Shielding Israel from criticism is not part of US strategy for combating anti-Semitism

2023/05/30 Leave a comment

Of note (on the IHRA and other definitions):

Supporters of Israel advocating for the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism have suffered a major blow in their ongoing effort to shield the apartheid state from criticism, following the release of a strategy document by the White House detailing its plan to combat the rise of anti-Jewish racism. Since at least 2016, anti-Palestinian groups have been clamouring to place the IHRA at the heart and centre of regulatory frameworks, which critics say is designed to police free speech on Israel and Palestine.

Yesterday, the US President Joe Biden had his say on the issue and the outcome is far from what advocates of the IHRA had been calling for. Instead of adopting the IHRA as the only definition of anti-Semitism, which hundreds of pro-Israel groups had been advocating for during consultation, its status has been demoted as one of the definitions of anti-Jewish racism alongside others that “serve as valuable tools to raise awareness and increase understanding of anti-Semitism.”

The White House’s strategy for combatting anti-Semitism refers to IHRA as “most prominent” but also “non-legally binding working definition” alongside other definitions it “welcomes and appreciates”. The US Administration also cites the non-controversial “Nexus Document” as a valid definition of anti-Semitism. Unlike the IHRA, the Nexus Document does not conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Interestingly, the IHRA is only mentioned once in the report, alongside other less controversial definitions of anti-Semitism, that do not mention Israel.

Noticeably, the White House did offer its own definition of anti-Semitism: “Anti-Semitism is a stereotypical and negative perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred of Jews” said the strategy document, without mentioning Israel once. “It is prejudice, bias, hostility, discrimination or violence against Jews for being Jews or Jewish institutions or property for being Jewish or perceived as Jewish. Anti-Semitism can manifest as a form of racial, religious, national origin, and/or ethnic discrimination, bias, or hatred; or, a combination thereof. However, anti-Semitism is not simply a form of prejudice or hate. It is also a pernicious conspiracy theory that often features myths about Jewish power and control.”

To the disappointed of pro-Israel groups, the White House’s definition does not mention the apartheid state once. Seven of the eleven examples of anti-Semitism in the IHRA conflate criticism of Israel with ant-Jewish racism. Because of this fact, opponents of the IHRA have warned that instead of focusing on how to keep Jews safe, the so called “working definition” is fixated on shielding Israel from accountability. The Biden administration seems to be implicitly sympathetic to this view. With no mention of Israel in the White House’s own definition of anti-Semitism, there is no other way to interpret the position of the Biden administration other than to view it as a snub to advocates of the IHRA. Having campaigned hard and long to make sure that the IHRA was at the heart and centre of the White House’s strategy to combat anti-Semitism, it was mentioned once and only in passing.

The Biden administration’s strategy represents “the most comprehensive and ambitious US government effort to counter anti-Semitism in American history”. To develop this strategy, the White House held listening sessions with more than 1,000 diverse stakeholders across the Jewish community and beyond. These sessions have included Jews from diverse backgrounds and all denominations. The White House also met with Special Envoys who combat anti-Semitism around the globe to learn from their best practices. Bipartisan leaders in Congress and from across civil society, the private sector, technology companies, civil rights leaders, Muslim, Christian and other faith groups, students and educators and countless others were engaged during “listening sessions”.

A bitter row had ensued during the consultation period over the status of the IHRA. Though there is said to have existed a broad consensus that anti-Semitism in America is a crucial problem and must be addressed, some Jewish organisations tried to undermine this effort, according to Hadar Susskind, the President and CEO of Americans for Peace Now. By insisting on the prioritisation of the IHRA above all other issues, Susskind claimed that a number of American Jewish organisations had prioritised shielding Israel from criticism over combatting anti-Semitism.

“Rather than support this far-reaching  plan to truly combat anti-Semitism, there are those in our community who, instead, insist that this plan should be about the IHRA definition, and only the IHRA definition,” said Susskind on twitter, while revealing details of the polarisation in the Jewish community over the IHRA. “Why are some insisting that the IHRA definition is so unique that it alone is worthy of inclusion in this effort?” Susskind asked. “Why do those same people insist that the Nexus definition and the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism are so unacceptable as tools to combat anti-Semitism?”

Explaining the difference, Susskind said that “the IHRA definition and only the IHRA definition has been weaponised by the Israeli government and those who defend its worst policies and actions”. He mentioned how the IHRA definition has been used repeatedly to define anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and “honed into a weapon to shut down criticism of Israeli policy and discourse on Israel-Palestine.”

J Street, another liberal pro-Israel advocacy group, which had urged the Biden administration not to incorporate the IHRA in its strategy, also welcomed the report. “Importantly, the strategy avoids exclusively codifying any one specific, sweeping definition of anti-Semitism as the sole standard for use in enforcing domestic law and policy, recognising that such an approach could do more harm than good” said J Street. “While some voices have pushed the White House to give the full force of US law to the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism and its accompanying examples, the Biden Administration rightly cites this definition as just one of a range of illustrative and useful tools in understanding and combating anti-Semitism.”

J Street went on to add that it was supported by many other advocates in the Jewish community – including the definition’s original author, Kenneth Stern – in warning that the IHRA and examples of anti-Jewish racism cited in the definition have been used to focus attention disproportionately on criticism of Israel and advocacy of Palestinian rights.

In refusing to endorse the IHRA as the only definition of anti-Semitism, President Biden has shown that a genuine effort to combat the rise of anti-Jewish racism cannot have a document shielding Israel from accountability at the heart and centre of its strategy.

Source: Shielding Israel from criticism is not part of US strategy for combating anti-Semitism

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with , , ,

Scholars defend Polish Holocaust researcher targeted by govt

2023/05/02 Leave a comment

Of note and Poland’s struggle to come to terms with its history:

Scholars and historical institutions from around the world are coming to the defense of a Polish researcher who is under fire from her country’s authorities after claiming that Poles could have done more to help Jews during the Holocaust.

Barbara Engelking said in a TV interview last week that Polish Jews felt disappointed in Poles during World War II, referring to what she described as “widespread blackmailing” of Jews by Poles during the Nazi German occupation.

Since then the historian and the independent TV broadcaster have been threatened with consequences by government institutions — turning the matter into a campaign issue ahead of elections scheduled for this fall.

Poland’s conservative government and pro-government media have described the remarks by Engelking, who is Polish, as an attack on the nation. They accuse her of distorting the historical record and not giving due credit to the Poles who risked — and sometimes lost — their lives to help Jews.

It is the latest eruption of an emotional debate that has been going on for years in Poland over Polish-Jewish relations, particularly the behavior of Poles toward their Jewish neighbors during the war — when Germans committed brutal crimes against Poles, whom they considered subhuman, and against the Jews, a population they sought to exterminate in its entirety.

Poles reacted in various ways to the German treatment of the Jews. Some helped the Jews, an act punishable with execution by the occupation forces. Others denounced or blackmailed them, motivated by antisemitic hatred or for personal gain. Many Poles lived in fear and sought to survive the war without getting involved either way.

Even Polish nationalists do not deny that some Poles preyed on their Jewish compatriots, but they say a relatively recent focus in scholarship on that aspect of the war distorts a larger history of heroism by Poles who resisted the Germans. They argue it risks blaming Polish victims for German crimes.

Engelking spoke on the 80th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. She was being interviewed by private broadcaster TVN about an exhibition she helped create on the fate of civilians in the ghetto, “Around Us A Sea of Fire,” which opened last week.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reacted to the interview with a long social media post describing Engelking’s comments as “scandalous opinions” and part of an “anti-Polish narrative.”

Morawiecki referred to the more than 7,000 Poles recognized by Israel’s Holocaust institute Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. A Polish institute is trying to document cases that have so far not been recorded.

“We know that there could be tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of such cases,” Morawiecki said.

This week Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek threatened the funding of the institution where Engelking works, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, which is part of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

“I will not finance an institute that maintains the kind of people who just insult Poles,” Czarnek said.

He said that Poles “were the greatest allies of the Jews, and if it had not been for the Poles, many Jews would have died, many more than were killed in the Holocaust.”

According to Yad Vashem, some 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland on the eve of the Sept. 1, 1939 German invasion, and only 380,000 survived the war.

Some 3 million other Polish citizens who were not Jewish were also killed during the war.

Poland’s state broadcasting authority has also opened an investigation into TVN, which is owned by the U.S. company Warner Bros. Discovery. The broadcaster faced government criticism recently for a report claiming that Saint John Paul IIhad covered up cases of clerical abuse in his native Poland before becoming pope.

Government critics see an attempt to exploit the issue to win votes ahead of the election — as the ruling party risks losing votes to a far-right party, Confederation, which has been surging in popularity.

Liberal media and commentators warn that media and academic freedoms are being threatened.

Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan said on Twitter this week that he called Engelking to show support for “freedom of expression and of academic research, in the face of blatant and menacing attacks.”

By Friday more than 600 scholars of the Holocaust and related subjects in Poland and abroad had signed a statement expressing opposition to the “political attack” on Engelking.

They said they regard “such censorious tendencies … as extremely dangerous and unacceptable,” adding: “We object to the idea of making a subject that calls for meticulous and nuanced research — as carried out by Professor Engelking — part of an election campaign.”

The POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, where the exhibition about civilians in the Warsaw ghetto is being shown, also defended Engelking in a statement Wednesday.

The museum argued that the feelings of disappointment expressed by Jews during the war are a “fact,” and that “they appear in almost every account of those who survived the Holocaust, as well as those who managed to leave a record of their fate, but did not survive.”

“The essence of scientific research is a dispute, but a brutal personal attack on a scientist and an outstanding authority in her field cannot be called a dispute,” it said.

Engelking more than a decade ago again angered some Poles by seeming to downplay Polish wartime suffering, saying death for Poles then “was simply a biological, natural matter … and for Jews it was a tragedy, it was a dramatic experience, it was metaphysics.”

Source: Scholars defend Polish Holocaust researcher targeted by govt

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust Tagged with ,

Swiss to erect 1st national memorial honoring Nazi victims

2023/04/28 Leave a comment

Over due, but test will be how it interprets Switzerland’s role in persecution of Jews and others during the Nazi regime:

Switzerland’s executive body agreed Wednesday to help pay for a national memorial to honor the six million Jews and other victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution, in what the leading Swiss Jewish group is calling the country’s first official monument of its kind.

The Federal Council, the seven-member executive branch, approved 2.5 million Swiss francs (about $2.8 million) for the memorial that will be erected at an unspecified “central location” in the capital, Bern, at a time when the number of Holocaust survivors has dwindled and antisemitism has risen again.

“The Federal Council considers it of great importance to keep alive the memory of the consequences of National Socialism, namely the Holocaust and the fate of the six million Jews and all other victims of the National Socialist regime,” a government statement said.

Switzerland and its capital, through the move, were “creating a strong symbol against genocide, antisemitism and racism, and for democracy, the rule of law, freedom and basic individual rights,” it said.

The statement did not mention whether the memorial would make any direct reference to any Swiss role in the persecution of people during the Nazi regime in Germany.

The Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, an umbrella group, said Switzerland has about 60 small, private sites remembering the Holocaust and other crimes of the Nazis.

“There is, however, no official or national memorial for the numerous Swiss victims of persecution, for the thousands of refugees repelled at the borders or deported, but also for the many courageous helpers in this country,” it said, noting that the memorial would be created to honor them all.

The group says recent studies have shown that a “sizeable number” of Swiss citizens were victims of the Nazi regime, “persecuted because they were, for example, Jews, socialists, Sinti or Roma.” Both Sinti and Roma are peoples who live predominantly in eastern Europe.

It noted that thousands of people flocked toward Swiss borders during World War II seeking protection, only to be “repelled and, in many cases, sent back to certain death.”

Switzerland has long grappled with its ties to Nazi Germany — not least through a call for national introspection on the issue from its first Jewish and woman president, Ruth Dreifuss, in 1999.

The country was neutral during WWII, but a government-appointed panel in 1997 found Switzerland had taken part in over three-fourths of worldwide gold transactions by Nazi Germany’s Reichsbank — both as buyer and intermediary.

Source: Swiss to erect 1st national memorial honoring Nazi victims

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust Tagged with ,

Irwin Cotler: The lessons of the Holocaust remain sadly relevant today

2023/04/24 Leave a comment

Good piece, connecting the Holocaust to other genocides, war crimes and human rights violations, both historic and contemporary:

This year’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day was a particularly poignant historical moment of remembrance and reminder, of bearing witness, of learning and acting upon the universal lessons of history and the Holocaust.

I write in the aftermath of the 90th anniversary of the establishment in 1933 by Nazi Germany of the infamous Dachau concentration camp — where thousands were deported to during Kristallnacht — reminding us that antisemitism is toxic to democracy, an assault on our common humanity, and as we’ve learned only too painfully and too well, while it begins with Jews, it doesn’t end with Jews.

I write also in the aftermath of the 81st anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, convened by the Nazi leadership to address “The final solution to the Jewish question” — the blueprint for the annihilation of European Jewry — which was met with indifference and inaction by the international community.

I write also on the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the most heroic Jewish and civilian uprising during the Holocaust, which was preceded by the deportation of 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. There is a straight line between Wannsee and Warsaw; between the indifference of one and the courage of the other.

I write also amidst the international drumbeat of evil, reflected and represented in the unprovoked and criminal Russian invasion of Ukraine, underpinned by war crimes, crimes against humanity and incitement to genocide; the increasing assaults by China on the rules-based international order, including mass atrocities targeting the Uyghurs; the Iranian regime’s brutal and massive repression of the “women, life, freedom” protests; the mass atrocities targeting the Rohingya, Afghans and Ethiopians; and the increasing imprisonment of human rights defenders like Russian patriot and human rights hero Vladimir Kara-Murza — the embodiment of the struggle for freedom and a critic of the invasion of Ukraine — sentenced this week to 25 years in prison for telling the truth, a re-enactment of the Stalinist dictum of “give us the person and we will find the crime.”

And I write amidst an unprecedented global resurgence of antisemitic acts, incitement, and terror — of antisemitism as the oldest, longest, most enduring, and most dangerous of hatreds, a virus that mutates and metastasizes over time, but which is grounded in one foundational, historical, generic, conspiratorial trope: namely, that Jews, the Jewish people, and Israel are the enemy of all that is good and the embodiment of all that is evil.

And so at this important historical juncture, we should ask ourselves what we have learned over the past 80 years and what lessons we must act on, including the following:

• The danger of forgetting the Holocaust and the imperative of remembrance — as Nobel laureate Prof. Elie Wiesel put it, “a war against the Jews in which not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were targeted victims” — of horrors too terrible to be believed but not too terrible to have happened.

• The demonization and dehumanization of the Jew as prologue and justification for their mass murder.

• The mass murder of six million Jews — 1.5 million of whom were children — and of millions of non-Jews, remembering them not as abstract statistics, but as individuals who each had a name.

• The danger of antisemitism — the oldest, longest, most enduring of hatreds — and most lethal. If the Holocaust is a paradigm for radical evil, antisemitism is a paradigm for radical hate that must be combatted.

• The dangers of Holocaust denial and distortion — of assaults on truth and memory, and the whitewashing of the worst crimes in history.

• The danger of state-sanctioned incitement to hate and genocide. The Holocaust, as the Supreme Court of Canada put it, “did not begin in the gas chambers, it began with words.”

• The danger of silence in the face of evil — where silence incentivizes the oppressor, never helping the victim — and our responsibility always to protest against injustice.

• The dangers of indifference and inaction in the face of mass atrocity and genocide. What makes the Holocaust and the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda so horrific are not only the horrors themselves. What makes them so horrific is that they were preventable. Nobody could say we did not know. Just as today, with regard to mass atrocities being perpetrated against the Uyghurs, the Rohingya, and the Ukrainians — nobody can say we do not know. We know and we must act.

• The Trahison des Clercs — the betrayal of the elites — doctors and scientists, judges and lawyers, religious leaders and educators, engineers and architects. Nuremberg crimes were the crimes of Nuremberg elites. Our responsibility, therefore, is always to speak truth to power.

• The danger of cultures of impunity, and the corresponding responsibility to bring war criminals to justice. There must be no sanctuary for hate, no refuge for bigotry, no immunity for these enemies of humankind.

• The danger of the vulnerability of the powerless and the powerlessness of the vulnerable. The responsibility to give voice to the voiceless and to empower the powerless. In a word, the test of a just society is how it treats its most vulnerable.

And so, the abiding and enduring lesson: We are each, wherever we are, the guarantors of each other’s destiny. May this day be not only an act of remembrance, which it is, but a remembrance to act, which it must be — on behalf of our common humanity.

National Post

Irwin Cotler is Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University, International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, and former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. He is Canada’s first Special Envoy for Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.

Source: Irwin Cotler: The lessons of the Holocaust remain sadly relevant today

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Adolf Eichmann Was Ready for His Close-Up. My Father Gave It to Him.

2023/04/18 Leave a comment

Interesting reflections:

I was 14 the first time I saw Adolf Eichmann in person. He wore an ill-fitting suit and had tortoise shell glasses, with the bearing of a nervous accountant. He did not seem at all like someone who had engineered the deaths of millions of people, except of course that I was at his trial for genocide.


My father, Leo Hurwitz, directed the television coverage of the Eichmann trial, which was held in Jerusalem and broadcast all over the world in 1961. My dad was chosen for the position after the producer convinced both Capital Cities Broadcasting, then a small network that organized the pool coverage, and David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister of Israel, that the trial needed to be seen live. In the 1930s, my father had been one of the pioneers of the American social documentary film. In later years, he had directed two films on the Holocaust and had helped to invent many of the techniques of live television while director of production in the early days of the CBS network. Also, as a socialist, he had been blacklisted from all work in television for the previous decade, so he came cheap.


My mother and I joined my father in Jerusalem. Each day I stood in the control room and watched my father call the coverage — “Ready camera 2, take 2!” For perhaps the first time in history, a trial was being recorded, not as in the style of a newsreel, with its neutrally positioned single camera, but more like a feature film, with concealed cameras placed to cover several points of view — the witnesses’, the judges’, the attorneys’, the public’s, and of course, Eichmann’s. These were cut, one against the other, often in close-up, so that the drama became vastly more personal. The style of my father’s work would come to define this trial, and its place in historical memory, even more than Eichmann’s confession.

The prosecutor confronted Eichmann with his own words: “The fact that I have the death of 5,000,000 Jews on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction.” The writer and Holocaust survivor Yehiel Di-nur testified from the witness box about the lines of people selected for death in the different “planet” of Auschwitz. Suddenly, Di-nur collapsed with a stroke. Through it all, Eichmann’s face, as revealed in my father’s close-ups, showed no feeling except the occasional tic.

Each night my father’s work was air-shipped, on 2-inch videotape, to be broadcast in Europe and the United States. It sharpened the way the world saw the anti-Semitic depredations of the Nazis. Meanwhile, my father was plagued by the question of how fascism had risen in the first place, how educated and progressive working classes had left their unions to fall into the lock step of a militarized, authoritarian regime.


It was a question that the West all but ignored. With the end of World War II, the prospect of justice for war criminals quickly dissolved, replaced by the need to build the postwar alliance against Communism. Leaders and thinkers were occupied with rearming for a nuclear future and rooting out leftists, the trend that had made my father unemployable.


He thought that he might use the trial to gather social scientists for a discussion of how fascism took root. During preproduction for the broadcast, he began to cast around for an Israeli institution that could host it. He said he asked a former classmate who was editor of a major Israeli newspaper, but they were not interested. Another outlet, the Israeli equivalent of the BBC, said they were not the place for it. A prestigious university couldn’t see the relevance. As the trial began and his production ramped up, he had to let the idea drop.


Though he did not know it at the time, these institutions showed no interest in the sources of fascism because the trial was not a trial of fascism. Instead, it was an opportunity for Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Agency to rebrand the Zionist movement. While the early days of Zionism extolled muscular, self-sufficient pioneers in a new, empty and promised land, that image had not aged well in the postwar world. In addition, many Israeli Jews looked down on the Jews of “old Europe,” whom they saw as trembling in their shtetls and walking helplessly to their deaths. Of course, they grieved the Holocaust, and their diplomats used its memory to convince the United Nations to recognize the State of Israel. Still, the ring of shame had settled around the survivors, many of whom had been traumatized to the point of dysfunction.

As witnesses at the trial spoke of crimes and suffering that had never been heard before, Israeli attitudes changed. The survivors of the Nazis — once seen as tattooed strangers, muttering to themselves on street corners in Tel Aviv — now began to be looked upon with more compassion. Their deaths and suffering, the crimes of the Shoah, were moved to the heart of Zionism. It helped point to Israel as the safe haven for the persecuted, with “never again!” as their rallying cry.

As Hannah Arendt famously pointed out, the aim of the prosecutor was to frame the trial as justice for crimes against Jews. The slaughter of Roma, Gays, labor leaders, Socialists, Communists, the disabled, and any opposition was hardly mentioned.

Without meaning to, my father helped to reinforce the emotional aspect of the trial and in so doing weaken its political implications. Though his previous films included a fuller view of the crimes and victims of Nazism, the way he shot the trial did the opposite: His brilliant coverage individualized Eichmann and steered viewers away from a more historical view. The work of studying fascism could not compete with the satisfaction of blaming a villain and imagining that the problems could be solved with his sentencing.

My father helped to make this Nazi into a character in a drama of cinematic confrontation, not of real understanding. It was now the Jewish state against the murderer of Jews. Crimes against other groups were not germane to the purpose to which the State of Israel and its head prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, sought to turn the trial.

The question of how fascism gains power is no less urgent today. As nationalisms multiply around the globe, lies gain supremacy as political weapons and scapegoating minorities proves itself a powerful mobilizing force, danger is burgeoning, here and in Israel itself. What I witnessed as a 14-year-old in that control room, I am witnessing again. The fascination with individual people’s guilt or innocence is obscuring the society-wide re-emergence of fascism. And we appear to be no more interested in viewing the full picture.

Source: Adolf Eichmann Was Ready for His Close-Up. My Father Gave It to Him.

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust Tagged with , ,

Why a debate over how to define anti-Semitism has reached the United Nations

2023/04/18 Leave a comment

Good overview:

An international debate over what should be considered anti-Semitism — centred around a controversial definition that critics say chills legitimate criticism of Israel — has reached the United Nations.

Last week, a group of 60 human rights and civil society organizations wrote to the leadership of the UN, urging it not to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

They say the IHRA framework “has often been used to wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and thus chill and sometimes suppress, non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism.”

Among the letter’s signatories are three Canadian organizations: Independent Jewish Voices Canada, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East and United Jewish People’s Order of Canada.

The high-profile appeal is just the latest twist in a now-years-long debate around the definition.

Mainstream Jewish groups and governments have urged the UN to officially adopt the IHRA’s working definition. To this point, the international body has insisted it has no plans to do so.

It has been adopted, meanwhile, in other jurisdictions around the world, including several in Canada.

Here’s a look at how the issue has become such a heated topic of debate.

What is the IHRA and why is its definition of anti-Semitism important?

The IHRA is a Europe-based, intergovernmental organization founded in 1988 with the aim of uniting governments and experts to advance and promote Holocaust education, research and remembrance worldwide. Canada has been a member since 2006.

In 2016 organization issued a “working definition” of anti-Semitism, which describes it as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The definition is accompanied by a set of 11 “contemporary examples” of anti-Semitism, seven of which refer to the state of Israel. These include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination; e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” and “applying double standards by requiring of (Israel) a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

The definition was adopted unanimously by IHRA’s 31 member states in 2016, and has since been adopted by some 865 entities around the world, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Why is the definition controversial?

Critics of the IHRA do not necessarily take issue with the IHRA’s working definition. Rather concerns stem from the 11 “contemporary examples,” which some say can be used to label any criticism of the state of Israel as anti-Semitic, creating a chilling effect in civil society and in academic settings.

Supporters of the definition say it is a key measure in the face of rising antisemitism. Following the release of the joint letter addressed to Guterres, other human rights groups, including the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), reaffirmed their support for the IHRA.

Amid a recent surge in anti-Semitism in Canada and elsewhere, “it is despicable that self-proclaimed human rights organizations are expending resources on a campaign to harm efforts to address this hatred,” said CIJA president and CEO Shimon Koffler Fogel in a written statement provided to the Star.

“Like any other minority, the Jewish people have the right to define what hate looks like against them and the IHRA definition is the most widely accepted definition of anti-Jewish hatred. Rejecting IHRA damages the fight” against anti-Semitism, the statement continued.

However, the IHRA definition’s detractors have said its inclusion of could have a negative impact on human rights.

“If IHRA was adopted by the UN, it would put a chill on the ability of Amnesty, UN experts and other groups to accurately report their findings, and prevent UN bodies from discussing them,” Michael Bueckert, vice-president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), told the Star.

Aaron Lakoff, the spokesperson for Independent Jewish Voices Canada, said his organization has “documented dozens of cases around the world in the last few years, including here in Canada, where the IHRA definition has been used to silence or threaten human rights advocates and Palestinians speaking out against Israeli apartheid.”

How wide is support for the definition?

Fogel, the president of CIJA, said the IHRA definition has broad support around the world.

“The Government of Canada, more than 20 provinces and municipalities, as well as the UN’s own former Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief and countless others around the world have supported the definition, recognizing its vital educational role in identifying and addressing the various mutations of this ancient hatred,” he said in a statement.

“What could be more legitimate than a definition developed through a nearly 20-year consensus driven process that brought together the world’s foremost scholars on antisemitism, government officials, and activists?”

Still, critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, counter that presenting the IHRA definition as a “consensus” is inaccurate. In a January letter urging the American Bar Association not to adopt the definition, those critics said it has been challenged by anti-Semitism “experts, rabbis, and scholars of Jewish studies, Jewish history, and the Holocaust, by Palestinians who have borne the brunt of its application, as well as by experts on fighting racism and free speech.”

In 2018, Jewish Voice for Peace — a U.S. organization dedicated to foreign policy based on peace, human rights, and respect for international law — released a joint statement signed by 40 Jewish groups opposing the adoption of the IHRA definition.

In 2020, Independent Jewish Voices shared an open letter from over 650 Canadian academics voicing their opposition.

What does the man who wrote the definition say?

Kenneth Stern — an anti-Semitism expert at the American Jewish Committee and the very person who drafted the IHRA’s working definition — has been one of its biggest critics.

“It’s not the definition that’s the problem,” he told The Times of Israel in 2020. “It’s the abuse of it.”

“It sets up a system in which administrators have a reason to either condemn or try to suppress pro-Palestinian speech because their job is to keep the university from being sued,” Stern said.

Where does the UN currently stand?

The UN is currently developing its own plan to respond to rising anti-Semitism, which is expected to be released in June. At this time, the international body has no plans to officially use the IHRA’s definition.

However, last winter, Secretary-General António Guterres recited part of the IHRA’s definition during a Holocaust memorial speech, prompting Israel’s ambassador to the UN to declare that Guterres had “effectively recognized” the definition.

In November, a report released by Prof. E. Tendayi Achiume, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, said that although the IHRA definition is legally non-binding, “its de facto influence on the policy and practice of governments and private actors has contributed to violations of the human rights of freedom of expression, assembly and political participation, among others.”

What is the joint letter asking for?

In its letter, the coalition of organizations expresses strong support for the United Nations’ commitment to combating anti-Semitism, but urges the international body to ensure that its efforts “do not inadvertently embolden or endorse policies and laws that undermine fundamental human rights, including the right to speak and organize in support of Palestinian rights and to criticize Israeli government policies.”

The letter points to two alternative definitions of antisemitism, which “while acknowledging that criticism of Israel can be antisemitic … set out more clearly what constitutes antisemitism and provide guidance surrounding the contours of legitimate speech and action around Israel and Palestine.”

One of those alternative definitions is the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, developed in 2020 under the auspices of the Van Leer institute in Jerusalem, and released in 2021. The declaration, which makes explicit that the movement to boycott Israel is not in and of itself anti-Semitic, was developed in response to the controversial aspects of the IHRA definition.

“In this critical moment, as Israel’s far-right government moves forward to annex the occupied Palestinian territories and consolidate its repressive, apartheid rule over the Palestinian people, it is essential that we give our full support to human rights defenders, and reject attempts to silence their voices,” Bueckert of the CJPME told the Star.

Source: Why a debate over how to define anti-Semitism has reached the United Nations

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with , , , , , ,

Goal of IHRA anti-Semitism definition is to target human rights groups, says proponent

2023/04/10 Leave a comment

Of note. However the main author of the definition, Kenneth Stern, has been vocal in his opposition to its “weaponization”:

A prominent advocate of the controversial and inaccurate definition of anti-Semitism created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has acknowledged that one of its purposes is to target and silence human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) and others documenting Israel’s human rights abuses.

“The purpose of the IHRA working definition was to prevent the illegitimate demonization of Israel, the singling out of Israel, and the antisemitic aspects of the attacks on Israel, which is exactly what these NGOs are doing,” said a key proponent of IHRA, Professor Gerald Steinberg, the founder of pro-Israel, NGO Monitor.

Steinberg made the remark in response to 60 human and civil rights organisations who on Tuesday released a joint open letter urging the UN not to adopt the IHRA. Steinberg told the Algemeiner that the letter, which was also signed by HRW, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and B’Tselem, is an act of “political warfare against Israel”.

According to Steinberg, the NGOs are doing the very thing which the IHRA was designed to prevent. But critics have pointed out that the IHRA is not preventing anti-Jewish racism and instead has had a chilling effect on free speech and has further undermined the work of the international human rights community.

In the letter to the UN, the groups warned that if the world body endorsed the IHRA then its officials who work on issues regarding Israel and Palestine may find themselves “unjustly accused of anti-Semitism based on the IHRA definition”. A case could also be made for “numerous UN agencies, departments, committees, panels and/or conferences, whose work touches on issues related to Israel and Palestine, as well as for civil society actors and human rights defenders engaging with the UN system,” to be smeared as racist.

The targets of accusations of anti-Semitism based on the IHRA definition have included university students and professors, grassroots organisers, human rights and civil rights organisations, humanitarian groups and members of the US Congress, who either document or criticise Israeli policies and who speak in favour of Palestinian human rights.

Rights group have constantly dismissed the claim that “illegitimate demonization of Israel” and “singling out Israel”, is anti-Semitic. If that principal was accepted in a definition of racism than by that logic, a person dedicated to defending the rights of Tibetans could be accused of anti-Chinese racism, or a group dedicated to promoting democracy and minority rights in Saudi Arabia could be accused of Islamophobia.

IHRA’s qualification that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic” has not offered any protection to the constant smearing of critics of Israel. “In practice,” said HRW, “these disclaimers have failed to prevent the politically motivated instrumentalization of the IHRA definition in efforts to muzzle legitimate speech and activism by critics of Israel’s human rights record and advocates for Palestinian rights.”

Source: Goal of IHRA anti-Semitism definition is to target human rights groups, says proponent

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with

Cohen: The unspeakable silence of the Canadian Jewish establishment

2023/03/20 Leave a comment

Of note:

In its 75 years of nationhood, Israel has lived under a regime of unrelenting threat. Challenges to its security, unity and prosperity are as old as the country itself. Whatever the danger – invasion, war, terrorism, intifadas, boycotts, sanctions – it has come from beyond Israel’s borders.

No longer. The forces convulsing Israel over the past 10 weeks are made in Israel. They come from citizens protesting a religious, revolutionary government that wants to make the judiciary less independent, weakening the checks and balances that have protected minority rights. If Israel is in upheaval today, blame not marauding infidels, foreign armies or fifth columnists. Blame Israelis.

Oh, the irony. The power of its military, diplomacy and economy ensures Israel dominates the neighbourhood. As political scientist Steven A. Cook has noted, Israel has broadened relations with regional partners while ensuring Israel’s armed forces, brandishing nuclear weapons, are matchless. There is a mortal threat from Iran, yes. But Israel is less vulnerable than it was during the wars of 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, or any other time. “Israel is in a better strategic position than ever,” Mr. Cook argues. “And its sovereignty is beyond question.”

At home, though, Israel is roiling with insurrection. Its soul is under siege. Ehud Barak, the former prime minister, calls for “civil disobedience” if the new government passes its agenda; he says Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is using “the tools of democracy in order to destroy [Israel] from within.” From afar, the Jewish diaspora watches this unravelling with a mix of acquiescence, incredulity, resignation, helplessness, fear and anger.

Among Canada’s 400,000 or so Jews, the response is muted. Some have voiced their opposition to Mr. Netanyahu’s plans through the campaigns of progressive Jewish organizations. From more centrist Jewish groups: silence.

It has come to this: In Israel’s hour of crisis, as thousands fill the streets, protesting the assault on democracy and human rights, mainstream Jews in Canada are unseen and unheard. They have been orphaned by timid, tepid leadership out of step with their views. This is the unspeakable silence of the Canadian Jewish establishment.

The emblem of that establishment is the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA). It calls itself the “advocacy agent” of the Jewish Federations of Canada, an umbrella of organizations providing social services and advancing Jewish interests.

CIJA initially called itself “the exclusive agent” of Canadian Jews. Now, more modestly, it “represents the diverse perspectives of more than 150,000 Jewish Canadians affiliated with their local Jewish Federation.” That claim is dubious. Is every one of these 150,000 individuals “affiliated” with a federation (presumably as donors or volunteers) duly represented by CIJA? How does CIJA know? And even if all were aligned with CIJA, this would still represent less than half of Canadian Jewry, suggesting that CIJA – for all its hopes and boasts – is far less relevant than it admits.

Then again, CIJA has overstated its stature since it was created in 2011, when it absorbed the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and the Canada-Israel Committee. Discarding its “legacy name” like day-old bagels, CIJA dropped “Canadian” and added “Israel.” It insisted its restructuring had “the overwhelmingly support of the community.” Not necessarily. Bernie Farber, who was at Congress (as it was called) for most of his long, distinguished career in Jewish advocacy, calls it a hostile takeover of what was known as “the parliament of Canadian Jewry.”

For many Canadian Jews, the end of Congress was an affront, reflecting the agenda of wealthy Jews sympathetic to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. For me, it was a loss. Congress was founded by my great uncle, Lyon Cohen, among others, in 1919. He was president until 1934, supported by my grandfather, Abraham Zebulon Cohen. Although at first the CJC did little beyond establishing the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, Congress eventually became a spirited democratic voice led by prominent Jews in business, law, the clergy and the academy. Among them were Samuel Bronfman, Gunther Plaut, Reuven Bulka, Irving Abella, Dorothy Reitman and Irwin Cotler.

Prof. Abella, the late eminent historian, called it “a unique organization” with “no parallel anywhere else in the Jewish world.” It was a forum “where all the problems of Canadian Jewry could be debated,” including human rights, equity, immigration, free speech, social justice and interfaith dialogue. “No one doubted that when the CJC spoke, it spoke on behalf of all Canadian Jewry,” he said.

Today no one believes CIJA speaks for Canadian Jewry. It is not a parliament. Its officers are unelected. Its annual budget is secret. It is evasive (after pleasantly acknowledging my queries, none were answered.) The organization does admirable things, such as fighting antisemitism. It also champions Israel, about which, let it be said, its chief executive officer, Shimon Fogel, cannot utter a discouraging word.

Scour CIJA’s Twitter account, its news releases and Mr. Fogel’s interviews, and it’s hard to find a single criticism of the Netanyahu government (except, recently discovering intestinal fortitude, it denounced Israel’s hateful Finance Minister for urging the eradication of a Palestinian village.) CIJA presumably believes its subtlety and caution serves the community, whose views on the unrest in Israel have been unclear.

Now, though, we know more. A comprehensive poll by EKOS Research Associates finds that Canadian Jews overwhelmingly oppose changes to Israel’s high court and other proposed measures, such as banning gay pride parades and imposing gender segregation in public spaces. That is just one poll, commissioned by JSpaceCanada and the New Israel Fund of Canada (NIFC). Still, it provides “a fair baseline representation of Jewish community perspectives in issues of vital importance,” says Robert Brym, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who oversaw the survey.

If this is a correct reading of Jewish attitudes, CIJA is ignoring them, even as Mr. Fogel insists otherwise. “While marginal groups may heckle from the sidelines,” he told the Canadian Jewish News, “in fact, CIJA not only has the access but has used its privileged position to meet with senior Israeli leadership” in and out of government. Those recent meetings were preceded by other private interventions, he reported.

Mr. Fogel, who lacks the influence of the luminaries who ran Congress, suggests his quiet diplomacy is more effective than public pressure. His scorn for other Jewish voices – heckling from the sidelines – reflects an erosion of civility within the community. Relations are so fraught that CIJA has threatened, in writing, to sue the NIFC and JSpaceCanada for attributing statements to Mr. Fogel that he denies are his.

Mr. Farber, who was CEO of the CJC, says this level of rancour is unprecedented in Canada. “There were always differences, sometimes prickly, but it was always ‘Macy’s versus Gimbels.’ It was always kept within the community. There was an unwritten rule that we ought not air our dirty laundry in public. We kept things unzera, in Yiddish, ‘among ourselves.’”

Then, again, it’s understandable that some Jews are reluctant to speak out, even though Jews are acutely sensitive to injustice and have historically protested it everywhere, notably as leading participants in the U.S. civil rights movement. They were raised to revere Israel and to remember the Holocaust. They don’t want to give ammunition to antisemites. The rabbi of my synagogue, who presides over a large, conservative congregation, says that were he an Israeli, he would join the protests. From his pulpit, though, he argues Israel is “a liberal democracy” that will get by without his advice.

There are other explanations for this reticence. It may be our character, which is less assertive than Americans, Australians and Britons. It may be that shutting up is the price of access, be it in Ottawa (which has been less critical of Israel than other governments) or Jerusalem. It may be the absence of a lively Jewish press as a forum for liberal Zionist voices.

And what good, skeptics might ask, is rushing to the ramparts anyway? Do we think Jerusalem really cares? Actually, Mr. Netanyahu might listen to the diaspora and foreign governments, if they made enough noise – and some threats, too. Meanwhile, he pushes his illiberal project forward because he can.

It isn’t that there are no critics among prominent Canadian Jews. Former Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella has warned of the dangers to the independence of Israel’s judiciary. So has Mr. Cotler among about 175 jurists who have signed a petition. The NIFC and JSpaceCanada are rallying opposition and raising public awareness, vigorously and effectively, as are Canadian Friends of Peace Now. To them, CIJA and its silent partners are marginal while they are mainstream, and this is no time for nuance.

But where are other Jews – entrepreneurs, doctors, artists, professors? Where are the philanthropists declaring their alarm, as Charles Bronfman, the Canadian co-founder of Birthright, and other Jewish billionaires and foundations have in the U.S.? Where are rabbis as passionate as Micah Streiffer of Toronto, who says it is our obligation to speak up when Israel abandons basic values, a response that is the real expression “of our love”?

In 1965, a young Elie Wiesel visited the Soviet Union to observe the life of its three million Jews. That produced his haunting cri de coeur, The Jews of Silence. Curiously, he confessed that he was less concerned about Soviet Jews than the detachment of his American co-religionists, a lament that has an eerie contemporary resonance amid Israel’s moral crisis.

“What torments me most is not the silence of the Jews I met in Russia,” he wrote, “but the silence of the Jews I live among today.”

Andrew Cohen is a journalist and professor of journalism at Carleton University. His most recent book is Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.

Source: Cohen: The unspeakable silence of the Canadian Jewish establishment

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with , , , , ,

Coren: Roald Dahl was repugnant but altering books a misguided solution

2023/03/04 Leave a comment

Some interesting background and sensible and balanced approach:

In 1983 I was a very young writer for Britain’s New Statesman magazine. I was asked to interview children’s author Roald Dahl, who had reviewed a book about the war in Lebanon that went far beyond criticism of Israel and bordered on downright anti-Semitism.

I assumed he would explain the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and clarify his stance. What he said instead was, “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity toward non-Jews. I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”

The rant continued, with references to Jewish men not fighting in the Second World War. When I told Dahl that my Jewish grandfather had won several medals and been wounded, and that Jews were over rather than under-represented he refused to withdraw his comments or apologize.

I mention this again now because Dahl’s publishers recently announced that they were to produce versions of his books with allegedly offensive words such as “fat” and “ugly” removed. Not, is should be emphasized, because generations of children and parents who read the books had complained but because, if we’re to be candid, someone, somewhere thought they might cause offence.

The angry reaction to the idea was so strong that the publishers have changed their minds, or at least hedged their bets. The criticism came not just from those who see dangerous censorship everywhere but leading authors and intellectuals. Because it was a very stupid idea. Am I still allowed to say stupid?

Dahl was an anti-Semite. I know that better than most people. He was a nasty man with repugnant ideas. He was also a gifted author who understood children’s minds and fantasies. And — this is vital — we can read and enjoy him while still detesting his racism. This entire issue requires sense, sensibility, and basic common sense.

In 2011 Peter Jackson commissioned Stephen Fry to write the screenplay for a remake of “The Dambusters.” Guy Gibson, the heroic commander of the RAF squadron featured in the 1955 movie, owned a black Labrador dog. It was named the N word. Pilots used the dog’s name to signal successful attacks. Thus it was used repeatedly in the original movie.

Quite clearly it would be deeply offensive, and just bizarre, to use the word now and Fry, a man who is extremely suspicious of any form of censorship, gently and wisely changed it to Digger. There was, however, outrage. For some people it was as if a tiny edit that did nothing to change the story was a monumental act of what they described as political correctness. They were wrong.

I can listen to and relish Wagner while despising his politics, and can read so many early 20th-century novelists and manage to ignore the occasional jarringly anachronistic and troubling epithets and descriptions. Because I can make up my own mind, make decisions, judge, and act accordingly. I don’t have to be told, and have my hand held, or perhaps gripped.

There’s room and need for editing because language is not only mutable but can cause profound harm. Usually it’s obvious, and most people agree. It’s when control becomes more important than sensitivity that we encounter problems, and that’s clearly what happened here.

When I was 14-years-old, I had to study Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” Part One. At one point Falstaff, a central character, claims to have defeated numerous opponents. If he’s lying, he says, “I am a Jew else: an Ebrew Jew.” There were several Jewish students in the class. Our teacher couldn’t and didn’t expunge the words but used them to speak about the evils of anti-Semitism and how we should approach and understand Shakespeare. I’m sure Roald Dahl would have hated it, but I still don’t think his books should be changed.

Source: Roald Dahl was repugnant but altering books a misguided solution

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with ,

Clark: Three Conservative MPs who saw no evil until after lunch

2023/03/02 Leave a comment

Good analysis and depressing reality that Pierre Poilievre is overly beholden to the more extreme elements in the party. And Max Bernier is already fundraising off this “discreet” repudiation of the AfD by Poilievre:

If you’re not familiar with the policies of the Alternative for Germany, the party represented by MEP Christine Anderson, you’re not alone. But the three Conservative MPs who met her for a long lunch last week didn’t get there by accident.

That is not to say the three MPs are racist. Leslyn Lewis, Colin Carrie, and Dean Allison aren’t known as that at all. They are the Conservative Party’s unofficial conspiracy caucus.

So when the Conservative Party issued a statement that said the three didn’t know Ms. Anderson’s views, and later two organizers of the three-hour lunch said the MPs knew a lot about who they were meeting, well, both of those things might be sort of true.

It’s easy to find out the AfD stands for anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and xenophobic views, because it can be quickly discovered on the internet, in newspapers or videos, or from many sources. But it also seems very possible that these three read about it and didn’t believe it.

Mr. Carrie apparently didn’t believe COVID-19 vaccines were safe, so, according to a Conservative source, he was one of the four MPs who did not go the Commons in person in the fall of 2021. Mr. Allison apparently didn’t believe public health officials who said the veterinary anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin wasn’t proven for treating COVID-19, and he gave a presentation about it to a group of Tory MPs. Last year, Ms. Lewis falsely claimed a then-undrafted World Health Organization treaty would give the WHO power to dictate all of Canada’s health care decisions in a pandemic. The three wink at the theory that the World Economic Forum is a cabal to control Canada and the world.

And guess what? Ms. Anderson shares a lot of their views about vaccine mandates and globalists. They saw her as an ally, and apparently chose not to see the rest. She tells people she is not xenophobic or anti-Muslim, although she doesn’t really eschew those sentiments. “I do not have problems with Muslims. I have a problem with Islam. I do not consider Islam to be a religion,” she told the right-wing website Rebel News.

Prominent AfD figures have played down the Holocaust and Nazi era, and spoken of immigrants as invaders. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs raised concerns about the three MPs meeting with Ms. Anderson. The AfD tends to target Muslims with its policies, but they include banning kosher meat and “non-medical” circumcision. Its politicians aren’t the advocates of freedom they claim to be.

So Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre did the right thing when he issued a statement to reporters who asked that criticized Ms. Anderson’s views as “vile.” That’s unequivocal. The party issued a statement saying the three MPs had not known about her views. Mr. Carrie took the extra step of tweeting that he regretted his mistake and will do better.

That didn’t settle it, however. Mr. Poilievre didn’t put his statement on his or the party’s social media or website, and critics accused him of try to keep it low-key with his own base.

But he probably got more criticism from the right – and Mr. Carrie got a helping of it, too – from people who accused him of backing down in the face of criticism from the media. Rebel News ran a piece that said Mr. Poilievre “panicked” and threw his MPs to the “media wolves.” They didn’t feel the Conservative Leader stood up for principle, but rather that he caved.

That is a message to Mr. Poilievre that he will pay a political price on his right wing if he distances the Conservative Party from extremists like the AfD. And, by the way, the People’s Party is waiting there.

It’s worth noting Ms. Anderson’s AfD evolved into what it is because of how it dealt with extreme elements.

Alternative for Germany came out in 2013 as an anti-European Union splinter from conservative parties, but its first leader, Bernd Lucke, quit in 2015 complaining the party was taken over by xenophobic elements under new leader Frauke Petry. In 2017, Ms. Petry lost a power struggle with the more extreme far right wing of the party, and later quit the party, too.

So if there’s a vein of folks in the Conservative Party that doesn’t want to see the extremism of some who claim to be allies, they should be warned. There is a line. If you choose not to see it at your lunch table, it just gets closer.

Source: Three Conservative MPs who saw no evil until after lunch

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →