Category Archives: Judaism

Belgian investigation into three Jewish men sparks diplomatic row with US

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US ambassador accused of interference after labelling inquiry into suspected illegal circumcisions ‘antisemitic’

A diplomatic row is escalating between Belgium and the US, with Donald Trump’s ambassador refusing to apologise for accusing his host country of antisemitism and reportedly threatening to bar a socialist politician from travelling to the US.

Bill White, a staunch ally of the president like many US ambassadors, on Monday demanded Belgium drop a “ridiculous” and “antisemitic” investigation into three Jewish men suspected of performing circumcisions without medical qualifications.

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British Museum removes word ‘Palestine’ from some displays

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Museum revises labelling on maps and panels, saying term used inaccurately and no longer historically neutral

The British Museum has removed the word “Palestine” from some of its displays, saying the term was used inaccurately and is no longer historically neutral.

Maps and information panels in the museum’s ancient Middle East galleries had referred to the eastern Mediterranean coast as Palestine, with some people described as being “of Palestinian descent”.

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UK’s Jewish community feels much less safe since 7 October attack, survey finds

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Research found 35% of Jews felt unsafe in Britain and 32% reported at least one antisemitic incident in 2024

Feelings of safety in the UK’s Jewish community have declined sharply in the last couple of years, according to the largest survey of British Jews since 7 October 2023.

The research, conducted in June and July, found 35% of Jews felt unsafe in Britain in 2025, compared with 9% in 2023 before the Hamas attacks.

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Dorset police investigate antisemitic hate crimes including swastika graffiti

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Officers step up patrols for Bournemouth’s Jewish community after teenage boy shot with air rifle

Dorset police have launched an investigation and stepped up patrols for Bournemouth’s Jewish community after a wave of antisemitic hate crimes in the seaside town.

Over the weekend, a teenage boy was shot with an air rifle and injured, and swastika graffiti appeared on buildings, police said.

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Israeli children refused access to leisure park in southern France

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Manager of zipline facility detained for alleged religious discrimination after group of eight- to 18-year-olds turned away

The manager of a leisure park in southern France has been detained for alleged religious discrimination after a group of Israeli children were refused access.

The children, aged eight to 16, were on holiday in Spain and had made a reservation for Thursday to use the Tyrovol zipline adventure park in Porté-Puymorens, near the Spanish border in the Pyrenees mountains, the Perpignan prosecutor’s office said.

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UK’s chief rabbi criticises Labour’s Palestine pledge at march for hostages

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Sir Ephraim Mirvis joins relatives of hostages in calling for their release before any recognition of a Palestinian state

The chief rabbi has criticised Labour’s pledge to recognise a Palestinian state at a “national march for the hostages” in central London organised by a number of Jewish groups.

Family members of Israeli hostages taken on 7 October also joined the march on Downing Street to urge the release of those being held by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

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British Jewish leaders call for rapid increase in Gaza aid

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UK’s largest Jewish body adds to pressure on Israel, saying recent move to allow in limited aid was ‘long overdue’

The UK’s largest Jewish organisation has called for a “rapid, uninhibited, and sustained increase in aid through all available channels” in Gaza in a rare implicit criticism of the Israeli government.

The Board of Deputies held an emergency meeting on Tuesday evening amid growing horror among British Jews at the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with children malnourished and starving and desperate parents being killed as they try to secure food for their families.

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Spanish discovery suggests Roman era ‘church’ may have been a synagogue

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Oil lamp fragments point to presence of previously unknown Jewish population in Ibero-Roman town of Cástulo

Seventeen centuries after they last burned, a handful of broken oil lamps could shed light on a small and long-vanished Jewish community that lived in southern Spain in the late Roman era as the old gods were being snuffed out by Christianity.

Archaeologists excavating the Ibero-Roman town of Cástulo, whose ruins lie near the present-day Andalucían town of Linares, have uncovered evidence of an apparent Jewish presence there in the late fourth or early fifth century AD.

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Pro-Palestine group targets Jewish-owned business in London

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Palestine Action says it carried out early hours attack in which windows were smashed and claims company has links to Israeli arms firm

A Jewish-owned business in north London has been daubed in red paint and its shop window smashed by pro-Palestinian campaigners in an incident police are treating as racially aggravated.

Three men were caught on CCTV in the early hours of Thursday attacking an investment group in Stamford Hill, an area with a large community of orthodox Jews.

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Two UK Jewish movements vote to become one progressive group

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Merger of Liberal Judaism and Reform Judaism will be first in any major religion for more than half a century

Two Jewish movements in the UK have united to form Progressive Judaism, embracing female rabbis, same-sex marriage and mixed-faith couples and representing about a third of British Jews who are affiliated to synagogues.

Liberal Judaism and Reform Judaism took the historic step of voting to unite at parallel meetings on Sunday. Each vote easily exceeded the required 75% threshold for the move, with about 95% in favour.

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Members of leading British Jewish body condemn Israel’s latest actions in Gaza

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Signatories from Board of Deputies say in open letter that ‘Israel’s soul is being ripped out’ and they ‘cannot turn a blind eye’ to loss of life

Members of the Board of Deputies, the largest body representing British Jews, have said they can no longer “turn a blind eye or remain silent” over the war in Gaza.

In a significant break with the board’s customary support for the Israeli government, the 36 signatories to an open letter published in the FT say “Israel’s soul is being ripped out”.

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Muslim groups reject push for new Islamophobia definition at Australian universities

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Groups call for a unified anti-racism standard and say separate definition would ‘shield’ universities from criticism of the antisemitism definition

A coalition of Muslim and Palestinian organisations have rejected a push by universities to adopt a new definition of Islamophobia, arguing it would “shield” the institutions from criticism of their contentious new antisemitism definition, and that a unified standard that rejects all racism is what is needed.

Last month, Australia’s universities confirmed they would unilaterally enforce a new definition of antisemitism on campuses after an inquiry recommended higher education providers “closely align” with the contentious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition.

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US to revoke student visas over ‘pro-Hamas’ social media posts flagged by AI – report

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State department launches AI-assisted reviews of accounts to look for what it perceives as Hamas supporters

The US state department will use artificial intelligence to revoke visas of foreign students who it perceives as supporters of Hamas, Axios reported on Thursday, citing senior state department officials.

Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to combat antisemitism and has pledged to deport non-citizen college students and others who took part in pro-Palestinian protests that have been ongoing for months amid Israel’s military assault on Gaza after Hamas’s October 2023 attack.

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Hopeful or ‘hate-fuelled’? Film of controversial play about Israel gets London premiere

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Director says Seven Jewish Children by Caryl Churchill, which provoked fury at its first production in 2009, is a ‘family story’ at heart

The premiere of Caryl Churchill’s short play Seven Jewish Children at the Royal Court theatre 16 years ago proved to be one of British theatre’s most controversial opening nights.

Audiences were immediately divided by the British playwright’s deliberately stripped-back treatment of Jewish generational fear and Israel’s history of conflict.

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Third of young adults in UK ‘unable to name Auschwitz or any Nazi death camps’

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Lack of knowledge about Holocaust identified as well as level of denial and disinformation seen on social media

A third of young adults in the UK are unable to name Auschwitz or any of the other concentration camps and ghettoes where the crimes of the Holocaust were committed, according to a study.

Other growing gaps in knowledge – especially among those aged 18-29 – were also identified, as part of a major international survey in countries including the US and UK.

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Anne Frank exhibit opening in New York amid US debate over antisemitism

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First full-scale replica of Frank’s attic annexe goes on show next week on International Holocaust Remembrance Day

The first-ever full-scale replica of Anne Frank’s attic annex goes on show in New York next week, part of an ongoing effort to maintain awareness of – and combat – antisemitism in the midst of conflict in the Middle East and political tensions in the US.

Eighty years on from Frank’s death, aged 15, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, the exhibition at the Center for Jewish History in downtown Manhattan aims to introduce new audiences to one of the most famous victims of Adolf Hitler’s “final solution”.

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Mark Rylance joins criticism of police ban on pro-Palestine march in London

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Protesters planned to gather outside BBC HQ, which is near a synagogue, on the Jewish holy day

Mark Rylance, the star of the BBC’s Wolf Hall, has joined the singer Charlotte Church and actor Juliet Stevenson to condemn a decision by the police to ban a pro-Palestine protest outside the corporation’s Broadcasting House headquarters.

Protesters were planning to gather in Portland Place in central London on Saturday 18 January before marching to Whitehall. A ban was imposed on Thursday by the Met, with officers citing the risk of “serious disruption” to a nearby synagogue on the Jewish holy day, as congregants attend Shabbat services.

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Rabbi in UAE killed in ‘antisemitic terror incident’, says Israel

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UAE says it has arrested three people over the killing of Zvi Kogan, who worked for an Orthodox Jewish group

Israel has said that an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi who went missing in the United Arab Emirates was killed in what it described as a “heinous antisemitic terror incident”.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement about the death of Zvi Kogan, who worked in the UAE for an Orthodox Jewish group called Chabad and had not been seen since Thursday.

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Police arrest pro-Palestinian protesters outside of New York Stock Exchange

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Hundreds partake in demonstration, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, against Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon

New York City police arrested numerous pro-Gaza protesters outside the New York Stock Exchange on Monday after a demonstration highlighting Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.

Demonstrators voiced chants such as “Let Gaza live!” and “Up up with liberation, down down with occupation!” and managed to get inside a security fence outside the exchange on Broad Street in downtown Manhattan.

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Dutch row over which victims of Nazis get ‘stumbling stone’ plaques

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Commemorations of 45 people ‘experimentally’ gassed reveal dark moments in the Netherlands’ history

They call them stumbling stones – little brass plaques in the pavement marking addresses where Holocaust victims once lived.

As the Netherlands marks 80 years of liberation, a row has sprung up about placing Stolpersteine for 45 Dutch political prisoners – Jewish activists, communists, critical Christians – who were “experimentally” gassed by the Nazis at the Bernburg psychiatric clinic in Germany in 1942.

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