THIS WEEK’S GLOBAL ANTISEMITISM REPORT
The U.S. State Department accused Russia of “resorting to antisemitism” to “vilify Ukraine” in a new dossier. The dossier said Russia is “propagating one of antisemitism’s most insidious forms, Holocaust distortion,” amid its claims of denazification to justify the invasion of Ukraine.
Upon landing in Israel, U.S. President Joe Biden pledged to “fight the poison of antisemitism wherever it rears its ugly head,” while meeting with Holocaust survivors there.
The U.S. President and Israeli Prime Minister signed the Jerusalem Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration, committing both countries “to fight every scourge and source of antisemitism and to respond whenever legitimate criticism crosses over into bigotry and hatred or attempts to undermine Israel’s rightful and legitimate place among the family of nations.” The declaration also pledges a commitment to never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, while firmly rejecting the BDS movement.
The FBI issued a security alert citing a credible threat to Jewish institutions in San Antonio, Texas, resulting in the suspension of shabbat and communal services. A vandal shattered the windows of a Chabad Jewish center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In a contemporary blood libel, Palestinian Prime Minister Shtayyeh claimed Israel used the bodies of deceased Palestinian terrorists in medical laboratories. Chile’s Jewish community denounced an antisemitic ‘happy merchant’ meme in a discount liquor ad featured in a popular daily newspaper.
In the UK, an antisemitic extremist was jailed after being found in possession of bomb-making instructions and an illegal dagger. Anne Frank was trending on Twitter this week as users debated whether the teenager who was murdered in the Holocaust benefited from ‘white privilege.”
In Germany and Austria, memorials to synagogues that were burned during Kristallnacht, were vandalized. An exhibition commemorating German Jewish athletes, and stumbling blocks in memory of a German Jewish family killed in the Holocaust, were also vandalized. Meanwhile, a swastika was painted on a Jewish school in Hungary.
This week’s global antisemitism report highlights 53 new media reports of antisemitic incidents. The total includes 32 (60.4%) from the far-right, 5 (9.4%) from the far-left, 5 (9.4%) with Islamist motivations, and 11 (20.8%) unidentifiable in nature.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
UNITED STATES
SAN ANTONIO JEWISH INSTITUTIONS BRIEFLY SUSPEND ACTIVITIES AMID UNSPECIFIED SAFETY THREAT
By JTA STAFF
An unspecified security threat disrupted Shabbat services and other Jewish activities in San Antonio, Texas, for several hours on Saturday before local Jewish leaders gave an all clear. The synagogue’s decision came after the local Jewish federation warned that it had been informed by the FBI of a “potential threat to an unconfirmed Jewish facility in the San Antonio area” and was urging the suspension of all community gatherings “until further notice.” At 3:30 p.m., the Jewish Federation of San Antonio called off the alert, saying that the FBI had said there was “no ‘known imminent threat’” to the community.
WINDOWS SHATTERED AT ALBUQUERQUE, NM CHABAD CENTER
By COLLIVE REPORTER
A Window at the Chabad Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico was shattered sometime Wednesday night, in what may have been an antisemitic act of vandalism. Congregants arriving on Thursday morning for Shacharit prayers saw that the glass of a large window near the front door of the building had been shattered. A glass window 15 feet behind it inside the building had been shattered as well. Rabbi Chaim Schmukler, director of Chabad of New Mexico, told COLlive.com that police are currently investigating what was used in the attack that caused significant damage to the building.
‘THEY ARE COWARDS:’ KITTERY, ME RESIDENTS STAND AGAINST NEO-NAZI GROUP RECRUITING IN AREA
WORLD NEWS
UNITED KINGDOM
EXTREMIST ANTISEMITE IN UK HAD BOMB-MAKING INSTRUCTIONS, A BANNED DAGGER
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
An antisemitic, racist and homophobic extremist was jailed in the UK on Thursday after having been found to possess instructions on how to make an explosive device, British media reported. This, after being investigated by the Counterterrorism Policing North West team in the country. Scott Mason of Rainhill in Merseyside, 36, confessed to having documents that would be useful to a terrorist. Part of a copy of the Anarchist’s Cookbook as well as extreme pornographic images were found in his possession by police. He also had a banned push-dagger. Mason was jailed for three years after pleading guilty to four offenses: possession of information useful to a terrorist; possession of extreme pornography; witness intimidation; and possession of an offensive weapon.
TWO CHARGED AND TWO CLEARED OVER INFAMOUS ‘CONVOY FOR PALESTINE’
By ADAM DECKER
The Crown Prosecution Service will proceed with charges against two men accused of inciting racial hatred during May 2021’s infamous “Convoy For Palestine”. Mohammed Iftikhar Hanif, 28, from Pringle Street in Blackburn, and Jawaad Hussain, 25, from Revidge Road in Blackburn, will face charges of “using threatening, abusive or insulting words, or behaviour, with intent, likely to stir up racial hatred”. Charges against two further men, Asif Ali, 25 and Adil Mota, 26, also from Blackburn, have been dropped.
GERMANY
EXHIBITION ON JEWISH STARS IN FREIBURG VANDALIZED
By BADEN.FM STAFF
In Freiburg, unknown persons intentionally broke off a figure of the Jewish basketball player Ralph Klein on Friday (July 8th, 2022). The life-size figure made of acrylic glass is part of the exhibition “Between Success and Persecution – Jewish Stars in German Sport until 1933 and After” in front of the Colombi Hotel. Among other things, the police are also examining a possible anti-Semitic background. There is currently no information on specific suspects.
NEW REVELATIONS OF SUPPORT FOR ANTI-ISRAEL BDS CAMPAIGN PILE PRESSURE ON BELEAGUERED GERMAN ART FESTIVAL
CANADA
LEGAL EXPERT, JEWISH GROUP SAY QUEBEC JUDGE SHOULD RECOGNIZE NAZISM LED TO HOLOCAUST
By JACOB SEREBRIN
Prominent Jewish group B’nai Brith Canada and a legal expert are questioning a Quebec judge’s claim that it is not a widely accepted fact that Nazi ideology led to the murder of Jews. The link between Nazism and the Holocaust is so well-known that prosecutors don’t need to establish that fact in a courtroom, they say, in response to an unusual drama that played out in a Montreal courtroom last week. “Any reasonable person would take as an undisputable fact that Nazi ideology led to the Holocaust,” said Lisa Dufraimont, a professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School. “Entertaining arguments to the contrary is a kind of hairsplitting that goes beyond what is reasonable, it seems to me.”
FRANCE
FAR LEFT FRENCH MP CONDEMNED FOR ‘ANTISEMITIC’ ATTACK ON PRIME MINISTER ELISABETH BORNE
By ALGEMEINER STAFF
A far-left French parliamentarian has been roundly condemned by opponents who alleged she made an antisemitic comment during a rhetorical attack on the country’s new prime minister. Mathilde Panot — a newly-elected MP from the La France Insoumise (“France Rising”) bloc that enjoyed a strong showing in June’s legislative elections — sarcastically referred to French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne as a “survivor.” The first female premier of France in 30 years, Borne’s father, Joseph Bornstein, was a Polish Jewish refugee who fled from Belgium to France in 1940 and joined the French resistance against Nazi forces in Europe. He was later deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where his father and his youngest brother were murdered upon arrival.
OTHER WORLD NEWS
TWITTER DEBATES WHETHER ANNE FRANK HAD ‘WHITE PRIVILEGE’
By MICHAEL STARR
Anne Frank trended on Twitter on Sunday as users on the social media platform debated whether the Holocaust victim was a beneficiary of ‘white privilege,’ advantages that society supposedly bestows on those who are racially white. “Anne Frank had white privilege,” said one Twitter user. “Bad things happen to people with white privilege also but don’t tell the whites that.” “Yes, all white people are safe,” said another commenter. “No one is saying the Nazis didn’t target white people, just that white people can hide behind their whiteness, whereas in Nazi USA black people can’t. Go tell black people the wites got it hard.”
CHILE’S JEWISH COMMUNITY DENOUNCES USE OF ANTISEMITIC MEME IN LIQUOR AD
By CAM
Jewish community leaders in Chile have expressed outrage at the publication of a newspaper advertisement for cut-price liquor that featured a notorious antisemitic meme. The advertisement that appeared in the Monday edition of the journal Las Últimas Noticias displayed the “Happy Merchant” — an internet meme depicting a bearded Jewish man with a hooked nose and a sly smile rubbing his hands with glee — alongside discounted bottles of whiskey and rum. The ad was placed by Arbol Verde, an alcohol distribution company located in the city of Valparaiso. In a statement carried on its Twitter account, the Jewish Community of Chile denounced the advertisement for reviving a “classic stereotype of Nazi propaganda” that had led to “the genocide of six million Jews” during the Holocaust.
DENMARK – IMAM SLAMS SAUDI DECISION TO LET SHEIKH MUHAMMAD AL-ISSA DELIVER KEY HAJJ SERMON: AL-ISSA PRAYED IN AUSCHWITZ FOR THE SOULS OF JEWS KILLED IN THE “ALLEGED HOLOCAUST” CLAIMED JEWS AND CHRISTIANS ARE “OUR BROTHERS”
AUSTRIA – HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL IN VIENNA-MARGARETEN DAMAGED
MIDDLE EAST
PA PRIME MINISTER CLAIMS ISRAEL EXPERIMENTING ON BODIES OF DEAD TERRORISTS
By ARYEH SAVIR
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh has claimed that Israel is “increasing the pain of the bereaved children by detaining the corpses of terrorist fathers killed in clashes with Israeli forces claiming these corpses are being used in the laboratories of medical schools in Israeli universities in flagrant violation of human rights, values, principles and scientific ethics.” He called for an international boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
PFLP AND PRESS TV SUPPORT FOR MAPPING PROJECT REFLECTIVE OF BROAD ANTI-ZIONIST TRENDS
IRANIAN REGIME INCITES TO ISRAEL’S DESTRUCTION ON WORLD QODS (JERUSALEM) DAY, USING THE PALESTINIANS TO ACCOMPLISH THE GOALS OF THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION – DESTROYING ISRAEL AND ESTABLISHING IRANIAN-SHI’ITE CONTROL IN THE REGION
ON CAMPUS
JEWISH STUDIES PROFESSORS JOIN JEWISH STUDIES ZIONIST NETWORK TO FIGHT ANTI-ZIONIST ACTIVISM ON CAMPUS
By BLAKE FLAYTON
The social pressure to conform to Israel-hatred is not just a problem for Jewish students, but Jewish faculty as well. The pressure is so strong that many will either join the crusade to label Zionism racism to strengthen their progressive bona fides, or will at least become ambivalent to the issue, thinking it best not to place oneself in controversy.These disturbing trends inspired the Jewish Studies Zionist Network (JSZN), a new initiative of scholars and educators in the field of Jewish studies. With over 150 signatories the network seeks “to defend the legitimacy of Israel in the academy, to fight attacks against Israel that are motivated by ideological rather than scholarly pursuits, to foster an environment where multiple perspectives and approaches are welcomed and encouraged, and to ensure that a ‘safe space’ exists on college campuses for Jewish, Zionist faculty and students.”
ANALYSIS & OP-EDS
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (USA) SCRAPES THE BOTTOM OF THE ANTISEMITIC SLIPPERY SLOPE
By ABRAHAM COOPER AND YITZCHOK ADLERSTEIN
STUDIES & STATISTICS
JEWISH ORG IN NEW ZEALAND REPORTS SHARP RISE IN ANTISEMITISM ONLINE
By ZVIKA KLEIN
By A Jewish organization in New Zealand has reported a rise in the country’s online antisemitism, according to a report by 1News. “The organization has collated content from New Zealand users and platforms over the past year and says there is a risk it will cause real-world harm,” the local news site said. New Zealand Jewish Council representative Juliet Moses told 1News that many of the comments online refer to the Holocaust – such as “Hitler was right,” “Hitler should have finished the job” – and that she found swastikas and caricatures straight out of Nazi propaganda.
NEARLY HALF OF HOLOCAUST-RELATED PUBLIC CONTENT ON TELEGRAM DENIES OR DISTORTS THE NAZI GENOCIDE OF THE JEWS, NEW STUDY FINDS
By CAM
Nearly half — 49% — of Holocaust-related public content on the Telegram instant messaging service denies or distorts the facts about the Nazi genocide of six million Jews, a new Oxford Internet Institute study — commissioned by UNESCO and the United Nations, in partnership with the World Jewish Congress — found. “This rate rises to over 80% for messages in German, and around 50% in English and French,” the report noted. “These posts, easily accessible to people looking for Holocaust-related information on the platform, are often explicitly antisemitic.”
UNRWA-PRODUCED EDUCATION MATERIALS CONTAIN ANTISEMITIC CONTENT, WATCHDOG GROUP DOCUMENTS
GOVERNMENT & POLICY
US ACCUSES RUSSIA OF DISTORTING THE HOLOCAUST WITH ‘DENAZIFICATION’ RHETORIC TARGETING UKRAINE
By CAM
Russia is engaging in Holocaust distortion to “delegitimize and demonize Ukraine” amid its ongoing invasion of the country, the U.S. State Department charged in a dossier published on Monday. In the document, titled “To Vilify Ukraine, The Kremlin Resorts to Antisemitism,” the State Department noted, “One of the Kremlin’s most common disinformation narratives to justify its devastating war against the people of Ukraine is the lie that Russia is pursuing the ‘denazification’ of Ukraine…The Kremlin attempts to manipulate international public opinion by drawing false parallels between Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine and the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany.”
BIDEN PLEDGES TO ‘FIGHT THE POISON OF ANTISEMITISM’ AROUND THE WORLD
By JACOB MAGID
In comments after landing in Israel, US President Joe Biden recalls how his father would “imbue in us a sense of obligation” to never forget the horrors of the Holocaust. He pledges to “fight the poison of antisemitism wherever it rears its ugly head.” Turning to the itinerary of the trip, he says he will tour cutting-edge Israeli defense systems, including Iron Dome and Iron Beam.
HUMANITY
IN HAJJ SERMON, SHEIKH DR. MOHAMMED AL-ISSA, FIRST-EVER CAM AWARD HONOREE, PREACHES INTERFAITH HARMONY
By CAM
The importance of interfaith tolerance and understanding were main topics in the Arafat Day sermon delivered by Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Al-Issa — Secretary-General of the Muslim World League (MWL) — last Friday at the Nimrah Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, during the annual Hajj pilgrimage. “Among the values taught by Islam are avoiding all that leads to dissent, animosity, or division; and instead, ensuring that our interactions are dominated by harmony and compassion,” he told the assembled worshippers.
US BLACK JEWISH LEADER WORKS TO BOOST COMMUNITY, INCLUSIVENESS
The Combat Antisemitism Movement is a global coalition engaging more than 360,000 people and 450 organizations from a diverse array of religious, political, and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred. We act collaboratively to build a better future, free of bigotry, for Jews and all humanity.
