The Anti-Defamation League publishes an annual report on incidents of anti-Semitism in the United States. This year’s audit, made available in November, showed a significant increase in relation to the previous year: 2017 saw a 67% rise in anti-Jewish hate speech, harassment, vandalism, and violence. It’s a disheartening measure of a terrible phenomenon. Yet in the three months since the audit was released, it’s garnered little attention.

On campus, where the ADL notes an acute rise in anti-Jewish hostility, alarmed Jewish students are sidelined for being white and middle-class and the Holocaust is trivialized as “white on white crime”. Elsewhere, Jews who protest anti-Semitism are dismissed for failing to ante up sufficient concern about people of color.

This erasure of anti-Semitism isn’t simply callous. It exposes a huge moral failure at the heart of the modern Left. Under the enveloping paradigm of “intersectionality,” everyone is granularly defined by their various identities — everyone, that is, except white Jews, whose Jewishness is often overwritten by their skin color. Not simply a moral failing, this erasure is deeply hazardous, inasmuch as the fight against racism happens by and large in sectors where the Left perspective dominates — the academy, pop culture, and much of the news media.

For in a key sense, regular racism, against blacks and Latinos for example, is the opposite of anti-Semitism. While both ultimately derive from xenophobia, regular racism comes from white people believing they are superior to people of color. But the hatred of Jews stems from the belief that Jews are a cabal with supernatural powers, in other words, it stems from the models of thought that produce conspiracy theories. Where the white racist regards blacks as inferior, the anti-Semite imagines that Jews have preternatural power to afflict humankind.

This is also why the Left is blind to Anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism differs from most forms of racism in that it purports to “punch up” against a secret society of oppressors, which has the side effect of making it easy to disguise as a politics of emancipation. If Jews have power, then punching up at Jews is a form of speaking truth to power — a form of speech of which the Left is currently enamored.

https://forward.com/opinion/393107/how-anti-semitisms-true-origin-makes-it-invisible-to-the-left/

Manfred Goldberg is pessimistic.

As nationalism reverberates across the world and the power of social media grows, he fears that the warnings of the past have fallen on deaf ears.

The 87-year-old Holocaust survivor sees a world that has failed to learn from its history, from a past that saw 6 million Jews die at the hands of the Nazis. And in social media, he sees a machine so powerful in spreading hate that it is difficult to see a happy ending. The rise of social media has left Holocaust survivors facing what Goldberg calls "a losing battle."

"Instant communication now means that any single person who wants to propagate his race hatred-infected views can do so much, much, much more effectively than the Nazis back then could ever do," he says.

"Many years before they gained political power the Nazis initiated and maintained a vicious anti-Semitic propaganda campaign against Jews mainly by the printed word but also by speech railing against Jews at mass meetings.

"They did so in the belief that any lie, no matter how vile or abhorrent, would eventually be accepted as truth if it was repeated often enough and powerfully enough.

"Unfortunately, they were proved correct. The result, as we know, was the Holocaust. And what worries me, tremendously, is that in the name of the freedom of speech, we appear to ignore this lesson of history."

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/26/europe/holocaust-survivor-fears-deniers-are-winning-intl/index.html

The high school classmate suspected of murdering Blaze Bernstein reportedly recreated a famed neo-Nazi attack from the big screen on social media.

Samuel Woodward, who posted white nationalist screeds on fringe sites, posted a photo of himself pretending to crush a friend’s skull against a concrete parking barrier, the New York Post reported.

It was apparently intended as a recreation of a stomping killing scene in “American History X,” a 1998 film starring Edward Norton as a neo-Nazi skinhead.

The photo sheds new light on the hateful rage that police say led Woodward to stab Bernstein more than 20 times in a park in their affluent Los Angeles suburb on January 3.

https://www.haaretz.com/blaze-bernstein-murder-suspect-displayed-hate-on-social-media-1.5751372

Promote the blood libel? Check. Glorify terrorism? Check. Celebrate Israeli deaths? Check. Ahed Tamimi and her family aren't fighting for peace, and they're not just fighting the occupation: They're fighting to destroy Israel, and their fight is seasoned with Jew-hatred.

At the end of September 2017, Ahed Tamimi was one of the speakers at a conference hosted by the European Parliament in Brussels. Among Aheds co-panelists was 'pioneering' airline hijacker Leila Khaled, who told the audience: "The Nazis were tried in Nuremberg for their crimes. Today, Israel is experiencing impunity. You must bring the war criminals to justice and tell your governments that they must cease all cooperation with the Zionist state."

<snipped>

In October 2015, Bassem Tamimi faced a backlash when he shared a Facebook post promoting "a viral anti-Semitic meme alleging Israelis detain Palestinian children to steal their organs, and that Zionists control the media to suppress this information."

Nariman Tamimi – Bassems wife and Aheds mother – hardly ever fails to take to Facebook after a terrorist attack to praise the perpetrator as a hero. The frightening depth of Nariman Tamimis hatred is reflected in a Facebook post she shared from a Tamimi family member in June 2016.

That post honored the teenage Palestinian terrorist who had just killed 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel in her sleep, after breaking into her home. As far as the Tamimis are concerned, the murder of the Jewish teen by a Palestinian just a few years older than her helped "to return to the homeland its awe/reverence."

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-reality-behind-the-tamimi-family-s-resistance-1.5630465

A U.S. Senate staffer allegedly suggested that anti-Semitism is of lesser concern than discrimination against other minority groups, stating twice that “we don’t care about anti-Semitism in this office,” JNS has learned. The revelation has sparked concern among groups that work to raise American lawmakers’ awareness about anti-Semitism.

The remarks were purportedly made in a conversation that took place between Sarah Stern, the president of the pro-Israel group Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), and Jake Cornett, a senior policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (known as HELP).

According to notes of the meeting that were taken at the time by Stern’s associate, Jennifer Dekel, Cornett responded, “We don’t care about anti-Semitism in this office. We care about transgenders, we care about blacks we care about Hispanics, we care about gays, we care about lesbians, we care about the disabled. We don’t care about anti-Semitism in this office.”

http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2018/1/18/we-dont-care-about-anti-semitism-in-this-office-senate-aide-allegedly-says#.WmDODqinHIU=

A regional court in Germany has decided that a brutal attempt to set fire to a local synagogue in 2014 was an act meant to express criticism against Israel’s conduct in its ongoing conflict with Hamas.

A German regional court in the city of Wuppertal affirmed a lower court decision last Friday stating that a violent attempt to burn the city’s Bergische Synagogue by three men in 2014 was a justified expression of criticism of Israel’s policies.

The original synagogue in Wuppertal was burned by Nazis during the Kristallnacht pogroms in 1938.

Wuppertal has a population of nearly 344,000 and is located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/German-court-calls-synagogue-torching-an-act-to-criticize-Israel-478330

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday night implied European Jews during the Holocaust chose to undergo “murder and slaughter” over emigration to British-held Palestine, and alleged that the State of Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion imported Jews from Yemen and Iraq to the country against their will.

The Palestinian leader further asserted that the State of Israel was formed as “a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism” to safeguard European interests.

The PA leader delivered a mini-lecture on his understanding of the history of Zionism on Sunday, claiming the Jewish state deliberately stirred trouble in Arab countries in order to forcibly move Middle Eastern Jews into the sparsely populated nascent state.

Abbas, in his address, made no mention of the Jews’ historic presence and periods of sovereignty in the holy land. Israel is the only place where the Jews have ever been sovereign or sought sovereignty.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/rewriting-history-abbas-calls-israel-a-colonial-project-unrelated-to-judaism/

Two kosher shops were damaged in a fire near Paris on the third anniversary of the slaying of four Jews at a different kosher supermarket in that city.

The fire Monday night at the Promo Stock store in the Paris suburb of Creteil and at the local branch of the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket chain store comes two weeks after swastikas were painted on both stores.

No one was hurt in the fire, which caused severe damage to the affected stores. French media reported arson is suspected.

On Jan. 9, 2015, an Islamist killed four Jews in the Porte de Vincennes branch of Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in eastern Paris.

https://forward.com/fast-forward/391697/2-paris-kosher-markets-hit-by-arson-on-anniversary-of-terror-massacre/

After decades of subjugation, the courageous women of Iran are demanding change.

The uprising in Iran has seen tens of thousands of men and women calling for the removal of the mullahs whose regressive reign has turned the oil-rich nation into a leading state sponsor of terrorism.

These protests are unlike what we’ve seen in the past. The level of anti-regime sentiment is unmistakeable, with people openly chanting for the end of Islamic rule as well as calling for the removal of President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

That takes enormous courage in a country where dissidence can get you imprisoned, tortured or even killed.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/rita-panahi/iran-uprisingwhy-the-courageous-protesters-deserve-the-wests-support/news-story/55fce555b0a17fb3cb102ee9878445bc

Rita Panahi describes her personal experience:

"For me, growing up in Iran went from idyllic to harrowing in what seemed like record speed.

The Islamic Revolution of 1978-79 turned a relatively modern and secular country into a backward, oppressive theocracy.

As a young child, I didn’t understand the socio-political issues or the religious forces behind the revolution; all I knew was that I had reason to be afraid.

The women of my mother’s generation, used to being free, independent and growing in power, were suddenly forced to cover up in compulsory Muslim garb or face arrest, imprisonment or worse.

Of course, it didn’t stop with forced veiling."

A Holocaust exhibition at the National Library in Tunis met with fierce opposition, with demonstrators tearing down posters and condemning what they called “propaganda” for the “decades-old myth about a genocide of the Jewish people.”

In a video published by Meem Magazine on December 15, shortly after US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, activists could be seen slamming the attempt to educate their “little children to get to know the history of the Jews,” according to a translation of the video published Monday by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

The exhibition, which was supported by the Holocaust Museum in Washington, UNESCO, the United Nations and the German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, was the initiative of Tunisian historian Habib Kazdaghli.

“This is a historical documentary exhibition which exposes and denounces Nazi propaganda,” he said. “The purpose of this exhibition is to make our children love [history]. I’m a historian, but my children don’t like history.”



https://www.timesofisrael.com/tunisian-activists-protest-holocaust-display-calling-it-zionist-propaganda/