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→ 6 January 2020
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What the killing of the top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani means for Jews, the US and Israel | JTA

Crowds gather for Suleimani’s Funeral Procession

A U.S. strike on a vehicle near Baghdad airport early Friday morning killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most influential military commander. Soleimani was the leader of the Iranian Quds Force, which had ties to American and Israeli enemies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and was directly responsible for some of the actions against Israel in Hezbollah’s war against the Jewish state in 2006.

Washington has been gripped by talk about what comes next — a real war between the U.S. and Iran? Iranian strikes on Israel? a string reaction of chaos across the Middle East? — but little actual insight as to what may ensue.

Still, there are already signs that one possible outcome is being taken seriously: attacks on domestic targets, including Jewish ones, like the gathering this weekend of what could be thousands of Jews to protest anti-Semitism in New York City. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter that he had spoken with top police officials about “immediate steps” the NYPD will take to protect key city locations from “any attempt by Iran or its terrorist allies to retaliate against America.”

Here’s what you need to know about the assassination, and what it means for American Jews and Israel.

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→ 18 December 2019
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The British working class saves Britain – and its Jews | Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips

The relief was overwhelming. When the exit poll on Thursday evening correctly predicted a large majority for Boris Johnson’s Conservative party, British Jews allowed themselves to breathe again. Overcome by the sense of deliverance from a great evil, some wept.

Immediately before the election, both Labour and Conservative party hierarchies had been seized by the belief that Britain was heading for a hung parliament and a coalition led by Labour’s hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn. Many British Jews were gripped by a deep sense of dread and panic.

In the event, Labour was pulverised and the Conservatives won by a majority of 80 MPs, the biggest since Margaret Thatcher’s third victory in 1987. 

The stakes in this election were enormous, not just for Britain but for the world. Labour is led by the most far-left leadership in its history, supporting terrorists abroad and incubating virulent antisemitism at home. If elected it would have wrecked Britain’s economy, attacked the State of Israel and posed a mortal threat to the security of Britain, its Jewish community and the west.

It was defeated by a seismic shift which may just have redrawn the British political landscape for ever.

What happened was something most people had believed was unthinkable. As I observed on my own blog in September, however, a tectonic shift was under way in the Labour heartlands.

The white working class, those blue-collar workers who had been tribal Labour supporters for generations, voted en masse for the Conservatives for the first time ever.

Boris Johnson effectively smashed the “red wall”, the swathes of hitherto rock-solid Labour-held seats in the north of England and the Midlands which all turned blue overnight.

Astoundingly, economically shattered communities with very high levels of poverty and unemployment, even former mining towns whose inhabitants had voted Labour virtually from the time the party was invented, all voted on Thursday for an Eton-educated, plummy-voiced toff in preference to the leader of the Labour party.

Why? Because the British working-class is deeply, passionately patriotic and attached to democracy. They are the very best of Britain. Time and again they have saved the country in its wars against tyranny by putting their lives on the line to defend what it stands for: their historic culture, institutions and values.

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→ 17 December 2019
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Corbynism Lost, But its Cultists Are Still Blaming the Jews [incl. Norman Finkelstein] | Middle East Forum

UK Labour (soon to be former) leader Jeremy Corbyn

The dogwhistle attacks on Jews for Labour’s historic defeat has already begun. They will only get louder

One thing I have learnt this election: British people are a lot more anti-Semitic than I thought.

It’s been a traumatic learning curve for someone who grew up here and for whom anti-Semitism had never intruded into daily life – or not outside the context of being a journalist reporting on Israel-Palestine. That milieu meant familiarity with the kind of far-left extremists who appropriated the Labour party in 2015, when Jeremy Corbyn became leader.

I knew them well from reporting on parliamentary meetings and the usual round of academic and activist lectures: box-ticking radicals for whom the Palestinian struggle was more an ideological cipher than a real and messy conflict.

The lunatics took over the asylum and unleashed an epidemic: on social media, at least, where most of this filth was spread and amplified.

There’s something peculiarly freeing about social media’s immediacy and anonymity. For ordinary, mild-mannered Brits, it offers the chance to give full rein to instincts and prejudices usually kept safely restrained and repressed. And the engine of accusations against “enemy centrists” and Jews was constantly fuelled by agitprop from a wild pro-Corbyn disinformation sphere.

If you don’t support Labour, you hate the NHS. If you oppose Corbyn, you hate disabled people. If you’re Jewish as well, then you’re part of an organised smear campaign to malign Corbyn, the world’s bravest campaigner for Palestinian rights. And probably rich and greedy, too.

All the greats were rolled out to show the Jews that other Jews were telling them they were wrong, they were victims of false consciousness, right-wing shills and undeclared agents of the Israeli state – Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Haaretz’s own Gideon Levy, who in his bitter dotage has squandered the legitimacy he once had.

The Jewish conspiracy was alive and well and living in the mind of otherwise woke and well-meaning progressives.

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→ 12 December 2019
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Judaeophobia in Transition | Gerloff

The Die Rechte Party uses the slogan “Israel is our misfortune!” as their slogan in a recent government election. This is a play on the old Nazi slogan “Jews are our misfortune!”

…you do not need intellectual sophistication in order to realize: The ancient ghost Judaeophobia is alive and well in Europe. Racist notes, insulting emails, anti-Semitic slogans at football matches or just remarks in passing, graffiti, and the desecration of memorials and cemeteries are obvious symptoms.

Germany today

Thus, on May 1, 2019, in Frankfurt am Main a Jewish businessman was called a “shitty Jew”. On May 6 in Hamm, the Left-Wing Youth of North Rhine-Westphalia demanded on Facebook the complete annihilation of the state of Israel. On May 10, an Israeli flag was burned in Berlin at the memorial site for victims of a terrorist attack. On May 18, the political party “The Right” played sound recordings of a multiple-convicted Holocaust denier in front of the synagogue in Pforzheim. On the same day, the house of a Jewish couple in Hemmingen, Lower Saxony was targeted with an arson attack.

On June 1, a young Jewess in Berlin-Charlottenburg was told: “Actually, Hitler should return and kill the rest as well.” On July 13, in Freiburg, a man harassed the chairwoman of the Jewish community: “I’m not surprised that Hitler gassed you, you idiots.” And: “Off with you! Otherwise I’ll kill you, you whore!” On August 10, a man with a Star of David chain was insulted by employees at Berlin’s Tegel Airport and thrown off a flight. Three days later, a Jew in Charlottenburg was knocked to the ground by two men. Eyewitnesses did not intervene, according to the victim.

In September, a young man talking in front of a discotheque in Hebrew is slapped in the face in Berlin. Despite a ban on performing for two anti-Semitic rappers, 500 people take part in an anti-Israel rally in the German capital in the same month. In a football match in Frankfurt am Main, the Israeli referee is called “Judensau”.

When a heavily armed man tried to intrude into a synagogue in Halle on the Saale on October 9, no Jewish person who knows Germany was truly surprised. The plan of the violent offender failed because the Jewish community had taken good security precautions. But two passers-by were murdered.

Anyone who wears a kippah or a Star of David in the German public of the 21st century, speaks Hebrew, shows an Israeli flag or otherwise shows his attachment to the Jewish people, must expect to be offended, insulted, threatened, stoned or beaten. In 2019, Jews in the Federal Republic of Germany were denied access to restaurants and they got to see the Hitler salute.

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→ 8 December 2019
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Targeting of pro-Israel Jews on campus must be countered | Montreal Gazette

Professor Gil Troy

For years, we at McGill have tolerated outrages that reflect poorly on our institution — and us — cowering behind our respect for academic freedom and student autonomy. As long as Israel-bashers yell “occupation,” many academics have allowed this legitimate political criticism to mask anti-Semitism. And when certain leaders of the SSMU — the Students’ Society of McGill University — have harassed pro-Israel students, we’ve insisted, “it’s not us, it’s the students.” Meanwhile, every year more students suffer — and our university is besmirched when student leaders in official positions show contempt for anyone who deviates from the politically correct Israel-bashing line.
So when Jordyn Wright, a McGill undergraduate, found herself the latest target of today’s socially acceptable campus witch-hunt — targeting pro-Israel Jews — it seemed as if it would be one more episode in a sad history.
Fortunately, this time, many McGillians said: “Enough.”
Last week, Wright reported that after she enrolled in a free Hillel Montreal Israel trip, Face-to-Face, the SSMU Legislative Council passed a motion claiming this “conflict of interest” required her “resignation” from student government. What “interest” was involved? Certainly nothing connected to the student governance issues that justify the “M” in SSMU, meaning the reason why student tuition dollars fund the organization and SSMU may use McGill’s name.
Beyond the “thinly veiled and blatant anti-Semitism” Wright says she experienced, watch what’s happening to McGill’s brand. “I was warned about getting involved in student leadership at McGill,” she writes. “The toxic environment, countless scandals, prohibitive anti-Israel sentiment, and anti-Semitism have led to a tainted image of an unfriendly campus for Jews.”
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→ 4 December 2019
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The BSA ruling on a ‘Jew’ slur loaded with centuries of persecution is utterly feeble | Spinoff

Bryn Hall

The ruling from the broadcasting regulator on a plainly anti-Semitic comment is unacceptable and suggests we have failed to learn the lessons of March 15, writes Juliet Moses of the NZ Jewish Council.

Yesterday a ruling came out from the Broadcasting Standards Authority, otherwise known as the BSA, that was, frankly, BS.

It considered whether the “red card segment” in the programme Kick Off, broadcast on Sky Sport back in June, fell foul of its “denigration and discrimination” standard. The statement in question was something to do with All Black Jack Goodhue’s mullet and went like this: “I’m red-carding … Jack Goodhue for his mullet … he’s actually looking for Women’s Day or Women’s Weekly to try and get behind and pay for his wedding, so red card for being a Jew, Jack”.

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→ 7 November 2019
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Anniversary of Kristallnacht shows why hateful words matter | Stuff

When 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke said that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”, he could not have imagined what the future would hold, and how his words would resonate for the world we live in today.

History is inexorably defined by the actions of those who live in the world, and the impact they have on generations that follow.

The Holocaust is one of these historical events. The murder of six million Jews and more than five million others who were seen as enemies of the Nazi ideology did not start with the plan of mass murder, but with words.

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→ 29 October 2019
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Being Jewish in New Zealand and the concerning rise of antisemitism | North & South

Juliet Moses

Growing up in Auckland, I knew I was a bit different.

Christmas wasn’t a big deal for me. My family didn’t have a Christmas tree and a wreath on our door, and 25 December was the most boring day of the year. Often, we would travel to a holiday destination on that day. Once, we excitedly discovered the movies were on, and had pretty much the entire theatre to ourselves.

Around Easter, my customary school lunchbox sandwiches got replaced with thin, dry tasteless crackers that my friends would ask to try, but only once.

On Sunday mornings, I begrudgingly went to a special school – listening to Bad Jelly the Witch on the radio as we carpooled there – where I learned a script we read from right to left. Sometimes I would use words I thought were part of every family’s lexicon, but when I was greeted with blank stares I realised they were Yiddish. When the subject of World War II came up, or what was happening in the world, I often sensed a raw and bitter pain in my grandmother.

Yes, I knew I was a bit different, but I was proud to be Jewish. My family, although not religious, was observant. I had a bat mitzvah (a coming-of-age ceremony) when I turned 13. Some of the highlights of the year for me were the Jewish festivals, when we took a day off school to attend synagogue and gather together with close family friends for a ceremonial dinner that included much rowdiness and hilarity.

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→ 16 October 2019
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Israel could get an Unity Government |AIR

While the make up of Israel’s next government remains unclear, what was striking in the aftermath of the September 17 election is that Israel’s democracy remains alive and feisty.

firstly, despite an unprecedented second election within five months and widespread predictions of higher voter apathy, voter turnout increased 2% from April’s poll to around 69%.

Secondly, Arab-Israelis showed their desire to participate in Israel’s democratic process. Bouncing back from a low turnout in April, approximately 10% more Arab Israelis voted this time around.

Moreover, highlighting the absurdity of critics alleging “apartheid” in Israel, the Arab-dominated Joint List now holds the third-largest number of seats in the Knesset (13, up from 10), is an active participant in the horse trading to form a new government, and its head, Ayman Odeh, may possibly become the country’s official opposition leader.

Thirdly, ultra-orthodox party Otzma Yehudit, followers of the late extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, again failed to win any seats – a welcome outcome for a party whose extremism and racism deserve no place in the Israeli mainstream.

Meanwhile, the results — Blue and White winning 33 seats, Likud with 31 — have seen most commentators agree that a national unity government is the most likely outcome of the coalition negotiations which follow any Israeli election. This may also be a good outcome.

Unity governments have frequently governed Israel in the past and the results have been mixed. Some broad-based coalition governments have become virtually paralysed with infighting. However, unity governments have also served Israel well at times of grave national challenge, such as the Six Day War in 1967, or the hyper-inflation crisis of the mid-80s.

Today, there are grave and persistent security threats to Israel from the north and Gaza — all of which derive from Iran and its local proxies. While these threats are not new, there is good reason to believe that they are reaching a critical turning point — suggesting that a united government reaching across the political spectrum might be the best way for Israel to confront these challenges.

Source: Rubinstein, C (October 2019). Australia Israel Review. Page 4. Abridge.

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→ 13 August 2019
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NZ, Israel and UNRWA w/ Stephen Hoadley | 95BFM

Associate Professor Stephen Hoadley, University of Auckland

NZFOI: After interviewing John Minto, 95BFM was criticized for a lack of balance in their interview of John Minto. In response to that criticism, the station interviewed Associate Professor Stephen Hoadley, a lecturer in International Relations from the University of Auckland.

You can listen to it here.

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