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You are here: Home / 2017 / Archives for March 2017

Archives for March 2017

March 29, 2017 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

The JCC bomb threats perpetrator was caught. Now what?

There has been over 150 bomb threats either emailed or phoned in to Jewish Community Centers (JCC) in the USA and other parts of the world since the beginning of 2017. Along with several Jewish cemetery desecrations and antisemitic graffiti, an eerie atmosphere of surging antisemitism has been noticed, even in mainstream media. I say “even” in mainstream media because the normal coverage of antisemitic hate crimes is usually very sparse or non-existent. “Black lives matter” and “Islamophobia” get quite a bit of coverage, but antisemitism usually not so much.

Nobody could ignore the multiple bomb threats to JCCs around the United Sates and other countries. But what came as a surprise was the identity of the perpetrator of the vast majority of these hoax bomb threats. It is believed that he might have made close to 1,000 similar threats in the last few years. That is quite an act of bold, relentless antisemitism, but……wait for it…….the perpetrator is Jewish and holds a dual USA/Israeli nationality. So the question is “was it antisemitism after all?” and the answer is “probably not.”

Michael Kaydar, the young man arrested on March 23 in Israel and suspected of making the calls has been diagnosed with a medical condition. He has had a brain tumor since the age of fourteen and was recently exempt from IDF service for health reasons. It is unclear what kind of sentence will Kaydar receive, if any. Yet, the arrest that just took place was significant for several reasons.

• The Bomb threats were not a by-product of Trump’s New America:
As much as many people wanted to blame the bomb threats to the “Alt-Right” atmosphere of Donald Trump’s America, it is now clear that there is no connection. Yet people were quick to blame our new President creating a tense atmosphere of racism. While it is always possible that extreme Right and/or extreme Left would participate in similar antisemitic acts, it wasn’t the case for this recent wave of threats. Donald Trump waited before speaking on the subject or reacting wrongly, and that was very wise.

• The perpetrator might not be a self-hating Jew:
Michael Kaydar was arrested for the threats. He is Jewish and holds a dual Israeli/American citizenship, but it is probably fair to say that he is a perpetrator that happens to be Jewish and not a self-hating Jew who wants to harm his own people. Kaydar is mentally unstable. His father was also arrested because he apparently knew of his son’s behavior in regards to the threats. Frankly, I would be more worried about the father than his son.

• The threats could be considered as acts of terrorism:
While Michael Kaydar might never be charged because of his condition, his actions were highly disruptive and as such could easily be considered as acts of terror. Many Jewish Community Centers (some of them multiple times) had to evacuate their facilities at a moment’s notice, risking the safety of their members, wasting a lot of energy, time and resources.

• Jew haters will find a way to use the events against the Jewish community:
It won’t be long before some real antisemites find a way to spin this series of threats to their advantage. Years ago, some accused the Jewish people of being behind the “inflated” statistics of the Holocaust simply as propaganda to force the establishment of the modern State of Israel. The same devious, unfounded methods could be used to accuse the global Jewish community of being behind the hoax threats simply to self-victimize, get attention to themselves and play the antisemitism card.

Jewish communities worldwide continue to suffer from acts of antisemitism. None of the bomb threats were real and that is good! But what about the multiple cases of graffiti and the several Jewish cemeteries that were recently desecrated? It would be a mistake to think for a second that because the bomb threats perpetrator was an irresponsible young man, Jewish people can rest. Antisemitism’s shadow is always looming around the corner of Jewish daily life.  But I believe that the current administration will do more to fight it that the previous one did. Vice-President Pence’s visit to Missouri proved it! We Jews could certainly use the support at this time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Antisemitism, Featured-Post-1, Israel, Jewish, Terrorism Tagged With: Bomb Threats, JCC, Jewish Community Centers

March 13, 2017 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

Switzerland strikes an unprecedented blow against BDS!

in 2005, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas created the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) that he defined as such: “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity….BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world. Eleven years since its launch, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.”

BDS’ actions are found in economic, cultural and academic fields and have garnered the support of many organizations worldwide. They receive the support of a myriad of celebrities such as Angela Davis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Roger Waters (former lead of Pink Floyd) and Stephen Hawkins to name just a few. Based on a false narrative of oppression, colonization and apartheid, BDS has a been rather successful over the last decade. But is it possible that some people are starting to see through its thin libelous veneer and are starting to distance themselves ? Some countries outside of Israel are making bold moves to denounce and even outlaw BDS? Switzerland is one of them.

France–the one European country with both the largest Muslim AND Jewish communities–has also been involved in fighting BDS in the form of lawsuits against BDS activists. But what Switzerland just did was unprecedented. It was the first of all the European parliaments to pass a bill to prevent their country from financing organizations that clearly promote racism, antisemitism and BDS. In and of itself, this is a major breakthrough. In our age of over-reaching political correctness, it is a breath a fresh air to see a whole country stand against BDS, especially in Europe!

What we shouldn’t miss in this bill is the fact that BDS is now bundled with racism and antisemitism equating the movement with the other two expressions of hatred. In essence, it claims that BDS is antisemitism, and it is!
The hypocrisy is obvious when you consider the fact that many other countries that have repeatedly violated human rights and are not even considered a threat.

Consider China for a moment. Any honest observer of their methods and policies would have to agree that they are not without fault. But who is willing to point the finger at China and boycott their products because of some of their human rights violation? It is a lot easier to label a product “Made in the Occupied Territories” and promote its boycotting, than to tell people to stop buying products “Made in China.” So before it is even racism or antisemitism, BDS is hypocrisy on steroids!

This recent move by Switzerland is by no means a shift in their official position on the middle East as they continue to promote the pre-1967 borders along with a two-state solution. What it shows though is that regardless of one’s view on the Middle East conflict, unorthodox methods to pressure either side are not acceptable. This is the first European Parliament t0 openly state that BDS is antisemitism. Hopefully others will follow suit in the near future.

The president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald S. Lauder recognized the significance of such a move against those who support BDS and fund it when he stated “The BDS movement claims to support Palestinians, but its real motivation is the delegitimization of the State of Israel. It is a movement based on the anti-Semitic denial of the Jewish people’s right to sovereignty in their own state. The Swiss parliament’s push to cease government funding of organizations that support such an ideology may finally help expose the lies and hypocrisies of the BDS once and for all.”

There is no doubt in my mind that Switzerland will receive a lot of criticism from the Middle East and various countries of the European Union. They just made a bold move against the politically correct establishment, and while their current position on Israel/Palestine is not quite in line with their reputation of being a pacifist country, this recent bill they passed is certainly in line with human decency.

 

Filed Under: Antisemitism, BDS, European Union, Featured-Post-1, Middle East, Political Correctness Tagged With: Switzerland

March 1, 2017 By Olivier Melnick 5 Comments

Antisemitism in America: The Not-So-Dormant Volcano!

For as long as I have studied and taught against antisemitism, the United-States were never immune from the virus of Jew hatred, but they were not in the forefront either. Antisemitism has been expected from countries in the Middle East that are mostly Muslim countries. It has also been on the rise in most of Europe in the last two decades, with a recent surge in the last three years coming from all sides of the political, religious, ideological and cultural spectrums.

Things seem to be changing in America! Over 100 Jewish Community Centers (JCC) have received bomb threats in the last two months all across our nation. Several of these threats touched some of my personal friends, as well as one JCC in my own neighborhood. Fortunately, none of them was real. But how many more phone calls before one threat turns into a real explosion and innocent lives are lost? The President covered the issue in his address to Congress when he said “Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms.”

One definition for “terrorism” reads “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” When I look at the recent bombs threats against multiple Jewish communities, and how they disrupted the peace of regular civilians, I cannot help but think that they were acts of terrorism. The intimidation in a bomb threat is very high as nobody can ever assume that it is a hoax, especially in the current world we live in. I also find the act of making a threatening anonymous phone call very cowardly. Antisemitism can happen in words and/or deeds. So far, the bomb threats have only been words but they can be equally damaging.

Two Jewish cemeteries in Missouri and Pennsylvania have also been desecrated with over 250 tombstones turned over. No muslim or Christian cemeteries were affected in the same period of time, just like no Muslim or Christian Centers were affected either. These attacks–strangely reminiscent of the 1930s and 1940s in Europe– were clearly targeted against Jewish people. These qualify as antisemitism in deeds the same way that several graffiti recently written on various Jewish properties do.

This may come as a surprise to many Americans, but these acts are not happening in a vacuum. I have been documenting such acts against American Jews since 1999. They were fewer and further in between than today…by a long shot. America is a huge country and isolated incidents of antisemitism have never made the front page of the papers or the eight o’clock news. Yet they happened all across the USA. This recent surge is symptomatic of a very serious problem but it can also be beneficial to many.

As surprising as it might sound, there are still many in America and around the world who either find it difficult to believe that antisemitism exist or who are simply unaware of it. The recent wave of events has propelled the issue to the forefront of the news, and it needs to park there for a while. Americans must understand that Jewish people are becoming a real target in the United-Stated like they have been in the Middle East and Europe for a while now. Outside from the obvious need to show our support to a scared community, this also should serve as a wake-up call for our country and the rest of the world. Antisemitism is back, it is growing again, and it is here to stay.

We must boldly denounce this wave of hatred against the Jewish people. Our current administration is going to have to do more than provide us with a few comforting words. When Mr. Trump makes it so clear that we are fighting Islamic radicalism and terrorism, he also needs to severely punish the perpetrators of such crimes.

Antisemitism is indeed the “Longest Hatred” and has been somewhat of a dormant volcano in America. The recent months have shown that the lava of Jew hatred is resurfacing out of a volcano that was never dead. I am not certain that we can stop the volcano, but I know that we can better protect the potential victims from its lava.

Hitler called his plan for the eradication of the Jewish people “the solution to the Jewish problem,” and he almost succeeded. The current surge of attacks against Jews in America could lead to another “solution to the Jewish problem,” if left unchecked. Europe is already seeing Jewish people being killed again. The evangelical community and all people of good will need to step up and reach out to help their Jewish friends, lest we become 21st century by-standers and facilitate what I call End-Times antisemitism.

Filed Under: Antisemitism, Christianity, End-Times, Eschatology, Featured-Post-1, Holocaust, Islamo-Fascism, Jewish, Middle East, Muslims, Terrorism, United States Tagged With: Bomb Threats, JCC, Jewish Community

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