www.jta.org

Jon Minadeo Jr. #racist #dunning-kruger #psycho #wingnut #conspiracy jta.org

Jon Minadeo Jr. posted about his arrest on Gab[…]on Sunday. He said he had been charged with “(((Hate Speech))) regarding Aushwitz”[…]
The Polish national police did not immediately respond to a request for comment[…]
Minadeo had posted pictures of himself and a fellow Goyim Defense League member, Robert Wilson, holding posters outside Auschwitz’s notorious front gate[…]
“We must continue exposing the Jewish anti white propaganda! That for decades has conditioned our people to be slaves for the Jews,” Minadeo wrote on Gab when posting the photographs. His post attacked the ADL as “an anti white terrorist organization” and says the Holocaust is “a f—ing hoax”[…]
The incident at Auschwitz was not the only one where Minadeo boasted about his provocations during his travels. He documented his vacation to Poland in a number of other photos and videos — including one in which he verbally attacks a South Asian man for more than 4 minutes

The video, which went viral on Reddit, bore the headline “American tourist in Poland goes on racial tirade against Indian guy.” It shows Minadeo[…]harassing the man on a sidewalk. He calls the man an “invader” and tells him to go back to India. “Why are you in Poland? Why are you here?” Minadeo says while following him. “You have your own country”

A different video posted on Gab shows Minadeo sitting on a restaurant patio. He is wearing a “white pride” T-shirt and a long, gold-colored swastika necklace, when a tall man in a tartan blazer approaches him and tells him it is illegal to display a swastika in Poland[…]
“Who makes it illegal?” Minadeo asks. “The Polish government,” the man replies. “No, the Jewish government,” Mindeo responds. He calls the man a “cuck”[…]and a “f—ing pussy” before asking if he would like to “go outside” to fight

Unnamed OUN-UPA March participants and Kyiv’s department of culture #racist #conspiracy jta.org

Participants in a nationalist march in Ukraine raised a banner decrying the country’s “occupation and robbery” by a “Jewish clan.”

The banner, aimed at Ukraine’s Jewish president, Vlodymyr Zelensky, appeared Wednesday at the annual OUN-UPA March, which is named for Ukrainian nationalist movements that for a time sided with Adolf Hitler against the Soviet Union.

“Celebrating the anniversary of the occupation and robbery of Ukraine by the Dnipro Jewish clan of Vova Zelensky,” the read the billboard-sized banner that was displayed in front of Zelensky’s office.

[…]

Other symbols on display at the march included the logo of the ultranationalist Azov Battalion and a banner that read “White Lives Matter.”

Separately, Kyiv’s department of culture sent a letter to a prominent rabbi in Kyiv asking him to hold prayers for “defenders of Ukraine of all generations” on Oct. 14. That date is a national holiday known as both Defender of Ukraine Day and the Day of the Cossacks, a Slavic group that perpetrated pogroms against Jews in the early 20th century. Many Ukrainian Jews objected to the establishment of Oct. 14 as a national holiday in 2015.

Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, criticized the letter, which was apparently sent to multiple clergymen, calling in “bizarre.”

Dolinsky said the reference to “all generations” meant the city was asking Jews to pray for Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the 17th-century Cossak leader whose army killed countless Jews, as well as 20th century Nazi collaborators.

Pablo Giorgetti #wingnut jta.org

Police in Argentina have raided and closed down a publishing house that they say was distributing Nazi literature online

They also arrested a man who was first raided for distributing Nazi propaganda in violation of Argentine law more than a decade ago. At the time, Pablo Giorgetti was a university student; now, he is accused of running Libreria Argentina, deemed by the country’s leading Jewish organization of being “the largest Nazi and antisemitic book distributor in Argentina”

The Jewish group, DAIA, spurred the two-year investigation into Libreria Argentina after finding a book it published for sale online and denouncing it publicly in December 2021[…]
The raid was announced by Federal Police officials Juan Carlos Hernandez and Alejandro Ñamandu along with the DAIA’s president, Jorge Knoblovits. They said more than 200 books had been seized at a house in San Isidro, an affluent neighborhood in the northern area of Buenos Aires. The police also seized electronic and printing devices and a large amount of Nazi propaganda

Books had been printed and were ready to be distributed featuring images of swastikas, Iron Crosses and other emblems of the Nazi Party, according to images of the seized trove that DAIA posted online

The Jewish organization first found the books on Mercado Libre, Latin America’s biggest online retailer, which is in the process of curbing the availability of Nazi material through its sales platform

Mahmoud Abbas #racist #dunning-kruger #crackpot #conspiracy jta.org

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas peddled falsehoods about the Holocaust and other discredited distortions about Jews, drawing diplomatic fire just as the Biden administration is launching a major diplomatic initiative that could include reviving Israeli-Palestinian talks

In a speech broadcast last month to a body of his Fatah Party, which controls the Palestinian Authority, Abbas, 87, said that Adolf Hitler and antisemites before him hated and persecuted the Jews not because of who they were but because of “their role in society” having to do with “usury, money, and so on and so on”[…]
In his speech, Abbas also peddled a discredited myth and distorted or erroneous claims, including: that Ashkenazi Jews are descended solely from the remnants of a bygone kingdom on the Caspian Sea; that the term “antisemitism” describes animus toward speakers of Semitic languages; and that Jews from Arab lands emigrated to Israel primarily because they were coerced by Zionists

Itzik Zarka #racist #wingnut #psycho jta.org

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expelled a prominent activist from his Likud Party after the activist was filmed calling protesters “whores” and saying that he wishes “another six million would burn,” a reference to the Holocaust

The activist, Itzik Zarka, directed the epithets at protesters who were demonstrating on Saturday night against Netanyahu’s effort to weaken the judiciary. Weekly protests have occurred nationwide against the planned judicial overhaul, a key portion of which is set to advance to a final vote in the coming weeks

“You whores, burn in hell, burn in hell,” Zarka screamed at a demonstration near the northern Israeli city of Beit Shean. “It’s not for nothing that six million went. I’m proud, I’m proud. I wish another six million would burn”

His comments, which were condemned by a wide range of senior Likud politicians, were a crude allusion to a perceived ethnic split in Israel between supporters and opponents of the judicial overhaul[…]
The vast majority of the country’s founding left-wing elite was Ashkenazi, or Jews of European descent, and enacted discriminatory policies that disadvantaged Mizrahim, or Jews of Middle Eastern descent, particularly in the country’s early decades. Correspondingly, Mizrahi voters have long formed a key part of the right-wing Likud’s base, while the core of the country’s shrinking left has historically been Ashkenazi

Some supporters of the overhaul say that the Supreme Court is a holdout of an upper-class Ashkenazi elite[…]
On his Facebook account, which features a photo of him kissing Netanyahu on the cheek, Zarka has repeatedly apologized for what he called his “terrible words.” He wrote that he was accosted by protesters, that his words were taken out of context and that he is a descendant of a Holocaust survivor

Sergeant K.E. Bluemke #racist jta.org

A German-born sergeant in the Canadian Army was fined roughly $2,200 and given a “severe reprimand” after joking about the Holocaust while conducting an infantry training course

But the 38-year-old officer was not demoted, even though a military tribunal considered handing down that punishment

The sergeant, identified as K.E. Bluemke, pleaded guilty last October in an Ontario court martial to one count of “conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline.” He was charged after 12 participants in the training course said he had made multiple antisemitic jokes and comments about Jews and the Holocaust

According to court documents, which were first reported on Friday by CTV News Vancouver Island, Bluemke began the training course by asking, “Is anyone here Jewish?” Throughout the course, he proceeded to make comments such as, “Move with the sense of urgency as a certain group did leaving Germany in 1939,” and “Why do Jews have big noses? Because the air is free”[…]
“I am having difficulties finding the right word to qualify the use of stereotypes and the reference to the unspeakable horrors suffered by the Jewish community before and during the Second World War to make adverse comments intended as jokes,” Cmdr. Martin Pelletier[…]wrote in his decision. “The word ‘distasteful’ does not suffice. It is in my opinion utterly disgusting. Regardless of who in the [Canadian Armed Forces] engages in such conduct, it should make a reasonable member cringe and worry about belonging to the same organization as the perpetrator”[…]
Soldiers in the training course described Bluemke’s conduct as “offensive, demeaning, and unprofessional”[…]Pelletier specifically cited a Jewish soldier’s victim impact statement as an “aggravating factor” in Bluemke’s sentencing

Daily Salinas #racist #conspiracy #wingnut #dunning-kruger jta.org

“I want to apologize to the Jewish community,” Salinas told the [JTA] on Wednesday. She was saying sorry for a Facebook post she shared in March offering a summary of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”[…]
“I’m not what the post says,” Salinas said. “I love the Jewish community”

The post came to light this week after the Miami Herald identified Salinas as the Miami Lakes, Florida, mother who petitioned her children’s school to ban students’ access to the Gorman poem. Gorman read the poem, called “The Hill We Climb,” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration

Salinas also petitioned the school to restrict children’s books about the Black poet Langston Hughes and about Black and Cuban history[…]Miami-Dade County school district opted to restrict all but one book about Cuba from grades K-5, while leaving them available to middle school students

Salinas challenged the Gorman poem — which she says she hasn’t read in its entirety — on the grounds that it contains “indirect hate messages.” The review committee said it “erred on the side of caution” in deciding to limit students’ access[…]
Post about the Protocols included a list of steps depicting how “Jewish Zionists” would achieve world domination. The graphic included stages such as “Place our agents and helpers everywhere,” “Replace royal rule with socialist rule, then communism, then despotism,” and “Sacrifice people (including Jews sometimes) when necessary”[…]
Salinas confirmed that the post about the “Protocols” was hers and apologized for it, saying she hadn’t read it beyond the word “communism.” Salinas said her aversion to communism stems from her Cuban identity. She added that English is not her first language[…]
She said she had only read parts of the books. “They have to read for me because I’m not an expert,” she said. “I’m not a reader. I’m not a book person. I’m a mom involved in my children’s education”

Kathleen Collins #racist jta.org

A Boston-area woman has been arrested and charged with leaving a series of paper swastikas outside the house of a Jewish lawyer who is representing her child’s father in an ongoing custody battle

The case had been a source of fear and confusion in the local community for months, since the Jewish woman being targeted, Stephanie Lyons, first found the swastikas on her front lawn in Stoneham in November

Lyons told The Washington Post that the swastikas had particularly unnerved her amid a larger climate of antisemitism; the incident came only a few days after rapper Kanye West launched what would become an extended antisemitic tirade

“I just burst into tears,” she told the Post. “Someone had taken the time to cut these swastikas out of paper and write those words. They knew where we lived. They knew we were Jewish”

Now local police have concluded that the culprit did in fact know Lyons. They have charged Kathleen Collins with a civil rights violation and two counts of witness intimidation, the Boston Globe reported

Collins had previously made derogatory statements about Lyons during a video call with her son and his father, according to the police report, which also said she later reportedly admitted to the father that she had put out the swastikas. They also contained antisemitic messages including “JESUS HATER” and “GO TO HELL, JEW BITCH”

Matt Keefer #wingnut jta.org

A local school board candidate in a suburb of Indianapolis is drawing criticism for insisting that “not all Nazis were bad” and that teaching that they were would represent “indoctrination”

Matt Keefer, an anesthesiologist who is running for school board in Zionsville, Indiana, initially made the comment in response to a Facebook user who pressed him for specifics about his platform, which starts with the statement, “Empower teachers to educate, not indoctrinate.” The user asked: Would teaching students that all Nazis are bad cross the line?

Keefer said it would. “All Nazis weren’t ‘bad’ as you specify. They did horrible things. They were in a group frenzy,” he wrote, adding, “Who is to say if we were both there in the same place and time, that we wouldn’t have done the same thing”

Keefer doubled down Thursday night as reports of his comments, first collected by a local Twitter account and first reported by an Indianapolis TV station on Thursday, burst into public view. “A few days ago I made the comment ‘not all Nazis were bad’ in my response to a question posed to me on Facebook. I am correct,” Keefer wrote in a lengthy statement on Facebook. But he added, “To be clear: I never was, am not now, and never will be a Nazi sympathizer”[…]
Keefer entered politics, he has said, because he was upset about pandemic restrictions and vaccine requirements, which he said one day might be perceived in hindsight as equally objectionable to Nazism

Vladimir Solovyov, Dmitry Popov and Agnia Krengel #conspiracy #racist jta.org

Russian President Vladimir Putin cracked down on the open antisemitism[…]
As Russia’s war effort in Ukraine founders, openly anti-Jewish rhetoric is entering the country’s mainstream media[…]
The shift in rhetoric about Jews in Russian media began about two months ago, according to Roman Bronfman, a former Israeli lawmaker who has published a book about post-Soviet Jewry[…]
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has left him isolated on the world stage[…]As Russia’s war machine stalls in Ukraine[…]there are mounting signs that the Putin-era taboos on displays of antisemitism are falling

In July, Vladimir Solovyov, a popular talk show host who has Jewish ancestry himself, listed on air the names of Jews whom he faulted for lacking patriotism[…]
In a Sept. 18 article in Moskovskij Komsomolets, a highbrow Russian daily, a senior and veteran writer named Dmitry Popov compiled a list of well-known Jews whom he called “foreign agents”[…]He added sarcastically that the Jews might one day form a government in “the beautiful Russia of the future” — ostensibly after Putin exits office[…]
More evidence of a shift in tolerance for antisemitic rhetoric came last week as Bernard-Henri Lévy, a prominent French-Jewish journalist[…], visited the war-torn country

The Strategic Culture Foundation, a Russian conservative think tank[…]published[…]
“This 74-year-old French citizen, born in a family of Algerian Jews, smells blood with his nose and, without delay, flies to lap it up — and for good money,” read the article, which was signed by Agnia Krengel

Ebrahim Raisi #dunning-kruger jta.org

Iran’s leadership has returned to Holocaust denial, its leader made clear in an interview with “60 Minutes,” after distancing itself from the phenomenon

“Historical events should be investigated by researchers and historians,” Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president, said in an interview on the CBS News flagship broadcast Sunday when he asked if he believed the Holocaust occurred. “There are some signs that it happened. If so, they should allow it to be investigated and researched”

The interview aired at the same time that PBS was showing the first installment of a six-hour new documentary, by Ken Burns, about the Holocaust. “The U.S. and the Holocaust” is the latest prominent work to make use of the vast trove of research available to scholars and laymen to show in meticulous detail evidence of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry

The falsehood that research that would deny the Holocaust is being repressed is a commonplace trope among Holocaust deniers[…]
Responding to a tweet quoting Raisi, Israeli interim prime minister Yair Lapid offered just two words — “Some signs” alongside four black-and-white photographs showing starved and murdered Holocaust victims. He was one of many people to lampoon the Iranian president’s comments on social media.
https://twitter.com/yairlapid/status/1571732099547398145

Bracken County Republican Party #racist #conspiracy #wingnut jta.org

When Steve Dettelbach was confirmed last week as the director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, he became the beleaguered bureau’s first head to pass a Senate confirmation in eight years. For some, the confirmation offered hope of a changing tide in America’s sea of mass shootings

But a county Republican group in Kentucky saw a different story: that Dettelbach is part of a “Jewish junta” that “is getting stronger and more aggressive”

The Bracken County Republican Party, representing a rural county with a population of around 8,400 along the Ohio River near Cincinnati, made the comment Friday on its official Facebook page, two days after Dettelbach’s July 12 confirmation

In calling Dettelbach “a Jewish anti-gun activist,” the county GOP group attacked the two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Rob Portman of Ohio, who voted for his appointment. It also attacked two Republican Senators, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and James Risich of Idaho, who were not present for the vote, saying, “It’s obvious they want to move on from having to defend rural gun owners”

The group deleted the comment from its Facebook page later that day, after being contacted by the Louisville Courier-Journal. The county’s GOP chair, Karin Kirkendol, did not respond to the paper’s questions about the post, but later signed a Facebook post from the group disavowing it

Robert Regan #wingnut #racist #conspiracy #sexist jta.org

During his campaign for a state House seat, Michigan Republican nominee Robert “RJ” Regan had told local outlets that, “My words aren’t as smooth and polished as the politicians are because I’m not a politician.” And there were many ways Regan wasn’t like other politicians

For one, most politicians’ public Facebook pages aren’t filled with antisemitic memes blaming Jews for the Sept. 11 attacks, calling Jews the “real virus” instead of COVID-19, or calling feminism “a Jewish program to degrade white men.” Most politicians also don’t have recorded video of themselves making jokes about their own daughters being raped. Regan had both

Most politicians also run with the full backing of their parties, but the Michigan GOP[…]refused to aid Regan in his Grand Rapids-area special election after he won the primary in March. Although the state party had initially congratulated him on his primary victory, it reversed course when his comments came to light[…]
Finally, unlike most politicians, Regan lost a seat he was heavily favored to win. In the May 3 special election[…]he lost the conservative district to Democrat Carol Glanville, who got 7,288 votes to Regan’s 5,697 and became the first Democrat to hold the seat in a decade[…]
In his concession, Regan called himself “an America First Republican” and lashed out at “the RINO Republican establishment”[…]
During his campaign, Regan had insisted he was “not antisemitic” but did not apologize for his social media posts, instead attacking “the left trolls trying to get some attention because they know where I stand on the issues”

State Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur (R-Ashtabula) #dunning-kruger jta.org

A Jewish lawmaker in Ohio is deriding legislation to restrict race education in the state’s schools as the “draconian Holocaust censorship bill” after one of the bill’s Republican sponsors suggested that it is appropriate to teach about the Holocaust from the perspective of the Nazis

State Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur, who co-sponsored the bill, made the comments when explaining to a local news station why she believes that “divisive concepts” should be taught from multiple points of view

“Maybe you’re going to listen to the perspective of someone from Poland when they were undergoing similar displacement, or when they were being incorporated into the war and to some of these camps. Or maybe you’re listening to it from the perspective of a Jewish person that has gone through the tragedies that took place,” she said, describing how a hypothetical lesson that complies with the law could unfold. “And maybe you’ll listen to it from the perspective of a German soldier”

Fowler Arthur also mischaracterized how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and why they were murdered in her remarks, originally made to News 5 Cleveland in early March but not publicized by the station until Tuesday

“What we do not want is for someone to come in and say, ‘Well, obviously the German government was right in saying that the Aryan race is superior to all other races, and therefore that they were acting rightly when they murdered hundreds of thousands of people for having a different color of skin,'” she said

Arizona State Sen. Wendy Rogers (R-6th district) #conspiracy #wingnut #racist #psycho jta.org

Jewish organizations have lambasted Rogers for a series of social media posts in which she repeatedly attacks “anti-Christian” bankers for opposing her and for spurring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She has named George Soros and the Rothschild family, both frequent targets of antisemites, as the “anti-Christian” bankers she is targeting

The censure motion which passed Tuesday 24-3 in the Republican-led chamber was directed at comments she made last week at a conference organized by white nationalist Nick Fuentes, in which she called for politicians who have implemented coronavirus prevention mandates to be hanged

“When we do take back our god-given rights we will bring these criminals to justice. I’ve said we need to build more gallows,” Rogers told the America First Political Action Committee in a video quoted by Vice. “If we try some of these high-level criminals, convict them and use a newly built set of gallows, it’ll make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country”

She separately threatened to “destroy the career” of any Republican who called her out for her statements
[…]
The Arizona Mirror reported that references to Rogers’ antisemitism were removed by the Republican leadership
[…]
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann said those passages were removed because the statements in question by Rogers were protected by the First Amendment while specific threats of violence were not

Calin Georgescu #wingnut jta.org

A Romanian political hopeful who could become honorary president of the country’s fourth-largest political party praised an antisemitic 1930s fascist leader during a primetime TV interview on Monday night, drawing sharp condemnation from Jewish and other groups

Speaking on Antena 3 news channel, Calin Georgescu, a sustainability expert formerly affiliated with the United Nations, said Corneliu Zelea Codreanu “fought for the morality of the human being.” An interviewer had asked Georgescu why he put Codreanu on a list of national “heroes” in a 2020 Facebook video which garnered over 700,000 views

Codreanu led the fiercely antisemitic Legionnaire Movement until his execution in 1938. The group espoused an extreme version of ethnic and religious nationalism that involved political murders and acts of terrorism
[…]
Georgescu’s interview marked the first time in years that a prominent political figure openly defended Codreanu’s record on a mainstream Romanian television channel

Georgescu also referred to Antonescu, under whose rule at least 280,000 Jews were killed, as a “martyr”
[…]
Georgescu’s 2020 Facebook video has circulated widely in Romania after he was nominated to be honorary president of the far-right AUR party[…]In announcing the nomination, AUR’s co-chair George Simion said that the party is also considering supporting Georgescu as its presidential candidate
[…]
Simion told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Georgescu’s comments “do not represent in any way the position of AUR,” adding that Georgescu “will have to clarify” his remarks. Asked whether he is considering revoking Georgescu’s nomination as AUR’s honorary president, Simion said “It is one of the options”

The JTA also questioned Simion over the broader AUR party’s views regarding Antonescu and Codreanu

“The party’s official position cannot be other than what the law says in Romania”

Father Michał Woźnicki #racist #fundie #conspiracy jta.org

A Polish priest with a long track record of antisemitic comments has been sentenced to community service after being convicted of insulting Jews and inciting hatred against them, in what his critics say is a landmark case

Father Michal Woznicki, a Catholic priest from the city of Poznan, must perform 30 hours of community service a month for the next six months, according to the order handed down by a judge earlier this month

Woznicki was on trial for comments made during a sermon in October 2021. “Jews in the world have assumed the role of a leech, a tick, a body that lives on the host’s body, swells, leading the host’s body to death, moving on to the next one,” he said, according to Polish media. He also said that Jews were in league with the devil and responsible for the spread of sexual impropriety in Poland

Woznicki is already facing sanctions from the church because of his record of controversy, and he delivered the sermon online because he has been suspended from his pulpit. But because he remains an ordained priest, his conviction is groundbreaking, according to the civil society group that pressed for him to face charges[…]
“Woznicki is well known for his antisemitic diatribes and anti-church tirades (he has called Pope Francis a heretic),” Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by email. “The Polish court has handed down a clear verdict that antisemitic hate speech is illegal in Poland. We are hopeful that the Polish courts will continue to find others guilty of this crime”

After the Polish judge ruled that Woznicki was guilty of insulting Jews because of their nationality and inciting hatred on the basis of national differences, the priest lashed out in comments to journalists

“I am convicted of preaching,” Woznicki reportedly said. “Apparently, the Jews do not like me very much because I love the Lord Jesus. As a non-Jew, I concede to the Jewish king, while the Jews do not so much to their king”

Thanos Plevris and Constantinos Plevris #psycho #racist jta.org

Greece has appointed a health minister who defended the antisemitic writings of his father in court more than a decade ago

Thanos Plevris, who was named to his post as part of a government reshuffle, said Wednesday in a statement that he did not mean to offend anyone with his 2009 defense
[…]
Constantinos Plevris was appealing his conviction for incitement to hatred for passages he wrote in his book titled “The Jews: The Whole Truth.” The elder Plevris appeared to advocate for keeping Auschwitz, the former Nazi death camp, “in good condition,” allegedly for the day it would again serve to kill Jews.

Defending his father in court, Thanos Plevris contested that interpretation of the Auschwitz reference. Even if it were true, he added, “What kind of instigation is this? What incitement is this? Is it that one is not allowed to believe and want to believe that ‘I want to exterminate someone?'” he said

The appeals tribunal acquitted Constantinos Plevris

Thanos Plervis wrote on Facebook that he “completely disagrees” with his father and “never meant to offend the Jewish people and I apologize if I did.” The post followed the statement by the Central Board, the main Jewish umbrella in Greece

Noor Ahmad Noor #racist #psycho jta.org

A Muslim imam in Norway who has led interfaith dialogue projects has made antisemitic statements on Facebook, including on how Jews are dangerous and “should be killed,” for years

The Norway branch of Minhaj-ul-Quran, an international Muslim organization that is considered moderate and geared toward outreach, suspended Noor Ahmad Noor indefinitely on Monday following an expose published last week by the Vartland newspaper on his antisemitic statements. Noor had served for years as the branch’s director
[…]
In one post from 2019, Noor wrote that Jews “put the world in danger” and it is “necessary to kill them”

In a short statement to the Norwegian media, Noor said: “My posts were published in frustration over attacks in Gaza. Innocent children and women were killed. My criticism and frustration should have been directed at the regime. And not against a group of people. I apologize”

Cassandre Fristot #conspiracy #racist jta.org

Police in France detained a woman for carrying a sign widely deemed antisemitic at a demonstration against COVID-19 emergency measures

Cassandre Fristot, an activist for the far-right National Rally party, held up a brown cardboard poster at the rally Saturday in Metz condemning President Emmanuel Macron and several well-known Jewish people as “traitors.” Fristot, who lost her 2012 bid for a local council on the National Rally ticket, is suspected of inciting hatred of Jews, Le Monde reported Monday

The poster also featured the question “but who?” with one of the letters decorated with devil’s horns. It listed as traitors several politicians and businesspeople who are Jewish or have Jewish roots, including former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn, government spokesperson Gabriel Attal, George Soros and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy

The rally was protesting the introduction of a COVID vaccine pass to be used at many public spaces as a requisite for admission

Unnamed Austrian soldier #wingnut jta.org

An Austrian soldier who posted online pictures of a swastika tattoo on one of his testicles was sentenced to 19 months in prison.

The sentence handed out earlier this month by an Austrian court to the 29-year-old soldier, who was not named in the Austrian media, owes also to an earlier conviction for displaying Nazi symbols, which is forbidden in Austria. He had received a suspended prison sentence for posting online pictures of Nazi World War II memorabilia.

That sentence was activated, however, when the soldier showed others with whom he had served the pictures of the swastika tattoo. The soldier said he had been very drunk when he got the tattoo earlier this year, the Kleine Zeitung newspaper reported earlier this month.

Camp Hikon and Naftali Schwartz #dunning-kruger #quack jta.org

Camp Hikon is aiming to prepare yeshiva boys for what it calls the “political, environmental and economic” changes to come. Despite its stated interest in preparing campers for “natural disasters,” it will not allow any vaccinated campers or staff to attend.

Naftali Schwartz, the Brooklyn-based self-described “health coach” with no formal training in medicine or public health who is launching the camp, said the rule is unlikely to keep anybody away.

“Because of the kinds of demographic that I’m drawing from, most people who are coming will not have taken the vaccine,” Schwartz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Drawing on a debunked theory spread by the anti-vaccination movement, the camp’s website cites the “experimental nature” of the COVID-19 vaccines. According to the false theory, living in close quarters with vaccinated people could “enhance” the spread of the coronavirus. The website refers readers to a site called NutriTruth, which claims vaccines are a “biological weapon,” and to a livestreamed discussion between several notable anti-vaxxers.

“We regret that we will be unable to accept campers or counselors who have already received any of these injections,” according to the website.

Schwartz said he made the rule because of “suspicious symptoms that occur to unvaccinated people who have spent a lot of time in the company of vaccinated people.”

“It’s also been reported to me from parents of my to-be campers that this is a real thing and it’s worrisome,” Schwartz said.

Waldemar Wojciechowski #racist jta.org

A local politician in Poland used language that critics said was anti-Semitic during a regional council meeting about agriculture.

“Why don’t Jews buy land? Because you can’t cheat the earth,” Waldemar Wojciechowski, a representative of the right-wing Law and Justice ruling party, said at a meeting Tuesday of the council of the Lodz District.

The meeting was on a subject unrelated to Jews and Judaism, and Wojciechowski was quoting a saying to make a point about the need to be fair to farmers, the Gazeta news site reported Wednesday.

Fritz Berggren #racist #fundie #conspiracy jta.org

A U.S. State Department employee named Fritz Berggren has been moonlighting as a blogger devoted to attacking Jews and promoting white Christian nationalism.

“Jesus Christ came to save the whole world from the Jews — the founders of the original Anti-Christ religion, they who are the seed of the Serpent, that brood of vipers,” Berggren wrote in an Oct. 4, 2020, post on his website titled “Jews are Not God’s Chosen People. Judeo-Christian is Anti-Christ.”

Later in the post he writes, “Jewish ideas poison people.”

Berggren has been sharing his extremist and anti-Semitic views under his real name for years while working as a mid-level civil servant. Politico first reported the connection on Friday after being tipped off by current and former State Department officials.

Berggren espouses the idea, common among the far-right, that white people are at risk of being eliminated through demographic change and organized persecution. He commonly rails against Black Lives Matter and other social movements identified with the left.
[…]
Politico reported that Berggren works for a State Department unit that handles special immigrant visas for Afghans. He has been identified as a Foreign Service worker since as early as 2009.

Travis Patron #wingnut #racist #conspiracy jta.org

The leader of a far-right political party in Canada has been arrested and charged with willfully promoting hatred against Jews – reportedly a first for a Canadian political party.

Travis Patron, the founder and head of the Canadian Nationalist Party, or CNP, was taken into custody in the Saskatchewan town of Carlyle.

Wednesday’s arrest of Patron, 29-year-old native of that province, stemmed from a 2019 social network video called “Beware the Parasitic Tribe” that news reports said cast Jews as “swindlers” and “snakes.”

Patron also has a social media history of denying the Holocaust, according to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.

In his video, Patron claimed that Jewish people “infiltrate the media, they hijack the central bank, and they infect the body politic like a parasite,” and “what we need to do … is remove these people, once-and-for-all, from our country.”
[…]
CNP is registered with Elections Canada as a political party that can run candidates in an election, but it won’t get federal political party status until it has elected members of Parliament. That seems unlikely in the near future since its three candidates in 2019 garnered only a few hundred votes.

Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) #conspiracy #dunning-kruger jta.org

Among the many posts being unearthed amid renewed scrutiny of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s social media history is one in which the new congresswoman implicated “Rothschild Inc” in connection with a deadly forest fire that, she wrote, was started using laser beams from space.

Greene, a freshman Republican from Georgia who made waves during the campaign for her promotion of the QAnon conspiracy theory, made the accusation in a 2018 Facebook post that is no longer visible. In the post, Greene offers a mix of evidence-free speculation as to what caused the 2018 Camp Fire, which burned more than 150,000 acres and killed 85 people.

In reality, the fire was determined to have been started by electrical wiring belonging to Pacific Gas and Electric.

In her post, Greene noted that Roger Kimmel, a board member at Pacific Gas and Electric, was also the vice-chairman of Rothschild Inc. Greene also wrote that PG&E had invested in technology to beam solar energy from space down to Earth. She claimed in the post that that technology had caused the fire. The post was first reported on Thursday by Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog.

"Melanie Rettler" #conspiracy #racist jta.org

An antisemitic tirade at a school board meeting in suburban Phoenix last week has spurred an extensive response among local officials and Jewish leaders — some of whom say they were distressed that board members did not rebut the comment at the time

During the public comment portion of the meeting of the Chandler Unified School District board, a woman who identified herself as Melanie Rettler spoke for over a minute about critical race theory and vaccines — topics not listed on the meeting agenda but at the center of heated public debate nationwide

Her comment crescendoed with an antisemitic claim drenched in the language of right-wing conspiracy theories

“Every one of these things, the deep state, the cabal, the swamp, the elite — you can’t mention it, but I will — there is one race that owns all the pharmaceutical companies and these vaccines aren’t safe, they aren’t effective and they aren’t free,” Rettler said. “You know that you’re paying for it through the increase in gas prices, the increase in food prices — you’re paying for this and it’s being taken from your money and being given to these pharmaceutical companies and if you want to bring race into this: It’s the Jews”
[…]
After Rettler walked away, Barb Mozdzen, the board president, addressed everybody in the room. “Comments really need to be related to what the school board can do something about, and this was not something we can do something about,” she said. “So please have your comments with something that is within our jurisdiction”

Ignazio la Russa #wingnut jta.org

Ignazio la Russa, a senator from Cologno Monzese, a municipality in Milan, wrote alongside a picture of an MSI campaign poster: “In memory of my father, who was one of the founders of the Italian Social Movement in Sicily and who chose the path of free and democratic participation with the MSI throughout his life in defense of his ideas respectful of the Italian Constitution”

Leaders within Italy’s Jewish community were dismayed by his decision to link MSI to the post-World War II Italian constitution. The ascendance of far-right leaders who have expressed nostalgia for the fascist period in Italy — which nearly spelled the near destruction of Italian Jewry — has Italy’s present-day Jewish community worried

“Today we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the promulgation of the Republican Constitution, the affirmation of our anti-fascist democracy,” Noemi Di Segni, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said on Tuesday[…]“Yet there are those who believe they are celebrating another anniversary, that of the foundation of the MSI, a party which, after the fall of the fascist regime, placed itself in ideological and political continuity with the RSI, the government of diehard fascists who actively collaborated for the deportation of Italian Jews”[…]
La Russa took office as Senate president in October, after the victory of a right-wing coalition gave his Brothers of Italy (FDI) party a plurality in the senate and made Giorgia Meloni prime minister[…]
For most of its history, MSI branded itself as the defender of Italy’s fascist history, even long after the death of dictator Benito Musolini. 

FDI is seen by many as MSI’s successor in Italy

Unnamed Yellow Vests #racist jta.org

(JTA) — French philosopher and writer Alain Finkielkraut was came under a verbal anti-Semitic attack by Yellow Vest protesters in central Paris.

The incident on Saturday was captured on camera, with protesters yelling “Dirty Jew,” “you’re a hater, you’re going to die, you’re going to hell,” “Dirty Zionist,” “France is ours,” and “return to Tel Aviv.” Police intervened to protect Finkielkraut.

French President Emmanuel Marcon condemned the attack in a series of tweets. “The anti-Semitic insults he has been subjected to are the absolute negation of what we are and what makes us a great nation. We will not tolerate it,” Macron tweeted.

“The son of Polish immigrants who became a French academician, Alain Finkielkraut is not only a prominent man of letters but the symbol of what the Republic allows everyone,” he also tweeted.

The Paris prosecutor’s office on Sunday said an investigation has been launched into the “public insult based on origin, ethnicity, nationality, race or religion.”

Finkielkraut, 69, has expressed support in the past for the social movement. His philosophical writing mostly discusses identity-based violence, including antisemitism.

The Yellow Vests began in the fall as a series of protests against a hike on fuel prices but has been mired since in countless instances of violence against police and a substantial amount of anti-Semitic hate speech.

The incident comes a week after a series of anti-Semitic incidents throughout Paris.

diégo de la véga, Memoires2legendes? and unnamed other Twitter users #racist jta.org

(JTA) — A satirical article suggesting that the French-Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy plans to emigrate if a far-left politician is elected president triggered a slew of anti-Semitic comments on Twitter.

In the fake interview published last week on the satirical website NordPresse, Levy, one of the country’s best-known celebrities, is quoted as saying, “If Melenchon is elected, I’m leaving France.”

Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is the presidential candidate of the French Communist Party and several other far-left groups, has made considerable gains in polls ahead of the first round of the presidential elections on April 23.

Using the hashtag #BHL — the Jewish philosopher’s initials — hundreds of Melenchon supporters circulated the fake interview on Twitter, adding anti-Semitic comments about it.

“Shove off to Israel or the States, you son of a bitch,” one Twitter user wrote in an apparent reference to the fact that Levy, who is a citizen neither of Israel nor of the United States, is Jewish. Another wrote, “If Melenchon wins BHL knows where he can return.” The latter added a banner advertising Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to tourists.

The L’Expresse daily accused the satirical website of encouraging anti-Semitic discourse by inventing a quote by Levy.

“I cannot agree to a 90-percent taxation of my revenues” in explaining his opposition to Melenchon. “The Jews, as we all know, are rich,” L’Expresse wrote sarcastically.

Levy has criticized Melenchon, whose policies he has called “dangerous.” This week, Levy wrote on Twitter: “A reminder on the deplorable remarks by Melenchon following 2014 rallies featuring chanting about death to Jews.”

The post included a link to an article about Melenchon that was published on the Levy-owned opinion website Le Regle du Jeu recalling Melenchon’s statement on Aug. 24 that protesters against Israel in Paris “remained dignified and embodied better than anyone the founding values of the French republic.”More than nine synagogues were attacked in July that year in the French capital by pro-Palestinian protesters, some using firebombs. In a July 2014 incident at one synagogue, a gang of 150 assailants besieged dozens of worshipers.

[...]

Melenchon has climbed to third place in an Ifop survey from April 14 with 19 percent of the vote — matching the Republican candidate Francois Fillon — moving up from fifth in February and 9 percent. Emmanuel Macron, the centrist candidate, topped the April poll with 23 percent, followed by Le Pen of the National Front party with 22 percent.

Jean de Dieu Momo #racist jta.org

(JTA) — A Cameroon government minister said that the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves because they wielded all the economic power.

The African nation’s government disavowed the comments made by Jean de Dieu Momo, the deputy justice minister, in a primetime interview on public television. Momo warned the opposition leader, Maurice Kamto, that he was leading the native Bamileke people to a fate similar to that of the Jews during the Holocaust, the French news service AFP reported.

“In Germany, there was a very rich community who wielded all economic power,” he said. “They [the Jews] were so arrogant that the German people were frustrated. Then one day, a certain Hitler came to power and put them in the gas chambers.”

The government of Cameroon distanced itself from Momo’s comments.

“The Government of the Republic of Cameroon wishes to point out that [Jean De Dieu Momo] was speaking on a strictly personally basis,” Communications Minister Réné Sadi said in a statement, the English-language Journal du Cameroon reported. “The government of Cameroon strongly deplores the irrelevant comments of [Momo] and completely dissociates itself.”

Unnamed Brugge soccer club fans #racist jta.org

(JTA) — Soccer fans in Belgium chanted about burning Jews during a match in the city of Bruges, Belgian media reported.

La Derniere Heure published footage from the Aug. 26 match on Wednesday. It shows dozens of fans celebrating their local team’s victory over Brussels’ Anderlecht team that day by singing in Flemish: “My father was in the commandos, my mother was in the SS, together they burned Jews ’cause Jews burn the best.”

The chant, whose use was first reported by the media in 2015, has proliferated in the Netherlands and Belgium in recent years. In some cases, fans chant it to taunt counterparts from rival teams that are seen as historically Jewish. Some fans say Anderlecht is such a team, although that soccer club is not famously associated with Jews.

[...]

The soccer club of Brugge, a city located 40 miles west of Brussels, said in a statement: “We strongly condemn this behavior,” the HLN news website reported. The club said several fans have been identified and slapped with a ban on entering the team’s Jan Breydel Stadium.

[Bolding mine]

Valerie Plame #racist jta.org

(JTA) — Former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson resigned from the board of an anti-war foundation after retweeting an article accusing American Jews of pushing the U.S. into a war with Iran.

Wilson, whose paternal grandfather was Jewish, made the announcement on Sunday about leaving the the Ploughshares Fund in a series of tweets.

“Actions have consequences, and while I have been honored to serve on the board of the Ploughshares Fund — to avoid detracting from their mission, I have resigned,” Wilson said in consecutive tweets.

“I take full responsibility for my thoughtless and hurtful actions, and there are no excuses for what I did.”

She also tweeted that she was “horrified and ashamed” for retweeting articles from the Unz Review website “without closely examining content and authors.”

“The white supremacist and anti-Semitic propaganda espoused by this website is disgusting and I strongly condemn it,” she also tweeted.

Wilson, a former operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, had her identity leaked to the press by an official in President George W. Bush’s administration in 2003 and left the agency in 2005. A 2010 film about the affair, “Fair Game,” portrayed the popular theory that her cover was blown as political retribution for an article by her husband charging that the White House manipulated intelligence to make the case for invading Iraq.

The article she retweeted, titled “Americas Jews Are Driving America’s Wars,” included several anti-Semitic tropes, including that American Jews are guilty of dual loyalty to Israel, and that Jews control the media, the entertainment industry and politics.

Unnamed armed burglars in Livry Gargan #racist jta.org

(JTA) — A French Jewish leader and his family were assaulted in their home near Paris in what representatives of French Jewry said was an anti-Semitic attack.

In the attack Thursday night, three men, two of whom were wearing masks, broke into the home of Roger Pinto, the president of Siona, a group that represents Sephardic Jews. The attackers beat Pinto’s son and wife in the home in the northeastern suburb of Livry Gargan, the Dreuz news website reported Sunday.

One of the attackers said: “You Jews have money,” according to the family members.

The family members told police that the attackers, who they said were black men in their 20s or 30s, took their credit cards and jewelry, interrogated them for hours about additional items them could steal and threatened to kill them. The men ran away after Roger Pinto managed to discretely call rescue services on a mobile phone.

The Pintos were taken to hospital for treatment. They suffered some minor injuries and were deeply traumatized, the report said.

The incident, one of several cases in France in recent years in which criminals apparently singled out Jews based on the belief that they have money, provoked passionate condemnations from the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities and the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism. Both groups said the incident was an anti-Semitic attack.

[...]

In 2014, three men broke into the home of a Jewish family in Creteil near Paris. One of them raped a young woman there while another guarded her boyfriend, whom they took prisoner. A third took the couple’s credit card to extract cash from an ATM machine. They too allegedly said they targeted the couple because they are Jewish.

Jean-Frédéric Poisson #fundie jta.org

(JTA) — French Jews demanded the country’s Republican Party take disciplinary action against a primary candidate who said Hillary Clinton endangers Europe because she is controlled by Zionists.

The president of CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish communities, made the demand in a statement Thursday about Jean Fréderic Poisson, a National Assembly lawmaker whose Christian Democratic Party is a right-wing outlier of the Republicans’ center-right coalition in the 2017 presidential election.

In an article published Wednesday by the Nice Matin newspaper, Poisson was quoted as saying about Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate in the United States, that her “closeness to the super funders of Wall Street and her submission to Zionist lobbies are dangerous for Europe and for France.”

CRIF President Francis Kalifat wrote in his statement that “beyond its insidiously anti-Semitic character, this remark reanimates conspiracy theories that we know to be the basic currency of extremists of the most violent kind.”

Poisson, whose party opposes gay marriage and euthanasia, is one of seven candidates competing in the open primaries of the Republicans, the new name of what used to be the UMP party of former presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.

In addition to Sarkozy, whose paternal grandfather was Jewish, the list of primary candidates includes former Prime Minister Alain Juppe and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a former Cabinet minister whose ancestors were Polish Jews but who is not Jewish herself.

“With his revolting remarks, Jean Frédéric Poisson has placed himself beyond the margins of the primary of the right and center bloc,” Kalifat said of the Christian Democratic candidate.

Some commentators believe Poisson will endorse the far-right National Front party of Marine Le Pen if he fails to win the Republican nomination.

Ahmed Chekhab #racist jta.org

(JTA) — A local Socialist politician from France’s Lyon region was booted from the party for making statements deemed anti-Semitic.

...

Chekhab was heard telling the president of a local sports club: “Would you rather get fucked by Zittoun, by a Jew, then get the help of someone like yourself?”

Chekhab was commenting on Philippe Zittoun, his Jewish predecessor as deputy mayor. He was angry at the sports club president over the cancellation of a sports event for 800 children.

Blood and Soil #racist jta.org

(JTA) — A banner with an anti-Semitic slur hung over a synagogue’s Holocaust memorial and fliers left on cars in a New Jersey township are related to the arrest of several area haredi Orthodox couples for welfare fraud, police said.

The incidents occurred over the weekend in Lakewood, where at least seven haredi Orthodox couples were arrested last week for underreporting their incomes to receive government benefits, including a rabbi and his wife as well as his brother and his wife.

Brazen anti-Semitic hate on full display as #Holocaust memorial in #Lakewood is defaced pic.twitter.com/7CMCh2ivkl

— ADL New Jersey (@ADL_NJ) July 2, 2017

The banner hung at Congregation Sons of Israel reads “(((Heebs))) will not divide us,” using the anti-Semitic echo symbol popularized by the “alt-right” to highlight Jewish names. Heebs stands for Hebrews and is used as an ethnic slur against Jews. The banner also lists a website for a white supremacist group.

Anti-Semitic fliers referencing the arrests were placed on cars throughout the township as well, the Asbury Park Press reported.

New Jersey Attorney General Christopher Porrino in a tweet posted Sunday called the incidents “sickening.” He also reminded the public of the $10,000 reward from the state for information that leads to a bias crime conviction.

Amira Jumaa #racist jta.org

[Bolding mine]

Amira Jumaa is the first student to be expelled from the institution since it was founded in 1872, according to Haaretz. She reportedly was expelled in December in a decision by the university’s disciplinary committee, which is made up of students and professors, Haaretz reported, citing a report in the French weekly Nouvel Observateur.

[...]

The Facebook posts came to light in October while Jumaa worked as an intern at the French Consulate in New York as part of a school program. She was fired immediately by the consulate and suspended from the university pending an investigation.

The posts were exposed by a website called the Inglourious Basterds, whose stated goal is to expose anti-Semitism in social media.

“Friends, there is a big catch. She’s young, she’s rich, she’s jet set, she enjoys horseback riding, and she hates the Jews,” the site said in introducing Jumaa. According to the site, Jumaa liked a Facebook page called “I hate Israel.”

[...]

She wrote in one: “Yes you Jews deserve to learn these lessons. What did you expect, taking over people’s lands and killing them? Hugs?”

Jumaa also wrote: “You don’t belong anywhere in this world — that’s why you guys are scums and rats and discriminated against wherever you are. Do not blame it on the poor Palestinians.”

In response to being accused of racism, Jumaa wrote: “First of all you dispersed rat, i am not an immigrant from France. I am from Kuwait so my country can buy you and your parents and put you in ovens.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene #wingnut #psycho #conspiracy jta.org

President Donald Trump boosted a Georgia Republican candidate who refuses to disavow a white supremacist she posed with in a photograph and has seemingly promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

“A big winner,” Trump said in a tweet Friday attached to a story on a pro-Trump website noting that Marjorie Taylor Greene in the heavily Republican 14th District had performed well in the primary despite having an ad banned by Facebook. “Congratulations!”

Greene, the owner of a construction company, was the leader in Tuesday’s primary but did not secure 50 percent of the vote and so is headed to a runoff against her closest rival, Dr. John Cowan, a neurosurgeon.

Greene has posed in photos with Chester Doles, a Georgia man who once was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and served a prison sentence for beating nearly to death a black man he saw in the company of a white woman. She has dismissed media queries about the photos as “silly” and “fake news.”

Greene has peddled conspiracy theories about QAnon, a complex fantasy about a group of influential pedophiles trying to bring down Trump that at times has veered into anti-Semitism. Jewish Insider uncovered a 2018 posting on a QAnon website signed by a Marjorie Greene that brought in anti-Semitic tropes accusing Jewish billionaire George Soros and the Rothschild family of being involved in the conspiracy.

The Republican Jewish Coalition told Jewish Insider this week that it would not support Greene if she won the runoff, but would not oppose her either.

In the banned Facebook ad, Greene cocks an automatic rifle and warns antifa, a group that organizes counterprotests against the far right and has become fodder for conspiracy theories peddled by Trump, not to come to her district.

Michael Caputo #conspiracy #racist jta.org

The man President Donald Trump just named to speak for the Health Department accused George Soros and the Rothschild family of seeking to exploit the pandemic for control and to advance their agendas.

Michael Caputo, who advised Trump’s 2016 campaign, last week became the spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, reportedly in part because of Trump’s dissatisfaction with how the department secretary, Alex Azar, was handling communications during the crisis.

Caputo, known for his pugilistic style, deleted tens of thousands of tweets just before the appointment. CNN on Thursday uncovered dozens of the tweets, including attacks on the Chinese tinged with racially charged imagery, accusations that Democrats wanted people to die so Trump would not be reelected and disparagement of the media.

On March 17, responding to David Rothschild, an economist who often is caustically critical of Trump and accused Trump of “wanting to murder” people to stay in power, Caputo said that Rothschild “is an inbred elitist sphincter whose family craves control. That’s one reason why he constantly lies about President Trump.”

The New York economist is not related to the European family, which for centuries has been the target of anti-Semitic slanders that it is seeking world dominance.

On March 15, Caputo responded to a far-right figure, Jack Prosobiec, who wondered on Twitter why George Soros, the liberal philanthropist was ready to give to his favored political causes but not to efforts to combat the coronavirus.

“Are you kidding? Soros’s political agenda REQUIRES a pandemic,” Caputo said. Soros has given tens of millions of dollars to coronavirus relief.

On March 27, Caputo tweeted a photo of Soros captioned “The real virus behind everything,” and added skulls and crossbones.

Tomás Méndez #conspiracy #racist jta.org

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — An Argentine journalist apologized after saying that the coronavirus was created by rich Americans and Israelis during a prime-time news program.

Tomás Méndez, host of the popular ADN Tv, said on Wednesday that “bats are not responsible for the coronavirus, humans are.”

Those humans, he said, are “the richest of the world, some born in the United States, others in Israel and another in Europe,” who “are the owners of your life, who created this virus.” He singled out the Rothschild family, who often appear in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and Bill Gates.

His comments triggered harsh criticism.

Rev. Rick Wiles #racist #conspiracy jta.org

(JTA) — Rick Wiles, the Florida pastor who claimed that the effort to impeach President Trump was a “Jew coup,” said the spread of coronavirus in synagogues is a punishment of the Jewish people for opposing Jesus.

Wiles made the claim Wednesday on his TruNews broadcast.

“The people who are going in to the synagogue are coming out of the synagogue with the virus,” Wiles said. “It’s spreading in Israel through the synagogues. God is spreading it in your synagogues! You are under judgment because you oppose his son, Jesus Christ. That is why you have a plague in your synagogues. Repent and believe on the name of Jesus Christ, and the plague will stop.”

Wiles also claimed that the U.S. outbreak started at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference in Washington, D.C., in early March. In fact, the first case and the first outbreak were both reported in Washington state.

Rabbi Kanievsky and several unnamed Haredi rabbis, officials and individuals #fundie jta.org

BEIT SHEMESH, Israel (JTA) — “Do you want trouble?” the Hasidic man asked, leaning toward me intimidatingly.

“Are you threatening me?” I asked, turning to look at the lean man in a flat black hat and long caftan.

“No. But if you stay here, everyone will come and there will be a mess,” he replied, gesturing across the street.

We were standing as we faced Torah V’Yirah, a haredi boys school in the insular religious enclave of Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, just west of Jerusalem, where hundreds of young Hasidic boys were studying on Wednesday despite Israel’s increasingly severe limitations on public gatherings.

Several minutes earlier, walking into the school affiliated with the Satmar Hasidic sect, I had seen dozens of children crammed into classrooms, many of them lacking supervision. None of the adults I encountered in the building would admit to working there in any official capacity.

When I asked one of the men to direct me to the school administrator, he began to follow me, alternating between demanding that I leave and making phone calls.

I left the building, only to find myself surrounded by a small crowd of Hasidim demanding to know if I was a government inspector. I again identified myself as a journalist, and they accused me of making trouble and attempted to physically prevent me from taking a picture of the school building.

As I walked away, I noticed posters on the side of the building blaming the coronavirus pandemic on Orthodox women wearing wigs made from non-Jewish hair.

Last week, Israel ordered a nationwide closure of schools and universities in an effort to slow down the spread of the coronavirus, trying to prevent the country’s health care system from being overloaded. While most secular and national-religious educational institutions have shuttered, some in the haredi sector have stayed open.

[...]

This week, evidence has come to light that the virus spreads quickly through haredi neighborhoods and communities. In the haredi Jerusalem suburb of Telzstone, for example, nearly one in four residents has been ordered into isolation. And in New York, at least 100 people in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn have tested positive.

Despite this, appeals made by law enforcement representatives directly to Kanievsky and other influential rabbis earlier this week failed to change their minds.

“Rabbi Kanievsky says canceling Torah study is more dangerous than corona,” Shmulik Woolf, a member of the rabbi’s inner circle, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday.

But Woolf added that aside from the issue of yeshiva closures, in all other matters it is important to listen to the directives of the Ministry of Health.

Back in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, after beating a hasty retreat from Torah V’Yirah, I walked down the street to another synagogue and struck up a conversation with an 18-year-old yeshiva student who identified himself only as Natan.

“The Torah protects us and saves us. We’re not scared,” he told me, echoing a widely held belief in his community. “I’m young. People in the yeshivas aren’t afraid because we won’t get sick and anyone with a fever is sent home. We learn Torah, so it won’t happen.”

[...]

At the Be’er Mordechai yeshiva only a few blocks away from Gerzi’s synagogue, dozens of students were crammed into the small study hall. When I entered the yeshiva and asked a rabbi about the government regulations, I was mobbed by students demanding to know if I was a government inspector and insisting that there was no cause for concern.

“Whoever learns is protected, the rabbis said so,” one called out.

“God loves us, he won’t bring us corona,” another chimed in.

“The Torah protects us,” a third said. “We don’t need to do anything.”

Twelve unnamed Saint Mary School students #wingnut jta.org

A group of 11 senior students from a Brazilian high school made the Nazi salute in support of a classmate running to become their speaker.

The students aged between 16 and 17 stood with one of their arms outstretched facing their colleague, displaying the gesture used by Nazis who supported Adolf Hitler.

The scene took place at Saint Mary School, a private school in Brazil’s northeastern city of Recife. A picture was posted on Instagram on Wednesday along with a message full of Nazi-related terms, reported the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper and other Brazilian media on Thursday.

“He promises to be the new Fuhrer of the grade on this journey towards building a new and innovative Reich,” the post said.

“A people person with good rhetoric,” it continued, followed by hashtags with the words “Aryan” and “fourth Reich.” It also included unrelated lewd comments.

On Thursday, the school principal met with the students, who were suspended for one week, and their parents. The account on which the picture was posted was removed from the internet.

“We apologize to all those who were offended,” read a school note. “Our school does not support any behavior that goes against Christian and ethical values and in relation to valuing life and respecting all races, peoples and beliefs.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke #racist #conspiracy #dunning-kruger jta.org

(JTA) — A far-right lawmaker in Poland said that natural selection in pogroms have made Jews powerful, and that “there are theories” that rabbis provoked violence to achieve this.

Janusz Korwin-Mikke made the comment in an interview for the Polsat channel last week about the coronavirus, the Do Rzeczy newspaper reported Wednesday.

“Jews are now powerful because they had pogroms,” he said. “As a result of pogroms, the strongest and the most gifted survived. This is a warning to anti-Semites: That is why Jews are powerful, because they had pogroms. There are even theories that rabbis deliberately provoke pogroms precisely so that Jews survive and then there is natural selection.”

Korwin-Mikke, a former lawmaker in the European Parliament and a leader of the Confederation Liberty and Independence party, has a history of making anti-Semitic statements and stunts.

Last year, he slipped a kippah on the head of a state secretary while she was speaking at a televised debate that Korwin-Mikke also attended.

Also in 2019, he aired a conspiracy theory about Jews while commenting on reports in the Israeli media on a custom in which residents of the town of Pruchnik beat with sticks an effigy of an Orthodox Jew representing Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus.

"Fred van Oilsjt" and other Aalst carnival participants and spectators #racist #conspiracy jta.org

Caricatures of Jews, including ones depicting them as ants, were prominently displayed at this city’s annual parade.

The displays came a year after the Jewish Telegraphic Agency exposed anti-Semitic displays in last year’s parade in Aalst, located about 10 miles west of Brussels. Participants said the new displays were designed to reject the criticism of the town and carnival that followed JTA’s report.

“This is us saying we’re not going to stop making fun of everyone,” a man who identified himself as Fred van Oilsjt, 26, told JTA on Sunday while wearing a costume that exaggerates the suits favored by haredi Orthodox Jewish men. (Oilsjt is Aalst in the local dialect.)

He and 11 other members of his group also wore an ant’s abdomen and legs attached to their backs and a sticker that read “obey” on their lapels. Anti-Semitic imagery has often associated Jews with vermin, but he said the display was meant to be a pun referencing how the Dutch-language word for the Western Wall sounds like “complaining ant.”

Another group wore fake hooked noses and haredi Jew costumes as protest. Their float had a sign labelled “regulations for the Jewish party committee,” and it included: “Do not mock Jews” and “Certainly do not tell the truth about the Jew.”

Among the thousands of revelers who watched the parade from the sidelines, dozens of people wore fake haredi Jew costumes, including one person who also wore large troll feet.

Rudi Roth, a journalist for the Antwerp-based Joods Actueel Jewish paper, said the expressions of anti-Semitism in Aalst this year were more numerous and prominent than last year. He called it a “backlash effect.”

[...]

The report brought scrutiny to the city. In December, UNESCO pulled its endorsement of the carnival as a world heritage event, and Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Thursday called for what he labeled a “hateful” event to be banned. Meanwhile, celebrities have backed out of appearances with Aalst’s mayor, who has defended the parade displays.

The mayor, Christophe D’Haese of the right-wing New Flemish Alliance, said on Sunday that in the “context of the carnival, these displays are not anti-Semitic.” Any illegal hate speech, he added, would be dealt with by law enforcement.

“This is not an anti-Semitic event,” he told journalists at a news conference.

Campo de Criptana carnival participants #racist jta.org

At a carnival procession in Spain, participants dressed like Nazis and Jewish concentration camp prisoners while dancing next to a float evoking crematoria.

The Israeli Embassy in Madrid on Tuesday protested the display this weekend at the annual carnival procession in Campo de Criptana, a town situated about 80 miles southeast of the capital.

“We condemn the vile and repugnant representation that disrespects the victims of the Holocaust,” the embassy wrote on Twitter, “making fun of the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis. European nations must collectively fight anti-Semitism.”

A video of the procession shows the participants marching in their fake Nazi uniforms. Behind them, dancers wearing striped outfits evoking concentration camp uniforms followed while waving flags of Israel. They were followed by the float shaped like a train locomotive with two large chimneys.

Kim Kamal, Isabel Pereira and Sami Jakobsson #racist jta.org

(JTA) — Two contestants were kicked off a Swedish reality show after having a conversation in which one said she hates Jews, while a third who remains has previously expressed support for neo-Nazi ideas on social media.

The comments, made during a live airing of the popular show “Big Brother,” drew a swift response from the network airing the show, as well as wide media coverage in Sweden.

Jewish community leaders also responded with concern, noting a rise in anti-Semitism across the Scandinavian country.

“We have unfortunately recently seen increased anti-Semitism in Sweden, with a fair number of serious incidents just in the last few years,” the president of the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities told the Jewish news site Expressen. “I think that when a person on such a big show as ‘Big Brother,’ which many young people are watching, says something like this, it legitimizes anti-Semitism.”

The comments came during the fourth day of taping for this season of the show, in which participants are brought together to live under constant surveillance, with their conversations streamed to viewers.

On Thursday, Kim Kamal, 21, could be heard complaining to fellow contestant Isabel Pereira, 24, about his former boss. Then he said, “She was a Jew, so I get it.”

“I hate Jews,” Pereira responded with a laugh.

Pereira was asked to leave the show shortly after she made the comments, while Kamal was told to do so the following day. Pereira later apologized for the comments in an Instagram post.

Meanwhile, the Swedish news site Nyheter 24 reported that Sami Jakobsson, 25, had expressed support for neo-Nazi ideas on social media, including posting photos of tattoos with Nazi imagery and promoting white supremacist musical bands. Jacobsson, who rose to fame after being on a different Swedish reality show, said following the report that he had previously held far-right views but that he no longer did so.

Eduardo Salim Sad #conspiracy #racist jta.org

A journalist from Argentina’s state-run public television used a Jewish conspiracy theory to explain the death of NBA basketball great Kobe Bryant in a helicopter accident.

Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, and seven other passengers, including two other teens, died Sunday when the helicopter they were riding in crashed into the side of a hillside in foggy conditions outside of Los Angeles.

“Sikorsky S76 helicopter, of Jewish surname, kills Kobe Bryant,” Eduardo Salim Sad tweeted Monday.

His account has been removed from Twitter, though it is not clear if it was by Sad or Twitter.

The tweet, which was viewed thousands of times, triggered criticism from the Jewish community and was condemned by Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella, DAIA.

Sad later asserted that someone hacked his account and tweeted the statement “to harm me. I’m furious and dismayed.”

Joseph Sytnik #racist #conspiracy jta.org

A senior economist in Ukraine said the country’s leaders secretly are serving Israel.

Local Jews said Joseph Sytnik, a department head at the Lviv Polytechnic University, was espousing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

Sytnik penned the text on Tuesday and posted the essay on Facebook alongside photographs of Israel visits by Ukraine’s current president, Vlodymyr Zelensky, and previous prime minister, Vldymyr Groysman, who are Jewish, and former president Petro Proshenko, who is not. Each of the men was shown wearing a kippah.

Back home, Sytnik wrote, Ukrainian politicians are “sinners, advancing slavery and self-destruction.”

But “at the Western Wall in Jerusalem they take off their Ukrainian masks for a moment, refuse their roles, which they perform spectacular in Ukraine and become real. For in that place they have a drop of conscience, faith, sense of duty and responsibility for their roots, there they feel fear for their sins, there they are truly afraid of their God and the law.

“Their dominance in Ukraine is a problem created mainly by Ukrainians themselves.”