Mind-Boggling European Union Chutzpah: David M. Weinberg, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 19, 2017— Israel should repulse the escalating European Union campaign of intimidation.
The Norwegian Elections, Israel, and the Jews: Manfred Gerstenfeld, BESA, October 19, 2017— The current prime minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, leader of the Conservative Party (Hoyre), and three potential coalition parties unexpectedly won Norway’s September 11 elections…
Europe Has a ‘Jewish’ Soccer Team Problem: Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA, Oct. 24, 2017— Seventeen-year-old Sjuul Deriet, standing outside this port city’s main soccer stadium on a rainy Sunday, vividly explains why he hates the people he calls “the Jews.”
In France, a Deadly Mix of Antisemitism, Islamism, and Family Violence: Michel Gurfinkiel, Jewish Chronicle, Oct. 19, 2017— "Burning hatred against France and against Jews, and an orgy of domestic violence."
An Italian Soccer Club Struggles to Battle Anti-Semitism: Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner, Oct. 25, 2017
Europe: What do Islamic Parties Want?: Judith Bergman, Gatestone Institute, Sept. 29, 2017
This BBC Interview Perfectly Illustrates Britain’s Left-Wing Anti-Semitism Problem: Yair Rosenberg, Tablet, Sept. 26, 2017
A UK Angel for Angela?: Francesco Sisci, Settimana News, Sept. 29, 2017
MIND-BOGGLING EUROPEAN UNION CHUTZPAH
David M. Weinberg
Jerusalem Post, Oct. 19, 2017
Israel should repulse the escalating European Union campaign of intimidation. You see, boycotts of Israeli products from Judea and Samaria no longer satisfy Brussels. Ramping-up its confrontation with Israel, the European Union has gone into the business of establishing “settlements” for the Beduin and Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, tower and stockade style.
This includes the wild Beduin building spurt that the EU has insolently funded in the strategic E1 quadrant between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim, in entirely purposeful defiance of Israel. The IDF defines the area in question a pivotal part of Israel’s strategic depth, and essential to defensible borders for Israel. It is also in Area C under the Oslo Accords, which means that Israel holds exclusive civilian and military control.
Yet illegally established Palestinian villages and Beduin shantytowns have slowly closed the corridor between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim, where a major highway runs, crawling to within several meters from it. These illegal outposts steal electricity from the highway lights, and water from Israeli pipelines. Civil Administration data, presented last year to the Knesset’s subcommittee on Judea and Samaria, showed that 6,500 Palestinians were living in some 1,220 illegally built homes in the area, and the number undoubtedly has grown since then – thanks to the EU.
The imperious EU has poured perhaps €100 million into EU-emblazoned prefabs, EU-signed roads, and water and energy installations – in E1, in Gush Etzion (near Tekoa), in the South Hebron Hills, and even in the Negev. Under the cover of diplomatic immunity, the EU’s settlement-building bosses audaciously thumb their noses at inspectors of the IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit. Then, they scream bloody murder when the IDF moves in, ever so minimally (– far too meekly and infrequently, I think!) to knock back a few of the most provocatively and problematically positioned EU illegal outposts.
Note that every prime minister since Yitzhak Rabin has promised and intended to build in the E1 quadrant as the eastern strategic anchor for Jerusalem and its critical connection to the Jordan Valley, only to be stymied by international protests. In short, the EU’s support of the Palestinians has graduated from passive diplomatic and financial assistance to subversive participation in the Palestinian Authority’s illegal construction ventures. The explicit EU intent is to erode Israeli control of Areas C and eastern Jerusalem while promoting Palestinian territorial continuity leading to runaway Palestinian statehood.
In June and August, the EU fiercely warned COGAT that Israel’s policy of demolishing illegal and unauthorized Palestinian construction is harming ties between Israel and the 28 EU member countries. According to Le Monde, eight EU member states this week took the further, unprecedented move of penning a letter to the Israeli Foreign Ministry demanding that Jerusalem reimburse (!) EU countries for the dismantling of infrastructure in the West Bank such as solar panels and mobile homes that were slated to serve innocent “local Arab schools.”
Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Sweden – members of the so-called “West Bank Protection Consortium,” a body which coordinates “humanitarian assistance” to Beduin and Palestinian squatters in Area C – are now demanding that Israel pay them compensation of more than €30,000 each. Such mind-boggling chutzpah! First the EU builds illegal settlements in defiance of Israel, then it demands that Israel pay for these offenses when Israel acts against them.
How much more contemptuous can you get than that? The European position is that under the Geneva Convention, Israel is responsible for dealing with the everyday needs of the Palestinian population in Area C, and since it is “not doing so,” the European states are stepping in with humanitarian aid. But it’s clear to anybody with a brain that European activity in Area C is not “humanitarian assistance” but political activity that brazenly seeks to create “facts on the ground” – to strengthen the Palestinians’ hold on Area C. In doing so, the EU has thrown key cornerstones of peace diplomacy out the window.
“Not prejudging the outcome of negotiations,” and “direct negotiations between the parties without coercion” – are principles that no longer hold sway, at least as far as EU pampering of the Palestinians is concerned. Instead, collusion with Palestinians and defiance of Israel is in vogue. The EU superciliously ignores the fact that the Palestinian Authority has rejected Israeli offers three times (2000, 2001, and 2008) which would have given the Palestinians statehood, including possession of almost all the West Bank and a share of Jerusalem. They also fled from US secretary of state John Kerry’s talks in 2014, and have sought to grab international recognition of their “statehood” unilaterally, while demonizing and criminalizing Israel in international courts.
Then the Palestinians revel in useless peace confabs, like the conference that Paris convened last summer, because this diverts attention from their intransigence and heightens Israel’s diplomatic isolation without actually brokering a peace negotiation that the PA doesn’t want. But none of this bothers the EU. It’s just happy to push Israel toward essentially unilateral withdrawals – without any expectations of real moderation from the Palestinians. Obviously, Israel shouldn’t pay the EU one red cent in “compensation” for its confiscated, cheeky solar panels.
In-your-face EU diplomacy should be met with in-your-face Israeli diplomacy. Perhaps Israel should demand compensation from Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Sweden for the Jews persecuted, the Jewish property confiscated, and the synagogues destroyed in their territories over the past 2,000 years. And if our government idiotically dares to settle with the EU, and shells out a single shekel, I am going to withhold paying my taxes in protest.
THE NORWEGIAN ELECTIONS, ISRAEL, AND THE JEWS
Manfred Gerstenfeld
BESA, October 19, 2017
The current prime minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, leader of the Conservative Party (Hoyre), and three potential coalition parties unexpectedly won Norway’s September 11 elections, receiving 89 out of 170 seats. Creating a government will not be easy, however. The Christian Democrat Party, a Solberg ally that barely passed the entrance threshold of 4%, is opposed to the anti-Islam Progress Party’s continuing in government.
A few months ago, polls indicated that Labor and its allies would return to power. Had that in fact occurred, Labor leader Jonas Gahr Stoere would have become prime minister. In that event, Norway would likely have joined Sweden sooner or later in recognizing a Palestinian Authority government that controls part of the Palestinian territories. In 2011, Anders Breivik murdered 77 people, mainly Labor Party youngsters. Then-prime minister Jens Stoltenberg thereafter publicly proclaimed that Norway, despite this tragic event, would become an even more open democracy. In reality, dissenters who strongly opposed social-democratic rule were even more ostracized than before. (After his 2013 defeat, Stoltenberg became secretary general of NATO.)
As prime minister, Stoltenberg was not so much an anti-Israeli inciter himself as he was tolerant of such incitement by his party and allies. At several venues where he spoke, there were brutal verbal attacks on Israel, but he remained silent. By not confronting these attacks he condoned them. Moreover, the Stoltenberg governments were the only European ones to include the extreme left. Several ministers came from the SV party, some of the founders of which were Norwegian communists. These governments frequently applied double standards against Israel, a behavior that fits the European definition of anti-Semitic acts.
The Stoltenberg government proffered de facto legitimization on the Islamist Palestinian terror group Hamas on several occasions. It also called on Israel to take down the security barrier, which would, had Israel complied, have facilitated Palestinian terror attacks. In yet another example of the poor judgment of a democratic prime minister, the Stoltenberg government also organized major festivities on the occasion of the 150th birthday of the late writer Knut Hamsun, a fanatical admirer of Hitler.
As for Labor leader Stoere, his anti-Israelism reached an extreme point when he wrote a back-cover blurb legitimizing a book by two Norwegian Hamas supporters, Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse. Writing on the 2009 Cast Lead campaign in Øyne i Gaza (“Eyes in Gaza”), they claimed that Israel had entered the Gaza Strip in 2009 to kill women and children. Stoere has always played both sides, however. In January 2009, the most anti-Semitic riots ever to have taken place in Norway occurred in Oslo. Muslims attacked pro-Israel demonstrators with potentially lethal projectiles. Stoere visited the Oslo synagogue afterward to express his solidarity with the Jewish community.
A study, paid for by the government, was published in 2012 by the Norwegian Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities. The study found that 38% percent of Norwegians believe Israel acts towards the Palestinians the way the Nazis behaved towards the Jews. During Erna Solberg’s tenure as prime minister, which began in 2013, extreme anti-Israelism among organizations mainly on the Norwegian left continued apace. The large trade union LO, which is a major force behind the Labor Party, came out in favor of totally boycotting Israel. In 2014, the Christian youth organization YMCA-YWCA voted in favor of a boycott on goods and services from the territories. (The Oslo chapter rejected the boycott.)
It is easy to underestimate the importance of Norway because it is not a member of the EU and has only about 5 million inhabitants. Yet its huge gas and oil income has enabled it to make major donations abroad, including to Palestinian causes. Labor governments did so extensively, and the Solberg government has continued the practice. In May of this year, however, Norway asked for funds it had donated to a center for women in the West Bank village of Barak to be returned. It had become known that the center was named for Dalal Mughrabi, who led the 1978 massacre on a highway near Tel Aviv that killed 37 Israeli civilians, many of them children, and wounded dozens.
A recent study by Jonas Duc Enstad of Oslo University’s Center for the Study of Extremism stated that it seems that “most anti-Semitic incidents in Norway are caused by Arabs and left-wing radicals.” As Sweden’s government is currently the main anti-Israel inciter in Europe, it is interesting to note that before the elections, Norwegian Immigration Minister Sylvi Listhaug, of the Progress Party, kept warning that Norway should not allow “Swedish conditions” to develop. The Financial Times wrote: “That is code for the gang warfare, shootings, car burnings and other integration problems that Sweden has endured recently in the suburbs of its three largest cities, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö.” One might also recall that Malmö is considered by many experts the anti-Semitism capital of Europe.
Listhaug traveled to Stockholm shortly before the elections and visited the extremely violent Rinkeby suburb. She made a point of noting that there are more than 60 no-go zones in Sweden. Sweden, with its 10 million citizens, is the dominant Scandinavian country, and many Swedes look down on Norway. This unusual Norwegian criticism hit Sweden below the belt, all the more so as it is largely true. If Solberg manages to govern for four years, this may enable Israel to further improve relations with Norway and better counteract its leftwing enemies there.
EUROPE HAS A ‘JEWISH’ SOCCER TEAM PROBLEM
Cnaan Liphshiz
JTA, Oct. 24, 2017
Seventeen-year-old Sjuul Deriet, standing outside this port city’s main soccer stadium on a rainy Sunday, vividly explains why he hates the people he calls “the Jews.” “They have the money, they run the business from management positions and they think they’re better than blue-collar people like us,” said Deriet, who works at a catering business. Yes, the statement sounds like typical anti-Semitic cliches. But it has nothing to do with actual Jews, Deriet hastened to tell JTA. “I have nothing against your people. When I say I hate Jews, I just mean supporters of Ajax,” he said, referring to the Amsterdam soccer team that is an archrival of Deriet’s beloved Feyenoord Football Club of Rotterdam.
For the uninitiated: Fans of Ajax are often referred to as “the Jews,” likely because of the historical presence of Jews in the Dutch capital. As it happens, there are several soccer teams across Europe that are known as “Jewish” for similar reasons, including England’s Tottenham Hotspurs — they once had a strong fan base among the Jewish immigrants of North London — as well as Italy’s Roma and Germany’s Bayern Munich. Both supporters and detractors often call the clubs Jewish, leading to some complicated situations. For example, it’s not uncommon at matches for fans of these teams to wave Israeli flags or shout their adoration for “the Jews.” At the same time, however, the detractors often display acrimonious hatred of “the Jews” — an uncomfortable situation that, depending on whom you ask, is either fed by or feeding anti-Semitism’s seeming comeback in Europe.
“Anti-Semitism in the stadiums has allowed the hate songs to gradually seep into society at large,” Manfred Gerstenfeld, a researcher of anti-Semitism and fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, wrote in a 2011 research paper titled “Antisemitism and the Dutch Soccer Fields.” Gerstenfeld’s paper shows how the chant “Hamas, Jews to the gas” has moved in Holland from the soccer pitch to anti-Israel protests.
In the case of Ajax, its “Jewish” nickname dates to the 1970s. It has the Amsterdam locale, and the team has had several Jewish managers and players — notably the late Johnny Roeg and Daniël de Ridder — as Ajax archivist Wim Schoevaart told Israeli filmmaker Nirit Peled in 2012. Peled made a film,“Super Jews,” about the team’s Jewish ties. Ajax also had many Jewish fans because — ahem — “they played well and Jews like to get good quality for their money,” added Schoevaart, who died in 2013 at the age of 94. Supporters of England’s Hotspurs proudly call themselves “Yids.” Based in North London, where most of the city’s 250,000 Jews reside, the Tottenham club also earned its Jewish credentials because its three chairmen since 1982 have been Jews.
But nowhere is the Jewish affiliation stronger than among Ajax fans, who like the film call themselves “Super Jews.” They wave giant Israeli flags during matches, sing “Hava Nagila” in stadiums and wear Star of David pendants around their necks. “Maybe it sounds silly, but it was a uniting element that brought fans together,” veteran Ajax fan Ronald Pieldoor told Peled. “They sing about it, they wear the symbols, so it seems that it’s part of the identity of some Ajax supporters.” At the same time, however, this borrowing of Jewish symbols by non-Jews (or “Ajax Jews,” as hardcore supporters call themselves) is triggering some of the most explicit and provocative expressions of anti-Semitic speech seen on the continent.
On Twitter, ahead of Sunday’s match in Rotterdam — Ajax won, 4-1 — fans of the rival team widely shared a picture of two Lithuanian Jewish boys wearing yellow stars taken just before their murder by Nazi collaborators. Ridiculing their suffering, the picture was titled “Back when Amsterdam had only one star.” Jewish organizations decried the tweet as a new low point in a long list of offensive jokes and acts, including Nazi salutes in stadiums and hissing sounds, a reference to gas chambers, made by rivals when Ajax comes on the pitch. One popular anti-Ajax banner reads “Adolf, here are another 11 for you” — a reference to the team’s 11 players.
While similar phenomena occur with Tottenham and Roma, they are particularly loaded in the Netherlands, where Nazis and their collaborators murdered 75 percent of the country’s prewar Jewish population of 140,000 – the highest death rate in Nazi-occupied Western Europe. “It’s extremely hurtful,” said Ronny Naftaniel, a Dutch board member of CEJI, a Brussels-based Jewish organization promoting tolerance through education. Yet not everyone believes the chants are anti-Semitic, per se. To Pieldoor, the veteran Ajax fan, the offensive chants have nothing to do with Jews and everything to do with fans’ desire to provoke Ajax supporters.
Following deadly hooliganism in the 1990s, Dutch police imposed strict measures during games, including a ban on Ajax contingents attending Feyenoord home games and vice versa. “As police got better at keeping us apart, you could no longer have at it, you couldn’t throw bottles at each other, so the only recourse was verbal aggression,” Pieldoor said in the “Super Jews” documentary. Remarks that would be considered anti-Semitic in any other context are not necessarily so in soccer, he argued. Soccer clubs and stadiums in the Netherlands and beyond have banned several fans for chanting insults and praises about Jews. Several court cases for incitement to racial hatred have been opened in recent years against fans who shouted anti-Semitic slogans at soccer matches…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
IN FRANCE, A DEADLY MIX OF ANTISEMITISM,
Michel Gurfinkiel
Jewish Chronicle, Oct. 19, 2017
"Burning hatred against France and against Jews, and an orgy of domestic violence." That was how Anne Chenevat, a major witness, described the Merah family – a divorced mother, three sons and two daughters – to the Special Criminal Court of Paris last Tuesday. Mohamed Merah, the youngest of the family's sons, killed seven people – including three Jewish children shot at point-blank range – and maimed six others in the southern French towns of Montauban and Toulouse between March 11 and March 19, 2012. He was himself killed by security forces three days later.
The main defendants in the present trial, which started three weeks ago, are his older brother Abdelkader Merah and his older sister Souad. The siblings are accused of inspiring the killing spree. Abdelkader was arrested in 2012; Souad fled to Algeria. Anne Chenevat, a former partner of the eldest Merah brother, Abdelghani, testified about the toxic influence of the family's Algerian-born mother, Zuleikha Aziri. "I was routinely abused and spat upon by Zuleikha for being 'a dirty French woman' and a 'dirty Jewess'." Anne Chenevat's importance as a witness stems from the fact that she was for six years the partner of Abdelghani Merah, the eldest Merah brother. According to her, Zuleikha Aziri, the Algerian-born mother, would use electric wire to beat her children. Violence between the brothers was rampant: on one occasion, Abdelkader inflicted seven stab wounds on Abdelghani.
Hatred for the non-Muslim French and antisemitism were held as self-evident in the family." As a result, I was routinely abused and spat upon by Zuleikha for being 'a dirty French woman' and a 'dirty Jewess'," Chenevat said. A Catholic by birth, she once admitted to the Merahs that she had a Jewish grandfather. She left Abdelghani because of his addiction to alcohol and drugs and raised their son Theodore alone. Also called also as a witness to the trial, Abdelghani concurred with his former companion about the Merahs' ethnic and religious prejudices: "We all grew up hating France and the Jews, it is a fact."
According to him, Abdelkader turned to radical Islam in 2006 along with Souad and frequently visited salafist mosques and madrasas in Egypt, and was the main nefarious influence on Mohamed. Theodore Chenevat, the son of Anne Chenevat and Abdelghani Merah – now a 21-year-old business and economics student – chillingly told the Court that in order to indoctrinate him into jihad, his uncle Abdelkader shared with him videos of "Islamic beheading" and attempted to have him visit mortuaries. When the counsel of Mohamed Merah's Jewish victims, Elie Korchia, asked him whether Abdelkader and Mohamed should be seen as two heads of a single terrorist beast, he answered that the fugitive older sister Souad should be counted as a third and equally dangerous head. The trial, which is expected to last until early November, continues.
An Italian Soccer Club Struggles to Battle Anti-Semitism: Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner, Oct. 25, 2017—Lazio, a top flight Italian soccer club, is finally confronting the scourge of anti-Semitism.
Europe: What do Islamic Parties Want?: Judith Bergman, Gatestone Institute, Sept. 29, 2017—Sweden's brand new first Islamic party, Jasin, is aiming to run for the 2018 parliamentary elections.
This BBC Interview Perfectly Illustrates Britain’s Left-Wing Anti-Semitism Problem: Yair Rosenberg, Tablet, Sept. 26, 2017 —At the moment, the British Labour party is holding its annual conference, at which members have been tackling, among other concerns, internal hate speech guidelines.
A UK Angel for Angela?: Francesco Sisci, Settimana News, Sept. 29, 2017—Like many times in the past century, German internal political events toll a bell for Great Britain and the rest of Europe, while the world looks the other way.
