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WHILE TRADITIONAL JEW-HATRED IN M.E. CONTINUES “PROGRESSIVES” PROMOTE THE “NEW ANTISEMITISM”

 

 

The Link Between BDS and Jew Hatred on Campus: Barbara Kay, National Post, Mar. 22, 2016— In a Feb. 25 Facebook post, McGill student Molly Harris recounted her experience in a “Rez (residence) Project” workshop…

Turkey's Runaway Anti-Semitism: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Mar. 10, 2016— The 74th anniversary of an embarrassing tragedy took place in Turkey on February 24, 2016.

Blaming Jews for Anti-Semitism: The Old Canard Exposed: Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Arutz Sheva, Mar. 4, 2016— A widely-held belief that Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism has been entrenched in the Western world for many centuries.

Jesus at the Checkpoint: Barry Shaw, Jerusalem Post, Mar. 8, 2016— It’s that crazy Christian time of year in Bethlehem when traditional beliefs are thrown out of the church window.

 

On Topic Links

 

PLEASE WATCH: This is a Powerful and Moving Message About the Story of Purim: Rabbi Jacobson, The Chevra, Mar. 25, 2016

Read Donald Trump’s Speech to AIPAC: Sarah Begley, Time, Mar. 21 2016

Merkel Hosting MKs among 100 Parliamentarians at Berlin Conference on Anti-Semitism: David Israel, Jewish Press, Mar. 15, 2016

Malaysia: a Hotbed of Anti-Semitism: Robert Fulford, National Post, Jan. 2, 2016

                                                                  

 

 

THE LINK BETWEEN BDS AND JEW HATRED ON CAMPUS

             Barbara Kay

National Post, Mar. 22, 2016

           

In a Feb. 25 Facebook post, McGill student Molly Harris recounted her experience in a “Rez (residence) Project” workshop, a (mandatory) three-hour discussion on “oppression, privilege, consent and race” designed to create a “safe space” for fellow dorm students. Molly described an incident when, singled out negatively for being Jewish, she felt unsafe. According to Molly, the facilitator responded that Molly could feel victimized for being female, but “being Jewish didn’t constitute grounds for systematic oppression.”

 

Molly writes, “Though a little perturbed, I let this go, I didn’t argue with the facilitator, and stayed quiet for the remainder of the workshop.” I sympathize with Molly’s intuition that pressing the issue would not have gone well for her. On campuses with an active anti-Zionist presence, like McGill, hatred of Israel has a trickledown effect into the general “social justice” agenda — feminism, Black Lives Matter, LGBT and others — which has hardened many progressives’ hearts against all Jewish pain, and shamed Jewish students into suppressing or denying it.

 

And so it has become commonplace even for Jewish students well-versed in their people’s history to accept the mantle of “privilege” rather than insist that 60 years of success in North America isn’t a patch on three thousands years of exclusion, religious persecution, second-class status and wholesale massacre, not to mention ethnic cleansing from 94 countries (with the alleged sins of the only one from which they cannot be expelled the hysterical, single-focus obsession of “human rights” activism).

 

Molly’s uncomfortable experience ranks as relatively benign in the scheme of anti-Israel expression on North American campuses, where the always-thin line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism has been slowly but surely dissolving…A survey of U.S. Jewish college students by Trinity College and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law reveals that 54 per cent of surveyed students reported experiencing or witnessing instances of anti-Semitism on campus in the first six months of the 2013-14 academic year. Another Brandeis survey found that 75 per cent of North American Jewish college student respondents “had been exposed to anti-Semitic rhetoric,” and one third “harassed because they were Jewish.” Both surveys found active BDS campaigns to be a consistent correlated factor in the anti-Jewish hostility.

 

A new report by the AMCHA Initiative (Hebrew for “your people”) confirms that BDS promotion creates “a hostile environment for Jewish students.” AMCHA examined 113 U.S. public and private colleges and universities with the largest populations of Jewish students in North America (but not the Canadian campuses that have high Jewish enrollment). Data were gathered from incident reports, media accounts, social media postings and online recordings. Also examined were the presence or absence of active anti-Zionist student groups and the number of faculty who had signed one or more petitions or statements endorsing an academic boycott of Israeli universities and scholars.

 

Categories for “targeting” of Jewish students included: physical assault, genocidal expression, destruction of Jewish property, discrimination, and intimidation. Language was considered anti-Semitic if it included historical tropes like blood libels or conspiracy theories (Jewish control of media, banks, governments, etc.), conflation of Jews with Nazis, Holocaust denial, and demonization or delegitimization of Israel (derived from the U.S. State Department definition of anti-Semitism). They found, for example, that on more than 60 campuses, Israel was vilified for genocide, crimes against humanity, “pinkwashing” (LGBT tolerance as a distraction from Israeli evil) and “faithwashing” (Israel’s religious tolerance for the same reason). A speaker at one school called Israel “the embodiment of evil.”

 

The report concludes that anti-Zionism is the most prominent face of contemporary anti-Semitism on campuses today, and that the best statistical predictors of overall anti-Semitic activity on a campus are the presence of groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and the number of faculty who have endorsed the academic boycott of Israel. Significantly, they found that the level of BDS activity on campus is the best predictor of anti-Jewish hostility…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

Contents

TURKEY'S RUNAWAY ANTI-SEMITISM

               Burak Bekdil                                   

Gatestone Institute, Mar. 10, 2016

 

The 74th anniversary of an embarrassing tragedy took place in Turkey on February 24, 2016. The MV Struma was a small iron-hulled ship built in 1867 as a steam-powered schooner, but was later re-engined with an unreliable second-hand diesel engine. In 1941, it was tasked with safely transporting an estimated 781 Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to Britain's Mandatory Palestine. Between its departure from Constanta on the Black Sea on Dec. 12, 1941 and arrival in Istanbul on Dec. 15, the vessel's engine failed several times. On Feb. 23, 1942 with her engine still not running but the refugees aboard, Turkish authorities towed the Struma from Istanbul through the Bosporus out to the Black Sea. On the morning of Feb. 24, the Soviet submarine Shch-213 torpedoed the Struma, killing all but one of the refugees and 10 crew aboard.

 

Until this year Turkey, one of the main culprits, had only once commemorated the victims. This year, official Turkey decided, should be the second time. A wreath and carnations were hurled at the sea in the shadow of the horrible event that took place decades ago. At the commemoration ceremony at Sarayburnu harbor on the Bosporus were the head of Turkey's Jewish community, Ishak Ibrahimzadeh, Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva and Istanbul's governor, Vasip Sahin. In his speech, Sahin said: "We observe that the necessary lessons were not drawn from such tragedies." He was right, at least from a Turkish point of view.

 

When it comes to diplomatic conflict between Turkey and Israel or Turkish anti-Semitism, there is always an unusual optimism in the official language chosen by Israeli officials or Jewish community leaders. For instance, Ibrahimzadeh praised "recent steps by the Turkish state to mend history with the Jewish community." Echoing the same optimism, chairman Stephen Greenberg and executive vice chairman Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, assured that Turkey's small (less than 17,000-strong) Jewish community feels "safe and secure" despite being placed in the middle of a political feud between Turkey and Israel — sparked first in 2009 by then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's clash with former Israeli President Shimon Peres at a World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

 

Such optimism in official narratives is normal, especially because Ankara and Jerusalem have been privately negotiating a deal to end their hostilities and normalize their diplomatic relations. Non-constructive, let alone explosive, speeches from any state or non-state actor will not help diplomats from either side in their efforts to reconcile. All the same, facts on the ground are a little bit different than the rosy picture. If Turkish Jews are "safe and secure" in Turkey, why do they feel compelled to protect their schools and synagogues with heavy security? Why do most synagogues in Istanbul look almost like a U.S. embassy in Baghdad or Islamabad?

 

On Jan. 20, 2016, a Turkish synagogue in an old Jewish neighborhood in Istanbul was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti days after holding its first prayer service in 65 years. Vandals painted the external walls of the Istipol Synagogue with the script: "Terrorist Israel, there is Allah." "Writing anti-Israel speech on the wall [outside] of a synagogue is an act of anti-Semitism," said Ivo Molinas, editor-in-chief of Turkish Jewish newspaper, Şalom. "Widespread anti-Semitism in Turkey gets in the way of celebrating the richness of cultural diversity in this country."

 

Less than a month after that, a column in the radical Islamist Turkish daily Vahdet claimed that the evolutionary theory of "the Jew" Charles Darwin contradicts Allah's word in the Koran and that in actual fact, monkeys evolved from perverted Jews whom Allah cursed and punished. Unsurprisingly, the columnist, Seyfi Sahin, is a staunch supporter of President Erdogan's Justice and Development Party. Sahin claims to be a physician, and argued that "Jews terrorize the world of science" and, "as a Jew, Darwin concocted his theory of evolution in order to turn Muslims away from their religion." He further wrote:

 

"The aim of [Darwin's] theory is to turn the non-Jews away from their religion, to harm their faith, and to make them suspicious about their religion. Darwin, being a Jew, believed, lived, and was buried according to his religion. His real targets were the Muslims … I believe that the gorillas and chimps living today in the forests of North Africa are cursed Jews. They are perverted humans that have mutated." There are no reports of Sahin being investigated or prosecuted under Turkey's anti-racism laws. Not surprising. No such case has ever been heard of.

 

More recently, there was the curious case of Yusuf Kaplan, a Turkish Islamist columnist and a darling of Erdogan and his supporters — until he dared to criticize the government's foreign policy. Kaplan a columnist for Yeni Safak, one of Erdogan's favorite newspapers and one of his staunchest supporters, argued in a television appearance that the government's foreign policy was incompatible with regional realities. So what? Not so difficult to guess.

 

Leading users on social media called for Kaplan's death and accused him of killing another pro-government journalist, of being a British spy and of "collusion with the Jews." Many called him a "Jewish stooge." A Jewish stooge? The man has a remarkable record of making anti-Semitic statements, including his claim that "Jews rule the Western universities and world media and that their paranoia can reach barbaric, cruel and inhuman dimensions." On the 74th anniversary of the Struma tragedy, anti-Semitism in Turkey reached such intensity that even anti-Semitic Islamists were not immune to anti-Semitic smear campaigns.

Contents

                        BLAMING JEWS FOR ANTI-SEMITISM: THE OLD CANARD EXPOSED

                                                        Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

                                                          Arutz Sheva, Mar. 4, 2016

 

A widely-held belief that Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism has been entrenched in the Western world for many centuries. In 2015, Isaac Bachman, Israeli ambassador to Sweden, exposed this perverted idea when invited for a rare state radio interview. The female interviewer asked him if Jews were responsible for the rising anti-Semitism in Europe. The ambassador rejected the question entirely.

 

However, the interviewer insisted. Bachman then answered that “the question of how a woman contributes to the fact of her rape is irrelevant altogether. I don’t think there is any provocation that Jews are doing – they just exist.” Afterwards, Sweden’s state radio took the unusual step of publicly apologizing and even deleted the question from the recording of the interview in its digital archive.

 

A recent French poll has again brought this ever-simmering belief into the limelight. Seventeen percent of those interviewed among the general public responded that Jews are significantly responsible for anti-Semitism. The percentage among Muslims was much higher, 31%. An additional forty-two percent of both general and Muslim respondents answered that there is Jewish responsibility for anti-Semitism, yet it is minimal. The majority of the French thus adhere to this false accusation whose beginnings go back more than fifteen centuries.

 

Jewish responsibility for what much later was called anti-Semitism is an ancient core idea of Christianity, usually used together with two other extremely evil concepts; collective responsibility and scapegoating. The Jews were perceived as responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion, which was in reality a sentence decided on and executed by the Romans.

 

Few Jews, if any, were present at the crucifixion. This did not prevent the collective blaming of all Jews through all generations for an evil act that even those few had not committed. This is another example of a typically rabid discriminatory attitude: that of stereotyping an entire group of people for the evil acts supposedly perpetrated by a small number of its members. On the contrary: responsibility for the innumerable anti-Semitic attacks, expulsions, pogroms and the like carried out by Christians throughout the centuries rests exclusively with those who ordered and committed such acts.

 

Even Martin Niemöller, one of the best-known German Protestant critics of Nazism during the Second World War, delivered pre-war sermons claiming that the Jews were cursed because their ancestors killed Christ. The persecution of the Jews has thus became an iconic example of blaming the victims.

 

In 1937 Winston Churchill wrote an article titled “How The Jews Can Combat Persecution” that was never published. It partially blamed Jews for anti-Semitism. Although he wrote that Jews were industrious and law-abiding, Churchill added that “there are times when one feels instinctively that all this is only another manifestation of the difference, the separateness of the Jew.” He then blamed Jews for “aloofness” and urged them to integrate into wider society to prevent future persecution. Churchill was soon proven dramatically wrong under the German occupation, when converted or assimilated Jews who matched the encompassing definition of Jews set down in the Nuremberg laws, were murdered along with other Jews.

 

American psychology professor Kevin MacDonald has strongly espoused, and abused, the concept of Jewish responsibility for anti-Semitism. In a series of books on evolutionary psychology published from 1994-2004, this hatemonger claimed that Jews had a successful group “evolutionary strategy” and that anti-Semitism is a “rational” response to Jewish successes. In his view, the Spanish Inquisition was a “defensive reaction to the economic and political domination [of Jews]” and even Nazism was justified as a “group evolutionary strategy that mirrored Judaism.”

 

Even some intelligent Jews have not grasped the insidious nature of this anti-Semitic trope. In 2003, billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros spoke before the Jewish Funders Network. In addition to blaming Israeli and US policies, he also blamed himself. In his words, “I’m also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world… As an unintended consequence of my actions, I also contribute to that image.” In response to Soros’ speech, the late Elan Steinberg, senior advisor to the World Jewish Congress at that time, gave the correct answer: “Let’s understand things clearly: Anti-Semitism is not caused by Jews; it’s caused by anti-Semites. One can certainly be critical of Bush’s policy or Sharon’s policy, but any deviation from the understanding of the real cause of anti-Semitism is not merely a disservice, but a historic lie.”

 

Contents

           JESUS AT THE CHECKPOINT

                        Barry Shaw

                                             Jerusalem Post, Mar. 8, 2016

 

It’s that crazy Christian time of year in Bethlehem when traditional beliefs are thrown out of the church window. March 7-10 will see the fourth rendering of that anti-Israel libel “Christ at the Checkpoint” played out yet again. It is bad enough when devious Arab Islamic leaders, including Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, speak at Christmas time of Jesus the “Palestinian messenger,” but it is something completely different when church leaders call Jesus a Palestinian.

 

They know it is a lie, yet they subscribe to this mantra. It leads one to question why they do it. Why do they go out of their way to deny the undeniable Jewishness of Jesus according to their own biblical commentaries? There can only be one inevitable conclusion. It’s anti-Semitism. It was anti-Semitism that fed the brutal dogma that expelled and killed millions of Jews as European Christianity pursued Jews around the globe from Spain and Portugal into central and southern America in the name of Christendom. It was anti-Semitism at the heart of replacement theology that positioned God as having abandoned His Covenant with the Jewish people in favor of Christians. It is anti-Semitism that drives Christian leaders to abandon the Old Testament narration of a return to Zion of the Jewish people in favor of promoting the notorious Kairos Palestine Document, which positions Palestinian Arabs as Jesus-figures deprived of their land, and Israelis as the Christ-killers. This blood libel is alive and well. It has shaken off the Christian shame of the Shoah, and found its voice in anti-Zionism.

Deconstructing the history of the Land of Israel in order to deny Jewish sovereignty is central to Palestinian policy. This narrative has been adopted by many Christians, who have found a moral hook on which to hang their anti-Semitism, namely the transfiguration of who are the violent and devious actors and who are the victims. It is truly appalling how cynically deceptive some Christian leaders can be. They come up with emotional but false messages. Take Christ at the Checkpoint as an example. This is the name of the event taking place in Bethlehem this month. Christians will try to portray Jesus as a Palestinian suffering at an Israeli checkpoint. In support of the Palestinian narrative it carries the message, “Your Kingdom come!” Had Jesus arrived at a checkpoint this year he would have been reminded by Israeli soldiers that, as a Jew, it was too dangerous for him to cross into Bethlehem, as his life would be in grave danger in a place that has become so radically Islamic that even the Christians have fled this once Christian town.

Elias Freij, the Christian mayor of Bethlehem at the time of the town’s handover by Israel to Arafat’s PLO, correctly prophesized that Bethlehem would be a town of churches but no Christians. Participants at this event should be reminded that Israeli security forces arrested 14 members of Islamic Jihad based in Bethlehem. During their search, they found weapons and explosives in the houses of the Bethlehem terrorists. At precisely the same time, the rector of London’s St. James’s Church was organizing, at her church, a propaganda event called “Bethlehem Unwrapped.” In a Guardian newspaper article, said she was supporting a “beautiful resistance.” Neither should churches be supporting such “resistance,” known to Israelis as terrorist attacks. This is the campaign and cause that some Christian leaders and the Christ at the Checkpoint event promote, while hiding the truth of what is actually going on here.

What is going on is that Israelis are being targeted for slaughter, as are Christians in the Muslim world, including within Palestinian-controlled areas. In Bethlehem, they are being persecuted and oppressed, not by Israel but by Palestinians, including the leadership. Prior to Israel’s surrender of Bethlehem to Arafat’s PLO in 1995, the Christian population was actually growing beyond the 80 percent mark, but today Bethlehem’s Christians have been reduced to a mere 10%. This can hardly be blamed on Israel, considering that the Christian population in the Jewish state continues to flourish. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, its Christian community has expanded more than a thousand percent.

Christ at the Checkpoint is primarily a public relations plot to dissuade Evangelicals worldwide from their pro-Israel views. They state this openly in their mission statement. They wish “to create a platform for serious engagement with Christian Zionism” in order to pull them away from their support for Israel. Mark Tooley of Front Page magazine wrote, “To succeed, they will have to put blinders on cooperatively gullible evangelicals, guiding their eyes towards disruptive Israeli checkpoints, while hiding the rest of the surrounding reality.” How right he is. It is this dishonest act that reveals their anti-Semitism. It is not performed out of ignorance. It is done knowingly, a conscious act of deception and yet another Christian libel against the Jew, this time the national Jew, Israel…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
 

 

CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!

 

On Topic

 

PLEASE WATCH: This is a Powerful and Moving Message About the Story of Purim: Rabbi Jacobson, The Chevra, Mar. 25, 2016

Read Donald Trump’s Speech to AIPAC: Sarah Begley, Time, Mar. 21 2016—Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, his party’s front runner for the nomination, addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Monday, discussing relations between the U.S. and Israel. A complete transcript of his remarks follows.

Merkel Hosting MKs among 100 Parliamentarians at Berlin Conference on Anti-Semitism: David Israel, Jewish Press, Mar. 15, 2016 —MKs Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid) and Anat Berko (Likud) are participating this week in the third conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating anti-Semitism being held in Berlin, with 100 parliamentarians from 40 countries. The conference is an initiative of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the German Foreign Ministry and the Bundestag.

Malaysia: a Hotbed of Anti-Semitism: Robert Fulford, National Post, Jan. 2, 2016—Anna Baltzer, a national organizer of boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) against Israel in the United States, was heartened to receive a warm welcome at a recent conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

 

 

                        

 

 

 

                  

 

 

 

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