Stop Antisemitism




Because the antisemitism from Palestinian and Arab media and personalities is so pervasive, they need to keep upping the ante in order to get their incitement to break through the line noise of normal Jew-hate.

Enter the preacher of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and "Grand Mufti" of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein.

In response to Jews visiting the Temple Mount on Sukkot, Hussein said that they "performed racist Talmudic rituals" and "carried out collective recitation of excerpts from their Talmud in the mosque’s courtyards."

But calling Jewish prayer racist is not nearly inflammatory enough nowadays. Modern Jew-haters need a new hook.

So the Mufti added that the goal of Jews who quietly walk around Islamic buildings designed to supplant Judaism's holiest site are "attempts to obliterate Islamic civilization."

Who knew that Jews pushing their kids in baby strollers could have such far-reaching abilities as to destroy entire civilizations? We Jews are even more powerful than I thought!




 
French police are investigating a blood-curdling antisemitic death threat mailed to a history teacher at a public school in the suburbs of Paris.

The unnamed teacher, who is in this 30s, is now living with police protection at his home in Evry, a satellite town of 50,000 people on the southern border of the French capital.


(full article online)


 
Our opinion editor, Laura E. Adkins, listened to Kanye West slander Jews for three hours so you don’t have to. The lengthy interview on the podcast “Drink Champs” was removed from YouTube and Revolt TV late Monday after its host, rapper N.O.R.E., publicly apologized for conducting it. But Adkins had already watched West suggest that every problem has a Jewish answer.



Viral clips from the interview, Adkins writes, don’t do justice to the depths of the West’s antisemitism. He used language that hewed close to the blood libel, saying Jews “take one of us, the brightest of us that can really feed a whole village” and “milk us until we die.” And he suggested that malevolence and manipulation are Jewish norms: “I’m #MeTooing the Jewish culture, y’all gotta stand up and admit to what y’all have been doing.”



Avoiding accountability. West, who legally changed his name to Ye a year ago, framed Jews as being behind everything he doesn’t like, every source of annoyance or anger — even President Obama’s gray hair. Though others are not as blunt or unhinged, Adkins argues, the diatribe shows “just how common it’s becoming for major figures in politics, music and public life to blame everything on others instead of taking responsibility for their own actions.”



Why has West suddenly made public antisemitism his brand? Deflecting blame after facing a wave of criticism may be part of it. But in the end, it comes down to attention, attention, attention. “I suspect that West is intelligent enough to know that actually improving Black lives, and especially his own life, does not require attacking Jews,” Adkins writes. “But that doesn’t make for good theatrics.”



Read the OpEd ➤



Plus: West, whose antisemitic comments on Instagram and Twitter recently led to his accounts being temporarily restricted, is set to buy the far-right social media platform Parley



 
The Republican Party once stood for limited government and tax cuts, but at this point, it would not be hyperbolic to say the GOP might as well be selling “Honk if you heart racism” bumper stickers and T-shirts. Whether it’s the leader of the free world telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came,” a US congresswoman speaking at an event put on by a white nationalist, a US senator publicly declaring he wasn’t afraid of the January 6 rioters but would have been worried if they were Black Lives Matter protesters, or the complete and total hysteria over children learning about systemic racism, truly nothing unites this group of people like demonizing anyone who isn’t white. So it was fully unsurprising to see conservatives embrace and give props to Kanye West after he wore a “white lives matter” T-shirt at his Paris fashion show last week. Still, one might have thought that the GOP would at least attempt to distance themselves from the billionaire rapper after he appeared to suggest he wanted to eliminate all living Jews over the weekend. But apparently, one would have thought wrong.

A day after posting screenshots on Instagram of text messages with Sean “Diddy” Combs, in which he accused the fellow rapper of being controlled by Jewish people, West, who changed his name to simply “Ye” last year, tweeted: “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” While it was not clear if he’d meant to write “Defcon,” or actually meant “death con,” neither would be great, given the persecution that Jews have historically faced, including that one period in which more than 6 million of them were wiped off the face of the earth.

The reaction from the GOP, which has embraced West for years now and aided in his political ambitions, ranged from deafening silence to outright defense.

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Of course, no one actually believes this, but just for yuks, let’s take Rokita at his word and accept that his post was “specifically and clearly aimed at the hypocrisy of the media and Hollywood elites, not anything to do with other comments.” That’s like vocally defending Jeffrey Dahmer right after he murdered 16 people, and then, after receiving backlash for it, insisting that it had nothing to do that, which you definitely don’t agree with.

Separately, the whole “the media is mean to Kanye” argument doesn’t actually hold up in the face of, as Wonkette’s Stephen Robinson points out, the media’s very nice treatment of the guy. Per Robinson:

The media, in fact, have been quite generous to Ye. The Wall Street Journal described his “going death con 3 on Jewish people” threat as a “purported anti-semitic tweet.” The Associated Press said the tweet was “widely deemed antisemitic,” and The New York Times passively observed that the tweet was “widely criticized as antisemitic.” These are the polite euphemisms you use when someone you otherwise like insists they saw a flying saucer, but what West tweeted wasn’t actually a weather balloon. It was straight up antisemitism. The man viciously threatened the entire Jewish people.
Elsewhere, the official House Judiciary Committee has made the choice not to remove its Thursday tweet lumping West together with other narcissistic conservatives they love.

(full article online )

 
Less than 48 hours after HonestReporting revealed the violent and antisemitic posts written by prominent Palestinian reporter Shatha Hammad, the Thomson Reuters Foundation has stripped her of a prestigious journalism prize.

On Sunday, we revealed Hammad had a long history of making disturbing comments on her social media accounts, including repeatedly joking about Adolf Hitler, lavishing praise on Palestinian terrorists who have murdered innocent Jews, and denying that Israel has any right to exist.

We questioned why the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), the charitable arm of the global wire service, and the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund (KSMF) had chosen Hammad as the recipient of the 2022 Local Reporter Award, which included a $5,000 cash prize and the chance for her work to be “spotlighted through a multi-media campaign on the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s social media channels.”

In addition, Hammad had been invited to take part in a discussion hosted by CNN pundit Christiane Amanpour at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference in London later this month.

On October 18, both organizations released a joint statement in which they confirmed Hammad has been stripped of her prize following our investigation:

The decision has been made following the discovery of a social media post on Hammad’s Facebook feed that appears to quote Hitler – which, in doing so, suggests an endorsement of his ideology. The comment appeared in 2014.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation and the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund stand opposed to hate speech of any description. We have therefore taken this unusual step in order to protect the integrity of the Kurt Schork Awards, established to recognise and celebrate the courageous and brilliant reporting of conflict, corruption and injustice from journalists around the world, who risk their lives daily to speak truth to power.
We are aware of a second Facebook post using extreme anti-Semitic language that purports to be drafted by Hammad, also dated 2014. However, Hammad strongly denies that this post is hers.”

“Me and Hitler are friends”​

The posts that HonestReporting uncovered included dozens of violent and antisemitic clarion calls, such as one in which she eulogized the “martyrs” who killed five “settlers” during the 2014 Jerusalem synagogue massacre where two Palestinian terrorists attacked worshipers with axes, knives and a gun.

In several posts in 2014, Hammad, who currently works for Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera, signed off her comments using the nickname “Hitler” and joked that she was “in agreement” with the Nazi leader who oversaw the mass extermination of six million Jews during the Holocaust.
In another post — originally written in Arabic but translated into English by HonestReporting — she described herself as “friends” and “one” with Hitler, adding they have the “same mentality, like, for example, the extermination of the Jews” alongside a smiley face emoji.

(full article online)


 
On October 16, MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan spoke with Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on a number of subjects, ending with a question about antisemitism. Given Hasan’s history, it is unsurprising that the question exuded bad faith. To begin, he wields discussions of antisemitism as a weapon for his own partisan interests. Then, he seeks to downplay Omar’s antisemitism as just “criticism of Israel.”

Here is Hasan’s question in full:

“You have been demonized in recent years as an antisemite by many, especially by Donald Trump and the GOP over your criticisms of Israel and of Jewish groups’ support of Israel, some of which you have regretted and apologized for, that you should have been more careful with some of your language in the past. And yet this morning, former President Trump tweeted, and I quote, ‘Jews need to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel before it’s too late.’ This coming from the guy who said you should’ve resigned from Congress for your comments. What do you make of Trump’s post this morning? What do you think the right would be saying if you or Rashida Tlaib had threatened American Jews, which of course I know you wouldn’t have done?”

Partisan Exploitation of Antisemitic Incidents

Begin with the partisanship. From the start, his segment is not one of concern about antisemitism, but instead a rather blatant employment of political whataboutery. Hasan immediately declares that the concern about Omar’s history of antisemitism came “especially” from “Donald Trump and the GOP.” Hasan also tells us Omar, the “progressive” member of the Squad, has regretted her words, and that he “knows [Omar] wouldn’t have” “threatened American Jews” like Trump did. After all, the accusations of antisemitism against her came from that guy who said antisemitic things and “who said [Omar] should’ve resigned from Congress.”

Hasan seems to be suggesting that because Trump said antisemitic things himself, the accusations against Omar aren’t valid. It’s only a slightly more sophisticated version of the childish attempt to justify one’s actions by suggesting two wrongs make a right.

Of course, “Trump and the GOP” weren’t the only ones condemning Omar’s past remarks, and whatever their faults, they obviously do not reflect on other individuals and political groups condemning Omar. The Democratic leadershipdenounced her antisemitism, as have Jewish Democrats. The Anti-Defamation League, headed by the progressive Jonathan Greenblatt, has also recoiled from Omar’s obvious anti-Jewish animus.

Combating antisemitism, including that espoused by Ilhan Omar, is not and should not be a partisan issue. Hasan’s attempts to make it one strongly suggests a disinterest in combating antisemitism for the sake of equality and the Jewish people. Instead, it suggests he treats the topic of antisemitism as a device with which he may exploit for his own partisan interests.

This exploitation is particularly notable when one looks at Hasan’s obsession with using examples of Republican or right-wing antisemitism to excuse or diminish Omar’s history of Jew hatred.

In Hasan’s question from Sunday night, he asked what Omar thinks “the right” would be saying “if you or Rashida Tlaib had threatened American Jews.”

A simple search of Hasan’s Twitter account returns example after example of Hasan playing this game, whereby he tweets about an offensive statement by political opponents and asks variations of “imagine how big a story this would be if Ilhan Omar had done this.” He resorts to this playbook again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and ag-, well, you get the point by now.

It’s almost as if Hasan is uninterested in condemning antisemitism unless it can advance his partisan interests, or unless he can use the incident to depict Ilhan Omar as a victim, too. That’s not exactly true allyship with the victims of antisemitism.

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Last year, when Omar responded to a question from CNN’s Jake Tapper about whether she understands the concerns of her Jewish colleagues about those past statements, she responded not with empathy, but by accusing her Jewish colleagues of not being truly interested in justice. Omar told Tapper: “I think it’s really important for these members to realize that they haven’t been partners in justice, they haven’t been equally engaging in seeking justice around the world…” Categorically declaring that Jewish congressmembers are not interested in justice has nothing to do with Israel.

Hasan’s lame attempts to cast Omar’s repeated employment of classic antisemitic tropes as merely “criticism of Israel,” alongside his constant efforts to politicize antisemitism, serve as a reminder that bigotry, including antisemitism, must be combatted because it is morally reprehensible, not because it is politically convenient.


(full article online)


 
On October 22nd, the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) – a prominent organization of legal scholars and practitioners – will work to help normalize the antisemitic “apartheid” libel against the Jewish state. It will do so in the presence of high powered attorneys and with the sponsorship of powerful law firms, including White & Case LLP and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.

The ABILA annual conference, held in New York, will feature a panel entitled “Racism and the Crime of Apartheid in International Law,” during which three known anti-Israel ideologues will be given over an hour to promote the apartheid canard without challenge. The panelists include: Omar Shakir, the “Israel and Palestine” director for Human Rights Watch (HRW); Victor Kattan, an academic; and E. Tendayi Achiume, a United Nations “expert.” All three are on record promoting the obscene accusation of “apartheid” against Israel.

The uniformity of opinion is almost certainly no accident. Even the event’s description works to diminish the existence of differing perspectives, lazily proclaiming that “human rights organizations, UN bodies, experts, and scholars have concluded that the crime of apartheid is being committed with impunity.” It ignores the fact that those conclusions come from a limited group of activists citing each other back and forth, creating an artificial appearance of greater support. Kattan, for example, was a contributor to a 2009 report that accused Israel of apartheid, which is cited by the hyper-partisan Amnesty International. Other contributors to the 2009 report are cited in the “apartheid” report by Shakir’s organization, HRW, which in turn is cited by those same 2009 contributors for the same proposition. This creates an endless loop of self-confirmation, which is sure to be an apt description of the October 22nd panel, too.

Also ignored are the many organizations and experts who have publicly challenged the apartheid canard, such as law professors Eugene Kontorovich, Mark Goldfeder, and Avi Bell, as well as world leaders and prominent jurists like former Canadian Justice Minister and human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler, former South African judge Richard Goldstone, Czech President Milos Zeman, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and French President Emmanuel Macron. Barrister Joshua Kern and Anne Herzberg in particular have produced two outstanding, thorough legal analyses on this subject.

Despite the prevalence of contrary views, and the highly controversial nature of the subject, ABILA clearly isn’t interested in allowing dissent. Only those who have openly declared Israel guilty of “systematic oppression of Palestinians” have been platformed, and Israel’s guilt was even predetermined in ABILA’s description of the panel prior to a minor stealth edit following concerned inquiries.

Instead of an intellectually engaging exploration of the law, such a panel is designed as a propaganda exercise, in which Israel, as the modern collective Jew, will be depicted as the source of the greatest contemporary evil, racism. There will be no question that Israel is guilty, leaving perhaps only mild disagreement on exactly how to prosecute the guilty Jewish state and its defenders.

To be clear, the “apartheid” libel against Israel is antisemitic in effect, even if not always in intent. It involves baseless charges, half-truths, double standards, and even openly antisemitic tropes to depict a Jewish state as uniquely illegitimate. The loudest purveyors of the libel are not coy about this, either. Earlier this year, Amnesty USA’s directoradmitted “we are opposed to the idea…that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people.” Ken Roth, until recently the head of HRW, similarly boasted that the “accusation of apartheid” is aimed at “perceptions of Israel’s legitimacy.”

Confronting, analyzing, and debating competing perspectives is a fundamental part of any legal education. Serious legal professionals and academics should not be afraid of differing perspectives and arguments.

Yet, we’ve recently seen law students justify the silencing of Jewish perspectives. A number of Berkeley Law student organizations effectively declared themselves as Jewish-free zones, banning anyone who holds mainstream Jewish beliefs from speaking.

Prominent legal associations shouldn’t be in the business of legitimizing such behavior by entertaining only one side of such a deeply controversial issue. Nor should serious law firms be in the business of sponsoring a one-sided antisemitic propaganda hour. This is especially concerning given that one of those firms, Debevoise & Plimpton, is also a sponsor of one of the Berkeley Law organizations behind the Jewish-free zones. Such bad practices are harmful not only to the Jewish community, but to the credibility of the legal industry as a whole.



 
Meet the artist behind the new Hanukkah postage stamp: Seasonal stamps make every holiday card just that much more festive. But Hanukkah designs are only released every few years — this one will be officially unveiled on Thursday. The design features a vibrant menorah made out of hand-dyed silks, and was assembled using paper cutting techniques. Culture writer Mira Fox spoke with the artist, Jeanette Kuvin Oren, about her lifelong dreams of creating a stamp. Read the story ➤

Joshua Malina on Donald Trump, Mel Gibson, and being Twitter’s most outspoken Jew: You likely know Malina, an actor, for his role on “The West Wing,” or his Torah-themed podcast, or for calling out Hollywood and the Republican Jewish Coalition for not calling out antisemites in their midst. Malina is starring in Nathan Englander’s new play, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” his most Jewish role yet. “If I could only play one role for the rest of my life,” he said, “this would be the one.” Read our interview ➤

But wait, there’s more…
 
Protestors outside George Washington University’s Jewish student center chant “there is only one solution, intifada revolution.”

“Everyone should understand: In 2022, there is no meaningful difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism,” tweeted Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby in response.





 
[ Poor Kanye, being successful in business or having a Jewish manager is a bad thing. Jewish Media, Jewish Media, Jewish Money. Not antisemitic at all ]

Kanye West launched into a fresh tirade against Jewish people during a podcast appearance on Sunday, after being restricted from major social media platforms for similar rants.

The hip-hop star, now known as Ye, spoke on Revolt TV’s “Drink Champs” podcast, hosted by rapper N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN, where he made antisemitic claims regarding Jewish ties to media and wealth.

“You get used to paparazzi taking a picture of you, and you don’t get money off it. You just get used to being screwed by the Jewish media,” West raged, adding that “the Jewish media blocked me out.”

“Jewish people have owned the Black voice. Whether it’s through us wearing the Ralph Lauren shirt, or it’s all of us being signed to a record label, or having a Jewish manager, or being signed to a Jewish basketball team, or doing a movie on a Jewish platform like Disney.”

He also repeated an earlier claim made in an Instagram post that he couldn’t be antisemitic, since black people were descended from Jews because they had the “blood of Christ,” echoing claims made by the Black Hebrew Israelites, which is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On the podcast, West blamed “Jewish Zionists” for news stories revealing that his ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her then-boyfriend, comedian Pete Davidson, had sex in front of a fireplace.

“It’s Jewish Zionists that’s about that life. That’s telling this Christian woman that has four black children to put that out as a message,” he charged.

In another wild claim about Jewish people and wealth, West said that Catholics refused to work on divorce cases, “so the Jewish lawyers came in and were willing to divorce people. That’s how they came into the money.”

Responding to Los Angeles apparel designer Dov Charney’s call for West to visit the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the rapper said Charney should visit Planned Parenthood, calling it “our Holocaust Museum” in reference to comments he has made on abortion.

Charney had printed West’s controversial “White Lives Matter” t-shirts but refused to release them after antisemitic tweets last week in which the rapper threatened to go “Death con 3 on Jewish people.”

“Death con 3” appeared to be a mistaken use of the US military heightened alert status DEFCON 3.

(full article online)

 

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