Media Coverage

The popularity of a recent controversial auction in Germany, which sold relics belonging to high-level Nazi officials, highlights a growing obsession on the part of the far-Right to revive its connection with the perpetrators of the Holocaust, a leading antisemitism expert told The Algemeiner on Monday.

Thirty one countries voted to adopt a new working definition of anti-Semitism last week, a move hailed by human rights activists as an important milestone in countering hatred.

June 1-2 is the 75th Anniversary of the 1941 Farhud pogrom, the pro-Nazi Arab attempt to exterminate the Jews of Baghdad. Hundreds were murdered, raped, and many Jewish homes and business looted and burned during a two-day orgy of hate and violence orchestrated by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

Human rights activists told The Algemeiner on Wednesday why they consider last week’s adoption by 31 countries of a new working definition of antisemitism to be a major step towards combating the reemerging phenomenon.

Last week, on May 26, 2016, the 31 member nations of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), under Romanian Chairmanship, officially adopted the “IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.” This important decision has made the IHRA the first international body to formally adopt such a definition.

The “Farhud,” Arabic for “violent dispossession,” was a pro-Nazi massacre against Baghdad Jewry that took place from June 1-2, 1941 – coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.

Danit Sibovits, 32, has been on the front lines of helping Jewish students as an attorney, and now supports the State of Israel through the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey.

The United Methodist Church took a stand this weekend against the anti-Israel and arguably anti-Semitic Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

On Thursday, Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Vice President for Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), testified before the House Homeland Security Committee’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee about a troubling connection between past financing for terrorism and current support for the BDS movement.

The Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement opposes Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and maintains that Israeli policy can be pressured to change through a combination of boycotts, divestment of assets and other sanctions.

“The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has really made a laughing stock out of the American Studies Association (ASA),” the head of a Jewish rights-focused legal organization told The Algemeiner.