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The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism
Newsletter
Volume 1 No. 8
9 February 2007

YIISA SEMINAR SERIES ANTISEMITISM IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

On February 15, Professor Michael Keith, Director of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London, will speak on "Geopolitics on the Street; Transnational, the Political Imaginary and a Personal Account of Contemporary London's Elections." This seminar will be held at ISPS, 77 Prospect Street, room A002.

On February 22, Gabriel Schoenfeld, Senior Editor of Commentary Magazine, will speak on "The Return of Antisemitism." This seminar will be held in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street, room 101.

Please see the seminar website for the Spring semester schedule. Please note that many of our seminars this semester will be held in room 101 at Linsly-Chittenden.


YALE CAMPUS EVENTS

Wednesday, Feb. 14 at 12:00
Judaic Studies Seminar: Human and Angelic Prayer in Jewish and Christian Traditions
Two Choirs: Praying with the Angels
WHC, 53 Wall Street, room 208
With Esther Chazon, the Jacob Perlow Visiting Associate Professor of Judaic Studies/Religious Studies
Hosted by the Program in Judaic Studies.  Lunch will be provided.
For more info, contact barbara.devlin@yale.edu

Wednesday, Feb. 14 at 4:00
"America and the World: Restoring a Damaged Foreign Policy"
Speaker, Strobe Talbott, President, The Brookings Institute
Luce Hall Auditorium, 34 Hillhouse
Sponsored by The MacMillan Center

Wednesday, Feb. 14 at 4:30
"The Regional Implications of Iraq's Sectarian Conflict"
Speaker, Professor Vali Nasr, Naval Postgraduate School
Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York Street, room 211
Sponsored by International Security Studies


PODCASTS

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum -- Voices on Antisemitism
Voices on Antisemitism, an audio/podcast series of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum features a broad range of perspectives about antisemitism and hatred today. Every other week, the USHMM posts a brief (5 minute) statement from a distinguished thinker about the continuing threat of antisemitism. Voices on Antisemitism has included Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christopher Browning, Robert Satloff, and many others. Listeners can subscribe to Voices on Antisemitism as a podcast or listen online through the Museum's Web site.
Click here to listen


YIISA in the News

Yale Institute Founder Thinks Big in the Fight against Antisemitism
An interview with Charles Small, the Director of YIISA, "going after nothing less than the modern plague of prejudice."
Click here to read


REPORTS

Antisemitic Incidents and Discourse in Europe during the Israeli - Hezbollah War in 2006
A report from the Community Security Trust (London) covers the months of July, August and part of September 2006. It reflects a snapshot of the atmosphere that prevailed in Europe (country by country) during the Israeli - Hezbollah war.
Click here to read the report

The Israel Project
Pollster Stanley Greenberg has conducted surveys for the past three years in Britain, France, Germany and the United States. A summary of his lecture and findings.
Click here


ARTICLES OF INTEREST

Israeli's Worst Nightmare
(The New Republic) Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael Oren write about a nuclear Iran. "The threat of a theologically motivated nuclear assault against Israel tends to be downplayed in the west, not so here [Israel]."
Click here to read

Antisemitic Acts across Europe Rose Significantly in 2006
(Ha'aretz) Figures for antisemitic acts in Germany, Austria and Scandanavian countries increased dramatically, a study finds.
Click here to read

War Pushes UK Anti-Semitism to Record High
(Guardian) Attacks on Jews in the UK rose to record levels last year, peaking during the Israel-Lebanon conflict over summer, a new report revealed.
Click here to read

Anti-Semitism in Islam: Israel Didn't Start the Fire
(History News Network) Timothy Furnish writes that "hatred of Jews runs much deeper than a century or so into the past. In fact, it originates not only in the actions of the founder of Islam himself, but also in the eschatological belief-system of the world’s second-largest religion."
Click here to read

What Makes an Antisemite
(Ha'aretz) Dina Porat writes about the new definition of anti-semitism that was approved by the European Union in June 2005. "Why was a new, international, practical definition needed, and why did non-Jewish organizations invest ongoing efforts in discussions on its formulation?"
Click here to read

Essay Linking Liberal Jews and anti-Semitism Sparks Furor
(New York Times) An essay written by Alvin Rosenfeld, an English professor at Indiana University, titled “ ‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” says a number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent anti-Semitism by questioning whether Israel should even exist. It was published on the American Jewish Committee website, and was first presented at a YIISA seminar last year.
Click here to read

More Young Muslims Back Sharia, Polls Says
(The Guardian) A new survey finds that a growing numbers of young Muslims are inspired by political Islam and feel they have less in common with non-Muslims than their parents  do.
Click here to read

Muslims "About to Take over Europe"
(Jerusalem Post) An interview with Bernard Lewis who asks the question "Will it be an Islamized Europe or a Europeanized Islam?"
Click here to read

Carter Says "Too Many Jews" on Holocaust Council
(YNet) Monroe Freedman, a former executive member of the government's Holocaust Memorial Council reveals that in 1982 when making recommendations for council board members his memo to President Carter was returned with a note on the upper right hand corner that stated, "Too many Jews." The note, Freedman said, was written in Carter's
handwriting and was initialed by Carter.
Click here to read

My Problem with Jimmy Carter
(The Middle East Quarterly) Kenneth W. Stein, Professor at Emory University, explains why he resigned as executive head of the Carter Center "over both the inaccuracies in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid and its message, which contradicts the Carter Center's founding purpose."
Click here to read

Our Worst Ex-President
(Commentary) "In order to understand the man today [Jimmy Carter], it is necessary to see him in the light of his past," writes Joshua Muravchik.
Click here to read

Yad Vashem Launches Website in Farsi
(Jerusalem Post) Every year, nearly 20,000 people from Muslim countries, including Iran, visit the Yad Vashem Web site. "We believe that making credible, comprehensive information about the Holocaust available to Persian speakers can contribute to the fight against Holocaust denial," said Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem's chairman.
Click here to read

Iranians Visit Yad Vashem Site
(Jerusalem Post) Since the Persian site went on-line late Thursday night, some 11,000 hits have been recorded, including 2,242 visits from Iran.
Click here to read

Yad Vashem to Collect Names from FSU
(Jerusalem Post) The "Immortalization Month" campaign aims to gather as many names as possible of the hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who perished.
Click here to read

New Study: Iran Seeks "Nuclear Ambiguity" Likely to Act "Logically"
(Ha'aretz) According to a study, as Iran formulates its nuclear policy, it will have to decide on one of three options: a) to remain on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons - to avoid developing a nuclear arsenal immediately, but developing the capability to do so on short notice; b) to adopt a policy of nuclear ambiguity - to produce nuclear weapons, but to avoid making their existence public and testing them, in the hope of averting further pressure on Tehran.
Click here to read

What Jewish Organizations Must Do About Iran
(Jerusalem Post) Professor Shlomo Avineri calls for the Diaspora Jewish community to respond to President Ahmadinejad's threat to destroy Israel and his Holocaust denial by using the same methods they used in the 1970s and 80s for the Soviet Jewry: with protests, demonstrations and vigils to keep the issue on the top of the international political agenda.
Click here to read

Chirac Strays from Assailing a Nuclear Iran
(New York Times) French President Jacques Chirac first said if Iran had a nuclear missile or two it would not pose a big danger, and that if Iran were to launch a nuclear weapon against a country like Israel, it would lead to the immediate destruction of Tehran. He later retracted many of his remarks.
Click here to read

Baker's Group Advisors, "Surprised," "Upset" at Report's Israel-Iraq Link
(Forward Magazine) “Desirable as it may be, we cannot obtain progress in the Israeli-Palestinian front right now, and even if we could, it would take years and the impact on Iraq would be less significant than some think,” said Wayne White, a former State Department official and one of the expert advisers.
Click here to read

Saudi Funded School Teaches Religious Hatred
(Telegraph - London) A former teacher complains that text books used by children at the King Fahad Academy in Acton, west London, describe Jews as "repugnant" and Christians as "pigs".
Click here to read

The War against the West
Melanie Phillips writes about the antisemitic assaults against British Jews.
Click here to read

Blood Libel on Lebanon TV
(YNet) In a TV broadcast in Lebanon, a poet recycles the myth of Jews using blood of Christian priests to make matzos.
Click here to read

Nasrallah Admits Iran Supplies Hezbollah with Arms
(Ha'aretz) Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah has said it is no secret that Iran is aiding Hezbollah by sending money and weapons via Syria.
Click here to read

Islam's Sunni-Shiite Split
(Christian Science Monitor) While there are superficial differences between the sects – differences in prayer and carrying out ritual ablutions, for instance – the arena of conflict between the two has long been political.
Click here to read

The Road to Reformation
(Newsweek) Fareed Zakaria writes, "Al Queda had hoped to rally the entire Muslim world against the West, but now it is in the middle of a dirty sectarian war within Islam."
Click here to read

The Lethal al-Aqsa Plot Hoax
(YNet) As the Israel Antiquities Authority begins construction work at the Mugrabi Gate in Jerusalem in order to make the area structurally sound and safe for visitors, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has called on Muslims "to defend the al-Aqsa Mosque." Hamas has also charged Israel with "demolishing parts of the Aqsa mosque.
Click here to read

Ahmadinejad Warns of "Deterioration"
(YNet) Iranian president says provocative act will lead to the deterioration of hostilities in the region. Iranian supreme leader urges Muslims to revenge Jerusalem dig. Livni: Leaders merely 'inciting religious flames for political gain'
Click here to read

Temple Mount Truths
(Ha'aretz) An editorial about the current commotion regarding the excavation work and pedestrian bridge construction that links the Western Wall with the Mugrabi Gate.
Click here to read

Religious War in Gaza
(YNet) The Palestinian infighting is no different than other civil wars. This is a war over values, over a way of life, and over the future identity of Palestinian society and state: It pits Fatah's secular democratic nationalism against Hamas' radical Islam.
Click here to read

Palestinians Fear Infighting Hurts Their Cause
(New York Times) The fierce internal clashes among Palestinian factions have shocked many Palestinians and Arab governments, who fear that the bloodshed is damaging the Palestinian case before the world, Palestinians say.
Click here to read

Auschwitz's 21st Century Legacy
(Open Democracy) In the six decades since the Nazi genocide, other terrible and in their own way incomprehensible crimes have been committed: in Cambodia and Rwanda, at Sabra and Shatila, Halabja, and Srebrenica, to name but some. Humanity has, evidently, not progressed, and in the turmoil of the early 21st century would appear to be unlearning whatever the genocide might have taught it.
Click here to read

Montreal Jewish Hospital Fined for Keeping Kosher
(Judeoscope) In its 75 years of existence, no one ever complained about the Hospital’s observance of Jewish dietary laws. One of the complainants, Yvon Verreault, told the Journal de Montreal that he was not satisfied with the ruling, saying that “the real struggle is to allow everyone to eat what they want in a public space.”
Click here to read

Citizen Awarded $16 million in Mideast Attack
(Washington Post)  A federal jury awarded $16 million to a Jewish man who claimed that Palestinian groups backed a terrorist attack in Israel in which he was injured.
Click here to read


BOOK REVIEWS

Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present
By Michael B. Oren
Reviewed by Hillel Halkin in Commentary magazine
Click here to read


NOTES AND QUOTES
(Some of this material is from the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research)

BERLIN A Holocaust memorial in Verden, northern Germany ­ a restored railway carriage once used for slave labour ­ was destroyed by arson hours before the anniversary today of the liberation of Auschwitz.(AFP)

WARSAW State-run Polish Radio will begin broadcasting news in Hebrew in March in an attempt to strengthen Poland’s links with Israel and help to cast off what it believes is an unfair reputation for antiSemitism. (Reuters)

PARIS ­ Halimi To Be Reburied. The body of a French Jew who was kidnapped and tortured to death in early 2006 by a youth gang seeking ransom will be reburied in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul cemetery Feb. 9. French Jews believe Ilan Halimi was targeted for being Jewish, but some people in France say officials only called it an anti-Semitic crime to placate Jewish leaders. The gang members, who are awaiting trial, reportedly admitted they hate Jews and kidnapped Halimi because they thought all Jews are rich. (Source CIJR)

BRATISLAVA ­ Rabbi Accosted. Three men verbally accosted Slovakia’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Baruch Meyers, and his son, 12, as they were leaving Bratislava’s only shul Jan. 27. The men – who yelled, “Jews to the oven,” “Sieg Heil” and “Jews out” – were in their late 20s and “were very aggressive and I was worried they would attack us,” the rabbi said. Police arrested two men and said they’d be charged with expressing sympathy with a movement that denies human rights. They could face up to three years in jail. The rabbi was assaulted by skinheads in 1993 and 1995. (Source CIJR)

JERUSALEM ­ Statement Mistakenly Attributed to Mayor. The Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism said last week that it mistakenly attributed a statement comparing Israelis to Nazis to the mayor of Montreal. The forum, a partnership of the government of Israel, the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, held a press conference earlier in the week to present data on anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial around the world. One of the forum’s spokespeople referred to a statement last August by Stephane Gendron, the mayor of Huntingdon, Que., to a Quebec City daily in which Gendron described Israelis as “modern-day Nazis.” The spokesperson mistakenly said Gendron is the mayor of Montreal. A data sheet in Hebrew also misidentified Gendron, and the mistake appeared in the English edition of Ha’aretz. The paper issued an apology. (Source CIJR)

LONDON ­ Looted Art Returned.  A London art institute will return two Old Master drawings to the heirs of a Czech victim of the Nazis. A U.K. government committee on Nazi-looted art claims ruled Jan. 25 on three works that once belonged to Arthur Feldmann, a Czech lawyer whom the Nazis tortured to death in 1941. The drawings to be returned by the Courtauld Institute of Art, valued at up to $23,519 (US), are by 17th-century painters Giuseppe Bibiena and Carl Ruthart. As an act of goodwill, the heirs gave the third work to the institute. It didn’t contest the claim and said it didn’t know the works’ origins when it received them in a 1952 bequest. (Source CIJR)


“Enough flexing muscles, enough calling names… It’s time to engage.”­Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, urging Iran and Western powers to take a “timeout” to head off a larger confrontation over Iran’s controversial nuclear development program.  ElBaradei proposed a suspension of the sanctions against Iran, while the Iranians simultaneously suspend enrichment of uranium.  He also warned that an American or Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would be “absolutely bonkers,” noting that it would not deprive Iran of the technological expertise to pursue any nuclear ambitions.  “They have the knowledge, sure they have the knowledge…  Are you going to bomb the knowledge?”  According to Aviation Week and Space Technology, Iran has converted its 30-ton Shihab-3 missile into a satellite launch vehicle. Alaoddin Boroujerdi, chairman of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission told a group of students and clerics in Qom that the launcher is assembled and will “soon” be sent into space with one of Iran’s satellites. (Globe and Mail, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 26; New York Times, Jan. 27)

“We could get them [Syria] to get Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist. It would be a huge step in the right direction.”­Former Secretary of State James Baker, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, claiming that if the Americans engage the Syrians, the Syrians could get Hamas recognize Israel from which, Baker implies, peace would follow. Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the State Department and the European Union, dominates the Palestinian government through its election a year ago.  The Bush administration has been reluctant to talk to Syria, citing its support for terrorist groups like Hamas. (New York Post, Jan. 31)
 
“As he walked out of the house, he asked me to wish him good luck… I wished him good luck and I knew of his decision to become a martyr.  Although I was aware of his intention, I did not know exactly when he was planning to carry out a martyrdom attack.”­Ruwaidah, mother of Muhammad Faisal Siksik, the suicide bomber who killed three people in Eilat on Jan. 29, expressing her pride in her son for carrying out the attack.  Ruwaidah, a mother of nine,  added that she was prepared to “sacrifice” all her sons, “for the sake of the Aksa Mosque and Palestine.” After the attack, dozens of Palestinians, chanting slogans against Israel and the U.S., converged on the family’s home to congratulate them. Islamic Jihad and Fatah’s  Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility.  (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 29)

“Mr. Livingstone’s world is one gigantic conspiracy, with American neoconservatives pulling the strings.  The Cold War was, he said, a conspiracy cooked up in Washington in 1943, just as the war on terror was devised by a ‘nexus around the White House and Wall Street.’  He stopped short of claiming that the CIA had ordered the September 11 attacks, but they had certainly created Al Qaeda.  The state of Israel was an American conspiracy too: It ‘should never have been created’ but the Americans, who of course control the United Nations, set it up on Arab land because they and the British were too anti-Semitic to accept Jewish refugees in their own countries.  This is pretty rich coming from Mr. Livingstone­the mayor who was censured by his own party for abusing a Jewish reporter as a Nazi concentration camp guard.”­Columnist Daniel Johnson, discussing last week’s debate between the left-wing mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and Philadelphia-based Campus Watch Director Daniel Pipes.  (New York Sun, Jan. 25)