UK Labour Party suspends former leader Jeremy Corbyn after release of report on anti-Semitism | Stuff

Former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn

[NZFOI:  Finally the UK Labour Party is being honest.]

Britain’s opposition Labour Party has suspended former leader Jeremy Corbyn for comments he made after the release of a report into anti-semitism in the party.

The report said the party failed to stamp out anti-Semitism and committed “unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination” against members of the Jewish community.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission found “significant failings” and a “lack of leadership” in how the left-of-center party handled allegations of anti-Semitism among its members.

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Following Facebook, Twitter will now ban Holocaust denial | JTA

Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO

Twitter will now ban posts that deny the Holocaust.

Bloomberg News reported Wednesday that a Twitter spokesperson said posts that “deny or distort” violent events including the Holocaust would be banned.

Twitter is the second major social media network to ban Holocaust denial this week. Facebook announced on Monday that it would ban posts that deny or distort the Holocaust, two years after Mark Zuckerberg said Holocaust denial should be allowed in the name of free speech.

“We strongly condemn anti-semitism, and hateful conduct has absolutely no place on our service,” the Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “We also have a robust ‘glorification of violence’ policy in place and take action against content that glorifies or praises historical acts of violence and genocide, including the Holocaust.”

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Facebook reverses policy and bans Holocaust denial on its platforms | CBS

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook has announced a ban on content that denies or distorts the Holocaust. The policy marks a reversal on how to handle a disturbing category of posts that CEO Mark Zuckerberg once said should not be blocked on the platform even though they’re false. 

The company updated its hate speech policy to prohibit such content, Monika Bickert, VP of Content Policy at Facebook, said in a statement on Monday. 

“Our decision is supported by the well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people,” she said.

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Billy Te Kahika: A Darker Truth | Stuff

Billy Te Kahika

He’s declared 5G a bio-engineered virus and that the United Nations is inspired by Satanic teachings. But as Billy Te Kahika’s wilder conspiracies grabbed headlines, his rhetoric touched on a darker subject.

On June 4, Billy Te Kahika took to Facebook live, as he regularly does, to deliver a sermon to his devotees.

By now these “prayer studies” are nothing new. In May, Te Kahika went viral with videos that weave scripture, 5G, Covid-19, Harry Potter, vaccines, the Labour government, Bill Gates and the UN into narratives of sinister plots to corrupt and control the world…

…in a video seen by more than 5000, the leader of the New Zealand Public Party spins a story about the Jewish nation. Using historical half-truths and debunked documents he enlightens his audience about its connection to a Satanic conspiracy, and a global plan to engineer a third world war.

He’s at pains to coat the language, expressing love for his “Israeli whānau”, and asserting that although the Jews killed Jesus, it’s only the Zionists, those Jews behind the nation of Israel, that are the real threat.

“It’s a Satanic deception.”

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Doctor who said she would give Jews wrong medications loses medical license | Forward

Lara Kollab

The State Medical Board of Ohio permanently revoked the medical training certificate of a doctor who was fired from two residency programs after old anti-Semitic tweets surfaced — including one in which she threatened to give Jews the wrong medications.

Lara Kollab is permanently prohibited from practicing osteopathic medicine or surgery in Ohio, Cleveland.com reported. She surrendered her certificate prior to its revocation Aug. 12, according to the report, and cannot participate in another medical training program in the state.

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What are Jews who embrace the Black Lives Matter movement endorsing? | JNS

More than 600 Jewish groups placed this ad in the form of a letter in “The New York Times” in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The pro-Black Lives Matter letter isn’t so much a defense of a movement as a not-so-subtle attempt to cancel, shame and silence anyone with the temerity to point out the danger in the cause the signatories have embraced.

As such, it’s clear that Jewish supporters of the BLM movement aren’t trying to help unite us against hate. Instead, they are choosing a side in a culture war that is cruelly dividing a wounded country struggling to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. In doing so, it is they who are choosing to be on the wrong side of history, not their opponents.

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Problematic Legacy | ODT

Huber (Left) Zuroff (Right)

Mr Huber was very young — just 17 — when he volunteered for the SS. His contribution to New Zealand skiing, Mt Hutt especially, since moving here in the 1950s has been hugely significant. He has a large family living in this country.

But those are not “mitigating factors”, and they do not prevent us asking one salient question: Should anything in New Zealand be named in honour of a member of a group responsible for some of the worst atrocities in history?

The answer, surely, is that never, in any circumstances, is that appropriate. Nothing, anywhere, should carry the name of a cog in the Nazis’ genocidal machine.

Mt Hutt representatives should have acted sooner. But it is not too late. They can still recognise the contribution made by Mr Huber to the ski area and not carry open, public reminders of a Nazi link.

There was a similar case in Akaroa earlier this year when the Bully Hayes restaurant was called out for honouring an American whose deeds in the Pacific included human trafficking, and abducting and raping young women and children.

We can’t change history. We can’t erase it. But we can recognise when it is very obviously not right to just ignore it.

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Why is New Zealand intent on honouring the legacy of an unrepentant Nazi? | Spinoff

Juliet Moses, spokesperson for the NZ Jewish Council

Last week, 97-year-old Cantabrian Willi Huber, a decorated Nazi officer lauded for his role in the establishment of Mt Hutt ski field, died. Juliet Moses says it is an indictment on this country that there has been no real reckoning with his past.

Cantabrian Willi Huber died last week. If you’re not a skier, you may not have heard of him. I’m not, but his name was seared in my mind when I first heard it in 2017. 

That’s when TVNZ featured him in its Sunday programme, lavishing praise on him as a Mt Hutt ski “pioneer” and “father of the mountain”. This did not pique my interest so much as the fact that he was also, in Cameron Bennett’s words, a “remarkable survivor” of World War II. Was he a Kiwi fighter pilot who fought for the RAF in the Battle of Britain? Or perhaps a survivor of a concentration camp? Why, no! He was a decorated Nazi officer – an Austrian who volunteered for the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front, moving here in the 1950s.  

The SS was the Nazi regime’s paramilitary branch, responsible for policing its racial policy and running its concentration camps. The Waffen-SS was its combat unit. Under the auspices of Heinrich Himmler, it ran separately from the German army.

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Canterbury skifield pioneer and former Nazi soldier dies | Stuff

Willi Huber

Mt Hutt pioneer and former Nazi Waffen-SS soldier Willi Huber has died, aged 98.

Hailing from Austria, Huber arrived in New Zealand in 1953 on a two-year work visa. A mountain guide by trade, he was curious about the mountains and thought he would visit for just the two years to work and explore.

Just as he was set to return to Austria, he met his future wife, Edna. He stayed and the couple married and had four children. They remained together up until his death on August 9, spanning 65 years.

At 17, Huber volunteered for the Waffen-SS, the military branch of the Nazi Party’s feared SS, where he served as a machine-gunner and then as a gunner in Panzer tanks.

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Nazi Hunter reacts to death of local “Hero” SS-Waffen Soldier | Holocaust Foundation

Willi Huber (left) and Dr Efraim Zuroff (right)

Former Nazi Waffen-SS soldier Willi Huber died recently, aged 96. Having lived in New Zealand since 1953, Huber made a name for himself as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of Canterbury’s Mt Hutt ski area. Hailed as a ‘heartland hero’, locals have appeared willing to ignore his Nazi past. 

In a 2017 TVNZ interview, Huber denied knowledge of the war crimes committed by the Waffen SS or German forces, or of the Nazi murder of about six million European Jews and millions of others, many of whom died in concentration camps run by the SS.

Speaking to the Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation from Jerusalem this week, renowned Nazi Hunter and Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, Dr Efraim Zuroff commented:

As a historian, I can state unequivocally that serving in a Waffen-SS unit on the Eastern front, there is no way that Mr Huber could possibly not have been aware of the massive atrocities carried out by the SS and the Wehrmacht in the territories of the Soviet Union, where 1,500,000 “enemies of the Reich,” primarily Jews, were murdered individually during the years 1941-1943.

Huber’s statements ring incredibly hollow in the face of the historical record of the Holocaust on the Eastern front. If we add the fact that he volunteered for the SS, and his comments that Hitler was “very clever,” and that he “offered [Austrians] a way out”  of the hardships after World War I, it’s clear that Mr. Huber was an unrepentant Nazi, who doesn’t deserve any sympathy or recognition.

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