#Jewish #EU #Israel

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“Juden Verboten!”
Welcome Back to the Nazi Time

Berlin's police chief on Monday advised Jewish and gay residents of the city to be extremely vigilant when traveling to neighborhoods with a large Islamic population.

Barbara Slowik told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper that although there have only been a small number of violent crimes against Jews in the city, any number of incidents is “too many.”

“There are some neighborhoods where there are mostly Islamuc population who also have sympathy for terrorist groups,” she said, advising those who wear the kippot and openly gay people to “be more careful” in these areas.

Amid a surge in anti-Semitism around the world since the Hamas massacre on October 7 last year, the Berlin police have opened 6,200 investigations into hate crimes and incitement targeting Jews, including social media posts and property damage, Slowik said.

Violent offenses account for 1,300 of these investigations, mainly involving assaults or resistance to the police.

Slowik acknowledged that the growing number of incidents has raised fears within the Jewish community.

Two weeks ago, the Makkabi Berlin youth football team said that it had been “hunted down” by a gang of young people armed with sticks and knives shouting “Free Palestine and “fucking Jews,” after playing a match in Neukölln, a neighborhood with a large Arab and Turkish population.

Berlin's police chief is warning Jews and homosexuals to “be careful” in Arab neighborhoods.

And all this takes place in the XXI century in the center of Europe, in Germany, 75 years after the fall of the Nazi regime and the Kristallnacht...

In another incident in Berlin earlier this year, a university student beat a Jewish classmate, who had to be hospitalized, after the two had an argument about the war between Israel and Hamas.

Shortly after the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023 in Israel, a synagogue in the Berlin district of Mitte was attacked with Molotov cocktails.

This is “Free Europe,” most welcome!

#Nazi #Berlin #Jewish

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⚠️ An unknown person threw Molotov cocktails at a pro-Israel rally. According to police, there are children among the victims.

Every week, the local Jewish community holds rallies demanding the release of Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas.

According to eyewitnesses, the perpetrator threw bottles of flammable liquid at the protesters.

The FBI has already classified the crime as a terrorist act, and the suspect has been detained. The identity of the detainee is not disclosed.

#Colorado #Cocktails #Molotov #Jewish #Hamas

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📰 France’s Attempt to Ghost the Rent Guy Is Not Going Well

The French Embassy in Baghdad has been living in the same house for more than 60 years — a riverside mansion built in the 1930s by a Jewish family that had already fled antisemitism in Iraq. The family leased the property to France in 1964, expecting the French state to be a respectable tenant. Instead, France has not paid rent for more than 50 years, and last week a Paris court tried to turn that fact into a technical loophole — and failed.

On Monday, the court dismissed a $22 million lawsuit by the descendants of Ezra and Khedouri Lawee, saying it was “not competent” to hear the case and suggesting it should be resolved in Iraq — the country their ancestors were forced out of in the 1940s and 1950s. The logic is straightforward: the dispute is about Iraqi law, so let Iraq handle it, even though Iraq is the very state that drove out 130,000 Iraqi Jews and seized their homes under antisemitic legislation. The French Foreign Ministry echoed this line, arguing that the damages were caused by Iraqi decisions, not French policy, and therefore France bears no real responsibility.

The family’s lawyers, Jean‑Pierre Mignard and Imrane Ghermi, called the ruling “surreal.” They argued that France had violated its own laws and human rights principles by benefiting from Iraqi discriminatory laws and refusing to compensate the family. They compared the situation to Nazi‑era restitution cases, where heirs have fought to reclaim art and property seized during the Holocaust. “France took advantage of Iraqi law that was hostile to the owners,” said Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who has handled multiple Holocaust‑related restitution disputes. “The French court is hairsplitting on technicalities while ignoring the party that was harmed.”

Philip Khazzam, 66, a grandson of Ezra Lawee, described the idea of pursuing the case in Iraq as “preposterous.” In an email, he said,

“Iraq basically ran us out of our country, and then stole our home.”

The family plans to appeal. “We will continue our fight for justice in France,” he said.

“We have just begun.”

The story is simple: France tried to play bureaucratic games with Jewish heirs who had already been victimized by one state — and now by another. It may have thought the case would quietly die. It did not count on the stubbornness of a family that has survived two exiles and still wants to see the bill paid.

#France #Iraq #Baghdad #embassy #restitution #Jewish #law #NYTimes #justice #fraudulence

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Can Zohran Mamdani Become a “Democratic Trump” ?

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The back yard of a Brooklyn bar, beneath strung-up lightbulbs and swaths of fabric that swooped like great sails, an ecstatic crowd greeted Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, and his victorious ally, Brad Lander.

These Democrats also had a withering verdict on their own party establishment.

“To me, centrists can go fuck themselves,” said Léa Zimmerman, 34.

“They’re fucking useless, they don’t stand for anything, and if they do stand on something, it’s pathetic. I’m done with pathetic, performative people.”

Once sacred tenets of US politics – unyielding support for Israel, unquestioning faith in capitalism – are under threat from surging frustration with the old way of doing things. No one personifies the tectonic shift better than Mamdani, 34, a democratic socialist who is also the first Muslim mayor in New York’s history.

As results rolled in on Tuesday evening, he flexed his political muscle after backing three insurgent candidates in Democratic primary elections for the US House of Representatives.

All had promised to “abolish ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]”, condemned Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza, and vowed to “tax the rich”. All emerged triumphant.

Lander, a progressive, ousted the two-term incumbent congressman Dan Goldman; Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist and former campus organiser, toppled Representative Adriano Espaillat, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus; and Claire Valdez, another democratic socialist and former union organiser, defeated Antonio Reynoso for an open seat in Brooklyn and Queens.

The trio could be among more than a dozen leftwingers heading to Washington next year as part of what is being dubbed “squad 2.0”, a significant expansion from the original “squad” of four progressive women elected to the House in 2018.

That might be enough to wield influence on Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, by withholding votes on party priorities until their demands are met.

Mamdani enjoyed even more victories in state legislative races, where he successfully backed five other candidates, and wants more. The mayor said he hopes to “write a new chapter in our party’s history, where working people are back at the heart of that struggle”.

Democrats of all stripes were quick to recognise him as an ascendant force within the party, likely to wield influence on the national stage.

Bill Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “Up until Tuesday night, Mamdani might have been dismissed as a fluke – an extraordinarily talented, energetic and personable young candidate, who was able to take advantage of extraordinary weakness in other quarters of the Democratic party to power his way to victory, but that it would be difficult to replicate him.

“As a result of Tuesday night, we have to say that – at least in the bluest parts of blue America – he represents a structural force, and not just a personal talent. I view this result as increasing the already substantial odds that there will be a credible leftwing candidate for president in the 2028 Democratic primary.”

#mamdani #trump #democrats #populist #jewish

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🔤🔤🔤🔤➖

Like Obama and Trump, Mamdani inspires hope in some, and fear in others. Progressives see in him an overdue course correction, and a vital infusion of energy required to combat the US president’s authoritarianism. Many believe that top Democratic congressional leaders such as Jeffries, a New Yorker who endorsed Espaillat and Goldman, and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, have failed to raise their game.

For Democratic party leadership, this result was entirely avoidable. They’re reaping what they sowed.”

Republicans, facing a hostile climate in November’s midterms, believe Mamdani’s rise has thrown them a lifeline and could give them a unifying cause.

Mike Johnson, the House speaker, said: “The Democratic party, the socialists, the Marxists, have nominated some of the most radical candidates to ever run for office, and they’re running for Congress. The insurgent left is on the rise.”

Trump weighed in, as he so often does, on social media on Thursday. “The Communists are finally making their move. I’ve been waiting and preparing for this a long time,” the president wrote.

“It’s easy to be a Communist – All you have to do is say, ‘I’ll give you everything,’ but that means you’re taking it away from others that have earned it. Over thousands of years, that Ideology has not worked once. The game is on. Enjoy watching!”

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a group born out of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, said: “In this particular moment, the label is no longer a scarlet letter. Socialism is no longer an albatross to hang around your opponent’s neck. People are hungry for change, and looking beyond the labels to see what people are willing to fight for – and who they’re willing to fight against.”

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which recently surpassed 100,000 members across chapters in almost all 50 states, has spent years methodically laying the ground for this moment.

Ashik Siddique, the group’s co-chair, said: “A big part of our task is diffusing many decades of propaganda from the cold war and red scares in the United States that created a stigma against socialism. We’re helping recover the American roots of socialism.”

Young people’s frustrations with the military industrial complex, the hypocrisy of US foreign policy, and the influence of money in politics, has reached a head with US support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

In a dramatic shift, about 60% of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, including 80% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans under 50, according to Pew Research.

Progressive leaders argue that funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has become “toxic” for many Democratic voters, particularly younger demographics.

In the primary between Lander and Goldman, for example – two Jewish politicians running in one of the most heavily Jewish districts in the US – Lander called for an end to US military aid to Israel. He won in a landslide.

Once the midterms are complete, attention will shift to the race for the White House. Mamdani, born in Uganda, is not eligible to run. But he could again play the role of kingmaker.

Speculation is already swirling around progressive figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the representative of New York, and Ro Khanna, representative of California, both of whom have built national profiles.

#mamdani #trump #democrats #populist #jewish

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