October 27, 2021

Remembering those murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue

Today is a time to remember and to grieve over the lives lost to a bigot yelling “All Jews must die” as he entered the synagogue where three congregations had their homes and murdered 11 Jews, because they were Jews! We remember...

Joyce Fienberg
Richard Gottfried
Rose Mallinger
Jerry Rabinowitz
Cecil Rosenthal
David Rosenthal
Bernice Simon
Sylvan Simon
Daniel Stein
Melvin Wax
Irving Younger

Anti-Semitism is real! Anti-Semitism is a threat! Anti-Semitism is bigotry!

October 27, 2021

Neo-Nazi group hangs 'Vax the Jews' banner in Austin, Texas just a few blocks from JCC and synagogue

Members of a neo-Nazi group hung a banner from a bridge in Austin, Texas Sunday with the message “Vax the Jews.”

The banner was put up by members of the Goyim Defense League, a group the Anti-Defamation League calls “a loose network of individuals connected by their virulent antisemitism.” The group’s name itself is a parody of the Anti-Defamation League using the Yiddish word “goyim,” which means “non-Jews” and can have an insulting connotation. Photos on social media showed members of the group standing behind the banner making the Nazi salute.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler, who is Jewish, condemned the incident in a tweet. “I am heartbroken to see antisemitic hatred in Austin, a welcoming and respectful place. Hatred of any kind has no place in our city,” he wrote, linking to the ADL’s website form for reporting incidents of bias or antisemitism.

The banner was hung over the MoPac Expressway on the city’s west side, just a few blocks away from the Shalom Austin Jewish Community Center and several synagogues. The banner incident came just a few days after racist and antisemitic graffiti was discovered at Anderson High School, about a mile and a half away from the JCC.

https://twitter.com/IGD_News/status/1452154122736574466

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October 27, 2021

(Jewish Group) After Facebook Papers, ADL CEO condemns Facebook for hate speech and violence

(NOTE: I am also including a link to the ADL's Campus anti-Semitism report at the bottom of this article. IF someone feels taht should be its own thread, I won't be offended at its reposting.)

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has condemned Facebook for allowing the incitement of violence on the platform, making the ADL one of the many organizations to speak out in response to a series of reports illuminating systemic policy failures at the social media company.

On Monday, after consortium of news organizations began publishing articles based on leaked internal documents taken by whistleblower Frances Haugen before she left the company, Greenblatt told CNN that the ADL is focused on encouraging advertisers to boycott Facebook. That action, he said, is an important response to increasing evidence of the company’s knowledge of ways in which its platform is used to incite violence and spread hate, including antisemitism.

“Companies can vote with their wallets and decide where they want to build their brands, redirecting resources away from Facebook,” Greenblatt said. “Mark Zuckerberg would have you believe [Facebook] was doing all it could. Now we know the truth: He was aware and did nothing about it.”

The documents provided by Haugen, known as the Facebook Papers, shed light on issues ranging from the company’s role in the January 6 insurrection to its challenges moderating non-English content, resulting in the proliferation of terrorist content and hate speech in countries like Afghanistan and Myanmar, as well as, in other countries, the suppression of ordinary speech.

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Related:

The ADL-Hillel Campus Antisemitism Survey: 2021

Antisemitism has been a problem on college and university campuses for decades. But while the climate for Jewish students had been improving for many years, we are seeing an alarming new uptick in the number of reported antisemitic incidents across the country. Swastikas, Nazi symbols and other antisemitic graffiti have been reported on numerous campuses, and antisemitic tropes hurled at Jewish students have made headlines. Most notably, white supremacists marched through the campus of the University of Virginia in 2017 shouting “Jews will not replace us.”

In the aftermath of increased conflict between Israel and Hamas in May 2021, students at college campuses across the United States experienced an even sharper increase in antisemitic activity, including many incidents not directly connected to Israel. Antisemitic incidents peaked during the 2020-2021 academic year, reaching an all-time high of 244 incidents, even though many campuses were physically closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From past research and conversations with students, we know that antisemitic activity on campus makes some Jewish students feel unwelcome or unsupported by their campus community. According to one recent survey, Jewish students were the least likely among their peers to view their campus as welcoming to religious diversity.

The Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International are dedicated to supporting Jewish students and addressing all acts of antisemitism. We are working together to respond to antisemitic activity on campus, and to proactively counter the underlying hatreds and biases that lead to it through education and engagement. To do so, it is vital to ground ourselves in data to understand the nature of antisemitism on college and university campuses today and the experiences of Jewish students. This study was conducted to better understand these national trends by hearing from a nationally representative sample of Jewish students across the United States. This report explores the extent to which Jewish college students face antisemitism and exclusion on campus and seeks to understand how campus communities can most effectively support them. Understanding these trends will help inform our efforts to partner with and educate campus administrators, Hillel professionals, and students, to ensure Jewish students are secure, supported, and empowered.

more... (Note: This is story is on multiple pages, so follow the "next section" links at the bottom of each segment.)

October 12, 2021

Happy National Coming Out Day...So sayeth Wonder Woman!

https://twitter.com/RealLyndaCarter/status/1447573357344530436



WONDER WOMAN!

October 8, 2021

80 years and several failed projects, Ukraine inaugurates historic memorial to Babyn Yar victims

Ukraine’s government inaugurated a memorial complex to the victims of the Babyn Yar massacre this week, 80 years after the tragedy that has long been a flashpoint in the country’s collective Holocaust memory.

The memorial at the Babyn Yar site, where Nazis and local collaborators killed some 33,000 Jews in a ravine near Kiev in September 1941, is still under construction. But it currently features a quartz crystal-studded “Wall of Crying,” designed by the famed Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović, and a new wooden synagogue above the only portion of the ravine, into which victims were ordered to lie before they were shot, that remains visible.

By 2026, its organizers say, the center will also house museum space and additional monuments. It costs around $100 million and is privately funded. A large portion of the funding has come from a group of billionaires, including Russian Mikhail Fridman and Ukraine-born Viktor Pinchuk, who are both Jewish.

Various initiatives to commemorate Babyn Yar victims had previously failed to materialize and, for decades, the only reminders of the tragedy were a couple of small and neglected monuments.

“The time for memory has come,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, at the inauguration ceremony.



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October 7, 2021

Our History: Meet the Dutch gay man who defied the Nazis & saved thousands of lives

In the final days before his execution in July 1943 at the hands of the Nazi party, Willem Arondeus asked his lawyer for one last request: to spread a message after he was gone.

“Let it be known,” he said. “Homosexuals are not cowards.”

A battle cry of defiance and a bold assertion of his strength, Arondeus lived his life by these words. An openly gay man and a tireless member of the Dutch resistance against the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, he willingly sacrificed his life for a mission that ultimately protected hundreds of thousands of Jews’ lives.

A budding artist struggling to survive
From an early age, Arondeus was no stranger to the concept of defiance.



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October 5, 2021

Auschwitz museum hit with antisemitic graffiti

Police in Poland are investigating antisemitic vandalism at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

Spray-painted slogans in English and German, some of them “antisemitic in nature,” were found on the museum’s grounds recently, the institution wrote in a statement Tuesday. There were “two references to the Old Testament, often used by antisemites, and denial slogans,” the statement also said.

The statement did not include further information on the vandalism. The site has robust security and enforcement measures in place to prevent vandalism and other abuses, which are rare.

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