Obama Calls For Confrontation of Anti-Semitism

President named Ambassador for Humanity by USC Shoah Foundation

By Hannah Dreyfus|May 8, 2014 2:31 PM in tabletmag.com  LINK HERE

President Barack Obama spoke about the need for ”confronting a rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world” in at the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation on Wednesday night, JTA reports. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who created the the Shoah Foundation, presented Obama with the Ambassador for Humanity award at the event, which was emceed by Conan O’Brien.

“We see attacks on Jews in the streets of major Western cities, public places marred by swastikas,” the U.S. leader said. “From some foreign governments we hear the worst kind of anti-Semitic scapegoating.”

The president also spoke out in support of the state of Israel, saying it’s “up to us to speak out against rhetoric that threatens the existence of the Jewish homeland and to sustain America’s unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”

The award raised $4 million to help the foundation compile video testimonies of 52,000 Holocaust survivors, liberators, and other witnesses. “The purpose of memory is not simply to preserve the past, it is to protect the future,” Obama said about the video testimonials. ....LINK HERE....

More from SJP Vassar - it is "alright" to republish articles from antisemitic White Nationalists

Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine justified their publication of a link from the Occidental Quarterly on their Facebook page as well.

This is a screencap of the discussion:

"If the idea is alright, who cares where they come from?" Would they have the same response if they found out a supporter of Israel had links to racist sites on his or her blog? I doubt it - it would be used as a way to characterize that person also as a racist.

What is wrong with them?

Pro-Palestinian Anti-Semitism at Vassar

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Petra Marquardt Bigman

In brandeiscenter.com blogs  LINK

Vassar College, which describes itself as “a highly selective, residential, coeducational liberal arts college,” has recently attracted a lot of attention because of the energetic activism of so-called “pro-Palestinian” groups like Vassar’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) who were apparently supportedby dozens of faculty members.  As I noted in a related post a few weeks ago, the anti-Zionist – and sometimes also anti-Semitic – website Mondoweiss seemed to view the activism at Vassar as a kind of bellwether indicating victory in the “BDS war on campus.” By now, Mondoweiss has published another similarly triumphant report on a Vassar event with the movement’s “rock stars” Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal; according to an announcement on Facebook, the event was co-sponsored by Jewish Studies and the departments of English, Political Science, Religion, Geography, and Sociology.

Before addressing subsequent developments, it is useful to recall that the first Mondoweiss report included the acknowledgement that “SJP students can be obnoxious,” though it also suggested that they should be compared to “abolitionists during slavery” who were “dedicated to a principle worth living and dying for.” However, if this comparison is at all justified, it is arguably in the sense that the goal of “pro-Palestinian” activism is the abolition of the world’s only Jewish state – and it is hardly surprising that the pursuit of this goal indeed often results in undeniably “obnoxious,” i.e. anti-Semitic, conduct.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

What Is Going on at Vassar College?

Jonathan Marks | @marksjo105.08.2014 - 4:45 PM  Commentary on line LINK

Vassar has recently distinguished itself in at least two ways. First, it is one of a tiny group of colleges whose faculty supported the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israel in substantial numbers. Thirty-nine faculty members signed a letter that sang the praises of the boycott-Israel movement. Second, as I have written here before, Vassar was the venue for an open forum at which two professors were vilified for leading a trip to Israel and at which Jewish students who spoke up were heckled. William Jacobson has provided extensive coverage of the situation at Vassar and was there to speak earlier this week.

In a blog entry describing reactions to Jacobson’s speech, Jewish studies professor Rebecca Lesses draws attention to a series of posts by Vassar’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, the most shocking of which includes this language: “Of course, mainstream media hasbarats have been around for decades, as have ‘hasbaratchiks,’ fifth-columns in foreign governments who subvert national policies to serve Israel.” The author of the linked article, Greg Felton, also wrote a book entitled The Host and the Parasite: How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America. Lesses observes that theOccidental Quarterly, on which the SJP draws, is an anti-Semitic magazine. While I hesitate to take the word of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which she cites, for it, a look through the Occidental Quarterly, which includes an article about libertarianism as a creed advanced by Jewish intellectuals to advance Jewish “group evolutionary interests,” tends to support the charge.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

SJP Vassar and White Nationalism

NOTE: the following is taken from the excellent blog: Mystical Politics at: 

LINK HERE

Last night I tweeted to @SJPVassar about their use of an article from the Occidental Quarterly (seeprevious post), and this is the response I got.

I didn't think it was possible to prove that there exist links (intellectual, political) between at least part of the pro-BDS movement and far right antisemitism and white nationalism, but here it is. I wonder who is writing the tweets for SJP Vassar. If someone is really antiracist, as they claim to be, they would stay far, far away from even a hint of connection to the organized racist and antisemitic far right. 

And it's not accidental - the SJP Vassar Tumblr just posted from another white nationalist on Tumblr.

This is the Tumblr blog of "neonationalist":

His slogan? "I have no white guilt."

UCLA Muslim Newsmag Targets Jewish Student

Paper's editorial board calls on Jewish student to disassociate from Hasbara Fellowships which "actively (contributes) to violence against Muslims."

5.8.2014

 Daniel Mael  Truth Revolt  www.truthrevolt.org 

The editorial board of Al-Talib, the Muslim Newsmagazine at UCLA, called onJewish student Avinoam Baral to disassociate himself from the pro-Israel program Hasbara Fellowships due to the group's alleged Islamophobia. Al-Talib alleged that the Jewish program "actively (contributes) to violence against Muslims" and asked that Baral, who is a candidate for Internal Vice President in upcoming UCLA student elections, separate himself from the program. 

The newsmagazine asked that Baral "publicly distance himself from the organization Hasbara Fellowships because of its association with the production and dissemination of Islamophobic documentaries across the United States. Unless Baral distances himself from an organization that disseminates Islamophobia, ties to anti-Muslim networks will remain accepted in campus life and politics."

TruthRevolt asked Ibrahim Hooper, the Communications Director for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), whether or not the organization approved of the editorial's request, to which Hooper replied, "Your apparent hostility to Islam and Muslims seems to have you grasping at straws."

As TruthRevolt reported on Wednesday evening, a number candidates for UCLA student government were asked to sign an "ethics statement" prohibiting trips to Israel with Hasbara Fellowships, AIPAC and the ADL. StandWithUs Executive Director Roz Rothstein labeled the attempt "bigoted" and Israel on Campus Coalition Executive Director Jacob Baime hoped that students on campus would "not be intimidated by closed-minded zealots with their heads in the sand."Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

The Next Step in the Campus War on Jews

from Commentary Jonathan S. Tobin May7, 2014

In recent months, those advocating boycotts of Israel have lost a series of votes on college campuses around the country. Though the political culture of academia swings hard to the left with faculty members often tilting the discussion about the Middle East against Israel, a critical mass of fair minded students still exist at most institutions of higher learning. Part of that stems from the fact that some students—especially Jews—have been to Israel on trips where they learn the other side of the story from the pro-Palestinian propaganda that is often shoved down their throats in classes or at college forums. So rather than merely accept the lies about Israel being an “apartheid” state they can lean on their own experiences and speak about the equal rights that are held by all people in the Jewish state or discuss the complex questions about the West Bank in terms other than that of an “occupation.”

That’s a problem for the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) crowd, but they’ve come up with an effective answer to it: start a campaign seeking to stigmatize those who take trips to Israel sponsored by Jewish organizations. That’s what’s happening at UCLA where an election has promoted a debate over whether it is ethical for candidates for student offices to have been to Israel on a visit sponsored by a Jewish organization. This specious issue was raised in an article published in the student newspaper the Daily Bruin last week by two members of Students for Justice for Palestine, an anti-Zionist group. It was followed by an attempt to get the student government to enact a ban on its members going to the Middle East with pro-Israel groups. That failed but, as the Daily Bruin also reported, a majority of candidates for student government positions have now signed a pledged not to take such trips. 

Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Holocaust Denial is Anti Semitism

Hamas to kids: Shoot all the Jews

So, How do you fight against kids who grew up with this?

5-May-14: The making of a martyr: it takes more than a village

"The funeral of the remains of the martyr who gave his soul for the struggle of a nation that strives for freedom" (that's a direct quote) received significant coverage on the government-controlled official Palestinian Authority news outlet, PA Television, this past Wednesday, April 30, 2014.

The televised [see brief YouTube extracts here and here] and widely photographed (see below) event was made possible, first, byIsrael's incomprehensible handing over last week of the decomposed remains of Izz Al-Din Al-Masri. He was the human bomb whose explosion caused a massacre in the center of Jerusalem on August 9, 2001.

The savagery celebrated by the Palestinian Arab crowd cost 15 human lives, 8 of them children, all of them Jews. One was our daughter Malki, 15.

The woman who set up the massacre and selected the site - the Sbarro pizza store at the corner of Jaffa Road and King George Avenue in the commercial heart of Jerusalem - has gone on record proudly asserting that she sought a target where she and the human bomb could murder a large number of (a) religious Jews and (b) religious Jewish children. (A sixteenth victim, a young mother, has been left in a comatose state for more than a dozen years.)

Wednesday's funeral celebration took place in the northern Samarian town of Tubas. Personages representing both the Mahmoud Abbas-controlled PA and the Hamas terror organization took part. A PA National Security Forces military vehicle provided transport for the human bomb's remains. The PA military adorned the funeral procession, and the PA-appointed governor of Tubas, Rabih Al-Khandaqji, took part and eulogized al-Masri and his barbarism. So did the PA-appointed mayor of the human bomb's town.

Palestinian Media Watch, an indispensable source for anyone wanting to know what the Palestinian Arabs here from their leaders when they think no one else is listening, this afternoon published a summary of the media coverage. Some key statements:  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Hamas's Abu Marzouk says recognizing Israel a 'red line'

NOTE: Okay, so noted. You don't recognize Israel, let alone the Jewish State. Thanks for sharing. Read on...

“This is a red line that cannot be crossed,” said the 63-year-old Hamas leader who played a pivotal role in achieving the reconciliation deal with Fatah on April 23.

Abu Marzouk’s remarks come as Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meet in Qatar. The Hamas leader added that the Quartet’s requirement that Hamas recognize Israel “do not concern us one bit.”

“We would have spared ourselves seven years of misery under the siege and two wars in 2008 and 2012 had we wanted to recognize Israel,” he said.

Abbas said April 26 that a unity government would recognize Israel, but this was not agreed upon with Hamas, according to Abu Marzouk, who said that Abbas “alone is responsible for his words.” He also reiterated Hamas’ refusal to disarm the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, despite requests by Fatah to do so as part of the reconciliation.

“Hamas’ position in this regard is clear, and it will not allow any tampering with the brigades’ armament under any circumstances,” said the Hamas deputy leader. Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/05/interview-abu-marzouk-hamas-israel-fatah-reconciliation.html##ixzz30skvjIJ6

• far right
• Dieudonné M'bala M'bala
• Belgium

Europe

'Anti-Semitic hatefest' with Dieudonné banned in Brussels

 
 
 
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© afp

Text by FRANCE 24 

Latest update : 2014-05-04

Citing security risks, a Brussels mayor banned a gathering of far-right figures – including controversial French comic Dieudonné (pictured) – planned for Sunday after some Jewish groups called the meeting an "anti-Semitic hatefest".

The mayor of the Brussels district of Anderlecht banned both the meeting and any street protests planned in connection with it, the Belga news agency reported.

Organisers of the so-called "European Dissidents' Congress" had kept its venue secret until the last moment to try to avoid a ban. The meeting aimed to bring together a string of controversial far-right figures that included comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, who has faced repeated convictions for anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and incitement to racial hatred in France.

The Belgian League against anti-Semitism, LBCA, on Friday filed a complaint before the Brussels prosecutor against what it warned would be "a day of hate, that would serve as a platform for the worst gathering of anti-Semite authors, theorists and propagandists that our country has seen since the end of World War II".

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust studies and human rights, rallied behind the calls for a ban.

"The fact that this hatefest is to be held in Brussels, the capital of Europe, the seat of its Parliament ... is a threat to democracy reminiscent of the 1920s Weimar Republic, which brought Europe to the Nazi abyss," the centre's director for international relations, Shimon Samuels, said in a statement.

The leader of the "Debout Les Belges!" (Rise up, Belgians!) group, far-right lawmaker Laurent Louis, said the event would go on despite the ban.

"Our guests have confirmed they will be coming, and in any event – ban or no ban – you can meet them and spend an unforgettable day," Louis wrote on his Facebook page.

"Do not give in to pressure and come with your families, in calm and good spirits," he wrote.

Please CLICK HERE for source article

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

BDS movement employing guerrilla tactics

San Diego Jewish World By Alex Joffe posted 4.30.14

NOTE: BDS is "winning" because this is all students hear day in and day out. And this is all one hears growing up in Europe, Latin and South America. The long game appears to be one of spreading anti-Semitic, anti-Israel propaganda. Integrity and truth don't factor into the equation.

Alex Joffe

NEW YORK — April saw the focus of BDS activities pivot back to academia. It is no coincidence that Passover and Easter were celebrated in April; indeed, the timing of BDS resolutions in student government settings has long centered around holidays when attention, presumably wanes.

Analysis: A series of BDS proposals were presented to student governments at North American universities in April. These were accompanied by various demonstrations and guerilla theatrics. At Cornell University a BDS resolution was presented to the student assembly by the local branch of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The resolution was presented at the last minute as ‘new business’ and as not listed on the original assembly agenda but only later on a revised version. This provided less than 48 hours notice to the Cornell community that a BDS resolution was to be debated. The timing of the resolution was designed to both avoid public notice and minimize the involvement of Jewish students, since the initial debate was scheduled only days before Passover. Had the resolution not been noticed, and a debate not held, it would have passed and been subject to a formal vote a week later, in the middle of Passover. A debate was held at the initial meeting, however, and the proposal was tabled indefinitely by a large margin.

The SJP, however, claimed that the defeat was undemocratic and called for a protest at the student union the following week. The call appeared to threaten a takeover of university premises of the sort that occurred recently at the University of Michigan. A small number of protestors appeared and at the regular student assembly meeting, the session was suspended and SJP supporters were given two hours to vent against Israel and the student government process. The incident typifies the BDS strategy of secrecy and ambush, designed to circumvent public scrutiny of BDS proposals and to minimize the involvement of Jewish student by scheduling debates in conflict with the Jewish religious calendar. This latter strategy was also telegraphed by the SJP’s called for a ‘National Day of Action’ on behalf of BDS proposals during Passover.

The Cornell incident also illustrates the growing tactic of declaring BDS defeats as anti-democratic, and to threaten protests and takeovers of facilities. At other institutions, BDS resolutions were usually defeated when opponents had sufficient time to organize. At San Diego State University a BDS resolution was soundly defeated after five and a half hours of debate. A similar resolution was also defeated at the University of California at Santa Barbara. A resolution was narrowly approved, however, at the University of California at Riverside in a closed vote. At Riverside, a campus with a long record of anti-Israel and antisemitic activity, a pro-BDS resolution was adopted last year, then overturned, and has now been reinstated. A BDS proposal at the University of New Mexico was defeated. A BDS proposal is also making its way through the student government at the University of Washington.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Jewish students to university administrators: time to stop hiding

By Tammi Rossman-Benjamin/JNS.org

As soon as an African American student at San Jose State University who was racially harassed and bullied by his dormitory roommates came forward, university, county, and state officials began an investigation. Within days, prosecutors labeled it a hate crime, battery charges were filed against three of the roommates, and the university had suspended them. Within weeks, California State Assembly Speaker John Perez announced the creation of a Select Committee on Campus Climate, and its first task was to look into this incident and find a way to prevent others like it.

When a white male threw a beer at Trinity College sophomore Juan Hernandez and yelled, “Get off our campus,” Trinity launched an investigation and charges were brought against the perpetrator. When anti-gay remarks were written on message boards that hang on dorm-room doors, Elizabethtown College began an investigation, engaged the FBI, and disciplinary action was taken.

Compare that to the situation for Jewish students. Over the last several years, Jewish students on campuses across the country have been physically, emotionally, and intellectually harassed, intimidated, threatened, and bullied, not only by their fellow students but also by some of their professors.   Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

RELATED!  CLICK HERE

RELATED!  Winnipeg shul drops speaker who allowed campus ‘apartheid’ week Read more: http://www.jta.org/2014/05/02/default/winnipeg-shul-drops-speaker-who-allowed-campus-apartheid-week#ixzz30aZGV7Vi

Venezuelan Jewish Leader Says Anti-Semitism Has ‘Exploded’ in Recent Years in Latin America

the Algemeiner May 1, 2014

NOTE: I've been worried about the rising Latin and South American anti semitism for years. This article just adds to my worries. Once again we're losing a propaganda and media war. Will Aliyah be the only answer?

Sammy Eppel, activist and director of The Commission for Human Rights at B’nai B’rith Venezuela, said on Monday that anti-Semitism in Latin America has significantly increased in recent years.

“The problem is that there is big damage that has been done in the last 12, 10  years,” he said. “I was born in Venezuela and I lived there all my life and I never felt anti-Semitism from anybody… we were never discriminated and all of a sudden in 2004, it explodes.”

Eppel made his comments as a panelist at a special conference held at the United Nations in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In 2006, he said, the Venezuelan Jewish community had to open an office and hire five professionals to monitor anti-Semitism in government and government-sponsored media.

In April 2011, while former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was in Cuba undergoing treatment for various health problems, a correspondent for Venezuela’s national radio, Radio Nacional de Venezuela, did a series of programs promoting theProtocols of the Elders of Zion. The book, which is the second most printed publication in the Arab world after the Koran, describes a popular anti-Semitic notion that the Jewish people are planning global domination. The book is also available at book fairs in Venezuela promoted by the government, Eppel added.

Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

2,495 Israelis Killed in Terrorist Attacks Since 1948

The National Insurance Institute announces figures ahead of Memorial Day, which begins Sunday night.

By Yosef Berger in Israel National News 

In advance of Memorial Day, which will take place next Monday, the National InsuranceInstitute (NII) announced Thursday that 2,495 Israelis had been killed in terror attacks since the establishment of the State.

Two people were killed in attacks last year. Since 2000, 996 people have been killed in terror attacks.

In addition to the victims themselves, terror attacks have turned 2,853 Israelis into orphans, with 99 of them losing both parents in the attack. There were also 978 widows, and currently there are 800 parents alive who have a least one child killed in a terror attack.

NII head Yehoshua Mor-Yosef said that the NII sees assisting terror victims injured in attacks, and their families, as among its most importantjobs. The NII also assists the families of those killed in attacks, and works to preserve their memories. In 2013, the NII paid out NIS 453 million in benefits to victims and their families, he said.

On Sunday, for the fifth year, the State will conduct a special memorialceremony dedicated to the victims of terror. The ceremony will be held in the Knesset, at 8 PM Sunday night. Some 800 people – family members, representatives of organizations that help families of victims, and others – will participate in the event. An official State ceremony will be held Monday at 1 PM. The event will be attended by the Prime Minister, the President, the Speaker of the Knesset, the IDF Chief of Staff, the Director of the National Insurance Institute, and the President of the High Court. Please CLICK HERE for the link

Opinion: International Community Criminally Negligent on Terror Against Israel

This article was first published by The Gatestone Institute. Author Richard Kemp spent most of his 30-year career in the British Army fighting terrorism and insurgency and was involved in the direction of national policy at the highest level.

British terrorism expert Col. Richard Kemp blames the international community for tolerating endless rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

There is the criminal failure of the international community, as both accomplice and accessory before the fact, to make any meaningful effort to prevent endless salvoes of terrorist rocket attacks against Israeli civilians for over nine years.

As we saw with the Iranian arms shipment aboard the Klos-C last month, Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism continues unabated — even as the international community is rehabilitating its extremist regime.

Three hundred and thirty two drone attacks against Al Qaida and Taliban targets on Pakistani territory since 2005 demonstrate U.S. President Barack Obama’s strong resolve against terrorists that threaten the United States. Only last week, the latest wave of air strikes launched or enabled by his government against Al Qaida networks in Yemen killed 55 suspected extremists, possibly including master bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri.

Of course no one expects the U.S. to send drones in reply to the news that thePalestinian Authority [PA], upon which he has lavished billions of dollars and thousands of hours of diplomacy, was going into business with Hamas, which the United States has branded a terrorist organization.

EU Response to Fatah-Hamas Deal ‘Treacherous’

But one could hope for something more forceful from Washington than State Department spokesman Jen Psaki’s weak and vacillating response in which she attempted to take the heat off Hamas and the PA by taking a gratuitous dig at Israel. “There have been unhelpful steps from both sides throughout this process,” she said.

If the US response was feeble, the EU’s was treacherous.

Like America and several other countries, the EU designates Hamas as a terrorist organization. Yet the spokesman for Catherine Ashton, EU foreign affairs head, actually welcomed the proposal to bring Hamas into the PA.

Though shameful, this is far from surprising. It is part of a lengthy pattern of witting or unwitting EU encouragement of Middle Eastern terrorism.

The EU has contributed its taxpayers’ money to paying the salaries of convicted Palestinian terrorists via unconditional donations to the PA amounting to billions of dollars since 1994. Some of this money has also been spent on school textbooks, television programs and other PA propaganda that incite hatred and terrorism against Israel.

Ashton and the EU have called repeatedly for an end to the Israeli-Egyptian security operation on land and sea around Gaza. The operation is designed to prevent predominantly Iranian-supplied munitions and materiel for terrorism from entering the Gaza Strip, and to stop Gaza terrorists and weapons moving to attack Israeli or Egyptian targets.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

The Palestinians and the Holocaust

the Algemeiner April 27, 2014 Petra Marquardt-Bigman

NOTE: Another fabulous article from Petra. A MUST READ! 

In the past few weeks, several reports highlighted the vitriolic backlash that followed a visit by a group of Palestinian students to Auschwitz at the end of March. The controversial visit – apparently the first of its kind – was organized as part of a joint program on Reconciliation and Conflict Resolution with the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and was led by Al-Quds University professor Mohammed S. Dajani.

The media reports on this visit leave little doubt that Professor Dajani reacted to the abuse and threats directed at him with admirable courage and integrity; it is also clear that he greatly inspired the students who participated in this trip. Moreover, the organizers of this program obviously had only the best of intentions. Yet, it is arguably deplorable that nobody seems to have made an effort to use this opportunity to teach the Palestinian students about the collaboration of Haj Amin al-Husseini with the Nazis. As one of the Palestinian students who visited Auschwitz reportedly noted afterwards: “It is a strange thing for a Palestinian to go to a Nazi death camp. But I would recommend the trip.”

Quite obviously, this student remained completely unaware that when Palestinians visit a Nazi death camp, they have no reason to feel like detached spectators for whom it is somewhat “strange” to come. On the contrary, when Palestinians visit a Nazi death camp, they are following in the footsteps of the man who is nowadays sometimes referred to as “Hitler’s mufti” and they have the chance to understand what this Palestinian ally of the Nazis saw and what he envisaged for the Middle East after the Nazi victory he hoped for. Please CLICK HERE to keep reading