The decision to eject the senior class of the Yeshiva of Flatbush in Brooklyn from a flight was not anti-Semitic, an internal school report found.

AirTran Airways “abused its discretion” in forcing the 101 students off the early morning flight June 3 to their senior trip in Atlanta, according to the report, obtained by the Times of Israel and authored by the yeshiva’s executive director, Rabbi Seth Linfield.

Flight attendants said the students did not stay seated and continued to use their mobile devices in advance of takeoff, despite their requests as well as from the captain. The report found that students erred by not turning off their cellphones.

“At no time did the students disrespect the flight crew in words or tone — beyond not immediately complying with the directives… to turn off all electronic devices,” the report said, according to the report.

The yeshiva said the airline crew rejected offers of assistance from the seven school chaperones in controlling the students and that the medias headline the incident because of claims that the airplane officials acted out of anti-Semitism.

The yeshiva apologized to AirTran, a subsidiary of Southwest Airlines, “to the extent that any of our students behaved in a way that was perceived by the flight crew to be disrespectful or disobedient.”

It also praised AirTran for giving vouchers to the students to continue on to Atlanta and working to rebook them.

Florida Atlantic University has launched a website promoting diversity following complaints from Jewish groups about activities on campus by a pro-Palestinian group.

The website features a video on which faculty and students describe the Boca Raton school as diverse and open to students of all faiths. The video was created after meetings between the university leadership and the Florida chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.

Students for Justice in Palestine last year sent 200 students eviction notices bearing the university’s official stamp as a means of calling attention to what it said are Israel’s policies toward Palestinians. A number of Jewish students among the 200 said they felt threatened by the notices and violated university policy.

The video on the new website launches with positive impressions from Jews, including a professor of Judaic studies, the president of the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County and a Jewish student.

An African-American said she sought information about other minorities on campus, and named the campus Hillel House as one to which she turned.

The Norwegian daily newspaper Dagbladet said Jewish reactions to its caricature on circumcision “are similar” to riots that erupted over cartoons mocking Mohammed eight years ago.

Referencing Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten caricatures of Mohammed in 2005, Dagbladet wrote in a statement, “We now have similar reactions to a cartoon that Dagbladet printed last week.”

Several people died in what The New York Times termed “a wave of violent protests by Muslims” in the Middle East and Europe over the caricatures mocking Mohammed.

Last week, several Jewish organizations condemned the Dagbladet caricature, which showed two people, who were widely perceived to be Jewish because of their clothing, maiming a child with a fork and bolt cutter while holding a book and professing their faith.

Dagbladet has justified itself and criticized the Jewish reaction by simply re-defining anti-Semitism as love for Jews. The caricature was not at all against Jews, said the paper, which went on to claim it actually is champion of snuffing out anti-Semitism.

Not only that. It seems to understand that the anger of Jews is a camouflage for some kind of evil intentions.

“The groups which said the circumcision caricature was anti-Semitic “leave little room for nuances and reflections,” the paper wrote in a statement published this week on its website.

“They claim that this is proof of Dagbladet’s anti-Semitic views. We come from a different angle and have a different interpretation of the cartoon,” the statement read. “It is important to distinguish between friend and foe when considering this question of values. Dagbladet has a long and consistent history of fighting anti-Semitism.”

The JTA contributed to this report.

Kasim Kaz Hafeez, a British Muslim of Pakistani origin, spoke out against Muslim antisemitism at the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism International Conference in Jerusalem, which was organized by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, in order to show his support for Israel. The conference attendees were split into working groups, such as: antisemitism on campuses, antisemitism in the former Soviet Republics, and antisemitism within the Muslim world. Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch was the co-chair for the working group on Muslim antisemitism and invited Hafeez to speak.

In his speech, Hafeez spoke about his “experience growing up around antisemitic messageswithin the Muslim community in Europe,” how “the messages affected and impacted” him, and “how the British university campus transformed” him into an antiSemite, until he “saw the light.”

Hafeez discussed how he came out of it. “The main emphasis was looking at antisemitism and the ways to combat it,” Hafeez explained.“I gave examples of extremist videos and DVDs and how they teach that it is a duty to kill the Jews.” He also spoke about “the link between antisemitism and anti-Zionism and how this delegitimization of Israel, negating Israel’s right to exist, is a key component of Muslim antisemitism.”

As a Pakistani Muslim, Hafeez finds it very interesting that many Pakistani Muslims hold antisemitic views, given the fact that most have never even met a Jewish person and have no personal experiences related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He believes that the main explanation for why Muslims from countries like Pakistan have become so antisemitic is because of the propaganda disseminating throughout the Muslim world as well as the rise of radical Islam. Jamaat al Islami, the Muslim Brotherhood of Asia, for example, teaches antisemitism to the masses of Pakistan, preaching that the Jews are responsible for all of the worlds’ problems and that it is good to kill them.

As for antisemitism in the United Kingdom and Europe generally, Hafeez claimed that it is a growing problem and a lot of it has been spread via hostility to the State of Israel. He claims that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being used to further antisemitic ideas, statements, and images, yet it is being “repackaged as anti-Israel. So instead of saying Jews control the world, they say the Zionists control the world. It has become acceptable, sadly.” Hafeez believes that the best way to deal with Muslim antisemitism in the United Kingdom is to acknowledge the problem, for “you can’t tackle an issue until you mention it is an issue.” He suggests a zero tolerance policy when it comes to antisemitism, because “one attack because of religious or racial hatred is one too many.”

At the conference, Hafeez claimed that he only got positive reactions and he hopes that some good recommendations for how to address antisemitism will come out of it. Hafeez asserted that his main reason for coming to Israel was to show solidarity with the State of Israel and to work towards eradicating antisemitism because “the same groups, the same people that propagate antisemitism will turn their focus to other groups, so it is so important that we stand against hatred and intolerance.” He sincerely hopes that other Muslims will understand why it was important for him to come to Israel to speak at this special conference. Although he realistically expects a lot of hostility, Hafeez believes that he is moving in the right direction if even one or two Muslims come to understand the importance of coming to Israel to take a stand against antisemitism.

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A letter handwritten by Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish soldier who was wrongly convicted of treason in 1894, was sold at auction for nearly half a million dollars.

The letter, which Dreyfus sent from prison to government officials in an attempt to clear his name, was sold Wednesday for $492,000 at an auction organized by Sotheby’s Paris branch. It was not expected to bring in more than $190,000, according to the French news agency AFP.

Due to Sotheby’s privacy policy, French media did not report the names of the seller or the buyer, but the buyer reportedly participated in the auction over the phone, outbidding several interested parties.

AFP reported that Dreyfus’ grandson, Charles Dreyfus, wrote an open letter this week urging the seller not to sell but to give the letter to a museum.

The letter was “probably given by Pierre Dreyfus, the son of Alfred, to the national French library for safekeeping on May 1940 so that they may protect it from the German occupation,” Sotheby’s said. “The letter was then returned to the Dreyfus family in 1951 and bought” by the person who sold it at Sotheby’s in 1996, the news agency reported.

A captain in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus was exonerated in 1906 of his conviction on charges of spying for Germany after a lengthy court battle rife with anti-Semitic overtones, which historians describe as a determinant of modern Zionism and a major influence on Theodore Herzl – an Austrian journalist who covered the trial and later founded the World Zionist Congress.

The case was widely denounced as a miscarriage of justice, most notably in “J’accuse,” an open letter by Emile Zola published in 1898 on the front page of the newspaper L’Aurore.

The Polish Academy of Sciences has dismissed historian Prof. Krzysztof Jasiewicz following an interview in which he partly blames Jews for the Holocaust.

Jasiewicz, 61, will lose his position as head of the Department of Analysis of Eastern Issues on June 1 but announced that he will appeal the decision.

In the interview, which was published in April in a special edition of Focus magazine on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Jasiewicz said that “generations of Jews worked for centuries to bring about the Holocaust,” that “without the active participation of the Jews, the Holocaust would have been impossible.

He also stated, “It is a waste of time to dialogue with the Jews.”

Director of the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Professor Eugeniusz Cezary Krol, said in a statement that Jasiewicz was fired for violating the elementary standards of scientific rigor.

Scholars and historians at the academy protested against what Jasiewicz said in the popular scientific magazine, saying his opinions were harmful.

Jasiewicz not only did not regret his remarks but also defended them. “The Jews accuse us [Poles] of the worst of everything; they are violent and arrogant against us. Our role in this dialogue is limited to apologizing,” he told Do Rzeczy magazine in an article about the controversy.

The leading Norwegian daily Dagbladet published a caricature of what appeared to be Jews torturing a baby during a circumcision, and the European Jewish Congress said it may sue it for committing a hate crime.

The caricature that appeared in Tuesday’s newspaper, the country’s third largest in terms of circulation – showed police officers looking on as a bearded man wearing a black hat and black coat sticks a three-tooth pitchfork into the head of a blood-soaked baby while holding a book.

Another unseen person cuts off the baby’s foot with a bolt cutter as a woman in a long-sleeve shirt and a hat shows the officers another blood-spattered book and tells them: “Abuse? No, this tradition is central to our belief.” The police officers apologize “for interrupting.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Copper, said the cartoon was “so virulently anti-Semitic it would make Hitler and Himmler weep tears of joy.”

Manfred Gerstenfeld, a scholar of anti-Semitism and former chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said the caricature “cannot be viewed separately from centuries of libels in Christian circles that try to establish a link between the ritual abuse of blood and the Jewish faith.”

But in an email sent to MIFF, a Norwegian pro-Israel organization, Dagbladet cartoon artist Tomas Drefvelin said he did not mean to draw Jews in his caricature, which he meant “not as criticism of either a specific religion or a nation [but] as a general criticism of religions,” Drefvelin wrote.

He added, “I gave the people in the picture hats, and the man beard, because this gives them a more religious character … Jew-hatred is reprehensible. I would never draw to create hatred of a people, or against individuals.”

Ervin Kohn, the president of Norway’s Jewish community, told JTA that in Norway, “it is not uncommon to compare brit mila with cutting off limbs and calling it mutilation. This is a form of lying, propaganda.”

European Jewish Congress president Dr. Moshe Kantor stated, “This cartoon has crossed all lines of decency and is dripping with hate and anti-Semitism. We are now studying the possibility that this legally constitutes incitement to hatred and even a hate-crime and will require legal action if this proves to be the case.

“This obviously falls outside the boundaries of freedom of speech as no one has the freedom to incite hatred against a particular people.

“The reason we have laws against hate is because modern society understands the connection between incitement and violence.

“This is a violent cartoon which is meant to inspire hate and contempt against one particular people. This type of hate, reminiscent of Nazi propaganda, cannot be left unanswered, and it is exactly this type of incitement which is contributing to a very troubling period for minorities in Europe at this time, especially with the rise of the far-Right.”

A school in a heavily Muslim neighborhood of The Hague delayed plans for a Holocaust monument over fears of Muslim vandalism.

Gerard Brasjen, a spokesman for the Paul Kruger School, told JTA on Tuesday that the Christian-affiliated school’s board had discussed a plan to place a commemorative plaque on the school facade, but the plan stalled “not because of the Jewish-Muslim issue but because it may not be wise in the neighborhood, which is not a peaceful place.”

Before the Holocaust, the building of the Paul Kruger School, in the Schilderswijk neighborhood, housed the Joodsch Lyceum, a Jewish high school. Kruger was an Afrikaner national leader.

Last week, the De Telegraaf daily reported that the school dropped the plan following objections by local residents who said a Holocaust plaque might not be acceptable to some members of Schilderswijk’s sizable Muslim population, but Brasjen said he was not aware of such objections.

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, a Hague-based watchdog on anti-Semitism, wrote in a statement Monday that “it seems that the school feared there would be protests,” but “there is little reason to fear violence against memorial monuments for Jewish children in the area.”

Anat Harel, a co-organizer of a Holocaust commemoration event May 4 at the school, told De Telegraaf that a poster advertising the event could not be placed outside the building “because of concerns regarding kids hanging around the school.”

Following the publication, the anti-Muslim Party for Freedom asked Security and Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten to research anti-Semitism among Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands.

The Irish Times reported that a part of the Schilderswijk neighborhood is in the “Sharia triangle” that is being run by a form of unofficial Sharia police.

A nearly all-Muslim population of approximately 5,000 people surrounds the El Islam mosque in the neighborhood that has been called “orthodox Muslim territory.”

“[An] investigation found that orthodox Muslims had become so dominant that they were dictating what people in the neighborhood wore and how they behave,” according to the newspaper.

“One woman told how her daughter had been approached and told her short skirt was inappropriate, while her son had been called a “kaffir” – a racist term formerly used in colonial South Africa to refer to a black person – for smoking,” the report added.