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Ruth King

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DAVID COLLIER: HATE FESTIVAL IN ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES

By on October 13th, 2016

Its 27th September 2016. Summer is over and the new academic year begins. Across the country, political activists such as those in the SOAS Palestinian society hold ‘freshmen’ sessions to attract new recruits to their cause. Everyone knows SOAS is important to BDS and Palestinian activism. When you walk into SOAS you enter the BDS UK student stronghold. But I am used to being inside the SOAS halls now. The atmosphere and venomous tone no longer intimidate me. I come so often they should consider presenting me with a special award.http://david-collier.com/?p=2315

Today’s talk, was part of a BDS workshop for new recruits. The person leading the talk was Riya Hassan, a SOAS alumni, who now works for the BDS central committee. Although she didn’t tell the crowd, Riya was apparently born in Lakiya (Laquia) in the Negev. That being the case, Riya failed to tell the audience that she is one of the only Arabs in the Middle East who can vote. Part of the most liberated Arab community in the entire region.

The format is typical of a BDS recruitment session. They spend the first 30 minutes or so, engaging with the crowd, asking them what they already know of BDS, where they are from, why they are here and most importantly what criticisms of BDS they have heard.

Then Riya began to speak. The first thing that Riya wanted to impress on those listening was that:

“BDS is a tactic. A tactic within a broad spectrum of tactics that an indigenous people who are fighting for liberation deploy”.

BDS: Flattening the conflict

This means that to understand BDS we need to recognise it is not alone, but rather part of the arsenal. It lines up alongside Hamas rockets, knives, suicide belts and terror tunnels, Arab violence, another ‘tactic’ that is ‘deployed’ to destroy Israel. Like ‘lawfare’ or attempts to delegitimise Israel at the UN, BDS does not oppose violence, it operates alongside it.

Riya is desperate to skip to talking about what BDS wants these students to do, but first she needs to circumvent the small issue of why Israel is so evil it needs to be (B)oycotted, (D)ivested from and of course (S)anctioned.

This is always an incredible element of any session. And it invariably follows the same pattern of history.

Firstly, 1917. Balfour. The idea that the British gave away the land of the indigenous people to European colonists. In line with this, Riya managed to discuss Balfour without even mentioning the word ‘Jewish’.

Then they skip to 1948. As if the week after 2nd November 1917, was 9th November 1948. This is done for a simple reason. For the Palestinian narrative to hold true, European colonists simply turned violent against an indigenous civilian population so as to ethnically cleanse the villages because they had to make room for more European colonists. It was as Riya suggested a ‘pre-planned expulsion’.

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Romania: Lawsuit Launched to Stop Bucharest Mega-Mosque “Romania is not a Turkish province.” by Soeren Kern

By on October 13th, 2016

The original deal called for a “mutual exchange” in which Romania would build a new Orthodox Church in Istanbul, while Turkey would build the mosque in Bucharest. In July 2015, however, Prime Minister Victor Ponta revealed that the Romanian government had abandoned the Istanbul church project because it is “not allowed under Turkish law.” Ponta approved the Bucharest mosque project anyway, saying it was a multicultural symbol of Romania’s acceptance of the Muslim community.

Ponta’s decision to approve the mosque, which will mimic Ottoman-era architecture, was greeted with outrage in a country that was under Ottoman Turkish domination for nearly five centuries until 1877.

“This plan is not about worship, it is about marking the territory of their authority through a monument.” – Ozgur Kazim Kivanc, a Turkish activist opposed to Erdoğan’s destruction of public commons to build mosques.

“Once Islam enters a land, that land becomes Islamic and Muslims have the duty to liberate it someday. Spain, for example, is Islamic land, and so is Eastern Europe: Romania, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia…” – Omar Bakri Muhammad, a prominent Sunni Islamist cleric.

“We consider the disposal of free land which, ironically, belonged to the family of Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu, who was beheaded by the Turks on August 15, 1714, to be a betrayal of the Romanian people.” – Pending lawsuit calling on the court to annul the government’s grant of free city land for the mosque project.

Opponents of a proposed Turkish mega-mosque in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, have filed a lawsuit against the government in an effort to halt the project. The court is set to begin hearing the case on October 14.

The lawsuit seeks to reverse a June 2015 decision by the Romanian prime minister at the time, Victor Ponta, to approve construction of what could become the largest mosque in Eastern Europe — second only to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul — on a large tract of city-owned land in northern Bucharest.

The property, valued at more than four million euros ($4.4 million), is being provided for free by the Romanian government, while the construction costs, estimated at three million euros ($3.3 million), are being paid for by Turkey.

Ponta said the mosque will reap economic benefits for Romania because Turkey is the country’s leading non-EU trading partner. The mosque’s critics, including an array of Romanian academics, historians, politicians, anti-immigration groups and even some Muslims, counter that not only will it increase Turkish influence over Romania, it will also encourage Muslim immigration to the country.

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Venezuela, Iran, USA and Narco-Terrorism by Susan Warner

By on October 13th, 2016

There are an estimated six million Muslims living in Latin American cities, who provide a fertile terrorist recruiting environment.

“Iran has opened up more than 80 cultural centers in Latin America in order to export its toxic brand of political influence and serve its interest, focusing on partnering with nations well known for their anti-American rhetoric including Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.” — US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, in testimony for the House Sub-Committee on the Middle East and North Africa.

Amidst the unspeakable economic distress facing residents of Venezuela today, security experts have identified yet another major cause for concern emanating from this once prosperous, oil-rich nation: Iran is moving in, partnering with Venezuela’s prosperous drug traders and creating a foothold there, as well as in other “friendly” Latin American countries. Iran is laundering money in Latin America and presumably secretly plotting to accomplish a strategic long-term goal to penetrate the Western hemisphere.

Iran’s terrorist activities, its partnership with Venezuelan drug traffickers and the general criminal atmosphere affects the citizens of Caracas so much that people reportedly are fearful of even going to the store to wait in the endless lines for food.

In Venezuela, security analysts say, the corruption starts at the very top with President Nicolas Maduro himself, who is looking frantically for money in every crevasse to keep the nation and his presidency afloat. Reports estimate that in Venezuela one police officer dies every day and the number of homicides per capita in Caracas is the highest in the world.

National crime statistics, however, seem to be just the start: deeper and more alarming than the Venezuelan homicide toll, there appears to be an imminent threat to the entire Western hemisphere from partnerships between Venezuelan drug traffickers and terrorist networks like Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups that act a proxies for Iran.

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Amona….The Little Jewish Village That Makes Obama Boil Between heaven, earth and the White House. Daniel Greenfield

By on October 13th, 2016

Halfway to the sky sits a tiny village of little white houses that has attracted the ire of the White House.

The village of Amona with its small white houses and red roofs could easily be mistaken for some lost Italian village or a dusty California town. But the White House would not have “boiled in anger”, as one anonymous official claimed, over the doings of some Italian village.

There’s only one place on earth that makes Obama’s blood boil. It isn’t Iran or North Korea. It’s Israel.

Amona’s small scattering of houses have a fraction of the square footage of the White House. The 40 families living there in defiance of Islamic terrorists and left-wing lawfarers would hardly be noticeable if they all crowded into the White House foyer. And yet they’ve been condemned by the State Department in more virulent tones than most Muslim dictators.

What is it about this handful of Jews caught between heaven and earth that outrages so many?

That may be the great question of history. It will not be solved among the sheep pens and orchards, the little white houses of Amona and their inhabitants, who despite the rage of the big White House, continue to go to work each day, to raise their children and to worship in the way of their ancestors.

In the official parlance of the media, Amona is a “settlement”. That is to say it dates back a mere 3,300 years to the time when Joshua, born a slave in Egypt, commanded the Jews, “’Go and walk through the land, and describe it, and come back to me, and I will cast lots for you here before the Lord in Shilo.”

Today Shilo is a city of some 3,500. Like Jerusalem, it is also deemed a settlement. But on the list of places described by Joshua’s men, the mere speck of Amona appears before Jerusalem.

But then Amona, unlike Jerusalem, vanished from history. For thousands of years the name would have only meant something to the most dedicated biblical scholars. And then the left went to war against Amona. And out of that hatred the forgotten town was raised up from its forgotten place in history.

The handful of families living in Amona have been the subject of more legal proceedings, international debates, threats and international outrage than most genocides. 3,000 feet above sea level, its residents look up at a kind blue sky and down at an angry world that is unwilling to let them live in peace.

They meet the challenges of gravity and rage with simple faith. Asked about the threat of Islamic terror, a 5-year old girl answered, “As God helped Joshua, so he will also help us.”

Amona and its residents need all the help they can get. They have been under siege for decades. What the Islamic terrorists couldn’t do to the residents, lawyers and activists who receive funding from the Soros network and assorted international left-wing billion dollar organizations, strive to accomplish.

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The Top Ten Schools Supporting Terrorists: UC-Berkeley “Let it be known that we here at Berkeley support the Intifada.”

By on October 13th, 2016

Last night the David Horowitz Freedom Center targeted the cabal of Hamas supporters at the University of California Berkeley campus with a poster campaign that exposes the links between anti-Israel terrorists and the campus organization Students for Justice in Palestine.

UC-Berkeley is home to an extremist and highly active anti-Israel movement allied with Hamas terrorists. During a recent campus rally, students supporting the BDS movement chanted pro-terrorist slogans including “Let it be known that we here at Berkeley support the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – calls to kill Jews in Israel and destroy the Jewish state. Berkeley SJP shared an article on its Facebook page quoting a Fatah activist who declared “Call Me a Terrorist, but I’m No Different From Israeli Troops Defending Their Homeland.” Since the Arabs are the aggressors in the seventy-year war to destroy the Jewish state, this analogy is obviously false and self-serving.

The Berkeley campus has hosted numerous pro-BDS speakers including Omar Barghouti, founder of the Hamas inspired and funded boycott movement, and Remi Kanazi, an anti-Israel poet and BDS supporter. Berkeley is the academic home of Professor Hatem Bazian, Hamas supporter and co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine.

The Freedom Center’s poster operation plastered the campus with posters identifying the organization Students for Justice in Palestine as a campus front for Hamas terrorists and the Hamas intermediary American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). AMP was revealed in recent congressional testimony to be funneling terrorist dollars to Students for Justice in Palestine to support the Hamas-sponsored, anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in America.

One of the posters depicts Berkeley Professor Hatem Bazian, a co-founder of SJP and also of Hamas-front AMP. Text on the poster describes Bazian as “Supporter of Hamas Terrorists, BDS Activist, Islamophobia Alarmist.”

A second poster targets fellow Berkeley professor Judith Butler and includes a quote from her stating, “Understanding Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of the left, that are part of the global left, is extremely important.”

A third poster depicts a gun-toting Hamas terrorist holding the strings of a puppet labeled “American Muslims for Palestine” which in turn controls a marionette labeled “Students for Justice in Palestine.” Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is described as “The chief sponsor of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activities on campus.” Hamas is identified as “A terror organization pledged to wipe out Israel” (a goal explicitly stated in the Hamas charter) while AMP is the “Hamas-created chief organizer and funder of SJP.” The poster also depicts shadowed bodies lying in pools of blood, illustrating the bloody deeds of Hamas’s campaign of terror against the Jews. The poster contains the hashtag #JewHatred and the Freedom Center’s website, www.HorowitzFreedomCenter.org.

A fourth poster created by the Freedom Center asks sardonically, “Do you want to show your support for Hamas terrorists whose stated goal is the elimination of the Jewish people and the Jewish state?” and answers the question with “Join us! Students for Justice in Palestine.” The poster then lists the names of student and faculty leaders on campus who promote the genocidal Boycott Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel.

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Perverting College Coursework to Conform to Ideology The latest onslaught against reason in the university propaganda war on Israel. Richard L. Cravatts

By on October 13th, 2016

In April of 2012, the California Association of Scholars, a division of the National Association of Scholars, prepared a report for the University of California Regents entitled “A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California.” In that report, the association outlined in a thoughtful way how the politicization of teaching by the professoriate degraded academic integrity, conflicted with the core principles of academia, and was antithetical to the promotion of scholarship and the pursuit of meaningful learning.

In fact, the report suggested, “Political activism is the antithesis of academic teaching and research. Its habits of thought and behavior are un-academic, even antiacademic.” Why is that? Because, the report said, “political activism values politically desirable results more than the process by which conclusions are reached. In education, those priorities must be reversed.”

Imposing a one-sided, pre-determined line of thought in coursework has the exact opposite effect that most universities strive to achieve; namely, preventing the truth from emerging as a result of considering competing views and coming to conclusions about the truth by analyzing many views on a topic. “The fixed quality of a political belief system will stifle intellectual curiosity and freedom of thought when it dominates a classroom,” the report noted. “In any worthwhile college education, a student’s mind must have the freedom to think afresh and to follow wherever facts or arguments lead. But this freedom of movement is constrained when the end process of thought has already been fixed in advance by a political agenda.”

Apparently, the recommendations in this report have been forgotten at least at one UC school—Berkeley—where this fall a student-taught, one-credit course, “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis,” drew collective howls of indignation from Jewish organizations and others who saw the course as being a prime example of politicized instruction that not only seemed to violate the spirit and letter of the Regent’s policy on course content, “constitut[ing] misuse of the University as an institution,” but also, more troublingly, had as its primary teaching purpose an assault on Zionism itself, and a blueprint for the possibility of dismantling Israel through “decolonization.”

Tellingly, Israel as a sovereign, democratic state is not even mentioned in the course syllabus; instead, the factitious country of Palestine is the focus of the course, an area now overrun by colonial “settlers” who might reasonably be extirpated by utilizing the ideological tactics outlined in the coursework. The revealing syllabus notes that the course will “examine key historical developments that have taken place in Palestine, from the 1880s to the present, through the lens of settler colonialism . . . [and] will explore the connection between Zionism and settler colonialism . . . in Palestine. Lastly, drawing upon literature on decolonization, we will explore the possibilities of a decolonized Palestine, one in which justice is realized for all its peoples and equality is not only espoused, but practiced.”

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Saudi Arabia and Qatar Bankroll ISIS — and the Clinton Foundation How Hillary welcomed money from those she knew to be funding jihadist killers. Joseph Klein

By on October 13th, 2016

WikiLeaks released an August 2014 e-mail from Hillary Clinton to John Podesta, who currently serves as her campaign chairman, stating that the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Evidently President Obama has not heeded Hillary’s concern, or chose to ignore it. In December 2014, Obama praised Saudi Arabia’s significant role in helping to fight ISIL (also known as ISIS and the Islamic State) during a meeting in Washington with the Kingdom’s Minister of Interior Prince Mohammed Bin Naif Bin Abdulaziz. And at a meeting he hosted with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, at the White House in February 2015, Obama said, “Qatar is a strong partner in our coalition to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL.”

Putting aside Obama’s state of denial, which has characterized his whole approach in dealing with the Middle East mess he helped to create, the information in Hillary’s e-mail is not particularly surprising. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been playing us for years, pretending to be allies in countering terrorism while actually helping to advance the terrorists’ jihadist agenda. For starters, Saudi Arabian government front groups and individuals linked to the government have been implicated in possible involvement with the al Qaeda 9/11 attacks on our homeland. A member of the Qatari royal family, Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani who headed Qatar’s ministry of Interior until 2013, is said by American intelligence services to have tipped off the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed back in 1996 when he was already under indictment on terrorist charges, as FBI agents were closing in on Mohammed while he was in Qatar. In addition, ABC reported, based on statements from U.S. intelligence officials, that “bin Laden himself visited Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani in Qatar between the years of 1996 and 2000.” Both countries’ funding of ISIS and al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq are just a continuation of this long pattern.

What makes Hillary’s e-mail noteworthy is the irony that the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and groups aligned with them, have not only been major funders of ISIS and other jihadist organizations, as she indicated, but they also have been big funders of the Clinton Foundation for years. Hillary has had no trouble taking money for her foundation from regimes that fund terrorists, oppress women, execute or imprison gays and apostates, and severely punish the exercise of free speech.

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‘Join the Revolution’: Al-Qaeda Makes Populist Pitch to Millennials Terror group tells youths political elites have left them “devastated, burdened,” and “now is the time to fight back.” By Bridget Johnson,

By on October 13th, 2016

Al-Qaeda is appealing to millennials with a cocktail of populism and Islam and directives to not admire grown “kids” in professional sports but “men… with their AK aimed at the enemy” — and to follow the latter into jihad.

The outreach was detailed in Al-Balagh, a recent magazine issued by al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, a successful chapter announced by core leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2014 that has conducted a spree of machete assassinations against individuals deemed to have insulted Islam. One of the group’s earlier victims was an Atlanta couple who were secular writers visiting Bangladesh; Avijit Roy was hacked to death, while his wife Rafida Bonya Ahmed was seriously injured.

The 53-page inaugural issue of the magazine was printed in English and Bengali. The editor’s note at the beginning first details and slams the “criminal demon-crazy nexus which is known as democracy.”

“Thus, while the anti-Islamic bigots and hate-breeders are hailed as heroes by the rulers and the media, the Tawheed [monotheism]-loving Muslims who came out in the streets to protest the defamation of their beloved prophet are humiliated and massacred,” the column states in apparent reference to the bloggers, professors and journalists who have been hacked to death by AQIS.

The appeal to youth first uses the politics of Bangladesh as a backdrop, arguing that “the criminals siphon billions of dollars from the share market with ease and immersed in mirth, with no accountability whatsoever, while the devastated, burdened youth faced with unrelenting poverty and debt are forced to commit suicide.”

“Domestic maids succumb to death after enduring barbaric torture at the hands of distinguished citizens, while the killers are showered with flowers and garlands. Our mothers and sisters are abused in broad daylight, yet the criminals roam free,” the piece continues. “Every moment a new tragedy is born. It is impossible to keep track of the disasters plaguing this nation. So which one of these can one speak about? Such is the state of the country.”

“And what about the Muslim Ummah [community]? It seems no one even cares to inquire about the Muslims in Palestine anymore, although the criminal Zionist Israel is still surrounded by Muslim countries. I think it was Ali Tantawi who once said, ‘If Muslims can’t learn to resist Israel with weapons then they should learn how to die. You will see Israel be wiped off of the map with a flood of Muslim blood.'”

The article laments that in “Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, China, Myanmar, India, Pakistan — nowhere have the Muslims been able to be liberated.”

“I am not merely talking about the Western concept of ‘independence’ or ‘self-determination,’ but I am talking about true liberation, which can only come through the victory of the deen [religion]. I am talking about making Islam victorious,” the write continues.

“But the good news is a new wave, a reversal of the world order has started all over the world. A wave of Muslim youth is returning to Tawheed. A wave of the youth is returning to Islam. It is a return to the roots in order to bring back the glory and reclaim the honor, and to destroy the satanic civilization and establish the reign of the divine Shariah.”

“The Muslim youth,” argues the AQIS piece, “have started to realize that they have to rise up and join the caravan.”

“They have to join the resistance and the revolution. They have to conquer fear and walk on the same road on which the Salaf stepped upon. Only then true liberation and true victory will come. The Muslims have recognized the reality of the system of kufr [disbelief] imposed by the global kuffar. The magic of the magician has finally come undone,” continues the recruiting pitch.

Would-be jihadists are told that “with our backs to the wall, now is the time to fight back.”

“It is now or never. The Muslims all over the world are witnessing the help of Allah granted to the Mujahideen.” A few operations are mentioned, including “the beginning of the Third Intifada” in the Middle East. CONTINUE AT SITE

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For President, Vote for the Judiciary and for America By Dov Fischer

By on October 13th, 2016

So let me understand this

Bill Clinton sexually frolicked with Gennifer Flowers, apparently sexually abused Paula Corbin (paying her an $850,000 litigation settlement) and Kathleen Willey. Leveraged his workplace supervisory position over Monica Lewinsky to convert the Oval Office into a sexually hostile workplace environment, even as he gazed into her gullible eyes, inter alia, and promised that he would divorce Hillary and would marry Lewinsky after his presidency. If we are to believe the accuser — as Hillary tells us we must — he raped Juanita Broaddrick. Ultimately, the state bar of Arkansas disbarred Bill Clinton for perjury.

Bill Clinton is the modern-day hero of the Democrat Party. He appears as the star of the Democrat convention every four years. His words inspire Democrats. He is legend. The mainstream media cannot praise and glorify him enough. Hillary Clinton sends him on the campaign trail to stump for her, to speak for her. His word, his endorsement, is sacrosanct.

And yet he has been a serial sexual abuser for decades — “because [he] could.” Alongside him, always defending him and thereby assuring her own continued access to power, to serve her own voracious ambitions, Hillary Clinton actively helped destroy women victims who spoke out.

Suddenly now the same mainstream media, who have found no one more suited in character and temperament for the presidency than Bill Clinton, instruct us that Donald Trump contrarily is disqualified for the presidency because a “hot mic” eleven years ago caught him ogling and boasting disgustingly about sexual exploits?

It is impossible not to be disgusted with all of these characters. We are mired in a kakistocracy of epic proportions. Trump with his bizarre ego, the insults and calumny and falsifications and exaggerations that have allowed others to puncture the urgently important and pure message that he repeatedly has compromised as its leading messenger. Even more, Hillary Clinton with her congenital lying, to the point of lying about why she was named “Hillary.” She inspires no trust in its most absolute vacuum. Travelgate. Rose Law Firm billing records. Cattle Futures. Lincoln Bedroom. Missing White House furniture. Leaving the White House “broke” and emerging a Top One Percenter, worth hundreds of millions without building a thing but instead selling access and influence to government contracts and regulations, while delivering 15-minute backroom “speeches” at $225,000 a pop to Wall Street insiders.

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Jonathan Sacks: Antisemitism and the End of Europe

By on October 13th, 2016

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013
The new antisemitism has mutated so that any practitioner of it can deny that he or she is an anti-Semite. After all, they’ll say, I’m not a racist. I have no problem with Jews or Judaism. I only have a problem with the State of Israel. Have we forgotten how the hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews?

Below is a transcript of a speech by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks at “The Future of the Jewish Communities in Europe” Conference at The European Parliament on September 27, 2016, in Brussels.

The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. That is what I want us to understand today. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Hitler. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Stalin. It isn’t Jews alone who suffer under ISIS or Al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad. We make a great mistake if we think antisemitism is a threat only to Jews. It is a threat, first and foremost, to Europe and to the freedoms it took centuries to achieve.

Antisemitism is not about Jews. It is about anti-Semites. It is about people who cannot accept responsibility for their own failures and have instead to blame someone else. Historically, if you were a Christian at the time of the Crusades, or a German after the First World War, and saw that the world hadn’t turned out the way you believed it would, you blamed the Jews. That is what is happening today. And I cannot begin to say how dangerous it is. Not just to Jews but to everyone who values freedom, compassion and humanity.The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the first symptom of a disease, the early warning sign of collective breakdown. If Europe allows antisemitism to flourish, that will be the beginning of the end of Europe

And what I want to do in these brief remarks is simply to analyze a phenomenon full of vagueness and ambiguity, because we need precision and understanding to know what antisemitism is, why it happens, why anti-Semites are convinced that they are not anti-Semitic.First let me define antisemitism. Not liking Jews is not antisemitism. We all have people we don’t like. That’s OK; that’s human; it isn’t dangerous. Second, criticizing Israel is not antisemitism. I was recently talking to some schoolchildren and they asked me: is criticizing Israel antisemitism? I said No and I explained the difference. I asked them: Do you believe you have a right to criticize the British government? They all put up their hands. Then I asked, Which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist? No one put up their hands. Now you know the difference, I said, and they all did.

Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else. It takes different forms in different ages. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, the state of Israel. It takes different forms but it remains the same thing: the view that Jews have no right to exist as free and equal human beings.

If there is one thing I and my contemporaries did not expect, it was that antisemitism would reappear in Europe within living memory of the Holocaust. The reason we did not expect it was that Europe had undertaken the greatest collective effort in all of history to ensure that the virus of antisemitism would never again infect the body politic. It was a magnificent effort of anti-racist legislation, Holocaust education and interfaith dialogue. Yet antisemitism has returned despite everything.

On January 27, 2000, representatives of 46 governments from around the world gathered in Stockholm to issue a collective declaration of Holocaust remembrance and the continuing fight against antisemitism, racism and prejudice. Then came 9/11, and within days conspiracy theories were flooding the internet claiming it was the work of Israel and its secret service, the Mossad. In April, 2002, on Passover, I was in Florence with a Jewish couple from Paris when they received a phone call from their son, saying, “Mum, Dad, it’s time to leave France. It’s not safe for us here anymore.”

In May, 2007, in a private meeting here in Brussels, I told the three leaders of Europe at the time, Angela Merkel, President of the European Council, Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, and Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament, that the Jews of Europe were beginning to ask whether there was a future for Jews in Europe.

That was more than nine years ago. Since then, things have become worse. Already in 2013, before some of the worst incidents, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that almost a third of Europe’s Jews were considering emigrating because of anti-Semitism. In France the figure was 46%; in Hungary 48%.

Let me ask you this. Whether you are Jewish or Christian, Muslim: would you stay in a country where you need armed police to guard you while you prayed? Where your children need armed guards to protect them at school? Where, if you wear a sign of your faith in public, you risk being abused or attacked? Where, when your children go to university, they are insulted and intimidated because of what is happening in some other part of the world? Where, when they present their own view of the situation they are howled down and silenced?

This is happening to Jews throughout Europe. In every single country of Europe, without exception, Jews are fearful for their or their children’s future. If this continues, Jews will continue to leave Europe, until, barring the frail and the elderly, Europe will finally have become Judenrein.

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