Anti-Semitism raised its ugly head most alarmingly in 2018, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center has reminded us just how much so with the release of its annual Top Ten list of worst global anti-Semitic incidents for 2018.
Topping the list is the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the US, followed by Louis Farrakhan, Airbnb, swastikas on multiple US campuses, the Jeremy Corbyn-led British Labour Party, and Roger Waters.
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1. TREE OF LIFE SYNAGOGUE: THE DEADLIEST ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACK IN THE UNITED STATES
The deadliest anti-Semitic attack ever committed in the United States took place on October 27 when 46-year old white supremacist, Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and shot to death eleven worshipers and wounded six others before police arrested him.
How could this have possibly happened in the United States? Why now? With hate crimes on the rise in the U.S., including a 57% rise in anti-Semitic incidents, the shooting in Pittsburgh illustrates the dangers of a society in which openly espousing hatred and intolerance on social media – and in the real world – are no longer taboo.
2. FARRAKHAN DEPLOYING NAZI PROPAGANDA, LOUIS FARRAKHAN DEHUMANIZES
During an October speech in Detroit, Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, said this about Jews: “I’m not mad at you because you’re so stupid… So when they talk about Farrakhan, and call me a hater, you do what they do: call me an anti-Semite…. Stop it, I’m an anti-termite.”
In May, Farrakhan lost his Twitter account after ranting about “satanic Jews” during a three-hour speech.
3. US CAMPUSES SWASTIKAS DESECRATE US CAMPUSES
Alarming anti-Semitic attacks on American campuses followed the synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, PA. Clinical psychologist Elizabeth Midlarsky found anti-Semitic graffiti spray-painted in her office at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York City. At Duke University a swastika was daubed over a mural commemorating the victims of the Pittsburgh shooting. Three swastikas were discovered at Cornell University, and a Jewish fraternity at Penn State had its menorah vandalized and stolen.
Dozens of similar episodes took place at schools across the nation. Flyers blaming Jews for sexual assault allegations against US Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh were posted at UC Berkeley and UC Davis in the West and at Vassar and Marist colleges in the East. Members of extremist groups, like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), created hostile environments for Jewish students by posting quotes on social media like, “Let’s stuff some Jews in the ovens” and “every time I read about Hitler, I fall in love again.”
4. A CORBYN-LED UK GOVERNMENT WOULD BE ‘AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT’ TO JEWS
Allegations of anti-Semitism on the part of key members and officials of the UK’s Labour Party officials have piled up in recent years, injecting the world’s oldest hatred into the mainstream of society. Party leader Jeremy Corbyn stands directly responsible. In July, Britain’s three leading Jewish newspapers published a joint article warning of “the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Corbyn government.” A poll conducted at the end of summer concluded that 40% of the Jewish community would consider leaving the U.K. if Labour took the election.
In April, Corbyn showed up for a “third night” Passover Seder that radical Jewish group “Jewdas” hosted. The group claims that Israel is “a steaming pile of sewage, which needs to be properly disposed of.”
Multiple photos of Corbyn embracing members of Middle East terrorist groups added to the fears of many British citizens well beyond the Jewish community.
5. UNRWA: ENABLERS OF HAMAS MASSIVE CHILD ABUSE WITH A ‘PEACE’ CURRICULUM THAT ERASES ISRAEL AND VENERATES MASS MURDERER OF JEWS
UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine) has become a de facto enabler of Hamas’ terrorist fiefdom in Gaza. The curriculum in UNRWA schools promotes anti-Semitism, won’t use the name Israel and is unwilling to teach about the Holocaust.
Hamas effectively controls the UNRWA teachers’ union and teachers resort to social media to promote terrorism against Israelis and to “stab Zionist dogs”.
6. AIRBNB BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER UNLESS YOU ARE JEW LIVING IN GUSH ETZION
Airbnb is a trailblazing company that matches travelers with local home owners willing to rent to tourists. In October, Airbnb announced it would delist 200 rentals in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. Airbnb announced that Israeli settlements “are at the core of the dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians.”
Airbnb, whichs claims to oppose BDS, does not extend its diplomacy to Cyprus or the scores of other disputed territories around the world.
7. GERMAN BANK STANDS WITH ANTI-SEMITIC BDSERS
In 2018, Germany’s Bank for Social Economy insisted on doing business with the radical “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East,” which strongly endorses boycotting the Jewish state. The group’s sister organization, the US-based “Jewish Voice for Peace,” hosted convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh at one of its conferences. Odeh was responsible for the 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing, which killed two Hebrew University students. Henryk Broder, a highly respected German pundit, labeled the German-based Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, “a bunch of anti-Semites.” The German LGBT group Magnus Hirschfeld, named after a victim of the Holocaust, cancelled its account with the bank to protest its pro-BDS business policy.
8. EPISCOPAL BISHOP FABRICATES ISRAELI ATROCITIES
During a speech in Massachusetts last July, Bishop Gayle Harris reported that she witnessed an Israeli soldier arrest a three-year-old Arab child on the Jerusalem Temple Mount and gun down a 15-year old Arab teen in the back. After the Simon Wiesenthal Center exposed the claims as fabrications, Harris, the #2 Episcopal clergy in the state, backtracked, saying that she had only heard the stories from a third party—an Arab. “The fault is solely mine,” Harris said. “I was ill-advised to repeat the stories without verification.”
Numerous American church leaders have embraced the PA Arab narrative in the Holy Land, often to the detriment of the 8.9 million Jewish, Christian, and Muslim citizens of Israel.
9. ROGER WATERS, AN ANTI-SEMITE WHO LECTURES JEWS ON ANTI- SEMITISM
There are few performers whose anti-Israel vitriol matches that of Roger Waters. Despite his protests to the contrary, the Pink Floyd star has, for years, crossed the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. 2018 has been a busy year for Waters.
Waters told an audience in Berlin that “anti-Semitism is obscene,” but he insists on defining for the victim what anti-Semitism is. For him, the worst anti-Semitic culprits are the Israelis. Waters, whose signature pig adorned with a Star of David floats above his concerts across Europe, continues to pressure fellow entertainers to boycott the Jewish state.
10. RENOWNED SWEDISH HOSPITAL FAILS TO TREAT CANCER OF ANTI-SEMITISM
Every year, Sweden’s Karolinska Institute announces the Nobel Prize for Medicine. But now, a dark cloud hangs over its Karolinska University Hospital for failing to deal quickly and forthrightly when history’s oldest hate manifested in its top ranks.
The head of neurosurgery at Karolinska has systematically discriminated against three Jewish doctors, blocking them from helping their patients and even hindering continued research at the Institute. Two of the doctors left the hospital, fed up with the intimidation and discrimination. But when the neurosurgery department head posted blatant anti-Semitism on his Facebook page, the Wiesenthal Center was asked to intervene.
Despite a face-to-face meeting between Rabbi Abraham Cooper and the hospital’s CEO, the scandal remains unresolved after 11 months. “We are shocked by the lethargic response of Karolinska to the cancer of anti-Semitism,” Rabbi Cooper said.