European Jewish News: November 20, 2015

 "Europe countries map en 2" by San Jose (map), Hayden120 (retouch) - Derivative work of Europe countries map en.png by San Jose, based on the Generic Mapping Tools and ETOPO2. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_countries_map_en_2.png#/media/File:Europe_countries_map_en_2.png

“Europe countries map en 2” by San Jose (map), Hayden120 (retouch) – Derivative work of Europe countries map en.png by San Jose, based on the Generic Mapping Tools and ETOPO2. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons

British MP bombarded by anti-Semitic tweets, says Twitter slow to respond

(JNS.org) British Jewish lawmaker Luciana Berger criticized Twitter’s slow response to the tweet campaign of abusive and threatening anti-Semitic messages leveled against her.

Berger spoke at a British Parliament meeting about the threat of digital crime. She said the tweets targeting her “were incredibly abusive, they were threatening, they were distressing,” London’s Jewish Chronicle reported.

“They included images of my face superimposed on concentration camp victims, on very graphic porn images. They used the Star of David,” Berger said. The campaign peaked more than a year ago, with 2,500 abusive tweets sent in three days.

Berger claims Twitter’s reporting system is “frustratingly slow” and that it took a few minutes to report each abusive tweet. Even with improvement from last year, Twitter has still failed to remove the anti-Semitic slur “kike,” she said.

“There is still an abundance of anti-Semitism on Twitter,” said Berger. “I have a voice as an MP, but I do worry for that young teenage boy or girl who may be the subject of a barrage of hate messages. They may not have the ability to deal with it.”
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Dutch student’s dorm room made to look like Nazi death camp in hazing ritual

(JNS.org) Students at Leiden University in the Netherlands redesigned a Jewish classmate’s dorm room to make it look like a Nazi death camp as part of a hazing ritual, the Dutch daily newspaper Volksrant reported.

Several Leiden seniors who are members of the “Minerva Society” are expected to receive disciplinary action for turning the freshman student’s room into the vivid portrayal. A video obtained by Volksrantshows mass graves painted on the floor with barbed wires covering pipes in the dorm room. German words translated as “work makes you free,” a reference to signs hung at concentration camp entrances, were spray-painted on the walls. Train tracks were also drawn on the walls and Nazi swastikas were formed out of sticks.

A representative of Minerva, Leiden’s oldest student association, said that “whether Jewish guys live there or not, such activities are inappropriate and cannot be tolerated.”
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Swedish synagogues shuttered over terror threat

(JNS.org) Sweden’s Jewish community has shut down synagogues across the country as a precautionary measure against a possible terrorist threat, the World Jewish Congress said.

According to the chairwoman of the Official Council of Jewish Communities in Sweden, Lena Posner-Körösi, the security situation will be re-assessed on a daily basis.

On Wednesday, Sweden’s terror level was raised to “high” for the first time in the country’s history as police were hunting a suspected terrorists. The director general of Swedish security service Sapo, Anders Thornberg, told reporters that the agency is “at an intensive operative stage and are working to analyze the information.”

“Violent Islamism is still the biggest threat against Sweden,” said Thornberg.

Several European countries have raised their terror alert levels in the wake of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks.
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Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman.