Tag: Anti-Semitism

German central banker criticised for remarks on Jews

German government leaders condemned a central bank executive on Sunday for making anti-Semitic remarks before the publication of his book on Monday that takes a critical look at Turk and Arab immigrants.

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said Thilo Sarrazin was out of line for comments about Jews, remarks that were also criticised by Jewish leaders in the country responsible for the Holocaust.

“All Jews share a particular gene, Basques share a certain gene that sets them apart,” Sarrazin told Welt am Sonntag newspaper ahead of the release of his book “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (Germany does away with itself).

Sarrazin, a Bundesbank board member, denied he was stirring racism. He has faced heavy criticism for making disparaging comments about Muslim immigrants. Sarrazin has repeatedly created uproar for criticising Turks and Arabs in Germany.

“There’s no room in the political debate for remarks that whip up racism or anti-Semitism,” Westerwelle said.

“There are limits to every provocation and Bundesbank board member Sarrazin has clearly gone out of bounds with this mistaken and inappropriate comment,” Guttenberg added.

Stephan Kramer and Michel Friedman, leaders in Germany’s Jewish community, also criticised Sarrazin, 65, a member of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and former finance minister in the city-state of Berlin.

“Someone who tries to define Jews by a genetic make-up is consumed by a racist mania,” Kramer said.

“Enough already!” Friedman wrote in Bild am Sonntag newspaper. “No more tolerance for this intolerance. It’s okay to provoke thought but enough of this baiting and defamation. We don’t need any hate preachers, especially in the Bundesbank.”

EMBARRASSMENT FOR BUNDESBANK

Almost 3 million people of Turkish origin and an estimated 280,000 of Arab extraction live in Germany.

Leaders in Sarrazin’s SPD have called for him to quit the party and resign from the Bundesbank.

Sarrazin’s comments have also embarrassed Bundesbank President Axel Weber, who some German leaders have backed to succeed Jean-Claude Trichet as president of the European Central Bank next year.

The Bundesbank has tried to distance itself from his remarks, saying they are his personal opinions and not linked to his role at the bank. The central bank requires evidence of “serious misconduct” to bring about Sarrazin’s dismissal.

The central bank last year stripped Sarrazin of some of his duties. If the central bank’s board voted to remove Sarrazin, the move would then need the approval of the president.

In the book, Sarrazin argues that Muslims undermine German society, marry “imported brides” and have a bad attitude. He said young Muslim men were aggressive due to sexual frustration.

“Sadly, the huge potential for aggression in this group is obvious. The Arab boys can’t get at their Arab girls,” he said.

“In the end, they use the German girls from the underclass who are easier to get, and then they hold them in contempt because they’re so readily available.”

(Editing by Charles Dick)

, 29 August 2010

August 29, 2010
Why Don’t Jews Condemn Anti-Semitism in Turkey?

Rifat Bali, a Jewish scholar and a native of Istanbul, has been investigating anti-Semitism in Turkey for many years. He has authored several books and articles on the history of Turkish Jews. His most recent book, “The Jews of Turkey and the Armenian Genocide,” is a monumental work that documents how the Turkish government pressured not only Turkish Jews, but also the Israeli government and American-Jewish organizations, to lobby against congressional resolutions on the Armenian Genocide.

Turkey’s blackmail of Jews in and out of Turkey is not news to our readers. Neither is the fact that there has been widespread anti-Semitism in Turkey for decades, if not centuries. In a lengthy article published in July by the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs in Jerusalem, Mr. Bali meticulously documents the fact that such racist attitudes are held by practically the entire spectrum of Turkish society.

In his article, “Present-day Anti-Semitism in Turkey,” Mr. Bali summarizes his analysis in four key points:

· “Turkish intellectuals have always taken a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli stance. Islamists associate the ‘Palestine question’ with alleged Jewish involvement in the rise of Turkish secularism. Leftists see Israel as an imperialist state and an extension of American hegemony in the Middle East. Comparable themes are found among nationalist intellectuals.

· “Turkish reactions to Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon and 2009 war in Gaza often spilled over into anti-Semitism. Newspaper columnists, some of them academics, belonging to the various ideological streams helped fan popular sentiment against Israel and Jews. Israel was said to be exploiting Holocaust guilt and the services of the ‘American Jewish lobby’ to further its own nefarious aims.

· “Turkish approaches to the ‘Palestine question’ rarely venture outside the clichés of Turkish popular culture. Turkish publishing houses providing translated works on the issue are careful not to run afoul of popular sentiment. The net result is that both Turkish columnists and their readers utilize only limited sources on the conflict that are preponderantly anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic.

· “Any attempt by the Turkish Jewish leadership to confront Turkish society on combating anti-Semitism is likely to backfire and even further exacerbate the problem. Given this reality, the only options left for Turkey’s Jewish community are to either continue living in Turkey amid widespread anti-Semitism or to emigrate.”

Mr. Bali documents his assertions by quoting from dozens of anti-Semitic statements published in various Turkish newspapers in recent years. Here are some examples:

— Toktamış Ateş, professor of political science at Istanbul and Istanbul Bilgi universities, newspaper columnist, and a prominent intellectual who frequently appears on TV, described Jews as “the first and most racist people in history.” (Bugün, July 20, 2006).

— Ayhan Demir, a commentator for the Islamist Millî Gazete, wrote: “The first thing to be done to achieve the security of Istanbul and Jerusalem is to get rid of, in as short a time as possible, this ‘shanty town’ that has begun to harm humanity on the entire face of the earth, and which is as offensive to the heart as to the eye. To send the occupiers to the garbage heap of history, together with their bloody charlatanism would be one of the most noble acts that could be realized in the name of humanity. A world without Israel would be, without a doubt, a much more peaceful and secure world.” (Millî Gazete, December 30, 2008).

— Nuh Gönültaş, a well-known columnist, said Hitler was justified in his treatment of the Jews, since “the state of Israel is an even greater tyrant than Hitler.” (Bugün, August 1, 2006).

— The Islamist sociologist Ali Bulaç, a well-known columnist for Zaman, described Gaza as “a concentration camp that in reality surpasses the Nazi camps.” (Zaman, December 29, 2008).

It is simply astonishing that Israeli officials and Jewish leaders worldwide hardly ever react, at least not publicly, to such widespread and vicious anti-Semitic outbursts in Turkey. Why is Rifat Bali resigned to the fact that “the only options left for Turkey’s Jewish community are to either continue living in Turkey amid widespread anti-Semitism or to emigrate?” This is a fundamental question that Jews themselves should answer!

By keeping quiet, Jewish leaders are simply encouraging Turkish commentators to continue making racist and insulting remarks. If Israel’s President Shimon Peres and ADL’s National Director Abraham Foxman were not so busy denying the Armenian Genocide, they would perhaps spend more of their time fighting anti-Semitism!

July 28, 2009
Police fear far-right terror attack

• Extremists want to stoke race tensions, officer warns
• Counter-terrorism unit diverting resources to threat
• No specific intelligence of planned strike, sources say

Vikram Dodd

Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command fears that right-wing extremists will stage a deadly terrorist attack in Britain to try to stoke racial tensions, the Guardian has learned.

Senior officers say it will be a “spectacular” that is designed to kill. The counter-terrorism unit has redeployed officers to increase its monitoring of the extreme right’s potential to stage attacks.

Commander Shaun Sawyer told a meeting of British Muslims concerned about the danger to their communities that police were responding to the growing threat.

Sawyer said of the far right: “I fear that they will have a spectacular… they will carry out an attack that will lead to a loss of life or injury to a community somewhere. They’re not choosy about which community.”

He said the aim would be to cause a “breakdown in community cohesion”.

Sawyer revealed that the Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, had asked the counter-terrorism command, SO15, to examine what the economic downturn would mean for far-right violence. The assessment concluded that the recession would increase the possibility of it.

Sawyer told the meeting last Wednesday that more of his officers needed to be deployed to try to thwart neo-Nazi-inspired violence. He said the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida remained the unit’s priority, but said of its far-right section: “It is a small desk … we need to grow that unit.” Sources have told the Guardian that while they believe the neo-Nazi terrorist threat has grown, they have no specific intelligence of an attack.

“There is an increased possibility of violence from the far right. There is a trend,” said one senior source, adding that the ideology of the violent right was driven by “people who don’t like immigration, people who don’t like Islam. We’re seeing a resurgence of anti-semitism as well.”

The meeting at which Sawyer spoke was staged by the Muslim Safety Forum, whose chair, Abdurahman Jafar, said: “Muslims are the first line of victims in the extreme right’s campaign of hate and division and they make no secret about that. Statistics show a strong correlation between the rise of racist and Islamophobic hate crime and the ascendancy of the BNP.”

It is a decade since an extreme rightwing terrorist has used bombs to claim lives in Britain. In 1999, David Copeland struck three targets in London. His attack on a gay pub in Soho, London, killed three people and left scores injured. It followed attacks against the Muslim community in Brick Lane, east London, and the bombing of a market in Brixton, south London.

The senior source said: “When Copeland attacked we did not have the religious tensions with the Muslim community. What kind of schism would a Copeland-type event cause now?”

The far-right threat to Britain’s Jewish communities is monitored by theCommunity Security Trust, which says attempted terrorist violence by neo-Nazis has increased in the past few years. It says nine white men have been “convicted of offences involving explosives, terrorist plots, violent campaigns or threats to carry them out”.

David Rich, of the CST, said: “There’s no one directing people, it’s a mindset” – a reference to the easy availability of extremist right-wing material and information about making bombs.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk, 6 July 2009

July 14, 2009
RACIST RANTS OF ELECTED BNP MAN, ANDREW BRONS, REVEALED

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor

The Observer, Sunday 14 June 2009

Yorkshire MEP Andrew Brons drew up some of the National Front’s most inflammatory policies

British National party MEP Andrew Brons. Photograph: BNP/PA

One of the British National party’s first MEPs’ attempts to play down his past links to the extreme right as “silly” teenage posturing are today exposed as a sham after it emerged that for many years he played a crucial role in shaping the National Front’s most overtly racist policies.

In 1983, when he was in his late twenties, Andrew Brons edited the National Front’s general election manifesto that called for a global apartheid to prevent the “extinction” of whites everywhere.

The Let Britain Live! manifesto was prepared by the party’s policy department, chaired by Brons. It outlined a series of hugely controversial positions, crystallised in one of its opening statements: “The National Front rejects the whole concept of multiracialism. We recognise inherent racial differences in Man. The races of Man are profoundly unequal in their characteristics, potential and abilities.”

The manifesto claimed the UK had been “swamped” by “racially incompatible Afro-Asians” and that “Black muggings of White people, especially elderly ladies, occurs regularly”.

It continued: “The eruptions in Bristol in 1980 and Brixton in 1981 were just two examples of the ‘cultural enrichment’ promised to us by the multiracialists.” And it claimed: “We believe the gradual dismantlement of the Apartheid system over the last 17 years to be retrograde … The alternative to Apartheid, multiracialism, envisages an extinction of the White man.”

Brons was also an enthusiastic contributor in the 1970s and 1980s to Spearhead, a far-right magazine considered so extreme even the BNP tried to distance itself from it. In two lengthy polemics for the magazine, Brons outlined the supposed importance of nationalism and interpreted genetic studies to suggest Europeans had a “greater cognitive ability” than non-whites. He attacked the influence of “people of Jewish ethnic origin” and peddled the myth that a number of predominantly Zionist organisations were controlling the world.

The now retired college lecturer wrote: “One ethnic, national and religious group whose power and influence has undoubtedly increased has been the Jews. It can be no mere coincidence that the number of people of Jewish ethnic origin to be found in internationalist and multiracialist schools of thought and organisations of action is out of all proportion to their numbers in the population.”

Brons, who was elected as the BNP MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber this month, has tried to distance himself from his National Front days. “People do silly things when they are 17,” he said recently. “Peter Mandelson was once a member of the Young Communist League but we don’t continue to call him a communist.”

But his critics say his relationship with the National Front was more than a youthful dalliance and question the extent to which he has left his past behind. A 1980 edition of National Front News, the party newspaper, carried an article about Brons saying he was prepared to go to jail for his beliefs. It noted that Brons refused a “Negro reporter permission to attend two National Front ticket-only meetings” and explains that Brons, then 29, has “campaigned against Coloured Immigration since he was a teenager” – suggesting his extremist views have been a feature as much of his adult as his teenage life.

Brons seized the NF chairmanship in 1980 when John Tyndall quit to form the BNP. In 1984 Brons was convicted of using insulting behaviour towards an ethnic-minority police officer and left the party, citing family problems.

At the National Front, Brons was a close ally of Richard Verrall, the author of the Holocaust-denial tract Did Six Million Really Die?, who was vice-chairman. In 1981, while Brons was chairman, the NF endorsed We are National Front, a pamphlet carrying an introduction from Verrall. It had photographs of Brons and Verrall as well as a picture of a gorilla and a black man stating: “These two creatures look the same, don’t they?”

Anti-racism and Jewish support groups yesterday described Brons’s failure to condemn his past activities as disturbing. “From a young man until well into his middle age, Andrew Brons was very much involved in a series of viciously antisemitic and racist far-right movements,” said a spokesman for the Community Security Trust, which monitors attacks on the UK’s Jewish community. “It’s hard to believe he has undergone a serious conversion since then.”

Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation, said Brons was influential in shaping the NF and it was important that those voting for him should be aware of his past views. “The fact that Brons is an intellectual fascist and bigot rather than an ignorant fascist and bigot cuts little ice,” a spokesman said. “We are unimpressed by his claims that his prejudice was a result of youthful exuberance.”

Attempts to contact Brons through the BNP were unsuccessful.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk, June 14th, 2009

June 16, 2009
Killer at Holocaust museum linked to BNP

Man who killed guard at Holocaust museum has links to BNP

• White supremacist injured in Washington gunfight
• Records show 88-year-old was at fundraising events

Matthew Taylor and Daniel Nasaw

F.B.I. investigators examining a bullet-riddled door at the entrance of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, where a gunman entered the building and shot and killed a security guard. New York Times

A white supremacist who killed a security guard at a Holocaust memorial museum in the US has links to the British National party, which gained two MEPs in last week’s European elections.

Thousands of visitors fled the museum in Washington on Wednesday after James von Brunn opened fire, killing a security guard. In the gunfight that followed, the 88-year-old was shot, and is now in a critical condition in hospital.

Yesterday it emerged that Von Brunn, a longtime antisemite, had attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National party (AFBNP), which was set up to raise funds from far-right activists in America.

Mark Cotterill, who ran the US-based organisation before it folded in 2001, said: “He did attend meetings. I have just checked my database and he is down as ‘meetings only’, so he was not a major donor, although he may have put some money on the plate when it was passed round.”

The AFBNP treasurer, Todd Blodgett, also told the Washington Post that he and Von Brunn had attended fundraising meetings in Arlington County. The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, spoke to at least two AFBNP meetings and said the money raised by the organisation made a “significant contribution to the BNP’s [2001] general election campaign”.

Yesterday a spokesman for the party said: “You get a lot of people coming to meetings but I don’t think you can blame us for that. Even if he did go to meetings, it was nothing to do with us.”

However, anti-racism campaigners said Von Brunn’s links to the BNP underlined its extremist agenda. “It is clear that Nick Griffin is at the centre of an international network of white supremacists,” said Dan Hodges, of Searchlight. “The BNP must explain the full extent of his organisation’s links with this antisemitic gunman.”

The far-right party gained its first two MEPs in last week’s European elections – Griffin in the north-west and former National Front leader Andrew Brons in Yorkshire and the Humber.

During the campaign, photographs emerged of Griffin alongside the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen “Don” Black, who was banned from the UK by the then home secretary, Jacqui Smith. He was also criticised for defending a BNP leaflet that said black and Asian Britons should be referred to as “racial foreigners”.

Yesterday Von Brunn was charged with murder and killing in the course of possessing a firearm at a federal facility, both capital offences under US federal law; police said hate crime charges were also possible.

At a press conference in Washington, Cathy Lanier, the Washington police chief, said security guard Stephen Johns was shot when he opened the door of the museum for Von Brunn. Other guards opened fire, and Von Brunn slumped to the ground.

In his car, officers found a notebook with a handwritten note saying, “You want my weapons, this is how you’ll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews,” according to a court affidavit.

Von Brunn’s .22-calibre rifle held 10 more bullets and investigators found more in his car and at an apartment in nearby Annapolis, Maryland, that he shared with his son and his son’s fiancee.

Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the Washington FBI field office, said Von Brunn was known to the police as an antisemite and a white supremacist, who had a website that espoused hatred against African-Americans, Jews and others.

“We know what Mr Von Brunn did at the Holocaust museum. Now it’s our responsibility to determine why he did it,” said Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the Washington FBI field office. “We have to ask ourselves did all these years of public display of hatred impact his actions.”

A self-described artist, advertising man and author, Von Brunn wrote an anti-semitic treatise, Kill the Best Gentiles, decried “the browning of America” and claimed to expose a Jewish conspiracy “to destroy the White gene-pool”.

In 1983 Von Brunn was convicted of attempting to kidnap members of the US federal reserve board. At the time, police said he had wanted to take the members hostage because of high interest rates and the nation’s economic difficulties. On the website, Von Brunn blames his six-year imprisonment on “a Jew judge” and “Negro jury”.

Last night civil rights groups said they had been monitoring Von Brunn for decades.

Heidi Beirich, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Centre’s intelligence project, said: “He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil. He’s an extreme antisemite.”

Source: www.guardian.co.uk, 12 June 2009

June 13, 2009
White supremacist kills man

An elderly white supremacist with a history of anti-Semitic tirades opened fire inside the Holocaust Memorial Museum, fatally wounding a security guard before being shot himself.

Tourists scattered in panic, ducked and took cover as the shots rang out in the museum’s crowded entrance shortly after noon in the heart of the US capital, not far from the White House.

The attack drew reactions of shock and sadness from President Barack Obama and other US leaders, Israel, and a US Muslim organization.

The gunman was identified as James von Brunn, 88, a Maryland resident who has done time in prison for taking a gun into the US Federal Reserve in an apparently botched anti-Semitic attack, a federal law enforcement official told AFP.

“It appears to be a lone gunman who entered into the museum and opened fire with what appears to be a rifle at this point,” Police Chief Cathy Lanier said.

Security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, of nearby Maryland state, was pronounced dead after being rushed to a nearby hospital, police said. The gunman was in critical condition, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty added.

Obama — who last week became the first US president to visit the Nazi death camp in Buchenwald, Germany — expressed dismay, saying the incident underscored the need to counter prejudice.

“I am shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms,” he said in a statement.

The Holocaust-denying Von Brunn has written books on Adolf Hitler and his views on white superiority, including “Kill the Best Gentiles,” which his website calls “the culmination of his life’s work.”

In a recent posting on his blog, he railed that “America is a Third-World racial garbage-dump — stupid, ignorant, dead-broke, and terminal.”

Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said they had no warning of the attack, which erupted at 12:50 pm just inside the packed museum, which is often visited by school groups.

The FBI said it had sent a special response squad to support the police, but it had no information “to indicate threats to area landmarks.”

“An armed gunman came into the entrance and immediately opened fire striking one security guard. There was fire, gunfire returned. The gunman was hit,” Fenty said.

Former defense secretary William Cohen said he was standing outside with a museum official when the gunman entered, apparently from a red vehicle left parked in the street.

“When the shots rang out, we just ducked down and scattered,” Cohen said. “So we ran up the stairs. We didn’t know how many shooters were there, how many shots were going to continue, how many people were involved.”

Cohen had been at the museum because a play written by his wife Janet Langhart Cohen was to be staged there Wednesday evening.

Angela Andelson, 22, visiting from San Francisco, was walking toward the museum’s exit when she heard a loud bang “like someone had dropped something.”

Then she saw a “gunman coming in (carrying) a long looking kind of gun.

“I just ran in to one of the exhibits to try to take cover,” she said.

“People were screaming and ducking down, getting on the floor, getting under benches.”

Another witness, Maria Hernandez, was with her grandparents walking through the haunting exhibits which chronicle the Holocaust and the genocide of six million Jews under the Nazis.

“We were in the exhibit ‘Remember the Children’ and we heard rounds fired and through the glass doors I saw a security guard firing towards the shooter and a man on his belly on the floor and when I looked back again, we were heading toward the exit, I saw blood all over the floor,” she told AFP.

Israel said through its embassy that it was “shocked and saddened by today’s shooting incident.”

The Muslim Public Affairs Council swiftly condemned what it called a “hate-motivated shooting.”

“Tragic incidents like this one only strengthen our commitment to combatting intolerance in all forms through education and dialogue,” MPAC executive director Salam Al-Marayati said.

Analysts noted the attack took place just five days after Obama became the first US president to visit the Nazi death camp in Buchenwald, Germany, where he renewed a historic commitment to Israel.

Obama said Buchenwald was “the ultimate rebuke” to those “who insist that the Holocaust never happened, a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful.”

“It’s hard to ignore the timing of this incident,” Brian Levin, a professor from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, told AFP.

“Maybe he (von Brunn) feels his country is slipping away. So he sees a black president at Buchenwald, remembering the Holocaust, and decides to attack the biggest symbol of the Holocaust in the United States.”

Mark Potok, director of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, said the shooting followed a string of violent incidents by extremists in recent months that included the killing of three police officers in Pittsburgh in April and the murder of an abortion doctor in Kansas last month.

“It’s really been quite an extraordinary period,” Potok told CNN, saying that there had been a “definite” surge in hate violence since Obama’s election.

More than 30 million people have visited the museum since it opened in 1993, including 85 heads of state.

AFP

June 11, 2009