AP Photo/Benjamin GiretteA pro-Palestinian protester displays a burning Israeli flag during a banned demonstration in support of Gaza at Place de la Republique in Paris, France, Saturday, July 26, 2014.
We have ten commandments. We truly need an eleventh commandment that
is written into the laws of every state. The positive aspect we
already know as treating our neighbor as ourselves. That is patently
not good enough or as mathematicians like to argue, it is necessary
but not sufficient.
What must be done is simple. Bearing witness to hatred in any form
against another human or group of humanity must be criminal. Thus
all such Imans and their Christian brothers and even Jewish brothers
must face criminal penalty and at least a stiff fine for each such
offence. The fine can be as token as you like so long as it is
criminal and automatically tells the world who this person is and
usually bars him from jobs of authority such as imman or rabbi or
priest.
Otherwise we give licence and from such license will arise the
horrors of ethnic empires and the destruction of all forms of human
freedoms.
I grew up been taught otherwise
in my home and in my school. This must be the standard all adhere
too and deviance must be punished as described. It is not an insult
against either body or wealth, but all such is a criminal
incitement to murder your
neighbors.
I strongly support Canada adopting such laws to augment its curent
anti hate laws and to then make it a standard issue in its diplomatic
dealings with every other country. We as a country need to judge
countries and threat them in conformity to that judgement and such
judgement must at least be then focused on just these types of laws
rather than idle sophistry.
It also supplies a clear yardstick with which to not admit a
troublemaker who promotes hate however nuanced.
.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper: When will Europe stand up for the Jews?
August
2, 2014 7:21 AM ET
From
the start, Hamas knew there was one battlefield in its asymmetrical
genocidal war against the Jews it could win. No, not in the teeming
alleyways of Gaza City, or the seething confines of the Jabalya
Refugee camp, but on the broad boulevards of Paris, the ancient
streets of Rome and even in the shadow of Amsterdam’s Anne Frank
House.
For
some three weeks Hamas has been providing “martyrs on demand”
from Gaza to fill the 24-hour news cycles and social media platforms.
The searing visuals of dead babies are more than enough to send young
Arabs and Muslims into Europe’s streets, delivering Hamas’
genocidal message, hate and violence to The Enemy.
And
“the enemy” is? Jews. Jews and their synagogues, their community
centres, their kosher butcher shops, their religious leaders. But the
hateful situation didn’t start with Hamas; they just heaped fuel on
an already growing bonfire.
Evidence,
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He’s been a key
cheerleader for Hamas for years. Basically, Erdogan co-opted former
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s game plan, bullying Israel,
in word and (sometimes) in deed to win points with the Arab and
Muslim streets. Just a few days ago, he reached the apex of
anti-Israel rhetoric, by libelling the Jewish state’s counterattack
against Hamas as “barbarism that surpasses Hitler.”
Turkey,
a nation with a 500-year record of tolerance for its Jews, now boasts
members of parliament who participate in violent demonstrations
against the Israeli embassy and a leading pop singer who tweeted,
“May God Bless Hitler,” and “it will be again Muslims who will
bring an end of those Jews, it is near, near.”
The
damage done by Erdogan and his supporters not only places Turkish
Jewry in harm’s way, it has helped opened the floodgates of
anti-Jewish invective by Turkish imams in Germany and The
Netherlands.
Last
year, Dutch Muslim social worker Mehmet Sahin found his life turned
upside down after he had the audacity to confront anti-Semitic Dutch
Muslim youth on national TV. That Friday, the imam in the mosque he
and his wife attended publicly accused Mehmet of “being a Jew,”
forcing him and his young family to flee into a witness protection
program. “Rabbi,” Mehmet told me recently, “you don’t
understand. It was never like this before, but today, ‘Jew’ has
become a dirty word in our community.”
In
England, where Israel has been pounded for decades by media and
cultural icons, the current situation has spawned racist death and
firebomb threats by pro-Palestinian boycotters. In Manchester, The
Jewish Chronicle reports
that a shop that sells Israeli cosmetics reported phone calls
threatening to burn down the shop, and beat up or kill staff.
One
caller threatened: “You would be wiped out right now … if [your
owner] puts more videos on Facebook I will f–k him up … I will
kill you with it.” Another inveighed, “I will burn your shop
down.” And this post was found on the shop owner’s Facebook page,
“I hope he burns in hell like the rest of the Jews.”
Without
question, anti-Jewish violence was at its worst in France. Only the
presence of the gendarmes averted
a mini-Kristallnacht in Paris, as rioters targeted synagogues and
their worshippers. For days, Jewish neighborhoods were subject to
violence, looting and intimidation. In Toulouse, not even the memory
of Jewish kids murdered on the schoolyard in 2012 spared the already
traumatized community. The local Jewish community centre was
firebombed.
Indeed,
well before the Gaza war, many French Jews, alarmed by the
establishment’s unwillingness or inability to protect Western
Europe’s most populous Jewish community, had already packed their
bags and left.
Three
weeks ago, I sat across French President Hollande at the Elysée
Palace as he confirmed to a Simon Wiesenthal Center delegation that
1,000 French citizens had been active in Syria. “Thirty one have
died and some others suffered trauma, but the majority have returned
to France and melted into the population,” Hollande confirmed,
adding that many were armed and that authorities had no idea where
the ticking human time bombs were. He didn’t have to remind us that
the Toulouse murderer and the terrorist who killed four people at the
Jewish Museum in Brussels were both French Muslims, trained by
Jihadist terrorists overseas.
The
threat to Jewish continuity in Europe goes beyond angry Muslims. It
goes to heart of Europe’s elite. Why did the mayor of The Hague
refuse to order the arrest of ISIS supporters who threatened Jews in
the centre of the city, on the very day that ISIS social media
were tweeting photos of their beheaded prisoners in Iraq? Where
are the Dutch people in Amsterdam to reassure their Jewish neighbours
that they don’t have to remove the Mezuzahs from their doorposts
for fear of attack? Why have German officials failed to take action
against an imam in Berlin who called for the murder of all Jews?
Where is the outrage when Green Party members join far-right and
Muslim extremists amid chants of “gas the Jews” on the streets of
Germany? Where is Swedish Civil Society to finally demand of elected
official and police that Jewish citizens of Malmo be fully protected
from constant anti-Semitic harassment? Who in Belgium will call out
the doctor who refused to treat a Jewish patient because of Israel’s
alleged misdeeds in Gaza? When will the churches, NGOs, and cultural
elite of Europe — from the UK, to Spain to Norway — who
never miss an opportunity to stand in silent tribute to six million
dead Jews, finally have the decency to acknowledge that six million
living Jews have the righs to pursue their destiny in the democratic
Jewish State of Israel?
The
canary in the coal mine analogy is often invoked to describe the
plight of Europe’s Jews. But in 2014, unlike 1938, Jews can leave.
The Jew is no longer the clueless canary, but European commitment to
democratic values totters on life-support. We Jews have
each other and Israel. We will survive. Can anyone guarantee the same
for a democratic Europe?
National
Post
Rabbi
Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
No comments:
Post a Comment