Anti-Semitic cartoon printed, prosecutor offends Holocaust survivors in Europe
(JNS.org) Anti-Semitism has come to the forefront in European media this week after an anti-Semitic cartoon was published in Spain and an Austrian prosecutor said that a magazine was justified in describing Holocaust survivors as a “plague.”
In Spain, the Jewish community is threatening legal action against the satirical left-wing magazine El Jueves, in which a cartoon was published showing hook-nosed Israeli soldiers urinating on Palestinians. Another part of the cartoon shows a hook-nosed Jew pushing a beaten Jesus. Along with these images, the illustrator alleges that Israel is “apartheid 2.0.”
“This is absolutely outrageous and obviously we are going to be seeking legal remedies,” said David Hatchwell, the president of the Jewish community of Madrid and vice president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain, the Jerusalem Post reported.
“This [cartoon] could be taken from the Nazis’ Der Sturmer and nobody would notice the difference….These are lies, totally non-factual, and it’s done in a sophisticated enough way that people who know nothing about the conflict will think that Israelis are Nazi-like oppressors and it affirms every myth [about Jews] in Europe [held] for thousands of years,” he said, calling the cartoon “pure anti-Semitism.”
At the same time, survivors of Nazi concentration camps are outraged over a remark by an Austrian prosecutor approving of an article in the July/August 2015 edition of Die Aula, which stated that “the fact that a non-negligible portion of freed prisoners became a plague on people is deemed by the judiciary to have been proven and is only disputed today by concentration camp fetishists.”
The remark referred to those who survived the Mauthausen concentration camp. Prosecutors in the southern Austrian city of Graz had started a legal proceeding against the author of the article on charges of Holocaust denial and incitement to hate, but have since dropped the charges. The new controversy stems from remarks made by the Austrian prosecutor’s office explaining its decision that “it is plausible that the release of several thousand people from the Mauthausen concentration camp presented a burden for the affected areas of Austria.”
The International Mauthausen Committee, an umbrella group of national organizations of concentration camp survivors, said that while “it is not disputed that food necessary for survival was procured in a few cases against the will of the affected local population…to describe the term ‘plague’ as appropriate as a result not only flies in the face of historical fact, but also ridicules concentration camp victims who are still alive.”
In other Holocaust-related news, 93-year-old Reinhold Hanning of the western German city of Detmold was put on trial in Germany as an accessory to the murder of at least 170,000 people for his role as a guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
“When you think of these cases, don’t think of frail, old, sick men and women, but of young people who devoted their energies to a system that implemented the [Nazis’ so-called] Final Solution and aimed to obliterate the Jewish people,” said the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Nazi hunter Ephraim Zuroff, Reuters reported.
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Ted Cruz campaign defends Pastor Mike Bickle amid stir over Hitler comments
(JNS.org) Jewish Democrats criticized Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) for promoting an endorsement from evangelical Christian Pastor Mike Bickle, who has said that God sent Hitler to punish Jews for not accepting Jesus.
“It is profoundly troubling that Sen. Ted Cruz proudly trumpeted the endorsement of such a controversial figure who holds such offensive views,” said a statement by the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC).
Bickle said in 2004, “These 20 million—less than 20 million Jews worldwide, there’s about 5 million in Israel, about another 15 million worldwide, a little bit less than that—those 15 million, God is going to bring them all back. Two-thirds will die in the rage of Satan and in the judgments of God and one-third, every one of the one-third, will be in the land before it’s over and they’ll be worshippers of Jesus…The Lord says, ‘I’m going to give all 20 million of them the chance. To respond to the fisherman. And I give them grace. And I give them grace…if they don’t respond to grace, I’m going to raise up the hunters…And the most famous hunter in recent history is a man named Adolf Hitler.’”
Cruz adviser Nick Muzin said in a statement the Cruz campaign “welcomes support from faith leaders across the country. Mike Bickle is one of the hundreds who have endorsed us. My understanding is that he was paraphrasing the words of the prophets Jeremiah and Zechariah. I know that he has made support for Israel and the Jewish people a central part of his mission.”
“No one has a better record than Senator Cruz when it comes to standing with Israel, fighting against radical Islamic terror, and combating global anti-Semitism. We are proud of the support we are building in both communities and see them as complementary, and part of our larger goal of restoring Judeo-Christian leadership values to America and the world,” Muzin said, Jewish Insider reported.
The NJDC responded that Cruz must “clarify if he stands with Pastor Mike Bickle and his belief that God sent Hitler to hunt Jews for not accepting Jesus as the messiah.”
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Israel and Netherlands to negotiate over Holocaust survivor payments
(JNS.org) Israel is expected to negotiate with the Netherlands over the alleged Dutch decision to cut monthly payments to Holocaust survivors from the European nation who immigrated to Israel, the Israeli Knesset Finance Committee announced Wednesday.
Reports surfaced earlier this month claiming that the Netherlands decided to stop paying benefits to Dutch Holocaust survivors living in Israel because they were already receiving payments from the Israeli government. The Dutch Foreign Ministry denied the allegations, saying that “it is in no way the intention of the Dutch government to stop these payments.”
Yet the Dutch embassy in Israel published a statement citing a decision-making in the Netherlands on whether or not the payments for Holocaust survivors, called “WUV,” would be scaled back because survivors were already receiving Israeli benefits since June 2014.
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