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ANTI-SEMITISM

The ‘acceptable’ face of racism in Britain As elites wring their hands over a moribund far right, surging middle-class anti-Semitism gets a free pass. Neil Davenport

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/17/the-acceptable-face-of-racism-in-britain/

Former Tory PM David Cameron, aka Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, has gone on the offensive against Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

In an interview with The Times last week, Cameron accused Farage of using ‘inflammatory language’ and promoting ‘divisive policies’. Citing the Reform leader’s claim that Tory leader Rishi Sunak ‘doesn’t understand our culture’ after he left the 80th anniversary D-Day commemorations early, Cameron claimed Farage was deploying ‘dog whistle’ politics designed to appeal, presumably, to Britain’s racist masses. Apparently, Reform-curious, working-class voters are only a Farage quip away from beating up British Asians. (Cameron launched this attack despite Farage making it abundantly clear at the time he made them that his comments had nothing to do with race.)

Cameron’s prejudices about Farage supporters are shared by many among the British political and media class. Times columnist Matthew Parris wrote disparagingly last week of Clacton, where Farage is campaigning to be an MP. Its residents, Parris said, are people who eat ‘bumper packs of crisps’ and drink lager in Wetherspoons (the horror!). These are the supposedly uneducated types who respond all-too-easily to Reform’s so-called dog whistles.

What’s odd is that aside from there being no evidence that Farage was making a racist statement, there is also no evidence that Britain’s working classes are gravitating towards racism or white nationalism. Quite the opposite. The National Front is long gone, and the British National Party is to all intents and purposes defunct, having seen its membership virtually disappear during the early 2010s. The explicitly anti-Islam English Defence League is also considered to be defunct, although founder Tommy Robinson can sometimes draw crowds to his rallies. Put simply, far-right, racist politics is simply not a meaningful force in Britain today.

NO POSTING UNTIL MONDAY JUNE 17

America’s Enemies at Home and Abroad by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20701/america-enemies-home-abroad

Who are these people who love America so much, who are so grateful for the freedoms they can have only in America, that they cannot wait to take them away?

In addition to the Axis of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, which is trying every day to take America down and replace it with their tyrannies, threats from within America appear graver than ever — to our freedom of speech, equal justice under the law, to our children whom we are failing to educate, except to hate America, to our underfunded military and most of all to our internal national security.

The Biden administration, which should be protecting Americans, has instead been putting them at risk – both through allowing an estimated ten million unvetted strangers in through our southern border, including an estimated 1.7 million “gotaways,” about whom nothing at all is known, including how many there are, except that they apparently do not want to be identified.

Meanwhile, more than 85,000 unaccompanied children have been “lost.” They are missing, perhaps subjected to sex trafficking and other forms of slavery, and no one in an administration supposedly so concerned about “humanitarian values” knows who they are, where they are, or has expressed any interest in finding out. Meanwhile, around 45,000 people have flooded in from Communist China – many of whom are groups of men of military age, whose exit visas have presumably been granted by China not for the purpose of a vacation at Disney World.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified earlier his year that “the Chinese Communist Party is working diligently inside the gates to undermine everything it is that we stand for.” Meanwhile, China has been sending spy balloons over America’s most sensitive military sites, and buying up US farmland, often near US military bases.

All these events have been funded, spearheaded and encouraged by the current administration, which has seemingly evaded any effort to slow it down or stop it. Who are these American who are letting the enemy inside the gates?

Why was this anti-Semitic maniac given a slap on the wrist? A knife-wielding man who terrorised a kosher supermarket has been spared jail. The justice system is broken. Georgia Gilholy

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/13/why-was-this-anti-semitic-maniac-given-a-slap-on-the-wrist/

‘Are you okay?’ Those were the words a friend texted me on a drizzly day this January. My safety had not come to their mind by chance, but because a knife-wielding man was on the rampage at a kosher supermarket down the street from my flat in Golders Green, north-west London.

The attacker, later identified as 34-year-old Gabriel Abdullah, demanded that staff at Kay’s kosher supermarket tell him whether the shop’s owners supported ‘Israel or Palestine’. He then returned with a knife. He was valiantly rebuffed by staff with a broom and a shopping trolley until the Shomrim, a Jewish neighbourhood watch force, arrived. Thankfully, no one was injured and Abdullah was arrested by police.

Over the next few months, I was puzzled by the near-total media silence on the incident. Would the press be as apparently indifferent if a far-right white nationalist had attacked a halal butcher’s? Such double standards are now so obvious that they require scant discussion here.

Abdullah has since been charged and sentenced. Incredibly, he has only been convicted of affray and possession of a weapon. This week, GB News, and thus far no one else, reported he had been handed down two suspended sentences at Harrow Crown Court – one for 18 months and a second for 12 months. Both are suspended for two years. He will also be made to attend ‘rehabilitation activities’. Despite threatening the lives of innocent people for being Jewish or for working at a Jewish business, Abdullah has been spared prison.

Unfortunately, this is hardly surprising. There is a lengthy list of violent criminals and terrorists known to the authorities who either spent all of five minutes inside a cell or avoided jail completely. In some cases, they have then gone on to commit horrendous crimes. Take the example of Ali Harbi Ali, the Islamist extremist who murdered Conservative MP David Amess in 2021. Ali had been referred to Prevent, the government’s deradicalisation initiative, seven years before he brutally stabbed Amess. But after a single meeting, Ali was not checked on again.

It seems that criminals are no longer treated as responsible individuals and given their due punishments. The few who are sent to jail find themselves inside semi-lawless enclaves awash with drugs, disorder and radicalisation.

Antisemitic Vandals Deface Homes of Brooklyn Museum’s Jewish Director, Board Members By David Zimmermann

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/antisemitic-vandals-deface-homes-of-brooklyn-museums-jewish-director-board-members/

The homes of the Brooklyn Museum’s Jewish director and board members were defaced Tuesday night by antisemitic vandals, who left a banner at the director’s house that called her a “WHITE SUPREMACIST ZIONIST.”

Social-media posts show the front of Anne Pasternak’s home spray-painted red, with the antisemitic sign in the foreground claiming she “funds genocide” — an apparent reference to the operations Israel is carrying out to eradicate Hamas in Gaza. The words, “Blood on your hands,” could be seen on Pasternak’s front sidewalk as well.

“We are deeply troubled by these horrible acts,” a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Museum told National Review. The museum spokesperson said a police report was filed.

In New York, vandalism is punishable by possible jail time and significant fines, depending on the cost of the damaged property.

Local officials on both sides of the political aisle responded to the incident Wednesday morning, condemning the late-night vandalism.

Lincoln Restler, a Democratic member of the New York City Council, said it was “disgusting” and “despicable.” Restler added that he already spoke with Brooklyn Museum board members, staff, and the NYPD, which is currently investigating the crime. The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment.

Joseph Borelli, the Republican minority leader of the New York City Council, also issued a statement on social media: “Wow. More Kristallnacht behavior from Hamasniks in NYC in 2024. There is no ‘both sides.’ Just savagery. It doesn’t matter how woke the @brooklynmuseum goes, nothing satisfies the bloodlust of the anti-Jew left. Looking forward to the city council’s upcoming debate on this.”

The Brooklyn Museum has been the target of antisemitic demonstrations as recently as last week, when anti-Israel protesters raised a Hamas flag and chanted, “We don’t want no Zionists here.”

In late May, one of the art museum’s outdoor sculptures were vandalized with graffiti. Among the derogatory phrases spray-painted on the yellow OY/YO Statue were “Ur museum kills kids in Palestine!” and “F*** ur bulls**t museum Gaza will be free.”

Notes from the safest place in Europe for Jews Jonathan Tobin

https://www.jns.org/notes-from-the-safest-place-in-europe-for-jews/?_sc=NTAyMDI0NiM3NTAyMg%3D%3D&utm_campaign=Evening+Syndicate+Tuesday+6112024&utm_medium=email&utm_source=brevo

This is a perilous time to be a Jew. The world responded to the greatest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust with a surge of antisemitism and sympathy for those who committed the atrocities of Oct. 7, rather than its victims. Israel’s efforts to eradicate the genocidal terrorists of Hamas who launched that attack have not just been opposed but demonized in a way that enlightened liberal opinion did not condemn the orgy of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction that occurred on that day.

And while Jews everywhere celebrated the heroic rescue of four hostages this past weekend by Israeli security forces, the same mainstream corporate media that has been acting as Hamas’s stenographers throughout the eight months of the current war reacted by emphasizing the deaths of the Palestinians holding them captive.

Yet as bad as the situation has become in the United States, where elite college campuses have become hotbeds of support for Hamas, it is arguably worse in Europe. It is not just a matter of the governments of Western Europe opposing Israel’s military campaign and seeking to prevent the defeat of Hamas in concert with the Biden administration. Spain, Norway and Ireland chose to reward the Palestinians for their terrorism by formally recognizing their fictional statehood. More than that, a sinister red-green alliance of leftists and supporters of political Islam has created a situation in which Jewish communities throughout the continent feel themselves under siege. Many are choosing not to wear religious markers such as kippahs and Stars of David, and still others have taken off the mezuzahs once affixed to their homes.

But not in Hungary.

Spend a week in that Eastern European country, as I just did, and the one thing you can count on is that you won’t see its landmarks being the site of mass demonstrations of supporters of jihad and Hamas terror, as is the case elsewhere, including the United States. That is something that would be unimaginable right now in America, but the reason is that the Hungarian government has banned pro-Hamas demonstrations. They’ve deemed it an open expression of antisemitism and a threat to public order. Their rationale is to treat pro-Hamas activism as morally equivalent to open advocacy for Nazism, which in Hungary and most other places in Europe is illegal.

Belgium’s Extremely Alarming Antisemitism by Alain Destexhe

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20692/belgium-antisemitism

What is striking about the survey is that, for every question, anti-Semitic prejudice is much higher in Brussels than at national level. It happens that the population of the capital of Belgium and the EU is between 30% and 40% Muslim.

In the country as a whole, 43% of Muslims think that Belgian Jews are not really Belgians like the other inhabitants of Belgium.

These figures are staggering. Many other signals testify to the sad reality that Jews are no longer safe in Brussels.

The compulsory Holocaust curriculum has not been taught in most Brussels schools for a long time now; teachers are afraid to broach the subject in classes where the majority of the pupils are Muslim.

The rise in anti-Semitism, appears, in fact, to coincide with the growth in Muslim immigration, which accelerated from 2000 onwards. The political world behaved as if they were the three monkeys: did not see, did not hear, did not speak. At Holocaust commemorations, the authorities repeat with their hands over their hearts that anti-Semitism has no place in Belgium, while passively witnessing its rise without ever acknowledging it.

The Muslim vote has become essential to the success of the left-wing parties, whose electoral weight in Brussels, as a result of immigration, has risen in 20 years, from 34% to 54%. Compared to the now hundreds of thousands of Muslim votes, those of the 30,000 Jews in Belgium, a genuine minority, do not carry much weight. Over the past 20 years, some of us have tried in vain to draw attention to this serious trend, which neither the media nor the political world has been willing to see.

The fate of Belgian Jews seems to be sealed. These testimonies are worth every analysis. Belgium is gradually becoming free of Jews — Judenrein — while joyfully and conscientiously celebrating the high mass of a highly racist multiculturalism.

A recent survey has attempted to quantify what Belgians feel towards Jews, a small minority representing 0.3% of the country’s population.

According to an IPSOS poll, 14% of Belgians express an aversion to Jews, twice as many as the French. This figure rises to 22% in Brussels, the capital, which is also the capital of European Union, where 11% of the population have sympathy for Hamas.

A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing By James Kirchick

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/27/opinion/publishing-literary-antisemitism.html

This month, an account on X with the handle @moyurireads and 360 followers published a link to a color-coded spreadsheet classifying nearly 200 writers according to their views on the “genocide” in Gaza. Titled “Is Your Fav Author a Zionist?,” it reads like a cross between Tiger Beat and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The novelist Emily St. John Mandel, the author of “Station Eleven” and “Sea of Tranquility,” earned a red “pro-Israel/Zionist” classification because, according to the list’s creator, she “travels to Israel frequently talks favorably about it.” Simply for posting a link to the Israeli chapter of the Red Cross, the novelist Kristin Hannah was deemed a “Zionist,” as was the author Gabrielle Zevin for delivering a book talk to Hadassah, a Jewish women’s organization. Needless to say, the creator of the list — whose post on X announcing it garnered over a million views within a few days — encourages readers to boycott any works produced by “Zionists.”

The spreadsheet is but the crudest example of the virulently anti-Israel — and increasingly antisemitic — sentiment that has been coursing through the literary world since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7. Much of it revolves around the charge of genocide and seeks to punish Zionists and anyone else who refuses to explicitly denounce the Jewish state for allegedly committing said crime. Since a large majority of American Jews (80 percent of whom, according to a 2020 poll, said that caring about Israel is an important or essential part of their Judaism) are Zionists, to accuse all Zionists of complicity in genocide is to anathematize a core component of Jewish identity.

Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel. This phenomenon has been unfolding in progressive spaces (academia, politics, cultural organizations) for quite some time. That it has now hit the rarefied, highbrow realm of publishing — where Jewish Americans have made enormous contributions and the vitality of which depends on intellectual pluralism and free expression — is particularly alarming.

As is always and everywhere the case, this growing antisemitism is concomitant with a rising illiberalism. Rarely, if ever, do writers express unanimity on a contentious political issue. We’re a naturally argumentative bunch who — at least in theory — answer only to our own consciences.

To compel them to express support or disapproval for a cause is one of the cruelest things a society can do to writers, whose role is to tell society what they believe, regardless of how popular the message may be. The drawing up of lists, in particular, is a tactic with a long and ignominious history, employed by the enemies of literature — and liberty — on both the left and the right. But the problem goes much deeper than a tyro blacklist targeting “Zionists.”

London’s Jews are fighting back against the bigots The anti-Israel mob failed to cancel a film screening about the horrors of 7 October. James Heartfield

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/24/londons-jews-are-fighting-back-against-the-bigots/

On Thursday evening, over 1,500 members of London’s Jewish community and their allies chased off an anti-Israel protest outside the Phoenix cinema in East Finchley, north London.

The anti-Israel protest, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, was prompted by the Phoenix’s decision to show a film from Seret, the UK-Israeli film festival. The film in question, Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre, documents the Hamas attack on 7 October last year, in which hundreds of music fans were slaughtered.

The protest had been building up a head of steam for several weeks. Earlier this month, a group called Artists for Palestine UK called for the Phoenix, and several Everyman cinemas, to boycott Seret, claiming that it was ‘co-sponsored by the Israeli government’ and thus part of Israel’s ‘broader art-washing strategy’. On Wednesday night, pro-Palestine protesters echoed these claims when they vandalised the Phoenix cinema and scrawled ‘say no to art-washing’ across its entrance.

It also emerged on Thursday that two of the Phoenix’s big-name patrons, directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, resigned from its board in a huff over its decision to show films from Seret.

It certainly looked like it was going to be a tough night for the Phoenix. Organisers of the protest against the screening urged the anti-Israel mob to ‘BRING NOISE! Drums, bells, pots and pans, whistles…’. But in the event, the protesters were drowned out by East Finchley’s Jewish community.

Local Jews and their allies were outraged by the attack on the Phoenix. And so that evening, they rallied to the defence of the cinema. By 6.30pm, the Phoenix’s defenders were already crammed on to the cinema side of the street. Opposite them, in an over-large police pen, three lonely anti-Israel protesters were left to rattle around by themselves.

As the number of the Phoenix’s defenders became too many to contain on the pavement, they started spilling over on to the street. When 40-or-so anti-Israel protesters walked up from the Underground, they were booed and barracked by East Finchley’s Jewish community.

All the Darkness They Cannot See: The Tunnel Vision That Drives Faculty Antisemitism: Andrew Pessin

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/371559/all-the-darkness-they-cannot-see-the-tunnel-vision-that-drives-faculty-antisemitism/

All these faculty members can see are Israeli offenses, only Israeli offenses, out of their context, which they see as aggressions and describe using such inflammatory language as “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacy.”

After Oct. 7 I didn’t think I could be more shocked than by seeing American campuses explode in support rather than condemnation of that barbaric massacre. I was wrong. Now after seven months of open season on Jews both rhetorically and physically, culminating in the encampments on well over 100 campuses, I find myself struggling not to think of the disastrous years 70 C.E., 1492, and 1939, alongside America of 2024. 

Oddly, though, even though the encampments break so many campus rules and often local laws, my starting point is actually to be sympathetic to them. I think about how I would act, say, during the early 1940s, when I learned that a genocide against the Jewish people was occurring and people were not paying attention. Wouldn’t I protest, loudly? Disrupt “business as normal”? Maybe even break a few rules or laws? I hope that I would. 

The problem, then, isn’t the mayhem, per se (though it’s appropriately against the rules and must be — is long overdue for being —punished). It runs deeper, rooted in the academy itself: It’s that these people falsely believe a genocide is occurring (when it clearly isn’t), and misidentify the true genocidal agent (as we’ll see). More generally, it’s that they have adopted an entire narrative that is one-sided, oversimplified, ignorant of history, often counter to the facts, mistaken about who are the good guys and the bad, and driven, ultimately, by hatred and bigotry—and that licenses the outrageously immoral violence of Oct. 7.

A painful glimpse of all this may be found in a revealing statement recently issued by some 90 faculty and staff at Connecticut College, constituting almost half the fulltime faculty at this typical liberal arts college, in “solidarity” with the encampments. Much is objectionable in it; but we will look only at one sentence: 

“We also stand in solidarity with Israeli organizations and activists who oppose Israeli apartheid and Jewish supremacy …”