In this mailing:
- Soeren Kern: U.S. Sends Anti-Israel Advisor to Anti-Semitic Sweden
- Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Is Jordan Keeping Out Palestinian Refugees?
- Michael Curtis: Hungary Spotlights Antisemitism - Again
U.S. Sends Anti-Israel Advisor to Anti-Semitic Sweden
by Soeren Kern
April 17, 2012 at 5:00 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3014/hannah-rosenthal-ilmar-reepalu-malmo
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The problem of anti-Semitism in Sweden is so widespread that the Simon Wiesenthal Center has advised Jews to avoid travelling to the country altogether: " There have been dozens of incidents reported to the authorities but have not resulted in arrests or convictions for hate crimes.
U.S. President Barack Obama's controversial anti-Semitism advisor, Hannah Rosenthal, will be visiting Sweden on April 24 to meet with Ilmar Reepalu, the famously anti-Israel mayor of the city of Malmö.
According to the American embassy in Stockholm, Rosenthal has been following the rise of anti-Semitism in Malmö for some time and wants to make sure that there are no politicians in the area that encourage discrimination, racism or hatred for Jews.
Rosenthal's visit to Sweden is likely to amount to little more than an empty photo opportunity. This is because Rosenthal and Reepalu are both self-styled "progressives" who hold the insidious belief that Jews are to blame for anti-Semitism because of their support for Israel.
Like other European countries, Sweden has experienced a significant uptick in anti-Semitic hate-crimes in recent years. Jews in Sweden are frequently subject to harassment and some have been physically assaulted; Jewish cemeteries in the country have repeatedly been desecrated; Jewish worshippers have been abused on their way home from prayer; and Jews have been taunted in the streets by masked men chanting phrases such as "Hitler, Hitler" and "Dirty Jew." Some Jews in Sweden have stopped attending prayer services out of fear for their safety.
The problem of anti-Semitism in Sweden is so widespread that the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center has advised Jews to avoid traveling to the country altogether. "We reluctantly are issuing this advisory because religious Jews and other members of the Jewish community there have been subject to anti-Semitic taunts and harassment. There have been dozens of incidents reported to the authorities but have not resulted in arrests or convictions for hate crimes," the center said in a statement.
Malmö, the third-largest city in Sweden, has become an especially hostile place for Jews, who are increasingly subjected to threats, intimidation and physical violence.
The only synagogue serving Malmö's 700-strong Jewish community has been a frequent target of attack. The synagogue, which is often the target of bomb threats, has also been set on fire, and now has security guards stationed around the building. The windows of the synagogue have been replaced with bullet-proof glass, while the Jewish kindergarten can only be reached through reinforced steel security doors.
The situation for Jews in Malmö is so bleak that some 30 Jewish families have already left the city for Stockholm, England or Israel -- and more are preparing to go.
The upswing in anti-Semitic violence in Malmö is being attributed to two key factors: the exponential increase in the number of Muslim immigrants in the city, as well as to Malmö's bigoted leftwing mayor, who rarely misses an opportunity to publicly demonize Israel.
Muslims now comprise between 20% and 25% of Malmö's total population of around 300,000, and local observers say most of the increase in anti-Jewish violence in recent years has been perpetrated by shiftless Muslim immigrant youth.
Anti-Semitism is also being stirred up by Ilmar Reepalu, the leftwing mayor of Malmö, who has a pathological obsession with Israel.
Reepalu, who has been mayor for more than 15 years, says Jews are to blame for anti-Semitism because of their support for Israel.
In January 2010, for example, Reepalu marked Holocaust Memorial Day by declaring that Zionism is racism because it is an "extreme ideology that puts one group of people over another."
In an interview with the daily newspaper Skånska Dagbladet, he also said: "I would wish for the Jewish community to denounce Israeli violations against the civilian population in Gaza. Instead it decides to hold a [pro-Israel] demonstration in the Grand Square [of Malmö], which could send the wrong signals."
Reepalu was referring to an incident in January 2009, during Israel's brief war in Gaza, when a small demonstration in favor of Israel was attacked by a screaming mob of Muslims and Swedish leftists, who threw bottles, eggs and firecrackers as the police looked on.
In July 2011, after a Hollywood film production company cancelled plans to shoot a movie in the southern Swedish province of Skåne due to concerns over anti-Semitism in Malmö, Reepalu cast his rage on the Simon Wiesenthal Center for issuing the travel warning.
Reepalu, in an interview with the newspaper Sydsvenskan, said: "I have a feeling that the Simon Wiesenthal Center is not really looking for what is happening in Malmö but they want to hang the people who dare to criticize the state of Israel. Are they once again saying I should be silenced? I will never compromise my morals."
More recently, Reepalu has accused Jews in Sweden of teaming up with an anti-immigrant party to "spread hate" toward Muslims.
In a March 22 interview with the magazine NEO about the rise of anti-Semitism in Sweden, Reepalu said the Jewish community has been "infiltrated" by the conservative Sweden Democrats party to promote their mutual disdain for Muslims.
Enter into the mix Hannah Rosenthal, who has been President Obama's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism since November 2009.
Rosenthal's first official act in office was to rebuke Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren for describing the self-described "pro-Israel" activist group J Street as "dangerous" to Israeli security. J Street -- which says it aims to "redefine" what it means to be pro-Israel, and has repeatedly worked to undermine Israel's fight against terrorism -- is funded by George Soros, an anti-Israel secular Jewish billionaire who blames Jews for anti-Semitism.
Rosenthal, a former director of J Street who has also served on the board of the left-wing activist group Americans for Peace Now (which is part of the boycott, divestment and sanctions [BDS] movement against Israel aimed at delegitimizing the Jewish state), has also implied that Jews around the world who are vocal supporters of the Israeli government are fair game for anti-Semitic attacks.
Commenting on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, Rosenthal said: "It's a scary time, with people losing the ability to differentiate between a Jew, any Jew, and what's going on in Israel." According to Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard: "Parse that quote and it's pretty clear what Rosenthal is saying -- the Israelis have it coming, but the rest of the world needs to distinguish between the good progressive Jews who are not living on Palestinian land and the Israeli Jews who are committing daily atrocities in the name of colonialism and occupation."
Rosenthal has also criticized non-leftwing supporters of Israel as having "narrow, ultra-conservative views of what it means to be pro-Israel."
Although her job description is to combat anti-Semitism, Rosenthal focuses much of her time and effort on fighting "Islamophobia." Speaking to the London-based Community Security Trust, an organization that is dedicated to protecting the Jewish community in Britain, Rosenthal called for a crackdown on bigotry against… Muslims.
A few months later, at the so-called High-Level Conference on Tolerance and Non-Discrimination organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Rosenthal again attacked Islamophobia and also criticized the "severe constraints" to the "free practice of Islam" in Europe, as well as the "great difficulty" Muslims face in building mosques on the continent. She made no mention of the fact that many, if not most, of the attacks on Jews in Europe are perpetrated by Muslims.
During a visit to Vilnius in April 2010, Rosenthal refused to confront the Lithuanian government's efforts to hide the country's complicity in the Jewish Holocaust. Instead, she declared that Lithuania had "taken very proactive steps in dealing with anti-Semitism," and also promised the Lithuanians a €64,000 ($85,000) grant "to develop Holocaust education."
Rosenthal made no mention of the fact that Lithuania is spending millions of euros on a pernicious campaign to obtain official recognition by the European Union that the crimes of communism are equivalent to those of the Nazis.
On a return visit to Vilnius in November 2011 to participate in a conference called "Tolerance and Totalitarianism: Challenges to Freedom," which was sponsored by the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rosenthal again refused to address the issue of anti-Semitism. Never mind that the Lithuanian government is currently sponsoring a series of events to honor as heroes Lithuanians who murdered their Jewish neighbors even before the Germans arrived in 1941.
Rosenthal now wants to travel to Sweden to find out what Reepalu is doing to combat intolerance in Malmö. Since both share similar perspectives on the root cause of anti-Jewish hate crime in Europe, namely Jewish support for Israel, Rosenthal and Reepalu can be expected to downplay the severity of anti-Semitism in Sweden and focus their attention on Islamophobia instead.
Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics: Soeren Kern
Why Is Jordan Keeping Out Palestinian Refugees?
by Khaled Abu Toameh
April 17, 2012 at 4:45 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3019/jordan-palestinian-refugees
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Jordan's treatment of Palestinian refugees is not uncommon for an Arab country. In the past, Palestinians have also been denied entry into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya. Palestinians are being held in tents, with poor sanitary conditions.
More than 1,000 Palestinians who fled from the violence in Syria and were hoping to find temporary shelter in Jordan, have been stranded along the border between Syria and Jordan for the past few weeks. The Jordanian authorities have been refusing to allow them into the kingdom.
The Jordanian authorities have set up a makeshift refugee camp along the border with Syria, where the Palestinians are being held in tents, with poor sanitary conditions.
Jordan's treatment of Palestinian refugees is not uncommon for an Arab country. Lebanon and Egypt have also refused to grant asylum to the fleeing Palestinians. This is also not the first time that an Arab country keeps Palestinians waiting on the border. In the past, Palestinians have also been denied entry into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya.
Arab support for the Palestinians has been largely rhetorical over the past two decades, forcing the Palestinians to become almost entirely dependent on American and EU taxpayers' money.
Meanwhile, an additional 100,000 Syrians, who have fled their country in the past year, have been permitted to enter Jordan.
The Jordanians are worried that if they allow a few hundred Palestinians to settle in the kingdom, that would create a precedent and pave the way for 500,000 Palestinians living in Syria to run away to Jordan.
As Jordan's King Abdullah already has a problem with the 80% Palestinian majority in his kingdom, he does not want the Palestinians in the kingdom. They pose a demographic threat to the Jordanians.
The decision to ban the Palestinian refugees from entering Jordan coincided with reports that the Jordanian authorities have begun revoking the Jordanian citizenship of Palestinians which they had previously been given.
Because the Palestinians pose a demographic threat to the Jordanians, hundreds of thousands of them living in Jordan will lose their status as Jordanian citizens.
The Jordanian government, according to sources in Amman, has even decided to revoke the Jordanian citizenship of Palestinian Authority leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas.
King Abdullah this week dispatched a high level delegation to Ramallah to discuss the new measures against the Palestinians with the Palestinian leadership. Headed by Jordan's interior minister, the delegation informed the Palestinians that the kingdom would not be able to help the Palestinians who fled from Syria.
King Abdullah is so worried about the talk, mainly in Israel, about the need to establish a Palestinian state in Jordan that he has just instructed his government to come up with a new electoral law that would keep Palestinians away from parliament and most government institutions altogether.
Related Topics: Khaled Abu Toameh
Hungary Spotlights Antisemitism - Again
by Michael Curtis
April 17, 2012 at 4:30 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3013/hungary-antisemitism
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It is not unusual for the malicious, the ignorant or the misguided to use the blood libel accusation. It is devastating that it should be used in a European parliament.
Two issues have recently occurred as reminders of the unpleasant past for Jews in Hungary. One is the coming into force on January 1, 2012 of the new constitution, The Fundamental Law of Hungary, passed on April 25, 2011. A paragraph in the Prologue can be read to deny any Hungarian responsibility for wartime actions in the country: "We do not recognize the suspension of our historical constitution due to foreign occupations. We deny any statute of limitations for the inhumane crimes committed against the Hungarian nation and its citizens under the national socialist and communist dictatorships." The implication, though not overtly stated, was that as Hungary was invaded and occupied by the Nazis in March 1944, and then later by the Red Army, its government and citizens could not be held responsible for the deportation of Jews to extermination camps. In more venal fashion this disclaimer could also limit payment of restitution claims by Jews against the state.
Even more disturbing has been the revival of the infamous blood libel accusation against Jews, the accusation that goes back to the first major one in 1144 in Norwich, England that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood to bake matzos for Passover. In the last few years this has been echoed by people in Russia, Poland, the Palestinian Hamas group, by the Syrian Minister of Defense, Mustafa Tiass, in a book in 1986, and by the leader of the branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.
The accusation was echoed in a public space in Budapest. Zsolt Barath, one of the leaders of Jobbik, the new Nazi party which has 47 seats in the Hungarian legislature, is known as a Holocaust denier. On April 3, 2012 in a speech in the parliament he referred to the Tiszaeszlar case, 1882-83 in which 15 Jews were accused of murdering a 14 year-old Christian domestic servant for her blood. They were acquitted but the case was followed by pogroms against Hungarian Jews. The town of Tiszaeszlar has become a pilgrimage site for antisemites. Barath argued that the acquittal was due to outside pressure, in effect Jewish international financiers. Hungary, in the views of this Nazi, was again 130 years later facing similar pressure of Jewish finance. It is not unusual for the malicious, the ignorant or misguided to use the blood libel accusation. It is devastating that it should be used in a European parliament.
The list of distinguished Jews, past and present, who were born in, or originated from, territory controlled by Hungary, and who made important contributions to science, mathematics, scholarship, political and economic activity, and culture is endless. Among them are Theodor Herzl, John von Neumann, Milton Friedman, Tony Curtis, Leslie Howard, George Szell, Elie Wiesel, Arthur Koestler, Robert Capa, and George Soros.
In spite of that contribution to Hungarian culture the story of the Hungarian Jewish community has not been a happy one. The Wannsee Conference of German leaders in January 1942 outlined plans for the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German occupied territory. Its chairman, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the German Main Security Office including the Gestapo, calculated there were 742,800 Jews in the territory controlled by Hungary. Of these, 568,000 were killed by Nazi Germany and by the pro Nazi party the Hungarian Arrow Cross.
Hungary even before the war, from 1938 on, had introduced a number of antisemitic laws, so called "race protective" orders, according to which Jews, as in Nazi Germany, were essentially removed from the economy, preventing them from employment in law, press, films, theater, and from travelling except in street cars.
In the months of July and August 1941, over 16,000 Jews were deported from Hungary, an ally of Germany at the beginning of the war, to Galicia, then under German rule: all of them were killed. In January 1942 the Hungarian police murdered 3,500 people, of whom 800 were Jews. Most of their bodies were thrown into the river Danube; victims were made to remove their shoes before being thrown into the river -- a set of iron shoes now stands along the riverbank. Other victims were publicly hanged.
The main malfeasance committed in the country came after March 1944 when Hungary was occupied by German forces. The Regent of Hungary, the conservative Admiral Miklos Horthy, who ruled the country had not stood up to Hitler but he had not totally succumbed to or supported German demands. With the German invasion ghettos were established for 70,000 people and Jews were obliged to wear the Star of David. The main criminal in charge of the Holocaust in Hungary was Adolph Eichmann, not exemplifying the "banality of evil," but the energetic and ruthless head of a special unit to deport Jews. In this activity, Eichmann was aided by Hungarian soldiers, police, and government officials. In two months in summer 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to their death.
The deportations ended on July 6, 1944, partly as a result of D Day and partly because of Horthy's awareness of the advance of the Russian forces into Hungary. The Germans replaced Horthy, who would no longer be a partner of the Nazis, by Ferenc Szalasi, the leader of the anti-Semitic Arrow Cross party which was responsible for killing over 80,000 Jews, some of whom were sent on death marches. Some of these killers were tried as war criminals in Soviet Union courts after the war, but many went unpunished.
Budapest, which once had a Jewish population of 825,000, today has less than 70,000. Prejudice against them remains. A recent survey of Hungarians showed that 75 percent believe that Jews have too much power in the business world.
How unfortunate that Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved so many Jews in Budapest, and Tom Lantos, the Congressman who was a refugee from Hungary, are not alive to pour scorn on recent developments in Hungary.
Michael Curtis is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University, and author of Should Israel Exist? A Sovereign Nation under Attack by the International Community.
Related Topics: Michael Curtis
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