Read below the in-depth feature about alarm bells ringing for the safety of Jews in Germany. Your opinion matters. Please let us know your reaction to the situation in Germany.

“…We’ve pushed back hard against anti-Israel bias at the United Nations and will continue to oppose it wherever it raises its ugly head. We are unleashing a fight against anti-Semitism, a growing problem across much of the world, including sadly right here in the United States. I think the most important thing that you all should take away from these actions by this Administration is that they are instinctive, they are reflexive, and they are right. And we do them because of that, because they are in the best interest of both of our peoples.” Read Here.

The Jewish Student Union sign at a Boston-area high school was vandalized with a swastika. The swastika was discovered at Brookline High School in a Boston suburb. “Anti-Semitic vandalism like this is a scary reminder that our work on fostering an inclusive, caring school community where all feel welcome is both ongoing and challenging,” school headmaster Anthony Meyer wrote. Read Here.

The Rieders Foundation is filing a formal complaint with the New York state division of Human Rights against the Rockefeller Brother’s Foundation for its extensive donations to groups with anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bias. Many of the recipients of RBF grants strongly support a 1 state solution, as well as the BDS movement. Read Here.

A new Netflix series called “Historical Roasts,” in which comedians poke fun at historical figures, has caused uproar by featuring an actress playing Anne Frank (Rachel Feinstein) fending off “playful insults” from Adolf Hitler (Gilbert Gottfried) and President Franklin Roosevelt (Jon Lovitz). All three performers are Jewish. The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam called the show “tasteless satire.” Read Here.

The driver asked the women where they were coming from after they sat in the back seat. The women were reluctant to say, but then told the driver after he did not start the car. “He started laughing and he looked us dead in the eye and he said, ‘You need to get out of my car. I’m Palestinian,’” The driver “clearly wanted to make a statement.” Read Here.

Nabih Berri, a leader of the pro-Hezbollah Amal movement and speaker of the Lebanese parliament told an anti-Semitic joke during an interview with the Al Joumhouria newspaper. Asked why Israel agreed to a demarcation process of its naval border with Lebanon, Berri replied: “…how do you recognize the Jew?…If you see a pregnant woman, simply approach her and place a piece of gold on the ground. If the fetus jumps out of the mother’s womb and picks it up, you know immediately that it’s a Jew.” Read Here.

For years, Europe maintained the comforting notion that it was earnestly confronting anti-Semitism after the horrors of the Holocaust. It now faces the alarming reality that anti-Semitism is sharply on the rise, often from the sadly familiar direction of the far right, but also from Islamists and the far left. Read Here.

Holes were cut into the portraits of the survivors taken by German-Italian photographer and filmmaker Luigi Toscano, days after some were defaced with swastikas and cut into with knives. In a post on Facebook, Toscano wrote: “I’m just speechless, again there was an attack on my photos. Austria, what’s wrong with you?” Read Here.

An accused neo-Nazi running for president in Argentina has said he would expel the Israeli ambassador if elected. Alejandro Biondini, a veteran far-right ultra-nationalist leader, is the presidential candidate for the Patriotic Front party. “I repudiate the colonialist genocidal Zionism.” Biondini has openly espoused anti-Semitism and his admiration for Adolf Hitler. Read Here.

The man accused of murdering Jewish pensioner Sarah Halimi will not face a criminal trial. The investigating magistrate in the Halimi case had concluded that the murderer was heavily intoxicated on marijuana when he committed the killing, and mentally unfit to stand trial. It’s a “paradox that a driver under the influence of alcohol has his sentence heavily aggravated, and a drug user is exonerated.” Read Here.

Some of the Netherlands’ most frequently used circumcisers of Jewish infant boys are breaking the law, the Dutch Health Ministry said. The Netherlands has a handful of mohels, and some of the more popular ones are not recognized as medical caregivers. The Royal Dutch Medical Association called for banning nonmedical circumcision of boys in 2010, arguing that it introduced unnecessary risks and violated the rights of underage patients. Read Here.

NYU President Andrew Hamilton said he “found it quite objectionable that the student speaker chose to make use of the Graduate School of Arts and Science doctoral graduation to express his personal viewpoints on BDS, language he excluded from the version of the speech he submitted before the ceremony. We are sorry that the audience had to experience these inappropriate remarks. A graduation should be a shared, inclusive event; the speaker’s words — one-sided and tendentious — indefensibly made some in the audience feel unwelcome and excluded.” Read Here.

Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro and Provost Jonathan Holloway criticized incoming Prof. Steven Thrasher and comments he made during a commencement speech commending the BDS movement. The two said they support Thrasher’s academic freedom, but rejected his support for BDS. “We do not share all of his views, nor do we feel commencement was the appropriate venue to express them, however, academic freedom assures his right to hold them. Northwestern as an institution unequivocally rejects BDS, to the contrary, we value our relationships with universities and research centers in Israel.” Read Here.

While in Israel, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a measure that prohibits anti-Semitic speech in the state’s public schools and universities. The proposal will add religion as a protected class when it comes to discrimination against students and employees. Currently, people are protected from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, marital status or disability. Read Here.

The University of Essex dismissed an academic who spoke out against a campus Jewish society and shared material questioning the Holocaust. Dr Maaruf Ali wrote that “Zionists next want to create a society here at our university” on a Facebook page for new students, as voting was underway on whether a Jsoc should be founded. The voting prompted an outcry when 36 per cent of those who cast ballots, voted no. Dr Ali also shared a photo which claimed a French police officer killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack was actually “a Mossad agent live and well in Buenos Aires… a crypto-Jew in the service of Israeli intelligence.” Read Here.

Daniel Yeluashvili, a fourth-year political science student at San Francisco State, stepped into a school restroom and got an unpleasant surprise. “Lo and behold, there was a swastika and Star of David carved into one of the toilet-paper dispensers,” he said. The graffiti showed a swastika with the name of the university, a Star of David and the words “Free Palestine.” Read Here.

Many students, including those on elite campuses like Williams College, look upon ideas they don’t like as violations of their safe spaces and see no problem in discriminating against, rather than debating, those with whom they disagree…The alternative to sustaining a high regard for freedom of speech is allowing groups, like the Williams College Council, to be guided by their prejudices in determining what speech they deem acceptable.

Read Here.

An Illinois high school district is withdrawing a course for educators titled “Teaching Palestine” after pushback from teachers and community members. Goals included discussing “concrete strategies for how to respond to Zionist professional developments and curricula or when parents/staff/others object to anti-Zionist curriculum,” with some of the material being provided by Jewish Voice for Peace.

In this episode Ezra and Alec discuss the connection between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Then scholar and author Yossi Klein Halevi shares his thoughts on the matter. “The only way being anti-Zionist absolves you of being an anti-Semite is if you’re also anti-Palestinian statehood.” Why would you be against the establishment of Israel but not other states? Is it because it’s a state full of Jews?”

Listen Here.

In this powerful animated monologue, Israeli news anchor Eylon Levy presents his case for why anti-Zionism is “inherently, essentially, necessarily anti-Semitic”. Watch his three points below:

In this in-depth analysis, indigenous peoples expert and Native-Canadian, Ryan Bellerose examines the archaeology, genealogy, and history that support the Jewish claim to indigeneity. To say that Palestinian Arabs were the first inhabitants of the land of Israel is problematic for actual indigenous people like the Jewish people, the Amazigh, the Copts, the Assyrians, the Samaritans, and others who were forcefully conquered, subsumed, and converted. It would literally be akin to white Europeans in North America making that same claim. Read Here.

Certain non-Jewish individuals have been defining what they deem to be anti-Semitic or not.

A YouGov survey has found that only 19% of British voters say that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party are not anti-Semitic. Just 18% of voters say that the Labour Party does not have a problem with anti-Semitism, while 50% think that it does. The polling shows that in the past year, approximately a further 5% of the public has lost confidence in Mr. Corbyn over this matter, reducing those who support him on this issue to less than 20% of the population. Read Here.
To View the Full YouGov Report and Data Click Here. .

“All Israelis have come to know the benevolent, nonpolitical, and compassionate projects built and supported by Bnai Zion Foundation, and enjoyed by all. Instead of making political statements that might divide us, Bnai Zion concentrates on what unites us. Read Here.

Today, the Bnai Zion Foundation will host a special panel discussion addressing the alarming rise in Anti-Semitism in New York City. Details about the panel and registration are below.

For over 110 years, the Bnai Zion Foundation has empowered American Jews to be strong advocates for Israel, to combat hatred, and to contribute their time, talents and funds to making the Jewish homeland stronger. Bnai Zion fights anti-Semitism by investing in and building in the Land of Israel.

The Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Elan Carr, will speak at the AJC Global Forum and the ADL National Leadership Summit in Washington, DC this week. Stay tuned next week for an update on the Special Envoy’s remarks at the AJC Global Forum and the ADL National Leadership Summit. Learn More about the AJC and ADL Events.

Following up on last week’s story, the video below captures the moving remarks of Paul Packer, Chairman of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, as he presides over the reburial of the remains of 1,214 Jews murdered in the Holocaust in the city of Brest, Belarus.

“As we remember those whose lives were taken here, we must also renew our commitment to never forget all the victims of the Holocaust, and to never again allow such evils to be committed against the Jews or any other people.”

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has issued a statement condemning the rise in anti-Semitic incidents. The statement however only referred to anti-Semitism occurring in Europe and the United States and no other parts of the world. The office said freedom of expression must be respected, but there are limits. When abuse rises to the level of incitement to hatred and violence, that type of expression should be prohibited by law. The Commissioner’s office did not offer any concrete steps that will be taken by the UN Human Rights Commission to address the rise in Anti-Semitism. Read Here.

Bestselling German newspaper Bild published a cut-out kippah on its front-page, urging readers to show their solidarity with the country’s Jewish community in the face of rising anti-Semitism. The move comes after a leading government official warned Jews in Germany not to wear skullcaps in public because of an increase in anti-Semitic attacks. In response, Germany’s most popular daily newspaper asked readers to wear the cut-out kippah as a mark of solidarity with the Jewish community, and even posted a video on its website showing how to make it. Read Here.

A group of Jewish teenagers from a Brighton, MA yeshiva noticed a body in the water while walking around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. They ran up to Officer Carl Mascioli who ran down the embankment and found the man partially submerged and not moving. “While I was pulling him out of the water, I observed that he had a swastika on his hand,” Mascioli said. The students had a message for the officer to share: “They wanted…him [to] know…four young Jewish boys helped save his life,” recalled Mascioli, who said the students had no regrets about helping a man with an anti-Semitic tattoo. Read Here.

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland voted to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism and its guidelines. Rev Dr Richard Frazer, convener of the Church and Society Council put forward the proposal and noted that “anti-Semitic incidents in the UK are at a record high for the third year in a row”. His motion said adopting the definition would “aid the Church in challenging anti-Semitism”. Read Here.

In October 2020, Sweden will host an international summit to combat anti-Semitism. The conference is also a reminder that many governments and international organizations have institutionalized the fight against anti-Semitism. Read Here.