Are there a lot of outdoor weddings in the states? It should be discussed between the couple, before the ceremony.
Israel to demand apology for ‘anti-Semitic’ Netanyahu cartoon
- Thread starter mentalfloss
- Start date
Oh Gosh, we only want to censor the Arabs, not the Jews. They have the fire power and control of the western news media and they can strike back, you will never find a decent job again...
Israel to demand apology for ‘anti-Semitic’ Netanyahu cartoon
Israel is planning to demand an apology for a controversial cartoon that appeared in the British Sunday Times, Israel’s ambassador to London said Monday, while one minister mulled steps against the paper.
One day after the caricature sparked outrage among Jewish groups for its depiction of a bloodthirsty Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall with the blood and bodies of Palestinians, leading Israelis joined the chorus of condemnation.
“The newspaper should apologize for this. We’re not going to let this stand as it is,” Israeli Ambassador to London Daniel Taub told The Times of Israel in a telephone interview. “We genuinely think that a red line has been crossed and the obligation on the newspaper is to correct that.”
Taub added that he was going to meet with the newspaper’s editor “at the earliest opportunity, perhaps already today,” to express the government’s concern about a cartoon that draws “on classical anti-Semitic themes.”
In a meeting Monday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Tony Blair, the representative of the Middle East quartet who’s also a former British premier, deplored the caricature, noting the timing of its publication on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, according to a press release from the Prime Minister’s Office.
Earlier on Monday, Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein told Army Radio that the government would probably refrain from filing an official complaint with the London-based paper. However, he said, “We will think about how to act against the paper’s representative here in Israel.”
The cartoon is “certainly” anti-Semitic, Edelstein asserted. “I don’t think there is any other possible way to interpret it,” he said, adding that its publication on International Holocaust Remembrance Day was particularly hurtful, a sentiment shared by Taub.
Responding to an outcry from Jewish groups — Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, called the cartoon “absolutely disgusting” and said it “makes all the talk of fighting anti-Semitism seem irrelevant,” and Michael Salberg of the Anti-Defamation League said “The Sunday Times has clearly lost its moral bearings — a spokesman for the newspaper told The Times of Israel Sunday the cartoon was not anti-Semitic but critical of the prime minister’s policies, as it was “aimed squarely at Mr. Netanyahu and his policies, not at Israel, let alone at Jewish people.”
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin wrote a letter Monday to his British counterpart, Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow, expressing the Israeli people’s “extreme outrage” at the cartoon, which was drawn by veteran caricaturist Gerald Scarfe.
“For me and for other Israelis, this cartoon was reminiscent of the vicious journalism during one of the darkest periods in human history,” Rivlin wrote. While government authorities should not attempt to control the media and must grant freedom of speech, many Israelis are “shocked that such cartoons can be published in such a respectable newspaper in the Great Britain of today, fearing that such an event is testimony to sick undercurrents in British society.”
Scarfe’s cartoon, captioned “Israeli elections: Will cementing peace continue?”, “blatantly crossed the line of freedom of expression,” Rivlin added.
Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky drew a direct connection between the cartoon and the increase in anti-Semitic violence that took place in 2012.
“There is a very tragic alliance between primitive, anti-democratic, nationalist, racist, fundamentalist forces who are committing most of the violence, and enlightened, liberal, intellectual representatives of the intelligentsia in Europe,” Sharansky told The Times of Israel. By using clear double standards towards Israel, Western intellectuals evidently accept the delegitimization of Israel and are thus “helping to justify” anti-Jewish violence, he said. While Israel respects other nations’ right to freedom of speech, it is was “necessary and important” to label people such as Scarfe, the cartoonist, as anti-Semites, he added.
Some Israelis came to Scarfe’s defense. Haaretz correspondent Anshel Pfeffer listed several reasons the cartoon was “not anti-Semitic by any standard”: the cartoon, he argued, isn’t directed at Jews, features no Jewish symbols and does not use Holocaust imagery.
Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire CEO of News Corp., which owns The Times, nevertheless tweeted a harshly worded apology.
Israel to demand apology for 'anti-Semitic' Netanyahu cartoon | The Times of Israel
Somewhere between the Holocaust and 2015 it became OK to blame Jews again
British Jews feel a new sense of unease as a fashionable form of anti-Semitism spreads unchecked
Jewish groups demonstrated outside the British High Court last year after a spike in anti-Semitic attacks on people and property in the UK following the lastest outbreak of violence between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images
By Emma Barnett
15 Jan 2015
The Telegraph
245 Comments
When I heard the news that four Jews had been murdered last week on European soil by an Islamist gun-toting terrorist, my blood ran cold; my hands started sweating. Dazed, I found myself in the work toilets shedding a silent tear. And then I realised why I needed to be alone: I felt scared.
For the first time in my life, as a British Jew, 70 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, I felt anxious and bewildered at how this assault had happened just across the Channel. While I was stunned and enraged by the murders of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and writers – both as a journalist and citizen – it was the murder of my fellow Jews that left me feeling personally exposed.
I’m not alone in this newfound unease. A startling YouGov survey published yesterday has found that more than half of British Jews fear the community may have no long-term future in Europe; over half say they have witnessed more anti-Semitism in the past two years than they have ever seen before and 77 per cent have observed anti-Semitism disguised as a political comment about Israel.
The whole report makes for grim reading, peppered as it is with that familiar everyday anti-Semitism: one in four Britons thinks Jews chase money more than other British people; one in six believes that Jews think they are better than others and that they have too much power in the media. But it’s the addition and casual conflation of Israel into the anti-Semitic pick ‘n’ mix that really stings and is driving most British Jews’ growing concerns about their place in UK society.
The same study also found that 20 per cent of Brits believe that “Jews’ loyalty to Israel makes them less loyal to Britain than other British people”. It makes the head spin.
Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the seven-month-old volunteer organisation that commissioned the survey, believes Britain is at a “tipping point” regarding its anti-Semitism and hopes that such findings will act as a “wake-up call”.
However, Mr Falter’s hopes presuppose that people know what constitutes anti-Semitism in the first place. The trouble is even educated folk don’t grasp that blaming Jews for Israel’s actions is indeed anti-Semitic.
A prime example is Tim Willcox, the BBC presenter who interviewed a French Jewish woman at the weekend about her fears of modern day Jewish persecution following the supermarket shootings. He interjected with this little gem: “Many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well,” he said, adding: “You understand everything is seen from different perspectives.” Note he said “Jewish hands”, not Israeli hands.
Disgraced: BBC News presenter Tim Willcox has a history of anti-Semitism
Many viewers used Twitter to express their anger and concerns over Willcox's anti-Semitic rally coverage, including historian and BBC presenter Simon Schama
Watch video of BBC anti-Semite Tim Willcox offending Jews in wake of Paris anti-Semitic attacks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ze_6fSTleZE
Mr Willcox’s subsequent attempt at remorse was wretched. He didn’t express sorrow for his thoughtless and harmful statement, withdrawing it immediately. Nor did he go to great pains to explain why it was so wrong. Instead he claimed it was a “poorly phrased question” and that any offence caused was “entirely unintentional”. Well that’s OK then.
Except it isn’t. A new working definition of anti-Semitism, by the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), now includes “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”, and “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel”. (It does, incidentally also state that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic”, which I wholeheartedly agree with along with thousands of Israelis.) Yet the Jewish Israeli conflation is fast becoming the most fashionable anti-Semitic norm, ever since Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza last summer – which, in turn, prompted the highest number of attacks against Jews in this country since records began.
As the historian Simon Schama told me: “It used to be the Zionists that were the problem. Now it’s the ‘Jews’.”
Historian Simon Schama
His words and this new study chime poignantly with the views of Danny Cohen, the BBC’s director of television. Just before Christmas, he confessed: “I’ve never felt so uncomfortable being a Jew in the UK asI’ve felt in the last 12 months. And it’s made me think about, you know, is it our long-term home, actually? Because you feel it. I’ve felt it in a way I’ve never felt before.”
Of course, not all Jews feel this way about their future – myself included. I am proudly British and cannot see that a day would come where I didn’t live in this country. We are lucky in that attacks against Jews are nowhere near as violent as those happening in France and Belgium - a fact the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that provides security to the Jewish community, is at pains to stress. In fact, anti-Semitic incidents are back down to normal levels – around 30 a month. Jews may be leaving Britain for Israel but the numbers are still small - up 20 per cent this year to 620 and nowhere near the level of France’s exodus, which is expected to reach a staggering 15,000. In France, security teams at synagogues and Jewish schools are on higher alert since the France attack but David Cameron hasn’t had to deploy 5,000 extra police. And thankfully anti-Semitism in this country is not state-sponsored.
It would be irresponsible to overstate the risks that Jewish people presently face in Britain - although the spokesman from CST grows quiet when asked what’s being done about the possibility of copycat terrorist attacks.
However, something imperceptible has changed and this new study bears this sad fact out. We might not be facing the same terrible violence as our European neighbours, but there’s been an attitudinal shift: at some point between the Holocaust and 2015, it’s become OK to blame “Jews” again – and the latest stick to beat the Jewish Diaspora with is Israel.
Wire mesh protecting the windows of the Sandys Row Synagogue in London
Non-Jewish colleagues and friends tell me they haven’t noticed the change. Of course they haven’t – it’s not drip dripping in their direction down the pub, on trains and even on TV. To them I say, check out social media – where you are either for the Palestinians or for the Jews. The tweeting after the murder of the Jewish hostages, to the tune of “Serves the Jews right. They need to stop murdering Palestinian babies” was chilling indeed.
The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “move to Israel” message at the Paris march of solidarity was unhelpful. Relocating to Israel should be a choice for Jews – not an automatic response when we are attacked in our home country. His poorly chosen but well-intentioned words have muddied the waters further.
Today in Britain the wider society seems unwilling to grasp, denounce and crucially understand anti-Semitism. The Jewish community needs more outward solidarity as the tide slowly turns against us once more.
Jews themselves, who are on the whole brilliant at assimilating, need to get better at publicly calling out anti-Semitism – instead of trying to distance themselves from the problem in embarrassment. My husband, for instance, wasn’t sure about me writing this column – fearing the backlash. There may be only 260,000 of us in the UK but if we don’t lead, how can the rest of society follow?
Hundreds of participants mourn during the funeral of the four Jews killed in the Paris kosher supermarket Photo: EPA
Before Amedy Coulibaly opened fire in the French Kosher supermarket last week, he told a reporter he wanted to defend Palestinians and therefore was targeting Jews. Forty-eight hours ago all four of those brutally murdered Jews were buried in Israel. We don’t know why but we can guess.
Do we really want to get to a point where Jews no longer feel safe enough to bury their dead in European soil?
Broken society: the aftermath of Kristallnacht, 1938
Paris shootings anti-Semitism: It's OK to blame Jews again - Telegraph
British Jews feel a new sense of unease as a fashionable form of anti-Semitism spreads unchecked
Jewish groups demonstrated outside the British High Court last year after a spike in anti-Semitic attacks on people and property in the UK following the lastest outbreak of violence between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images
By Emma Barnett
15 Jan 2015
The Telegraph
When I heard the news that four Jews had been murdered last week on European soil by an Islamist gun-toting terrorist, my blood ran cold; my hands started sweating. Dazed, I found myself in the work toilets shedding a silent tear. And then I realised why I needed to be alone: I felt scared.
For the first time in my life, as a British Jew, 70 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, I felt anxious and bewildered at how this assault had happened just across the Channel. While I was stunned and enraged by the murders of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and writers – both as a journalist and citizen – it was the murder of my fellow Jews that left me feeling personally exposed.
I’m not alone in this newfound unease. A startling YouGov survey published yesterday has found that more than half of British Jews fear the community may have no long-term future in Europe; over half say they have witnessed more anti-Semitism in the past two years than they have ever seen before and 77 per cent have observed anti-Semitism disguised as a political comment about Israel.
The whole report makes for grim reading, peppered as it is with that familiar everyday anti-Semitism: one in four Britons thinks Jews chase money more than other British people; one in six believes that Jews think they are better than others and that they have too much power in the media. But it’s the addition and casual conflation of Israel into the anti-Semitic pick ‘n’ mix that really stings and is driving most British Jews’ growing concerns about their place in UK society.
The same study also found that 20 per cent of Brits believe that “Jews’ loyalty to Israel makes them less loyal to Britain than other British people”. It makes the head spin.
Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the seven-month-old volunteer organisation that commissioned the survey, believes Britain is at a “tipping point” regarding its anti-Semitism and hopes that such findings will act as a “wake-up call”.
However, Mr Falter’s hopes presuppose that people know what constitutes anti-Semitism in the first place. The trouble is even educated folk don’t grasp that blaming Jews for Israel’s actions is indeed anti-Semitic.
A prime example is Tim Willcox, the BBC presenter who interviewed a French Jewish woman at the weekend about her fears of modern day Jewish persecution following the supermarket shootings. He interjected with this little gem: “Many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well,” he said, adding: “You understand everything is seen from different perspectives.” Note he said “Jewish hands”, not Israeli hands.
Disgraced: BBC News presenter Tim Willcox has a history of anti-Semitism
Many viewers used Twitter to express their anger and concerns over Willcox's anti-Semitic rally coverage, including historian and BBC presenter Simon Schama
Watch video of BBC anti-Semite Tim Willcox offending Jews in wake of Paris anti-Semitic attacks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ze_6fSTleZE
Mr Willcox’s subsequent attempt at remorse was wretched. He didn’t express sorrow for his thoughtless and harmful statement, withdrawing it immediately. Nor did he go to great pains to explain why it was so wrong. Instead he claimed it was a “poorly phrased question” and that any offence caused was “entirely unintentional”. Well that’s OK then.
Except it isn’t. A new working definition of anti-Semitism, by the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), now includes “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”, and “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel”. (It does, incidentally also state that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic”, which I wholeheartedly agree with along with thousands of Israelis.) Yet the Jewish Israeli conflation is fast becoming the most fashionable anti-Semitic norm, ever since Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza last summer – which, in turn, prompted the highest number of attacks against Jews in this country since records began.
As the historian Simon Schama told me: “It used to be the Zionists that were the problem. Now it’s the ‘Jews’.”
Historian Simon Schama
His words and this new study chime poignantly with the views of Danny Cohen, the BBC’s director of television. Just before Christmas, he confessed: “I’ve never felt so uncomfortable being a Jew in the UK asI’ve felt in the last 12 months. And it’s made me think about, you know, is it our long-term home, actually? Because you feel it. I’ve felt it in a way I’ve never felt before.”
Of course, not all Jews feel this way about their future – myself included. I am proudly British and cannot see that a day would come where I didn’t live in this country. We are lucky in that attacks against Jews are nowhere near as violent as those happening in France and Belgium - a fact the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that provides security to the Jewish community, is at pains to stress. In fact, anti-Semitic incidents are back down to normal levels – around 30 a month. Jews may be leaving Britain for Israel but the numbers are still small - up 20 per cent this year to 620 and nowhere near the level of France’s exodus, which is expected to reach a staggering 15,000. In France, security teams at synagogues and Jewish schools are on higher alert since the France attack but David Cameron hasn’t had to deploy 5,000 extra police. And thankfully anti-Semitism in this country is not state-sponsored.
It would be irresponsible to overstate the risks that Jewish people presently face in Britain - although the spokesman from CST grows quiet when asked what’s being done about the possibility of copycat terrorist attacks.
However, something imperceptible has changed and this new study bears this sad fact out. We might not be facing the same terrible violence as our European neighbours, but there’s been an attitudinal shift: at some point between the Holocaust and 2015, it’s become OK to blame “Jews” again – and the latest stick to beat the Jewish Diaspora with is Israel.
Wire mesh protecting the windows of the Sandys Row Synagogue in London
Non-Jewish colleagues and friends tell me they haven’t noticed the change. Of course they haven’t – it’s not drip dripping in their direction down the pub, on trains and even on TV. To them I say, check out social media – where you are either for the Palestinians or for the Jews. The tweeting after the murder of the Jewish hostages, to the tune of “Serves the Jews right. They need to stop murdering Palestinian babies” was chilling indeed.
The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “move to Israel” message at the Paris march of solidarity was unhelpful. Relocating to Israel should be a choice for Jews – not an automatic response when we are attacked in our home country. His poorly chosen but well-intentioned words have muddied the waters further.
Today in Britain the wider society seems unwilling to grasp, denounce and crucially understand anti-Semitism. The Jewish community needs more outward solidarity as the tide slowly turns against us once more.
Jews themselves, who are on the whole brilliant at assimilating, need to get better at publicly calling out anti-Semitism – instead of trying to distance themselves from the problem in embarrassment. My husband, for instance, wasn’t sure about me writing this column – fearing the backlash. There may be only 260,000 of us in the UK but if we don’t lead, how can the rest of society follow?
Hundreds of participants mourn during the funeral of the four Jews killed in the Paris kosher supermarket Photo: EPA
Before Amedy Coulibaly opened fire in the French Kosher supermarket last week, he told a reporter he wanted to defend Palestinians and therefore was targeting Jews. Forty-eight hours ago all four of those brutally murdered Jews were buried in Israel. We don’t know why but we can guess.
Do we really want to get to a point where Jews no longer feel safe enough to bury their dead in European soil?
Broken society: the aftermath of Kristallnacht, 1938
Paris shootings anti-Semitism: It's OK to blame Jews again - Telegraph
Last edited:
Posters advertising a Holocaust memorial event in east London have been daubed with graffiti including the words "liars" and "killer".
The vandalism, which took place in the London Borough of Newham, which hosted the 2012 Olympics, is being listed as a "hate crime", Scotland Yard said.
Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales described what had happened as "despicable".
The graffiti, which is being treated as racially aggravated criminal damage, was found in four locations and has been removed, the council said.
Newham Holocaust memorial day posters defaced
17 January 2015
BBC News
Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales described the graffiti in east London as "despicable"
Posters advertising a Holocaust memorial event in east London have been daubed with graffiti including the words "liars" and "killer".
The vandalism, which took place in Newham, is being listed as a "hate crime", Scotland Yard said.
Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales described what had happened as "despicable".
The graffiti, which is being treated as racially aggravated criminal damage, was found in four locations and has been removed, the council said.
It was found at two locations in High Street, Stratford, one in West Ham Lane, near Stratford Park, and another on Balaam Street, Plaistow.
The posters, which are on display at 43 sites across the borough, are advertising the council's Holocaust memorial day event on Tuesday 27 January at Stratford Town Hall.
The council said police were checking the borough's CCTV footage to try and identify those responsible. Council officials will also be monitoring all advertising boards in case of further offences.
'Repulsed'
The vandalism was brought to the attention of Newham Council via social media.
Resident James Tattle, who reported one of the incidents on Twitter, said he was "repulsed" by what he saw.
"I was utterly repulsed, and saddened, to see one of the posters had been defaced," he said.
"I couldn't believe that anyone would stoop so low as to scrawl that graffiti - not something I expect to see in London in 2015."
The mayor said: "This despicable and cowardly hate crime is an assault on the values of decency and mutual respect which the vast majority of us share."
BBC News - Newham Holocaust memorial day posters defaced
The vandalism, which took place in the London Borough of Newham, which hosted the 2012 Olympics, is being listed as a "hate crime", Scotland Yard said.
Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales described what had happened as "despicable".
The graffiti, which is being treated as racially aggravated criminal damage, was found in four locations and has been removed, the council said.
Newham Holocaust memorial day posters defaced
17 January 2015
BBC News
Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales described the graffiti in east London as "despicable"
Posters advertising a Holocaust memorial event in east London have been daubed with graffiti including the words "liars" and "killer".
The vandalism, which took place in Newham, is being listed as a "hate crime", Scotland Yard said.
Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales described what had happened as "despicable".
The graffiti, which is being treated as racially aggravated criminal damage, was found in four locations and has been removed, the council said.
It was found at two locations in High Street, Stratford, one in West Ham Lane, near Stratford Park, and another on Balaam Street, Plaistow.
The posters, which are on display at 43 sites across the borough, are advertising the council's Holocaust memorial day event on Tuesday 27 January at Stratford Town Hall.
The council said police were checking the borough's CCTV footage to try and identify those responsible. Council officials will also be monitoring all advertising boards in case of further offences.
'Repulsed'
The vandalism was brought to the attention of Newham Council via social media.
Resident James Tattle, who reported one of the incidents on Twitter, said he was "repulsed" by what he saw.
"I was utterly repulsed, and saddened, to see one of the posters had been defaced," he said.
"I couldn't believe that anyone would stoop so low as to scrawl that graffiti - not something I expect to see in London in 2015."
The mayor said: "This despicable and cowardly hate crime is an assault on the values of decency and mutual respect which the vast majority of us share."
BBC News - Newham Holocaust memorial day posters defaced
Last edited: