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London Holocaust library defaced in latest incident of pro-Palestinian graffiti on Jewish site
(JTA) — A Holocaust library and research center in London was defaced with graffiti reading “Gaza,” the latest in a string of Jewish institutions and sites areound the world that have been vandalized with pro-Palestinian slogans.
Staff at the Wiener Holocaust Library discovered the spray-painted graffiti on Thursday morning on a prominent sign affixed to a fence outside the building, which is the world’s oldest Holocaust library and research center. The center will be replacing its sign, director Toby Simpson told the Jewish News.
“To use ignorance as a weapon against an institution of learning is stupid and wrong. To lash out against Israel by targeting a Holocaust institution is an action that can only make sense to antisemites and their enablers,” Simpson said. “The proliferation of antisemitic hate in the current climate should be a matter of grave concern to us all.”
One day earlier, on Wednesday, a wall in a Jewish cemetery in Vienna was defaced with a swastika and the word “Hitler,” and someone set fire to the cemetery’s ceremonial hall, according to London’s Jewish Chronicle. Firefighters extinguished the flames. Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer said in response to the incident, “Antisemitism has no place in our society and will be fought against by any political and legal means necessary,” he said.
On Tuesday, the Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center in New York City was graffitied with the words “Free Palestine” near the doorway. It is a Yiddish culture center in the Bronx that also rents space to Montefiore Medical Center, whose staff discovered the graffiti, according to the New York Post.
“Writing ‘Free Palestine’ or anything on a Jewish institution is an apparent attack against the Jewish community,” said Jeffrey Dinowitz, a New York State assemblymember representing the Bronx, in a statement. “Nonetheless, the act of vandalizing the Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center in the Bronx with the words ‘Free Palestine’ is not solely an expression of anti-Zionism; it has antisemitic connotations.”
Pro-Palestinian graffiti was also reported this week at Canter’s Deli, a Los Angeles Jewish deli that opened in 1931. “How many dead in the name of greed?” and other slogans were painted underneath a mural showcasing Jewish life in Los Angeles in an incident that local police are investigating as a hate crime.
And last week, a wall outside of a high school in Pittsburgh’s Jewish neighborhood of Squirrel Hill was graffitied with the words “Free Palestine from PGH to Gaza,” according to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. The graffiti was found shortly before the fifth anniversary of the synagogue shooting in that neighborhood, the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Multiple pro-Israel signs in the neighborhood were also graffitied. The high school’s principal condemned the graffiti “hurtful and divisive.”
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The post London Holocaust library defaced in latest incident of pro-Palestinian graffiti on Jewish site appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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