Struggle
09-10-2008 / United States
USA - Boy, 15, charged with hate crime in Newport News
A 15-year-old boy has been charged with committing a hate crime after police arrested him as the suspect in an incident of
burglary and vandalism at a Jewish community center
in
Newport News, Virginia
.
The teen, whose name has not been released because of his age, is a Newport News resident. He has been charged with two felonies, burglary and hate crime to damage property of a religious facility. He also faces misdemeanor charges of vandalism and trespass to posted property.
Source: www.dailypress.com
06-10-2008 / Russia
Russia - Novosibirsk court gives antisemitic suspended sentence
A court in
Novosibirsk
, Russia sentenced a former police officer, Alexander Budnikov, to a suspended sentence after finding him guilty of engaging in extremist activity by inciting hatred against Jews and calling for the overthrow of the government.
Responding to the lax sentence, defendant Aleksandr Budnikov publicly vowed to continue his illegal incitement on local Internet forums.
Source: www.fsumonitor.com
01-10-2008 / Czech
Czech Republic - Centre against violence, xenophobia and antisemitism to be built in Terezín
A European centre of studies and meetings to focus on cooperation in fighting violence, xenophobia, racism, rightist extremism and antisemitism is to be founded in
Terezin
.
Source:
http://www.praguemonitor.com/
01-10-2008 / Britain
Britain - Australian Holocaust-denier arrested at Heathrow
British police arrested
Gerald Fredrick Toben
on charges of Holocaust denial. The 64-year-old Australian citizen was taken into custody upon arrival at Heathrow Airport on charges of publishing and distributing anti-Semitic material and Holocaust denial and revisionism.
An EU warrant for Toben's arrest was issued by Germany authorities. He has served time in a German prison after being convicted on inciting racism.
"From 2002 to this day the worldwide, internet publication of an anti-Semitic and, or, revisionist nature deliberately contrary to historical truth the said publications deny, approve or play down above all the mass murder of the Jews, planned and implemented, by the national socialist rulers," reads the warrant.
In 2006 Toben traveled to Tehran to take part in the Iranian conference for Holocaust deniers.
Source: www.ynet.co.il
30-09-2008 / United States
USA - Nazi prank gets city worker axed
A tasteless Nazi stunt
at a
Staten Island
parks office cost one man his job and will lead to disciplinary action against his two cohorts.
Nick Johnson, who wore a motorcycle helmet with a swastika in front of a Jewish co-worker last month, was fired after a city investigation last week.
Charlie Ekonomakos, who sported a Hitler-style mustache, and Chris Mullusky, who wielded a flaming aerosol can, are still working but face as-yet undisclosed.
Source: www.nydailynews.com
28-09-2008 / Czech
Czech Republic - Two convicted of promoting antisemitism
Erich Sedlacek and Libor Budik were convicted for articles they published in 2003-04 on the Web site called The Last Generation where they worked as editors-in-chief.
It says the articles called for the extermination of Jews and denied the Holocaust.
The paper says on its Web site that the court on Thursday sentenced Sedlacek to three years and Budik to two.
Source: www.iht.com
26-09-2008 / Germany
Germany - Three arrested on suspicion of vandalizing Jewish cemetery
Police arrested young three men, all between the ages of 16-20, in connection with the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in
Westerstede
, near Bremen in northern Germany. The vandals, two of whom confessed to their involvement, allegedly spray-painted antisemitic and neo-Nazi slogans on several gravestones and on a plaque commemorating the city’s former Jewish citizens.
Source: www.adl.org
18-09-2008 / Russia
Russia - Ulyanovsk court sentences antisemitic vandals
A court in
Ulyanovsk
, Russia sentenced four local residents to prison and fines after finding them guilty of painting antisemitic death threats on the building of the Jewish Community Center. The four were convicted of illegal hate speech after an expert study found that the graffiti was "an open call to kill Jews." The defendants were sentenced to three years in prison, one year in prison, and 84 and 80 hours of community service, respectively.
Source:
http://www.fsumonitor.com/
15-09-2008 / United States
USA - Man arrested on suspicion of vandalizing Jewish preschool
Authorities say they've arrested a
Camarillo
man on suspicion of spray-painting swastikas and other hate-crime graffiti at a Jewish preschool and other sites.
The Sheriff's Department says they arrested Jonathan Samuel Latino on suspicion of felony vandalism and a hate crime.
A surveillance camera from one business captured video of a suspect, leading investigators to Latino.
Source: www.foxnews.com
13-09-2008 /
The Vatican - Pope slams antisemitism in meeting with French Jews
Pope Benedict XVI slammed antisemitism as theologically unjustifiable and tantamount to being "anti-Christian" in a meeting with French-Jewish leaders in Paris.
"The Church is opposed to every form of antisemitism, which can never be theologically justified," he said, quoting French theologian Henri de Lubac as saying he had understood that "to be antisemitic also signifies being anti-Christian."
Benedict lamented the victims of antisemitism, saying: "Once again I feel the duty to pay heartfelt recognition to those who have died unjustly, and to those that have dedicated themselves to assure that the names of these victims may always be remembered. God does not forget."
He called for greater Christian-Jewish understanding, noting that the two religions' "fraternal bonds constitute a continual invitation to know and to respect one another better."
Source: www.jpost.com
08-09-2008 / Australia
Australia - Submissions to Senate inquiry highlight campus bias
In submissions to a Senate inquiry into academic freedom, both Jewish and Liberal Party student groups wrote that
cademics rarely portray the Middle East conflict in an impartial light.
The inquiry was requested by Victorian Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield earlier this year and is expected to report in
ovember.
The Melbourne University Liberal Club’s submission said that a lecturer attempted to explain early Zionist settlement in Israel by telling students that it was like Monash University buying all of the University of Melbourne’s land and then
ramming the Melbourne University students into the physics department building.
The submission reads: “This exercise ... uses an analogy which is false and grossly simplistic, comparing early Jewish settlers in Israel to a horde of marauding Monash students.”
In a joint Executive Council of Australian Jewry and Australasian Union of Jewish Students submission, concern was expressed that university students often encounter anti-Semitism in the form of “academic bias and prejudice against Israel”.
The submission recommends that teachers and textbook authors disclose their “personal bias” to students.
It called for any courses that include the situation in Israel to present texts written by a variety of authors, including traditional Israeli and Arab historians, as well as “revisionist” and “post-revisionist” historians.
It added that universities should be held accountable for their sources of funding, a recommendation directed largely at the Australian National University’s Centre of Arab and Islamic Studies, which receives funding from the United Arab Emirates government.
“To us, it seems self-evident that the direct or indirect receipt of funding from a government, especially a non-democratic government, by an Australian university ought to be publicly disclosed and capable of being vetoed by the Australian Government in the public interest,” the submission said.
Fifield said he moved the inquiry into academic freedom because students needed to feel they were not being discriminated against or preached to at school or university.
“I have long been concerned at the anecdotal evidence I have heard suggesting a culture of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish
ias in our universities.”
“Certainly the evidence presented in submission thus far is very disturbing.”
The inquiry was launched on the back of a new website,
Make Education Fair
, which has been set up by the Young Liberal movement. It asks students to report academic bias.
In the course of the inquiry, the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee will investigate intellectual diversity at schools and universities.
It will examine the importance of offering pluralist, accurate and balanced courses and will consider introducing a charter of academic freedoms.
Professor Richard Larkins, the chair of Universities Australia, called on the Government to resist interfering in the day-to-day running of tertiary institutions.
“In a free and democratic society, there is no place for external interference in the intellectual endeavours of scholars,” he wrote.
Source:
www.ajn.com.au
07-09-2008 / Germany
Germany – A thousand Neo-Nazis March in the Streets of Dortmund
Radical right wing activists, mostly dressed in black, proudly strode down the streets of Dortmund waving black, white and red flags. Police secured the event in an attempt to avoid violent flashes between the opposing sides. Passersby who
bserved the marchers called out to them: "Out with the Nazis."
The Social Democratic Party SPD organized a demonstration in response in which hundreds of people took part. The demonstrators arranged their own short march at the end of which they had a gathering in of the large squares in the city.
Some of the left wing demonstrators waved Israeli flags. Others waved banners which bore the slogan:"Fight Anti-Semitism, Show Solidarity with Israel."
One of the left wing demonstrators said: "The police don't have a problem with allowing a march of this kind, but we, the citizens of Dortmund, have witness with our own eyes, the dramatic developments of recent years. We do not like the fact that the Nazis are gaining power in Europe. I want to show them that we are here and that we oppose them."
Source:
http://www.ynet.co.il/
04-09-2008 / United States
USA - Fallsburg man charged with arson, hate crimes
A Fallsburg man was charged with felony arson and hates crimes in connection with a bungalow fire and spray-painted slurs.
Town of Fallsburg Police said Edward Smith, 44, allegedly started a fire at Skopps Bungalows on Seldon Road and
also spray painted slurs and threats.
Police said the investigation is continuing and more arrests are suspected.
Source:
www.crownheights.info
02-09-2008 / Russia
Russia - Nizhny Novgorod court gives antisemitic vandal suspended sentence
Evgeny Aleshin an 18 year old student who
vandalized Jewish graves in the Krasnaya Etna cemetery
multiple times over the course of May and June was given a two and a half year suspended sentence. In a rare departure from standard prosecutions of similar cases, the youth was convicted of "mockery over the bodies of the dead and their burial motivated by ethnic hatred" rather than just "hooliganism." The defendant, Evgeny Alyoshin, admitted to a friend that he "doesn't like Jews" and prosecutors pointed out the fact that graves that he singled out Jewish graves for vandalism, while ignoring
thers.
Source:
www.fsumonitor.co
28-08-2008 / Russia
Russia - The site "Vkontakte" removes antisemitic community
The popular website "Vkontakte" removed at the request of prosecutors and the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia (FEOR) profiles of a number of persons
who distribute antisemitic video.
Source:
www.jewish.ru
28-08-2008 / Britain
Britain - Academic says leaders must confront hatred
Philosophy professor Shalom Lappin, of King's College, London, calls for a more aggressive reaction to antisemitism in a
aper written for the Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism at Yale University.
In This Green and Pleasant Land: Britain and the Jews, Professor Lappin says that increased hostility to Israel, both in public discourse and in the media, is fuelled by a "perception of Jews as an illicit collectivity with no claim to legitimacy or
ecognition".
Current hostility to Jews in the UK, he argues, is frequently packaged as "progressive political comment", but its origins are in "traditional social attitudes that have been integral to Britain's history for centuries".
This week he told the JC: "It is not true that change can be brought about by quiet diplomacy by an elite of elders. When a community finds itself under attack, it should react robustly, with activism and in the public domain."
Professor Lappin, a supporter of Peace Now and of the anti-boycott campaign, said that Israel should be held accountable to the same norms as other countries, and that criticism on such a basis was legitimate. However, he said, the community should react when such criticism spilled over into antisemitism.
"There are some wonderful people in this community who fight antisemitism, such as the Community Security Trust, but too often - when for instance Jewish students come under attack - the community leadership stands off and just offers quiet advice from the outside. The reaction is anaemic."
Source:
http://archive.thejc.com
By Bernard Josephs
26-08-2008 /
Europe - Jewish group urges EU to strengthen legislation against racism and antisemitism
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) called on upon the European Union member states to strengthen the existing legislation against racism and antisemitism.
The call follows
the desecration of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
as well as recent acts of antisemitism in countries around Europe.
“We urge the European Union leadership to implement the legislation against racism and antisemitism and to promote a policy of tolerance and education in the European Union. This is the most fitting response,” said Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress.
“Condemnations of these attacks need to be backed up by strong actions and governmental policies. The EJC is committed to developing tools and educational programs that encourage tolerance and understanding in Europe.”
The EJC President added: “The lessons of the Holocaust are universal ones, which serve to remind all of humankind of the dangers inherent with hatred, intolerance and ignorance.”
Source: www.ejpress.org
26-08-2008 / Greece
Greece - YouTube removes memorial desecration video
The video, which was removed, shows the boy urinating but his face is hidden by an Israeli flag with the symbol for "no" pasted over it.
Source: www.jta.org
26-08-2008 / Turkey
Turkey – Arrest of Antisemitic Journalist
The High Court of Appeal in Turkey sentenced a nationalist Turkish author and journalist, Ergun Peyroz to a year in prison for insults to Christianity and Judaism.
The journalist who is known for his radically nationalistic opinions published two books of conspiracy based on unfounded claims that the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ERDOGAN and his wife are ("Children of Moses"), Jewish descendents of the Shabtaim and similar claims against the then Member and current President, Abdullah Gul, (which means 'rose' in Turkish) calling him the "Rose of Moses". He was tried and sentenced for the insults he wrote in these books about Judaism and Christianity. Because of their scandalous nature, these books not only received wise publicity but also became best sellers.
25-08-2008 / Russia
Russia - Moscow schools will teach one day of tolerance
Students in Moscow will take part in a "Day of Tolerance" on the first day of the school year (September 1). The course, entitled "We are diverse, that is our wealth," will teach inter-ethnic tolerance and tolerance towards people with different traditions and social classes.
Source: www.fsumonitor.com
