicly to say so. He says he hopes to “get support from the whole Jewish community” — he already has mine.
It’s about damn time. Baruch Hashem and AlhamduliLl-h for Abdallah Al-Hadlaq.
Writing for the Kuwaiti Al-Watan newspaper, Mr. Al-Hadlaq wrote a scathing opinion piece (Arabic) condemning the “terrorism” of Hamas and Hezbollah in last week’s massacre at Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav in Jerusalem. Mr. Al-Hadlaq, among other things, calls the attack “a barbaric murder of eight children who were engaged in religious study” and says that the “odious and inhuman terror attack exemplifies the extremist and inhuman path of the terror organizations Hamas and Hizbullah.”
Indeed, as the Jerusalem Post notes:
The writer goes on to assert that “the terror attack must prompt the free world to comprehend the magnitude of terrorism and its threats and to realize that a clear and unequivocal stance must be assumed against it. There can be no negotiations with terrorism that indiscriminately aims itself at students, women and babies without any consideration for the means and the targets.”
Contrasting the terror attack with the IDF’s operations in the Gaza Strip, the writer explains that “there is no link between a murderous terrorist act and the inadvertent killing of civilians in response to the firing of rockets by Hamas.”
The piece presented a stark contrast to the main current in the Arab press, which presented almost sweeping praise for the “heroic operation.”
The Google-translated version (which I’m sure does not do the original Arabic piece justice) shows Mr. Al-Hadlaq referring numerous times to Hamas as a terrorist organization, and speaking of the incident as ” الهجوم الارهابي /al’hajoum al’irhabi” — the terrorist attack carried out by the “evil Alliance” of Hamas and Hezbollah.
(On the other hand, here’s a contrasting opinion on Hamas from a local chapter of an American organization.)
Scathing criticism of Hamas — هجمات الارهابي (hajmaat al’irhabi), the terrorist organization — and calling terrorism for what it is — in defense of murdered innocent Jews engaged in the service of G-d. At least one person is standing up for human life — indiscriminately — in the face of a pro-Hamas media deluge.
A brilliant display of unity. Well done, Mr. Al-Hadlaq, and well done, Al-Watan. Kudos. May the anti-terrorist voices only multiply exponentially throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and the world as a whole.
Meet Michael L. Weinstein, Esq.
Former military attorney in the Air Force, legal counsel in the White House under the Reagan Administration and General Counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, “Mikey” Weinstein has become a centerpiece figure in the fight for religious freedom in America’s military. As IsraelENews.com informs us, “the 1977 honors graduate of the Air Force Academy is suing the United States Air Force for allowing, even promoting, evangelical Christian proselytizing at his alma mater”:
“People say this is a Christian country founded on Christian principles,” he says. “The real essential aspect of this country, woven into the tapestry of the embroidery of how beautiful this country is, is one concept above all others, which is tolerance of diversity.
“The biggest crime I accuse the religious right of — and it’s a blood libel, a crime against humanity — is torturing that concept, by bludgeoning it and assaulting it, so that what it comes out as “tolerance for diversity’ equals “intolerance for us in the majority.’ My response is: Fuck you. Fuck you. How dare you?“
What is it that drives Mr. Weinstein to his goals, of making every religious stream represented equally in the military? Why is he so headstrong against what he perceives as an evangelical hegemony?
“Every single time radicalized Christianity has engaged the machinery of the state and the armed forces, we have ended up not with puddles and little streams, but with oceans and oceans of blood,” he says. “I’m not just talking about the Holocaust or the Inquisition or the four Crusades, I’m not just talking about the Black Plague; it’s the transition from Plan A to Plan B.
“In Plan A, evangelical Christians with a smile on their face will ask you to please, please, please accept their biblical worldview of Jesus. The problem with that is, inevitably, Plan A morphs into Plan B. They stop asking so nicely, and then you have the Holocaust…”
Provocative, but definitely worth reading. Weinstein’s Military Religious Freedom Foundation was founded in 2006 to combat anti-non-Christian discrimination in the religious arena in the armed forces, and Weinstein was recently nominated for JFK’s Profile in Courage Award.
His interview with IsraelENews.com is here, is an introduction to Mr. Weinstein, as well as the efforts of his organization. The MRFF combats cases of discrimination — ranging from a soldiers’ being expelled from mess halls for refusal to pray to Jesus for being an atheist to encouraging Christiantiy via having blatantly pro-Evangelical speakers speak to soldiers to boost morale.
Weinstein has been called the “field general of the godless armies of Satan”, and laughs at his title — he wished it could get him free food:
WEINSTEIN: …On Sundays, they’ve been throwing my photo up on the jumbotrons in their sanctuaries mostly in the southeast, mostly in “red states.” Underneath my picture they put down “field general of the godless armies of Satan.” There are enough nuts out there that actually believe this.
I’ve tried to make this worthwhile. I go to McDonalds, and I order a couple of hamburgers, a Diet Coke, and some fries. They charge me $5.61, and I tell them I’m the “field general of the godless armies of Satan,” but they still make me pay. It doesn’t even seem to work.
As IsraelENews.com also notes, “the Christian right has been successful in spreading its fundamentalist agenda at US military installations around the world for decades.” It is only when a voice of dissent arises from an “outsider” group that the mandate for diversity in all spheres of American government (and military) becomes as germane and relevant as it is in our cities and streets.
One love to Reb Mike Weinstein. May he be successful in all his efforts, and my there never be another case of a soldier being subjected to:
A 2004 survey indicated that half the cadets at the academy reported hearing religious slurs on campus.
One documented “joke” went like this:
“Why do Jews make the best magicians?“Because they can go into a building and vanish in a puff of smoke.”
Jewish cadets complained about being called “Christ-killers” and being told that the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus.
Ken y’hi ratzon.
Welcome to the new world of highbrow fascist fashion, the pret-a-porter for the Third Reich.
Tønsberg, a fashion boutique on the tony strip of Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße in Berlin, recently became home to Thor Steinar, a brand of clothing identified with neo-Nazis and far-right fascists in Germany.
Describing its store’s inventory as “urban street wear”, Tønsberg has now become embroiled in a huge controversy which has already seen its landlord searching for ways to evict his unwanted tenant, says Gridskipper.com:
Tönsberg, which defines its inventory as “urban street wear,” moved into Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse 18, an emblematic number for Adolf Hitler’s initials (1=A, 8=H). The store also carries clothing by the brand Thor Steinar, a well-known label worn by followers of the rechtsextremismus (extreme right)….
Nearby stores have publicized their opposition to Tönsberg’s uninvited presence by hanging information about Tor Steinar in English or painting “Kauft nichts bei Nazis” (buy nothing from Nazis) on their windows, in an effort to educate the tourists that frequent this part of town and keep unsuspecting consumers away from the store’s cash registers.On the day of Tönsberg’s opening, according to The Economist, 60 people gathered to protest this apparent invasion of neo-Nazism in Berlin’s Mitte, in what was actually a timid display compared to the reaction in Leipzig, where riots broke out back in October when the same store opened a branch there…
In Berlin, Tönsberg has already seen one of its windows broken, but the widespread publicity surrounding the store has been doing a different type of damage. It is technically illegal in Germany to accuse someone of being a Nazi without actual evidence, and Tor Steinar occupies a veritable gray area…
The scene in Leipzig. (Courtesy: German TV)The landlord of Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse 18, who refused to have his name printed in the Berliner Zeitung for fear of right-extremist reaction, has decided to evict Tönsberg.
If only it was that simple.
The three-year lease signed by the store, which promoted itself to the landlord as an “urban street wear” chain with 160 employees nationwide, has no clauses that allow for premature termination — the same issue faced by the landlord of the Leipzig branch.
Although the landlord claims he will pursue legal intervention in order to force Tönsberg out of his house, it’s unclear if such attempts will be successful.
Thor Steinar’s thoroughly unimpressive catalog is viewable here.
This, I feel, is something the area business owners need to rally together and seriously address. Perhaps local business owners would serve themselves well by linking up and sharing resources with local anti-Nazi activists. Because the bottom line is, they’re losing money — who wants to shop while on vacation next to Nazis? — and a fascist presence in an area brings down everything in its vicinity.
No business district should provide a forum and meeting place for these racists. Perhaps German law needs to change to incorporate Thor Steinar’s new logo into the category of forbidden designs — together with swastikas and SS insignia. Until there is an outcry, the clothes will still be on the shelves, and the skinheads boneheads will keep coming out to shop there, disturbing everyone in their wake.
The Anti-Racist Blog, a wonderful blog dedicated to exposing hatred, ran this extremely disturbing report of brazen racist and anti-Semitic graffiti being scrawled at Massachusetts’ Anna Maria college, as Black History Month was just opening:
An investigation is under way to find out who penned anti-Semitic and racist graffiti inside a coed residence, Madonna Hall, at Anna Maria College, according to AMC President Jack P. Calareso.
The graffiti was discovered by AMC security staff during routine rounds Thursday night, according to Paula L. Green, spokeswoman for the college. Calling the graffiti a “heinous act,” Mr. Calareso pledged to pursue the investigation and cooperate with local police until the person or people responsible are held accountable…She said the graffiti, which she believed was done with a marker, was photographed for the investigation and then immediately removed.
Several students, however, said the graffiti included the words white power and swastikas, and a racial epithet was scrawled on the dorm-room doors of two black male students. The students, who did not want to be identified by name, said that despite the increased security, they do not feel safe.
“Today is the first day of Black History Month, so it’s kind of ironic that in every single hallway at Anna Maria is (scrawled) the word n*gger,” one of the students said. She complained that a student was allowed to walk around campus during the early part of last semester wearing a jacket emblazoned with a swastika.
The story was also covered in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
I think the security here, if this students’ words are true, is too little too late. A student walked around in public with a swastika on his jacket? I am almost positive that this kid had friends (either on- or off-line). This means the area — if not the school itself — has a neo-Nazi presence and that, in my opinion, is enough cause to enlist some sort of extra protection for minority students. It is truly lamentable that it often takes something like this to cause change.
It is my hope that the new security “cleans house” of these racists, enabling their minority students to feel safe once again.
From The Jerusalem Post, unity-oriented statements from Barack Obama decrying anti-Semitism and hatred which did not get nearly enough attention in the media:
US Sen. Barack Obama spoke out against black anti-Semitism and other bigotry at an African-American church. Obama (D-Ill.), a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, spoke Sunday at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to mark Martin Luther King Day.
[…]
“The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.”
This was said before Monday’s official “I have never practiced Islam” statement.
I only hope that Obama’s outreach to Jews is as effective as it is unequivocal — unfortunately the “Obama gap” with Jewish voters is still alive and well, and I hope he’s not fighting as much of an uphill battle with Jewish populations as his detractors would like to make it seem.
I never do this.
I never, ever quote Little Green Footballs. LGF and I rarely agree on any issues — LGF being a neo-con platform and me being, well, me. But my boy Nick posted something from LGF on MySpace Jews that I felt compelled to write about.
This is lamentable for a number of reasons. First of all — it is not as if there are absolutely no suras and no ahadeeth which allude to interfaith coexistence, on the contrary. But bigger than this, this shows what happens when people are raised inside of an abject lack of dialogue with any member of a certain group.
How many of these people had ever had a conversation with a Jew? How many of them ever met a Jew — for more than 5 seconds, and not in an airport check-in line?
Chat the Planet, a project from NextNextEntertainment, is an example of interactive dialogue-building that is sorely needed in Saudi Arabia. Chat the Planet produces things like Hometown Baghdad, a “look into the everyday lives of students in war-torn Iraq.” For the Jerusalem Project, they set up laptops and webcams — and kids on two sides of the world sat and talked and gave their opinions, perhaps the first times in the participants’ lives ever having heard such points of view.
Saudi Arabia needs this. Someone — because there may not be an internal awakening to do so — has to have the courage to say, “let’s see if this is correct, if the ‘Jews’ of today are the people referred to negatively in the Qur’an, or if they are really respectable ‘People of the Book’ who worship All-h”. These Saudi young adults need someone to initiate dialogue and build a bridge leading to them.
Because, if you listened to that last guy, he’s not really planning for peaceful idea exchange at this poiint.
Bridges — and not walls — must be built if humanity is going to survive and prosper.
So a hat tip to LGF. G-d willing, in a few years, Saudi TV will have Jews and Imams shaking hands in peace.
Could someone tell me why, of all places, the headquarters of the New York Nazi Party is in Brooklyn?
Brooklyn, of all places? One of the most diverse places in the nation? One of the largest, most vibrant Jewish communities where the borough president and mayor are both Jewish? While statistically, more people means more chances of finding a Nazi, wouldn’t we expect this ilk to be relegated to some backwoods cesspool or “white bread…mountain town” (a la South Park)?
Take a good look at these NY Nazi Party delegates. While, yes, we see bomber jackets and shaved heads and all those things we have been trained to look for — would one be able to easily peg that white-haired older man for a fascist? What about the well-dressed businessman-type in the button-down shirt and blazer?
The Brooklyn office of the Nazi party can be reached via phone at 1-718-252-2247, an “unlisted land line” with Verizon.
So apparently Brooklyn does have a Nazi presence.
Who are these people? And how do we stop children from next to — or inside — our own communities from joining up with filthy ideologies like this?
