Describing his own personal encounter with forces hostile to Jewish interests, Small told the audience about the pressure exerted in 2011 by Middle East Arab entities that was unfortunately successful in terminating his Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, the first research center with a focus on anti-Semitism based at a North American university. Small’s institute had been disseminating valuable information about trends in anti-Semitic activity over a five-year period of in-depth conferences and lectures.

A Koret Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Charles Asher Small has a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University. In addition to teaching at the University of London, Ben Gurion University and Hebrew University, he served as the Director/Associate Professor of Urban Studies at Southern Connecticut State University; and has been a Visiting Professor at University College London; McGill University, Montreal; the University of Vilnius, Lithuania, and Cape Town University, South Africa. Small has spoken as an expert on anti-Semitism at a number of prestigious worldwide venues, including the Australian, British and Canadian Parliaments, the German Bundestag, and the United Nations, Geneva. The Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy runs academic seminar series at McGill University, Montreal; Harvard Law School; Fordham University and Stanford. In August 2010 in New Haven, Small was elected President of the newly formed International Association for the Study of Anti-Semitism (IASA).

In a path-breaking article entitled “Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe,” in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Small and Yale Professor Edward Kaplan analyzed populations in 10 European countries, wherein the two surveyed 5,000 respondents and asked them about Israeli actions and classical anti-Semitic stereotypes. “There were questions about whether the IDF purposely targets children, whether Israel poisons the Palestinians’ water supply – these sorts of extreme mythologies,” Small says. They demonstrated that Europeans whose opinions are extremely anti-Israel, are highly likely to also be anti-Semitic. The study demonstrated that an Israel-hating European is 56% more likely to be anti-Semitic than the average European. “This is extraordinary. It’s off the charts,” says Small. “If a food or a drug was 56% more likely to cause cancer, it would be taken off the shelf.”

During the ISGAP luncheon, the AJC’s Harris characterized the current waves of anti-Semitism as emanating from three distinct sources – the far right of the political spectrum, which includes such groups as the Golden Dawn party in Greece and right-wing extremists in Hungary; the far left, epitomized by the persistent efforts of leaders and members of the academic world to delegitimize the state of Israel as an “oppressor” of the Palestinians; and the Islamic world, which has a tendency to view Jews as lesser human beings and which often denies the historical veracity of the Holocaust.

“They are killing people only because they are Jews,” Harris asserted at the ISGAP luncheon. “We have to recognize them and name names. Anti-Semitism is a disease that ultimately destroys a democratic society. The challenge we face is to wake up and smell the coffee.”

Analyzing the classic roots of anti-Semitism, Bernard Lewis stated that other nations in the ancient world were angered by the refusal of the Jewish people to recognize any other deity besides the G-d who revealed Himself at Mount Sinai. Lewis said that this hostility became greatly exacerbated during the Spanish Inquisition when the Christians of Spain demanded that the Jews either convert to the dominant religion or become exiled from the country. Lewis noted that while Muslims during that historical period were willing to “tolerate” Jews and Christians living under their rule because they were viewed as fellow believers in revelation, the two non-Muslim religious groups were legally required to pay a poll tax. According to Lewis, Jews who were expelled from Christian Spain were taken in by some Muslim countries. “Anti-Semitism is fairly new in the Middle East,” Lewis contended. “This was introduced from Christian Europe.”

The ISGAP gathering drew a standing-room only crowd to Bernstein Global Wealth, with such notables in attendance as Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy; Matthew Goldstein, the outgoing chancellor of the City University of New York; Bernice Manocherian, former president of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); Helen Freedman, executive director of Americans for a Safe Israel; Dr. Paul Brody, vice president of the International Committee for the Land of Israel; and former judge Milton Mollen.

During Lewis’ address, one member of the audience asked him if it was possible that the West could endure the reality of a nuclear Iran, in the same manner that the United States and the Soviet  Union maintained a relatively peaceful co-existence based on the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which postulated that neither country would launch a nuclear attack on the other lest both sides suffer the decimation of mutual reprisals. “When Ahmadinejad makes threats, we should take notice,” Lewis responded. “To the Muslim world, Mutually Assured Destruction is not a deterrent. It is an inducement.”

Despite his professed concerns over the rising threat to Western and Jewish interests from the Muslim world, Lewis appeared to down play the growing Muslim population in Europe. “The answer is simple,” he said. “Marry young and have children.”

The Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, Lewis specializes in the interaction between Islam and the West, and he is especially famous in academic circles for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire. The renowned historian has served as the chair of Near and Middle Eastern History at the University of London. He additionally held a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, and served at Cornell University from 1986 to 1990. In 1990 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities.

Lewis is a widely read expert on the Middle East, and is regarded as one of the West’s leading scholars of that region. His advice has been frequently sought by policymakers, including the George W. Bush administration. In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Martin Kramer considered that, over a 60-year career, Lewis has emerged as “the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East.

In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued that Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian civil war (1992–98), and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88).

Lewis was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in November 2006.

In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East, and his analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him much publicity. American historian Joel Beinin has called him “perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community”. Lewis’s policy advice has particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked that, “in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media.

Written by Boruch Shubert

Originally published on May 1, 2013 at The Jewish Voice

“I’ve attended many of these events,” Lo Bianco said, “and I’m depressed because of the hopelessness. It looks like we’re losing the battle in the colleges.”

Lo Bianco, star of the Academy Award-winning “The French Connection,” was listening to Charles Small, founding director of ISGAP, who told how Middle East Arab pressure in 2011 forced Yale to close down his institute, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, and drive him off campus after five years of conferences and lecture series.

“Things are getting worse,” Lo Bianco concluded after hearing David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, describe Antisemitism is coming from three different directions: from the far right like the Golden Dawn in Greece and extremists in Hungary, from the far left such as the academic world, including Yale, to delegitimize the state of Israel, and from the Islamic world where they say we are all Semites and, besides, there was no Shoah.

“They are killing people only because they are Jews,” Harris said. “We have to recognize them and name names. Antisemitism is a disease that ultimately destroys a democratic society. The challenge we face is to wake up and smell the coffee.”

Why is Antisemitism happening? Another speaker at the luncheon, Bernard Lewis, the preeminent historian of Islam and the Middle East, said one cause in the ancient world is the Jews’ refusal to recognize any god but their own faceless God. The situation worsened during the Spanish Inquisition when the Christians forced the Jews to convert or leave the country.

Lewis pointed out that Muslims tolerated Jews and Christians as fellow believers in revelation—as long as they paid a required poll tax. Jews expelled from Christian Spain were welcomed by some Muslim countries.  “Antisemitism is fairly new in the Middle East,” Lewis said. “This was introduced from Christian Europe.”

The event drew a standing room only audience in the Bernstein conference room. Among the guests were Helen Freedman, executive director of Americans for a Safe Israel; Dr. Paul Brody, vice president of the International Committee for the Land of Israel; Matthew Goldstein, the retiring chancellor of the City University of New York; Bernice Manocherian, former president of America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); former judge Milton Mollen; and Elaine Wolfensohn.

One guest wondered whether the West can live with a nuclear Iran much like the U.S. and the Soviet Union existed under an understanding of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

“When Ahmadinejad makes threats, we should take notice,” Lewis insisted. “To the Muslim world, Mutually Assured Destruction is not a deterrent. It is an inducement.”

One guest asked what can be done when nation building and dialogue in the Middle East don’t seem to be working.

“The entire Arab world,” Lewis explained, “has nothing but fossil fuels. Their exports amount to nothing more than oil and gas. Sooner or later that will be depleted. The Middle East will lapse into insignificance. That is beginning to happen. I would say that in the decades to come the Middle East will cease to matter.”

“Let’s bring those decades sooner,” Lo Bianco interjected, “We have all the energy we need in this country. “

Another guest was alarmed at the increasing presence of Muslims in Europe, where they are the majority in some areas.

“The answer is simple,” Lewis said. “Marry young and have children.”  In other words, be fruitful and multiply.

Written by Tim Boxer.

Originally published on April 23, 2013 on The Jewish Week.

BERLIN — In the wake of several recent high-profile cases incriminating Hezbollah in Europe, there are growing cracks in the European Union’s policy on the Lebanese terror group. Two of the EU’s leading voices, France and Germany, according to several recent reports, are amenable to some form of a Hezbollah terror designation. So, as it turns out, the EU’s decade-long hardened opposition to banning the group from Europe appears to be not very hard at all.

It started in late March, when the London-based Arabic daily Al Hayatreported that France is prepared to designate Hezbollah’s “military wing,” which is also the policy of the U.K. At around the same time, Germany’s interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich also said he would consider banning the group’s military wing or its entire structure after consideration of the evidence against Hezbollah. But others in Germany are willing to go further. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s foreign policy spokesman in the Bundestag, Philipp Missfelder, calls for a full-blown ban of Hezbollah.

“The European Union must act now and use its instruments to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization,” Missfelder said, adding that if the EU cannot reach a consensus, the Federal Republic should unilaterally sanction Hezbollah.

That would make Germany only the second country in the EU to sanction Hezbollah’s entire apparatus. (The only nation to do so to this point is the Netherlands.)

Most of the EU has been unwilling to consider such a move. For example, Cypriot foreign minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, whose country held the EU’s rotating presidency last July, sheepishly noted, “Hezbollah is an organization that comprises a political party [and a] social services network, as well as an armed wing. Hezbollah is active in Lebanese politics, including the parliament and the government, and plays a specific role with regard to the status quo in Lebanon.”

But much has changed since last July’s Burgas, Bulgaria bus bombing. Three Hezbollah operatives detonated several pounds of TNT in a bus at the Black Sea resort, killing five Israelis, a Bulgarian National, and causing severe injuries to 32 Israelis.

The timing of the attack was audacious, even for Hezbollah. Two weeks prior, Cypriot authorities arrested a dual Swedish-Lebanese citizen, a self-confessed Hezbollah member named Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, for plotting to murder Israeli tourists on the small Eastern Mediterranean island.

We have learned much about Hezbollah in Europe since then. The 80 page decision by a three-judge panel in late March outlining the conviction of Yaacoub, also describes the reach of Hezbollah’s activities across Europe. Alarmingly, the group’s activities and meetings spanned from London to Amsterdam to Lyon, France. In early April, a criminal court in Haifa sentenced an Israeli Arab to seven years in prison for espionage activities on behalf of Hezbollah. He met with his handlers in Denmark.

There had always been hints of Hezbollah activity in Europe. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Verfassungsschutz, documented in its report the existence of 950 active Hezbollah members in the Federal Republic as of 2011. But the Europeans simply didn’t see the need to take action.

The United States has not been bound by the same constraints. The Clinton administration named Hezbollah a terror entity in 1995. That policy was reinforced during the George W. Bush presidency, with its focus on the “war on terror.” And it has even held up during the Obama administration. President Obama told Israeli students during his visit to Jerusalem “… every country that values justice should call Hezbollah what it truly is: a terrorist organization.”

While the revelation of Hezbollah plots on EU soil was likely a jolt to the EU, the Obama administration’s steady stream of escalating calls for a Hezbollah designation has undoubtedly softened the stances of the EU’s most recalcitrant members, France and Germany.

The EU was, no doubt, also spurred on by Bahrain, which recently became the first Arab government to outlaw Hezbollah’s organization. That a Persian Gulf monarchy would designate the group before the EU came as a surprise to many.

The stridently anti-Iranian stance of the Saudi regime, which is Bahrain’s patron, is unquestionably behind the push to clamp down on Hezbollah. The effort took on greater urgency after reports surfaced that Hezbollah was actively fighting in Syria’s civil war to defend President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

But the Bahrainis have their own reasons to ban Hezbollah, too. Reports have recently surfaced about Hezbollah training insurgents in Lebanon and in Iran to topple the ruling Sunni Khalifa family in Bahrain.

“The measure is to protect Bahrain’s security and stability from Hezbollah’s threats,” Bahraini MP Adil al-Asoumi told Al Arabiya. He stressed that Hezbollah is a threat to “Gulf security.”

Hezbollah is also a force for destabilization in Syria and Lebanon. In fact, that’s one of the reasons Europe has been reticent to designate. There is a fear that a ban on the group might destabilize Lebanon’s fragile political system. Hezbollah has already taken over the role as the kingmaker in Lebanese politics and is de-facto in control of the government in Lebanon. European forces are part of UNIFL. European businesses have investments in Lebanon. EU leaders are concerned for the safety of these interests.

But the steady stream of caskets returning to Lebanon from Syria containing Hezbollah fighters may have changed the calculus for Europe. Media reports from Lebanon indicate that last week alone 11 Hezbollah fighters and five Iranians were killed in Syria.

The buzz in Europe is that a designation is increasingly likely, but that the EU will only sanction the military wing. The very concept of a bifurcated Hezbollah is something that many other countries reject, including Israel, Canada, the United States, and the Netherlands. But it is also worth recalling that Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem also rejects it. He told in the Los Angeles Times in 2009 that the “same leadership that directs the parliamentary and government work also leads jihad actions in the struggle against Israel.”

During his visit to Lebanon last month, Ireland’s defense minister Alan Shatter echoed the one-dimensional nature of Hezbollah. “I think Hezbollah is a single organization,” he stated, adding that it does not mirror “the structure of the IRA [Irish Republican Army] where the IRA, or Provisional IRA, was a military wing and Sinn Fein was a political wing.”

European opinion certainly appears to be evolving. The debate has shifted a great deal since Cyprus’ former foreign minister, Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, stated last year, “Should there be tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism, the EU would consider listing the organization.”

The evidence is now undeniable, which explains Washington’s campaign for a complete ban on Europe’s Hezbollah operations — both political and military, if such a distinction can be made.

A full ban would deprive the Lebanese group from its fundraising system, weapons, and technological procurement enterprises in the 27-member EU body. Indeed, the move would deal a morally symbolic blow to Hezbollah’s reputation as a legitimate political organization and dismantle its finance-starved operation in Europe.

Written by Benjamin Weinthal

Originally published on April 17, 2013 on The Atlantic

MONTREAL — The tentacles of jihadist Islamist extremism are spreading across the African sub-Saharan continent and pose as great a risk there as anywhere else in the world, an African scholar said.

Speaking to a Canadian Institute for Jewish Research gathering recently, Shalem Coulibaly, a philosophy professor at the Université de Ouagadougou in the West African nation of Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), expressed his concern about the extent to which forces of political Islamic radicalism are gaining steam and expanding through the Maghreb, the countries of Northwest Africa.

“You need to understand what happened in Algeria,” where Islamists have won a measurable political foothold, “to understand what is happening in West Africa,” said Coulibaly in his French-language discourse.

In its own way, he said, “Islamist expansionism” is not much different from the European imperialism of old, in terms of the route it has been taking.

Although he is a native African, Coulibaly speaks fluent Hebrew, a result of positions he held teaching at the Tel Aviv and Hebrew universities.

For him, West Africa has become a “laboratory” for Islamists to work on their “radical ideologies.”

“It is a silent progression of religious fanaticism,” he said.

This progression, he said, has extended to Mali, where French troops have intervened militarily against violent Islamist terrorists, and has included Timbuktu, Gao, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Tanzania and other areas.

Some of these nations border on Coulibaly’s native country of Burkina Faso, where, until it was threatened by Islamist encroachment, a modus vivendi had been developed for coexistence between the Christian and Muslim populations, which are roughly equal in number.

In his talk, Coulibaly also provided historical context for Islam’s presence in Africa, where more than 400 million mostly Sunni Muslims – one-quarter of the world’s Muslim population – live.

Often, he said, Islamists exploit existing discontent within native populations to gain a theological and political foothold.

Earlier, Coulibaly spoke at McGill University as part of a seminar series sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.

Written by David Lazarus

Originally published on Tuesday, April 16 at The Canadian Jewish News

In the discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, extreme criticisms of Israel (e.g., Israel is an apartheid state, the Israel Defense Forces deliberately target Palestinian civilians), coupled with extreme policy proposals (e.g., boycott of Israeli academics and institutions, divest from companies doing business with Israel), have sparked counterclaims that such criticisms are anti-Semitic (for only Israel is singled out). The research in this article shines a different, statistical light on this question: based on a survey of 500 citizens in each of 10 European countries, the authors ask whether those individuals with extreme anti-Israel views are more likely to be anti-Semitic. Even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors, they find that anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is anti-Semitic, with the likelihood of measured anti-Semitism increasing with the extent of anti-Israel sentiment observed.

Click here to read the full article in PDF format.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Police in Hamas-ruled Gaza have started grabbing young men with long or gel-styled spiky hair off the streets, bundling them into jeeps, mocking them and shaving their heads, two of those targeted and a rights group said Sunday.

It is the latest sign that the Islamic militants are imposing their strict practices on the population.

Hamas has been slowly forcing its fundamentalist interpretation of the religion on already conservative Gaza since it overran the territory in 2007, but the new crackdown on long hair and tight or low-waist pants — in several cases accompanied by beatings — appears to be one of the most aggressive phases of the campaign so far.

The crackdown began last week, and two of those targeted told The Associated Press said they were rounded up in separate sweeps in Gaza City that included more than two dozen young men.

House painter Ayman al-Sayed, 19, had shoulder-length hair before police grabbed him and shaved his head Thursday.

“The only thing I want to do is leave this country,” said al-Sayed, who despite his ordeal defiantly wore stylish but outlawed narrow-leg tan khakis Sunday. “I am scared. They just take you from the street without reason. I don’t know what they are going to do next.”

Hamas officials played down the campaign — a stance adopted in the past that allows the group to distance itself from a controversial crackdown while at the same time instilling fear in those it targeted.

Ziad al-Zaza, the deputy prime minister of Gaza, said the head-shaving “was a very limited, isolated behavior of the police and is not going to continue.”

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights called on Hamas to investigate the “arbitrary detentions and violations of civil rights of civilians.”

The hair crackdown came just days after the Hamas-run parliament in Gaza passed an education bill mandating separate classrooms for boys and girls from the age of nine.

Gender separation is already widely practiced in Gaza schools, as it is in the West Bank, where Hamas rival Mahmoud Abbas, the Western-backed Palestinian president, administers some areas.

Enshrining such separation in law marked another step forward in Hamas’ campaign of imposing Islamic practice.

Since seizing Gaza from Abbas six years ago, Hamas has moved gradually in spreading its ultra-conservative version of Islam. It has issued rules restricting women or requiring them to cover up in the traditional Islamic dress of long robes and headscarves, but relented if met by protests.

Last month, the Hamas government barred girls and women from participating in a UN-sponsored marathon, prompting a UN aid agency to cancel the race. Hamas activists have also exerted social pressure to get all school girls to wear Islamic dress.

Al-Sayed, the house painter, and 17-year-old high school student Tareq Naqib said Sunday that they were targeted by police in separate incidents Thursday.

Al-Sayed said he had just finished his work in Gaza City and was waiting at an intersection for a shared taxi when a police jeep approached. Al-Sayed said he was thrown into the jeep with more than 10 others already squeezed into the back of the vehicle. He said policemen cursed them on the way to the police station.

There, the detainees were lined up, and a policeman began shaving their heads. He shaved two lines, from front to back and from one ear to the other, telling the young men they could finish the job at a neighborhood barber shop.

Those who resisted were beaten, al-Sayed said. He said he asked the policeman to finish the job of shaving so he wouldn’t have to step outside with a partially shaved head.

A young man came into the police station, saying he was looking for his cousin, said al-Sayed. One of the officers grabbed the young man, who had his hair in gel-styled spikes, and shaved his head as well.

Naqib, the high school student, said he was seized outside his home and put in a police jeep along with four young men who had come to Gaza City from the southern town of Khan Younis.

On the way to the police station, police insulted them and warned them that Gaza is Islamic, said Naqib.

“They said, ‘we want you to respect our tradition,’” Naqib said. “They made a cross on our heads and asked us to leave and finish the shaving at a barber shop.”

Naqib’s family is originally from Tunisia, and he said he wants to go back there after he finishes high school.

In another incident, a Gaza teen, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said he saw police beat three young men in downtown Gaza City for wearing tight, low-rise pants. The witness said the policemen beat the three with clubs on the backs of their knees and told passers-by watching the scene to move along.

Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas figure identified with the more pragmatic wing of the movement, said the police behavior is “absolutely wrong” and must stop. Hamas is often divided over such campaigns, but the pragmatists have been unable to stop the more zealous members.

Hamas is also competing with the even more fundamentalist Salafis, a movement that has gained in strength and popularity in Gaza in recent years. Salafis have criticized Hamas for not implementing Islamic law in Gaza quickly enough.

For Gaza’s young generation, such crackdowns have meant a shrinking space of self-expression. In some, it sparked defiance. Mohammed Hanouna, an 18-year-old high school senior, said he started styling his hair with gel after his friends Ayman and Tareq were targeted by police.

On Sunday, he walked with them in the streets in a show of support, adding that he is not afraid of arrest. “I have nothing to lose except my hair,” he said.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Originally published on April 8, 2013 on The Times of Israel

Also speaking at official Yad Vashem remembrance, Peres calls on world to take seriously modern-day threats of mass destruction

Israel will defend itself with its own forces and prevent a Holocaust from ever happening again, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day Sunday night, echoing a familiar refrain that the Jewish state won’t tolerate an Iranian nuclear weapon.

President Shimon Peres, also speaking at the ceremony, lamented the fact that anti-Semitism still persists, and that the Holocaust “is still with us.”

The two addressed a gathering that included many of Israel’s political and religious leaders, as well as the former prime minister of Britain, Tony Blair, who is currently the special envoy of the Middle East Quartet; and the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird.

“Iran is warning openly about its intentions to destroy us and is working with all its might to carry it out,” Netanyahu said. “The hate against Jews hasn’t disappeared, but has morphed into a murderous hate against the Jewish state. We won’t leave our fate in the hands of others, even the best of our friends.”

“Here, and today, I promise — there will never be another Holocaust,” he added.

Alluding to the recent figures published that there are now more than 6 million Jews in Israel — the same number estimated killed in the Holocaust — Netanyahu said that ”this is our victory. This is our consolation. This is our pride.

“The rebirth of the Jewish people is tied to the battle against those who wish to destroy us,” he continued. “Our ability and willingness to defend ourselves, that is what enabled the establishment of the Zionist enterprise and that is what ensures our continued existence and our future.”

Paraphrasing the Passover Haggadah, the prime minister said that “in every generation there are those who rise up against us to destroy us. In every generation, every one of us must think of himself as though he survived the Holocaust and established the state [of Israel]. In every generation, we must ensure that there will not be another Holocaust.”

Peres, on the other hand, lamented that Jews the world over were still experiencing the same hate that led to the systematic murder of the Shoah, saying that skinheads, Holocaust deniers, and attempts to reestablish the Nazi party prove that “to our shame, there yet remain those who have not learned a thing.”

“The civilized world must ask itself, how in such a short space of time after the crematoria were extinguished, after the terrible death toll that the allied powers endured to put an end to the Nazi devil, is it still possible for the leadership, like that of Iran, to openly deny the Holocaust and threaten another Holocaust,” he continued.

“Whoever ignores the threat against one nation, must know that the threat of a Holocaust against one nation is a threat of a Holocaust against all nations,” Peres added.

Calling the 74 years since the official outbreak of World War II “more biography than history,” Peres said the greatest horror known to mankind “resonates as we step on the stones of the ghettos, floats like a ghost in the barracks of the camps, cries from the prayer shawls, the hair, the shoes that we see with our own eyes.”

“The Jewish people are a small nation in number, but large in spirit,” Peres said. “That spirit cannot be burned in the ovens. From the ashes of the Holocaust rose spiritual redemption and political rebirth. We rose and we built a state of our own.”

The theme for this year’s ceremony at Yad Vashem was Defiance and Rebellion during the Holocaust — 70 Years Since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Of those who participated in the revolt, Peres remarked: “They were few, but their heroism remains an example for many — now and forever. Today, we salute their bravery with the flags that fly freely.”

The president mentioned Peretz Hochman, one of the last survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto, who passed away last week, two weeks before his 86th birthday.

“The history of the Holocaust is not just a lesson from the past, it is also a guide for the future,” Peres said. “That we will know how to defend ourselves against dangers… that we can rely on ourselves. That we must maintain our moral legacy, which withstood even impossible situations.”

He added that “we must ensure that mankind never again loses its humanity… that every person will have the right to be different… different and equal.”

Netanyahu opened his remarks by referring to the recent spate of attacks by younger people against the elderly, including some Holocaust survivors. He vowed to see to it that the perpetrators are punished as severely as possible.

“We are committed to the safety of our elderly citizens, and we have an extra obligation to those who survived the Holocaust,” he said. “The Holocaust survivors are the symbol of our rebirth. Those who went through the Holocaust deserve to live the remainder of their days in peace and comfort.”

Written by Asher Zeiger and the Times of Israel Staff

Originally published on April 7, 2013 on The Times of Israel

Indeed, the Holocaust was uniquely evil in its genocidal singularity – where biology was inescapably destiny – a war against the Jews in which, as Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel put it, “not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.”

It appears that the full dimensions of this unprecedented evil – of these unfathomable horrors – are only now becoming fully known. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, after 13 years of research, has disclosed the full extent of Nazi criminality, revealing the existence of some 42,500 documented ghettos, killing centres, forced labour camps, P.O.W. camps, brothels, and “care centers” where babies were aborted or killed. The sheer magnitude of this revelation has shocked even some Holocaust experts.

As it happens, this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day coincidences with important moments of remembrance and reminder, of bearing witness and of warning:

• The 70th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, recalling the heroic resistance of a starved, decimated Jewish remnant;
• The eve of the 65th anniversary of the Genocide Convention – the “Never Again” convention – which, tragically, has been violated again and again;
• The eve of the 65th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the international magna carta of the UN – which, as former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, “emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust,” intended “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war;” and where, as he reminded us, “a UN that fails to be at the forefront of the fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, denies its history and undermines its future.”

On this anniversary of anniversaries, we must ask ourselves: what have we learned, and what must we do?

The first lesson is the importance of zachor, of remembrance itself. For as we remember the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah – defamed, demonized and dehumanized, as prologue or justification for genocide – we have to understand that the mass murder of six million Jews, and millions of non-Jews, is not a matter of abstract statistics.

For unto each person there is a name, an identity; each person is a universe. As our sages tell us, “whoever saves a single life, it is as if he or she has saved an entire universe.” Conversely, whoever has killed a person, it is as if they have killed an entire universe. Thus, the abiding imperative: we are each, wherever we are, the guarantors of each other’s destiny.

The second enduring lesson of the Holocaust is that the genocide of European Jewry succeeded not only because of the industry of death and the technology of terror, but because of the state-sanctioned ideology of hate. This teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other, this is where it all begins. As the Canadian courts affirmed in upholding the constitutionality of anti-hate legislation, “the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers – it began with words.” These, as the Courts put it, are the chilling facts of history. These are the catastrophic effects of racism – the whole reaffirmed in the recent unanimous judgment of the Canadian Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of both human rights and criminal anti-hate legislation.
Moreover, we have been witnessing, yet again, a state-sanctioned incitement to hate and genocide whose epicenter is Ahmadinejad’s Iran, as distinct from that of the people and publics of Iran, who are themselves the object of Ahmadinejad’s repression. As the unanimous report of the all-party Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Canadian Parliament put it, “Iran has already committed the crime of incitement to genocide, prohibited by the Genocide Convention” while calling on State Parties to the convention to hold the Iranian government to account.

The third lesson is that these Holocaust crimes resulted not only from state-sanctioned incitement to hatred and genocide, but from crimes of indifference, from conspiracies of silence – of the international community as bystander.

As it happens, this Holocaust Remembrance Day coincides also with the remembrance of the Rwandan Genocide, where from April to July close to one million Rwandans were murdered. What makes the Rwandan genocide so unspeakable is not only the horrors of the genocide itself, but that this genocide was preventable. No one can say that we did not know. We knew, but we did not act.

Today, we know but have yet to act to stop the slaughter of civilians in Syria, ignoring the lessons of history and mocking the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

Let there be no mistake about it: Indifference and inaction always mean coming down on the side of the victimizer, never the victim. Let there be no mistake: indifference in the face of evil is acquiescence with evil itself; it is complicity with evil.

The fourth enduring lesson of the Holocaust is that it was made possible not only because of the “bureaucratization of genocide,” as Robert Lifton put it, but because of the trahison des clercs – the complicity of the elites – physicians, church leaders, judges, lawyers, engineers, architects, educators, and the like. Holocaust crimes, then, were also the crimes of the Nuremberg elites.

It is our responsibility, then, to speak truth to power, and to hold power accountable to truth; and to ensure that the double entendre of Nuremberg – of the Nuremberg Laws that enshrined racism as well as the Nuremberg Principles that laid the ground for prosecuting war crimes – are part of our learning and our legacy; and that Holocaust education underpins these perspectives as it informs our principles on justice and injustice.

The fifth lesson concerns the vulnerability of the powerless and the powerlessness of the vulnerable – as found expression in the triage of Nazi racial hygiene: the Sterilization Laws, the Nuremberg Race Laws, and the Euthanasia Program – the whole targeting of those “whose lives were not worth living.”

It is not unrevealing, as Professor Henry Friedlander points out in his work on “The Origins of Genocide,” that the first group targeted for killing were the Jewish disabled – the whole anchored in the science of death, the medicalization of ethnic cleansing, the sanitizing even of the vocabulary of destruction.

It is our responsibility, then, as citoyens du monde to give voice to the voiceless, to empower the powerless, be they the disabled, poor, elderly, women victims of violence, or the vulnerable child – the most vulnerable of the vulnerable.

Sixth is the tribute that must be paid to the rescuers – the righteous among the nations – of whom Raoul Wallenberg is metaphor and message – the Swedish non-Jew, and Canada’s first honorary citizen, who saved more Jews in four months in Hungary in 1944 than any single Government or organization.

Finally, we must remember – and celebrate – the survivors of the Holocaust – the true heroes of humanity. For they witnessed and endured the worst of inhumanity, but somehow found, in the depths of their own humanity, the courage to go on, to rebuild their lives as they helped build our communities.

And so, together with them we must remember – and pledge – that never again will we be indifferent to incitement and hate; never again will we be silent in the face of evil; never again will we indulge racism and anti-Semitism; never again will we ignore the plight of the vulnerable; and never again will we be indifferent in the face of mass atrocity and impunity.

We will speak up and we will act against racism, against hate, against anti-Semitism, against mass atrocity, against injustice – and against the crime of crimes whose name we should even shudder to mention, genocide; and always against indifference, against being bystanders to injustice.

Written by Irwin Cotler, Co-Chair of the ISGAP Academic Advisory Committee, Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and Emeritus Professor of law at McGill University

Originally published on April 5, 2013 on The Times Of Israel

It seems to have started during the spring of 2009, when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano first appeared in her new role at a congressional hearing.

Some close listeners of her testimony realized that while Napolitano was head of the U.S. government’s cabinet-level department created specifically in response to the terrorist attacks against this country on September 11, 2001, the word “terrorism” never crossed her lips.

The English online version of the German newspaper Der Spiegel interviewed Napolitano shortly after her maiden congressional speech, and asked her about that glaring inconsistency.

Napolitano explained that by substituting the phrase “man-made disaster” for “terrorism,” the Obama administration was demonstrating “that we want to move away from the politics of fear.”

In the four years since the word “terrorism” was dropped from the play list, several other terms or words have been placed on the “no speak list.”

For example, during the George W. Bush administration the U.S. was fighting something called “the war on terror.”  But “terror” and “war” are both such negative terms that the Obama administration gave it the heave-ho,  replacing it with “overseas contingency operations.”

This week a new change in parlance was introduced.  Although the U.S. government is not responsible for this change, it will have at least as enormous an impact on how we speak as if it were ordered from the White House, probably even greater.

The Associated Press Stylebook is an extensive compilation of standardized terminology, abbreviations, capitalizations and other information journalists use to convey information.  It is the most widely-used resource for journalists, and therefore the way in which it chooses to define words or concepts has an enormous ripple effect on the public’s understanding of many subtle and not so subtle issues.  The Stylebook also plays a major role in determining when, whether and how new words or concepts enter the general lexicon.

For example, in the 2010 edition of the AP Stylebook, a new section was added on social media, for the first time addressing how “Twitter” and “Facebook” can be used by journalists and therefore how it will be introduced to consumers of news.  That new section also was responsible for officially transforming the word website from a two-word phrase to one word.

From a report in Politico on Friday, April 6, we learned there’s more change afoot.  While there has already been some discussion of the change in reference to “illegal aliens” to “undocumented workers,” another change has thus far received less attention.  This changed has been traced directly to campaigning by the Council on American-Islamic Relations against the use of a term it described as pejorative.

In a January CAIR press release, the organization which describes itself as a Muslim civil rights group, but which government officials have described as a front-group for Hamas, was unhappy with the way the AP Stylebook defined “Islamist.”

The AP added the term “Islamist” to its Stylebook in 2012.  The term was defined:

Islamist—Supporter of government in accord with the laws of Islam. Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.

CAIR found that definition objectionable, and urged the AP to drop the term from its Stylebook.

The AP went even further.

Although “Islamist” is still a defined term in the AP Stylebook, reporters are now admonished not to use it to mean something objectionable.  The entry for “Islamist” now reads, with emphasis added by Politico:

An advocate or supporter of a political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam. Do not use as a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals, who may or may not be Islamists. Where possible, be specific and use the name of militant affiliations: al-Qaida-linked, Hezbollah, Taliban, etc. Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.

CAIR issued a press release Friday, April 5, welcoming the change by AP, and calling the Stylebook revision a “step in the right direction.”

Written by Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Originally published on April 6, 2013 on TheJewishPress.com