Jewish Press February 24, 2007

Last week’s report published by the Community Security Trust (CST), Britain’s Jewish security and defense organization, showed that anti-Semitic incidents in Britain increased in 2006 by 31 percent over the previous year. Nearly 600 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded, the highest number in one year since the CST was established in 1984.

Anti-Semitic events were at their peak in July, August and September, around the time of the war in Lebanon.

There were 112 violent assaults, up 37 percent from 2005, 70 incidents of damage to Jewish property, 365 incidents of abusive behavior and 27 threats. CST has tracked a trend since 2000 of increased attacks linked to events in the UK and overseas.

Incidents of assault and extreme violence in Manchester made up nearly half of the anti-Semitic physical assaults recorded , a disproportionately high figure. The CST believes most of these are random, opportunist attacks on people whose appearance and clothing mark them out as visibly Jewish.

“Anti-Semitic hate crime levels have doubled in the last 10 years,” said CST spokesman Mark Gardner. “This is unacceptable racism that many Jews had hoped and believed was a thing of the past.

“Today’s anti-Semitism is a wave of hatred, intimidation and abuse against British Jews, who are stupidly blamed and randomly attacked over international tensions for which they bear no responsibility. We call upon the police, government, political parties and democrats everywhere to act loudly and clearly against this hateful trend.” Advertisement

Muslim Kidnap Plot Hits British Army

A plot to capture and murder a Muslim soldier in the British army has been uncovered. Aimed at intimidating Muslims who join the British security services, it was the first attempt at an Al Qaeda-type kidnapping and execution in the West. Defense chiefs have launched an urgent investigation into how a gang of suspected Islamic terrorists obtained a list of names and addresses of 25 British Muslim soldiers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nine men were arrested in police raids across Birmingham last week after a six-month clandestine operation. All the suspects are of Pakistani origin and under 35, and most are British born. Police are investigating possible links to terror training camps in Pakistan.

The gang planned to announce the time of the execution, film it, and post it on the Internet with a warning that other British Muslim “collaborators” would face a similar fate for taking part in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Maktabah bookshop, notorious for stocking works on jihad and a regular target of police raids, is implicated in the plot. Among the incendiary literature it has on sale is a book claiming that “terror works and that is why the believers are commanded to enforce it by Allah.”

The author, Dhiren Barot, who was sent by Al Qaeda to check potential economic and Jewish targets in New York just before 9/11, was given a 40- year prison sentence after admitting to plotting to commit terrorism. The store also sells a DVDthat shows images of Tony Blair’s face morphing into Satan’s, and Jews at praer with the subtitle “Brothers of pigs and monkeys.”

The store owner said: “We have a duty to sell books that express a variety of viewpoints.”

The suspects may have thought kidnapping poses fewer risks than bomb attacks, because the purchase of large amounts of potentially explosive material arouses suspicion.

The plot was exposed in the same week that Sinn Fein, the political branch of the IRA, agreed that their followers should cooperate with the police in Northern Ireland.

Within the Muslim community there is a strong feeling that the arrests are part of a British conspiracy to bring Muslims into disrepute. Dr. Mohammed Naseem, chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, accused the government of “picking on” the Muslim community to pursue a political goal.

“The German people were told Jews were a threat. The same thing is happening here,” he claimed.

In a separate development, the London Central Mosque was exposed for selling DVDs containing speeches by two radical preachers, Sheikh Feiz and Sheikh Khalid Yasin.

A television documentary on a DVD sold in the mosque shop shows Sheikh Feiz imitating the noise of a pig when referring to Jewish people, who “will be killed on the day of judgment.”

Meanwhile, leaders at a Birmingham mosque, the Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, were outraged to be the subject of an undercover television investigation last month in which a preacher was secretly filmed as he allegedly spouted hatred of Christians and Jews.

Osama bin Laden was better than a thousand Tony Blairs, claimed Abu Usamah, before going on to explain that women suffer from a deficient intellect.

On the scholarly front, British academic Azzam Tamimi, founder of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought, refused last week to condemn the suicide bombing in Eilat.

Tamimi, who is a supporter of Hamas, claimed other bombings were likely to follow. “We would be mad to think it was the last,” he said.

French Village Joins List Of Righteous Gentiles

The French village of Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Cevennes mountains in southeast France entered the annals of history last week when 2,739 members of the village community, led by two Protestant pastors, were honored at a ceremony at the Pantheon in Paris.

Jacques Chirac, who in 1995 became the first French president to recognize France’s inglorious role in its collaboration with the Nazis, its Vichy regime, and the mass deportation of Jews to death camps, said: “Thousands of French men and women, from different social classes and professions and across the political spectrum, made, without questioning it, the right choice.”

A commemorative plaque reads: “Ignoring all risks, they embodied the honor of France, its values of justice, tolerance and humanity.”

The ceremony was attended by relatives of the villagers and of those they saved. Between 1940 and 1944, the villagers hid Jewish people and smuggled them across the border into Switzerland.

They were encouraged by Protestant ministers Andre Trocme and Eduard Theis, who issued an edict directing the villagers to “oppose violence against their conscience” and instructing them that “Nazis should be resisted without fear, without pride and without hatred.”

By contrast, the Vichy government played a major part in deporting 76,000 Jews to concentration camps.

Anti-Semitism In Right-Wing European Group

Two weeks into the formation of the European Parliament’s right-wing nationalist party Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty(Ataka), internal divisions are splitting the group.

The only British member, Ashley Mote, criticized Bulgarian member Dimitar Stoyanov of accusing the “Jewish establishment” of exploiting people through the media.

Stoyanov was quoted as saying, “There are a lot of powerful Jews, with a lot of money, who are paying the media to form the socil awareness of people. They are also playing with economic crises in countries like Bulgaria and getting rich.”

Emil Kalo, chairman of the Bulgarian Jewish Organization, has challenged the Ataka party to provide evidence that any Jews have offered funds to the media to express any particular public opinion. If proof is found, Kalo said he would offer financial support to the party.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 and is filed under news. You can leave a response.