6 minute read
Opinion
Some things have not changed
OPINION PIECE BY ROBERT FESTENSTEIN
Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary forces along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed.
Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland (part of former Czechoslovakia). Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.
Early reports estimated that 91 were killed that night though modern analysis of German scholarly sources puts the figure much higher; when deaths from post-arrest maltreatment and subsequent suicides are included, the death toll reaches the hundreds.
That was 83 years ago. Today we live in a different world. The Shoah is a diminishing memory as the number of survivors decrease each year. Israel is stronger than ever and competing on the world stage in science, technology and medicine. In theory at least, the memory of Kristallnacht should be just that, something to remember against a current background of peace and understanding.
Yet this is not the case. Despite the records and accounts, holocaust denial is alive and well and promoted in the Middle East and amongst the far right in Europe. In May of this year, 3 cars – covered with Palestinian flags - carrying a number of men drove 200 miles from Bradford to North London with the specific intention of intimidating Jews. They achieved this by yelling abuse via megaphones. No-one was killed and no buildings were set on fire so perhaps it was not that bad.
Pause for a moment though to consider what happened. The fact that no one was killed or property not damaged is irrelevant. What was of such concern was these people felt able to undertake this activity at all. Remember, the chants had nothing to do with Israel, they were “**** the Jews, rape their daughters”, coming from cars adorned with the Palestinian flag, evidence surely that for these people claiming freedom for Palestine really means driving Jews from the land of Israel.
On Tuesday night, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, Israeli Ambassador, Mrs Tzipi Hotovely, was able to address her audience and engage with them respectfully at the London School of Economics. When she left however, it was a different story. Agitators amongst those protesting her presence, again carrying Palestinian flags, were responsible for creating a threatening atmosphere of violence as they got worryingly close to her car.
The convoy in May and the actions of the protestors on Tuesday night do not represent a new wave of violence against the Jews in the UK. They do though demonstrate the depth of hatred being openly exhibited against Jews and Israel through the medium of pro Palestine protestors. These people are not interested in any peaceful solution to the issues facing Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, they are interested only in destroying the Jewish state and subordinating Jews. For there to be any progress, this hatred needs to be recognised and serious thought given to a way of finding those who genuinely seek peace and engage with them, though as matters stand this is likely to be hard task.
Robert Festenstein is a practising solicitor and has been the principal of his Salford based firm for over 20 years. He has fought BDS motions to the Court of Appeal and is President of the Zionist Central Council in Manchester which serves to protect and defend the democratic State of Israel.
Antisemitism on Campus - a personal perspective
OPINION PIECE BY BEN SWEIRY
I am a second year student and a StandWithUs Emerson Fellow studying toward a degree in International Relations and Economics. Looking back to my first year at university, my awareness of the issues surrounding Israel on campus was not overly extensive and I don’t think I would have been able to tackle the issues, even if I had witnessed them. The anti-Israel sentiment on campus was evident and led me to sign up to StandWithUs UK’s Emerson Fellowship, but it is the same challenges that I faced that have also deterred me from naming my university institution in this article. However, since my induction, the Fellowship has provided me with both the confidence and the ability to think critically. Now, I can analyse lecture content and assess whether Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, is being held to a different standard than other nations by my university institution.
As my journey through the Fellowship programme continued, I developed a plan to counter the mischaracterisation of the Jewish People as exclusively White-European. I set out to deliver an event aimed to educate students on the rich diversity of the Jewish Community. My Campus Coordinator and I arranged to facilitate a panel of Jews from right across the globe, including Ashager Araro, an Ethiopian-Israeli, Lyn Julius, representing the Mizrahi Community and Fanya Donin, an American-Ashkenazi hailing from Eastern Europe. Finally, I utilised my leadership position spurred on by StandWithUs’ Personalised Track Programme to coordinate a group project - educating students on Israeli culture and cuisine through social media. I’m looking forward to continuing my journey as a SWU alumni and the further exchange of ideas on a global level having signed up to the SWU International Student Alliance during the summer-term.
In February 2021, I experienced my first antisemitic incident on campus. Whilst my seminars on the Arab-Israeli conflict saw a few ill-informed students make farcical claims such as “Americans support Israel because the American Jews hold all the power in their country”, “Israel is a settler colonialist state”, or “Israel has shut-off the Palestinian water supply”, I was able to refute and correct them thanks to the knowledge and resources that StandWithUs has provided. However, when a lecturer started to use terms such as the “Jewish lobby” and implied that Jewish people wielded a disproportionate amount of political power within the US’ political sphere, it became evident that a dangerous antisemitic trope was being disseminated by my professor. This message would be one in which the 200+ students who take the module would note and believe to be true. Students would naturally assume that content taught in lectures is factual, and so it was frightening to see that a university lecturer would attempt to educate the students in such a way that demonises the Jewish community, intentionally or otherwise.
After liaising with my Campus Coordinator at StandWithUs, I was able to construct a complaint that was sent to the lecturer and the course director, highlighting my concerns at the use of the term “Jewish lobby” and the impression it gave about Jewish people in politics to hundreds of unassuming students. Thankfully, the university agreed that the language used was unacceptable, and a swift decision was made to remove this particular part of the lecture and send an announcement to the students explaining why it was wrong.
Today more than ever, being a pro-Israel Jewish student at university requires vigilance and extensive knowledge about who you are and what you represent on campus. I am grateful to StandWithUs for offering the training required to recognise and tackle antisemitism and anti-Israel bias as quickly as I have seen it. I would urge other like-minded students at university-age to educate themselves because it really does make a difference.
On 14th and 15th November SWU UK is running its Generations for Israel campaign – a matched fundraiser to ensure StandWithUS can continue to support students to stand up, stand strong and stand proud of Israel and their Judaism..
StandWithUs UK’s mission is to educate about Israel and combat antisemitism. Student Ben Sweiry has written exclusive for the Jewish Weekly about his experiences on his university campus.
