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Pro-Hamas Protesters Show Up at Jewish Illinois Officials’ Homes, Declare ‘No Sleep for War Criminals’
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas protesters outside the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. Photo: Ron Sachs via Reuters Connect
Pro-Hamas agitators roamed the streets of the greater Chicago area over the weekend, harassing Jewish residents and fostering unrest in their campaign to pressure elected officials into boycotting and divesting from Israel.
Marching through the heavily Jewish suburb of Highland Park early on Saturday morning, a mob consisting of some 40 protesters — who concealed their faces with masks and keffiyehs — amassed outside the home of US Rep. Brad Schneider (D), who is Jewish, reportedly dousing “red liquid” on the sidewalk.
About 24 hours later, the protesters undertook a similar action, showing up at the Chicago home of Illinois Gov. Jay Robert Pritzker (D), who is also Jewish.
The group responsible for the disturbance, which calls itself “Direct Action for Palestine,” said on social media that Pritzker and Schneider are “war criminals” while denouncing Schneider’s voting for a bill which, if passed, would defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), several of whose employees allegedly aided Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
“No sleep for war criminals. Palestinian, Arab, and allied youth refuse to let war criminals rest, including Representative Brad Schneider who was awoken at 2:30 am,” Direct Actions for Palestine said in a social media post following its demonstration. “We demand a complete reinstatement of UNWRA funding, Illinois’ divestment from Israel, and an end to the US backed genocide on Gaza.”
Reports on the protesters’ actions circulated on social media, with some saying that they approached residents asking if they are a “Jew.” Others said that local law enforcement declined to make any arrests.
“It’s unfortunate that instead of seeking a constructive dialogue with Congressman Schneider, a group of people hiding their faces chose to taunt and intimidate a predominantly Jewish neighborhood on the Jewish Sabbath in the middle of the night,” a spokesperson for Schneider said in a statement following the incidents. “It’s even more disturbing the chose to harass a community that is preparing to commemorate the second anniversary of the Highland Park mass shooting, a shared tragedy that was spurred by hate.”
The statement added, “The congressman is always happy to meet and sit down with anyone. I encourage those who disagree with his views to seek a conversation in the daylight rather than disturbing and traumatizing families in the darkness of night.”
The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Midwest office denounced the demonstrations on Sunday, describing them as blatantly antisemitic and undermining the group’s claim that it wants peace.
“The chants were antisemitic. The false charge of genocide is antisemitic,” ADL Midwest tweeted. “The targeting of Jewish elected officials is antisemitic. This clearly isn’t about peace.”
Incidents of antisemitic hatred in Chicago have increased, according to a new report by the Chicago Commission on Human Relations issued last week.
“Antisemitic acts including assault, harassment, and vandalism rose to their highest level in recent history in 2022, jumping 128 percent from the previous year, from 53 to 121,” the report said, before noting that anti-Jewish hate crimes have further spiked due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. “Tensions around the conflict have impacted communities across the country, leading to protests in our streets and college campuses.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Pro-Hamas Protesters Show Up at Jewish Illinois Officials’ Homes, Declare ‘No Sleep for War Criminals’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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