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The Prince of Wales visits London Synagogue – The Royal Family

Posted By on March 5, 2024

The Prince of Wales visited the Western Marble Arch Synagogue where he took part in conversations about the deeply troubling rise in antisemitism in the UK, and some of the invaluable work that is being carried out to combat this.

Upon arrival, The Prince received an overview of the Western Marble Arch Synagogue and the Jewish community it supports. The Prince then met with Holocaust survivor Renee Salt, who is a living example of the tragic consequences of antisemitism being allowed to go unchecked, to hear more about her experiences.

During his visit to the Synagogue, The Prince also met a number of young ambassadors from all backgrounds and faiths who have taken part in the Holocaust Educational Trusts flagship Lessons from Auschwitz project. Through the project, young people from across the UK learn the history of the Holocaust and visit the site of the former Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Having seen where antisemitism can lead, they are powerful advocates for ensuring that hatred is called out, wherever it is found. In the final stage of the project, participants commit to share what they have learnt with their communities and become ambassadors, joining thousands of others across the UK.

His Royal Highness heard about what the young people have learned through the project and how as ambassadors, they are sharing the lessons from the past with their peers and wider communities. As part of this conversation, The Prince also heard from students and young people who have themselves experienced antisemitism.

This engagement was originally planned to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 and The Princess of Wales was also due to be in attendance.

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The Prince of Wales visits London Synagogue - The Royal Family

A synagogue courtyard was set on fire in Tunisia – Ynetnews

Posted By on March 5, 2024

Unknown individuals set fire to a synagogue in Sfax, the second-largest city in Tunisia.

No one was harmed in the arson attack, which occurred on Sunday in a city that currently has no Jewish residents.

According to Tunisian media outlets, the fire erupted in the synagogue's courtyard, resulting in the burning of 12 palm trees. Additionally, some of the synagogue's windows were damaged.

A rescue services officer in the city stated that firefighters managed to control the flames and prevent them from spreading to the synagogue building itself. He added that, simultaneously, another fire broke out on the roof of a nearby residential building, where the fire was also extinguished.

Sfax, once home to many Jewish families, is now devoid of Jews. The old synagogue that served the community stands abandoned.

A visitor from Israel who toured the area in 2008 described the synagogue: "Its windows are shattered, surrounded by fences, and it's empty. But I was moved to see the symbol of the Star of David adorning its outer walls. Sfax today appears very neglected and is a wholly Arab city, so this synagogue, standing despite everything, was an unforgettable sight for me."

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A synagogue courtyard was set on fire in Tunisia - Ynetnews

Roald Dahl’s anti-Semitism explored at theatre forced to apologise to Jewish people – The Telegraph

Posted By on March 5, 2024

Dahl, who died in 1990 at the age of 74, also said in an interview months before his death that he was certainly anti-Israel and I have become anti-Semitic.

His family issued an apology in 2020 for his anti-Semitism, saying that his past remarks were incomprehensible to them.

Published on the authors website signed by the Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company, which manages the rights of the authors characters and stories, it said that they deeply apologise for the lasting and understandable hurt.

Giant, which will run in the Royal Court Theatre from late September to mid-November, will grapple with the authors remarks through performances by award-winning actors John Lithgow as Dahl and Elliot Levey as Dahls publisher, Tom Maschler.

According to publicity material, the play depicts the author being rocked by an unexpectedly explosive confrontation, which means he is forced to choose: make a public apology or risk his name and reputation.

It is Rosenblatts debut stage production, but the writer and director has previously made short films that were inspired by the aftermath of his familys Holocaust survival.

He said: I really hope Giant gives Royal Court audiences an uncomfortably funny, urgent and provocative night in the theatre.

Speaking about Dahls legacy, the spokesman for the Campaign Against Antisemitism said: While Roald Dahls stories entertain and delight millions of children, and should continue to do so, it is important that people know about the darker side of the man.

In 2022, the theatre was bombarded with abusive anti-Semitic harassment while showing a play entitled, Jews. In Their Own Words.

It was widely viewed as the theatres attempts to right wrongs of the past but was received with a strong of antisemitic trolling and horrible abuse.

The Jewish Chronicle reported at the time that some complainants harassed the theatres box office staff on the phone, while others used Twitter to accuse it of betrayal for showcasing Jewish voices.

Jews. In Their Own Words analysed both historic and contemporary anti-Semitism through actors playing 12 real Jewish people, including Howard Jacobson, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, and Luciana Berger, a former Labour MP.

The Royal Court has been contacted for comment.

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Roald Dahl's anti-Semitism explored at theatre forced to apologise to Jewish people - The Telegraph

Chris Cuomo Defends Chummy Interview With Antisemitic Conspiracist Jackson Hinkle – The Daily Beast

Posted By on March 5, 2024

Amid backlash over his friendly interview with Jackson Hinkle, NewsNation anchor Chris Cuomo defended hosting the far-right conspiracy theorist and denied giving any deference to any kind of anti-semitism. During last weeks broadcast of his podcast The Chris Cuomo Project, the former CNN star welcomed Hinkle, a pro-Kremlin MAGA communist who recently pivoted to anti-Israel content during the Israel-Hamas war. While experts have noted that Hinkles support of Palestine is a cynical ploy to drum up social media clout while peddling thinly disguised antisemitism, Cuomo dismissed any notion that Hinkle was a Nazi or a hater while introducing the alt-right influencer. Hes young, hes relevant, hes got a lot to say about politics at home and abroad. Lets get after it, Cuomo stated, adding: Its nice to talk to somebody whos at the head of the next generation of a lot of social media and political thought in the country. Throughout the hour-plus interview, Cuomo didnt press Hinkle on his antisemitic conspiracies or Gaza war disinformation, sparking outrage online and prompting Mediaite to reach out for comment. It is clearly untrue that I have ever, or would ever, give any deference to any kind of anti-semitism. This is another cheap hit piece. I get that some in the media want to say what can and can not be said, a defiant Cuomo responded. People can make quick work of why Hinkle has such a robust following, and how they feel about his ideas. Mediaite can try to frame me as an apologist for a bigotbut that is about their toxic agenda, not the truth.

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Chris Cuomo Defends Chummy Interview With Antisemitic Conspiracist Jackson Hinkle - The Daily Beast

Harvard Professor Noah Feldman denounces opposition to the Gaza genocide as the New Anti-Semitism – WSWS

Posted By on March 5, 2024

Time Magazine has chosen as its cover story Harvard Professor of Law Noah Feldmans maliciously dishonest and morally bankrupt defense of Israels savage war against the population of Gaza.

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The old anti-Semitism was a central element of fascism, espousing virulent nationalism, anti-communism and anti-socialism, and implementing genocide of defenseless people.

The new anti-Semitism, according to Feldman, is a central element of the left, which opposes Israeli fascism, nationalist xenophobia, anti-Arab racism, and the mass murder of defenseless and oppressed people in Gaza.

Feldmans propaganda piece consists of the crudest historical falsifications. He writes, Ultimately, in different ways, both Nazism and Marxism identified Jews as an enemy deserving liquidation. This is an outrageous lie.

The Marxist and socialist movement led the struggle against anti-Semitism in Germany, throughout Europe, and in the United States. Fundamental to Nazi and fascist ideology and politics was the identification of Jews with socialism and the labor movement.

The SEP launches its campaign for a socialist alternative in 2024 to Biden and Trump, the corporate candidates of war and dictatorship!

David North, the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US) announced today the selection of Joe Kishore and Jerry White as its candidates in the 2024 presidential election campaign.

Feldman dissolves Judaism as a religion into Israeli nationalism, proclaims the Israeli state as the supreme manifestation of Jewish existence, and asserts its status as the only homeland for a historically oppressed people who have nowhere else to call their own.

This claim ignores the fact that more than half the worlds Jewish population, including Feldman, hold citizenship in countries other than Israel. And, one might add, that thousands of Israelis abandon this homeland every year.

Feldman resorts to the most vile sophistries to minimize Israeli crimes, such as the claim that ethnic cleansing practiced by Israel would arguably not count as genocide under the legal meaning of the term.

He also states, The genocide charge depends on intent. And Israel, as a state, is not fighting the Gaza War with the intent to destroy the Palestinian people.

According to Feldman, since Israels stated war aims are merely to hold Hamas accountable, it cannot be accused of genocide. Israels aims are lawful in themselves.

Writing as an attorney for mass murderers, Feldman asserts, There is no single, definitive international-law answer to the question of how much collateral damage renders a strike disproportionate to its concrete military objective.

Feldman, shedding a tear, writes, The number of Palestinian dead, over 29,000 as of this writing, is heartbreaking. But the actual killing of the 29,000, according to Feldman, is not a crime.

Of all the arguments advanced by Feldman, the most cynical is his claim that Accusing Israel of genocide can function, intentionally or otherwise, as a way of erasing the memory of the Holocaust and transforming Jews from victims into oppressors.

This is the same argument made by the Polish government in introducing a law in 2018 illegalizing references to the complicity of Poles in the mass murder of Jews during World War II.

The bill passed by the Polish Senate declared that whoever accuses... the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes... shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years.

The fascistic Polish government justified this law on the grounds that references to Polish complicity in the Holocaust detracted from the sufferings of the Polish people during the years of Nazi occupation. Israel denounced the Polish law.

Feldman invokes the Holocaust as a cover for Israeli atrocities. But his defense of Israels genocidal war, with the support of the US, is a desecration of the memory of the six million Jewish victims of Nazism and the universal significance of the Holocaust.

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Harvard Professor Noah Feldman denounces opposition to the Gaza genocide as the New Anti-Semitism - WSWS

The New Antisemitism | TIME – TIME

Posted By on March 5, 2024

Why wont antisemitism die, or at least die down? In the months following Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitic incidents increased substantially. The Anti-Defamation League, which keeps track, says they tripled in the U.S. over the previous year, although its criteria also changed to include anti-Zionism. But from 2019 to 2022, the amount of people with highly antisemitic attitudes in the U.S. had nearly doubled, the ADL found. In Europe, Human Rights Watch warned in 2019 of an alarming rise in antisemitism, prompting the European Union to adopt a strategic plan for fighting it two years later.

No one can say definitively why the preGaza War surge happened when it did. The salience of groups like the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville,Va., in 2017 probably played a role, as did the influence of figures like the troubled rapper turned designer Kanye West. Historically, antisemitism has been a side effect of populism, which traffics in us-vs.-them stereotypes. Social media allows antisemitic influencers to recruit and communicate directly to followers, getting around the filtering bottleneck of the legacy media. The murder of 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, by a shooter enraged at Jewish groups providing aid to immigrants, was the painful lowlight of this era.

It can be hard to think clearly and reason calmly about antisemitism. For 15 million Jews around the world, its resilience engenders fear, pain, sadness, frustration, and intergenerational trauma going back to the Holocaust and beyond. The superficial sense of security that many Jews feel on a daily basis in the contemporary world turns out to be paper-thin. Jews know enough of their own familial stories to realize that in historical terms, such moments of safety have often been fleeting, followed by renewed persecution. Sitting in my office in leafy Cambridge, Mass., a proud citizen of the freest country in the world, in which Jews have been safer than in any other country in history, I am not free of emotion on the topic. Nor could I be.

For many non-Jews, antisemitism matters deeply too. People everywhere who believe that all humans are created equal know that the presence of antisemitism in a society has often been the forerunner of other visceral, irrational hatreds, from racism to homophobia to Islamophobia. Worse, the persistence of antisemitism stands as a stubborn counterargument to Martin Luther King Jr.s hopeful faith that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.

In the past, antisemites, whether medieval Crusaders or 20th century Nazis, were often proud of their views. Today, thankfully, almost no one wants to be accused of antisemitism.

Thats a marker of human progress. It also means that the whole subject of antisemitism needs to be approached with charity and sensitivity. People who harbor no conscious negative ideas about Jews may unknowingly hold views that resonate with historical antisemitism.

Jews arent exempt from this, and so, neither am I. In a world roiled by polarizing debate, my aim is to encourage introspectionto get you to ask, as I ask myself, whether your feelings and beliefs would be the same if seen through the lens of the history and context of antisemitism. I come not to accuse anyone of antisemitism, but to explore the topic in a way that deepens our understanding of where it comes from, and where its going.

The easiest way to explain why antisemitism is still with us is to blame religion. Scholars agree that what we call antisemitism today has its historical origins in a strain of anti-Jewish thought that grew out of early Christianity. The Gospels describe the Jews as complicit in the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Pauls theology was read to depict the Jews as having been replaced or superseded as Gods special favorites by the community of Christian believers. By failing to become Christians, Jews implicitly challenged the narrative of inevitable Christian triumph. For well over a thousand years, Jews in Christian Europe were subject to systemic, institutionalized oppression. Historical antisemitism took the form of discrimination, expulsion, and massacre.

The problem with blaming religion is that antisemitism today is no longer driven primarily by Christianity. Although antisemitism can still be found among Christians, in the U.S. and around the world, most contemporary believing Christians are not antisemites. The old theological condemnation of the Jews for killing Christ has been repudiated by nearly every Christian denomination.

Nor does antisemitism among Muslims primarily reflect the classical Islamic claims made against the Jews, such as the accusation that the Jews (and Christians) distorted Scripture, resulting in discrepancies between the Bible and the Koran. Jews in Muslim lands mostly fared better than in Christian Europe. Until the 20th century, those Jews occupied a complex, second-class status, protected alongside Christians as people of the book and also simultaneously subject to special taxes and social subordination. The tropes of modern Europes antisemitismof Jews power and avaricemostly came to the Middle East late, through Nazi influence. Even the prevalence of antisemitism among Islamist groups like Hamas isnt primarily driven by religion. Rather, it is part of their politically motivated effort to turn a struggle between two national groups for the same piece of land into a holy war.

Read More: When Jews are Threatened, Why Cant Americans Condemn Antisemitism?

It emerges that far from being an unchanging set of ideas derived from ancient faiths, antisemitism is actually a shape-shifting, protean, creative force. Antisemitism has managed to reinvent itself multiple times throughout history, each time keeping some of the old tropes around, while simultaneously creating new ones adapted to present circumstances.

In each iteration, antisemitism reflects the ideological preoccupations of the moment. In antisemitic discourse, Jews are always made to exemplify what a given group of people considers to be the worst feature of the social order in which they live.

A crucial reason why is surely that Jews were the most salient minority group living among Christians for the bulk of European historyand Europe was the heartland of historical antisemitism. The practice of projecting immediate social fears and hatreds onto Jews grew from the human need to treat some nearby group of people as the Other. (Muslims and Asians eventually also became subject to projection and fantasy, a practice dubbed Orientalism by the literary scholar Edward Said.) Once Jews had become the go-to targets for exemplifying societal ills, the habit stuck.

In this way, crucially, antisemitism is not and has never been about actual Jews so much as antisemites imagination of them. Because antisemitic ideology isnt accountable to real-life facts, its content can be altered and changed as a societys worries and moral judgments shift. Antisemitisms capacity to keep its familiar character while also channeling new fears is what confers its stunning capacity to reinvent itself.

The first major reinvention of antisemitism took place as the Enlightenment gradually reduced the role of religion as the main source of Europeans attitudes and beliefs. Nineteenth century antisemitism preserved the old belief that the Jews were unique, having once been Gods chosen people and then uniquely punished for rejecting Christ. But it transformed this uniqueness to match the concerns of contemporary society.

Preoccupied with economic and social upheaval, antisemites depicted Jews as both uniquely capitalist and uniquely communist. Concerned about an unstable global power balance, antisemites claimed that Jews secretly controlled the world. Entranced by the pseudoscience of race that flourished after Darwin, antisemites declared that Jews were racially inferior. The obvious contradictionsthat far from running the world, most Jews were impoverished, or that capitalism and communism were warring ideologiesdid not deter antisemites. They ignored the illogic, or fell back on conspiracy theory, like the myth that Jewish capitalists and Jewish communists were secretly in cahoots. Ultimately, in different ways, both Nazism and Marxism identified Jews as an enemy deserving liquidation. The virulent antisemitism that fueled the Holocaust was thus partly a descendant of Christian antisemitism and also the product of modern conditions.

Today, racial pseudoscience is an embarrassment and the struggle between capitalism and communism has become pass. Antielitist populism can still draw on old canards about Jewish power, and those still resonate with certain audiences, especially on the far right. But the most perniciously creative current in contemporary antisemitic thought is more likely to come from the left.

Instead of disappearing among people who would condemn neo-Nazis, antisemitism is morphing again, right now, before our very eyes.

The core of this new antisemitism lies in the idea that Jews are not a historically oppressed people seeking self-preservation but instead oppressors: imperialists, colonialists, and even white supremacists. This view preserves vestiges of the trope that Jews exercise vast power. It creatively updates that narrative to contemporary circumstances and current cultural preoccupations with the nature of power and injustice.

Concerns about power and justice are, in themselves, perfectly legitimate, much like past concerns about the effects of unfettered capitalism on working peopleor for that matter, condemnations of elitism. So it is important to distinguish carefully between critiques of power that deserve serious consideration and the antisemitic ways in which those critiques may be deployed.

That caution is especially important because Israel, the first Jewish state to exist in two millennia, plays a central role in the narrative of the new antisemitism. Israel is not an imaginary conspiracy but a real country with real citizens, a real history, a real military, and real political and social problems that concern relations between Jews and Palestinians. It is not inherently antisemitic to criticize Israel. Its power, like any national power, may be subject to legitimate, fair criticism.

It is also essential not to tar all critics of Israel with the brush of antisemitism, especially in wartime, when Israel, like any other war-waging power, is properly subject to the strictures of international humanitarian law. To deploy the charge of antisemitism for political reasons is morally wrong, undermining the horror of antisemitism itself. It is also likely to backfire, convincing critics of Israel that they are being unfairly silenced.

At the same time, Israels history and current situation confound categories that are so often used today to make moral judgmentscategories like imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. And because peoples ideas about Israel typically draw on older, pre-Israel ideas about Jews, criticism of Israel can borrow, often unconsciously, from older antisemitic myths.

To understand the complicated, subtle character of the new antisemitism, notice that the concept of imperialism was developed to describe European powers that conquered, controlled, and exploited vast territories in the Global South and East. The theory of settler-colonial white supremacy was developed as a critical account of countries like Australia and the U.S., in which, according to the theory, the colonialists aim was to displace the local population, not to extract value from its labor. The application of these categories to Israel is a secondary development.

These borrowed categories do not fit Israels specificity very well. Israel is a regional Middle Eastern power with a tiny footprint, not a global or continental empire designed to extract resources and labor. It was brought into existence by a 1947 United Nations resolution that would have created two states side by side, one Jewish and one Palestinian. Its purpose, as conceived by the U.N.s member countries, was to house displaced Jews after 6 million were killed in the Holocaust.

The Palestinian catastrophe, or nakba, of 1948 was that when the Arab invasion of Israel failed to destroy the nascent Jewish state, many Palestinians who had fled or been forced out of their homes by Israeli troops were unable to return. Those Palestinians became permanent refugees in neighboring countries. Instead of ending up in an independent Palestine as proposed by the U.N., those who had stayed in their homes found themselves living either in Israel or under Egyptian and Jordanian rule. Then, in the 1967 war, the West Bank and Gaza were conquered by Israel. Palestinians in those places came under what Israel itself defines as an occupation. They have lived in that precarious legal status ever since despite the 19932001 peace process.

Notwithstanding undeniable Jewish prejudice and discrimination against Arabs in Israel, the paradigm of white supremacy also does not correspond easily to the Jews. Around half of Israels Jewish citizens descend from European Jews, as do most American Jews. But those Jews were not considered racially white in Europe, which is one reason they had to emigrate or be killed. Roughly half of Israels Jews descend from Mizrahi, (literally, Eastern) origins. They are not ethnically European in any sense, much less racially white. A meaningful number of Israeli Jews are of Ethiopian origin, and the small community of Black Hebrew Israelites in Israel are ethnically African American.

Read More: Europe's Jews Are Resisting a Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism

Whether early Zionist settlers should be conceived as colonialists is a hotly disputed question. Were they stateless, oppressed people seeking refuge in their ancient homeland, where some Jews had always lived? That is certainly how they saw themselves. Or were early Zionists agents of the very European states they were seeking to flee, aiming to buy as much territory in Palestine as they could to create their own state? That is the view of critics, who emphasize the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which Britain, still very much an empire, announced that it looked with favor on the creation of a national Jewish home in Palestine.

The upshot is that while a well-meaning person, free of antisemitism, could describe Israel as colonialist, the narrative of Israel as a settler-colonial oppressor on par with or worse than the U.S., Canada, and Australia is fundamentally misleading. Those who advance it run the risk of perpetuating antisemitism by condemning the Jewish state despite its basic differences from these other global examplesmost important, Israels status as the only homeland for a historically oppressed people who have nowhere else to call their own.

To emphasize the narrative of Jews as oppressors, the new antisemitism must also somehow sidestep not only two millennia of Jewish oppression, but also the Holocaust, the largest organized, institutionalized murder of any ethnic group in human history. On the right, antisemites either deny the Holocaust ever happened or claim its scope has been overstated. On the left, one line is that Jews are weaponizing the Holocaust to legitimize the oppression of Palestinians.

During the Gaza War, some have argued that Israel, having suffered the trauma of the Holocaust, is now itself perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinian people. Like other criticisms of Israel, the accusation of genocide isnt inherently antisemitic. Yet the genocide charge is especially prone to veering into antisemitism because the Holocaust is the archetypal example of the crime of genocide. Genocide was recognized as a crime by the international community after the Holocaust. Accusing Israel of genocide can function, intentionally or otherwise, as a way of erasing the memory of the Holocaust and transforming Jews from victims into oppressors.

It is, of course, logically possible for an oppressed group to become oppressors over time. Allegations of genocide have been brought against Israel by South Africa in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), charges Israel has wisely chosen to contest rather than ignore. The charges are based on the numbers of civilians killed, the tactics that led to the deaths, and statements by Israeli officials. This evidence is supposed to prove Israel intends to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, which is the legal definition of genocide.

The number of Palestinian dead, over 29,000 as of this writing, is heartbreaking. The rhetoric of some individual Israeli government officials cited by South Africa is particularly appalling, both in its dehumanizing character and in referring to Palestinians as Amalekites, a group whom the God of the Bible called on the ancient Israelites to erase. Retired Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak, who serves on the ICJ panel considering the genocide charges, joined a part of the courts provisional measures that directed Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent ... public incitement to commit genocide in Gaza.

The U.S. government has itself condemned far-right members of Israels Cabinet who called for Gazans to be pushed into Egypt. The repugnant policy of ethnic cleansing urged by the extremists would violate international law, even if it would arguably not count as genocide under the legal meaning of the term.

Notwithstanding these serious concerns, Israels efforts to defend itself against Hamas, even if found to involve killing disproportionate number of civilians, do not turn Israel into a genocidal actor comparable to the Nazis or the Hutu regime in Rwanda. The genocide charge depends on intent. And Israel, as a state, is not fighting the Gaza War with the intent to destroy the Palestinian people.

Israels stated war aims are to hold Hamas accountable for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and to get back its citizens who are still being held captive. These aims are lawful in themselves.

The means Israel has used are subject to legitimate criticism for killing too many civilians as collateral damage. But Israels military campaign has been conducted pursuant to Israels interpretation of the international laws of war. There is no single, definitive international-law answer to the question of how much collateral damage renders a strike disproportionate to its concrete military objective. Israels approach resembles campaigns fought by the U.S. and its coalition partners in Iraq in Afghanistan, and by the international coalition in the battle against ISIS for control of Mosul. Even if the numbers of civilian deaths from the air seem to be higher, it is important to recognize that Israel is also confronting miles of tunnels intentionally connected to civilian facilities by Hamas.

To be clear: as a matter of human worth, a child who dies at the hands of a genocidal murderer is no different from one who dies as collateral damage in a lawful attack. The child is equally innocent, and the parents sorrow equally profound. As a matter of international law, however, the difference is decisive. During the Hamas attack, terrorists intentionally murdered children and raped women. Its charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Yet the accusation of genocide is being made against Israel.

These relevant facts matter for putting the genocide charge into the context of potential antisemitism. Neither South Africa nor other states have brought a genocide case against China for its conduct in Tibet or Xinjiang, or against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. There is something specifically noteworthy about leveling the charge at the Jewish statesomething intertwined with the new narrative of the Jews as archetypal oppressors rather than archetypal victims. Call it the genocide sleight of hand: if the Jews are depicted as genocidalif Israel becomes the very archetype of a genocidal statethen Jews are much less likely to be conceived as a historically oppressed people engaged in self-defense.

The new narrative of Jews as oppressors is, in the end, far too close for comfort to the antisemitic tradition of singling out Jews as uniquely deserving of condemnation and punishment, whether in its old religious form or its Nazi iteration. Like those earlier forms of antisemitism, the new kind is not ultimately about the Jews, but about the human impulse to point the finger at someone who can be made to carry the weight of our social ills. Oppression is real. Power can be exercised without justice. Israel should not be immune from criticism when it acts wrongfully. Yet the horrific history and undefeated resilience of antisemitism mean that modes of rhetorical attack on Israel and on Jews should be subject to careful scrutiny.

Just because antisemitism is a cyclical, recurring phenomenon does not mean that it is inevitable nor that it cannot be ameliorated. Like any form of irrational hate, antisemitism can in principle be overcome. The best way to start climbing out of the abyss of antisemitism is to self-examine our impulses, our stories about power and injustice, and our beliefs.

___

Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School, is the author of the new book To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People

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The New Antisemitism | TIME - TIME

Unity March and Rally held for SF Jewish community – KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco

Posted By on March 5, 2024

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A show of support for the Jewish community Sunday in San Francisco in response to escalating acts of anti-Semitism across the nation.

SAN FRANCISCO - A show of support for the Jewish community Sunday in San Francisco in response to escalating acts of anti-Semitism across the nation.

The Unity March and Rally started in the Embarcadero Plaza and finished in front of City Hall. The goal of the event is to bring together the northern California Jewish community and allies, combat anti-Semitism and foster inclusion and belonging.

Speakers included Mayor London Breed, State Sen. Scott Wiener and Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen.

Similar events have taken place recently in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Washington.

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Unity March and Rally held for SF Jewish community - KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY-15) on Combatting Anti-Semitism: "The Question Isn’t Why I’ve Chosen To Speak Out, the … – FOX News Radio

Posted By on March 5, 2024

Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat representative in the house, member of the Committee on Financial Services, and a member House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, joined the Guy Benson Show to discuss the latest on anti-Semitism across the United States by the pro-Hamas crowd in the United States. Listen to the full interview below!

Full Interview: Listen to the full podcast:

Rep. Torres had this to say on many anti-Israel protestors:

The question isnt why Ive chosen to speak out, the question is why others have chosen to be silent if we as a country cannot find it within ourselves to condemn the murdering of civilians and the butchering of babies, then we have to ask ourselves what were becoming as a society.

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Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY-15) on Combatting Anti-Semitism: "The Question Isn't Why I've Chosen To Speak Out, the ... - FOX News Radio

Dept. of Ed investigates anti-Semitism at Swarthmore College: EXCLUSIVE – Campus Reform

Posted By on March 5, 2024

The Department of Education is investigating Swarthmore College over its response to anti-Semitism on campus since October 7, 2023.

The complaint, filed byCampus ReformEditor-in-Chief Dr. Zachary Marschall, states that pro-Palestine student groups have created a hostile campus climate for Jewish students, and accuses Swarthmore of doing little to address it.

An investigation by the Department of Educations Office for Civil Rights was opened into the Pennsylvania college was opened on Monday.

[RELATED: Dept of Ed opens investigation into UMass over student harassment of Jewish reporter: EXCLUSIVE]

The complaint cites multiple incidents, including one where the Swarthmore Students for Justice in Palestine chapter called Hamas terrorists martyrs and affirmed the right of Palestinian people to resist, as Campus Reform reported on Oct. 11.

In response, Swarthmore College President Val Smith wrote in a campus email that the statement is an example of the free exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives that we embrace as a liberal arts institution.

According to the Swarthmore Phoenix, a coalition of pro-Palestine students held a sit-in at a campus building, averaging around 40 or more protesters.

[RELATED:THE SCROLL: Pro-Hamas students corner, harass Jewish reporter Kassy Dillon]

Swarthmores SJP chapter also projected globalize the intifada onto a campus building in late February, as Campus Reform reported.

Israel Bombs, Swarthmore Pays, one projected statement read. Swarthmore funds Genocide, read another.

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Dept. of Ed investigates anti-Semitism at Swarthmore College: EXCLUSIVE - Campus Reform

San Francisco leaders, thousands of others, rally in support of Israel – JNS.org

Posted By on March 5, 2024

(March 4, 2024 / JNS)

Rain poured down as speakers addressed an estimated 10,000 people who had marched to counter antisemitism at San Franciscos city hall in an event called Unity March: Standing Together Against Anti-Semitism.

On Sunday, the citys mayor, London Breed, declared in her speech that there is no place for hate in San Francisco. She noted a rise in local hate crimes, saying 30% of incidents in 2023 had targeted Jewsa 260% increase since 2022.

Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO at (Facebook) Meta and founder of the womens leadership group Lean In, said just as parents should not have to warn their gay children not to hold hands in public and their black children not to avoid certain neighborhoods, Jewish parents should not have to tell their children to take off their Star of David.

Californias Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis said the way to overcome those who seek to divide us was through being together and standing together today and always.

On Saturday, a march also took place in San Franciscofrom Market Street to Embarcadero Plazawith protesters advocating against Israels efforts to defeat the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.

We have gathered in the thousands here today in San Francisco and all over the world to demand an end to the United States complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people, said Rami Abdelkarim of the Palestinian Youth Movement. We fund Israel every single year. We are anticipating a bill of $17 billion going straight to Israel. Why are we sending arms and our tax dollars straight to Israel to commit a genocide against the Palestinian people?

At one point, the anti-Israel protest grew violent with police forced to use pepper spray in response to calls of assaults and vandalism. A statement from the police said that a few of the officers at the scene suffered non-life-threatening injuries and that this remains an open and active investigation.

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San Francisco leaders, thousands of others, rally in support of Israel - JNS.org


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