Anti-Semitism

Is Venezuela's Jewish Community Under Attack?

By MARC PERELMAN

"We're facing the first anti-Jewish government in our history," asserted Simon Sultan, president of the Hebraica community center in Caracas. When two dozen heavily armed policemen searched the center one night last month, ostensibly looking for a stash of weapons and evidence of “subversive activity,” the Jewish community, whose population had declined since anti-Israel President Hugo Chavez's election in 1998, had to admit the situation was grave. Read more about the raid (not the first), escalating tensions, and the resulting exodus of Jews from Venezuela.

Reflections on AntiSemitism: Listen and Learn

“Being a Jew means always living with uncertainty-never letting one’s guard completely down. History is too powerful to ignore or deny.”
—Alan Dershowitz (I am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl)

Voices on Antisemitism: A Podcast Series features a broad range of contemporary perspectives. Listen to Faiza Abdul-Wahab, daughter of Khaled Abdul-Wahab, Tunisian rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust; Alan Dershowitz, who is concerned over the rising tide of anti-Semitic speech on American college campuses; Susannah Heschel, inspired by the lasting friendship between her father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King; and Father Patrick Desbois, who traveled across Ukraine to locate the sites of mass killings of Jews during the Holocaust, motivated by the memory of his grandfather, a French soldier who was deported to Ukraine by the Nazis. Plus Michael Posner, Shawn Green, Reza Aslan, and Judea Pearl, father of slain Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl, who describes himself as a “soldier battling the tsunami of hatred that has defined the twenty-first century.”

A Teach-In Across Europe: Tents Pitched Against Anti-Semitism

This is not your ordinary camping trip, although tents get pitched. A group of young Jews in Paris, Warsaw, and Kiev recently launched a campaign against anti-Semitism by simultaneously unfolding huge tents, designed to teach non-Jewish visitors about Judaism. Supported by the World Jewish Congress, the goal is to offset the increasing levels of anti-Semitism across Europe by exposing non Jews—through music, workshops, storytelling, and interfaith dialogue—to what life was like before the Holocaust, and in modernity.

Thumbs Down! Durban II Seems Headed for Same Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic Agenda as Durban I

The UN has launched a series of international meetings on racism, leading up to a major world conference in 2009. All indications suggest Durban II may be as blatantly anti-Semitic as the Durban 2001 fiasco, especially since Libya is chairing the pre-conference meetings. Honest Reporting points out that monitoring the progress of Durban II in the planning stages will be crucial in stopping human rights abusers from scapegoating Israel yet again.

Log on to New Web Site to End Campus Anti-Semitism

Hillel, the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, reports that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has recently launched a Web site to help end college campus anti-Semitism, which has been on the rise. The site is designed to educate college kids and to urge victims or witnesses to report anti-Semitic incidents. Become an accurate information resource and help stop racism on college campuses now!

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe as well as in America. For a good resource, check the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism, which asserts that acts of violence and intimidation against Jews worldwide doubled in 2006 over the previous year. The countries that experienced the sharpest rise in anti-Semitism were in Europe, home of the first Holocaust.

Thumbs Down! Psych Professor an Avowed Anti-Semitic White Supremacist

Kevin MacDonald, an unabashedly outspoken anti-Semite who is admired by white supremacists on their websites, is a tenured psychology professor who teaches child development courses at California State University, Long Beach. In racist books he publishes (very popular with neo-Nazis), and in his classes, he contends that Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western societies. Amazingly, Professor MacDonald is a member of the executive council of the professional body for evolutionary psychologists and serves on the University's Scholarly and Creative Activities Committee.

Anti-Defamation League

The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.

Jewish Council for Public Affairs

Resources

Human Rights First Oral Statement at the OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism
US Mission to the OSCE
Global Anti-Semitism and International Human Rights
Global Anti-Semitism: Response of the Jewish Community Relations Field
OSCE Official Website - Pictures at the OSCE Conference
Declaration by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Sept. 13-14, 2004
Human Rights First Oral Statement at the OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism

On Being Targeted

By RABBI BRADLEY SHAVIT ARTSON

A violent anti-Semite scouted out my workplace to attack.

Even in America: The JCC Shooting in Los Angeles

By JUDITH BOLTON-FASMAN

Raw hate lurks in the background of American life. Much of it is anti-Semitism.

Book review of Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism

Reviewed by JUDY LASH BALINT

This compendium, featuring 49 articles by 46 authors, has little new to add. But the after word by novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick is reason enough to pick up the book.