Around the world
GREECE
Shechita ban
THE highest court in Greece has ruled against shechita, following of a petition filed by the Panhellenic Animal Welfare and Environmental Federation, according to the Greek news site Protothema.
Last year, the European Union’s highest court upheld the bans imposed in regions of Belgium against slaughtering animals for meat without stunning them first.
“Jewish freedom of religion is under direct attack,” warned Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association.
“It started in Belgium, moved to Poland and Cyprus and now it is Greece’s turn.”
SWEDEN
Promoting denial
SWEDEN’S National Agency for Education has come under fire for recommending that high school teachers should make students try to disprove the Holocaust, as part of a push to help them understand conspiracy theories.
“Group 1 must find at least three arguments for the case that the Holocaust never happened, using facts and information from the internet,” reads the suggested exercise in a handbook, which defines both the moon landing and the Shoah as “controversial subjects”.
Svante Weyler, chairman of the Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism, said, “It is a grotesque idea that this can take place in Swedish classrooms.”
CHILE
‘Apology for Nazism’
ONE of the largest newspapers in Chile has published a tribute feature to Hermann Göring, sparking an outcry from politicians and the Chilean Jewish community.
The article, marking the 75th anniversary of Göring’s death, resembled a eulogy, including details about the Nazi leader’s youth, military career and close relationship to Adolf Hitler.
The Jewish Community of Chile called the piece “an apology for Nazism,” adding, “In Europe, this publication would be considered a crime.”
US
Ice cream protest
AFTER the completion of a 90-day review last week, Florida state entities are to cease new investments in Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, because the ice cream maker plans to stop selling its product in the West Bank.
Florida law mandates divestment from companies boycotting Israel. Ben & Jerry’s says it is ending its sales only in the West Bank, but Florida law does not make a distinction.
Unilever, which has disavowed the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, has said it has no control over Ben & Jerry’s business decisions.
AUSTRIA
Prison sentence
A COURT in Graz has handed a 32-year-old Syrian a three-year jail term for vandalising a synagogue and other antisemitic attacks in August last year.
The man was arrested after he threw stones and scrawled pro-Palestinian slogans on the town shule before threatening the head of the local Jewish community. He also damaged a facility used by an LGBT group.
In court, the man said he regretted the actions that the prosecutor claimed were motivated by “hatred of Jews, homosexuals and prostitutes,” the APA news agency reported.
He was placed in a care institution after he was found to be psychologically disturbed, a spokesperson told AFP.
SCOTLAND
Apology blasted
SOME 500 scholars, including prominent Israel critic Noam Chomsky, have accused the University of Glasgow of curbing free speech after a student publication, eSharp, apologised for a 2017 essay it said promoted “an unfounded antisemitic theory”.
Jane Jackman, author of the article titled “Advocating Occupation: Outsourcing Zionist Propaganda in the UK” wrote, “Whilst initially strengthening ties with the Jewish Diaspora, Israel’s longer-term objective was to conscript and resource a cohort of grassroots Zionist supporters to carry the Israeli narrative into the broader society.”
She also suggested the pro-Israel lobby had unusual clout in the UK.
The apology is a “capitulation”, The Times of London quoted Chomsky as saying, and “a serious blow to academic freedom that should not be allowed to stand”.