04/14 Links Pt2: Anglo Jewry confronts Labour anti-Semitic surge; The Soviet Campaign to Eliminate Passover ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Fred Maroun: Why the BDS Movement is Destroying a Future Palestinian State

From the moment Israel declared its independence, one of the main Arab tactics has been to exploit the Jews' Achilles heel – their highly developed culture, which respects and values life, and their support for human rights.
Of Arab origin, I have long known about the Arab stereotype of the West and Israel -- that they are weak because they care about the lives of their own people and they are eager to respect the human rights of their enemies. Golda Meir is reported to have said, "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children."
Until now, Israel has conformed to that Arab stereotype -- such as with "knocks on the roof" in Gaza to warn residents to leave buildings being used for military purposes before they are targeted -- but in conversations with Zionists, it seems that this attitude is changing. While Jews will always value life, their determination to minimize enemy casualties and to respect their human rights at almost all costs might be unraveling, and it is the Palestinians who are likely to pay the price.
During the War of Independence, the Arab side ensured that not a single Jew was left on the Arab side of the 1949 armistice lines, but a large number of Arabs were allowed by Jews to remain on the Israeli side. Today those Arabs constitute 20% of the Israeli population.
Israel's respect for the human rights of Arabs living in Israel has been used by Arabs against Israel. The idea of any Jews on the Arab side is demonized and any "normalization" with Jews is aggressively discouraged

Isi Leibler: Anglo Jewry confronts Labour anti-Semitic surge

Ten years ago, I was accused of pandering to hysteria when I praised Melanie Phillips’ groundbreaking book, Londonistan, detailing the alarming growth of anti-Semitism in the UK and predicting further deterioration unless the British government drastically altered its approach.
Many British Jews, especially those living in Jewish enclaves, were in denial, simply unwilling to face reality.
Their attitude is brilliantly portrayed in Howard Jacobson’s 2010 Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Finkler Question, which satirically portrays a British Jew desperately seeking to become socially acceptable.
The Anglo Jewish establishment has frequently been referred to as “trembling Israelites.” They were “shtadlanim” (court Jews) who, to quote a former president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, crafted a policy based on “Why must one shout when a whisper can be heard?” Their overriding concern was to avoid rocking the boat by minimizing public protest wherever possible.

Merciless London Musical Skewers Jeremy Corbyn

Just when Jeremy Corbyn thought it couldn't get any worse, a rollicking stage musical has debuted in London openly mocking the Labour Party leader's intellect, his terror-loving friends and his sexual performance.
The entire run of Corbyn the Musical, which first previewed on Tuesday at the Waterloo East Theatre, is already sold out.
On stage, Corbyn is mercilessly lampooned as a hapless Communist wannabe—rejected by the Soviet Union, and unable to get it up.
Perhaps most worryingly of all for Corbyn—who is overshadowed by wicked caricatures of Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin—you leave the theater feeling sorry for the beleaguered left-wing leader.
This extremely camp musical is set in the early months of Corbyn's first term in office. He has taken power after a freakish turn of events render current Prime Minster David Cameron and his heir apparent Boris Johnson unable to win the election despite Corbyn's historically low approval rating. (h/t Alexi)

Israeli group Who Profits spearheading BDS efforts

An Israeli left-wing organization calling itself Who Profits is spearheading the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, according to a new NGO Monitor report.
Who Profits maintains and updates a database of more than 500 Israeli and foreign companies, businesses and organizations that have ties to or financial investments in Judea and Samaria, east Jerusalem and the Golan region.
This "blacklist" has effectively become an invaluable resource for the BDS movement and anyone seeking to impose economic sanctions on Israeli businesses.
The report, put together by NGO Monitor expert Itai Reuveni, details Who Profits' funding sources, which prominently include European church-affiliated organizations that receive money from European governments. For example, Dutch aid group the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation, which provides funding to anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada, also transferred more than a million shekels (about $264,000) to Who Profits in 2014 and 2015.
Typically, Who Profits sends a letter to a company that it intends to include in its database, giving the company three weeks to respond. Among the companies that have been targeted by Who Profits are SodaStream, mobile phone service provider Partner Communications Ltd., Israel's national water company Mekorot, cosmetics giant Ahava, and multinational security company G4S.

Ben Shapiro: Trump Should Be A Nonstarter For Jewish Voters

The rest of his [Trump's] Mideast policy is similarly self-centered and principle-free. While Cruz and Kasich abhor the Iran deal, Trump says he’ll leave it in place and simply “enforce” it – nonsensical verbiage, since the deal itself does not contain any serious provisions for consequences snapping into place. Why not just kill the deal outright? Trump put on his dealmaker hat to explain: “I love to buy bad contracts….I will make that agreement so tough and if they break it, they will have hell to pay.”
This is verbal detritus.
But that’s just the start. Trump suggested this week that the way to stop Iran from utilizing its $150 billion windfall to fund terrorism would be to sell the Iranians defective missiles. Yes, really. He has suggested that the United States rely on the Russians to handle ISIS, then reversed himself and said he’d put thousands of troops on the ground, then reversed himself again.
Trump has a Jewish daughter. So what? Barack Obama had a Jewish chief of staff, and he’s the most anti-Israel president in American history.
Meanwhile, Senator Cruz is the most pro-Israel candidate in American history. Cruz has repeatedly stood up for Israel’s moral right to defend itself, has castigated Israel’s enemies as genocidal Jew-haters, has attempted to kill the Iran deal repeatedly, has pledged to move the American embassy to Jerusalem on the first day of his administration, has vowed to cut off all American aid to the Palestinian Authority, and says we should defund the United Nations and withdraw federal funding from any institution boycotting Israel.

Dershowitz: Ted Cruz 'One of Best Students I Ever Had'

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz says Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was one of his best students – even though the two don’t agree on much.
"He came into my class, literally his first day in law school with his right had up – not his left hand, his right hand," Dershowitz said Tuesday on Fox News Channel's "The Kelly File."
Cruz challenged his professor on everything, which made his job easier, Dershowitz said.
"I was against the death penalty, he's in favor. I was in favor of the exclusionary rule, he's against it," he said. "And he made such brilliant arguments that I never had to play the devil's advocate."
Cruz "was one of the best students I ever had," Dershowitz said.

"Jews for Bernie" - really?

Honest, I don’t know if it’s ever been this bad. Every day I read something that makes it seem like American Jews have lost their minds.
Listen to this: “What he stands for is what my Judaism has been about my whole life,” Jeff Marker, a Jewish Renewal rabbi from Brooklyn, said in an interview at the brunch. “Social justice, and understanding that peace and security for Israel only comes when there is peace and justice for Palestinians.”
That came from a “Jews for Bernie” brunch in Manhattan, covered by JTA, and typifies what was being said at an event that could have been named “Jews for Farrakhan.” Consider me in the dark as to what the heck is going on with my landsmen here in America.
Obviously there is something I’m not getting when I hear “peace and justice for the Palestinians” as if it’s Israel’s fault for every Arab stabbing attack.

PreOccupiedTerritory: Nutjob Racists Side With Us. Checkmate, Zionists (satire)

By Ali Qawasmeh
Until now, the ravings of Louis Farrakhan, of David Duke, of other extremists, could be waved away as unrepresentative and of marginal importance. But as anti-immigrant sentiment has come to the fore unfiltered, other haters have become emboldened. Numerous Trump supporters proudly anticipate the day their leader will deal with the Jews controlling this and that. The willingness of these brave people to step out into the open and embrace an element of our cause may well tip the balance in our favor. Zionists, the lunatics are against you. You have been warned.
It matters not that these Trump supporters seem not to realize, or care, that his daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism and married a Jew, making some of Trump’s grandchildren Jewish. The point is that they are willing to trumpet (see what I did there?) their true feelings, and their true feelings dovetail with ours. It is only a matter of time before the increasing numbers of deranged bigots form a critical mass that finally enables us to wrest control of the Jews’ future from the hands of the Jews themselves.
So to the Jews and Zionists, I say, prepare for the end. The moonbats on both ends of the political spectrum have been unleashed as well as unhinged. The end is nigh. To deny that would be, well, crazy.

Morgan Freeman caves into BDS pressure?

One day after the actor posted a photo of himself, Freeman erases ‘Israel’.
Actor Morgan Freeman on Wednesday posted a Facebook profile photo in which he was smiling against the background of Jerusalem's OId City, captioned as "Jerusalem, Israel".
However, on Thursday the actor appeared to cave into anti-Israel attacks and removed “Israel” from under the photo description.
Freeman is currently promoting his National Geographic Channel series, "The Story of God with Morgan Freeman" which has been setting record ratings for the network and is the fourth most-watched telecast of all time for the US network.

‘Vote Was About Denying Israel’s Right to Exist,’ Opponents Say After BDS Passes at U of Chicago

The student government at the University of Chicago (UC) passed a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution against Israel Tuesday, The Algemeiner has learned, with eight in favor, four against and three abstaining.
UChicago Coalition for Peace, a group that had spearheaded efforts to oppose the resolution, immediately stated on its Facebook page that the vote was “a stain” on UC, and did not “represent the values of this University, including freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and commitment to intellectual curiosity.”
The statement continued:
Our council representatives had the chance to accept a resolution stripped of explicit connections to the global BDS movement and also had a chance to affirm their belief in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. This alternative resolution was soundly defeated, sending the message to students on campus that this resolution is not about human rights, but about the vilification of the Jewish state and denying its right to exist in any form.

Did Steven Salaita Just Lose His Job at American University of Beirut?

Some bigots just can’t catch a break. Having been jettisoned from a tenure-track position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for expressing vile and violent anti-Semitic sentiments on social media, Steven Salaita found refuge at American University of Beirut, where he was hired as the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies.
But Salaita’s views, it seems, are too unpalatable even in Lebanon. A petition circulated today and signed by students of the university argues that the official search procedure designed to award Salaita his position was cancelled on March 30 by university president Fadlo Khuri, citing “procedural irregularities.” Which, the petitioners argue, is just code for political persecution. “We fear,” the petition continues, “that AUB is reproducing the trend of persecuting scholars who condemn the injustices committed in Palestine.”
Even if you ignore for one minute the rich irony of this statement—given the absolutely abysmal way Lebanon has treated its sizable Palestinian population, denied access to basic resources like housing, education, and employment for the past six decades—you have to savor the thought of Salaita, who fashioned himself into a martyr wronged by a shady Zionist cabal for criticizing Israel, being now slammed a second time by a university few can accuse of abundant love for the Jewish state.

UK Secular Society head urged to resign over 'anti-Semitic rant'

Following remarks by The National Secular Society’s Executive Director on LBC Radio last week about government’s attempts to close Jewish faith schools, leading UK haredi community figure Rabbi Avrohom Pinter has called on Mr. Porteous Wood to resign his position.
Wood claimed the classic anti-Semitic trope that ‘there is a very, very strong Jewish Lobby which actually undermines – of which the government appear to be frightened – and allows the rule of law to be undermined.’
Pinter - a haredi rabbi who lives in Stamford Hill, London, acts as a spokesman for the Orthodox Jewish community, represents haredi interests on the London Jewish Forum, and is also a school principal - responded by noting the "blatant anti-Semitism" in that statement.
"The National Secular Society has now moved from promoting a secular lifestyle to blatant antisemitism," Pinter said. "With Mr Porteous Wood at its CEO, the NSS can no longer claim any form of legitimacy in the political sphere when we know their opinions are based on prejudice and hate."

Horowitz Freedom Center Targets BDS Supporters with Campus Poster Campaign

The David Horowitz Freedom Center claimed credit today for posters that appeared on the campus of UC-Santa Barbara attacking the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel as a “Hamas-inspired genocidal campaign to destroy the world’s only Jewish state” and naming individual students and faculty members who promote BDS on the Santa Barbara campus. David Horowitz, President of the Freedom Center, commented, “We’ve decided to get up close and personal with merchants of Jew hatred on our campuses.”
Several versions of the posters were hung on campus late last night in a guerilla campaign to draw attention to the problem of Jew hatred at UCSB. In addition to defining the BDS movement as a genocidal campaign to wipe out Israel, one poster names a number of prominent campus BDS activists and states, “The following students and faculty at UC Santa Barbara have allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetrate BDS and Jew Hatred on this campus.”
A second poster displays a photo of armed Palestinian militants with the caption “BDS: The Final Solution to the Israel Problem,” while a third features an enlarged photo of retired UC-Santa Cruz professor Angela Davis who is known for her anti-Israel activism emblazoned with the words “Communist Anti-Israel BDS Supporter.”
All three posters contain the hashtag #StoptheJewHatredonCampus, a reference to the Freedom Center’s campaign and website of the same name, and also include a link to the HorowitzFreedomCenter.org website.

Bipartisan Anti-BDS Bill Passes California Committee

On Wednesday, the anti-BDS Act of 2016 (AB 2844) passed the first of many steps in California’s legislative process, thanks largely to the support of three Republicans and two Democrats on the state’s Assembly Accountability Administrative Review Committee, whose votes pushed the legislation over the top.
BDS stands for “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions,” and is a core element of a global strategy by anti-Israel activists to isolate the Jewish state.
Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) authored AB 2844 along with Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach). The bill prohibits California from contracting with businesses that engage in boycotts against Israel.
“It is great to be moving forward as result” of the bill’s passage, Bloom told Breitbart News on Wednesday. He added that “the bill still has a long road ahead of it,” noting that it passed “by just the bare minimum number of votes needed” to do so. “That tells me there’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” he said.
AB 2844 will be presented to the Judiciary Committee next Tuesday and will eventually make its way through the Appropriations Committee before heading to the Assembly floor where, if it passes, can then proceed to undergo the same process on the Senate side. Ultimately, it must receive Gov. Jerry Brown’s blessing.

US Senator: Investigate German bank for anti-Semitic BDS support

A leading US Senator called on Wednesday for an investigation into Germany’s second largest bank, Commerzbank, because of possible violations of the Illinois State anti-BDS law that seeks to stop boycotts of Israel.
“I am alarmed by reports that Commerzbank, a German bank headquartered in Frankfurt with branches in Illinois and New York, may be one of several German banks facilitating accounts used by anti-Israel and anti-Semitic BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] groups, and I urge the Illinois Investment Policy Board to investigate these reports under our state’s first-in-the-nation anti-BDS law,” US Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, told The Jerusalem Post in a statement.
Kirk, who played a critical role in crafting Iran nuclear and human rights sanctions legislation, is the first Senator to weigh in on German banks enabling BDS groups to wage economic warfare against the Jewish state.
Kirk added “Recent reports of pro-BDS German banks further underscore the need for Congress to pass the Combating BDS Act of 2016, a bipartisan bill to authorize state and local governments to follow Illinois’ lead and divest public taxpayer money from companies engaged in anti-Semitic BDS conduct.”

Israeli Jordan Valley Farmers to EU: We Will Not Label Products

Israeli Jordan Valley farmers told European parliamentarians on Wednesday that they would not label their products as coming from “the occupied territories,” despite European Union guidelines that may require them to do so.
A conference held Wednesday in the Jordan Valley was attended by a number of European representatives, including the leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache.
David Elhayani, the head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, said at the conference, “They are demanding that we label agricultural produce. I want to say to everyone who seeks to harm us: Your hope will not be realized….We have no intention of doing what you ask. We will not label our agricultural produce. We are determined to fight this phenomenon and to struggle against this unethical and discriminatory [demand] that has remnants of a dark time.”

Guardian letter by Gilad Atzmon ally blames ‘100 years of Arab hostility to West’ on Zionism

[Karl] Sabbagh ostensibly sets out to correct a claim about the Sykes-Picot agreement in an article by the Guardian’s Giles Fraser, but quickly pivots to ‘setting the record straight’ on the broader historical record concerning Britain’s “unjust treatment of Palestine”.
His letter begins thusly:
Giles Fraser makes one small but significant error in his piece on the Sykes-Picot agreement (Loose canon, 8 April). He says that the agreement “gave … Palestine to the British”. In fact, Britain and France each wanted Palestine and, as will be revealed in an al-Jazeera documentary on which I am a consultant, to avoid coming to blows Sykes and Picot agreed that it should be put under international administration. This avoided the intolerable situation for each country of seeing its long-term rival control Palestine. However, in 1918, at a meeting in 10 Downing Street with the French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, Lloyd George asked for – and got – Palestine for the British. The British then, of course, set in motion a process that made the country Jewish, even though its population was 90% Arab.
First, “Palestine” prior to 1948 was not a “country”, but a large territory with a uniquely Jewish historical connection. At no time in history was there an independent Arab state of Palestine. This is why, on July 24, 1922, the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (recognizing this historic connection) laid down the Jewish legal right to “reconstitute their national home” by settling “anywhere in western Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea”.
Also, in light of the Partition Plan of 1947 (accepted by the Jews, but rejected by the Arabs), it would of be more accurate if Sabbagh were to say that British control of Palestine “set in motion a process” that offered independent states to both Jews and Arabs.

BBC report on assassination in Lebanon fails to provide context

Neither are they informed that the same agreement (which was annulled in 1987 by the Lebanese parliament) allowed the PLO to establish military bases in Lebanon and to conduct cross-border terrorist operations against Israel.
Both the Taif Agreement (1989) and UNSC resolution 1559 (2004) called for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias but neither Hizballah nor the various Palestinian militias complied with those conditions.
Obviously that missing historical context is crucial to audience understanding of the background to the story reported in this article.

Human Rights Groups: Neo-Fascists, Islamic Extremists Behind Rise in Antisemitic Hate Crimes in OSCE Countries

The number of antisemitic hate crimes in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) region are rising and neo-fascist and Islamist groups are the cause, a human rights report published on Tuesday claims.
The report, issued jointly by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Human Rights First (HRF), found that OSCE states, which include the US, under-report hate crimes and fail to live up to their commitments to fight them. The report was published days before an OSCE conference in Vienna aimed at promoting tolerance and nondiscrimination.
“In some OSCE countries there has been a rise in antisemitic hate crime,” the report stated. “This alarming development can be traced to both incitement from neo-fascist groups and the growth of violent Islamist extremist groups. Antisemitism is a virulent thread that runs through the ideologies of many extremist groups, even though their worldviews converge on little else.”
The governments of Greece, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland and France were specifically named in the report for the rise of “openly antisemitic, anti-Muslim, racist and homophobic far-right political parties.”

Dutch Protestant Church Issues Official Condemnation of Martin Luther’s Antisemitic Teachings

The Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) denounced on Monday the five centuries-old antisemitic teachings by founder Martin Luther, the NL Times reported.
The first-of-its-kind condemnation from the PKN states that the church “absolutely disagrees” with Luther’s antisemitism, adding that it is reflective of the “dark pages” in Lutheran history.
In 1543, Luther wrote a treatise titled On the Jews and their Lies, in which he advocated labor camps, the burning of synagogues and Jewish schools and the confiscation of Jewish property and money. Referring to Jews as “poisonous envenomed worms” and “base, whoring people,” Luther said Jews should not be shown mercy or kindness.
Rabbi Raphael Evans, of the Dutch Jewish umbrella organization NIK, hailed the PKN’s declaration, but said it may not be enough. “I sometimes get the question whether the excuses now are still necessary, given the declaration by the Lutheran World Federation back in 1983. However, I fear that warning against antisemitism is never sufficient,” he was quoted as stating by the World Jewish Congress.

Holocaust scholar who said Poles killed Jews grilled by police

Gross, a professor based at Princeton University, told The Associated Press he was questioned for five hours Tuesday in Katowice but does not yet know if he will be charged with the alleged offense, which can carry a prison term of up to three years.
Poland’s case against Gross, which also involves a presidential threat to strip him of a state honor, has raised questions about the conservative leadership’s commitment to the freedom of scholarship. Law and Justice, a conservative and nationalistic party that controls both the presidency and parliament, is also centralizing power in a way that has raised concerns about its commitment to democracy more broadly.
Gross was questioned after multiple complaints were filed with prosecutors by Polish citizens over an article published last year in which Gross said Poles killed more Jews during the German occupation than they killed Germans — a claim that challenges a widespread conviction in Poland that the Polish response to the German terror was almost exclusively honorable.

Dumping Israel love-fest, Dubai security chief embraces anti-Semitism

The Dubai security chief who made headlines last month by calling for an Arab coalition with Israel has since made numerous anti-Semitic comments online, apparently backtracking on his congeniality toward the Jewish state.
Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, deputy head of Dubai Police and General Security, embarked on a days-long Twitter screed in mid-March calling for open ties with Israel and accepting the possible failure of an independent Palestinian state. He also said Arabs should not treat Jews as enemies
However, later in March, he appeared to pull an about-face, predicting the destruction of Israel and lashing out at what he called “Jewish control” of the US.
“Israel will fall on its own evil actions. I suggest to my Jewish cousins to give the Palestinians a state on 1947 borders,” Tamim wrote on March 29, referring to the year before the creation of the State of Israel.

Louis C.K. is coming to Israel for some quick cash

Comedian Louis C.K. is coming to Israel sometime soon, apparently to supplement his income after he blew all his savings on a self-financed TV show.
C.K. told radio host Howard Stern Tuesday that he will do the show at a large venue such as a soccer stadium, and would “get as much money over there as I would here at home.”
No other information is currently available as to the date of C.K.’s show, and his website does not list any future tour dates in the US or Europe.
According to several recent news pieces about the comedian, he’s broke because “Horace and Pete,” his self-financed TV show, distributed on his own website, has not earned what he expected.
C.K. told Stern that his plan was to spend two million dollars of his own money on the first four episodes before financing the remaining six with profits made from the first episodes.

Google gives $700K to Israeli disabilities technology initiative

The search engine giant’s grant to Tikkun Olam Makers, or TOM, was announced Tuesday as part of the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities campaign.
Google’s funding will “underwrite TOM’s plans to support a global movement of innovators creating extremely affordable solutions to neglected needs of people with disabilities, with the goal of improving the lives of 250,000,000 within a decade,” according to a statement from The Reut Group, the Tel Aviv-based nonprofit think tank that started the initiative.
Tikkun Olam Makers holds three-day innovation makethons in which engineers and technologists come together to invent products for people with disabilities — like a bionic hand and a walker that helps disabled people climb stairs. It claims to have created 120 product prototypes since 2014.

Motorola Solutions to set up Israel innovation center

American technology giant Motorola Solutions has announced it will be establishing an innovation center in Israel that will deal with cyber, analytics, mobile and the Internet of Things.
On Wednesday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with Motorola Solutions Chairman and CEO Greg Brown in Jerusalem, where the decision was formally announced.
The move will be a boost to the Israeli economy, providing jobs and helping to encourage future investments in the Jewish state.
Motorola Solutions noted that it views its Israeli branch "as a strategic asset and that the establishment of the aforesaid center expresses its continued long-term commitment to Israel and Israeli industry, which began in the 1970's with the establishment – in Israel – of the company's first development center outside North America.
"The new development will entail the recruitment of additional workers from Israel's talent pool and express the deepening of the company's commitment to the start-up nation. To this end, the company intends to increase its investment in Israel by establishing the innovation center that will produce new technological developments for export to the entire world.

What Did Americans Know as the Holocaust Unfolded? Quite a Lot

History Unfolded is an initiative of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is using crowdsourcing to scour newspapers across the country for articles that ran between 1933 and 1945 on the plight of Europe's Jews.
Some were shocked to see how much news had been printed on the Holocaust. "My prevailing notion about this period in time was that a lot of what had happened with the Nazis during the '30s and '40s was not that well-known," said Sandi Auerbach, 62, a retired IBM financial manager who is a member of the museum and has contributed more than two dozen articles to the project.
"I am amazed, quite frankly, at the coverage that there was in a lot of different papers," Auerbach said. "For example, in 1933 there was a huge rally in Madison Square Garden with 20,000 people in attendance to protest the persecution of Jews in Germany." Contributors say they have been struck by detailed accounts of the Nazis' persecution and slaughter of Jews.
Tayte Patton, 17, whose English class in Lexington, Ky., is participating, said he was shocked at the U.S.' inaction. "I never knew that we didn't want to let Jews into the country," he said. "I always thought that we would let anyone in, that we would be a refuge for the Jews."

BBC Passover Documentary to Highlight Plight of French Jews Amid Rising Antisemitism

A BBC documentary scheduled to air during Passover will explore the plight of French Jewry.
The program, Never Again: Fear and Faith in Paris, will examine “the decision of 8,000 Jews to leave France in 2014, concerned about the recent terror attacks and rising antisemitism in the country.” The program will feature interviews with families affected by antisemitism, as well as “insight” from Lassana Bathily, a Muslim from the suburbs of Paris who saved Jews during the Hyper Cacher supermarket attack in 2015.
Among the notable figures who appear in the documentary is Rudi Leavor, president and chairman of the Bradford Reform Synagogue, and Jani Rashid, the first Muslim to be appointed to the congregation’s executive board.

The Soviet Campaign to Eliminate Passover

By 1930, the notoriously antisemitic Soviet leader Joseph Stalin lost patience with the quixotic and typically unsuccessful propaganda efforts of the Yevsektsiia. Under his influence, the attacks on Jews and Judaism grew far more vicious and deadly, and celebrating even Sovietized Passover Seders became dangerous, entering a phase of persecution that is unfortunately familiar to students of Jewish history.
The Red Haggadahs of the 1920s, however, testify to an unusual period when overt government discrimination was milder. In her research Dr. Shternsis transcribed the childhood memories of Samuil Gil, who recalled how the Komsomol (Communist Youth) movement organized distribution of forbidden hametz on the first day of Passover: “We were given the task of going to Jewish homes and throwing a piece [of bread] into the window of ten different houses. The one who was fastest would receive a prize. We enjoyed the game very much, especially when the old, angry women ran out of their houses and ran after us screaming ‘apikorsim![heretics]' We felt like heroes of the Revolution and were very proud. In the evening, though, we would all go home and celebrate the traditional Seder with all the necessary rituals.”
Gil’s experience, specific to the unusual conditions of 1920s Ukraine, is also illustrative of the eternal pattern of Jewish history: “In every generation, someone rises to destroy us – but the Holy One rescues us from their hands.” Just as this truism is affirmed, so too may the conclusion of the Haggadah become our collective reality – next year in Jerusalem!

IsraelDailyPicture: Passover: Whoever Is Hungry, Come and Partake of this Yemenite Seder

Passover is one of the three pilgrimage festivals mentioned in the Bible along with Sukkot and Shavuot. Historians and rabbinic literature refer to hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who filled the streets and alleyways of Jerusalem, bringing sacrifices to the Temple.
The Temple Institute's depiction of a Passover seder at the time of the Temple. Note the pascal lamb on the table. Today as well, Jews from all over the world and from all over Israel make their pilgrimages to the holy city.
The Library of Congress photographic collection includes a series of photographs of Yemenite residents of Jerusalem celebrating their Passover seder in 1939. Note their low table and compare it to the painting of a Seder during the time of the Temple, taken from the Passover Seder Haggadah of the Temple Institute in Jerusalem.

The Passover story featuring Adele and Justin Bieber
Featuring Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Pharaoh. You have to see it to believe it.

Passover tech
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology tells the Passover story in a very new way....Technion where miracles are brought to life!

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