Is this anti-semitism?

ton of bomb threats in US & UK today apparently - luckily not my kid's school but ppl i know's kids :/

The threats were reported against Jewish institutions in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Tennesee, South Carolina and two metropolitan areas in Florida – Miami and Jacksonville, according to local news reports. In the Miami area, institutions in Miami Beach and Kendall were affected.

http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.763994

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/school-bomb-threat-1.430294

16 JCC's apparently in all: http://www.jta.org/2017/01/09/news-opinion/united-states/across-the-us-16-jccs-get-bomb-threats-in-a-single-day

this is why there's an elaborate security system set up at my kids school w/ passes that only give access to certain wings, a front door that requires manual confirmation for entry, an extensive video camera system, and a full-time security guard

on a not so depressing note tho this has been making the rounds and even tho i'm pretty sure i saw something like this before (maybe contrasting the first photo w/ a menorah in front of the gate) it's still something: https://twitter.com/amit_segal/status/818516201517281282

fucking hell.

(at the threats, obviously.)

obv somewhat problematic that my reaction was not horror but 'thank god it was just empty threats'

problem not rly with you

aren't bomb threats always empty

not always!

okay modern bomb threats

seems like a very rare phenomenon - some google research turned up IRA bomb threats that were real and some Vietnam-era bomb threats. presumably if you want to kill jews you don't warn them first (whereas if you're protesting Britain, or a war in vietnam, you might want to make a statement w/out casualties)

I work (for a Jewish social services agency) in a building next to a JCC; building was evacuated this afternoon. We were instructed to leave and assemble next door at the--wait for it--HEBREW HOME.

Anyway I wasn't in the building at the time but it was o_O

Meanwhile, I'm having to get a duplicate passport so I can go to Lebanon in March; apparently Israeli passport stamps are a no-go. My mom, who didn't make a peep when I went to North Korea a couple or years ago, has decided to worry excessively about me going to Beirut.

north korea does somehow seem more stable what w/ not sharing a border w/ syria or having a militant pseudo-government / syria civil war belligerent controlling parts of the country, or suicide bombings in the capital within the last 2 years, but tbh i'm a little jealous both of yr courage, world travel + ability to even go to beirut.

It is true that I have probably never been safer than when I was in NK. But the fact is that I'm more likely to be injured/killed in a car accident ANYWHERE than by a Beirut bombing. I think people my parents' age just hear the word "Beirut" and it is 1983 all over again.

I was going to try to work in an Israel visit but the logistics of doing both are just too cumbersome for a two-week trip :(

Will do Jordan+Israel at some point in the next couple of years I guess.

German court rules that firebombing a synagogue is not anti-Semitic

well i guess the germans would know

was it a jewish synagogue

As opposed to what? Wtf?

just trying to establish the facts maam

...

this shit continuing: http://www.jta.org/2017/01/18/news-opinion/united-states/18-jewish-institutions-across-us-targeted-in-second-wave-of-bomb-threats

Ugh, so terrible. At the Jewish institution I work at in SF we got a walkthrough of bomb threat evac procedures after we found out the Marin JCC had received a threat today.

ppl are stupid http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/360328/australian-mayor-declines-synagogue-invitation-citing-israel-s-occupation/

Gross

Wow, was about to ask how someone with such bad critical thinking skills could be elected mayor but... well... tomorrow is happening.

another wave of bomb threats against jewish community centers?

what do you guys think about the holocaust statement? a lot of ppl think that they omitted specifically referencing jews to... i guess signal to white supremacists? i'm willing to buy that but what i'm wondering about is to what end are they signaling WS's? are they hoping to rev them up into counter-protests, or use them for some purpose down the line? like once the election is over and trump won he doesn't need their votes. (and then even if he did, surely all the anti-immigrant stuff is pleasing enough to them that he doesn't need to throw antisemitism in there too.) in general i've found his dalliances w/ antisemitism to seem to mostly be thoughtless and not intentional (or at least w/ plausible deniability that his other bigotry doesn't have). i guess i'm just confused in general about politics atm.

like a. don't include jews in holocaust statement, b. white supremacists get excited he is signaling to them, c. white supremacists call jewish community centers with bomb threats, d. ???, e. profit

more like mentioning jews sounds too much like namby pamby "identity politics"

better just to say it was "sad" than admit that racism exists and that power relationships built on racism exist

I think they don't want to be on the record articulating that discriminating against minority groups is a bad thing

Re the Holocaust statement in particular. No way to know whether original omission was oversight because these clowns don't work on anything for more than 15 mins, or deliberate jew-trolling. The doubling down after the fact, though ("we were just trying to show how much we care about ROMANI!") definitely intended as "look at the jews trying to tell us what we can and can't say, well those days are over." I don't think it's mainly aimed at movement white supremacists as the much larger group who doesn't draw a clear distinction between jews / "the media" / "elites" / "political correctness"

Could be they are just really really really stupid and don't know wtf they are doing.

i'm reluctant to believe in nefarious conspiracy, or some kind of expert message calibration to thrill the nazis out there. i think it's better to focus on a habit of mind. trump and his people are historically and politically illiterate. the statement was terrible in a bunch of other ways beyond its non-specificity about the event it commemorated. trump's mind cannot look at victimization honestly. stating simple facts like who did what to whom and why is not something his character can allow.

i mean the first sentence is "It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust." heroes... of the holocaust? someone wrote that?

the last paragraph (of 3) is "In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that" blah blah i mean, what the fuck is this?

it's all vague storybook generalities that lead to self-aggrandizement. some stuff happened, i'm the hero here

And of course the movement white supremacists are over the moon about it, since their Holocaust denial has long since moved on from "there's no such thing as Auschwitz" to "the Nazis killed lots of people, war is terrible, look how the Poles and Russians suffered, somehow the sneaky Jews in the media managed to make it all about them like they always do, trying to drum up sympathy from gullible whites"

Hard to believe that Tom, this shameful speech has Bannon written all over it. He's dangerous, not stupid.

the point is, i'm pretty sure there's nobody in the white house whose attitude is "the jews are a cancer and need to be exterminated," but most of the history of anti-semitism is just not like that (one reason the jews of europe were taken by surprise) and yet is still pretty fucking terrible

goole otm

Yeah. And also what symsymsym said. Trump is far down the line that admitting the persecution of non-Christisn minorities exists would be a "gotcha" moment for the press

yup goole otm

I'm sorry pretty certain Steve Bannon has read a history of Germany in the 1930s, he's been meaning to check out the other volumes, but this is just such a page-turner.

becoming sadly regular today but worth mentioning that our local JCC in wynnewood (where a few friends send their kids) got their v own bomb threat today

My gf teaches at a JCC and is increasingly freaked out about this. Feel like the FBI's investigative route toward solving this string of crimes is pretty straightforward (seeing as how they keep targeting the same organization over and over) so I'm not sure they're doing a fucking thing about it.

i don't have much to say about it. a graveyard in philly got hit this week too. these are pretty cowardly acts - terrorizing children and the dead.

i guess i just feel pretty numb about the whole thing.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/226013/sarsour-odeh-anti-trump-movement

http://www.clickhole.com/blogpost/if-my-son-and-his-friends-are-going-deface-jewish--5690

Do Jews have to make common cause with people who want to kill them?

A lot more of my relatives would have been murdered if we hadn't made common cause with Stalin so my answer is yes

last few paragraphs are p odious. Women, black people, latinos etc. have had to make common cause w racists/misogynists etc. in the Democratic Party since forever. There's always gonna be people on the left I think are insane or misguided or too strident or (possibly even) legit dangerous, but I'm not gonna lose too much sleep over it. Fringes of political movements are always like that.