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A prominent German critic of Israel claimed to be Jewish. Now he says he is not.
BERLIN (JTA) — He was celebrated on the left as a prominent Jewish critic of Israel. But the German journalist and teacher Fabian Wolff has revealed that he is not Jewish after all, sparking criticism of the way he framed his political positions.
In a personal essay published on Sunday in Zeit Online, Wolff said that he had not known the truth himself until recently. He had written columns for the Juedische Allgemeine, Germany’s leading Jewish newspaper, for years.
Wolff, 33, explained in the essay titled “My Life as a Son” that his mother had once hinted that her maternal great-grandmother had been an Orthodox Jew. Based on this story, Wolff had embraced a Jewish identity and even underwent a circumcision, he wrote. But his mother, who died in 2017, had been mistaken.
“I will not speak from the position of a Jew in Germany, because I cannot and I am not,” he wrote.
Wolff has been known for his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and his rejection of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which includes some forms of Israel criticism. He had, critics say, used his supposed Jewish identity as a shield against backlash from Jewish community organizations.
A few years ago, after Wolff signed an open letter in support of a German-Palestinian journalist, he learned that someone had warned other signatories and members of the Jewish community that he was not Jewish, “based on private information,“ Wolff wrote. He said he took a step back from expressing his Jewish identity publicly and stopped taking writing assignments “if I had the feeling I was being asked first and foremost as a Jew.“
A long search through many archives led him to the conclusion that there was no truth to his mother’s story about having Jewish roots.
“In journalistic circles, the question was not when Fabian Wolff’s costume Judaism would be exposed, but only who would make it public first,” wrote journalist Philipp Peyman Engel of the Juedische Allgemeine. “Because in September 2021, some journalists in Berlin received detailed research into the extent to which Wolff’s Jewish biography was made up from start to finish.”
The episode spurred debate online about Wolff’s political stances. The fact that Wolff is not Jewish “does not change anything about his justified and important criticism of Germany and Israel,” wrote one Facebook friend. Another answered: But “the man lied, faked a family history and made a career with it.”
In 2019, a German historian and blogger named Marie Sophie Hingst died by suicide after it was revealed that she had falsely claimed to be descended from Holocaust survivors.
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The post A prominent German critic of Israel claimed to be Jewish. Now he says he is not. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.