July 2, 2019

Adidas under fire for racist tweets after botched Arsenal launch

Adidas UK has come under fire after a social media gambit backfired spectacularly, leading to the company tweeting out pictures of its shirts with racist and offensive slogans on the back.

The error came as Adidas launched a social media campaign, #DareToCreate, in conjunction with its release of the new Arsenal home kit.

People were encouraged to share a tweet advertising the brand using the hashtag, which automatically created an image of the new Arsenal strip emblazoned with the Twitter handle of the account.

The image, along with the message “This is home. Welcome to the squad”, and an encouragement to buy the strip, was then tweeted out by the official @AdidasUK account.

However, the promotional campaign was hijacked by people with offensive or insensitive Twitter handles, including @GasAllJewss, @MadelineMcCann, and @96wasnotenough.

The images of the offensive handles on Arsenal shirts were retweeted widely.

The offensive tweets were posted from the @AdidasUK account late on Monday night and were still visible on Twitter through the early hours of the morning, but have since been removed.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/02/adidas-under-fire-racist-offensive-tweets-arsenal-new-shirt-launch

June 29, 2019

Acclaimed Novelist Rejected by Two Cultural Organisations Because of His Jewish Faith

An old friend of mine who is a part-time book publicist began trying to set up events for me three months earlier.

In early March, he called and confessed – in a distressed tone I’d never heard before – that he had just been turned down by two cultural organisations that had previously shown enthusiasm for hosting an event with me. “They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,” he said. “They even stopped replying to my emails and returning my phone messages.”

I’ll call my publicist John as he prefers to remain anonymous. He has also asked me to refrain from identifying the organisations that reacted negatively to my being Jewish. John told me that the final conversations he had with the two event co-ordinators convinced him that they weren’t antisemitic themselves but they feared a backlash – protests by their members and others – if they extended an invitation to a Jewish writer.

After our phone conversation, I was deeply shocked and upset. Facing discrimination is always unpleasant and infuriating and I never expected that my career in the UK would be prejudiced by my being Jewish. It made Britain seem like a place I didn’t know and maybe never knew. Even just asking about my religious affiliation struck me as outrageous. The situation seemed particularly ironic because I have long endeavoured in my novels to give voice to people who have been systematically silenced by prejudice and bigotry. Obviously, I do not believe that anyone benefits when writers are censored for their ethnicity or faith.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/29/ive-never-met-antisemitism-in-britain-until-now?

June 26, 2019

New Survey Shows Rise in Number of Americans Who Believe Refusing Service to Jews Should Be Allowed

A new survey showed a rise in the number of Americans who said small businesses should have the right to refuse service to Jews if doing so would violate the owners’ religious beliefs.

Conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, which has partnered with the Brookings Institution and Georgetown University, the survey revealed that 19 percent of Americans felt discrimination against Jews on religious grounds was acceptable.

This marked a seven-percent rise since 2014 when only 12 percent agreed.

According to the data, 24 percent of Republicans, 17 percent of Democrats, and 16 percent of independents said such discrimination should be permitted.

In 2014, only 16 percent of Republicans and nine percent of Democrats did so.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/06/25/new-survey-shows-rise-in-number-of-americans-who-believe-refusing-service-to-jews-should-be-allowed/

June 13, 2019

Iraqi man with kippah and knives stopped at entrance to Antwerp synagogue

A non-Jewish Arab man wearing a kippah and carrying several concealed knives was intercepted by guards as he attempted to enter an Antwerp synagogue.

The 34-year-old Iraqi citizen was questioned by guards when he tried to enter the Romi Goldmuntz Synagoge in the Belgian city on Monday, during the holiday of Shavuot, the Joodse Actueel newspaper reported Tuesday. The man said he spoke neither Hebrew nor Yiddish but insisted he was a member of the city’s Jewish community, the report said, citing police sources.

The guards — members of the community’s Shmira security service — had approached the man with some suspicion because they saw him arrive on a bicycle, a means of transportation that few observant Jews in Antwerp use on Jewish holidays.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/iraqi-man-with-kippah-and-knives-stopped-at-entrance-to-antwerp-synagogue/

June 13, 2019

Two oil tankers struck in suspected attacks in Gulf of Oman

Two oil tankers were hit in suspected attacks in the Gulf of Oman and the crews have been evacuated, shipping firms and industry sources said on Thursday, a month after a similar incident in which four tankers in the region were struck.

The Bahrain-based U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet said it was assisting the tankers after receiving distress calls following “reported attacks”. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, part of the Royal Navy, said it was investigating.

Details of the incident were not immediately clear, but one operator said it suspected its ship had been hit by a torpedo. Another shipping firm said its vessel was on fire in the Gulf of Oman.

Oil prices surged by 4% after the report that has stoked tensions in the region that have already been heightened by attacks last month on Gulf oil assets amid a dispute between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-tanker/two-tankers-struck-in-suspected-attacks-in-gulf-of-oman-sources-idUSKCN1TE0OI?

June 7, 2019

Lesbian Couple Beaten Up on London Bus after Refusing to Kiss

Melania Geymonat, 28, said the attack on her and girlfriend Chris happened on the top deck of a London night bus as they were traveling to Camden Town in the early hours of 30 May.

Miss Geymonat posted on her Facebook page: "In an attempt to calm things down, I started making jokes. I thought this might make them go away. Chris even pretended she was sick, but they kept on harassing us, throwing us coins and becoming more enthusiastic about it.

"The next thing I know is that Chris is in the middle of the bus fighting with them. On an impulse, I went over there only to find her face bleeding and three of them beating her up.

"The next thing I know is I'm being punched. I got dizzy at the sight of my blood and fell back. I don't remember whether or not I lost consciousness. Suddenly the bus had stopped, the police were there and I was bleeding all over."

Miss Geymonat added that the gang of at least four men might have broken her nose during the ordeal, and stole a phone and bag from them before fleeing.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-48555889

June 6, 2019

DC Dyke March Bans Jewish Star of David Pride Flags.

LGBTQ, Jewish and feminist organizations called on the DC Dyke March to apologize for their ban on the Jewish Star of David and Israeli flags, on Wednesday night.

While there was originally no official announcement, after participants inquired, they discovered that they would not be able to bring Israeli flags or related national symbols to the march. Organizers later wrote on Facebook that, "participants [may] not bring pro-Israel paraphernalia."

This controversy is not new, two years ago a similar incident occurred with the Chicago Dyke March organizers kicked out several people for carrying Jewish Pride flags.

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Jewish-LGBTQ-feminists-NGOs-condemn-DC-Dyke-March-for-Jewish-Star-ban-591732

June 5, 2019

Owner Of Minneapolis LGBTQ Bar Called Out For Anti-Semitism

The anti-Semitic Facebook posts of the owner of a yet-to-open LGBTQ bar in Uptown has caused an uproar among Minneapolis’ Jewish and gay communities.

“It’s been the Titanic today: slowly sinking more and more,” said Chad Kampe, the founder and director of Flip Phone Events. “Since I’m a local, gay Jew who does work in the community, it was my duty to call it out.”

Kampe has been posting screenshots of the owner’s rants on his own Facebook page, just in case the owner deleted them.

The owner of Cheers Minneapolis, Emad Abed, has been responding to people on a Facebook thread that called out his anti-Semitic postings with profanity and banning them from his bar:

“This community is a joke. We don’t want their business or support. They can take their money to the Saloon & Gay 90. Without this group commenting on this post we will do big business and we will be the number one gay bar in town Without all the stupid losers commenting on this post Andy Birkey can take his post and shuv it up his gay ass. ❤️ this group here they are all racist, prejudice, biased and discriminatory, that’s why they are not welcome in my bar. My bar will still be number one without them and without their money.”

https://tcjewfolk.com/owner-of-minneapolis-lgbtq-bar-called-out-for-anti-semitism/

June 3, 2019

Thanks to the far-left and far-right, U.S. Jews are trapped in a political no man's land

I think my beliefs are pretty moderate, pretty reasonable. But in leftist social justice spaces, to be accepted as a “good Jew” and to have your experiences of antisemitism taken seriously, you must be flat-out against Israel. There’s no room for nuance here, which I found out the hard way after Students for Justice in Palestine defaced the article I wrote for my school paper about the experience of being gay and Jewish. An article I was really proud of, focusing mainly on American rabbis and queer American Jews, was scrawled with “STOP PINKWASHING APARTHEID.” As one of the paper’s editors, I invited the SJP branch to submit their own op-ed. They declined. That was the first and last time I ever spoke of my Jewishness on campus.

In another instance, I attended the Decolonize This Place tour of the Natural History Museum on Columbus Day in 2016. I enjoyed learning about the history of the museum from an alternative perspective and agreed with a lot of what was being said about the exploitation of certain cultures and theft of artifacts on display. The majority of the tour focused on the plight of Native Americans in the United States, and how Columbus Day should be Indigenous Peoples Day instead (a sentiment I completely agree with). But after the tour, when we all gathered outside as the leaders put a giant plastic bag over the monument of Teddy Roosevelt, a chant of “Free, Free, Free Palestine!” broke out. Not relevant to the immediate topic at hand, I instantly felt unwelcome and like I didn’t belong. I was confused as to why a movement about indigenous rights and decolonization would have such a narrow understanding of the history of the land that is now Israel.

While many leftists in the West view the world in a very simplistic fashion of oppressed vs. oppressor (with white skinned people being the oppressor), this way of thinking doesn’t apply to all the nuances and complexities of the Middle East. This is why I cringe when I hear anyone refer to Israel as “settler-colonial.” They’re under the impression that all Jews are white European settlers displacing the Palestinians. This is inaccurate on multiple levels.

For one, Jewish people — all Jewish people — are indigenous to the Levant (the region that is now Israel). We do not have any real ties to Europe, and in fact, about 90% of European Jews don’t feel safe or welcome in their respective countries anymore.

While right-wing antisemitism is definitely more directly frightening, left-wing antisemitism is more existentially terrifying… these are people who are meant to be my allies, so why am I being held to a different standard because I’m ethnically and culturally Jewish?

https://deadstate.org/opinion-thanks-to-the-far-left-and-far-right-u-s-jews-are-trapped-in-a-political-no-mans-land/

A long read but very much worth it in my opinion. I've snipped the portions posted here.

May 31, 2019

Palestinian Uber driver in L.A. kicks 2 Jewish women out of his car

A Palestinian Uber driver kicked two Jewish women out of his car on May 19 after he learned they were leaving the Israeli-American Council (IAC)’s Celebrate Israel Festival at nearby Rancho Park.

In a phone interview with the Journal, Dayna, (who requested only her first name be used for fear of retaliation), 33, and Rachel (a pseudonym; she requested that no part of her name be used for fear of retaliation) said they were in the back seat of the driver’s car across the street from Rancho Park at Fox Studios when he asked them, “What event were you coming from?” The women responded, “Just an event.” After the driver — who according to his Uber profile is named Mustafa — asked them again where they had come from, and after noticing that the car had not yet moved, Dayna said, “An Israeli Independence Day event.”

The driver then told them to get out of his car.

“He started laughing and he looked us dead in the eye and he said, ‘You need to get out of my car. I’m Palestinian,’ ” Dayna said. “The only reason I can think of that he would ask us which event we were coming from is he clearly wanted to make a statement. It was clear by the families crossing the street and the security that it was an Israel Independence event.”

https://jewishjournal.com/news/los_angeles/community/299295/palestinian-uber-driver-refuses-ride-to-jewish-women/

The driver has since been banned from Uber.