Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

SYNAGOGUE

‘Ring of Peace’ demo ‘tainted’ by anti-Jew link

The ’Ring of Peace’ demonstration in Oslo on Saturday, which brought hope to millions across the world, has been condemned as “tainted” because one of the organisers in the past blamed the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre on Jews.

Published: 22 February 2015 21:32 CET
'Ring of Peace' demo 'tainted' by anti-Jew link
Ali Chishti wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh in his Facebook profile. Photo: Facebook
Eric Argaman, an outspoken member of Norway’s Jewish community, told the JTA newswire that the involvement of Ali Chishti (30), a Norwegian Muslim with a history of anti-Israel statements “stained the event, which now feels more like a spin, on our backs, than a gesture of good will.”
 
More than 1,300 people turned up to the event on Saturday, which saw Muslims from Oslo link hands around the city’s synagogue in a show of solidarity with the city’s Jewish population. 
 
The symbolic gesture was reported on around the world, with the father of Dan Uzan, the 37-year-old Jewish man killed in Copenhagen earlier this month, saying that it had given “meaning” to his son’s death. 
 
"You must say to the young Muslims in Norway that they have given me hope,” he told Norway’s chief rabbi Michael Melchior. “ They have given me a reason to continue living.” 
 
However, as publicity grew ahead of the event, the organisers started to get more scrutiny, with Chishti’s involvement particularly coming under the spotlight. 
 
Chishti was booed off the stage at Oslo’s Litteraturhuset in 2009 after he gave a highly provocative talk titled “Why I hate Jews and Gays”. 
 
“There were several thousand Jews away from work in the World Trade Center, and why there were more Jews in Mumbai when Pakistani terrorists attacked than usual?” he said in the talk. 
 
In interviews with Norway’s VG newspaper and Dagbladet newspapers on Saturday, Chishti acknowledged that his statements were “anti-Semitic” and “unacceptable”. 
 
“I have reflected a fair amount about the state of things since then,” he told VG. “I was very angry at that time. Since that meeting, I’ve had many discussions about Islam, and I’ve developed a more nuanced picture of everything.” 
 
However, he refused to disavow his past criticism of Israel. 
 
“I think it is important to distinguish between being critical of Israel and anti-Semitic,” he said. 
 
“Those who support an occupation which has been condemned in several UN resolutions, those I dislike,” he admitted. “As a Muslim I should not hate people, but I can dislike what they stand for.” 

ANTI-SEMITISM

German leaders express shame at rising antisemitism

German leaders voiced their shame over resurgent anti-Semitism on Friday, one year after a deadly attack targeting Jews in the city of Halle.

Published: 10 October 2020 09:42 CEST
German leaders express shame at rising antisemitism
German President President Frank-Walter Steinmeier lays a wrath outside the synagogue in Halle. Photo:Ronny Hartmann / AFP
Two people were killed in the attack on October 9, 2019 during Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, in one of the worst acts of anti-Semitic violence in Germany's post-war history.
   
A heavily armed man tried to storm the synagogue, but when the door failed to break down he shot dead a female passer-by and a man at a kebab shop instead.
   
“I feel deep sadness. But even a year later I still feel shame and anger,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at a commemoration to mark a year since the attack.
 
   
No one should stand by and watch anti-Semitism “in the underground, in a café, in the schoolyard, on the street, on the internet”, Steinmeier added. “Everyone must stand up when the human dignity of others is violated.” 
 
At 12.01pm, the time the attacker fired his first shot at the door of the synagogue, all the church bells in Halle rang for two minutes.
 
READ ALSO: 
 
In the afternoon, a memorial was unveiled incorporating the old door of the synagogue.
 
The attacks have sparked soul-searching in Germany, which has placed a huge emphasis on atoning for the murder of six million European Jews by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime during World War II.
   
Just this week, a Jewish student was attacked outside a synagogue in Hamburg in a case that police are treating as attempted murder with anti-Semitic intent, condemned by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a “disgrace”.
   
A neo-Nazi suspect, 28-year-old Stephan Balliet, is currently on trial for the Halle attack and has told the court it was “not a mistake”.
   
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also voiced his regret on Friday at anti-Semitism in Germany.
   
“One cannot say that the problem has left us — and the fact that we have to protect Jewish institutions in 2020 is actually a state of affairs that is not acceptable,” Maas told the RTL broadcaster.
SHOW COMMENTS