January 14, 2015

YouGov study surveys attitudes towards British Jews

Nearly half of the British population agreed with one of four antisemitic statements presented to them according to a new poll, which found that one in eight of those surveyed believe that Jewish people use the Holocaust as a means of gaining sympathy.

It also found that one in four (25%) Britons believed that Jews chase money more than other British people, a figure which rose to 39% of those participants who identified themselves as Ukip voters.

The research by YouGov was commissioned by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA), a network of activists in the UK which said that Britain was at a “tipping point” and warned that antisemitism would grow unless it was met by “zero tolerance”.

The group also carried out its own separate survey of British Jews, which found that 54% feared they had no future in the UK and that a quarter had considered leaving the country in the last two years.

more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/14/uk-jewish-antisemitism-rise-yougov-poll

January 13, 2015

Charlie Hebdo: first they came for the cartoonists, then they came for the Jews

When terror strikes, we all become mind-readers. With no words to accompany the violence, it’s left to us to supply the motive. We insert our own guess, ventriloquising the killers who remain enigmatically mute. It happened again this week, following the slaying of 12 people at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine with little more than an “Allahu Akbar” to go on. They hated the cartoons, we say. Free speech was the target, we declare. They wanted to silence satire and gag dissent.

Then on Friday, a siege at a kosher supermarket, four hostages confirmed dead, the murderers apparently linked to those behind Wednesday’s carnage. Oh, we say. So perhaps the killers’ problem was not with ugly cartoons or vicious depictions of Muhammad after all. Maybe their motive is of a different order, one we find much harder to comprehend. Perhaps the murderers are bent on killing people not only for what they do, but for who they are.

It’s hard to live in a senseless world so people, even well-intentioned people, will try to make sense of this latest, desperate twist in Paris. So far there have been mercifully few attempts to make the usual, kneejerk move, insisting that the animating grievance must be western foreign policy. It is hard to draw that conclusion when the targets have been a satirical magazine and a shop selling salt beef and pickles. Some will doubtless talk about Muslim antagonism to Israel, as if an infant in a kosher deli is somehow responsible for the conduct of a government 2,000 miles away.

Others might note the curious kink in the ultra-Islamist mindset that has anointed Jews as a kind of ultimate symbol of the west. Witness the Iranian newspaper that in 2006 responded to the Danish cartoons affair with a competition for “the best Holocaust caricatures”, as if the most efficient way to hit back at Europe was by attacking … Jews.

---snip---

It follows that our responsibility is to thwart that effort. For Muslims, that has meant spelling out that these killers speak only for themselves. Note the speed with which a delegation of 20 imams visited the Charlie Hebdo offices, branding the gunmen “criminals, barbarians, satans” and, crucially, “not Muslims”.

Of course they should not have to do it. The finger-wagging demand that Muslims condemn acts of terror committed by jihadist cultists is odious: it tacitly assumes that Muslims support such horror unless they explicitly say otherwise. The very demand serves to drive a wedge between Muslims and their fellow citizens. (As it happens, Jews have some experience of this feeling: we too are sometimes told we have to condemn this or that action taken by others – and over which we have no control – if our place in polite society is to be secure.)

more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/09/charlie-hebdo-cartoonists-paris-killers-fascist-death-cult

January 12, 2015

Compare and contrast (how anti-Semitism is viewed) (left vs. right)

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!

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Netanyahu, in Paris shul, thanks France for ‘firm’ stance on anti-Semitism

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he appreciated the “very firm position” taken by French leaders against “the new anti-Semitism and terrorism” in France, speaking after millions of French gathered to rally for unity in the face of terror.

He also thanked Lassana Bathily, the Muslim employee of a Jewish supermarket who saved several hostages during a jihadist attack on Friday.

“Our common enemy is radical, extremist Islam — not normal Islam,” Netanyahu said in an address at the Grand Synagogue in Paris, after briefly joining other world leaders in a mammoth march against extremism through the capital that drew up to 1.6 million people.

---snip---

Netanyahu went on to once again extend an invitation to French Jews to emigrate to Israel, just a day after he said the Jewish state was their home.

“Jews have the right to live wherever they want,” the prime minister said.

“But Jews these days have an opportunity that did not exist in the past, to live freely in the only Jewish state, the State of Israel.”

more: http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-thanks-france-for-firm-stance-on-anti-semitism/

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Netanyahu to French Jews: ‘Come home to Israel from terrible European anti-Semitism’

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has invited Jews from France and the rest of Europe to immigrate to the state of Israel, referring to what he sees as a “rising tide of anti-Semitism” there. The statement comes in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

“To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said in a televised statement on Saturday, referencing the Jewish tradition of facing Jerusalem when praying.

--snip---

"This week, a special team of ministers will convene to advance steps to increase immigration from France and other countries in Europe that are suffering from terrible anti-Semitism,” Netanyahu said.

“All Jews who want to immigrate to Israel will be welcomed here warmly and with open arms. We will help you in your absorption here in our state that is also your state.”

more: http://rt.com/news/221499-israel-pm-immigration-france/

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COMMENTS FROM RT:

GREAT-IDEA Net-In-Yahoo, “Summon ALL the Jews of France, ALL the Jews of Europe (and don't forget ALL the Jews in Asia and the America's too) to say that, Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home,”......and that's where ALL 'Ashkinazi Zionest-Jew Global Bankers' belong, home in ISRAEL.

Where are the videos of the bodies of these terrorists being removed from the store by the coroner wagons? Where are the videos of the dead accomplices being removed from the warehouse? Where's the pictures of the bodies? We got to see a lot of videos of the terrorists leaving the Hebdo building but where are the videos of them smoking them out of their holes and them rounding them up? If someone knows where they are can they post a link?

Another reason to think that this was a false flag. How convenient to include a Jewish supermarket in the attack.

After invitation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both French presidents Sarkozy and Holland will make aliya
Whole Polish national assembly (Sejm) would qualify too.

Yes, all Jews come to 3rd Reich! Jews that represent Judaism will never support you or your illegal regime Hitleryahoo! How can you treat ISIS terrorists in Israeli hospitals, kill Jews who represent Judaism then invite them using the scare tactic to live in Israel??

Anti - Semitic Europe?? French Jews to go to the terrorist entity that is Israel “rising tide of anti-Semitism” in Europe boy that's rich
Lets be clear here, French Jews (European for that matter) are not Semitic, over 90% of Israelis are also not Semitic that includes the fascist Netanyahu (polish) So the real anti Semite in the room is Israel. Palestinians are semitic by the way.
By the way there have been reports of french Jews joining ISIS, so netanyahu anti semite of polish decent the only “rising tide of anti-Semitism” is what you have and are continuing to create since the holocaust of 1948, these attacks in Europe are there to justify your own actions of genocide that you are committing.

Every year 3000+Palestinians of all ages are slaughtered by Israel as part of their ongoing Genocide against the Palestinians. Holocaust is what the IDF is doing in Palestine and Gaza strip and West Bank and the proof that Wallace the Jew was the chief of the Klou Klux Klan and also the many jews who have joined Al-Qaeda and ISIS is enough proof to know that the USA is doing all these atrocities with the guidance of israel.

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Some things are as stark as ever.

January 9, 2015

Wikileaks: ‘Jewish pro-censorship lobby’ legitimized attacks on Charlie Hebdo

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!)

Wikileaks accused the Jewish lobby of legitimizing attacks on the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, which was assaulted Wednesday by Islamist terrorists in one of the worst such attacks on French soil.

The organization, which serves as an online clearinghouse for leaked documents, tweeted on Thursday about "How the Jewish pro-censorship lobby legitimized attacks on Charlie Hebdo for 'offensive' speech," linking to a 2009 article in the magazine perceived by some to be anti-Semitic.

http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Wikileaks-Jewish-pro-censorship-lobby-of-legitimized-attacks-on-Charlie-Hebdo-387183

Three gunmen entered Charlie Hebdo's Paris office on Wednesday and opened fire, killing 12 people, including Jewish cartoonist Georges Wolinski. The attack drew fierce condemnation worldwide, including from Jewish organizations.

The article to which WikiLeaks linked was from the British newspaper The Telegraph, which details accusations of anti-Semitism leveled against Charlie Hebdo writer Maurice Sinet for commenting on the engagement of then-president Nicolas Sarkozy's son to a Jewish woman amid rumors that the younger Sarkozy planned on converting.

MORE: http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Wikileaks-Jewish-pro-censorship-lobby-of-legitimized-attacks-on-Charlie-Hebdo-387183

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Anyone surprised?

BDS Leaders Promote Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory Linking Mossad to Charlie Hebdo Atrocity

January 7, 2015

Paris-area synagogue set ablaze

(JTA) — Unidentified individuals started a fire inside a synagogue near Paris and drew a swastika on its wall.

The signs of the fire were found in the main hall of the synagogue in the Garges suburb on Jan. 1, according to the National Bureau for Vigilance against anti-Semitism, or BNVCA. Little damage was reported.

Police were looking into the case, the report said.

In Garges last month, several assailants attacked a young Jewish man at a public park while he was walking his dog. During the Dec. 16 attack, one of the three assailants said they would kill him like Ilan Halimi was killed after being beaten.


Read more: http://www.jta.org/2015/01/06/news-opinion/world/fire-started-in-synagogue-near-paris#ixzz3O7J38bDE


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France is having some real problems in regards to Jews as of recent.

January 1, 2015

Antisemitism 2015: A Global Challenge

Antisemitism presents a serious challenge for the global community today. The last decade has seen a shocking growth in antisemitic rhetoric and agitation, and routine acts of violence against Jews have returned to European cities 70 years after the Holocaust.

The battle between Israel and the Palestinians has become intractable, and the idea of a "peace process" that might finally resolve the issues is not taken as seriously as it was years ago. This fact does not bode well for Israelis or Palestinians, and given the obsessive focus on this conflict by the media and by both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel activist organizations, the lack of resolution and mounting frustration is an ongoing concern for all of us.

Today, we face a major impasse in our discussions about antisemitism: Where many Jews see a new or resurgent antisemitism, non-Jews are more likely to see political protest or a backlash against Israeli actions and policies. In truth, both characterizations can be accurate depending on the specific circumstance. Increasingly, however, this chasm in perception between Jews and non-Jews about the nature of antisemitism is widening, and it is one reason why there is a distinct lack of concern about the problem on the part of the world community today.

Along with news and debate about the conflicts in the Middle East, the Internet, satellite television, and social networking via cellphone allow people across the planet to share an enormous amount of explicit antisemitic material that is, quite frankly, poisoning the relationship between humanity and the Jewish people, making an intractable conflict even more difficult to resolve. This new reality is enormously threatening to a tiny people whose parents and grandparents survived being slated for extermination in Europe 70 years ago.

more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/catherine-chatterley/antisemitism-2015-a-global-challenge_b_6400620.html

December 30, 2014

Synagogue, garages spray-painted with racial slurs in West Rogers Park

A badly drawn Star of David and the words “F – - – U!” were among the scribblings residents awoke to Sunday morning on synagogues, garages and other buildings in a largely Jewish area of West Rogers Park.

“It’s outrageous, It’s very sad,” said one resident, as she saw the words Monday sprayed in black paint on the back side of the tiny synagogue in the 2900 block of West Touhy she’s attended for two-plus decades.

In all, a dozen or more buildings appeared to have been hit with the racial slurs and other profanity.

About 6:40 a.m. Sunday, police responded to the store-front synagogue. Officers later got word of similar incidents in the 2800 block of West Estes and the 5700 and 5800 blocks of North Talman. Police labeled the incidents as criminal damage to property. There had been no arrests as of Monday evening.


Anti-Semitic graffiti was found spray-painted on garages and a small synagogue in West Rogers Park on Sunday. | Al Podgorski / Sun-Times

more...

December 18, 2014

The Darkness Is Real. So Is The Light.

---snip---

But this year, let's own up to the fact that the darkness is real.
• The 148 victims of the Taliban terror attack on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan -- a grim, gory testimonial to the fact that religious freedom is, for too many, still a fiction.
• The racial and class divisions in this country. We might imagine that race relations have moved forward, and in some ways, we would be right. But until African-American parents no longer have to have "The Talk" with their teenaged sons, we are not free. No way.
• The grim and horrific revelations about our country's implicit endorsement of torture. And why aren't there more religious voices screaming about this? Isn't this a theological issue -- or do we no longer believe in that hoary concept of "the image of God?"
• The growth of anti-Semitism. And not even, just, international anti-Semitism. This is not just about Europe. This is about what is happening on college campuses in this country. When a mother of a soon-to-be college freshman asks me, in all candor, whether she should have her own version of "The Talk" with her son, and tell him to take off his kippah, you know that we have a problem.

And yes, there is some light as well. American Jewish prisoner Alan Gross has been released from his long incarceration in Cuba -- making the theme of freedom even that much more powerful.

---snip---

May your Festival of Light -- however you choose to spell it -- be filled with precisely that -- the light of moral courage.

more...

October 17, 2014

Homophobia is not always "in your face".

I posted this article in the LGBT group:

Is It a Big Deal That the Actor Playing the Flash Isn't Straight?

Actor Ezra Miller has been cast as the Flash in Warner Brothers’ eponymous movie, which is slated to premiere in 2018. That's big news even for those who aren't diehard DC Comics fans, because Ezra Miller is also openly queer, making it the first time a non-heterosexual has played the lead in a superhero movie.

Let's get one distinction out of the way: The 22-year-old Miller identifies as queer, not gay. Though the word can mean different things to different people, it’s often used as an umbrella term to mean “somewhere on the spectrum of sexuality that's not 100 percent straight.” In a 2012 interview, Miller told The Advocate “I’m queer... I have a lot of really wonderful friends who are of very different sexes and genders. I am very much in love with no one in particular."

It may seem ridiculous that we’re talking about this in 2014, when it feels like there is no shortage of openly non-heterosexual actors in Hollywood. But the casting choice of a queer man as the lead in a big-budget superhero, the embodiment of traditional American masculinity, is inarguably a huge deal. Queer actors are still up against the surprisingly pervasive idea that a non-straight actor can’t play a straight character. This has historically been true not just of superhero roles, but of all types of straight roles in mainstream American films.

--snip--

You may remember when Bret Easton Ellis tweeted that openly gay actor Matt Bomer wasn’t fit for the role of Christian Grey in the movie version of Fifty Shades of Grey. Ellis opined that “Fifty Shades of Grey demands an actor that is genuinely into women." That's a stubbornly persistent attitude: We love and applaud straight male actors for portraying gay characters, but we apparently don’t trust queer actors to be able to do the reverse.

more: http://www.vice.com/read/its-a-big-deal-that-the-actor-playing-the-flash-is-not-straight-117

The paragraph after the snip is not as uncommon as one might think. Not too long ago, Andrew Garfield, who plays Spiderman in the recent movies, stated something to the effect he wouldn't be opposed to Spiderman being gay. People lost their shit! Before that, it was about making "Sherlock Holmes" gay. Collective shit again lost, and as yet, unrecovered. The idea a fictional character might be written as gay totally pissed people off in a way that is nothing short of an example of homophobia. Many characters in superhero genres have be re-written in a way that changes the characters racial identity, physical abilities, even gender, but sexual orientation? That, for some is just a step too far.

Why is it so hard for some to understand gay people are here to stay and we are part of the fabric of life?

October 12, 2014

He would have been 38 in a month and a half were it not for murderous homophobes.

Remembering Matthew


Today marks 16 years since the day we lost Matt Shepard. I know from the conversations I’ve had with many of you that those terrible days in October 1998 echo in your memories: where you were, how it felt, the fears, the outrage and the questions you were left with.

In a cold October not so long ago in a sparse and misunderstood place, one of the few things that a senseless act of violence could not take from Matthew Shepard was his honor. In living openly as himself, Matthew encountered a terrible force that countless thousands like himself have faced before and since. The force of hatred. He lost his life to it. But he and we did not lose what was true about him – he had honored himself by being authentic, and honored those few of us fortunate enough to have known him, by being honest.

http://www.matthewshepard.org/

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Matthew Shepard: His Legacy Continues

Even after 16 years the name and story of Matthew Shepard, whose murder, carved into American history, represented a watershed moment that forever changed the conversation about the LGBT experience, not only still resonate but continue to have an impact.

When Matt died in 1998, I was an advocate working for GLAAD. My story and my connection to his death are well documented, most recently in a TEDx talk at Claremont College. The memories and lessons of all I have ever done in relation to Matt's death, and of all subsequent work I've done with regard to hate crimes and so many other issues, inform, inspire and motivate me every day. Legacy.

My experience changed me forever and carries with it a deep responsibility to continue to tell the stories of LGBT people. October is forever bittersweet for me: I celebrate National Coming Out Day with both pride and painful memories of being in Laramie and mourning Matt's death with his friends and fellow students and community advocates, not only bearing witness to moments that were shared around the world though the media but knowing that, in the best way we could, we tried to ensure that the media coverage was as fair and accurate as possible. Legacy.

As Dennis Shepard said at Russell Henderson's plea bargain hearing (Henderson is one of Matt's killers, now spending the remainder of his life in prison), "good is coming from evil." And after 16 years that good continues. Yes, his murder sparked a national conversation not only about hate crimes but about LGBT lives in general. Yes, it began a process where our experience as LGBT people suddenly had more context in the broader culture. (It followed the coming out of Ellen DeGeneres in 1997, making the late '90s a very influential time for the cultural visibility of LGBT people.) In October 2009 I stood feet away from President Obama at a reception following the signing of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Legacy.

more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cathy-renna/matthew-shepard-his-legacy-continues_b_5965980.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices

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Homophobia kills!