Home » Anti-Semitism » Page 17
→ 31 October 2018
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

American Jews have feared this kind of attack for years, but still kept their doors open. Here’s why | CNN

The Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh, PA.

(CNN) Like many American Jews, Rabbi Ethan Linden was in a synagogue on Saturday morning, reading a portion of the Torah, when a friend came and interrupted him.

Linden walked out of the synagogue and found a quiet place.
“And I did what I never do — I made a call on Shabbat,” he said, using the Hebrew word for the Sabbath honored by observant Jews.
Linden called his parents, who belong to one of three congregations that meet at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Linden himself is a native son of Squirrel Hill, a friendly neighborhood with a vibrant and historic Jewish community.
Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,
→ 30 October 2018
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Anti-Semitic incidents were on the rise even before shooting | NZ Herald

NEW YORK (AP) — Swastikas scrawled into Jewish students’ notebooks. Headstones toppled and desecrated by vandals at Jewish cemeteries. Jews falsely blamed for challenges facing the nation.

The shooting rampage that killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday is being decried as the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, allegedly carried out by a virulently anti-Semitic gunman. The carnage, however unprecedented, is not an aberration.

Year after year, decade after decade, anti-Semitism proves to be among the most entrenched and pervasive forms of hatred and bigotry in the United States.

Jews make up only about 2 percent of the U.S. population, but in annual FBI data they repeatedly account for more than half of the Americans targeted by hate crimes committed due to religious bias. The Anti-Defamation League identified 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in 2017, up from 1,267 in 2016, and also reported a major increase in anti-Semitic online harassment.

Read more

Filed Under: News, Resources Tagged With: ,
→ 30 October 2018
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

The Futile Search for Meaning in Antisemitic Crimes | Algemeiner

The Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh, PA.

When something terrible happens, we demand explanations. Awful and irrational events spawn conspiracy theories because it’s part of the human condition to need to make sense of the world, even when the world makes no sense.
That is all the more true when an atrocity such as the shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue occurs. The wholesale slaughter at a house of worship on the Sabbath is the sort of act that, almost by definition, defies explanation. What sane person would seek to murder total strangers at prayer? What possible end could be served by the spilling of innocent blood in this manner?

Our sole concern should be to comfort the families of the slain, to honor their memories and to heal a community torn by sorrow. Yet it is almost instinctual to seek explanations that place the incomprehensible in a context we can accept more easily. Doing so enables us to avoid the truth that we live in a world in which irrational prejudice can strike anytime, anywhere, in ways that shake us to our very core. If the real villain is a familiar target of our anger, rather than age-old hatred of Jews or the deranged ravings of an extremist, it helps us channel our rage and sorrow in a direction that seems productive, even if it is nothing of the kind.

So it is hardly surprising that the slaughter at a synagogue in a quiet, leafy neighborhood would provoke reactions that tell us more about the sickening divisions within our society than anything else.

Read more

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: ,
→ 29 October 2018
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

‘All Jews must die’: 11 killed, six injured in US synagogue shooting | NZ Herald

The Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh, PA.

The gunman who opened fire on a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday morning (local time), killing 11 and injuring six more, has been named as 46-year-old Robert Bowers, a Trump-hating antisemite who regularly complained on social media about the president and “the infestation” of Jews.

Bowers, who professed his disdain for President Trump on social media as he spewed vile antisemitism an hour before Saturday’s attack, opened fire at the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh shortly before 10am.

Less than an hour after posting the threat: “I’m going in” on the social media site Gab.

He was enraged by HIAS, the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society which helps Jewish migrants settle in the US, which he accused of bringing ‘invaders in that kill our people’.

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,
→ 29 October 2018
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

‘Horrendous anti-Semitic brutality’: Israel decries synagogue massacre, sends official to Pittsburgh | NZ Herald

The Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh, PA.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “heartbroken and appalled by the murderous attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue” after a gunman killed at least 11 people and injured six others during religious services on Saturday morning (local time).

“The entire people of Israel grieve with the families of the dead,” he said in a video message posted to Twitter after the massacre on Saturday.

“We stand together with the Jewish community of Pittsburgh, we stand together with the American people in the face of this horrendous anti-Semitic brutality, and we all pray for the speedy recovery of the wounded.”

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,
→ 8 October 2018
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

We are all Jews today | Aish.com

So moving…

Filed Under: Resources Tagged With: , , ,
→ 4 October 2018
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Jeremy Corbyn has lit a fire of Jew-hate that is now beyond his control | The JC

UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn

‘Corbyn has said and done things that can reasonably be described as antisemitic,’ writes Dave Rich

A little over three years ago, shortly before Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, this newspaper set out seven questions for him to answer regarding people and organisations who he had supported, assisted or spoken alongside. It was a gruesome list of terrorists, Holocaust deniers and antisemites, and it was vital and urgent for Mr Corbyn to answer these questions satisfactorily, the JC urged, lest he “be regarded from the day of his election as an enemy of Britain’s Jewish community”.

Read more

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: , , ,
→ 25 September 2018
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

Jews uneasy as changes in attitude creep in | NZ Herald

Yitzhak Rabin Memorial, Harris St, Wellington, New Zealand

On Wednesday a letter was published in Wellington’s Dominion Post. The writer wanted to know why there was a memorial to former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin – a man he described as leading “a bloodstained life” – on public land in the central city’s Harris St.

It may have been an honest inquiry, and there have been a few such similar letters in the five or so years since the memorial – a piece of Jerusalem stone acknowledging Rabin as a Nobel Peace Prize winner beside an olive tree – was dedicated.

A close up of the memorial

A reply yesterday pointed out the memorial was for Rabin’s efforts to break a deadlock between Israelis and Palestinians and that “soldiers sometimes make the greatest peacemakers, and to urge us to reflect on whether his violent death really means that we must descend again and forever into the abyss”.

The original letter came as no surprise to some.

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , ,
→ 18 September 2018
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

University of Michigan ‘Disappointed’ After Professor Refuses to Write Recommendation Letter for Student Studying Abroad in Israel | Algemeiner

John Cheney-Lippold

The University of Michigan (U-M) said it was disappointed after a professor refused to write a letter of recommendation for a student who sought to study abroad at Tel Aviv University, in an expression of support for the academic boycott of Israel.

In an email sent on September 5, Professor John Cheney-Lippold told the student, who had taken a course with him during the Spring 2018 semester, that he would have to rescind an earlier offer to write a letter of recommendation due to “politics.”

“I am very sorry, but I only scanned your first email a couple weeks ago and missed out on a key detail,” wrote Cheney-Lippold, who teaches in the Department of American Culture’s Digital Studies program.

“As you may know, many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel in support of Palestinians living in Palestine,” he said in reference to the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Read more

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,
→ 18 September 2018
→ By
→ Leave a Comment

UK PM vows to defend Jews and Israel, in dig at Labour’s Corbyn | Reuters

Theresa May

EDINBURGH – Prime Minister Theresa May pledged on Monday to protect British Jewish identity and Israel’s right to defend itself, in an attack on opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn in the run-up to his Labour Party conference next weekend.

May told a United Jewish Israel Appeal dinner she was “sickened” by the idea that some Jews questioned whether Britain was a safe place to raise their children.

Labour has been angrily divided this year over pockets of anti-Semitism which Corbyn himself has acknowledged. Critics suggest he should step down for failing to tackle the issue.

A poll in Britain’s Jewish Chronicle earlier this month said that 40 percent of Jews would consider emigrating if Corbyn won power in a national election.

Source

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »