“FOLLOWING DESECRATION OF 80 HEADSTONES IN DENMARK, EUROPEAN JEWISH HEAD SAYS EU LEADERS MUST STEP UP NOT ONLY SECURITY BUT EDUCATION.

Envoy says dozens of countries will shun this year’s anti-racism conference at UN after past antisemitism; Bennett to make debut address at General Assembly next week

By TOI STAFF
Thirty-one nations will boycott a UN meeting marking the 20th anniversary of the Durban World Conference on Racism — also known as Durban IV — on Wednesday, over concerns that it will veer into open antisemitism as it has in the past.
The first Durban conference — held from August 31 to September 8, 2001, just days before the terror attacks of September 11 — was marked by deep divisions on the issues of antisemitism, colonialism and slavery. The US and Israel walked out of the conference in protest at the tone of the meeting, including over plans to include condemnations of Zionism in the final text.
At the 2009 conference, a speech by Iran’s then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacking Israel sparked a temporary walkout by many European delegates.
Thirty-one nations will boycott a UN meeting marking the 20th anniversary of the Durban World Conference on Racism — also known as Durban IV — on Wednesday, over concerns that it will veer into open antisemitism as it has in the past.
The first Durban conference — held from August 31 to September 8, 2001, just days before the terror attacks of September 11 — was marked by deep divisions on the issues of antisemitism, colonialism and slavery. The US and Israel walked out of the conference in protest at the tone of the meeting, including over plans to include condemnations of Zionism in the final text.
At the 2009 conference, a speech by Iran’s then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacking Israel sparked a temporary walkout by many European delegates.
This year, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said Friday, a record 31 countries will be skipping the event, over double the amount that have done so in the past.
“In recent months I have worked for the world to understand that the Durban Conference was fundamentally rotten,” he said in a Monday tweet. “I’m glad many more understand this today.”
The United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, and France are among some of the key nations set to boycott this year’s meeting.

Vaccines, climate, nuclear deal on General Assembly agenda

The highlight of the UN General Assembly, during which world leaders and other top officials deliver addresses from the marble-backed podium, begins on Tuesday in New York and will see a mixture of in-person speeches and pre-recorded video messages sent from around the world.
This year’s event and is markedly different from last year’s, which was conducted mostly online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to the speeches by world leaders, the General Assembly usually also has hundreds of side events, but only a limited number are being held this year, mainly virtually or outside UN headquarters.
These include events on vaccines, on children as invisible victims of the coronavirus and conflict, on multilateralism and democracy, and on global hotspots including Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Additionally, the UN Security Council will hold a high-level meeting Wednesday on climate and security.
Afghanistan and other major global challenges are expected to be on the agenda, including the lack of progress on the United States rejoining the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Iran’s new foreign minister, Hossain Amir Abdollahian, will be in New York and there is speculation that he may meet with the five countries that remain part of the deal — Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.
There are also high-level meetings on energy and the nuclear test ban treaty, and a summit on the connected system of producing, processing, distributing and consuming food, which according to the UN contributes an estimated one-third of greenhouse gas emissions.
Thirty-one nations will boycott a UN meeting marking the 20th anniversary of the Durban World Conference on Racism — also known as Durban IV — on Wednesday, over concerns that it will veer into open antisemitism as it has in the past.
The first Durban conference — held from August 31 to September 8, 2001, just days before the terror attacks of September 11 — was marked by deep divisions on the issues of antisemitism, colonialism and slavery. The US and Israel walked out of the conference in protest at the tone of the meeting, including over plans to include condemnations of Zionism in the final text.
At the 2009 conference, a speech by Iran’s then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacking Israel sparked a temporary walkout by many European delegates.
This year, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said Friday, a record 31 countries will be skipping the event, over double the amount that have done so in the past.
“In recent months I have worked for the world to understand that the Durban Conference was fundamentally rotten,” he said in a Monday tweet. “I’m glad many more understand this today.”
France are among some of the key nations set to boycott this year’s meeting.

Bennett’s debut

According to a provisional list of speakers for the General Debate, US president Joe Biden will speak on Tuesday morning, in America’s traditional slot as the second speaker of the General Debate.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will be another one of at least 83 world leaders who plan on attending in person, according to Turkish diplomat Volkan Bozkir, president of last year’s gathering. Twenty-six leaders applied to speak remotely, Bozkir said earlier this month. Bennett will address the gathering on Monday, September 27.
In his address, Bennett will speak about Israel’s national security and regional issues, according to his office. His remarks will likely focus on Iran’s nuclear program and its support for armed proxy groups.
Bennett’s predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, was known for making headlines with his speeches on the Iranian nuclear threat at the UN General Assembly, often using cardboard graphics and other props to get his point across.
Israel’s regional partners will also be represented, according to the provisional list. Egypt and Jordan will send their heads of state, while the foreign ministers of Israel’s new Gulf allies Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, will speak.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and new Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi are both sending prerecorded addresses to be broadcast at the event.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-israels-prodding-record-31-nations-to-boycott-durban-conference-anniversary/

The Public Prosecutor’s Office appeals against the minimum sentence for the ultra Pedro Varela and calls for the definitive closure of his neo-Nazi bookshop
Oriol Solé Altimira
7-9 minutes

The Barcelona public prosecutor’s office against hate crimes has appealed against the sentence that condemned the neo-Nazi Pedro Varela to a minimum sentence. As elDiario.es has learned, the prosecutor is asking the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to increase to eight years in prison the 18-month sentence imposed on the ultra in the first instance and, in particular, to order the definitive closure of the bookshop and publishing house owned by the neo-Nazi, which the Barcelona Court of Appeal rejected.

The sentence of the Barcelona High Court left an extensive investigation by the Mossos d’Esquadra and the Public Prosecutor’s Office in tatters by acquitting all the accused except Varela and sentencing the well-known neo-Nazi (who hours before the trial attended a Vox rally) to a sentence of only one and a half years in prison, compared to the 12 years demanded by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Born in Barcelona in 1957, in his youth Varela was one of the disciples of Leon Degrelle, a Belgian SS officer whom Franco gave asylum in Spain. In 1978, Varela became president of CEDADE, the largest organisation producing Nazi propaganda and a breeding ground for a large part of the Spanish extreme right until its dissolution in 1993. He has three convictions for spreading neo-Nazi ideology.

The case was the fourth trial against Pedro Varela and the legal tool to close down once and for all the Europa bookshop and the Ojeda publishing house, owned by this veteran of the neo-Nazi movement and converted into two of the epicentres of ultra propaganda in Barcelona: books such as ‘Mein Kampf’ were sold there and international supremacist or Ku Klux Klan leaders came to give lectures.

The Barcelona Court, however, rejected the definitive closure of Varela’s business, as well as the prohibition to publish books again, and decreed only the destruction of the copies of neo-Nazi books that had been seized in 2016, when the investigating judge in the case decreed the precautionary closure of the establishment.

The refusal to close the bookshop and the neo-Nazi publishing house for good was based on the fact that the court did not convict Varela of illicit association. The judges only punished the neo-Nazi with 18 months in prison for the crime of incitement to hatred for the publishing, sale and distribution of Nazi books by Varela, whom the court went so far as to highlight as having ‘rescued works openly and grossly discriminatory towards Jews’.

The books and the talks and activities of the Europa bookshop were aimed at ‘the defence and praise of several of its authors, such as Adolf Hiter and Rudolf Hess’, the ruling added. However, the closure of the shops could only be a consequence of a conviction for unlawful association and not for incitement to hatred, the court reasoned.

In a pedagogical argument, prosecutor Marta Gloria López Catalá compared the case of Varela’s establishments and businesses to the seizure of drug trafficking boats. If the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court has endorsed the definitive seizure of vehicles used to transport narcotics, it should also proceed in the same way with the vehicles (in this case, the bookshop and the publishing house) through which Varela propagated the hate speech for which he has been convicted, the prosecutor reasons.

‘The spaces of the Europa bookshop and Ediciones Ojeda and its trademark registered in the register of patents are the instruments through which the criminal acts were committed’, recalls the prosecutor, who does see it as possible that their closure is a consequence of the conviction for incitement to hatred. For this reason, the appeal does not include a request for a conviction for unlawful association, but sees the closure as legally fitting in the only offence for which he was convicted in the first instance.

In addition to the closure of the premises, the Prosecutor’s Office requests in its appeal the closure of the websites of the bookshop and the publishing house, as well as its Facebook page and the money confiscated from Varela’s bank account, which the Barcelona Court of Appeal also saved from being definitively destroyed.

La European Jewish Association a réagi outrée dimanche à l’étoile jaune représentée sur l’une des bannières de manifestants participant à la marche organisée dimanche à Bruxelles contre les mesures sanitaires prises par le gouvernement pour endiguer la propagation du coronavirus. “Il est difficile de dire à quel point c’est une erreur“, a déclaré le rabbin Menachem Margolin, président de l’association.
“J’ai du mal à voir la similitude entre le fait qu’on vous demande de vous faire vacciner pendant une pandémie, -ou d’en assumer les conséquences si vous ne le faites pas- et l’extermination systématique de six millions de Juifs dans des camps de la mort, des chambres à gaz ou dans des fosses communes à ciel ouvert“, a déclaré M. Margolin.

“Cela me rend malade de penser que si peu de gens comprennent la douleur que de telles bannières provoquent, et que si peu de gens réalisent vraiment l’énormité et l’ampleur de l’Holocauste. À ceux qui ont défilé aujourd’hui avec une grande étoile jaune, je dis: ne faites pas ça. Peu importe ce que vous pensez des restrictions sanitaires, personne ne vous tatoue les bras, personne ne vous case dans des camions à bétail et personne ne veut que vous, votre famille et vos proches meurent. Tout d’abord, assurez-vous d’avoir les connaissances et de savoir ce que cette étoile jaune représente réellement“, a encore souligné le président de l’association
https://www.rtbf.be/info/societe/detail_une-association-juive-outree-par-la-representation-de-l-etoile-jaune-a-la-manifestation-contre-les-regles-corona?id=10892119

The Hellenic Council of State, the highest court, in Greece, ruled on Tuesday to ban halal and kosher slaughter, raising alarm among Jewish religious groups concerned about infringements on religious freedoms.
saw the court revoke the standing slaughter permit, which was provided through a ministerial decision that exempted ritual Jewish and Muslim slaughter practices from the general requirement to stun animals prior to killing them.
The ruling further called on Greek lawmakers to devise a way to meet the demands of animal rights advocates and the needs of Jews and Muslims who follow the laws about food in their traditions.

“The government should regulate the issue of slaughtering animals in the context of worship in such a way as to ensure both the protection of animals from any inconvenience during slaughter and the religious freedom of religious Muslims and Jews living in Greece,” Greek news site Protothema cited the ruling.

“We warned in December about the downstream consequences that the European Court of Justice ruling carried with it, and now we see the outcome,” Director-General of the European Jewish Association Rabbi Menachem Margolin told JTA.

“Jewish freedom of religion is under direct attack. It started in Belgium, moved to Poland and Cyprus, and now it is Greece’s turn,” he warned.
Bans on ritual slaughter have been implemented in several countries across the region, including Sweden, Slovenia, Estonia, Denmark, and Finland.
The bans are part of a struggle across Europe between animal welfare activists and Muslim and Jewish community representatives.
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The European Court of Justice ruled last year that all member states had to “reconcile both animal welfare and freedom of religion.”
The EJC’s Dec. 17 ruling effectively upheld a 2017 decree by the Flemish government to ban ritual slaughter without stunning, as required by most interpretations of Jewish and Muslim law, but said that imposed stricter regulation on ritual slaughter were up to the states themselves. The ruling further urged member states to “adequately and proportionately consider freedom of religion” when making such rulings.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/10/28/jewish-groups-alarmed-as-greeces-top-court-rules-against-ritual-slaughter/