States try again to ban neo-Nazi party (Germany)

Germany's states are making a renewed push to ban the country's best-known neo-Nazi party, arguing it

is basically the same as Hitler's party, and is damaging democracy.
The states - represented in the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat - are due to submit their application for a ban to the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe on Tuesday.

It is the second attempt to ban the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany), after the same court rejected a submission in 2003, because too much of the crucial evidence was from party members who were acting as paid agents of the security services.

That attempt was backed by the government and Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, as well as the Bundesrat. This time the Bundesrat is going it alone, after the other two bodies decided a second attempt was unlikely to succeed.

This time around, the submission consists only of publicly available evidence, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper reported - as well as two reports from academics.
One of these talks of a "continuity in ideological direction" from historical National Socialism to the NPD. A second says that the actions of the NPD have "already led to the limitation of public democratic life at the local level."

The NPD last got 0.8 percent of the vote in Lower Saxony's state election, 1.2 percent in Bavaria and 1.1 percent in Hesse, while in September's federal election they managed 1.3 percent. They have a total of 13 state MPs in Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

The submission to ban the party claims the NPD wants to violently deport foreigners and migrants, as well as those who have German citizenship but do not met their narrow definition of being German enough.

It also argues that the NPD's, "rejection of the democratic parliamentary system of government, its relativism of National Socialist injustice and the relativism of the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force" counted as breaches of the basic order of peaceful democracy.

The FAZ also said that a security service report included in the submission suggested that one in four of the NPD's leadership nationally and in states, had criminal records for offences including assault, criminal damage, trespassing, and propaganda-related offences. Half of those convicted were, according to the report, habitual offenders and had been given prison sentences for their crimes.
The Bundestag decided to make the submission a year ago in the wake of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) case, in which a neo-Nazi gang, which had some connections to NPD functionaries, are accused of killing ten people over a period of seven years.

The Local Germany

Two Teens Arrested Over Anti-Semitic Facebook Hate (uk)

Two teenage girls have been arrested as part of a police investigation into a vehemently anti-Semitic Facebook group exposed last week by the Jewish News.

The group, which attracted more than 500 members, featured scores of offensive remarks from youths and even saw teenagers boasting about engaging in anti-Semitic behaviour.

Created by a pupil at Loxford School of Science and Technology in Ilford, the group was described by a Community Security Trust official as "one of the most shocking things I have ever seen".

This week police confirmed arrests had been made. A spokesperson said: "A 16-year-old girl was arrested in connection with the investigation. The following day a second girl, aged 17, was also arrested. Both were taken into custody at an east London police station and later bailed to a date in mid-March pending further inquiries."
The group featured messages from youths using language rife with spelling errors, profanities and teenage colloquialisms. One girl wrote: "Jews are the ones that killed prophets in the past. Dirty filthy scum-bags. No wonder they have the curse of Allah upon them. Burn Jew burn."
News of the arrests came as MPs from across the political spectrum signed a parliamentary motion prompted by last week's Jewish News front page story.
Tabled by Hendon MP Andrew Dismore, it "calls on the Secretaries of State for Children, Schools and Families and Business, Innovation and Skills to investigate these incidents and the use of Facebook generally to promote messages of hate, and to then report back to Parliament on their conclusions".

The early day motion, which also congratulates the Jewish News on its online investigation, has so far been signed by Conservative Lee Scott, Liberal Democrat Evan Harris and Labour's Louise Ellman, Andrew Love and Virendra Kumar Sharma. Speaking to the Jewish News, Dismore joined the CST in welcoming the police probe.
The offending group, which had been online for two weeks, was removed by Facebook after the school contacted the popular social networking site and the police. The Jewish News was informed about the group by a private investigator in Australia
totallyjewish.com

Police launch investigation into anti-Semitic Facebook group

Police have launched an urgent investigation into a horrific Facebook group that gave graphic details of anti-Semitic incidents perpetrated by its members against Ilford's Jewish community.

The group, created by a student at Loxford School of Science and Technology, attracted more than 500 members in two weeks following its launch last month and featured teenagers boasting about engaging in anti-Semitic behaviour.
It featured messages from youths using language rife with spelling errors, profanities and teenag colloquialisms.

One girl wrote: "Jews are the ones that killed prophets in the past. Dirty filthy scum-bags. No wonder they have the curse of Allah upon them. Burn Jew burn."

Another stated: "OMG! ii Saw a Jew Todaii ii Swearr downn Weariingg Dahh Hatt He Lookedd At Me Liike Man Knowsz Me [sic]."

She went on to describe screaming obscenities at the man and rudely telling him to go away.

In a further disturbing post, a girl bragged about aggressively confronting

a Jewish woman in Argos after she was "looking at me". She wrote: "Looool i Had a Fight Wif 1 Urgh in Argos [sic]."

The Jewish News was informed about the group, created by a student at Loxford School, by a private investigator in Australia. It has since been removed from the popular social networking site.

The group was described by a Community Security Trust (CST) official as "one of the most shocking things I have ever seen".

A spokeswoman from Redbridge Council, speaking on behalf of Loxford School, said the school was contacted about the group and then immediately reported it to Facebook and the police.

The spokeswoman said: "The student concerned has been dealt with and the school has taken disciplinary action. There is an ongoing police investigation so we are unable to comment further."

Ilford police confirmed it had "received an allegation regarding anti-Semitic material being published on a social networking website".

A spokeswoman told the Jewish News that the police are investigating and inquiries continue.

Several comments on the vile Facebook site include misguided references to Islam and the Koran as justification for targeting Jews. #

One female youth wrote: "We hate Jews for the sake of Allah as he has told us to do in the Koran."

The group page included offensive jokes invoking pejorative stereotypes about Jews and money as well as an anti-Semitic cartoon. There was also a link to a YouTube video entitled "Kill All Christians and Jews".

In addition several members expressed anti-Israeli sentiment. There was a photograph of graffiti saying "Jihad 4 Israel" and a link to another YouTubev video of "a brave Palestinian girl standing up to Israeli soldiers".

Mike Gardner, director of communications at the CST, said he was left "utterly chilled" by the casual way that the youths displayed their anti-Semitism.

He said: "It shows how new media is now facilitating the most shocking anti-Semitism among groups of youngsters, as if hatred and violence and gross ignorance were all just a part of their normal lives.

"Anybody who wants to understand how anti-Semitism can be transmitted today should study this online group closely, but they will need a strong stomach to do so."

The CST, which is due to release its latest findings on anti-Semitism in the UK this week, has previously reported 609 incidents in the first six months of 2009, more than in any other entire year. A report released by the Jewish Agency last month revealed that there were more anti-Semitic incidents in Europe in 2009 than in any year since the Holocaust. Mike Gapes, the local MP for Ilford South, urged the authorities to take

"very strong action". Gapes told the Jewish News: "I am deeply concerned. Incitement to hatred is a crime and we must stand very firm and take action against anyone who incited racial or religious hatred. Anti-Semitism has to be opposed."

Lee Scott MP for Ilford North also denounced the site, saying: "It is shocking and I condemn it."

A Facebook spokeswoman said that the group was removed because it breached the company's policies. She said: "We want Facebook to be a place where people can openly discuss issues and express their views, while respecting the rights and feelings of others." She added that users should report groups that they feel violate Facebook's rules.

Spencer Lewis, the headteacher of local Jewish high school King Solomon said: "We have had no problems at all with Loxford that I am aware of and we have a very good relationship with the school." Have you encountered anti-Semitism online?

Tell them about it by emailing newsdesk@thejngroup.com
TotalyJewish.com

We are still in the shadow of the Holocaust

This Wednesday we remember the greatest crime ever inflicted by man against his fellow man. Holocaust Memorial Day allows us to reflect on the bleakest chapter in the history of the 20th century. And there is a special urgency in the call to remember this year, of all years - because the shadow of the Holocaust continues to fall over the world today.

Mass murder is still deployed as a political tool by tyrants, from Burma to Zimbabwe. Racism is returning to the streets of Europe, from St Petersburg to Antwerp. And, hard though it is to credit after the horrors of the last century, anti-Semitism is creeping back into the corridors of power.

We know that Nazi ideology still has the power to motivate evil men. From the Swedish fascist who tried to acquire the "Arbeit macht frei" sign which hung over the gates of Auschwitz, to the British fascists of the BNP, there is an ominous resurgence of extremist activity visible across our Continent.

It is because we face a new fascist threat, and because the extremism of the BNP is mirrored in the equally toxic ideology of anti-Semitic groups such as Islam4Uk and Hizb-ut Tahrir, that we need, all of us, to make an additional effort to remember how the Holocaust started. And where it ended.

The history of the Holocaust is the history of a society which blamed the Jews for its miseries, sought to push them to the margins and then sought, literally, to make them vanish from sight. In our time we can see the same trends returning. The calls for boycotts of Jewish thinkers at Israeli universities, the rise in anti-Semitic incidents on our streets, the inflamed rhetoric of vilification which culminates in the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call to wipe Israel off the map, are all connected.

As the chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, has so presciently pointed out, anti-Semitism is a virus which mutates. Originally it was the Jewish people's religious identity which came under attack, and the Church led a programme of forced conversion. Then, as society replaced religion with science as a source of authority, anti-Semitism mutated so that the Jewish people came under attack on racial grounds. Now it is Jewish identity expressed through the right of Israel to self-determination which is the focus of anti-Semitism. Israel, like any state, makes mistakes. Sometimes grievous ones. But many of Israel's enemies now risk repeating one of the greatest errors of history by infusing anti-Semitism with a new and toxic vibrancy. We see it in some of those who have attached themselves to recent anti-war campaigns, with Britons marching through the streets of London declaring "We are all Hezbollah now" even though Hezbollah is a fascist organisation whose leader is a Holocaust-denier who believes the Jews are "grandsons of apes and pigs". And we also see the apparent mainstreaming of anti-Semitism in comments such as those of a former ambassador who recently objected to the composition of the Iraq inquiry team because two of its members were Jewish.

When prejudice is unleashed in this way we are all affected. As the chief rabbi has pointed out, what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. The Nazis targeted gay men and women, Roma, the disabled and Christians of conscience. The BNP are, similarly, as homophobic, Islamophobic and plain, downright racist as they are anti-Semitic.

History teaches us many lessons, if we are willing to pay attention. And one of the most profound is that the best guide to the health of a society has always been how secure its Jewish community feels. Throughout history the freest societies, from 17th-century Holland to 20th-century England, have been those in which Jewish people have felt safest. And over the ages the surest sign that a country is moving away from liberalism has been a growing prejudice towards the Jewish community, whether Vienna a hundred years ago, Germany in the thirties or Russia in the last decade.
It is because that lesson of history is so important that Holocaust Memorial Day is so crucial. And it is because we must ensure the next generation learns those lessons that the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust is so vital. The Trust provides the tools for schools to communicate the lessons of the Holocaust – so that young people can understand the consequences of allowing prejudice to grow. The Trust provides schools with books, maps, images and artefacts from the past as well as a Bafta award-winning production containing the testimonies of survivors. And two students from every school in the country are given the chance to visit Auschwitz and see the site of mankind's most terrible atrocity with their own eyes.
As the survivors of the Holocaust grow older and we face losing their vivid living testimonies, so the risk of forgetting grows stronger, and with it the risk of repeating history's mistakes. That is why the Holocaust Educational Trust's work has never been more necessary, the lessons of history never more relevant and the act of commemoration never more important. Whatever else may divide politicians, the lesson of the last century is that the resurgence of anti-Semitism requires us all to unite against this most poisonous of prejudic


Daily Telegraph

BRITONS ARRESTED OVER ARSON ATTACK ON CRETE SYNAGOGUE (Greece)

Two British nightclub waiters have been arrested after arson attacks on a historic Jewish synagogue on the Greek island of Crete which have drawn condemnation from around the world. The men, aged 23 and 33, are in custody alongside a 24-year-old Greek man after the restored medieval in the port city of Hania, one of the most noted Jewish temples in Greece, was twice set alight this month. The fires, which destroyed 2,500 rare books and manuscripts, sparked alarm among the 8,000 Jews in Greece. The US state department said the attacks were "clearly intended to intimidate and terrorise Greece's Jewish community". The arsons were the latest of several incidents of antisemitic vandalism across Greece, including attacks on synagogues and cemeteries in Larissa, Volos, Thessaloniki, Ioannina and Athens. During the first fire, on 5 January, a bottle with flammable liquid was found, according to witnesses. That fire was extinguished. But another, on 16 January, destroyed books and computers as well as causing considerable damage to art work and to the interior of the building, which is Crete's only synagogue. The 33-year-old Briton, who has not been named, is accused of being the perpetrator of that second attack but denies the charges. The Greek man and 23-year-old Briton are accused of keeping watch. Two US citizens are being sought in connection with the first attack, with the three detained also accused of involvement, said local police.

The 15th-century synagogue was restored in 1999 after lying derelict since the Holocaust. By 1941 most of the Jews in Crete had emigrated, leaving only the Hania community of 269 people. They were deported by Nazi invaders in 1944 and died when their ship was bombed and sunk by the Allies. Now a cultural centre and museum as well as a house of worship, the building was renovated with help from the World Monuments Fund. As a derelict building it was seen by locals as "a monument to the success of the Nazis in obliterating 2300 years of Jewish life" but is now a "vibrant statement of Jewish life, vitality and values", according to its website. The men were reportedly arrested after the Greek co-accused confessed. Israel has called on Greece to better protect its Jewish heritage. Moses Constantinis, head of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, said: "We are worried, the Jewish community is worried."