Corbyn at top of Wiesenthal list of 2019’s antisemitic and anti-Israel outbreaks
The Simon Wiesenthal Center disclosed its annual top-10 list of worst outbreaks of antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents, including lethal Jew-hatred in the US and Germany.
It announced that the now-defeated British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was ranked No. 1 for mainstream antisemitism in the UK. The center wrote that it ”released its No. 1 choice for its Top 10 2019 list five days before the UK election. Corbyn’s Labour was trounced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in the December 12 elections. Some analysts say that antisemitism impacted the voters. Corbyn has resigned as leader of the Labour Party.”
In fact, Corbyn termed the antisemitic jihadi organizations Hezbollah and Hamas his “friends.”
The center listed the lethal antisemitic attacks in Jersey City and in Halle, Germany, as the next worst outbreaks of Jew-hatred.
“In Jersey City, New Jersey, a kosher market was the target of domestic terrorists. David Anderson and Francine Graham were adherents of the Black Hebrew Israelites hate group. Anderson had expressed anti-police and antisemitic sentiments. The shooters first killed a police officer, then unleashed a barrage of gunfire killing three innocent people inside the kosher store. Only quick and heroic action taken by police prevented an even greater massacre, as an adjacent yeshiva [school] would have been their next target,” wrote the center.
The center wrote that “some 80 Jews praying in a German synagogue on Yom Kippur – Judaism’s holiest day – miraculously escaped certain injury or death at the hands of a neo-Nazi when the attacker failed to break down a security door outside a synagogue in Halle, Germany. After failing to enter the synagogue, Stephan Balliet, 27, armed with a submachine gun and explosives, killed two civilians nearby and injured two others. Balliet admitted that he was motivated by his hatred of Jews.”
The entry also listed the San Diego gunman who “opened fire on Jews at prayer inside a Chabad synagogue in San Diego County, killing 60-yearold Lori Gilbert-Kaye, and wounding the rabbi.” The shooter announced that he was “defending our nation against the Jewish people, who are trying to destroy all white people.”
The third spot went to the antisemitic death threats targeting the “89-year-old Auschwitz survivor Liliana Segre, who serves as Senator for Life in the Italian Parliament.” The center reported that after launching a national commission to end bigotry, she received death threats via social media. Two policemen were assigned to protect her round the clock.
As No. 4 on the center’s list, French prosecutors were cited for “dropping murder charges against Kobili Traore, who mercilessly beat Sarah Halimi, a Jewish kindergarten teacher, and then threw her off her balcony. Authorities outrageously decided that the murderer had suffered a ‘massive psychotic episode’ after smoking marijuana. When Traore broke into Halimi’s apartment, he recited Koranic verses while attacking the Jewish woman.” The center wrote that Traore claimed, ‘I felt persecuted. When I saw the Torah and a chandelier in her home, I felt oppressed.’”
American Muslim Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, America’s first congresswoman of Palestinian descent, and Ilhan Omar, a Muslim congresswoman, earned spot No. 5 for their “slander of Israel and Jews.” The center wrote that Tlaib “launched her career in the US House of Representatives by slandering colleagues who supported a resolution seeking to weaken the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement when she tweeted, ‘They forgot what country they represent.’ That resolution also called for sanctions on funders of the criminal Assad regime in Syria.”
Tlaib also reportedly falsified history, declaring that she had “warm feelings about the way Palestinians ‘provided’ a homeland for Holocaust survivors… ‘I love the way my ancestors provided that .... ’”
Spot No. 6 was the lack of political response to violence against Jews in New York City. The center wrote that in “November, NYPD Commissioner James P. O’Neill reported that Jews were victims of more than half of the hate crimes in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world. Of 309 reported incidents, 159 targeted Jews. Beatings of Jews, particularly in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Crown Heights and Borough Park, drew national attention, but scant action was taken by politicians in response to the beatings.”
Germany’s Ambassador to the United Nations Christoph Heusgen earned spot No. 7. The Jerusalem Post exclusively reported on his spot in the list last week. “Germany is in the midst of an 18-month stint on the UN Security Council. Its UN ambassador, Christoph Heusgen, created an uproar after word spread regarding the number of anti-Israel votes he has cast and by his equating 130 rockets fired by terrorist organization Hamas at Israeli civilians in one week in March with the Jewish state’s demolition of terrorists’ homes,” noted the Wiesenthal Center.
The eighth spot went to “elite North American universities [that] have proven fertile ground for antisemitism often cloaked as ‘anti-Zionism’ and protected under the rubric of free speech.” The center cited the University of Toronto’s Graduate Student Union’s denial of a “Jewish student’s request to support a campaign to offer kosher food on campus, saying, ‘I doubt the executive committee will be comfortable recommending this motion, given that the organization hosting it [Hillel] is openly pro-Israel.’”
According to the center, “leading US schools, including Columbia, Barnard, NYU, Vassar, Duke, UNC, Oberlin, ASU and UCLA, are only a few of the US schools to be confronted by anti-Israel and antisemitic incidents this year – often spawned by the extreme anti-Israel, anti-peace BDS movement.”
Spot No. 9 listed the Scandinavian countries of Denmark and Sweden. “On the 81st anniversary of the November 9 ‘Night of Broken Glass,’ when most German synagogues were burned down by the Nazis, neo-Nazis plastered stickers shaped like yellow stars on multiple Jewish sites in Denmark and Sweden.”
The Center noted that “while Jews make up no more than one-fifth of 1% of Sweden’s population, more than 4% of all hate incidents in the country target Jews. Swedish authorities allowed neo-Nazis to rally in Raoul Wallenberg Square across from Stockholm’s main synagogue. Sweden fails to protect its Jewish citizens and institutions and has failed to hold antisemites accountable for their actions in the public and private sectors, including at its famed Karolinska Hospital.”
Rick Wiles, a nondenominational, Florida-based pastor, earned the 10th spot for using his radio program to boost ”racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” He labeled the House impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump a “Jew coup.”