Young Jews reportedly leaving Turkey 'due to political strains'

Rise in anti-Semitism related to tensions between Ankara and J'lem has led to current exodus, community leader says.

Turkey is beginning to experience a rise in Jewish emigration, a leading figure among Turkish expatriates in Israel said this week.

Nesim Güveniş, the deputy chair of the Association of Turkish Jews in Israel, told the Turkish newspaper that political tensions between the two countries and rising anti-semitism have contributed to an increase in the number of young people moving abroad.

Güveniş, made aliyah in the early 1980s, along with tens of thousands of other Turkish Jews primarily because of his children, he told the newspaper.

“They didn’t want to go to university where leftists or other groups were putting pressure on them to take sides at school,” he said.

A rise in anti-Semitism related to national tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem has led the current exodus, he said, declining to give exact figures.

“Look the environment in Turkey at the moment. We are uncomfortable with being ‘othered’ ... I am more Turkish than many. But we couldn’t make them believe it,” Güveniş told Hurriyet.

Earlier this year the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul was revealed to be the target of an al-Qaida bomb plot and in 2003 twenty seven people were killed when two truck bombs were driven into Neve Shalom and the Bet Israel synagogue.

The sexton of a local synagogue, speaking with the Jerusalem Post in April stated that the community was strongly Zionist and that they believed themselves to be safe in Turkey, saying that their “security is strong.”

Despite that assurance, however, local Jewish leaders have frequently been reluctant to speak with the Israeli press, seemingly due to their country’s strained relationship with Israel.

Despite tensions between the two countries, there have been some efforts at the grassroots level to bridge the gap.

On Thursday Turkish and Israeli academics participated in the opening of the “first-ever joint Seminar in Turkey” according to Yad Vashem, one of the event’s organizers. A joint initiative of the Aladdin Project, an NGO dedicated to Jewish-Muslim understanding, Yad Vashem and International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the program will bring together twenty academics at Galatasaray University in Istanbul for a series of lectures.

"This is an initial, although important step given the significance of Turkish society in the Muslim world. At Yad Vashem we are witnessing interest in the Holocaust that traverses countries, religion and language. Our International School for Holocaust Studies is prepared to meet this challenge," Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said in a statement.

After the program, which will involve several stages following the initial seminar, including an online course, the participants will implement holocaust study curriculums in their respective educational institutions.

Jerusalem post

Is Anti-Semitism Back in Europe?

The status of Jews in Europe remains a delicate one. At least that is what a new survey by the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights suggests. 

The survey, to be released in full in November, found that nearly one quarter of European Jews avoid doing things or wearing symbols that could allow others to identify them as Jewish. And the numbers are worse in some places: Forty-nine percent of the Swedish utopia’s Jews avoid recognizably Jewish clothing and symbols in public. 

Eighty-eight percent of French Jews said antisemitism has become worse in the last five years. Thirty percent of Hungarian Jews have experienced an antisemitic incident in the past twelve months. And around Europe, two-thirds said reporting assaults and other antisemitic incidents to the police wasn’t worth it, or wouldn’t make a difference.

Surveys like this cast doubt on the belief that the history of the West has been one of steady progress. Sure, the Europeans seem to have finally been civilized, with their bloody, multicentury stream of wars and revolutions supplanted by social democracy and multinational union. But in 2012, reports Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center, Franceled the world in violent antisemitic incidents.

Who is to blame? The media would have you believe it’s the far right—Greece swarming with Golden Dawn blackshirts and cryptofascists flexing their muscles almost everywhere east of the Elbe. And the Kantor Center documents plenty of far-right violence. But participants in the EU survey, many drawn from Western Europe, saw it differently—just 19 percent pinned it on the extreme right. Twenty-two percent faulted the extreme left. But Europe’s Muslims are cited by 27 percent.

This brand of antisemite has imported the hatred of Jews to countries where it was historically less severe, such as Denmark. Tablet, a Jewish online magazine, relates the taleof Martin Krasnik, a journalist and a liberal Jewish Dane who decided to take a long walk through the immigrant neighborhood of Nørrebro with a yarmulke perched atop his head. He’s quickly harassed—flipped off, told to “go to hell, Jew,” told to his remove his cap, and so forth. There were plenty of threats—men tell him that “we have a right to kick your ass,” that his religion may tell him to wear the yarmulke but that it doesn’t tell him to get killed, that “my cousin killed a guy for wearing a ‘Jewish hat.’” Krasnik was extremely uncomfortable, telling Tablet’s Michael Moynihan that he thought, “If I keep doing this for an hour or two, something will happen. And if I did this everyday, I would get my ass kicked around.”

The rise of Muslim antisemitism in Europe is well documented—and widely ignored.

 Krasnik told Moynihan that the press and other elites give the phenomenon little attention and little energy—“The mayor of Copenhagen says ‘we will not accept antisemitism, but that we shouldn’t overdramatize the situation. We should breathe calmly, he said.” 

Moynihan noted that some school principals in heavily immigrant areas have begun warning Jewish parents away. Europe’s multiculturalists prefer to apologize for their more troublesome charges—and to bend native society to accommodate foreigners’ prejudices. Moynihan, again:

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Danon calls to halt peace talks following West Bank shooting

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon on Saturday urged Israeli peace negotiators to rethink current talks with their Palestinian counterparts, following the shooting of an Israeli child in the West Bank.

He insisted that the Saturday shooting of a nine-year-old girl in the settlement of Psagot proves "those who support terrorism" can not be trusted partners in peace.

He then vowed to catch the alleged Palestinian shooter, saying "If a person shoots a nine-year-old girl, their blood is on their own head."

"We must put an end to hypocrisy of the Palestinian leadership," Danon added.

Meanwhile, Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely said "The rise in terrorist attacks requires Israel to stop negotiations".

"This is a result of the Palestinian Authority's system of incitement and two-faced policy. On the one hand, they say they want peace, and on the other hand they incite against Israel."

According to Hotovely, "nothing has changed since Arafat; there was no partner and there is no partner for peace."

Knesset Finance Committee chairman Nissan Slomiansky (Bayit Yehudi) called the terrorist attack "further proof that continuing negotiations with the Palestinian Authority from a position of weakness brings more terror."

Slomiansky called for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon to form am aggressive policy to stop terror, and wished the injured girl a speedy recovery.

MK Yoni Shetboun (Bayit Yehudi) called for a military operation "to bring back Israel's deterrence" after recent terror attacks.

Jerusalem Post 

UPDATES on the hunt for the terrorist (s) who targeted a child in Israel in multiple shootings

FOLLOW THE LINK

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/9-year-old-shot-in-psagot/2013/10/05/

Nine-Year-Old Girl Shot in Terror Attack

A nine-year-old girl was seriously wounded Saturday evening in a shooting attack by one or more terrorists at Psagot, in the Binyamin region.

Magen David Adom paramedics were giving the girl first aid as IDF forces began combing the area. She was then evacuated to Shaarei Tzedek hospital with what one news source described as "a serious injury to her upper body."

The residents of Psagot have been told to stay indoors until further notice.

Initial assessments are that the girl was hit by gunfire from an adjacent Arab village.

According to initial reports, the girl had been playing in the yard of her house and may have been hit by sniper fire. Other reports point to a possible inflitration by terrorists. These reports led to a lockdown of the residents.

Local residents reported that a siren has also been sounded in Tel Tzion, several kilometers to the north of Psagot, meaning that it, too, has been put on alert.

Construction and Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi) responded to the attack and said: “We have returned to a reality in which talks with the Palestinians equal murderous terror attacks. This reality must not continue! I demand that the prime minister bring back to the government, for renewed discussion, the decision to release terrorists, and that the IDF be allowed to take tough action against the murderous terror that is raising its head again.”

IDF soldier First Sergeant Gal Kobi was shot dead by a sniper in Hevron less than two weeks ago. Two days earlier, Sergeant Tomer Hazan was abducted and murdered. 

Fatah’s armed branch, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, issued a statement in early September in which it announced that it would give the green light to terrorist attacks targeting Israelis.

The reason given for the planned resumption of open hostilities was Jewish visits to the Temple Mount, which the group termed, “The invasion of the compound by hordes of settlers, and the harm to [Muslim] worshipers, with no intervention from the international community.”

The statement, issued just before Yom Kippur, called on all "sleeper cells" to prepare for a confrontation with the "Israeli occupation."


Arutz Sheva

Indonesia’s last synagogue destroyed

Indonesia anti-terror police 

Indonesia’s last synagogue has been destroyed, a Dutch news site reported last week.

Unidentified persons demolished the Beith Shalom synagogue in Surabaya on the island of Java to its foundations sometime earlier this year, according to a report on Indoweb.nl.The synagogue has seen a number of anti-Israel protests staged in front of it and was sealed by Islamic hardliners sealed in 2009, according to the Jakarta Globe.

Reports of the synagogue’s destruction have appeared in the Indonesian media since May and were confirmed last week by Indoweb.nl, which quoted the director of the Surabaya Heritage Society as saying that he intended to protest the demolition in talks with government officials.

“It is not clear by whom and when exactly the building was demolished,” Freddy Instanto told Indoweb.nl.

The City Council of Surabaya was in the process of registering the building as a heritage site. Istanto said that for that reason, the building “should have been protected.”

The Dutch news site also quoted Sachiroel Alim, the head of the Surabaya regional legislative council, as saying that it was unknown whether Muslim extremists had anything to do with the demolition.

Situated in in eastern Java, the small synagogue was built in the 19th century by Dutch Jews when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony. It had white-painted bricks and a Star of David painted on the front door.

The first Jews arrived in Indonesia in the 17th century with the Dutch East India Company. During the 1930s and 1940s, the community grew due to new arrivals fleeing persecution in Europe.

Currently, about 20 Jews are estimated to be living in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim nation, according to Beit Hatfutsot, the Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv.


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Jerusalem Post