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Comments (0)Two Buenos Aires synagogues received bomb threats in the wake of violent anti-Semitic attacks at a public street celebration.
Monday’s bomb threats on the Amaijai and New Israeli Community synagogues, both located in the highly Jewish-populated neighborhood of Belgrano, proved to be false.
Also Monday, hundreds of protesters, mostly women and children, clamored for the release of the five men arrested Sunday during a cultural event organized by the Buenos Aires city government to celebrate the 61st anniversary of Israel. Several people were injured during the violent demonstration at the street fair.
The men have been identified as members of the Front of Revolutionary Action, which has links to leftist radical groups such as the political organization Quebracho. The group maintains an Internet blog and defines itself as Marxist-Leninist.
The five men were scheduled to appear Tuesday at a court hearing and could be charged on several counts, including violating the anti-discriminatory law and public intimidation.
The local Jewish community and the Israeli ambassador have called for an investigation into what they consider an attack on democracy.
“We don’t know how much time this process could last, but we are demanding a serious investigation to see who are the leaders of this group and try to stop these deliberate anti-Semitic acts,” Aldo Donzis, the DAIA local Jewish political umbrella president, told JTA.
Unlike Jewish leadership, the national government has said the incident is not a sign of a new wave of anti-Semitism in Argentina.
The government’s attitude has not been well received by the local Jewish community.
Donzis said that after anti-Semitic incidents increased at the beginning of the year due to Israel’s military operation in Gaza, new incidents erupted that were “not even linked to Gaza but merely anti Jewish.”
Even then, Donzis told JTA, the government denied that it was a new wave of anti-Semitism, fearing “it brings imbalance and insecurity to society.”
“The result we are facing is an anti-Semitic campaign,” he said. “What happened last Sunday was an anti-Semitic act and cannot be called differently.”
Rightist Political Crimes Rise in Germany
Germany’s annual report on extremism shows a record number of right-wing politically motivated crimes were committed in 2008.
The report, released Tuesday, also shows a rise in the number of Islamist extremists traveling from Germany to Pakistan.
But the total number of registered anti-Semitic crimes dropped about 4.2 percent, from 1,541 in 2007 to 1,477. Within the 2008 total, the number of violent incidents also dropped, from 59 to 44. In all, 3 percent of all politically right-wing crimes are both extremist and anti-Semitic in nature, the report said.
Still, anti-Semitism remained a central theme among right-wing extremists, who in 2008 spread conspiracy theories regarding the world financial crisis aimed at sparking anti-Jewish sentiments in the general population. Germany’s main far-right political party, the National Democratic Party of Germany, made no secret of its hatred for Jews in numerous statements related to both domestic and foreign policy. In addition, far-right music continued to feature anti-Semitic themes among its hate-filled lyrics.
According to the report, anti-Zionist anti-Semitism continued to fluctuate depending on events in the Middle East, and took its harshest form in the “questioning of Israel’s right to exist,” a way that right-wing extremists conceal their fundamental rejection of Jewry.
When they equate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with the crimes of National Socialism, “they are trying to relativize the unique historical event of the Holocaust,” the 305-page draft document read in part.
Though right-wing extremists and Islamic extremists seldom overlap in activities, they both continued to call the Holocaust a “founding myth” for Israel, and both use the Internet as their most important communication and propaganda tool, the report found.
The report also said that the number of radical Islamists in Germany has grown, according to German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble. Though there have been no successful terrorist attacks in Germany, the government considers Germany to be “definitely within the sights” of radical Islamists.
Australian Man Charged Over YouTube Video
An Australian man who denigrated Judaism on a YouTube video was ordered to stay away from Jewish buildings and report to police daily.
Brendon O’Connell, 38, appeared in the Perth Magistrates’ Court Tuesday, where he was released on bail and ordered to stay away from Jewish institutions in the city and at least 100 yards from the Jewish student whom he allegedly harassed outside a shopping mall where a pro-Palestinian rally was being held May 2, The West Australian newspaper reported.
He must also report to police every day until he reappears in court on June 9.
O’Connell was arrested May 13 by police in Perth and charged with conduct likely to entice animosity or racist harassment for his 10-minute video. In the video, he allegedly described Judaism as “a religion of racism, hate, homicide and ethnic cleansing.”
The video has since been taken down from the popular video-sharing Web site.
O’Connell, who says in the video that he is representing Christians, could become the first person to be convicted under Western Australia’s racial vilification laws since they were enacted in 2005. The maximum penalty for the offense is 14 years in jail or fines of up to $18,000.
Tal Dror, the Jewish Agency’s emissary to Perth, told Ynet that “The reactions in the community were terrible. People literally cried when they saw the video on the Internet. They said they didn’t know such things still existed, certainly not in Australia.”
Ukraine Party Accuses Israeli Envoy of ‘Interference’
A political party in Ukraine accused Israel’s ambassador there of insulting the country on a TV talk show.
The Rovno Regional Department of Ukraine People’s Party sent a petition to the president of Ukraine, Ukrainian government officials, the prosecutor general and the chief of the Ukrainian Secret Service, or SBU, demanding that Zina Kalay Klaytman be declared a persona non-grata for interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs, and to bring charges against the anchor of the “Shuster Live” show and owners of the TV channel, TRK Ukraine.
Klaytman and several lawmakers, including Evgeny Chervonenko, first deputy major of Kiev and a Ukrainian Jewish leader, joined host Savik Shuster on the April 24 broadcast devoted to the issue of xenophobia and racism in Ukraine.
People’s Party leaders in a May 12 statement lambasted the host and lawmakers who, they say, “deliberately strain” the level of xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Ukraine, and demanded the prosecutor general bring a criminal case against them “for the anti-state activities.”
The statement added that “persons of Jewish nationality cynically outraged our state and debased Ukrainians.”
The party holds six seats in the 450-seat Ukrainian parliament.
Ukrainian Jewish lawmaker Aleksandr Feldman, leader of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, slammed the party’s statement.
“It’s a pity, but there is xenophobia, anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism in Ukraine, and political figures who protect such phenomenon at different levels of power,” the lawmaker’s press service reported Wednesday.
“Such statements discredit the Ukrainian nation in world public opinion rather than any ‘foreign secret services,’ ” according to Feldman.
Feldman urged President Victor Yuschenko to take a public position on the issue. In April, Feldman asked Yuschenko in an open letter to pay attention to the rapid growth of fascism in Ukrainian society.