THIS WEEK’S GLOBAL ANTISEMITISM REPORT
A machete-wielding man menaced passersby outside a Jewish school in Lakewood, New Jersey, and Jews were verbally harassed on the street by a group of juveniles in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Police are investigating a hit-and-run in Brooklyn, New York as a possible hate crime, after a driver accelerated into a Jewish man in a crosswalk. In Shreveport, Louisiana, an antisemitic banner reading “Jews Own & Control All Media” was hung from an Interstate 20 overpass.
In Ermreuth, Germany, a vandal smashed the window of a synagogue and tried to start a fire. While in London, England, a man asked a woman “Are you Jewish?” and attempted to punch her, and a robbery suspect reportedly yelled “Jews don’t give me a job, I have a gun” before holding up a nearby shop.
In Thessaloniki, Greece, a second Holocaust memorial in as many weeks, was defaced with Nazi symbols, and a shuttle driver at the Orcières-Merlette ski resort in the French Alps was arrested after threatening to attack and kill Israeli tourists.
A new study found that TikTok users are exposed to Nazi content after just 75 minutes on the app, even without seeking it out. A group of French intellectuals are defending prominent Jewish historian Benjamin Stora, who was the target of an antisemitic diatribe in an Algerian government-backed newspaper.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates is adding Holocaust studies to its national school curricula, and U.S. Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is meeting with leaders of the U.S. House Bipartisan Taskforce for Combating Antisemitism, ahead of travel to Germany and Poland later this month for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
This week’s global antisemitism report highlights 35 new media reports of antisemitic incidents. The total includes 21 (60.0%) from the far-right, 0 (0.0%) from the far-left, 5 (14.3%) with Islamist motivations, and 9 (25.7%) unidentifiable in nature.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
UNITED STATES
JEWISH PITTSBURGHERS HARASSED IN GREENFIELD
By TOBY TABACHNICK
A group of juveniles harassed Jewish community members in the Greenfield neighborhood, asking if they are “fake Jews” and swearing at them, according to Shawn Brokos, director of community security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. Two separate incidents were reported to the police, but because the suspects are juveniles, charging them with crimes is “challenging,” Brokos said. Nonetheless, she added, it is crucial to report these types of incidents to law enforcement.
ANTISEMITIC BANNER APPEARS ON I-20 OVERPASS IN LOUISIANA
By DOUG WARNER
From flyers scattered across Shreveport/Bossier City neighborhoods to now a banner. And one local man wasn’t about to let its message of hate fly freely over an interstate in Shreveport. It was not the kind of welcome sign he was expecting to see over the weekend. On the heels of antisemitic flyers popping up in neighborhoods on both sides of the Red River, a large banner spewing hate toward those in the Jewish community appeared Saturday in a very high-profile area. Above Interstate 20. It’s unknown how long it had been out there hanging from the Fairfield Avenue overpass when the Shreveport man saw it, took the next exit, came back and tore it down. KSLA News 12′s Doug Warner caught up with him just moments before he tossed it into a Dumpster. The person responsible for the banner blames the many woes of the world on the Jewish faith.
VIDEO SHOWS NYC DRIVER RUN MAN DOWN IN CROSSWALK IN POSSIBLE HATE CRIME: NYPD
By PEI-SZE CHENG
A violent hit-and-run in Brooklyn is being investigated as a possible hate crime, after police said video showed a driver run down a Jewish man in a crosswalk and then take off. Shocking surveillance footage showed the moment a car slammed into the 55-year-old man, who is Hasidic, as he was crossing at Albany Avenue and Union Street in Crown Heights just after 5 p.m. Friday, police said. In the video, the car is seen turning at the intersection, then accelerating right into the victim. The man fell to the ground and broke his leg, but is recovering. The driver immediately took off from the scene, and police are trying to determine if the driver smashed into him on purpose. If they determine that to be the case, the driver could face hate crime charges. “If it was not intentional I would be very surprised because he literally swerves into him at the end.” An investigation is ongoing.
NEO-NAZI FIGHT CLUBS DUPE TRI-CITIES, WA EVENT CENTER INTO HOSTING ‘MARTYRS DAY RUMBLE’
WORLD NEWS
UNITED KINGDOM
“ARE YOU JEWISH?”: CCTV FOOTAGE APPEARS TO SHOW MAN TRYING TO PUNCH JEWISH WOMAN
By CAA
CCTV footage appears to show a man trying to punch a Jewish woman. The suspect reportedly asked the woman “Are you Jewish?” before allegedly attempting to hit her. It is understood that the suspect has been arrested. The alleged incident occurred in the Grodzinski bakery in Stamford Hill and was reported by Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighborhood watch patrol. If you have any more information, please contact the police on 101 or Stamford Hill Shomrim on 0300 999 0123, quoting reference number: 4600142/23
MAN REPORTEDLY YELLS HE HAS A GUN AFTER RANTING ABOUT JEWS IN STAMFORD HILL
By CAA
A man reportedly claimed to be in possession of a gun after allegedly ranting about Jews. The alleged incident occurred in Stamford Hill and was reported by Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighborhood watch patrol. According to Shomrim, the suspect yelled “Jews don’t give me a job, I have a gun,” before robbing a nearby shop’s cash register. If you have any more information, please contact the police on 101 or Stamford Hill Shomrim on 0300 999 0123, quoting reference number: CAD 3129 03/01/23
POLICE INVESTIGATING AFTER MAN LAUNCHES INTO VILE ANTISEMITIC RANT ON JUBILEE LINE
GERMANY
ATTACK ON SYNAGOGUE: POLICE SUSPECT RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST ACT
By DAVID SADLER
A 21-year-old man is said to have smashed the window of a synagogue on New Year’s Eve in Ermreuth in the Forchheim district and then tried to start a fire. As the police headquarters in Upper Franconia and the public prosecutor’s office in Bamberg announced on Tuesday, witness statements and video surveillance of the synagogue led to the 21-year-old suspect being arrested last Thursday. He is accused of vandalizing a window and throwing firecrackers inside. He wanted to start a fire, the police and prosecutors continued. According to initial findings, the investigators are assuming an anti-Semitic crime with a right-wing extremist background. Due to the lack of a risk of absconding, the investigating judge at the district court in Bamberg refused to issue an arrest warrant last Friday. The suspect was therefore released. In the meantime, the public prosecutor’s office has lodged an appeal against this decision. Since Tuesday, the Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism (ZET) has taken over the investigation.
CANADA
AMAZON CANADA IS SELLING A VACUUM CLEANER THAT CLEANS ‘JEWISH’
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Amazon Canada is sparking ire after a listing was posted on the site for a vacuum that can clean “Jewish.” The ad on Amazon for the “lightweight stick” vacuum cleaner includes photos showing different types of garbage the vacuum is capable of cleaning, including hair, dust, and “Jewish.” Back in November, Jewish and human rights NGOs issued requests to Amazon to remove an antisemitic film shared by basketballer Kyrie Irving and the books the documentary was based on. Even after weeks of pressure, the company’s CEO Andy Jassy, who is Jewish, said in December that Amazon had no plans to remove or add a disclaimer to Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.
FRANCE
FRANCE – A SHUTTLE DRIVER AT A VACATION CLUB WAS ARRESTED AFTER THREATENING TO ATTACK ISRAELI TOURISTS
By BFMTV
A driver of a holiday club shuttle bus is under investigation for glorifying terrorism; the person suspected of Islamist radicalisation threatened to attack Israeli guests He allegedly made antisemitic remarks and threatened to attack Israeli citizens. The driver of a shuttle bus taking skiers from the Club du Soleil holiday village in Orcières-Merlette to the resort was arrested last weekend on suspicion of Islamist radicalisation. The 48-year-old from Metz was taken into police custody on Friday. It was work colleagues who had alerted the authorities to suspicious statements. “I would love to crash the shuttle with the Israeli customers into the gorge. They don’t deserve to live,” he is reported to have said, among other things, after returning from a trip.”
OTHER WORLD NEWS
THESSALONIKI: HOLOCAUST MURAL VANDALIZED WITH NAZI SYMBOLS
By NEWSROOM
A mural marking the deportation of Thessaloniki’s Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II has been defaced for a second time, the community group that commissioned it said. Located on the eastern fence of the New Thessaloniki Railway Station, the mural was erected in 2021 by the Vardaris Neighborhood Group, with the support of local residents and people recovering from addiction issues. The group said that “members of fascist groups covered a large part of the mural with swastikas and symbols of hate, trying once again to tarnish what the mural symbolizes and recalls: The greatest crime in the history of mankind, the Holocaust.” “This is the second time in two weeks that a memorial that honors the long-standing Jewish presence in our city and the victims of the Holocaust has been targeted by neo-Nazi groups,” the group said, noting that in late December a monument erected in 2014 on the grounds of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki commemorating the Jewish Cemetery once located there was also vandalized.
DAUGHTER OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS ‘SHOCKED AND TERRIFIED’ AFTER A HITLER-LOVING ANTISEMITE PERFORMED A NAZI SALUTE AND HURLED A DISTURBING RACIAL SLUR AT HER DURING A GROCERY RUN IN MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
WINNING BIDDERS OF ‘DESPICABLE’ NAZI MEMORABILIA URGED TO DONATE ITEMS TO SYDNEY JEWISH MUSEUM
MIDDLE EAST
HAMAS DENOUNCES UAE DECISION TO INCLUDE HOLOCAUST EDUCATION IN CURRICULUM
By DION J. PIERRE
Terrorist group Hamas criticized the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Tuesday for its decision to include Holocaust education in its school curriculum. “We condemn and denounce the UAE embassy’s announcement in Washington that its country has included materials on the ‘Holocaust’ in its educational curricula, and we consider that support for the Zionist narrative and a form of cultural normalization,” said Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for the group, placing the word Holocaust in scare quotes.
ANGER OVER ALGERIAN PAPER’S ‘UNBEARABLE ANTISEMITIC DIATRIBE’ TARGETING FRENCH JEWISH HISTORIAN
By BEN COHEN
A group of influential French intellectuals have risen to the defense of a prominent Jewish historian of North Africa after he was the subject of an antisemitic screed in an Algerian government-backed newspaper. Benjamin Stora — one of the world’s leading experts on Algeria and the author of several award-winning books on the country — was commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2020 to prepare a report on French commemoration of the bloody 1962 Algerian War that resulted in the North African nation’s independence. At the end of December, the Algerian government-backed outlet Algérie Patriotique published a scathing assault on Stora, whose report was submitted one year ago. “Poor France is entitled to be led as it sees fit in the writing of its history, but the Algerian people refuse to take the same path traced by Benjamin Stora, his fellows and his ancestors,” the paper declared in an editorial.
ON CAMPUS
SEARCH FOR MAN WITH MACHETE NEAR LAKEWOOD, NJ JEWISH SCHOOL
By DAN ALEXANDER
The search continues for the man with a machete who yelled profanities at a group of Jewish students on Thursday night. Police were called to the Bais Medrash Torat Chesed Yeshiva on Monmouth Avenue around 8:30 p.m. about a masked, machete-wielding man playing loud music from a portable speaker across the street. Capt. Gregory Staffordsmith said no specific threat was made towards the students. Police evacuated the Yeshiva and conducted a search for the man..
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE TO BOYCOTT COURSE TAUGHT BY FORMER IDF GENERAL
By DION J. PIERRE
An anti-Zionist group at the University of Chicago has called for a boycott of a course taught by retired Israeli Defense Forces General Meir Elran. In an op-ed published Tuesday in the Chicago Maroon, SJP accused Elran of “anti-Palestinian violence” and described his course as “nothing less than the incursion of Israel’s military complex onto the university’s campus.” Elran, head of the Homeland Security Program at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, is currently teaching at University of Chicago as a visiting professor through an exchange program sponsored by the Israel Institute, a nonprofit organization that connects colleges and universities with scholars who can teach courses about modern Israel.
ANALYSIS & OP-EDS
STUDIES & STATISTICS
TIKTOK USERS SEE NAZI CONTENT AFTER 75 MINUTES, COMMISSION FINDS
By i24NEWS
Despite no interaction or indication of interest, the platform presented the fake account ‘Alice’ videos with Nazi content after 75 minutes of scrolling New TikTok users – without seeking it out – see Nazi content after 75 minutes, according to the committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The report, published Thursday in Rolling Stone, was made using a fake account – Alice, a fictional 41-year-old from Massachusetts. Despite no interaction or indication of interest, the platform presented “Alice” videos with Nazi content after 75 minutes of scrolling. The committee aimed to test a theory that social media was reluctant to curb right-wing extremist content. According to the committee staff, this was “just one of the Committee’s experiments that further evidenced the power of TikTok’s recommendation algorithm in creating rabbit holes toward potentially harmful content.”
ANTISEMITIC HATE CRIMES IN NEW YORK CITY INCREASED 41 PERCENT IN 2022
By DION J. PIERRE
Antisemitic hate crimes throughout New York City increased by 41 percent in 2022, based on an analysis of crime data conducted by The Algemeiner. There were 293 total antisemitic incidents in 2022, rising from 207 overall in 2021. Notable attacks included the shooting of a Jewish man and his seven year old son with a BB gun outside a kosher market in Staten Island, an attack on three yeshiva students who were walking home in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, and a spree of shootings with gel guns on Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg.
GOVERNMENT & POLICY
SCOOP: EMHOFF TO VISIT GERMANY AND POLAND WITH ANTISEMITISM ENVOY
By HANS NICHOLS
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is planning to travel to Germany and Poland this month with Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, Biden’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, according to people familiar with the matter. Why it matters: The foreign trip will present an opportunity for Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, to speak out against antisemitism on a global stage in two countries where the worst acts of the Holocaust were committed. It’s also a sign of how seriously the Biden administration is taking the rise in antisemitism and that it perceives it as a global problem. Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, has made combating antisemitism a signature issue — calling out an “epidemic of hate” last month at a White House roundtable focused on domestic incidents.
BUCKING REGIONAL DENIAL, UAE TO INCLUDE HOLOCAUST IN SCHOOL CURRICULA
By TOI STAFF
The United Arab Emirates is taking major steps to combat a regional culture of Holocaust denial in the wake of the 2020 Abraham Accords that normalized its relations with Israel. Once entirely absent from the learning materials of children in the UAE — which also blacked out Israel from world maps and globes — the Holocaust is now set to be fully included in the curriculum, as the Gulf country moves to position itself as a regional peacemaker. Last year, the region’s first Holocaust memorial exhibition opened in Dubai, just months after the US-brokered accords ended a more than 70-year impasse between Israel and the UAE.
EMHOFF TO MEET WITH HOUSE ANTISEMITISM TASK FORCE
By GABBY DEUTCH
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is set to meet on Thursday with the co-chairs of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, Jewish Insider has learned. The closed-door meeting will serve as something of a listening session for Emhoff to hear from members of Congress. A source with knowledge of Emhoff’s visit to Capitol Hill told JI the meeting is meant to indicate that antisemitism will remain a priority for him as he heads into his third year as second gentleman. “This meeting will be an opportunity for the second gentleman to hear directly from members of Congress and discuss the administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism,” a White House official told JI on Wednesday. Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, has made combating antisemitism a core focus of his responsibilities as second gentleman. Last month, he convened a first-of-its-kind meeting on antisemitism, attended by a diverse array of Jewish leaders, at the White House.
HUMANITY
U.N. EXHIBIT REMEMBERS WHEN THE WORLD TURNED ITS BACK ON STATELESS JEWISH REFUGEES
By ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
On display at U.N. headquarters in New York City Jan. 10 through Feb. 23, it is intended to illuminate “how the impact of the Holocaust continued to be felt after the Second World War ended and the courage and resilience of those that survived in their efforts to rebuild their lives despite having lost everything,” according to a press release. Among the artifacts on display are dolls created by Jewish children and copies of some of the 70-odd newspapers published by residents, as well as photographs of weddings, theatrical performances, sporting events and classroom lessons. The exhibit is “about the displaced persons themselves, about their lives and their hopes and their dreams, their ambitions, their initiatives,” said Debórah Dwork, who directs the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center-CUNY, who served as the scholar adviser for the exhibition.
MEL GIBSON DROPPED FROM NEW ORLEANS MARDI GRAS AMID OUTCRY FROM JEWISH GROUPS
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