Category Archives: Antisemitism

Police officer gets $1.5m settlement to resign after antisemitic behavior

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Assistant police chief Derek Kammerzell from Washington pinned Nazi insignia on his office door and made jokes about Holocaust

A senior police officer from Kent, Washington, will receive $1.5m in order to resign in a settlement with the city after an investigation into antisemitic behavior, including pinning Nazi insignia on his office door.

Assistant police chief Derek Kammerzell was initially suspended after multiple complaints surfaced in September 2020 from other officers for behavior indicative of sympathetic behavior towards Nazis, such as displaying Nazi imagery above his name placard on his office door and making jokes about the Holocaust.

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QC to examine NUS president election in antisemitism inquiry

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Rebecca Tuck says internal investigation into president-elect Shaima Dallali will take priority

The QC leading an independent investigation into alleged antisemitism within the National Union of Students has announced she will examine the election of the organisation’s incoming president as well as wider concerns.

Rebecca Tuck, who was appointed to head the inquiry after consultations between the NUS and the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), said an internal investigation into Shaima Dallali, the president-elect, under the NUS’s code of conduct would take first priority, with her findings to be announced within weeks.

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UK government suspends engagement with NUS over antisemitism allegations

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The education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, said he was ‘seriously concerned’ by reports of alleged antisemitism within the organisation

Ministers have banned official contact with the National Union of Students over long-running allegations of antisemitism within the organisation, despite the NUS’s pledge to work with Jewish students in an internal investigation.

The allegations have become a focus for the government since the election of Shaima Dallali as the next NUS president, with groups including the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) raising concerns after alleged historic comments resurfaced.

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Russia accuses Israel of backing ‘neo-Nazis’ in Kyiv as diplomatic row grows

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Moscow hits back at Israeli criticism of Sergei Lavrov’s claim that Adolf Hitler ‘had Jewish blood’

Russia has accused Israel of supporting the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv as it escalates a diplomatic row with one of the few close US allies that decided not to join in sanctions against the Kremlin or send lethal military aid to Ukraine.

The dispute over remarks by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who said in an interview that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” and that the “most rabid antisemites tend to be Jews”, has threatened to unsettle Israel’s careful position over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

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Keir Starmer hosts Israeli Labor party in charm offensive ahead of local elections

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Senior shadow cabinet ministers invite Israeli politicians to observe Labour’s door-knocking drive in Barnet, north London

Keir Starmer and senior shadow cabinet ministers have launched a charm offensive while hosting officials from Israel’s Labor party, including taking them door-knocking for the local elections in Barnet, north London.

In move designed to underline the contrast with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Starmer and Rayner have hosted nine officials including the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, Chen Arieli, the party’s chief executive, Nir Rosen, and senior staffers from the Israeli leader’s office.

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Tory councillors disciplined for ‘hate’ directed at Jewish Labour candidate

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Dan Ozarow felt terrorised by abuse of him and his family after negative campaigning in Hertfordshire

Conservative councillors in Oliver Dowden’s constituency have been disciplined for a “hate” campaign against a Jewish Labour candidate, according to an independent investigation commissioned by Tory HQ.

The report found the behaviour of five Hertsmere Tory councillors “may well have encouraged” antisemitic abuse of Labour’s Dan Ozarow, as well as multiple breaches of the party’s code of conduct.

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Civil rights group counts record tally of antisemitic incidents in US

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Anti-Defamation League counts 2,717 incidents of harassment, assault and vandalism in 2021 – highest since it began counting

A Jewish civil rights organization’s annual tally of antisemitic incidents in the US reached a record high last year, with a surge that coincided with an 11-day war between Israel and the Hamas militant group, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Anti-Defamation League counted 2,717 antisemitic incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism in 2021, a 34% increase over the previous year and the highest number since the New York City-based group began tracking such incidents in 1979.

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Amnesty International calls Israel’s actions against Palestinians apartheid

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Israel calls for report to be withdrawn and accuses human rights group of antisemitism

Amnesty International has joined other leading human rights groups in stating that Israel’s “system of oppression and domination” over the Palestinians amounts to the international definition of apartheid.

The report immediately prompted fury among Israeli politicians who called for it to be withdrawn.

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‘The biggest task is to combat indifference’: Auschwitz Museum turns visitors’ eyes to current events

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Director wants visit to former Nazi concentration camp to spark reflection on ‘silence of bystanders’

Piotr Cywiński has spent a lot of time pondering a question that has exercised historians, philosophers and politicians ever since the end of the second world war. What lessons should we draw from one of the darkest pages in human history, the organised mass killing at Auschwitz?

A 49-year-old Polish historian, Cywiński has been director of the Auschwitz Museum since 2006. His office is housed in a former hospital and pharmacy built for the camp’s SS guards, and his windows look out over a crematorium and gas chamber.

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Bambi: cute, lovable, vulnerable … or a dark parable of antisemitic terror?

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A new translation of Felix Salten’s 1923 novel reasserts its original message that warns of Jewish persecution

It’s a saccharine sweet story about a young deer who finds love and friendship in a forest. But the original tale of Bambi, adapted by Disney in 1942, has much darker beginnings as an existential novel about persecution and antisemitism in 1920s Austria.

Now, a new translation seeks to reassert the rightful place of Felix Salten’s 1923 masterpiece in adult literature and shine a light on how Salten was trying to warn the world that Jews would be terrorised, dehumanised and murdered in the years to come. Far from being a children’s story, Bambi was actually a parable about the inhumane treatment and dangerous precariousness of Jews and other minorities in what was then an increasingly fascist world, the new translation will show.

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David Baddiel and his daughter on his social media addiction: ‘it can reward and punish you’

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Despite the abuse and anger, the comedian spent hours a day online. But then his daughter Dolly became dangerously drawn in. Was it time for a rethink?

Over the past 30 years, I have read and heard David Baddiel’s thoughts on many subjects, including sex, masturbation, religion, antisemitism, football fandom, football hooliganism, his mother’s sex life and his father’s dementia. “I am quite unfiltered,” he agrees, “mainly because I am almost psychotically comfortable in my own skin.” But today I have found the one subject that makes him squirm.

How much time does he spend on social media a day? “Oh, um, too much,” he says, his usual candour suddenly gone. What’s his daily screen time according to his phone? “It says four hours, which is a bit frightening.”

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Spanish village that dropped ‘Kill Jews’ name hit by antisemitic graffiti attack

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Castrillo Mota de Judíos’ Sephardic centre was among four locations defaced in the ‘cowardly’ attack

The mayor of a Spanish village whose former name was an ugly reminder of the country’s medieval persecution of its Jewish population has vowed to carry on with plans for a Sephardic memory centre despite an antisemitic graffiti attack this week.

Seven years ago, the 52 eligible residents of Castrillo Matajudíos – Camp Kill Jews in English, voted in a referendum to change the village’s name back to Castrillo Mota de Judíos, which means Jews’ Hill Camp.

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Life sentence for murderer of French Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll

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Yacine Mihoub sentenced for ‘savage’ antisemitic murder of 85-year-old in her apartment

A French court has sentenced the killer of an elderly Jewish woman to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 22 years, in a case which caused an outcry over antisemitism in France.

Yacine Mihoub was convicted of the murder of Mireille Knoll, 85, who was stabbed 11 times and whose body was partly burned after her Paris apartment was set alight on 23 March 2018.

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Half of Britons do not know 6m Jews were murdered in Holocaust

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Survey also finds majority of UK respondents believe fewer people care about Holocaust today than used to

Just over half of Britons did not know that 6 million Jewish people were murdered during the Holocaust, and less than a quarter thought that 2 million or fewer were killed, a new survey has found.

The study also found that 67% of UK respondents wrongly believed that the government allowed all or some Jewish immigration, when in fact the British government shut the door to Jewish immigration at the outbreak of the war.

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Rise of far right puts Dreyfus affair into spotlight in French election race

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As Emmanuel Macron opens a museum dedicated to the exonerated Jewish soldier, ultra-nationalists led by Éric Zemmour again question his innocence

More than a century after he was exonerated, Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer whose false conviction for treason sparked bitter controversy, has erupted into France’s presidential race amid far-right attempts to question his innocence.

Emmanuel Macron last week personally inaugurated the first museum dedicated to the Dreyfus affair, a historical collection exhibited in the house of Émile Zola, the writer and best-known defender of the persecuted officer, in Médan west of Paris.

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CCTV footage appears to challenge singer’s claims in Star of David row

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Police express ‘serious doubts’ after Jewish symbol absent in images of Gil Ofarim published by German media

CCTV footage published in the German media appears not to show the Star of David pendant that a Jewish German singer alleged a Leipzig hotel had told him to “put away” before he would be allowed to check in.

In an emotional Instagram video post on 5 October, Gil Ofarim claimed that an employee at the Westin hotel in Leipzig, in eastern Germany, had asked him to cover up the symbol of Jewish identity.

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Far-right Covid conspiracy theories fuelling antisemitism, warn UK experts

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Organisers of exhibition on history of British fascism say parallels can be drawn with current thinking

A surge in Covid-19 conspiracy theories risks boosting antisemitism, hate crime campaigners have warned after the opening of an exhibition shedding light on interwar British fascism and its parallels today.

The Wiener Holocaust Library in London is staging the exhibition – focusing on the motivations and propaganda of British fascists and their European peers in the 1920s and 30s – out of concern about the recent growth of far-right ideas and populism in the UK and abroad.

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Poland’s president signs bill to curb claims on property seized by Nazis

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Move to limit Jewish people’s opportunity to seek restitution sparks furious response from Israel

Poland’s president has decided to sign a bill that would set limits on the ability of Jews to recover property seized by Nazi German occupiers and retained by postwar communist rulers, drawing fury from Israel, which said the law was antisemitic.

“I made a decision today on the act, which in recent months was the subject of a lively and loud debate at home and abroad,” Andrzej Duda said in a statement published on Saturday. “After an in-depth analysis, I have decided to sign the amendment.”

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French Holocaust survivor Simone Veil’s memorial vandalised

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Police launch investigation after memorial in Brittany to former minister daubed with swastikas

A stone memorial commemorating the life of the Holocaust survivor and former minister Simone Veil has been defaced with swastikas, police have said, sparking fresh concern over antisemitism in France.

The memorial to Veil, at Perros-Guirec in the western Brittany region, was found to have been daubed with the Nazi insignia on Wednesday morning. An investigation has been launched.

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Gaza conflict led to record rise in UK antisemitic attacks, charity says

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Community Security Trust recorded 639 incidents in May, 49% of the total for the first half of 2021

A charity that monitors antisemitism and provides security for British Jewish groups has said the Gaza conflict that broke out in May resulted in its highest recording of anti-Jewish hate incidents.

The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 1,308 such incidents nationwide between January and June 2021, a 49% increase on the same period in 2020 and the highest recorded in the first half of a year.

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