EJA calls on Split mayor to condemn antisemitism and adopt IHRA definition

June 15, 2021

In an open letter to the media in Croatia, the EJA called on the newly elected leaders of the city of Split – Mayor Ivica Puljko and his deputy Bojan Ivosevic – both of whom recently used anti-semitic references during their election campaign, to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism in order to draw a line under the incident.
Our Chairman Rabbi Margolin wrote “At a time of growing anti-Semitism in Europe, it is concerning that in the second largest city of an EU member state two people who made anti-Semitic outbursts or pro-Nazi excesses are elected to two leading positions,” the letter said.
“We welcome the courageous and quick condemnation of such behavior sent by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia Andrej Plenković, as well as the condemnation of Deputy Prime Minister Davor Božinović both (Puljko and Ivošević) on election night…in many cases, such behavior would result in the immediate withdrawal of that person from public life… the European Jewish Association believes that the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti- Semitism in Split would be appropriate to draw a line under this incident.”

Additional Articles

European Jewish Association concerned over Romanian President “secret agreements with Jews” remark

The Chairman of the European Jewish Association Rabbi Menachem Margolin expressed his concern at remarks made by the Romanian President in which he resorted to language  such as “secret agreements with the Jews.”
President Klaus Iohannis made the remarks to the media following Romanian Prime Ministerial meetings with the Israeli government. The President it seems was expressing his discomfort over not being previously consulted on the content of the visit as well as on the decision of Jerusalem recognition, according to established protocol, where the controversial remark was made.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, whose Brussels based organisation represents Jews across the continent warned that Heads of State should avoid using such language “heavy at it is with connotation and sinister undertone.”
In a statement from Brussels, Rabbi Margolin said,
“Regardless of established protocols and the President’s evident displeasure that they were not adhered to, I would urge restraint and caution when it comes Heads of State to using language such as this.
“In the media heat of the moment, finding the correct words is not always easy, and we are prepared to give the President the benefit of the doubt on this occasion. But using such language, loaded as it is with connotation and sinister undertone, can be seized upon by unsavoury elements in society and naturally, sets off alarm bells amongst the Jewish community.”

#LightingEurope Fourth and Fifth Day of Chanukah13-12-2020

As a part of our #LightingEurope canpaign we are happy and honored to have EMIH Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation Executive Rabbi Slomó Köves for the fourth candle and Dr Leah Floh, Chairperson of the Mönchengladbach Jewish Community for the Fifth candle with some special words for Chanikah
You can read the translation of Dr Floh here:
My dear Jewish friends in the entire world but especially in Israel!
Dear friends and supporters!
The Jewish Community of Möchengladbach [Northrhein-Westphalia, Germany] and all Jews from throughout Germany want to wish all of you a Happy Chanukah – a festival of lights, of love, of hope and of solidarity.
Please stay healthy or return quickly to good health. Remain optimistic and always remember to support each other.
Dear Shoah survivors, dear Child Survivors: you have great capacity for resilience and with it you could infect others with your positive outlook on life.
I’m convinced that we will be able to celebrate together next year.
Am Israel Chai עם ישראל חי [the people of Israel live!], l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim לשנה הבאה בירושלים‎ [next year in Jerusalem!].
Chag Chanukah Sameach חג חנוכה שמח [Happy Chanukah Holiday!]
Amen!

Jewish, Muslim women launch campaign to challenge hatred together

LONDON: More than 250 Jewish and Muslim women have made a commitment to being #ActiveAllies and take firm and united action against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, after declaring that “the time for talking is over” and “we are in this together”.
The women, of all ages and backgrounds and from all parts of the UK, launched the campaign at the Nisa-Nashim Annual Conference — Europe’s only such gathering of Jewish and Muslim women, which took place at the University of Westminster on Sunday, according to a press release issued here on Monday.
Nisa-Nashim’s co-chairs Laura Marks OBE and Julie Siddiqi said: “For too long in both of our faiths communities we have seen insular thinking when it comes to tackling hatred. The time for talking is over, now it’s time for us to take united action together.
“We know that both our communities are the targets of hatred and, largely, by the same type of people — people who are intolerant and despise difference. We need to face this challenge together and by standing up for each other.
“We recognise, as women in Nisa-Nashim, that both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are on the rise. The devastating attacks on innocent people in both Pittsburgh and Christchurch have strengthened our resolve and we commit to be #ActiveAllies. It’s not enough, nor is it right, to only stand for ourselves. We are in this together, as Jewish and Muslim sisters — especially when the hatred is targeted at women.”
Over 250 delegates at the conference, along with other Nisa-Nashim members around the UK, have signed up to the #ActiveAllies charter vowing to call upon every political party in Britain to review their processes for preventing, exposing and dealing with both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism within their party.
The conference — titled Faith and Friendship, Shaping the Future Together — also featured a number of keynote speeches, on stage interviews, sessions and workshops. Speakers and presenters included Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, Countdown star and anti-Semitism campaigner Rachel Riley, London Deputy Mayor Debbie Weekes-Bernard and the Deputy Director of Hope Not Hate Jemma Levene.
The article was published on The News

Far-right going mainstream in Europe

ZAGREB: Hungary’s prime minister declares that the “color” of Europeans should not mix with that of Africans and Arabs. His Polish counterpart claims Jews took part in their own destruction in the Holocaust. And the Croatian president has thanked Argentina for welcoming notorious pro-Nazi war criminals after World War II.Ever since World War II, such views were taboo in Europe, confined to the far-right fringes. Today they are openly expressed by mainstream political leaders in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, part of a global populist surge in the face of globalization and mass migration.
“There is something broader going on in the region which has produced a patriotic, nativist, conservative discourse through which far-right ideas managed to become mainstream,” said Tom Junes, a historian and a
researcher with the Human and Social Studies Foundation in Sofia, Bulgaria.
In many places, the shift to the right has included the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators, often fighters or groups celebrated as anti-communists or defenders of national liberation. In Hungary and Poland, governments are also eroding the independence of courts and media, leading human rights groups to warn that democracy is threatened in parts of a region that threw off Moscow-backed dictatorships in 1989.
Some analysts say Russia is covertly helping extremist groups in order to destabilize Western liberal democracies. While that claim is difficult to prove with concrete evidence, it is clear that the growth of radical groups has pushed moderate conservative parties to veer to the right to hold onto votes.
That’s the case in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party – the front-runner in the April 8 elections – have drawn voters with an increasingly strident anti-migrant campaign. Casting himself as the savior of a white Christian Europe being overrun by hordes of Muslims and Africans, Orban has insisted that Hungarians don’t want their “own color, traditions and national culture to be mixed by others.”
Orban, who is friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was also the first European leader to endorse Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. In 2015, he erected razor wire at Hungary’s borders to stop migrants from crossing and has since been warning in apocalyptic terms that the West faces racial and civilizational suicide if the migration continues. Orban has also been obsessed with demonizing the financier and philanthropist George Soros, falsely portraying the Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor as an advocate of uncontrolled immigration into Europe. In what critics denounce as a state-sponsored conspiracy theory with anti-Semitic overtones, the Hungarian government spent $48.5 million on anti-Soros ads in 2017, according to data compiled by investigative news site atlatszo.hu.
In a recent speech, Orban denounced Soros in language that echoed anti-Judaic cliches of the 20th century. He said Hungary’s foes “do not believe in work, but speculate with money; they have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs.”
In nearby Poland, xenophobic language is also on the rise. When nationalists held a large Independence Day march in November, when some carried banners calling for a “White Europe” and “Clean Blood,” the interior minister called it a “beautiful sight.” Poland’s government has also been embroiled in a bitter dispute with Israel and Jewish organizations over a law that would criminalize blaming Poland for Germany’s Holocaust crimes.
With tensions running high in February, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki listed “Jewish perpetrators” as among those who were responsible for the Holocaust. He also visited the Munich grave of an underground Polish resistance group that had collaborated with the Nazis.
In the same vein, an official tapped to create a major new history museum has condemned the postwar tribunals in Nuremberg, Germany, where top Nazis were judged, as “the greatest judicial farce in the history of Europe.” Arkadiusz Karbowiak said the Nuremberg trials were only “possible because of the serious role of Jews” in their organization and called them “the place where the official religion of the Holocaust was created.”
Across the region, Muslims, Roma, Jews and other minorities have expressed anxiety about the future. But nationalists insist they aren’t promoting hate. They claim they’re defending their national sovereignty and Christian way of life against globalization and the large-scale influx of migrants who don’t assimilate.
The Balkans, bloodied by ethnic warfare in the 1990s, are also seeing a rise of nationalism, particularly in Serbia and Croatia. Political analysts there believe Russian propaganda is spurring old ethnic resentments.
Croatia has steadily drifted to the right since joining the EU in 2013. Some officials there have denied the Holocaust or reappraised Croatia’s ultranationalist, pro-Nazi Ustasha regime, which killed tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs, Roma and anti-fascist Croats in wartime prison camps. In a recent visit to Argentina, President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic thanked the country for providing postwar refuge to Croats who had belonged to the Ustasha regime.
The world’s top Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff of the Wiesenthal center, called her statement “a horrific insult to victims.” Grabar-Kitarovic later said she had not meant to glorify a totalitarian regime.
In Bulgaria, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, the government includes a far-right alliance, the United Patriots, whose members have given Nazi salutes and slurred minorities. Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Simeonov has called Roma “ferocious humanoids” whose women “have the instincts of street dogs.”
Junes, the Sofia-based researcher, said that even though hate crimes are on the rise in Bulgaria, the problem has raised little concern in the West because the country keeps its public debt in check and is not challenging the fundamental Western consensus, unlike Poland and Hungary.
While populist and far-right groups are also growing in parts of Western Europe, countries like Poland and Hungary are proving more vulnerable
to the same challenges, said Peter Kreko, director of Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank.
“In younger, weaker, more fragile democracies,” he said, “right-wing populism is more dangerous because it can weaken and even demolish the democratic institutions.”
The article was published on The Daily Star

Additional Communities
United Kingdom
Ukraine
Turkey
Schweiz
Switzerland
Sweden
Spain
Slovenia
Slovakia
Serbia
Russia