FROM TOM GROSS: GALLOPING ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE

www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001140.html

ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACKS IN THE NETHERLANDS DOUBLE

Anti-Semitic attacks in the Netherlands nearly doubled last year compared to the year before, according to newly-released police figures. Police said that 209 incidents had been documented in 2009, accounting for about one tenth of all discriminatory incidents in the country despite the fact that the number of Jews is much smaller than the number of other minorities in the Netherlands. This represented a 48 percent rise in attacks against Jews and Jewish sites, including damage to graves of dead Jews and anti-Semitic graffiti on Holocaust monuments.

The Jewish community in the Netherlands numbers around 30,000, less than 0.3 per cent of the country’s population.

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ON ADVICE OF A MUSLIM MP, POLICE PATROL AMSTERDAM DISGUISED AS RELIGIOUS JEWS

The acting mayor of the Dutch capital Amsterdam, Lodewijk Asscher, has deployed undercover police officers disguised as orthodox Jews on the streets in order to identify violent anti-Semites. “Jews in at least six Amsterdam neighborhoods often cannot cross the street wearing a skullcap without being insulted, spat at or even hit,” one Dutch newspaper reported. Secret television recordings by one broadcasting company showed young men shouting and making Nazi salutes and chasing a rabbi in the Dutch capital.

Amsterdam police already disguise officers as decoy prostitutes, gays and old people in operations to deter street muggings and attacks on homosexuals and in the city’s red light district.

The idea of using police officers in Jewish disguise was floated by a Muslim parliamentarian. Ahmed Marcouch, a Moroccan-born Social Democratic member of parliament who immigrated to the Netherlands at the age of ten, told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz: “I say, send fake Jews to arrest the attackers. Everything must be done to keep the phenomenon of anti-Semitism from growing. It seems like these are small incidents, but this is serious.”

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HOLOCAUST MEMORIALS, CEMETERIES DESECRATED IN SOUTHERN, CENTRAL AND EASTERN FRANCE

A monument to the victims of World War II in south-western France has been spray-painted with anti-Semitic graffiti. French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux expressed “horror and sadness” after the discovery of the slogans and Nazi symbols painted in bright red at a memorial to the deportation and resistance in Marmande, which bears the names of Nazi concentration camps.

This incident follows several other recent anti-Semitic attacks in France. For example, in July dozens of Jewish graves, including those of children, were smashed or overturned at the Jewish cemetery of Wolfisheim, near Strasbourg in eastern France. (In January, around 30 Jewish graves were also desecrated in the Strasbourg area, on the same day as the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz.)

And anti-Semitic slogans and swastikas were daubed recently on the walls of the Etz Haim synagogue in Melun in central France, and on the windows and walls of a dozen kosher stores in Paris.

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FRENCH RAILWAY COMPANY PROMISES TO COMPLY WITH U.S. BILL REVEALING HOLOCAUST ROLE

The state-owned French railway company SNCF may finally disclose details about the role it played transporting Jews to Nazi death camps during the Holocaust. The announcement follows pressure from lawmakers in California’s state legislature, where a bill is in process that requires companies seeking state business to reveal any involvement in the Holocaust.

“It is our intention to fully comply with the bill,” said Peter Kelly, an attorney for SNCF, which is working on a bid to win a $45 billion contract to build California’s high-speed rail system.

California legislators said they were not seeking restitution for the relatives of Holocaust victims, but believed that taxpayers had a right to know how their money was spent and companies such as SNCF should “come clean about their central role in rounding up and transporting Jews for death.”

SNCF, as well as other instruments of the French state, have long been accused of covering up their role in the Holocaust.

A 75-year gag order issued by the French postwar government is in place to protect the names of French citizens involved in the round-up of Jews from being made public. A ruling last year by France’s Supreme Court confirmed that the first files from 1940 will become public in 2015, with the remaining documents becoming public over the following four years.

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JEWISH TEACHER SUSPENDED IN FRANCE FOR TEACHING “TOO MUCH” ABOUT HOLOCAUST

In a case which is dividing France, a history teacher in the town of Nancy has been suspended for breaching “the principle of secularism and neutrality” after the French education ministry concluded that she was teaching “too much” about the Holocaust and had organized trips for her students to see former Nazi camps in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Catherine Pederzoli, 58, was investigated by officials at the education ministry, who released a report about the matter in July. The report accused the teacher of “lacking distance, neutrality and secularism” in teaching the Holocaust.

Pederzoli’s lawyer, Christine Tadic, said that the school authorities were leading a witch hunt against her. “Had the teacher been Christian, no one would have led a campaign against her this way,” she added.

Pederzoli is now getting a lot of support both inside and outside the Jewish community, and her case has become something of a cause célèbre. There is a demonstration in her favor today.

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JEWISH DANCERS ATTACKED BY MUSLIM TEENAGERS AT A PERFORMANCE IN GERMANY

A group of Jewish dancers were attacked with rocks and stones by a group of teenagers during a performance at a street festival in Hanover, Germany over the summer. After one dancer suffered a leg injury, the group canceled its performance. Six German teenagers of Lebanese, Palestinian and Iranian origin, were arrested. They also used a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic slurs such as “Juden raus” [Jews out] during the attack.

Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the newspaper ‘Die Welt’ that anti-Semitic feelings were widespread in both far-right and Muslim communities in Germany. Noting that one of those arrested was as young as 14, she said “It particularly saddens me that anti-Semitic views can already be seen with such vehemence among children and youths.”

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