Our colleague Juan Caldes had the incredible opportunity to explore the vibrant Jewish Community of Melilla, sharing insights on combating anti-Semitism.
He also had the privilege to join the President of the Jewish community in a fruitful meeting with Vice President Miguel Marin and the Government of Melilla. Grateful for the chance to discuss important issues together!
Every Day during the Corona crisis our Advisory Board Member Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs (NL) writes a diary, on request of the Jewish Cultural Quarter in Amsterdam, which is published on the website of the NIW, the only Jewish Dutch Magazine. Rabbi Jacobs is the head of Inter Governmental Relationships at the Rabbinical Centre of Europe. We will be regularly publishing a selection of his informative, sometimes light hearted, but always wise pieces.
For our Dutch readers you can follow the diary every day at NIW home page: https://niw.nl
Mr cohen from Schin op Geul
The world is turned upside down. The UK in isolation. My grandson, who lives in London but is studying at a Talmud College in Israel, will join us soon. He had flown from Israel to London for a week to attend his older brother’s wedding, but now cannot go back. And so he travelled to Calais last night via Dover, is now in Belgium and will come here immediately in the hope / expectation that he can still fly to Israel from the Netherlands.
Incidentally, he has been tested for corona and according to the test he is in possession of a very large number of antibodies and we do not have to worry about contamination, although we will of course observe the 1½ meters.
We have made it through Hanukkah quite well, but uncertainties are starting to gnaw more and more and so the limitations of human ability are becoming increasingly visible. But in the meantime, that ‘other’ older virus is also spreading: in the ND, the Nederlands Dagblad I am quoted:
Chief Rabbi Jacobs: ‘Prohibition of kosher slaughter has been a precursor to the persecution of the Jews throughout the centuries’. ‘Naturally we want to contribute to the welfare of animals,’ emphasizes Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs. ‘Well-being is not only about slaughter, but also about everything before that: the stables, transport. The focus is now on one point: slaughter. I would like to sit with the PvdD, but then for the total well-being. ‘ Jacobs is moved by the ruling of the European Court. “If they’re really concerned about animal welfare, let them bring up animal cruelty and sadism in slaughterhouses and the large meat industry.”The Chief Rabbi sees the will to ban kosher slaughter as a sign of rising anti-Semitism. ‘The first ban that Hitler issued in the Netherlands was that of kosher slaughter. It is absolutely not the case that I accuse the people who are now advocating a ban with anti-Semitism. But the phenomenon has always been a precursor to the rising persecution of the Jews. That worries me very much. ‘ ‘Animal welfare is very high on the Jewish standard’, he continues. ‘Kosher slaughter is precisely about the welfare of the animals. And even if the animal is stunned, ie paralyzed, no one knows whether the animal suffers when it is cut into pieces. Science does not clarify this. ‘ Jacobs foresees major consequences if the Netherlands, like Flanders, imposes a ban on kosher slaughter without anesthesia. ‘Then we can’t eat meat anymore. Or we have to import it. It would be more consistent if the Party for the Animals advocated a general ban on meat. Then I would become a vegetarian. ‘ According to him, the consequences are even more far-reaching: ‘Orthodox Jewish people will leave the Netherlands. And Orthodox Jewish life is already so sparse. They are the core of the Jewish community. If it disappears, the periphery of the Jewish community will also disappear. ‘ The European Court of Justice partly relies on science for its judgment. However, according to Jacobs, this is not unambiguous. A ban on ritual slaughter is drastic for the Jewish community. “It’s an erosion of the faith community.”
And in the RD, the Reformatorisch Dagblad, Rabbi v.d. Camp words to that effect and elsewhere I also saw that Lowenstein expressed the same concern. It is nice that it is precisely through an attack on a religious aspect of Judaism that something very unique becomes visible, something to which I was drawn to the attention of, among other things, a non-Jewish employee at the EO. I was at the EO a few days ago to record a podcast for the Jewish Broadcasting Company. Afterwards you talk a little longer. If a member of one of the PKN municipalities no longer sees the faith, he deregisters and is therefore no longer Protestant. But the Jew always remains a Jew, he explained to me! I remember a certain Mr Cohen from Schin op Geul. He was an atheist, anti-Zionist, vehemently against Israeli politics and wanted nothing to do with Judaism. Of course, he did not want to speak to me, he explained to me in an impassioned speech of at least half an hour. But when some years later the local pastor asked him to give a lecture to his church about Israel’s special position in the Middle East and so he was actually asked to defend Israel’s politics and for the unassailable union between Jews and the holy Land, he called me and asked to help him prepare for his talk.
And we see the same thing now. Because also Jews who really do not attach any importance to kosher food and certainly not to kosher meat, for whom kosher slaughter has no value and who will not be harmed by any means if there is a ban on kosher slaughter, stand hand in hand with me in the fight against the ruling of the European Court. Why? Because they too feel that it is not primary here that this is not primarily about animal welfare, but about the survival of the Jewish Community in Europe. But does the unbelieving Jew (if any) then need the survival of religious Judaism? And then I just quote that non-Jewish employee of the EO: being a Jew goes deeper than just faith and is certainly not linked at all to membership of the Jewish community.
I think that Mr Cohen from Schin op Geul is an exemplary example of this.
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs said he was “shocked” that the Labour Party rejected a motion calling for the adoption of a definition of anti-Semitism, saying its vote aimed to curry favor with some Muslim voters.
On Tuesday, a majority of lawmakers in the lower house of the Dutch parliament, the Tweede Kamer, passed a nonbinding motion calling on the government to adopt the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. But Labour, along with all the other left-wing parties, voted against it.
The definition has been adopted as official policy by the United Kingdom, Germany and five others in the European Union, as well as the EU as a whole.
Some pro-Palestinian activists have opposed the definition because it says that some forms of vitriol against Israel are anti-Semitic.
Jacobs, a member of the Rabbinical Center of Europe, rarely comments on political votes. He made an exception here.
The lawmakers who voted against the motion, he said, “did so out of political considerations.” Asked whether he meant that Labour opposed the motion to woo some Muslim voters, he said “Yes.”
Labour leader Lodewijk Asscher declined to say why his party voted against the motion, Ernst Lissauer, a prominent freelance journalist, wrote on Twitter.
Bram van Ojik of Green Left told Lissauer: “Anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel should be kept separate.”
On Wednesday, Jacobs and Rabbi Izak Vorst, the co-heads of Chabad’s team of emissaries to the Netherlands, attended an early Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony at the Dutch parliament in The Hague. Khadija Arib, the chairwoman of the Tweede Kamer, also attended along with Ankie Broekers-Knol, chairwoman of the Eerste Kamer, or Senate.
Despite Labour’s vote, Jacobs said, “There is real determination in the Dutch political establishment to fight anti-Semitism, and the chairwomen’s remarks at the event reflected that.”
The article was published on JTA
Our story about Universiteit Gent’s repugnant Sign language dictionary for Jew went viral. From El Pais in Spain, the Guardian in UK, From France to Belgium, the US to Israel, the image of a woman signing a hook-nose to denote Jew is as shocking to the media as it was to us and the family who dioscovered. We are still awaiting a formal explanation from the Rector of the University. They have already captioned them as derogatory but this is not enough. No deaf person should be signing Jew in this way. It is offensive. Full stop. We will keep you updated.
The guargian
”We want everyone to acknowledge and accept that Israel is there to exist and that the roots of Jews, Christian are not in New York or Paris but here in our region. They are part of our history and they should be part of our future,’’ said Dr Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, Chairman of the Defense, Interior and Foreign Affairs Committee of the United Arab Emirates Federal National Council.
‘’From the United Arab Emirates perspective, the Abraham Accords are there to stay,’’ said Dr Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, Chairman of the Defense, Interior and Foreign Affairs Committee of the UAE Federal National Council, who played a leading role in the 2020 accords which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries.
”This the third war in Gaza. Whenever there is something happening in Gaza, people come to us and ask: ‘What do you think of the Abraham Accords. Are you going to change ? ‘’
‘’The Accords are our future. It is not an agreement between two governements but a platform that we believe should transform the region where everyone will enjoy security, stability and prosperity,” he said as reports say that Iran’s main interest was—and remains—to prevent the United States from brokering Saudi-Israel normalization.
‘’This is a people to people engagement. This is what we need. We want everyone to acknowledge and accept that Israel is there to exist and that the roots of Jews, Christian are not in New York or Paris but here in our region. They are part of our history and they should be part of our future,’’ added Dr Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, during a special online briefing organized by the European Jewish Association (EJA) together with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel adocacy group in the U.S.
‘’We want to change the educational system and religious narrative. It is very important to understand that there are enemies for what we are doing. Those terrorist organisations don’t respect human life. Don’t let them achieve their goals. No person with a human feeling and common sense will agree with the barbarian terrorist attack that Hamas committed on October 7. No one,’’ he added.
He stressed the need to differenciate between Hamas and the Palestinian people. ‘’Our enemies took advantage of this. We need those who believe in peace in Europe, the US and everywhere to counter the hate narrative that we see in demonstrations in Paris and London.’’
Other speakers included Nicola Beer, Vice-President of the European Parliament who noted that the Abraham Accords ‘’are a good tool to support Israel and peace in the region.’’
‘’We need to make a difference between terrorists and the Palestinian people. The aggressor is Hamas and not Israel. We need to fight against terror everywhere,’’ she said.
‘’We stand strong with Israel and its right to defend itself against Hamas terror. We also understand that in the long run there must be peace for the people of Israel, Palestine and the whole Middle East.’’
On the EU’s position during a vote of a resolution on the war at the United Nations General Assembly last week, the German MEP from the Renew group, criticized those EU countries who voted in favor of a text that didn’t even mention the Hamas massacres committed in south of Israel.
‘’I would like all countries in the EU to vote like the Czech Republic and Austria who voted against,’’ she said.
U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), who is co-chair and co-founder of the Abraham Accords Caucus and a member of the Hiouse of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said : ‘’ On October 7, Hamas committed a heinous terrorist attack, brutally, barbarically slaughtering 1400 people. They used murder, torture, rape as a strategy, as a goal. This is clearly a war crime. There is no justification for this attack. Hamas is an norganisation dedicated to the genocidal vision of eliminating the state of Israel and killing Jews. What we see now is Israel taking action to secure its borders, protect its citizens and rescue the hostages, as well as elilminating Hamas from control of Gaza and from threatening Israel.’’
Former Israeli Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Idan Roll emphasized the need to have full backing from the moderate Arab states. ‘’We want not Israel but someone else than Hamas to be responsible for the Gaza Strip. When we left Gaza in 2005, Hamas choose not to build and develop it but made it a terrorist hub.We will not go back to the same scenario.’’
‘’When we see the demonstrations in Europe, it is not about the two-state solution but about ‘ Palestine from the river to the sea’ which means no more Israel. Young people are manipulated. Anyone who supports what is going in Europe, supports terror,’’ he said.
by Yossi Lempkowicz
https://ejpress.org/are-the-abraham-accords-stronger-thant-the-war-between-israel-and-hamas/
It’s a challenging time for Jewish communities in Europe. Anti-Semitism is on the rise as populism and the politics of the lowest common denominator are gaining traction. Our communities often need round the clock protection and our practices and customs such as keeping Kosher are under pressure from increasing political interference.
