Black antisemitism in NYC

In December last year, two gruesome anti-Semitic attacks in the New York area made international headlines. First, a shooting in a kosher supermarket in New Jersey, which killed six. Later in the month, five were injured in a stabbing attack on a rabbi’s home. In October, a shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue killed 11 people – the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history. In April, the Poway synagogue in California was targeted by a gunman, who killed one person and would have killed more, had his rifle not jammed. Yet while anti-Semitism was central to all of these attacks, the roots of that anti-Semitism differ.

Spiked spoke to Robert Cherry, economics professor at Brooklyn College, to find out about New York’s particular problem with anti-Semitism.

spiked: How serious has anti-Semitic crime become?

Robert Cherry: Over the past couple of years, there has been an uptick of anti-Semitic crimes. There is always a large number in the United States because anti-Semitic crimes include property crimes. So if you look at hate crimes against Jews, it dwarfs the hate crimes against Muslims, for instance. A good deal of those crimes are people knocking over stones in cemeteries or putting swastikas on temples. In the past couple of years, there have been lots of robocalls – someone will call 50 or 75 Jewish institutions and make threats over the phone. Right-wingers put up posters around universities or near Jewish neighbourhoods. I don’t want to trivialise it but those are nuisances, by and large. These are things that you certainly don’t want to overreact to.

That was the nature of anti-Semitic crime until about a year or two ago. There was lots of this kind of activity but not many assaults. But that has changed in the past year-and-a-half. There were murders in California and in Pittsburgh by right-wingers. In Pittsburgh, for instance, the murderer was pissed off at Donald Trump because he thought Trump was too friendly with Jews and too supportive of Israel.

In the New York City area, there has been a noticeable increase in assaults. In the beginning, Bill de Blasio, the mayor, and the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) tried to put it in the context of right-wing-inspired anti-Semitism. That made sense in Pittsburgh and California, but it’s really hard to do that in New York, where virtually all of the assaults have been by African-Americans. It was only after the murders in a Jersey City grocery store, which was run by Haredi Jews, and in Monsey, where there was a knifing in a rabbi’s home, that people started to realise that these actions are not following the usual script. This is not a right-wing problem.

Before the killings in Jersey City and Monsey, I wasn’t the only one to point out that there had been a substantial increase in assaults virtually all being perpetrated by black Americans. The numbers of assaults increased from 17 in 2017 to 33 in 2018. You might say that the New York Metropolitan area has 20million people, so what is 33 assaults? Do you want to build a story on that?

But when you look into it in these neighborhoods, there are lots of cases of people being shoved, a wig is pulled off, people get called ‘dirty Jew’ and they don’t report it. What’s more, this is only happening to the Haredi community because they are the only people that are easily identifiable as Jews. They have funny hats and dresses and so on. So we’re talking about a much narrower population of Jews which is being victimised.

spiked: Is anti-Semitism treated differently to other forms of racism?

Cherry: I think that that’s true. For example, now that it’s clear that these crimes are being done by black Americans, some influential writers in New York City are saying that this is really a problem of mental illness and juvenile delinquency. When you look at the adults who are committing these anti-Semitic crimes, it is true that many of them have mental problems.

And when you look at the youth, there have been examples over the past decade of black youth engaging in random acts of violence. About six or eight years ago, there was a whole experience not only in New York, but in some of the other cities, where two or three black kids would get together, they would walk down the street, and just punch the first white person they saw. Some juveniles engage in anti-social behaviour and perhaps it happens to be Jews this time that they are picking on.

But the problem is, nobody is looking at whether there are sources of anti-Semitism in the black community. There are groups like the Nation of Islam and the Black Israelites. I also think that the demonisation of Israel that goes on among many activists, including black activists, has filtered down. The people committing these crimes might be 15 year olds. They are not joining a BDS movement, but it has filtered down to them that the Jews are brutalising Palestinians. That’s not all there is to it, of course – there is a constellation of factors.

spiked: Some have argued that gentrification has played a role in these crimes. How does that fit in?

Cherry: Gentrification is very complicated. In my day job as an economist, I have done a lot of research on gentrification. I think the evidence shows, if done correctly, gentrification can revitalise poor black neighborhoods. You need middle-class people to live in those neighborhoods again and, with the money they bring, comes housing, schools and police. But gentrification is so demonised in this country. It is always implied that gentrification means simply shoving poor people out.

In New York, Orthodox Jews are moving into black neighbourhoods because their population is growing. For example, the most known black neighbourhood in Brooklyn is Bedford-Stuyvesant. Bed-Stuy used to be 80 per cent black. It is now 50 per cent black. Meanwhile, a quarter of the people who live in Bed-Stuy now are Haredi Jews, who filtered out from neighbouring Williamsburg. In Jersey City, 100 Hasidic Jews recently moved into the neighbourhood.

There have been some negatives in this. In Jersey and other suburbs, the Haredi don’t support public education. Their kids are in Yeshivas, so if they come into the community, budgets for public education end up getting cut. That creates a layer of antagonism. And they do move into these areas in groups because they need their temple and their institutions. So they are not filtering in individually. So gentrification of this kind plays a different role to when upper-middle-class white people gentrify a neighbourhood. And nobody is beating up upper-middle-class whites when they come in.

That’s the situation in New York. And I think that the organised liberal Jewish community is uncomfortable doing anything about it. Firstly because they have the same negative stereotypes of the Haredi community as everyone else. So they are not personally too sympathetic in their solidarity with the people who were being affected by anti-Semitism.

The other thing is that it has been extremely important in the United States to maintain black-Jewish unity. Over the past century and longer, Jewish immigrants had a particular sensitivity, sympathy and empathy with black Americans. And they gave money and time to many aspects of the civil-rights movement. I think for many leaders in the Jewish community, they don’t want to take a stand on forcing black leaders to contend with anti-Semitism in the black community. They tried that in the early 1990s when Louis Farrakhan was saying Jews were behind the slave trade. It was a big issue getting black leaders to condemn that stuff and they don’t want to go through it again.

The response has instead been to say that we are all in the same boat, we are all adversely affected by gentrification, so we shouldn’t be fighting each other over it. That’s what the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York’s line is on this.

spiked: How should we respond to this?

Cherry: I think the best way to respond is to acknowledge that there are many negative stereotypes of Haredi Jews that we need to confront. There should be assemblies in schools where kids can ask them questions like, ‘Do you really have horns?’. At my Brooklyn College, I’m trying to add some affirmative action. I want the admissions officers and the student-affairs people to hire one Haredi Jew so that they will have a colleague from that community. Also, there is a book by Chaim Potok called The Chosen. That’s a book that should be read widely. I think a good way to deal with it will be by finding ways to humanise the Haredi community.

SOURCE 







NYT Admits, at Last, That Its 1619 Project Is Wrong

"Why?" is a fundamental question in both journalism and history. We're constantly asking it, along with who, what, when, where, and how. We’re also constantly debating it. We know, for instance, that a given battle happened at a specific place. But why? Why were the combatants on that spot at that time, and what events or ideas led to conflict and bloodshed? In other words, why did it happen? We're constantly debating and re-evaluating as new information comes to light and as we look at old information in new ways.

In August 2019, The New York Times launched a project it called the 1619 Project. Its aim was to locate the founding of America to that year, 1619.

Why?

Because 1619 was the year the first slave ships arrived in the New World.

The Times explicitly sought to diminish America’s actual founding in 1776 by changing the focus from 1776 to 1619.

Why?

Because in 1776, the American revolutionaries laid out their “Why?” in the Declaration of Independence as they commenced the revolution to throw off the yoke of the British monarchy. The Times explicitly set out to re-write America’s answer to its central purpose. The Times set out to make liars of  America's founders.

The 1619 Project sought to re-write the American story. We would no longer be a nation built to protect the inalienable rights of all, as the Declaration states, but would instead become a nation forged specifically to enslave some. Who would, who could, be proud to be an American if our nation was founded specifically to protect and project the abomination of slavery? What would future Americans think, and do, if the Times' version of history stands?

The Times launched its project, and historians criticized it immediately. Yet the Times persisted, assailing its critics as its 1619 Project was adopted and used by public schools all over the nation.

Why?

That’s a question the NYT should now be forced to address, in public, as it should retract the entire Project. The paper has made a very significant change to its core 1619 claim. But only when it was forced to do so by its own fact-checker. The Washington Examiner:

The head of the New York Times’s much-hyped 1619 Project concedes she got it wrong when she reported that “one of the primary reasons” the colonists revolted against England was to preserve the institution of slavery.
Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones claims now that she meant to say “some of” the colonists fought to preserve slavery, not all of them.

The admission comes seven months after her faulty assertion first appeared in the New York Times’s package of essays arguing that America’s founding is defined by chattel slavery. The admission also comes after Hannah-Jones mocked and debased the many academics who directed mild and good-faith criticisms at her bogus statement.

The American Revolution, writes historian Leslie Harris (who helped fact-check the 1619 Project), not only wasn't launched to project slavery. It disrupted slavery.

Far from being fought to preserve slavery, the Revolutionary War became a primary  disrupter of slavery in the North American Colonies. Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, a British military strategy designed to unsettle the Southern Colonies by inviting enslaved people to flee to British lines, propelled hundreds of enslaved people off plantations and turned some Southerners to the patriot side. It also led most of the 13 Colonies to arm and employ free and enslaved black people, with the promise of freedom to those who served in their armies. While neither side fully kept its promises, thousands of enslaved people were freed as a result of these policies.
The 1619 Project deliberately distorted history to serve current political purposes. It must be removed from all school curricula immediately since its core claim is false and defamatory.

SOURCE 






European Human Rights Court Rules Against Christian Midwives Who Will Not Abort Babies

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has dismissed the case of two Christian midwives who were denied jobs in Sweden for refusing to perform abortions, ruling that the violation of the women’s consciences was “justified”.

After losing several court battles in Sweden, the two women — Ellinor Grimmark and Linda Steen — took their plight to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which announced this week it will not take up the case.

Swedish law obliges all midwives to perform abortions and makes no allowance for conscientious objection based on religious faith.

In dismissing Ms Grimmark’s complaint, ECHR judges recognised there had been “an interference with her freedom of religion under Article Nine” of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) — but insisted that this interference “was proportionate and justified with the view of achieving a legitimate aim.”

The interference “had a sufficient basis in Swedish law,” the judges claimed, and “pursued the legitimate aim of protecting the health of women seeking an abortion.”

“Sweden provides nationwide abortion services and therefore has a positive obligation to organise its health system in a way as to ensure that the effective exercise of freedom of conscience of health professionals in the professional context does not prevent the provision of such services,” the judges declared.

Both women received state funding for their training in Sweden as midwives, but despite Sweden’s acute midwife shortage, they were refused midwifery jobs when they revealed they would be unwilling to carry out abortions.

Ms Grimmark applied for a job at the women’s clinic at Värnamo Hospital, which denied her the position but offered her counselling “in order to come to terms with abortions and to change her mind.”

The women attempted to redress the wrong through Sweden’s legal system, arguing unsuccessfully that they had suffered discrimination because of their Christian faith and that their freedom of conscience had been violated.

The European Court ruling echoed a recent report from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, which stated that religious liberty must surrender to “human rights” such as the right to an abortion or same-sex marriage.

UN official Ahmed Shaheed lamented religiously-informed “laws and policies that restrict sexual and reproductive rights,” including “partial or total bans on access to abortion and contraception.”

In his report, Mr Shaheed explicitly condemned the appeal to conscientious objection to avoid having to perform abortions.

“One area of particular concern regarding accommodations to national law for religious beliefs is the use of conscientious objection by healthcare providers and institutions unwilling to perform abortions or provide access to contraception on religious grounds,” the Special Rapporteur stated.

Shaheed said that the Human Rights Committee “has called on States to ensure that women have access to legal abortion notwithstanding conscientious objection by medical practitioners, which it has referred to as a ‘barrier’ to access.”

SOURCE 






Australian government quietly mothballs laws to protect gay students and teachers

The Morrison government has quietly mothballed an inquiry which would have paved the way for long-promised laws to protect gay students and teachers from being expelled or sacked from religious schools.

The Australian Law Reform Commission has not yet started work on the inquiry, which was first referred to it nearly a year ago. President Sarah Derrington requested the deadline be extended until 12 months after the government's Religious Discrimination Bill passes Parliament - which is not guaranteed - making it highly unlikely any recommendations will be legislated before the next federal election.

Attorney-General Christian Porter made the change on March 2 but it was not announced by the government. The amendment appeared on the relevant webpage on the ALRC website last week.

Mr Porter told The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age the delay "makes good sense as it will enable the commission to take into account the extraordinarily far-reaching public consultation process we undertook in developing the Religious Discrimination Bill".

But Anna Brown, a lawyer and the chief executive of LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Australia, said it was "irresponsible" to make the inquiry contingent on the bill's passage. "This spells danger and discrimination for students at religious schools, whichever way you look at it," she said.

The ALRC's general counsel Matt Corrigan said the commission asked for an extension because it was impossible to conduct the inquiry while the Religious Discrimination Bill was being considered by Parliament.

"We will not be starting on this inquiry until either a bill is passed or a final decision is made by [the] government," he said. "The two are inexorably linked and it's not possible to look at them separately."

Mr Morrison's initial 2018 pledge to protect gay students from being expelled or turned away from religious schools followed public outcry over the recommendations of Philip Ruddock's review into religious freedom, which revealed freedoms few realised existed under the law.

But later in the year the government back-tracked on that promise and referred the matter to the ALRC for a review, after failing to agree on a deal with the Labor opposition led by Bill Shorten.

In 2019, the government amended the terms of reference of the review to remove the issues being dealt with by the Religious Discrimination Bill, leaving the ALRC to focus on LGBTQ teachers and students. It also delayed the reporting date to 12 December 2020, with a discussion paper to be released in "early 2020".

The review has now been delayed for a second time, with an indefinite deadline of "12 months from the date the Religious Discrimination Bill is passed by Parliament". That bill has itself been delayed and reviewed multiple times, with no guarantee it will ever pass. The discussion paper's due date is now "TBA".

Even if the Religious Discrimination Bill becomes law this year, if the ALRC reports by late 2021 it is highly unlikely its recommendations would be legislated before the next election, due in 2022.

Mr Porter said the government still expected the bill to pass the Parliament. "But let's not forget that it was the former Labor government that introduced the exemptions allowing schools to exclude gay students," he said.

"That decision could have been overturned in the last Parliament, but Bill Shorten refused to allow a conscience vote, effectively blocking attempts by the Coalition to change the law."

Ms Brown said many faith-based organisations did not want the exemptions they currently enjoy under the law, and it was "irresponsible" to make the ALRC's long-awaited inquiry contingent on a bill that was "deeply flawed" may not pass.

"In the instance where the strong and broad community opposition to the bill prevails and it doesn't pass, the Prime Minister's promise to protect kids in schools looks destined to remain unfulfilled," she said.

There are relatively few instances of LGBTQ teachers being sacked or forced out of schools, and fewer still cases of LGBTQ students being expelled or turned away. But religious schools retain this power to discirminate and some of the major churches have expressed a desire to keep it.

For example, Sydney Anglican Archbishop Glenn Davies apologised after a backlash to a letter he facilitated, signed by 34 church schools, which argued for the preservation of the schools' power to discriminate against gay students and teachers.

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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