The Very Latest Daily News from various news sources and agencies. First two Photos: Reuters. Last photo Pres. Obama’s half-brother.
Why Europe blames Israel for the Holocaust: Post-1945 anti-Semitism
Sacha Stawski, an expert on anti-Semitism in the German media, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that “Israel-related anti-Semitism is probably the most common and most persistent form of anti-Semitism in all levels of society today.”
Stawski, who is a German Jew and editor-in-chief of the media watchdog website Honestly Concerned, added: “Today it is no longer fashionable to hate Jews outright, but it is perfectly acceptable to debate about and to demonstrate against the very core of the Jewish state’s existence – in a way and with emotions unlike that about any other country.”
The social-psychological theory articulated by Adorno and Horkheimer might, just might, provide a macro-level grasp of a pan-European epidemic that is fixated on turning Israel into a human punching bag.
Caroline Glick: International Holocaust Remembrance Day’s fatal flaw
Modern Zionism was conceived as having two objectives – to enable the Jews to protect ourselves from anti-Semites; and to end anti-Semitism by normalizing Jews as a nation among the nations. But as Wisse notes, like the Jews in exilic communities, the Jewish state cannot end other people’s hatred of Jews, because we didn’t cause it. Only the anti-Semites, through their own moral reckoning with their anti-Semitic past and present, can do that.
In light of the Europeans’ continued refusal to undertake such a moral reckoning, far from combating anti-Semitism, International Holocaust Remembrance Day serves as a cover for it. Israel and the Jewish people should not let the Holocaust serve as a fig leaf for their continuing, and growing, hatred.
Anne Bayefsky: Holocaust Remembrance Day — has UN learned anything from history?
It is Holocaust remembrance time at the United Nations. Once a year, Jews from around New York, a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, occasional celebrities, and precious few friends, file into the General Assembly Hall and grant the U.N. the privilege of appearing to care.
This year’s speakers include Steven Spielberg. When it is over, the year-round ritual censure of the Jewish state will resume.
Characteristic of “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust” is the scarcity of express emphasis on Israel, save for the remarks of the Israeli ambassador.
Spielberg: We must act on what was learned from the Holocaust
Meanwhile, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor stressed that remembering the Holocaust was not enough to guarantee the future for the Jewish people.
“The State of Israel is the only guarantee that the future and fate of the Jewish people will be held in our own hand,” Prosor said Monday at the UN memorial.
“The Holocaust has taught us that remembrance without resolve is meaningless,” Prosor said. “Awareness must be matched with action.”
“Almost 70 years after the Holocaust, the world is still plagued with anti-Semitism,” Prosor noted. “Men and women are still persecuted for what they look like, how they worship, and who they love.”
Netanyahu: World not doing enough to avert new holocaust
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday berated the international community for showing indifference to the threat posed by Iran, comparing Tehran to the Nazi regime and implying that the world was not fulfilling its obligation to prevent a second Jewish holocaust.
“Even today when there is broad agreement that the Holocaust that took place should have been prevented, the world doesn’t feel any sense of urgency regarding a regime that calls for our annihilation, and even welcomes with open arms the man who represents it,” Netanyahu said, referring to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Hatikvah sung at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, April 23, 1945
To commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2014, we bring you the following clip of a radio transmission from April 23, 1945 (by BBC reporters Patrick Gordon Walker and Richard Dimbleby) at the recently liberated concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. (h/t Akusia)
Atrocities Prevention Board: Just Words
International human rights investigators have discovered evidence that “Syria has systematically tortured and executed about 11,000 detainees since the start of the uprising.” The details are horrifying, with respected experts funded by Qatar having obtained photos which showed bodies with evidence of “starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing.” A news account reports: “One of the three lawyers who authored the report — Sir Desmond de Silva, the former chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone — likened the images to those of Holocaust survivors.”
Seems like a perfect case for the Obama administration’s much ballyhooed Atrocities Prevention Board, announced by the president in 2012 at the Holocaust Museum. Only the administration is largely silent in the face of these atrocities beyond ritual words of condemnation.
Odd Choices For Cameron’s Holocaust Commission
Helena Bonham Carter is not a completely weird choice. She is partly Jewish – from a rather posh family – and there’s also this:
“Helena Bonham Carter, whose grandfather Eduardo Propper de Callejon was posthumously recognised for his role in saving hundreds of Jews during the Second World War,”
Much less impressive is the selection of Simon Hughes.
Simon Hughes is a Liberal Democrat MP who has carved out a special niche as a supporter of Islamist causes and groups which promote hate preachers.
Blazing Cat Fur: Anti-semitism on the rise on college campuses VIDEO
Pro-Israel campaigner and student Chloe Valdary discusses how anti-Jewish bigotry is on the rise on North American university campuses.
Anti-Israel ‘charities’ (satire)
Most people are completely unaware that some of the most popular ‘charities’ (or NGOs: Non Governmental Organisations as they are more accurately called) actually divert large amounts of their income to political propaganda. And in many cases the brunt of this political propaganda is directed against Israel. NGO Monitor continually provides updates of this type of activity, but I felt a simple summary was needed since very week or so I end up having to tell a friend that the charity they or their children are asking us to contribute to is actually helping to fund the deligitimization of Israel or even worse, directly funding Palestinian terrorists.
Following the lead of Debbie Schlussel I have awarded a number of Arafats (rather than stars) to each charity (where 5 Arafats is the worse possible). The list – ordered by the fame of the charity – is by no means exhaustive. It does not include the many specifically ‘Palestinian’ charities, such as Interpal, and Muslim charities, such as Muslim Hands, which directly fund Hamas. But I would not expect any rational Jewish person to be in any doubt about the purpose of such ‘charities’.
PMW Netanyahu has Nazi genes and imitates Hitler’s racism
Last week, just a few days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the official Palestinian Authority daily published an op-ed demonizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The op-ed claimed that Netanyahu has Nazi genes and uses Hitler-style racism against the Palestinians:
“It is possible that Netanyahu has preserved it [racism] and acquired it genetically from the days of the Nazis and the Aryan race.”
The reason Netanyahu is compared to Hitler is because Netanyahu “is demanding that the Palestinians recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel,” – a “Jewishness,” which is racist, the writer states, claiming that even Jews don’t “enjoy equal treatment” in Israel: (h/t Bob Knot)
Shin Bet: West Bank terror attacks more than doubled in 2013
In 2013, there were some 1,271 attacks in Judea and Samaria, as opposed to 578 in 2012, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said. Of these attacks, 1,042 took place in Judea.
In addition, of the six Israelis killed in terror attacks in 2013, five were killed in the West Bank – as opposed to 2012, when all of the 10 Israeli fatalities from terror attacks took place inside the Green Line. Of those killed, three were civilians and three were members of the security forces.
Inside Lines: New concern for Fifa ahead of World Cup 2022 after anti-Zionist row in Qatar
With the current cloud of anti-Semitic allegations hovering over football, Fifa must be praying that Israel do not qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. For hard on the heels of the disturbing concerns over excessive heat, homophobia and mass deaths of migrant construction workers comes an incident at the recent Swimming World Cup in the capital Doha when the Qatari hosts refused to display the name “Israel” during TV broadcasts and removed Israeli flags from outside the venue.
The International Swimming Association (Fina) have issued strong warnings both to Qatar and Dubai, where Israeli athletes suffered similar discrimination. Shouldn’t Fifa be doing the same? Especially as only last week the United Arab Emirates refused permission for Israel-born defender Dan Mori to enter the country with his Dutch club Vitesse Arnhem for friendly matches in Abu Dhabi because they do not recognise Israel as a state.
45 Years Since the Public Execution of 9 Jews in Baghdad
Today marks 45 years since nine Iraqi Jews were hanged in Baghdad’s central square. The murdered Jews were: Ezra Naji Zilkha, Fuad Gabay, Yakub Gorji Namordi, Daud Haskil Barukh Dalal, Daud Ghali, Haskil Saleh Haskil, Sabah Hayim, Naim Khaduri, and Charles Rafael Horesh. Their hanging was a nadir in the persecution of Iraqi Jews, but persecutions did not end with them, and in August 1969 two more Jews were hanged, and scores more were arrested and never seen again, presumed murdered. Today, few if any Jews remain in Iraq – remnants of an illustrious Jewish community that numbered more than 150,000 members in the middle of the 20th century.
ADL Chairman: US Position on Pollard Reflects Anti-Semitic Myths
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Chairman Abraham Foxman was quoted by Maariv Tuesday as having called the US’s refusal to release Jonathan Pollard as a form of “revenge” against the American Jewish community.
According to the daily, Foxman revealed in a Tablet interview that his personal views on the Pollard case have changed over the years, after US officials in the last government publicly stated that the Israeli spy’s punishment is “unjust.”
Obama’s Jewish Half-Brother Visits Israel, Promises to Help Free Pollard
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. While some people accuse President Obama of being hostile to the Jewish state, apparently he has a half-brother who is halachically Jewish and interested in getting in touch with his Jewish roots.
Last week Mark Obama Ndesandjo visited Israel secretly. One of the main purposes of his trip was to meet with Ashkenazi chief rabbi Yona Metzger and receive a blessing and a letter for his mother, Ruth Nidesand. The visit had to be kept a secret for fear of reprisals from al-Qaeda-related terrorist groups. (h/t AlexandreM)
UNESCO to proceed with disputed Jewish exhibition
“The date has been set for June 11,” a UNESCO spokeswoman said without elaborating. The exhibition was co-sponsored by Israel, Canada and Montenegro.
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, co-organizer of the exhibition, said in a statement the exhibition had nothing to do with recent efforts by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to revive the Middle East peace process.
“While the Arab League was trying to kill this exhibition and all the attention was focused on Paris, the U.N. headquarters in New York is hosting an exhibit entitled ‘Palestine’ based entirely on the Arab narrative, which was not criticized as an interference in Secretary Kerry’s mission,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the center, said in a statement.
Israel leads global photo apps market
There are almost 13,000 photo apps on iTunes and Google Play. However, if you look closely out of the top 10, almost all of them originated from Israel.
So how come Israelis have captured that throne too? Have Israeli’s become the new Japanese or is it just a technological thing? JewishNewsOne went to find out with some of the developers of those apps.
A Polish Opera Director in the Judean Desert
Znaniecki has been working on the La travieta production for the past three years and related to Tazpit that he is “excited to see the project finally happen in the Judean desert.”
It will be the largest and most complex opera production ever seen in Israel, employing some 2,500 people, in addition to 700 participants and operating teams. The festival will also feature the Israel Philharmonic led by Kent Nagano and the Idan Raichel Project, as well as singers from the Israel Opera’s Meitar Opera Studio.
The Israel Ministry of Tourism expects 50,000 people from Israel and ‘cultural tourists’ from abroad to partake in the 2014 festival. This year, the Israeli Opera Festival will also come to Akko (June 19-21), and will feature a weekend of Mozart at the subterranean Crusader Halls in Akko’s Old City.
Thanks to Elder of Ziyon News Source
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Israeli Researchers Find a Simple Blood Test Can Predict Diabetes Risk Much Earlier by Jewish Business News
Analysts are expressing increasingly pointed concerns that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif may lack either the ability or the willingness to help secure a comprehensive deal between Iran and the West that would put Tehran’s nuclear program verifiably beyond use for weaponization, with his recently published memoirs and multiple recent interviews all being marked by intransigent rhetoric and maximalist negotiating positions. Ali Alfoneh and Reuel Marc Gerecht, both senior fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, reviewed Zarif’s Mr. Ambassador: A Conversation with Mohammad-Javad Zarif and flatly assessed that “the affable foreign minister turns out to be every bit as religiously ideological as the radicalized student activist he was in the late 1970s.” Zarif emerges as a dogged ideologue who remains committed to exporting the Islamic Revolution beyond Iran’s borders, even as he lacks the domestic power base that would allow him to deliver concessions being promised to the West. The combination, note Alfoneh and Gerecht, “serves as a bad omen for the Islamic Republic’s interim nuclear agreement in Geneva.” Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, evaluating their analysis, pointed specifically to passages in which Zarif described Iran as having a “fundamental problem” with America, noting that the friction is grounded in Iran’s “raison d’etre”: “trying to change the international order.” Goldberg suggested that “U.S. negotiators facing Zarif might be facing someone who is more rigidly ideological than they are prepared to acknowledge.” Meanwhile tape reemerged over the weekend, posted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), of Zarif telling George Stephanopoulos that critics who castigate Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for the latter’s Holocaust denial are taking him out of context. That claim is false, and may deepen concerns that Zarif is unwilling to acknowledge – let alone address – the broad ideological and diplomatic gaps between Iran and the West.
The Daily Beast Tuesday reported on a new poll, conducted by Democratic pollster Mark Mellman and sponsored by The Israel Project, showing that “a majority of Americans disapprove of President [Barack] Obama’s handling of the Iran issue and want Congress to have a say in any final agreement with Tehran over its nuclear program,” and documenting support across all demographics for Congressional legislation that would impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic should nuclear negotiations fail. The full poll and a slide deck outlining the cross tabs are here, and The Tower unpacked several different sections of the poll here. In the broadest sense, Americans favor holding Iran’s feet to the fire via continued or even boosted sanctions until Tehran dismantles its nuclear program. Eighty-three percent of voters overall – and 83% of Democrats – favor using economic sanctions to pressure Iran. Seventy-seven percent of Americans – and 70% of Democrats – want those sanctions maintained or strengthened beyond their current levels. Sixty-two percent of Americans – and 55% of Democrats – believe that Iran should have to “dismantle its nuclear infrastructure and give up the ability to build a nuclear weapons” before sanctions relief should be granted. In a more specific legislative sense, an overwhelming majority of Americans favor passing the conditional sanctions legislation – dubbed the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act – that 59 senators have already co-sponsored (78%-15%). After hearing arguments on both sides of the policy debate regarding the legislation, sixty-three percent of Americans continued to express support for the new legislation, as did majorities across all parties (55% of Democrats, 65% of Independents, and 71% of Republicans). President Barack Obama on Tuesday night used the foreign policy section of his State of the Union address to among other things renew his threat to veto any such legislation. The Hill contextualized the President’s stance within an ongoing legislative battle in which “Democrats and Republicans in both chambers have criticized the president’s interim nuclear deal.” The Joint Plan of Action (JPA) allows Iran unlimited uranium enrichment up to 5% purity, continued work at its Arak plutonium production facility, and the freedom to continue advancing its ballistic missile program.
Turkey seems set to renew its diplomatic relationship with Iran and deepen its trade ties with the Islamic republic, even as top U.S. officials pleaded with Turkish officials on Monday to heed Washington’s insistence that remaining sanctions on Iran mean that the country “is not open for business.” Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodgan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) had for the better part of a decade cultivated close ties with the Iranian regime, providing valuable economic and diplomatic lifelines to Tehran in the face of Western efforts to isolate the Iranians. Bilateral relations between the two countries were severely strained during the opening years of the Syrian conflict, though Turkey’s role as a sanctions-busting pipeline for Iranian assets remained. Turkey’s rush to fully reenter Iran’s markets since the announcement of the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) has come at such a pace that it has wholesale threatened the White House’s insistence that the relief provided to Iran was “limited, temporary, targeted, and reversible.” Turkey has pursued diplomatic rapprochement at a similar pace, and Turkish media announced Tuesday that Iran and Turkey will establish a high-level cooperation council during a Tehran visit that Erdogan will leave for Wednesday. The administration earlier this week dispatched David Cohen, Treasury’s Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, to press Ankara on its posture and warn Turkish businesses that they “really should hold off.” The degree to which Cohen’s protestations were effective is unclear.
Egyptian officials on Tuesday brought to court the country’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked former president Mohammed Morsi to stand trial on charges relating to a 2011 jail break, as continuing violence targeting Egyptian political and security institutions continued to rock the country for the second week in a row. General Mohamed Saeed, head of the Interior Ministry’s technical office and a chief aide to Interior Minister Mohammad Ibrahim, was gunned down outside his house. The attack comes in the aftermath of a series of bombings last week that targeted Cairo police stations, and a few months after senior police official Mohamed Mabrouk was assassinated. Ibrahim himself had been targeted last September by a suicide bomber. Cairo’s efforts to restore stability and security have diplomatic as well as geopolitical dimensions. Egyptian leaders, up to and prominently including the country’s presumptive next president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, have explicitly criticized the U.S. for insufficient support for the army-backed government against Islamist extremists. A diplomatic snub by Washington earlier this month, involving a bilateral trade summit, threatens to erode relations further.
Thanks to the Israel Project
From NGO Monitor we have the following:
| In advance of the Israeli Cabinet meeting about European BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions), being convened today in Jerusalem, NGO Monitor released the following statement: The boycott campaign, targeting Israeli firms and companies that do business with Israel has been active for more than ten years, and is led by a network of political advocacy non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded largely by European governments. In order to successfully blunt and defeat this threat, it is necessary to understand the sources of BDS campaigns, their scope, alliances, primary tactics, and vulnerabilities. BDS is a form of political warfare against the State of Israel based on the exploitation of human rights and humanitarian principles, double standards, invidious comparisons with South African apartheid, and false allegations of “war crimes” and violations of international law. (The discredited 2009 Goldstone report on Gaza is one of many examples of this process.) Although often expressed in terms of opposition to the post-1967 Israeli occupation and settlements, the leaders of BDS campaigns repeatedly express their rejection of any Jewish right to self-determination, regardless of borders. The radical BDS movement supports Palestinian refugee demands, promotes the 1948 narrative of Palestinian victimization, and a “single state solution,” meaning the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. In addition, the network of church-based NGOs that fund and promote BDS often include antisemitic themes and images. Therefore, the claim that BDS will end if a two-state peace agreement is reached is inconsistent with the evidence. The most effective and immediate strategy to blunt BDS and other forms of political warfare is to end the massive funding given to radical NGOs that promote these anti-Israel campaigns in the Netherlands and elsewhere. NGO Monitor research has exposed tens of millions of Euros provided annually to NGOs via the EU and European governments. For more than ten years, this highly politicized NGO funding has been allocated for discriminatory anti-Israel warfare through secret processes under frameworks for humanitarian aid, democracy and human rights, and other universal moral principles. There are at least 80 such NGOs, active in promoting BDS in Europe, North America, and elsewhere. Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP) – the leading Israeli NGO promoting BDS – was funded directly by the European Union, but requests for documents on this funding based on the EU’s freedom of information guidelines have been denied. Ali Abunimah and the NGO known as Electronic Intifada – among the most visible participants in BDS campaigns – have been funded indirectly by the Dutch government through the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO), which has an annual budget of over €80 million. ICCO was also involved in lobbying the Dutch pension funds to divest from Israeli banks. As seen in the past few days, CWP, Electronic Intifada, and many Palestinian NGOs that receive European government funding are pressing Oxfam International, which receives funding from the UK, EU, Dutch, and other governments, to join the politicized campaign against SodaStream. The first step in confronting European governments that provide most of the funds for these organizations is to demand the implementation of democratic transparency principles in Europe. On this basis, Israeli and European officials can negotiate guidelines for funding political advocacy NGOs, which would prevent grants to groups that promote double standards, the discriminatory singling out of Israel, lawfare based on “war crimes” and similar false allegations, and the denial of the right of the Jewish people to sovereign equality.
While these measures will not bring an immediate end to BDS and political warfare, they constitute the essential first steps towards a viable counter-strategy.
For more information, see NGO Monitor’s “BDS in the Pews” website and our fact sheets:
“NGOs Responsible for Dutch Pension Fund Divestment- PGGM/PFZW“ “NGOs and the Libel Campaign Against Mekorot Water Company“ “The Rights Forum” – a Dutch organization behind the campaigns in the Netherlands and the EU
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ECI Holocaust Memorial appeals to Putin to open archives
Brussels, January28th, 2014 – In an Ecumenical Holocaust Memorial Service in Brussels on Monday ECI director Tomas Sandell appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to open the remaining archives in Russia to enable researchers to determine the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews at the end of WW2. Wallenberg was later captured by the Soviet forces never to be seen again. However, nobody has been able to finally determine his fate.
This year will mark the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the Hungarian Jews and the Holocaust memorial was organized only one day prior to the arrival of President Putin in Brussels for bilateral meetings with the EU-leaders in Brussels today Tuesday.
– Whilst we remember the victims of the Holocaust we should also remember and honour those who laid down their lives to save Jews, such as Raoul Wallenberg, Sandell said at the event. But honouring someone does not give us the right to abandon them. As long as the fate of Raoul Wallenberg remains unsolved we have a moral duty to find the answers, he said.
Louise von Dardel, the niece of Raoul Wallenberg, was a guest of honour at the event. After the memorial Sandell, von Dardel and ECI UN director Gregory Lafitte met with a high ranking diplomatic advisor to the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy to ask the EU leader to bring up the issue of Raoul Wallenberg with the Russian leader in their talks on Tuesday. A request to meet directly with President Putin was finally turned down on Friday due to the rescheduling of the EU summit which was originally planned to last for two days but which, because of EU pressure, was squeezed in to a half-day meeting. On Monday Russian Ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov indirectly accused blamed the EU-leaders for the difficulties to schedule a meeting. But in a parallel development in Moscow the Russian Ombudsman for Human Rights Vladimir Lukin said that “the remaining archives should be opened to ensure that nothing is hidden which could shed light on the fate of Raoul Wallenberg.”
The Ecumenical Holocaust Memorial under the patronage of the Vice-President of the European Parliament, Lászlo Surján, was one of three Holocaust Remembrance Day events in Brussels on Monday.
In the official EU Holocaust Remembrance Day event in the European Parliament, where ECI was one of the co-organizers, EU-leaders, including EP President Martin Schulz and Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras warned about the resurgence of anti-Semitism and racism in Europe. They vowed to do everything in their power to combat these forces of hatred and were applauded by leaders of the Jewish Community, including the President of the World Jewish Congress, Ambassador Ronald Lauder and the President of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor.
