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Briefs
‘SILENCE IS COMPLICITY’: BIDEN CALLS ON POLITICAL LEADERS TO DENOUNCE ANTI-SEMITISM
President Joe Biden, reacting after the latest station in Kanye West’s dolorous journey, explained that Hitler was bad and the Holocaust was real and chided politicians like his predecessor Donald Trump who give the rapper’s antisemitism oxygen.
“I just want to make a few things clear: The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure,” Biden said on Twitter. “And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity.”
Biden’s statement did not call out anyone by name. But the most immediate reference Biden was making was to a threehour appearance by West, also known as Ye, on Infowars, the streaming show hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in which he repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler, said he loved Nazis and denied that the Holocaust happened as it did.
Biden also appeared to be referring to Trump, who had West over for dinner, along with Nick Fuentes, a prominent antisemite and Holocaust denier. Biden has denounced antisemitism and Trump’s proximity to it since the first speech of his presidential campaign.
By saying “silence is complicity,” Biden may have been referring to those who had not condemned Trump for hosting West, or who would not directly criticize Trump. Since Biden’s statement, almost all top Republicans have denounced the dinner, though some with sharper criticism of Trump than others. (JTA)
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Jewish president of Ukraine, was named Time’s “person of the year” for galvanizing “the world in a way we haven’t seen in decades,” in the words of the magazine’s editor-in-chief.
“From his first 40-second Instagram post on Feb. 25—showing that his Cabinet and civil society were intact and in place—to daily speeches delivered remotely to the likes of houses of Parliament, the World Bank, and the Grammy Awards, Ukraine’s President was everywhere,” Edward Felsenthal wrote in an article explaining the choice. “His information offensive shifted the geopolitical weather system, setting off a wave of action that swept the globe.”
Zelensky is the fifth Jew to claim the honor in the magazine’s almost 100 years of awarding it. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg earned it in 2010, former Treasury Secretary Ben Bernanke won it in 2009, former business executive Andrew Grove won in 1997 and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger earned the award in 1972.
Since the outbreak of Russia’s war against Ukraine in February, Zelensky has emerged as a Jewish symbol around the world. The former comedian and actor, first glorified for staying put in Ukraine as the violence threatened his life, is seen by many as a tough “modern Maccabee.” His Jewish heritage is widely acknowledged as historically significant in a country with a bloody Jewish history, and he and his allies have used his identity to dispel Russia’s arguments that the war was meant to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
Throughout the conflict, Zelensky has also repeatedly called on Israel, citing his Jewishness, to break its strategic connections to Moscow and join the wave of Western nations that supplied Ukraine with aid and arms. (JTA)
BIPARTISAN SLATE OF 125 LAWMAKERS CALL FOR ‘WHOLE OF GOVERNMENT’ APPROACH TO COMBATING ANTI-SEMITISM
A bipartisan slate of 125 lawmakers from both chambers are calling on the Biden administration to adopt a “whole of government” policy to combating antisemitism.
A letter sent to President Joe Biden, spearheaded by the chairmen of congressional task forces for combating antisemitism, called for action from officials from an array of agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the State Department, the White House, the Department of Education, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The letter pushes for the creation of “an interagency task force led by an official at the Assistant Secretary rank or higher,” and it cites an FBI report saying there was a 6% rise in antisemitic hate crimes in 2020.
“Because many individual agencies play a critical role in combating antisemitism, closer coordination is needed to share best practices, data, and intelligence; identify gaps in efforts; streamline overlapping activities and roles; and execute a unified national strategy,” the letter said.
The letter came a day ahead of a roundtable on antisemitism at the White House bringing together top administration officials with Jewish organizational leaders, and a week after the Department of Homeland Security issued a terrorism advisory bulletin saying that the Jewish, LGBTQ, and migrant communities face a “persistent and lethal threat.”
The chairs of the task force in the U.S. House of Representatives are Kathy Manning, a Jewish Democrat from North Carolina, and Chris Smith, a New Jersey Democrat. The chairs in the Senate are Jacky Rosen, a Jewish Democrat from Nevada, and James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican. (JTA)
ISRAEL CONDEMNS NETFLIX MOVIE ABOUT 1948 WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Israel’s government has lashed out at Netflix over a new Jordanian movie that they say disparages the country’s military and their actions in the War of 1948 that led to Israel’s independence.
Farha, Jordan’s entry into the Academy Awards’ best international feature race, is a historical drama about the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” the Palestinian term for the events that led to the founding of the State of Israel. In the film, a Palestinian teenager locked in a storage room witnesses a family being slaughtered by the Israel Defense Forces. Two small children and a baby are among the victims.
The movie debuted on Netflix on Thursday, Dec. 1, and Al Saraya Theatre, a theater in Jaffa popular among Arab Israelis, planned to screen it. Its director, Darin Sallam, has said she based the film off twice-removed real-life testimony from a Palestinian refugee of 1948 who ended up in Syria.
But Israel has attacked the film and its producers over what the government says is an unfair portrayal of the IDF.
“To me, it is ridiculous that Netflix chose to release a film whose entire purpose is inciting mockery against IDF soldiers,” Israeli Finance Minister Avidgor Lieberman told Israeli media.
Lieberman further suggested the treasury could withhold state funding from the theater unless it canceled plans to screen the film, saying, “The choice of a cultural institution funded by the State of Israel to screen the above-mentioned film is already unacceptable.” Israeli law permits the finance minister to withhold funding from any cultural institution that recognizes the Nakba by commemorating Israel’s Independence Day as a day of mourning.
In response, producers of Farha released a statement accusing the Israeli government of launching a disinformation campaign against the film.
“These attempts to silence our voices as Semite/Arabs and as women filmmakers to dehumanize us and prevent us from telling our stories, our narrative and our truth are against any freedom of speech,” reads the statement by Sallam and producers Deema Azar and Ayeh Jadaneh.
Another film that has provoked controversy over its depiction of the events of 1948, the Israeli documentary Tantura, opened in U.S. and Palestinian theaters this week. Tantura plays oral testimony from former members of the Israeli military who recall slaughtering hundreds of Palestinian residents of the village of Tantura and dumping their bodies into mass graves to pave the way for a kibbutz.
A theater in Ramallah in the West Bank is currently showing Tantura, which its distributors say marks the first time a theater in the Palestinian territories has shown an Israeli documentary. (JTA)
