RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21338/germany-cultural-elites-israel

Fringe activists and their “positions of moral outrage” continue to be funded by the German government, with high visibility platforms to promote their blatant anti-Israel and antisemitic campaigns.

In the face of poisonous propaganda, the Bundestag resolutions calling for an end to German government funding to “organizations or projects that spread antisemitism [or] question Israel’s right to exist” are important. Implementing them and stopping the support via cultural and academic institutions will not “silence” the voices of hate, but at least the German state will no longer be providing them with resources or legitimacy.

On November 22, 2024, at the National Gallery of Berlin, the American photographer and political activist Nan Goldin asked, “Why can’t I speak, Germany?” With apparently no sense of irony, she spoke at a lectern in front of a large audience, with numerous phones pointing at her, at the opening of her retrospective, titled “This will not end well.” The subject of her talk was not her artistic portfolio but rather her political agenda on Israel.

An enthusiastic audience applauded her outrage and indignation over the “genocide” in Gaza and Lebanon, and her immoral equivalence between the Palestinian population after the October 7 atrocities with pogroms against Jews under the Russian Empire. Goldin’s false claim that “antizionism has nothing to do with antisemitism” was followed by loud chants of appreciation and applause.

The one person who could not speak was the National Gallery’s Director, Klaus Biesenbach, who was shouted down when he attempted to distance himself from her statement, while adding the obligatory and obvious defense of Goldin’s right to express herself.

The “Nan Goldin incident” was widely covered in prominent media platforms, including the New York Times and German press, as well as in social media, almost everywhere repeating her false accusations regarding the ostensible silencing of Israel’s critics. Goldin is one of a number of examples (another is Judith Butler) in which Jewish anti-Israel activists are used by Germans as fig-leaves to claim that their agendas should not be labeled as antisemitic.

https://jihadwatch.org/2025/01/in-ireland-today-the-antisemitism-is-so-wide-and-deep-that-one-despairs?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-ireland-today-the-antisemitism-is-so-wide-and-deep-that-one-despairs

The government of Ireland has just announced that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Here is that definition: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” Most of those adopting that definition also point to various examples of different ways in which that antisemitism is expressed.

Such a decision — to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism — is always to be welcomed, but given how antisemitic many Irish, including those at the very top of the government, have shown themselves to be this past year, in truly hair-raising pronouncements by the Irish president, Michael Higgins, the prime minister Simon Harris, the foreign minister Micheal Martin, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland Eamonn Martin, and the head of the Anglican Church in Ireland, Canon David Oxley, it’s hard to see that that adoption of the IHRA will do much good with those people still in office.

Ireland is, said one leader of the Irish Jewish community, the “most antisemitic” of all member states in the EU, and this announcement looks to be more of an attempt to deflect criticism rather than a genuine expression of sympathetic understanding for Jews, a tiny and embattled people fighting a seven-front war, who are now experiencing an increase in antisemitism worldwide that has not been seen since the days of the Nazis. More on what has been going on in Ireland that vitiates its pretense of becoming, if not a supporter of Israel, at least not a relentless and obsessive enemy of both the Jewish state and also of Jews, can be found here: “Ireland Adopts IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Amid Row With Israel,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, January 17, 2025:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/21/australia-is-in-the-grips-of-an-anti-semitic-nightmare/

The standard you walk past, as the famous Australian saying goes, is the standard you accept. Unfortunately for Jewish Australians, the standard set by the Labor government when it comes to anti-Semtism could hardly be any lower.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Australians woke to the news that a Sydney childcare centre had been firebombed and sprayed with anti-Semitic graffiti. Last weekend, two masked figures attempted (and failed) to burn down a synagogue. Theses would once have been significant national events. But not so now, in Anthony Albanese’s Australia. They were merely just the latest of several recent attacks on Jewish property.

In December, Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue, in the prominent and historic Jewish suburb of Ripponlea, was burnt to the ground in possibly the most significant act of anti-Semitism in Australian history. Last week, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, two cars were set alight, many more were graffitied with anti-Semitic slogans, and the former home of Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, was doused in red paint.

Anti-Semitism now pervades Australian society. It began, as most of the world now knows, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, with crowds celebrating Hamas’s atrocities on 7 October 2023. It blossomed into regular, vicious anti-Israel marches, including one mourning the death of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader responsible for the indiscriminate bombing of northern Israel. During that time, protesters have routinely damaged the offices of politicians deemed supportive of Israel – and they’ve done so, for the most part, with impunity. By the time the office of Jewish MP Josh Burns was targeted last June, with vandals deploying an age-old anti-Semitic trope by adorning his photograph with Satanic horns, hardly anyone could claim to be surprised.

https://www.jns.org/new-lawfare-tactic-threatens-all-israelis-who-serve-in-idf/

The specter of her sons and daughters being hauled before foreign courts on war crimes charges has shaken Israel.

The lawfare tactic came to the public’s attention this week with the drama of an Israel Defense Forces reservist on vacation in Brazil being forced to flee the country, aided by the personal intervention of Israel’s foreign minister.

Yuval Vagdani, 21, a soldier in the IDF’s Givati Brigade, found himself in the crosshairs of the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), a Belgium-based NGO that targets Israeli soldiers for legal action.

Its modus operandi is to monitor the social networks of soldiers for posts about their service—for HRF, service in Gaza appears to be prima facie evidence of war crimes—and then to launch a suit in the countries those soldiers visit, typically on holiday.

It signals an aggressive shift in anti-Israel legal strategy, Brooke Goldstein, founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project, a group dedicated to defending Jewish civil rights, told JNS.

“Previous failed efforts to prosecute Israelis for alleged war crimes have focused primarily on political and military leaders rather than rank-and-file soldiers. The move to target lower-level personnel, like the IDF soldier in Brazil, represents a major escalation in legal and advocacy strategies,” she said.

HRF lawsuits started from a handful, rising as of last count to 28 in multiple countries, including Sri Lanka, Thailand, Holland, Ireland and South Africa. It brought two complaints in Argentina this past week. Israelis fear the number of cases will become an avalanche.

“Given Israel’s mandatory military service…this tactic poses a threat to the broader Israeli population, effectively putting all citizens at risk of legal action,” noted Goldstein.

https://jihadwatch.org/2025/01/irish-archbishop-gives-his-imprimatur-to-the-most-grotesque-false-charge-against-israel?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=

Eamon Martin, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, has a spittle-flecked message for Israel:”Irish Catholic Archbishop: Israeli response to Hamas ‘merciless and disproportionate,’” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, January 2, 2025:

“I highlight Gaza not only because of the severe impact of this conflict but because it is emblematic of the failure of the international community to prevent the escalation of conflict and to protect civilians,” said Martin. “This is despite rulings of the International Court of Justice on protection from genocide, on illegal occupation of Territories, and on systemic discrimination.”

Martin has given his imprimatur to the grotesque charge that in Gaza Israel has been committing genocide. The only attempt at “genocide” in this whole business was that displayed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, when its operatives raped, tortured, and murdered Israelis, gouging out eyes and cutting off genitalia of some of its victims before killing them. The IDF has not been committing “genocide” in Gaza. The IDF has facilitated the delivery of 1.1 tons of humanitarian aid, which is not what an army hellbent on genocide would do. Only 13,000 civilians in Gaza, out of a total population of 2.2 million, have died as a result of the war. And it must be repeated: the IDF has made unprecedented efforts to minimize civilian casualties by warning people away from places about to be targeted. Hamas, on the other hand, by embedding its operatives and hiding its weapons in civilian areas, is deliberately trying to maximize civilian casualties.

Martin said that with more sophisticated and powerful weapons being employed in streets, homes, hospitals, and schools, modern warfare had become indistinguishable from terrorism.

“How can tactics, which cause thousands of civilian deaths, alongside the whole scale [sic] destruction of food, water, health services, and other infrastructure that is essential for survival, ever hope to restore justice and rights, resolve differences, respect human dignity, or provide a path for reconciliation and peace?” asserted the archbishop.

More “sophisticated” weapons have allowed the IDF to strike terrorist targets with greater precision, thus minimizing collateral damage. As for Martin’s charge about the “whole scale” (sic) “destruction of food, water, health services and other infrastructure,” every part of this claim is preposterous. The IDF does not “destroy” food and water in Gaza, but supplies both to the Gazans. The IDF cannot, however, be blamed if, once the trucks bringing the aid are inside Gaza, some of that aid is seized by Hamas both for distribution to its own members and for sale to ordinary Gazans. Nor is Israel destroying “health services” — that is, hospitals. It is Hamas, by hiding its weapons and men, sometimes hundreds of them, inside hospitals, that makes not the hospitals in their entirety, but the places where those men and weapons are located, legitimate targets of the IDF.

Martin is the latest Irish religious leader to issue harsh criticism of Israel’s conduct during the Israel-Hamas War, with Anglican Church of Ireland Canon David Oxley claiming on Remembrance Sunday that the IDF had a cruel policy of targeting schools, hospitals, and mosques, and that Israelis saw Jews as a “master race” – a term usually associated with Nazi ideology.

The Catholic Archbishop Eamon Martin is deplorable, but far worse is the openly antisemitic Anglican Church of Ireland Canon David Oxley, who dares to claim that Israelis see Jews as a “master race.” The Jews as the new Nazis? But why then did that “master race” allow the 160,000 Arabs in Israel in 1949 to not only live, but to multiply until there are now two million Arabs in Israel? And why did the Jews who won control of Gaza in the Six-Day War allow the 400,000 Arabs in Gaza in 1967 to increase until there were 1.2 million Arabs in the Strip when Israel withdrew in 2005? And why did Israel allow the 900,000 Arabs who were living in the West Bank in 1967 to become the three million living there today? Surely the “master race” could have prevented all that.

And if the Israelis believe that Jews are the “master race,” as Oxley claims, why are Arabs allowed to serve on Israel’s Supreme Court, to sit in the Knesset, to have their own political parties? Why are those “inferior” Arabs allowed to become doctors and treat Jewish patients? Why does the “master race” allow Arabs to serve side-by-side with Jews in the military? Or let Arabs play on the same sports teams, and in the same orchestras, or to work with Jews in the same offices and factories? Why does the “master race” of Jews in Israel provide medical care to Arabs, and let Arabs provide medical care to Jews? Why do the “master race” Jews allow Arabs to become the heads of Israeli companies, including the largest. bank in Israel? Why does that “master race” make such tremendous efforts to spare the lives of the “inferior” Arabs in Gaza with its elaborate warnings about targeted sites? Perhaps Canon Oxley should look into the Qur’an, where he will discover that it is Muslims, not Jews, who are taught that they are the “best of peoples” and non-Muslims are “the most vile of created beings.”