Jewish people Archives | Page 2 of 2

Mining for hate in “The Plot Against America”

March 20, 2020 Melanieantisemitism, conspiracy theories, Donald Trump, Philip Roth

The coronavirus pandemic has produced an intensification of anti-Jewish paranoia. One guest on Turkish television said “Jews, Zionists have organized and engineered the novel coronavirus as a biological weapon just like bird flu” to “design the world, seize countries and neuter the world’s population.” Similar vile theories are circulating in the West. False claims are being spread that Israel hasn’t helped the Palestinians in this crisis. In fact, Israel, has distributed testing kits to the Arabs in Gaza and the disputed territories, while its health ministry has provided Arab Israelis…

Britain Culture wars Jewish people

What will Jewish leaders say about Trevor Phillips?

March 16, 2020March 16, 2020 MelanieBoard of Deputies, Islamophobia, Trevor Phillips

The veteran anti-racist campaigner and former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, has found himself accused by his own Labour party of Islamophobia. The case is grotesque. Phillips has done much for British Muslims. And none of the accusations against him meets any reasonable test of bigotry. His allegedly “Islamophobic” comments are for statements over issues such as the Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs, or polling which found that a quarter of Muslims were “sympathetic” to the aims of the terrorists who killed the Charlie Hebdo journalists…

Jewish people

From Aalst to America: the post-modern, anti-Jewish reconfiguration of the west

February 28, 2020February 28, 2020 MelanieAalst, antisemitism, JCPA, Shmuel Trigano

The annual parade in Aalst, Belgium, last Sunday turned into a carnival of monstrous Jew-hatred. Participants portrayed Jews as insects topped with fur shtreimel hats and peyot (sidelocks). Others were dressed in Nazi uniforms, among other vicious Jewish caricatures, libels and insults. The mayor of Aalst defended the carnival on the basis that it mocked Christians and Asians, too. He thus showed no understanding of the difference between vulgar mockery and the murderously dehumanizing, historical phenomenon of antisemitism. This was followed by a carnival parade in the Spanish village of…

Israel Jewish people

Denying their parent and embracing their assassin

February 14, 2020 Melanieantisemitism, church, Islam, supersessionism

The Church of England has once again been performing the ritual that has been enacted by progressive protestant churches in the West for decades: liberal self-flagellation. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said this week that he was ashamed of the Anglican attitude to black people, and declared that the church was “deeply, institutionally racist.” So ashamed was he of having previously been unaware of his “white privileges and advantages,” he even compared the behavior of the church to the way the German people allowed the Nazis to persecute the…

Britain Jewish people

“Hineini”, says Sir Tom Stoppard; here I am, a Jew

February 2, 2020 Melanieassimilation, holocaust, Leopoldstadt, Tom Stoppard

The first play to be written by the Jewish writer Tomáš Straussler is shortly to open in London. Actually, it’s the latest play by the acclaimed playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, who was born Tomáš Straussler in Czechoslovakia in 1937. But Leopoldstadt is the first of his plays which reflects the fact that he identifies himself — deeply, emotionally, viscerally — as a Jew. He told the JC last week that he realised what this meant to him only in late middle age. The play, which I have seen in preview,…

Global conflict Jewish people

Holding hostage the memory of the Jewish dead

January 24, 2020 Melanieantisemitism, holocaust, Poland, Russia

A profound and bitter battle between Israel and Poland has been brought to crisis point by the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which is being commemorated by world leaders this week at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem and next week at Auschwitz itself. The roots of the row lay in remarks made last December by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He claimed that Poland helped start World War II, and accused it of being an antisemitic country that had welcomed Hitler’s plan to liquidate Europe’s Jews. A few days later, Polish…

Jewish people

The west mourns the Jewish dead. But what about the living?

January 17, 2020 Melanieantisemitism, Auschwitz, holocaust, Jewish history

At Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Jan. 23, some 46 political leaders and royals, including Britain’s Prince Charles, will be attending the fifth World Holocaust Forum to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. At this and doubtless other such memorial events, many eloquent, important and heartfelt observations will be made about the evils of Nazism and Jew-hatred. In today’s climate, however, there’s something disquieting about such memorializing. Given the eruption of physical and verbal attacks on Jews in Britain, America and Europe, it…