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Former London Mayor Blames Jews for Corbyn/Labour Crushing Defeat

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“The Jewish vote wasn’t very helpful,” said former London Mayor Ken Livingstone shortly after the British election results came in late Thursday. “Jeremy should have tackled that issue far earlier than he did,” he said. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Former London mayor sparks “fresh anti-Semitism row” with comments about Jewish vote.

Edited by: TJVNews.com

“The Jewish vote wasn’t very helpful,” said former London Mayor Ken Livingstone shortly after the British election results came in late Thursday. “Jeremy should have tackled that issue far earlier than he did,” he said.

The Daily Mail reported that Livingstone’s comments have sparked “a fresh anti-Semitism row.”

‘It looks like the end for Jeremy, which is disappointing for me since I’m a close ally. I’m sure he’ll have to resign tomorrow,” Livingstone said. Corbyn has since announced he won’t run again as opposition leader.

Livingston attempted to defend Corbyn during the campaign, calling the accusations of anti-Semitism “lies and smears” and blaming it on the old Labour guard led by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who he said wanted to get rid of Corbyn because they feared he would lead the party to a “wipeout.”

Corbyn did, in fact, lead Labour to a wipeout. The Boris Johnson-led Conservative party won 364 seats to Labour’s 203. It is the worst result for Labour since 1935.

Livingston had little moral authority to draw on in his efforts to defend Corbyn as he himself was forced to quit Labour in 2016 after he said that Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”

He also said “it’s not anti-Semitic to hate the Jews of Israel.”

The Daily Mail reports that more moderate factions within the party immediately began to attack Corbyn for the disastrous showing.

Ruth Smeeth, the parliamentary chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, told Sky News that Corbyn should have resigned “many, many, many months ago.”

“We are the racist party because of the actions of our leader and the lack of actions of our leader… we need to detoxify and move on,” she said.

“Jeremy Corbyn should announce he is resigning has leader of the Labour Party from his count today,” she said.

Jews have responded with relief to the defeat of Corbyn, under whose leadership the Labour party had seen an unprecedented rise in anti-Semitic behavior among its rank and file.

The AP reported that the pound surged when an exit poll forecast a Tory win in United Kingdom elections on Thursday, jumping over two cents against the dollar, to $1.3445, the highest in more than a year and a half.

Many investors hope the Conservative win will speed up the Brexit process and ease, at least in the short term, some of the uncertainty that has corroded business confidence since the 2016 vote.

Voters casting ballots on Thursday hoped the election might finally find a way out of the Brexit stalemate in this deeply divided nation. Three and a half years after the U.K. voted by 52%-48% to leave the EU, Britons remain split over whether to leave the 28-nation bloc, and lawmakers have proved incapable of agreeing on departure terms.

Opinion polls had given the Conservatives a steady lead, but the result was considered hard to predict, because the issue of Brexit cuts across traditional party loyalties. The Labour party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, contended with rampant anti-Semitism in the party, which most members of the Jewish community believe hasn’t been confronted in a meaningful or effective manner.

Largest Persian Synagogue in Beverly Hills Vandalized; Police Investigating as Hate Crime

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Beverly Hills police described the suspect in Saturday’s vandalism as a white man, 20 to 25 years old with curly hair and a thin build. (Beverly Hills Police Department)

By: Fern Sidman

Police in Beverly Hills are investigating a break-in and vandalism overnight at one of the city’s largest Iranian-Jewish synagogues as a hate crime. The attack occurred at around 2:00 am on Shabbos morning at the Nessah synagogue on Rexford Drive. Several rooms inside the building were ransacked and Sifrei Torah and Seforim were damaged. The suspect is described as a white man in his early 20s with short dark curly hair. Surveillance video shows the suspect carrying a backpack and pulling a rolling suitcase.

According to a JPost report, local police responded to the call at the Nessah Synagogue “shortly after 7 a.m.” local time on Saturday, after an employee notified security when he “found an open door and items ransacked inside the synagogue,” the police said in a release to the media.

The suspect overturned furniture in the building as well as “damaged several Jewish relics,” according to the statement. Fortunately the synagogue’s “main scrolls remained unscathed,” and disruption was “primarily to the synagogue’s interior contents,” with “very limited structural damage.”  

“This cowardly attack hits at the heart of who we are as a community,” Beverly Hills Mayor John Mirisch said in the release. “It’s not just an attack on the Jewish Community of Beverly Hills; it’s an attack on all of us. The entire city stands in solidarity behind Nessah, its members and congregants. We are committed to catching the criminal who desecrated a holy place on Shabbat of all days and bringing him to justice.”

Contrary to earlier reports, the synagogue, one of the largest Iranian Jewish synagogues in Los Angeles, suffered less damage than originally believed.

The LA Times reported that police are investigating the incident as a hate crime but report that there is no evidence to suggest that the attack was anti-Semitic in nature. The synagogue’s main scrolls were locked up and undamaged.

Damage inside the synagogue was “ugly,” according to one witness who had conversations with people who saw the damage first hand, and will require extensive cleanup, as was reported by the LA Times.

The synagogue was founded by David Shofet, who immigrated to the United States in 1980 from Tehran in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, according to the LA Times report.

“In the aftermath of the terrible tragedy in Jersey City earlier this week, the American Jewish community is understandably anxious,” said Richard Hirschhaut, director of the American Jewish Committee in Los Angeles. “Reports of vandalism and damage to a synagogue are deeply troubling and cause further sense of discomfort amid the presumption of anti-Semitic intent.”

On Twitter, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti also expressed his concern.

“Shocked and outraged by the vandalism at Nessah Synagogue in the city of Beverly Hills,” he said. “We will stand together and speak out strongly against any act of hate and intolerance in our community. We’re keeping our friends and neighbors in our thoughts as police investigate.”

Bal Harbour Shops in N. Miami Beach to be Expanded After Securing $500M Construction Loan

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Rendering of the Barneys New York store that will be part of the $500 million expansion of Bal Harbour Shops. WHITMAN FAMILY DEVELOPMENT

For those snow birds who relish the idea of escaping the biting cold of New York every year by migrating down to sunny Florida, the exciting news is that upscale shopping is now being expanded. 

Edited by: TJVNews.com    

A July 2019 report in Miami Herald said that the luxury Bal Harbour shopping center that attracts people from across the globe will now be significantly expanded. The mall which is located at  9700 Collins Avenue in North Miami Beach has secured a $550 million construction loan for its long-awaited expansion, which will add 300,000 square feet of retail space to its existing 463,000 square feet, according to the Miami Herald report.

The South Florida paper reported that the loan was secured from MetLife Investment Management on behalf of the Miami-based Whitman Family Development, which owns and operates Bal Harbour Shops. The real estate firm Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P were the ones who deftly secured the formidable loan, which is one of the largest in Miami-Dade history. 

Forbes reported that Chris Drew, a senior managing director with HFF’s capital markets team, said Bal Harbour Shops has maintained its position as one of Florida’s most successful shopping destinations at a time traditional retail centers across the U.S. are losing retailers and big box tenants.

“The loan marks the official launch of the Bal Harbour Shops expansion and represents the growth and strength of Miami’s retail real estate market,” Drew said. “The Shops continues to experience intense demand from both existing tenants and retailers that have been waiting years to join its roster.”

For those who enjoy luxury brands, it was reported that among the new shops to call the Bal Harbour mall home will be Barneys New York, who will be leasing out a 57,414 square foot space. This will mark the first flagship store of the luxury department brand in the southeastern U.S, according to the Miami Herald. 

Barneys first announced that it was coming to Florida in 2017. 

The Neiman Marcus chain will expand by an additional 20,000 square feet. The Miami Herald reported that a new grand entrance on the northeast corner of the property will also be added. Other new tenants will be announced at a later date. Construction on the expansion is scheduled to be completed by early 2025.

Bal Harbour Shops is owned by the Whitman family and is one of the few remaining family-owned malls in the nation. It opened in 1965. There is a waiting list at the shopping center which has operated at 100% occupancy for several decades. Demand for additional space by many existing retailers continues to grow. The mall is currently home to more than 100 global brands, including Chanel, Gucci and Tiffany & Co.

In January 2013, Bal Harbour Shops announced an equity partnership with Swire Properties to jointly develop the 500,000-square-foot retail component of Brickell City Centre in downtown Miami. Bal Harbour will contribute equity, brand recognition and its luxury retail expertise to the project.

 

Did the Family of George Soros Fund a Deal to Buy Taylor Swift’s Music?

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Pop superstar Taylor Swift is quite upset these days. Breitbart reported that on Thursday, the internationally renowned singer excoriated music industry manager Scooter Braun after it was revealed that he allegedly purchased the legal rights to her music with what she claims was money from the family of far left-wing billionaire George Soros. Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Pop superstar Taylor Swift is quite upset these days. Breitbart reported that on Thursday, the internationally renowned singer excoriated music industry manager Scooter Braun after it was revealed that he allegedly purchased  the legal rights to her music with what she claims was money from the family of far left-wing billionaire George Soros.

Edited by: TJVNews.com

Soros has funded the likes of Hillary Clinton and has sponsored many anti-Israel non-governmental organizations,

On Thursday evening, while delivering her acceptance speech for Billboard’s Woman of the Decade award, Swift called out the “unregulated world of private equity coming in and buying our music as if it’s real estate — as if it’s an app or a shoe line.”

Swift said that Braun’s purchase of the independent record label Big Machine and the master rights to her  first six albums, was funded by the Soros family.

Breitbart reported that Swift said, “This just happened to me without my approval, consultation, or consent. After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalog was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros family, 23 Capital, and that Carlyle Group.”

Swift, who has earned Grammy awards also spoke of her progressive worldview while on the podium accepting her award, She took to task the “toxic male privilege” in the music industry:

“And of course, Scooter never contacted me or my team to discuss it prior to the sale or even when it was announced. I’m fairly certain he knew exactly how I would feel about it, though, and let me just say that the definition of toxic male privilege in our industry is people saying “but he’s always been nice to me” when I’m raising valid concerns about artists and their right to own their music. And of course he’s nice to you—if you’re in this room, you have something he needs, ” Swift intoned.

Breitbart reported that Swift added: “The fact is that private equity enabled this man to think, according to his own social media post, that he could “buy me.” But I’m obviously not going willingly. Yet the most amazing thing was to discover that it would be the women in our industry who would have my back and show me the most vocal support at one of the most difficult times, and I will never, ever forget it. Like, ever.”

Breitbart reported that the tension between Swift and Braun became public last month when Swift claimed that Braun was blocking her plans to perform songs from her first six albums at the 2019 AMAs, although she ended up singing them anyway.

Braun responded at the time in an open letter via Instagram, demanding that she speak “directly and respectfully,” while also complaining that his family had begun receiving death threats as a result, according to the Breitbart report. (Breitbart.com)

 

Netanyahu Trails Gantz by 6 Seats in New Poll

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President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, shake hands, Sept. 19, 2019. (Flash90/Yonatan Sindel)

it is unlikely that either Gantz or Netanyahu will be able to form a ruling government without Liberman’s Israel Beiteinu party.

By: WIN Staff

A new poll published by Channel 12 news on Friday showed that if Israeli elections were held today, Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party would win six more Knesset seats than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Blue and White won 33 seats and Likud picked up 32 in Israel’s second election in September.

According to the poll, Israel Beiteinu would match the eight seats it won in the last election, the Sephardic Ultra-Orthodox Shas party would drop from nine to eight seats, United Torah Judaism would match its current seven seats and the New Right would net five seats.

The left-wing parties of Labor-Gesher would match its current six seats and the Democratic Camp would drop from five to four seats. The Arab Joint List, which refuses to join any coalition, would gain one seat more than the 13 they received in the last election.

As with the last two elections, it would be unlikely based on these predictions that either Gantz nor Netanyahu will be able to form a ruling government without Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party.

On Dec. 24, 2018, Netanyahu called for early elections after Liberman dropped out over a spite with the Orthodox parties regarding the IDF draft law. In doing so the 20th Knesset’s term ended, which contributed to the early collapse of the 21st and 22nd Knesset because no ruling coalitions were formed after the two elections.

According to the poll, 43% of the respondents placed the blame for third elections on Netanyahu and 30% blamed Liberman, while 6% blamed Blue and White No. 2 Yair Lapid, 5% blamed Gantz, and 2% blamed the Orthodox parties. (World Israel News)

Read more at: worldisraelnews.com

 

Boris Johnson Sails to Victory in Most Consequential Election in Modern UK History

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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson wearing Yeshivishe hat. (YWN)

 Exit polls predict 368 seats for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Labour projected to win just 191 seats

By: Elad Benari

Exit polls published on Thursday night following the election in Britain predict a solid majority for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative party, as was reported by INN. 

The Conservatives are set to win an overall majority of 86 in the general election, according to an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky News.

INN reported that the exit poll found that Johnson is projected to win 368 seats. The Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn wins just 191 seats in parliament.

The Lib Dems win 13 seats in the poll, the Brexit Party none and the SNP 55.

The Green Party will still have one MP and Plaid Cymru will lose one seat for a total of three, the survey suggests.

While the first election results came in about an hour after the polls closed in the UK, some of the most rural and remote areas — including the Scottish Islands where votes have to be brought to the mainland by boat — could take until Friday morning, according to a Breitbart report.

The Conservative MP for the town Marcus Jones has dramatically increased his majority to over 13,000 tonight — up from 4,700 in 2017. This is an absolutely major swing for the Conservatives in a swing seat that had been Labour for decades before Jones won the seat for the Tories in 2010.

Exit polls have proved to be very accurate in recent years, noted the BBC. In 2017 it correctly predicted a hung Parliament, with no overall winner, and in 2015 it predicted the Conservatives would be the largest party.

If the exit polls are accurate, it would be the worst performance by Labour in any general election since World War II, Professor Michael Thrasher from the University of Plymouth told Sky News.

The election was dominated by Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union.

Johnson focused relentlessly on a single message: “Get Brexit done”, promising to take the UK out of the EU by January 31, 2020 if he got a majority.

Corbyn promised voters another referendum with a choice between a renegotiated Leave deal and remaining in the bloc.

Corbyn has faced ongoing accusations of anti-Semitism, both over his history of hostility towards Israel and support for anti-Israel terrorist groups, as well as the rise in anti-Jewish rhetoric within the party.

Dozens of Labour members have been suspended over their anti-Semitic statements in recent years, while the party has been criticized for its failure to deal with the anti-Semitism within it.

Before the election, the Chief Rabbi of Britain, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, published an article in which he criticized Corbyn and the party’s “utterly inadequate” response to anti-Semitism within its ranks.

In a subsequent interview with the BBC, Corbyn was asked four times whether he would like to apologize over the party’s failure to clamp down on the anti-Semitism within their ranks and he adamantly refused to do so.

Corbyn later gave an interview to ITV’s Philip Schofield in which the interviewer pressed the Labour leader to apologize to the Jewish community.

“Obviously I’m very sorry for what has happened, but I want to make this clear, I am dealing with it. I have dealt with it,” Corbyn said. “Other parties are also affected by anti-Semitism. Candidates have been withdrawn by the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives and by us because we do not accept it in any form whatsoever.” (INN)

Senate Passes Resolution Recognizing Armenian Genocide

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A memorial in Istanbul this year commemorating the Armenian genocide. Photo Credit: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

The Senate on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution that recognizes as genocide the mass killings of Armenians a century ago, a historic move that infuriated Turkey and dealt a blow to the already problematic ties between Ankara and Washington, as was reported by Reuters. 

Edited by: TJVNews.com

Turkey condemned the measure, which passed a month after an official visit to the White House by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who enjoys a special rapport with President Donald Trump, amid mounting issues that have soured the relationship between the two NATO allies, according to the Reuters report. 

Trump had cast his November 13 meeting with Erdogan as “wonderful” despite no concrete breakthrough on deep disagreements about issues such as Ankara’s purchase of Russian weapons systems and diverging views on Syria policy. 

The Democrat-led House of Representatives passed the resolution by an overwhelming majority in October. But Republican senators had blocked a vote in the Senate since the Erdogan meeting. 

“This is a tribute to the memory of 1.5 million victims of the first #Genocide of the 20th century and bold step in promotion of the prevention agenda. #NeverAgain,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan tweeted. 

The resolution, which is nonbinding, asserts that it is U.S. policy to commemorate as genocide the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923. The Ottoman Empire was centered in present-day Turkey. 

Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War I, but contests the figures and denies that the killings were systematically orchestrated and constituted genocide. 

Reuters reported that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called the decision a “political show,” while presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Ankara strongly condemned and rejected the measure. 

“History will note these resolutions as irresponsible and irrational actions by some members of the U.S. Congress against Turkey,” Fahrettin Altun, Turkey’s communications director, said on Twitter. 

Congressional aides said the White House did not want the legislation to move ahead while it was negotiating with Ankara on sensitive issues. However, since the visit, Erdogan repeatedly said Turkey had no intention of dropping the Russian S-400 air defense missile systems it bought, crushing any hopes for progress, according to the Reuters report. 

For decades, measures recognizing the Armenian genocide have stalled in Congress, stymied by concerns about relations with Turkey and intense lobbying by Ankara. 

“I’ve invested, like, decades of my life,” said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America. “So it was a sense of relief and a bit of a vindication that … [the United] States recognized the history of the Armenians, but also put up a firewall against foreign countries coming into our democracy and dictating to us.” 

Congress has been united in its opposition to Turkey’s recent policy actions. Republican senators have been incensed with Turkey’s purchase of the S-400, which the United States says poses a threat to its F-35 fighter jets and cannot be integrated into NATO defenses. 

They have also moved to punish Turkey for its October 9 incursion into Syria. A U.S. Senate committee backed legislation on Wednesday to impose sanctions on Turkey, pushing Trump to take a harder line on the issue. Many lawmakers blame Trump for giving a green light to Ankara for its military offensive. 

To become law, that legislation would have to pass the House of Representatives — which passed its own Turkish sanctions bill 403-16 in October — and be signed by 
Trump. 

 

Krispy Kreme Owner Donates Millions to Atone for Nazi Past

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Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (iStock)

Reimann family announces donation to Holocaust survivors after investigation finds their Nazi ancestors used slave labor during WWII

By: A7 Staff

The Reimann family, which owns well-known food brands such as Krispy Kreme and Panera Bread, on Thursday announced a multi-million dollar charity donation after an investigation revealed that their Nazi ancestors used slave labor during World War II, CNN reported.

The family, which owns a controlling stake in JAB Holdings, announced it would be donating more than $5.5 million to Claims Conference, an organization that provides compensation payments to Holocaust survivors.

The donation will be administrated through the Reimann family’s new Alfred Landecker Foundation over the next three years. The organization said the money is a “significant step” for them as it begins to provide financial and humanitarian assistance for Holocaust survivors.

The Reimann family said they discovered in March that family members had strong anti-Semitic ties following a three-year investigation. A family spokesperson said Albert Reimann Sr., who died in 1954, and Albert Reimann Jr., who died in 1984, used Russian civilian prisoners and French prisoners of war as forced labor in their factories during World War II and that they were anti-Semites and avowed supporters of Adolf Hitler.

A plant run by Reimann Jr. used 200 civilians as forced laborers in 1942, the investigation found.

The investigation also found that Reimann Sr. donated to Hitler’s paramilitary SS force as early as 1931. Investigators also found a letter from Reimann Jr. to a local mayor complaining that the French prisoners of war weren’t working hard enough and should be in prison.

The family previously said the crimes were “disgusting” and are “nothing to gloss over.”

Thursday’s donation, according to CNN, is part of a larger $11 million commitment the family plans to donate to Holocaust survivors. Landecker was killed by Nazis and was linked to the Reimann family, it said in a press release. (INN)

Israel’s Rivlin Appeals: Don’t Lose Faith in the Democratic System’

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As Israel prepares for its third elections within a year, President Reuven Rivlin on Thursday appealed to the public not to lose faith in Israel’s democratic system, despite its apparent flaws. Photo Credit: Esty Dziubov/TPS on 22 August, 2019

As Israel prepares for its third elections within a year, President Reuven Rivlin on Thursday appealed to the public not to lose faith in Israel’s democratic system, despite its apparent flaws.

By: Arye Green

“After two rounds of elections and as a third election campaign begins, I believe this is also a critical moment for the Israeli public, which will decide on who its leaders are. Israeli democracy was and still is a source of pride, and we know that the democratic system comes at a cost,” Rivlin told Israel’s citizens in a statement.

The president said that despite the growing divisive rhetoric and partisanship, he prays that people can look for common ground and focus on what connects them as citizens.

“I pray that the depth of the current political crisis and the divisions it exposes amongst us will lead us as a society and as a country to fight not only for the right to disagree with each other – but also to the duty to find what we can agree about,” he said.

After the second election round in September, Rivlin invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to establish a government, and after Netanyahu was unable to form a coalition, the mandate was given to Member of Knesset (MK) Benny Gantz, who failed to do so as well.

The mandate to form a government was then passed on to all 120 MKs, who could have nominated a candidate to form a government, but did not recommend any MK to the president. This caused the Knesset to be dissolved automatically and has now led to a third round of elections.

Rivlin expressed hope that the Israeli political system will return to its routine of elections every four years, and that Israelis will overcome the damage the current political crisis has caused.

“I hope that this is the last election campaign for the next four years, and that we will be able to grow as a people and a society from the division and disagreement that separates us to agreement and action that benefits us all. We must not allow ourselves to sink into despair or grievance, which does no good. We must not lose faith in the democratic system or in its ability to create the reality we live in with our own hands,” he said.

“When the time comes, we will all exercise our democratic right and do it in the hope of a better future, as soon as possible, for us all,” he concluded. (TPS)

Legendary Actor Kirk Douglas Turns 103; Found Meaning in Judaism After ’91 Crash

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On Monday, legendary Jewish actor Kirk Douglas celebrated his 103rd birthday.

After a helicopter crash in 1991, Douglas set out to search for spiritual meaning and seek to understand what it meant to be a Jew.

By: WIN Staff

On Monday, legendary Jewish actor Kirk Douglas celebrated his 103rd birthday.

Kirk Douglas was born on December 9, 1916, in Amsterdam, New York., beginning life as Issur Danielovich. His parents were illiterate immigrants from Belorussia. Because the mills and factories of Amsterdam excluded Jews, his father earned his living as the town’s junk dealer.

Dirt poor, Douglas moved to New York City as a teenager, initially having to depend on his friend — a young model named Lauren Bacall — for her uncle’s winter coat. After playing supporting roles as villains, everything changed when young Douglas starred and received an Academy Award nomination for his role as the heroic boxer in the 1949 movie Champion.

Douglas left his mark on Hollywood for his iconic performances in movies like 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954), Paths of Glory (1957), Spartacus (1960), and Lonely Are The Brave (1962)

In 1996, Douglas was given an honorary Oscar to mark his 50 years in the movie business.

In his 1988 autobiography Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning, Douglas shares his quest for spirituality and Jewish identity.

He said that it all began after a helicopter crash in 1991 that left him severely injured and two others dead. While in his hospital bed, the actor couldn’t shake a question that kept haunting him: Why had two young men, who haven’t lived out their lives, died, while he at age 74 survived?

Rather than dismiss it as a stroke of luck, Douglas set out to search for spiritual meaning and seek to understand what it meant to be a Jew.

Douglas hired a rabbi to teach him the Bible and found the Jewish faith deeply satisfying. He also said that it enriched his relationship with his children and taught him to listen to others. (World Israel News)

Read more: worldisraelnews.com

 

What Kind of Iron Dome Can We Deploy Against the Hate in Jersey City?

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What kind of Iron Dome can we create against hate in Jersey City? Against real bullets in Pittsburgh? In London? In Paris? Against hard and cowardly hearts the world over? Photo credit: Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images

It’s happening again, not in the same way. Not yet. But this is surely the prelude to the “fire next time.” And it is happening anywhere, anywhere at all.

By: Professor Phyllis Chesler

This article originally appeared on the Arutz Sheva (Israel National News) website (http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24865) and is republished here with the express permission of the Arutz Sheva staff and editors

I remember getting out of a sick bed and taking a taxi to a corner in Crown Heights where for days, African-Americans perpetrated a pogrom in New York City.

The mayor did not stop them—not for three days. I watched and tried to remember what a late 20th century pogrom is America was like.

Well, it’s happening again, right before my eyes. Not in the same way. Not yet. But this is surely the prelude to the “fire next time.”

The video captured by Dov Hikind yesterday (see below) is shocking, awful. In it, a few barely comprehensible African-American civilians who live in Jersey City are on record saying that they don’t like the Jewish presence—no, not at all. In fact, they blamed the Jews, calling them Sh-T. One woman exclaimed that had the victims been Black, the police might not have come at all (this might be true but it’s not the fault of the Jews).

Someone else said the Jews were to blame for being there in the first place; their presence alone caused resentment—because they were …Jewish.

I was reeling from this video when The New Yorker jumped right in with a piece by Zach Helfand. He tells the story very much from the point of view of the African-Americans who feel left behind, invisible, and who envy the Jews because their sorrows seems to command media and police attention. Locals also fear the “gentrification” that might take place once another kind of citizen moves in.

Helfand describes hostility towards the “Hasidic influence” and their “insularity.” Their shul may have been violating zoning laws. (I bet everyone is up in arms about that!).

Helfand did not interview a single Jersey City Hasid—but was careful to interview a local, probably an African-American woman, who spent much of her “childhood on Stegman Street.” He closes with this: “(She) wondered how to balance her own feeling of neglect with the increasing possibility that a different kind of hate had visited the neighborhood…People died. That’s the sad part. I don’t care where you’re from…this is horrible.”

All day yesterday and part of today, no announcement was made as to who the killers were. Usually, that means that the politically correct narrative did not apply, that the Bad Guys were Muslims, or African-Americans or Black Muslims. In this case, they are Black Hebrew Israelites who believe that they are the original Jews. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center has condemned them as a hate group. Also, one of the killers posted Jew-hating material online and both killers drove slowly and purposefully to the kosher market.

Is what I’ve written anti-Black? How, dear God, are we going to talk about (indoctrinated) Jew hatred among people of color? Among Muslims of color? Among faux-Jews of color? Jew hatred on both the left and the right? Jew hatred among Muslims in the Islamic world?

Is this too forbidden a subject?

Not as forbidden as the subject about how so many Jewish leaders, both in America and Israel have failed the historical moment.

Not as forbidden as discussing how many American Jews blame Israel for being attacked and refuse to bear the burden of understanding and fighting for the right of our only Jewish state to exist.

The rockets that recently fell again—again! on Sderot were barely reported in the world media. Oh, there is a connection.

What kind of Iron Dome can we create against hate in Jersey City? Against real bullets in Pittsburgh? In London? In Paris? Against hard and cowardly hearts the world over?

Addendum:

From the desk of Dov Hikind

Rep. of Americans Against Antisemitism Captures Antisemitic Tirade By Locals Outside Kosher Store Targeted By Terrorists

WATCH SHOCKING VIDEO

“While the Jewish blood of terror victims was still warm, local residents gathered outside not to show support, not to offer help, but to condemn Jews, blame Jews for their own deaths, and cheer it on,” said Hikind on the shocking footage. “The big story here is that not only was there a horrible terror attack motivated by antisemitism that occurred, but it happened in a context in which wishing death on Jews seems totally normal.”

Hours after reports of a Jewish-owned grocery store in Jersey City was involved in a shootout with heavily armed criminals, a representative of Americans Against Antisemitism took his camera and went to the scene. What he recorded and encountered when he got there shocked all of us. While it was becoming clear that a terror attack had unfolded, and that Jews had been murdered, local residents gathered outside to blame Jews for all sorts of problems including their own deaths, while others cheered them on.

Not only was there a terror attack to absorb at the scene, which would be enough for anyone to deal with, our representative had to deal with vile antisemitic vitriol from local residents who wished the Jews were dead and gone. Let that sink in.

What this clearly shows is that antisemitism is a MUCH BIGGER problem than anyone has hitherto imagined! It’s time for people of all persuasions to wake up, now! We’ve been warning for a while that antisemitic terrorism was coming, and here it is. And it’s worse than the attacks alone, now they add insult to injury, throwing salt on the freshly opened wounds, and surround those sites with antisemitic hate.

(Below the shocking video is one of the Jewish storekeeper whose wife was murdered in the attack handing out candies to black children for Halloween although it is certainly not a Jewish holiday). (Israel National News)

The writer is a Ginsburg-Ingerman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, received the 2013 National Jewish Book Award, authored 18 books, including Women and Madness and The New Anti-Semitism, and 4 studies about honor killing, Her latest books are An American Bride in Kabul, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing and A Politically Incorrect Feminist.

Anti-Semitic Hate Spewed by Locals After Jersey City Attack

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Moshe Deutsch, 24, left, was killed in the Jersey City attack. Photo Credit: Chabad.org

In the wake of a deadly anti-Semitic attack, video emerged of Jersey City residents at the crime scene railing against Jews and expressing delight at the carnage.

Edited by: Fern Sidman

Less than 24 hours after assailants killed multiple victims in a kosher grocery in Jersey City, New Jersey, former NYS Assemblyman and former Jewish Defense League activist Dov Hikind posted online chilling footage captured in the hours subsequent to the bloody attack.

World Israel News reported that in one of the clips, a young man asks a Jewish first responder, “Four [Jews] are dead, right? If they’re dead and they got shot, that’s great.”

Another bystander comments, “I blame the Jews! We never had a shooting like this until they came here.”

“We can’t do it to them?” she added, referring to the attack as “Jew shenanigans.”

WIN also reported that another person can be heard yelling, “Get the damn Jews the f**k out of here! Get the Jews out of Jersey City.”

Hikind commented on the footage, “As Jewish bodies were still laying in cold blood after being murdered by terrorists in Jersey City, a representative of Americans Against Anti-Semitism captured spontaneous anti-Semitic tirades blaming Jews for their own murder and people cheering it on.”

Two of the victims at the store were identified by members of the Orthodox Jewish community as Mindel Ferencz, who with her husband owned the grocery, and 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn who was shopping there. The Ferencz family had moved to Jersey City from Brooklyn.

The funerals for the two Orthodox Jewish victims in the Jersey City shooting attack were held on Wednesday night. Thousands turned out for the two funerals.

Also murdered was Jersey City police officer Detective Joe Seals, a law enforcement veteran and father of five.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop on Wednesday announced that the kosher grocery had been specifically targeted.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the New York Times reported that one of the perpetrators, who was identified as David Anderson, posted anti-Semitic and anti-police content online and was affiliated with the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, a hate group that, despite its name, promotes virulently anti-Semitic conspiracies and advocates violence, as was reported on the World Israel News web site.

The Black Hebrew Israelites are in no way affiliated with any stream of Judaism or the mainstream Jewish community.

For decades, adherents of the sect have stood in New York’s Times Square accosting Jews and other passersby. The group made the news in January when a video surfaced of members in Washington, D.C. calling high school students “crackers” and “faggots.” Hate group watchdogs have warned about the dangers of the Black Hebrew Israelites since at least 2008.

Investigators also are scouring social media postings of at least one of the gunmen in search of a motive, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still going on.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the Hebrew Israelites a black supremacist group.

Yeshivah World News reported that the shooting began near a cemetery, where Detective Joseph Seals was killed while trying to stop “bad guys,” Police Chief Michael Kelly said without elaborating.

The killers then drove a stolen rental van over a mile to the kosher market, where they waged a drawn-out battle with police that filled the streets with the sound of high-powered rifle fire and turned the city into what looked like a war zone, with SWAT officers in full tactical gear swarming the neighborhood.

A first responder from a Jewish organization who was present of the deadly shooting attack in Jersey City told Arutz Sheva on Wednesday that authorities found 300 rounds of ammunition and three pipe bombs in the U-Haul van the shooters were driving.

“I came here about an hour after the shootout finished. I was one of the first to respond to the command,” said Isaac Wollner, a member of the local Chesed Shel Emes organization.

“A U-Haul van found nearby contained some 300 rounds of ammunition and three pipe bombs,” he said.

According to the AP, when the standoff ended, the police entered the grocery store and found the bodies of those they believed were the two gunmen and three other people who apparently happened to be there when the assailants rushed in. Police said they were confident the bystanders were shot by the gunmen and not by police.

Offering her sagacious insights into the tragic murders in Jersey City, Professor Phyllis Chesler told the Jewish Voice, “What else can people expect after so many years of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda; after so many years of Islamic funded hate. It is now totally out of control and I am not sure that legislation so late in the day can put this diabolical genie back in the proverbial jar.” 

Dr. Chesler speaks from decades of rigorous personal research on the subject of burgeoning anti-Semitism in the Western world. She is the author of the critically acclaimed monograph titled, “The New Anti-Semitism” which was originally published in 2003. 

In this intensely passionate and compelling book, Dr Chesler demonstrates how old-fashioned anti-Semitism — now often seen in the form of anti-Zionism — has become fashionable and even politically correct, and how this plague threatens Jews in Israel, America, and throughout Western civilization.

Last night, Rabbi Moshe Schapiro, who directs Chabad of Hoboken and Jersey City with his wife Shaindel, was at the Jersey City Medical Center, visiting Chaim Deutsch, who was injured in the attack, and consoling community members gathered there. Deutsch had witnessed the murder of his cousin, Moshe Deutsch, and was struck multiple times before slipping out the back door of the store, according to an article on the Chabad.org web site. Together they reflected on the resilience of Jewish faith in the face of even the worst adversity, and belief in the world’s Creator.

Schapiro, who moved to Hoboken a week after the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001, told Chabad.org: “If we are to uproot this scourge of evil and transform our world into a place of goodness and kindness, then we must nurture in our society an appreciation, from the youngest age, that we are each personally accountable for our moral conduct to our all-knowing and benevolent Creator, who also created every one of our fellow human beings in His image.”

In a related development, Yeshiva World News reported on Wednesday that in just three hours, the Orthodox Jewish community raised a whopping $25,000 for the family of Jersey City Police Detective Joseph Seals.

Around 820 generous Orthodox Jews opened their pockets and donated – to a fund on The Chesed Fund platform – to show their support to law enforcement – and Detective Seals in particular.

Seals was a beloved police officer and was the department’s leading officer in removing guns from Jersey City’s streets. He  frequently worked in plain-clothes.

The veteran officer joined the Jersey City police force in 2006, according to department officials.

This fund was administered by prominent Jewish community activists Mr. Chaskel Bennett, Mr. Leon Goldenberg and Mr. Moshe Wulliger in partnership with Yeshiva World News (YWN).

Shooting victim Mrs Leah Mindel Ferencz HY”D, 33-years-old, was one of the victims of the Jersey City shooting attack.

Rabbi David Niederman of the UJO in Williamsburg gave Yeshiva World News the following statement:

Mindel Ferencz HY”D, was a pioneer. She and her husband were of the very first to relocate from Williamsburg, due to the sky-rocketing prices of housing, to settle in Jersey City.

They did not do it for themselves, but to pave the way for a new community that lives harmoniously with their neighbors.

She was a caring and nurturing mother for her three children, and at the same time helped her husband who ran the first kosher grocery in the area, to ensure that the community’s families have were to shop and feed their children.

A life of selflessness, and dedication to others, full of love, was cut short by vicious hate-filled murders.”

Shooting victim Moshe Hersh Deutsch HY”D. 24-years-old, was one of the victims of the Jersey City shooting attack. He lived in Williamsburg.

Chai Lifeline gave YWN the following statement:

We are heartbroken to inform you that one of the victims of yesterday’s horrific attack in Jersey City was our own dedicated volunteer, Moshe Hersh Deutch HY”D. Our thoughts and tefilos are with all those impacted by this senseless act of violence.”

Rabbi David Niederman of the UJO in Williamsburg gave Yeshiva World News the following statement:

Moshe HY”D was learning in a Yeshiva he was instrumental in establishing and getting off the ground. He was extremely kind and generous and was the go-to person when his peers needed help. Moshe is also the son of our devoted and energetic board member, Abe Deutsch, who is a pillar of the UJO and is the main force behind the largest food distribution for Pesach, feedings thousands upon thousands. Abe’s kindness knows no bounds and even though he is occupied with managing a business, individuals needing assistance knock on his door regularly for help. Moshe followed in his father’s footsteps and devoted his spare time and energy to help organize the UJO Passover food distribution and many other acts of kindness.

The community lost a promising-upcoming charitable person who was spreading love and kindness. He was butchered by people filled with poisonous animosity. Our heart goes out to both families and to our board member, Abe.”

Jewish leaders and the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks anti-Semitic attacks, expressed concern about the deaths.

“The report from the Jersey City mayor saying it was a targeted attack makes us incredibly concerned in the Jewish community,” said ADL regional director Evan Bernstein. “They want answers. They demand answers. If this was truly a targeted killing of Jews, then we need to know that right away, and there needs to be the pushing back on this at the highest levels possible.”

YWN reported that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on MSNBC that the attack was “clearly a hate crime,” while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pronounced it a “deliberate attack on the Jewish community.” They announced tighter police protection of synagogues and other Jewish establishments in New York as a precaution.

In the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, 11 people were killed in an October 2018 shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Last April, a gunman opened fire at a synagogue north of San Diego, killing a woman and wounding a rabbi and two others.

The kosher grocery is a central fixture in a growing community of Orthodox Jews who have been moving to Jersey City in recent years and settling in what was a mostly black section of Jersey City, causing some resentment.

Mordechai Rubin, a member of the local Jewish emergency medical services, said the small Jewish community has grown over the past three or four years, made up mostly of people from Brooklyn seeking a “nicer, quieter” and more affordable place to live. Next to the store is a synagogue with a school and day care center where 40 students were present at the time of the shooting, he said. (WIN, YWN, Chabad, INN)

 

Trump: ‘As President I Will Always Stand With Our Ally Israel’

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President Trump hosts White House Hanukkah reception, signs Executive Order Combating anti-Semitism

Edited by: TJVNews.com

President Donald Trump on Wednesday delivered remarks and lit a menorah in honor of the holiday of Hanukkah at the annual White House party. During the event, the President also signed an Executive Order Combating Anti-Semitism.

Israel National News reported that this Executive Order makes clear that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applies to anti-Semitic discrimination. When enforcing Title VI, Agencies will consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism as well as the contemporary examples provided by the IHRA. There has never been an American President more supportive of the Jewish People than President Donald J. Trump.

The guest list includes hundreds of American Jewish politicians, organization heads, and school and yeshiva deans, as was reported by Israel National News.

President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Second Lady Karen Pence, Jared Kushner, Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor and Ivanka Trump, Advisor to the President, were in attendance at the event.

INN reported that several members of Congress attended as well, including Sen. James Lankford, (R-OK), Sen. Tim Scott, (R-SC), Rep. Elaine Luria, (D-VA-02), Rep. Doug Collins, (R-GA-09), Rep. Lee Zeldin, (R-NY-01), Rep. David Kustoff, (R-TN-08), Rep. Josh Gottheimer, (D-NJ-05) and Rep. Max Rose, (D-NY-11).

Also participating was Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots.

Trump expressed condolences for those who were murdered in the attack on the kosher market in Jersey City on Tuesday.

“With one heart America weeps for the lives lost. With one voice we vow to crush the monstrous evil of anti-Semitism, whenever and wherever it appears,” he said.

“As President, I will always celebrate and honor the Jewish people, and I will always stand with our treasured friend and ally, the State of Israel,” Trump stressed.

Before signing the Executive Order to combat anti-Semitism on campuses, Trump said, “This is our message to universities: If you want to accept the tremendous amount of federal dollars that you get every year, you must reject anti-Semitism. It’s very simple.”

“My administration will never tolerate the suppression, persecution or silencing of the Jewish people. We’ve also taken a firm stand against BDS. We forcefully condemn this anti-Semitic campaign against the State of Israel and its citizens,” he added.

“Today we thank God for the Jewish people whose love and loyalty, brilliance and bravery, resilience and resolve, spirit and strength bless America and the world.”

“It is game changer,” said Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz of the Executive Order. He was called on by Trump to speak at the Hanukkah event. “It will go down in history as one of the most important events in the 2,000-year battle against anti-Semitism,” Dershowitz declared.

“It is very interesting to see how the leading heads of various Jewish organizations and activists who are infected with Trump derangement syndrome twist themselves all in a knot to try and explain how a president, who earlier this week they were accusing of trafficking in anti-Semitism, just did the most historic action to defend the Jewish community from anti-Semitism ever in history,” Matt Brooks, president of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told VOA.

“This is a very critically important move made by the president of the United States that will set an environment wherein Jewish students who were targeted with anti-Semitism on university campuses in America will actually have some semblance of protection and recourse,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a major Jewish human rights organization. (INN & VOA)

Mayor DeBlasio on NYC’s Response to Jersey City Attack and Anti-Semitism in the City

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NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio, top police officials and Jewish leaders gathered at City Hall on Wednesday. The mayor called the Jersey City attack an act of terror. Photo Credit: NY1.com

By: David Ben Hooren

dited by: TJV News.comMayor Bill de Blasio: I want to start by honoring the victims of yesterday’s horrific attack in Jersey City, and we feel their loss deeply here in this city. Moshe Deutsch, the son of Abe Deutsch – a well-known community leader in Williamsburg – was brutally murdered in this attack; Leah Ferencz, also originally from Brooklyn; and from Jersey City, Detective Joseph Seals of the Jersey City Police Department, brutally assassinated in the horrible, horrible attack. I want to ask for a moment of silence for all that were lost yesterday.

We’re here at a very somber moment, we’re here at a very urgent moment for this city but also for this nation. Everyone is here sharing that same mix of sorrow and anger and urgency. I want to thank all the elected officials, the community leaders, the clergy who are present in common cause. We are all going to be working together, we have been working together for years, we are going to be working together even more intensely in the days to come. I want to thank the Executive Director of our Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, Deborah Lauter, who is leading an effort to work with communities all over the city to get at the root causes of the challenge we face.

You’ll hear from Commissioner Shea in a moment. I also want to thank Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison, Chief of Patrol Fausto Pichardo, and the Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counter Terrorism John Miller, everyone at the NYPD who will be involved in the efforts in the coming days to ensure the safety of our entire city and particularly of the Jewish community in this city.

We feel a lot of pain but we have to understand why this is a moment of urgency. This confirms a sad truth – there is a crisis of anti-Semitism gripping this nation, there is a crisis of anti-Semitism in this city. It has continued to take on a more and more violent form all over this country. Now we have seen this extraordinarily, extreme form of violence reach the doorstep of New York City and we have to take that as a warning sign. We have to understand, as I’ve heard from so many members of the Jewish community, that people are now living in constant fear. Members of the Jewish community have told me they no longer feel comfortable wearing anything that is a symbol of their faith for fear of an attack. That is absolutely unacceptable in a free society that anyone should have to feel that way from any faith, any background.

It’s unacceptable in a city that is meant to be for everyone and prides ourselves in respecting all people. It’s a national problem unquestionably but it is here now and we have to recognize that this is a crisis. There has been an uptick in hate crimes in this city directed against the Jewish community, some acts of vandalism and hateful symbolism, but some physical assaults. Until yesterday we had not seen in the New York metropolitan area for many years the level of violence directed at the Jewish community that we saw in Jersey City. And so we have to understand we’ve entered a new reality. No one is happy about it but we have to be honest about it.

What we saw yesterday was a premeditated violent anti-Semitic hate crime. In other words you can say it was an act of terror because it was premeditated, because it was violent, because it was directed at the Jewish community. There is still a lot we need to know. The investigation is preliminary and we only have some of the picture of what happened in Jersey City but it is enough to tell us that this was an act of hate and an act of terror.

Anti-Semitism – I don’t have to tell anyone here but it’s worth saying for all New Yorkers – anti-Semitism is not a new phenomenon, it is centuries old. I think at one point we hoped it was in decline, we hoped it had gone away, but it never went away. It just lay dormant in this country and in many other countries. And now it is coming out in the open. History teaches us to take these warning signs seriously. And we in New York City have to lead. We have to show our country what a vigorous response looks like and it will have to go farther than anything we’ve done previously.

So, to the members of the Jewish community of this city, my message is we will keep you safe. We will use the largest and best police force in this nation to protect you but we’re going to have to do a lot more at the community level to engage community members and community leaders of all communities in common cause to root out hate. I’ll say a few more words before turning to Commission Shea regarding the specific actions of the NYPD but I will say very crucially at the outset, that there, at this hour, are no credible and specific threats directed against New York City but that is not sufficiently comforting and that is why we are in a state of high alert.

I directed the NYPD last night to go into that state of high alert and to ensure that hundreds of officers would be assigned to dozens of crucial Jewish community locations around the city. That effort will grow and that effort will be ongoing. Commissioner Shea will go into detail. You will see visible and increased presence throughout the Jewish community for a number of days to come. That’s the first point for people to understand, that presence will be large and consistent over the coming days. It has started already.

Second point is, the NYPD has been building a new unit over the last weeks. We now want to publicly announce this unit. The acronym is R-E-M-E. That stands for Racial and Ethnically Motivated Extremism. The unit is focused on identifying any trends and any signs of racially and ethnically motivated extremism so that it can be acted on before any terror or any bias crime occurs. Commissioner Shea and Deputy Commissioner Miller will go into greater detail. This is a new unit within the NYPD’s Intelligence Bureau. As I said it has been built up over the last weeks. It did not happen as a result of this horrible incident yesterday but this is the time to now talk publicly about the role of this unit and what it will do.

It will directly take on the hate groups that are trying to spread in this country and that pose a threat to so many communities. Last point, as I indicated we will be gathering community leaders across all faiths and backgrounds in common cause and with a sense of urgency to find any signs out there of potential acts of hate, to reach deeper into all our communities. Our Office to Prevent Hate Crimes will work on the long term solutions but right now we need to reach more deeply into our communities to find out where immediate threats exist. We will turn to faith leaders, elected officials, community leaders with a particular focus on Brooklyn where very sadly we’ve seen so much of the hate crime activity in this city.

We’ll have more to say on that in the next few days. But one thing I want to remind anyone who ever even ponders committing an act of hate in any way, if anyone out there is even thinking about committing an act of hate, the NYPD has proven that it will find you, it will prosecute you, and you will suffer the consequences. We have to be very clear we seek to move the people of this city in all the right and positive ways but for those who refuse to respect their fellow New Yorkers, there will be very serious consequences. And hate crimes – to make it very simply, once any crime is committed there will be consequences. Once it is proven it is a hate crime, there will be additional time in prison.

To close before turning to the Commissioner, history has shown us over and over again the danger of silence and no community understands this better than the Jewish community. Silence can be fatal. That means all of us have to speak up against hate, it means we all have to guard against the dangerous trends in our society. We cannot let them grow. But it means something more personal as well. It means confronting hate speech in our lives when we hear it, God forbid even from friends or family members. It means reporting anything that suggests the potential for an act of violence and a bias crime. I want to urge all New Yorkers to remember that phrase that we have lived by and has saved so many lives – if you see something, say something. That message has been heard and felt by New Yorkers for years. We remember in Chelsea, just a few years ago, an everyday New Yorker called in her concern about a package on the street and saved countless fellow New Yorkers when it turned out it was a live bomb.

Well, if you hear the kind of speech that suggests someone might be considering an act of violence, if you hear someone musing out loud about committing violence against the Jewish community or any community, we need you to call that in immediately. If you hear something, say something too. Call 9-1-1 or call 8-8-8-NYC-SAFE. Any and all information is needed. Do not hesitate. If you think you’ve heard something important, don’t hesitate, the NYPD needs to know it. That one phone call might save lives. So, everyone, this is all of our business.

This is a crisis and in a crisis we all ban together and we all take responsibility. I want to conclude by saying there are many people hurting today – our brothers and sisters in Jersey City – and I want to thank you, Commissioner, for the extraordinary support the NYPD provided yesterday to Jersey City in their hour of need. My heart goes out to the people of Jersey City, to Mayor Fulop, and all the people he represents. They are going through a lot of pain. The families who have lost their loved ones, the people who were injured.

But to all New Yorkers, remember today, members of our Jewish community are in pain right now. They are feeling beleaguered and attacked. They just saw something horrific happen on our doorstep. Offer your understanding and support whether you’re a member of the Jewish community or a member of another community. Offer your support today. And to our police officers, they have lost a brother. And one thing that I know from working closely with law enforcement, it doesn’t matter which part of law enforcement or which state our officers come from, whenever an officer is killed all other members of law enforcement feel that pain. So, offer your condolences and support to the members of the NYPD today. With that, I’ll turn to Commissioner Dermot Shea.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: Good morning. Let me start by saying that every member of the New York City Police Department today, as the Mayor said, mourns our colleagues in Jersey City in the wake of this absolute tragedy, and we stand together as one. By all accounts, Detective Joe Seals, a husband, a married father of five children, was a stellar police officer. Highly skilled at doing his job, getting guns off the street, making the streets of Jersey City safer for all residents, a man truly dedicated to the people he served. And our hearts also go out of course to the families of everyone killed or injured in this prolonged senseless act of violence.

While authorities in Jersey have the lead in this investigation, obviously, I can tell you that from the start the NYPD offered and sent almost immediately specialized resources to Jersey City as this initial job came over as an active shooter. And that occurred shortly after the first reports came in. Some of those resources included members of the Intelligence Bureau, our Aviation Unit – and you can think of the hazard with the weather conditions yesterday – our Emergency Service Unit, men and women that trained with their partners in Jersey City well before this incident.

So this is not a story in a distant newspaper or far off land. These are people that they know and respect prior, too. Almost immediately, here as this was unfolding here in New York, we deployed our Critical Response Units throughout the city to various Jewish locations and that instant response was amplified, as the Mayor said, throughout the night and continues to this point in time initially out of an abundance of caution as the situation unfolded but then with more purpose as the details began to emerge.

Those Counter Terrorism Bureau deployments were maintained overnight. They have been expanded today and they will be in place until we feel it is safe to remove them. But I will tell you that we stand committed to keep members of the Jewish community and all New Yorkers safe from any act of hate. In fact this morning I visited one of our police officers stationed outside on the largest synagogues in the world, Temple Emanu-El, right off Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Members of our Community Affairs Bureau are engaged as well. We’ll be in touch with leaders of the Jewish community throughout the day today as they do every day. I’ll reiterate now what we’ve been saying since yesterday.

There is no known nexus at this time between the attack in Jersey City and New York and that as the investigation moves forward we will continue to be in direct contact with authorities in Jersey City and our federal law enforcement partners including the FBI. I will urge everyone however to keep going about your business as usual without fear, that is how we defeat terror, but to always remain vigilant and aware of your surroundings at all times. If there is anything, no matter how slight that you see or hear that makes you uncomfortable in any way, anything that doesn’t look or seem right, tell a police officer, call 9-1-1, call 1-8-8-8-NYC-SAFE. Thank you everyone for this and I say that we denounce this act of senseless violence.

Mayor: Thank you, Commissioner. This horrible tragedy has particular meaning for members of the Satmar community in Brooklyn who have lost members of their own community including, as I said, the son one of the prominent leaders of the community. We are joined by someone I have known for decades and respect highly. I want him to speak on behalf of the community, Rabbi Niederman.

[…]

Mayor: Rabbi, thank you for speaking from the heart and we are all with you today, and with the community. Rabbi said one thing, before we turn to questions from the media, this, I want everyone to understand one of the powerful, many powerful things he said, that children were in the yeshiva right next to this site where this horrific killing was happening. So it’s horrible what did happen but imagine the fear it puts in the hearts of people throughout the community that those innocent children could have been in harm’s way.

And this is way it is a crisis and it has to be called a crisis and it has to be treated as a crisis. You can’t see that happen just miles away from your home and feel safe. We have to do everything we can do to change that so we return to a day where people can walk the streets of this city and know that this horrible moment has ended and we move forward. It will take real hard work and again, I say to everyone, you can depend on the NYPD. But do not ask them to do everything. We are all a part of this. They can’t be everywhere, they can’t see and hear everything but all of us together can. And once the NYPD knows about something they can act on it. But we all have to be vigilant and we all have to support each other. With that, take questions from the media. Yes?

Question: Can you talk a little bit more about the new unit and how it works with the Hate Crimes Task Force?

Mayor: Dermot, John?

Commissioner Shea: I will kick it off and I will pass it to John. But let me just say, we’ve seen an increase this year in anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City. I think it’s been well documented this year. And where we stand today is a 22 percent increase. And at times there are some that may look at these and downplay them – oh, they are just a sign etched on a window or in transit. Let me be very clear, the NYPD treats every one of these, every one of these as serious incidents. We have the largest hate crime unit in the country. I think there is a relationship between those incidents and this. And I don’t mean one that you can tie together. But there’s an escalation. You see swastikas being drawn, you see a brick thrown through a window, you see a woman walking with her kids walking down the block and having her wig ripped off her head. And sometimes it’s kids but there’s a common theme here. It’s ignorance and it’s hate. And it’s got to be denounced by everyone. It’s got to be denounced by not the NYPD, not members of the Jewish faith, every New Yorker.

That hate crimes unit is currently staffed with about 25 members. And if you think about what they do, they respond after the fact. An incident has happened, it’s dissected. They analyze it. Is this in fact a hate crime? And then they take it and run with it. But we are not blind to what’s been happening and I’ve had many conversations and to Jimmy O’Neill’s credit before me and John Miller to my right, and myself, Terry Monahan and others that what we have been seeing, not just in New York City, but across the country, so what can we do with hate that hasn’t risen to an individual act yet and can we prevent it before an incident like this happens? That’s really what’s behind this new unit. I will let John Miller really drill down into some of the details and some of the parameters, safe guards that we have built in place around it.

Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, NYPD: Thanks Commissioner. You know as the Mayor said earlier we hadn’t seen anything on the scope or scale of the violence that we saw in a hate crime form yesterday in Jersey City, in New York in many years. We are joined by Devorah Halberstam whose son, Ari, was killed in an incident 25 years ago that had similar dynamics. What we have seen across the country is an increase in hate groups, an increase in hate speech from hate groups and an increase in individual acts emanating from those groups and that speech. So while those investigations were always carried out within the Intelligence Bureau, they were carried out by a group of four to five units who would come together at the table and work together on those cases. This summer in the course of a single weekend when you saw an attack at a garlic festival in Gilroy, California, followed by one a couple of days later targeting immigrants in El Paso, followed by another in Dayton, Ohio preceded by the attack of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh because of an actor who was upset about their association with a support agency that actually is headquarters in New York City, or the shooting in Poway – towards the end of the summer, it became apparent to us that while this work was being done, it would be better form to get the four or five units together in one team. It was clear that we needed to expand that team before something on this scale happened in New York City. We requested from the Police Commissioner additional resources and then invited outside agencies including the State Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and others to participate. So it is centralizing something we have already done and expanding the man power. It operates the way the rest of the Intelligence Bureau does on these cases, which is under the [inaudible] guidelines which gives us the ability to investigate what we need to investigate while carefully guarding civil rights, free speech, privacy and the rest of the considerations that go hand in hand with that.

Mayor: Marcia, sure.

Question: John, would you just follow up – could you give us some idea of how the new unit will try to prevent crime from happening, to identify the lone wolf or the people who are involved in posting hate speech, fomenting hate speech, trying to get weapons, etcetera?

Deputy Commissioner Miller: So I think, Marcia, you’re question touches on the shifting dynamic that we have seen and we’ve seen grow which is it is not so much, although there are subtexts here, subgroups, it’s not so much that individual groups are meeting in somebody’s basement and plotting violence. Before you get to that point, what we see is the expansion and the networking of this online. Many of these groups have literally taken a page out of the ISIS handbook in terms of propaganda and encouraging acts. Many of these message boards that you have seen, from the one that was cited in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, [inaudible] you know Gab, 4Chan, 8Chan, Discord, where people get together and exchange these ideas and encourage violence, are places that give us opportunities to understand networks as they are formed, networks as they grow, and where hate speech which unpopular speech is also protected by the First Amendment, crosses the line into hate acts and acts of violence. The idea is to have the intelligence, use the analysis, and then execute the prevention which is the key.

Question: [Inaudible] infiltrating [inaudible]?

Deputy Commissioner Miller: I am not going to get into the suite of tactics that we use, because it that crosses all investigations. But the idea is to focus on prevention.

Mayor: Dave.

Question: John, can you just clarify does this group then need all the time, is it replaced – the 25 members who are in the Hate Crimes Unit they’re part of it [inaudible] –

Deputy Commissioner Miller: They’re going to go to the Police Commissioner distinction. The Hate Crime Unit which is a very well formed and highly experienced unit responds to hate incidents, investigates them, and tries to bring people to justice. Those are often individual incidents committed by individuals against individuals. The focus here is hate groups, and hate networks, and we have worked with our partners from – I mean people right here standing with us from the ADL to the JCRC, people that study these groups all the time. We’ve compared notes across training for years. This is really just to centralize that effort. And this is something that began really at the end of the summer and into the fall.

Unknown: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Hold on, we’re going to go around. Anna, go ahead.

Question: Can you talk a little bit about what has been happening with the new Office of Hate Crimes since it was started, I think, I believe the first week of September. Just kind of the progress that’s been made?

Mayor: Deborah, go ahead.

Executive Director Deborah Lauter, Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes: Right, so the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes opened in early September, as Rabbi Niederman mentioned, I’ve been spending a large part of my time meeting with the community, looking for solutions. What I found is that there’s – obviously there’s not one way to address hate. There’s not one way to address anti-Semitism. What you just heard today is a tangible way that law enforcement is dealing with it. So there’s three pillars. You need law enforcement, you need community relations, and you need education. And those are the three things our office has been focusing on. So the rabbi has been doing some incredible, and others, outreach in the communities just to break down stereotypes and to get the communities to know them. I think this is a really healthy thing that needs to be scaled in this community. The education – what we’re finding is that there’s very little, particularly among youth about what are hate crimes. They know that when they’re scrawling a swastika they’re doing something bad, but they don’t have any context for what the meaning of a swastika is and why it’s having such impact on the Jewish community. Today, the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crime is convening the first ever inter-agency committee. These are all the agencies that have worked in some respect on hate crimes. We’re bringing them all together to talk about how do we address this long term and holistically. So I’m really excited about doing this in this way, and I commend the Mayor for the vision for creating this office.

Mayor: Let me, let me just try and give some quick context that, what Deborah and her team are doing and working with everyone here – we are going to be on a long journey to try and eradicate hate but there’s really immediate things that we have to do too. And again, we’ll have more to say in the coming days about some immediate steps we’ll be taking at the community level that have to involve leaders of all different communities. The other point is we’ve got to figure out how to create more consequence. I think there are some crimes that deserve stronger penalties. I think there are real questions in terms of working with prosecutors to make sure that they are following through on this, on these cases effectively and making sure that they’re seeking appropriate penalties. I want to thank Devorah Halberstam who has raised this concern to all of us to make sure that the coordination with the prosecutors is tighter, but also that there is a recognition that we have to create a culture of consequence, because I think Deborah’s point is well take, there are people out there who think they can act with impunity or don’t even understand their actions. But once it is clear, there are consequences, it changes the whole discussion. So we have some real work to do. Quickly on that, yeah?

Question: Just a follow up on that issue. Is – are you getting an understanding by talking to kids who have maybe drawn swastikas, asking them why did you do this, do you understand what this means? Is that what you mean by outreach to communities that –

Executive Director Lauter: Yeah, that’s what we’re hearing. When the perpetrators of swastika incidents are caught, and many of them are youth, they admit that they didn’t know what it was. There are have been programs taking these kids like to the new Auschwitz exhibit in the Jewish Museum and giving the kids some context for what was behind it and from what I understand it was incredibly impactful. So basic education, education, education not only about hate symbols but also anti-bias education, and just generally how do you stand up against bigotry and hate. We have to inculcate these values in our youth early on.

Question: And then just, I’m sorry –

Mayor: Anna, I just want to get around. We’ll come back to you.

Question: [Inaudible] already said. You said that in the next couple of days you’ll be doing outreach, is that kind of going to be on top of the existing budget for the office?

Mayor: Again, different matter. We’re going to have more to say in the next few days. Go ahead, Erin.

Question: On the – you talked about – like how big is it?

Mayor: How big is the new unit?

Question: Yeah.

Mayor: John.

Question: [Inaudible] is it already in operation? Or is it going to [inaudible]?

Mayor: In operation, and growing. John?

Deputy Commissioner Miller: So, it’s been in operation for several weeks with the team together. We have been recruiting an additional half-dozen people, but it’s going to round out to a couple of dozen, so 24-25, combination of NYPD detectives, Intelligence Bureau, analysts, and partners from outside agencies.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: Commissioner Miller and Commissioner Shea, could any of you talk about the [inaudible] in Jersey City, their presence and activity in New York City and what – how this new program you [inaudible]?

Commissioner Shea: What I’ll say is obviously it’s a Jersey-led investigation. I’m aware of many of the reports that are already surfacing about the several of the identities. We’ll be working closely with our partners in Jersey City, as well through John’s JTTF with the FBI to peel back the individuals involved in this, the scope of it, is there anyone else involved and all of those networks if they exist will be examined. But it’s a little preliminary right to be commenting on the individuals and any affiliations they may have had.

Mayor: Gloria.

Question: I just want [inaudible] I know we have covered this, [inaudible] briefing, can you just talk in general about what the rise in hate crime numbers look like, the kind of – the increase that we have seen in the last year or two years. And if you could tie it to anything specifically that’s been happening in our society in the last few years, why we are seeing this increase, it’s something we haven’t seen in many, many years.

Mayor: As the Commissioner comes over on the facts, I’m just going to say, you know, in the most American way meaning non-partisan, non-ideological, it’s just clear there’s more division, there’s more hatred, it’s getting more permission. We could all go into the how and why, but, you know, we all have eyes to see that the civic discourse, the what you’re allowed to say and not say, is really different from just three or four years ago and there’s no question that that’s part of the equation, but there’s other things going on too.

And that’s why we got – that’s why Deborah and this office exist, and credit to the City Council that really leaned in heavily to move this, because we’ve got to figure out what is wrong, particularly with our young people, that they could be experiencing such a misunderstanding of the world, even to the point of lashing out with symbols of hate they don’t even understand, right? That something is profoundly wrong there that’s going to take real work at the grassroots level to get at. So I think your questions – you know the basic foundational question, I wish I had a perfect answer, but I do think more permission has been given for hate and that’s very dangerous. On the facts of the cases, numbers?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, when you look at what we’re saying, Gloria, something that I’ve spoken about before, it’s – we’re up 70 hate crimes reported in New York City this year. Of that we’re up 39 specifically anti-Semitic. The anti-Semitic hate crimes are up 22 percent this year and that’s, you know, a significant increase, an increase of much less I would say the same, and that’s certainly the case. What we’re seeing, I highlighted a few examples before. Most of them are not physical assaults, and I don’t mean that to downplay what they are though, in any way, shape, or form. We’ve seen examples of women walking on the street and people coming up and smacking hats off heads, or wigs taken off, I think about the – just the most basic level the lack of respect that that displays. We’ve seen cars pull up and people jump out trying to scare people, specifically young Jewish children that are walking on the street, or walking home from a synagogue. Would the courts treat that as the most serious offense? No. Do we? We absolutely do.

I think it’s systematic of what we’re seeing in society, just a basic lack of respect. Are there undercurrents of what are happening in other parts of the country? Clearly. I think as I said before the common denominator is – you can call it ignorance and maybe that’s not the appropriate word, but I’ll call it that. It’s hate, its lack of respect for fellow human beings. But clearly, in conversations with the Mayor, I mean this is something that we’ve seen in New York City in the distant past, we’ve seen it more recently. Think about the normalcy of this event today, where this is becoming the new norm in the United States, for a group of leaders to stand up and talk about mass killings. I think it’s a sad day and it says, unfortunately, a lot of wrong things about where we are today.

Mayor: We’ll get you the exact facts. Go ahead, Noah.

Question: Alright. A couple of follow up questions on some of the stuff you said. First, is there any estimates of the number of kids you’ve taken to the Auschwitz exhibit and sort of introduced to the horrors of the Holocaust and how kids manage to become teenagers and never really realize what the Holocaust entailed and what the swastika meant.

Mayor: [Inaudible] you want to talk about the –

Question: And before she goes, just secondly, you mentioned efforts to tighten cooperation between the Police Department and prosecutors when it comes to going after hate crimes in the city. Are there any notable lapses that leap to your mind, cases where you thought hate crimes should have been brought as criminal charges but weren’t?

Mayor: I’m going to speak broadly to that but you speak to the first part about what we’re doing, and again, your efforts are nascent, let’s remember the office started in September, it’s only December. But any kind of sense of what’s being built up to bring young people to see these kinds of exhibits – obviously the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn is another very powerful place for that kind of education to happen.

Executive Director Lauter: Right, I don’t – I don’t have the exact numbers with me but you can contact the museum. They have reported a definite increase and a definite increase in the number of student tours that are coming through. From what I can glean, there are a number of already really good resources on Holocaust education and anti-Semitism. It’s a matter of how much are they actually being used – teachers have challenges with time and what not and I believe it’s time to look at the values in our schools and doing a little bit more concentration on teaching kids not just to respect the other, respect themselves, which I think will have larger consequences.

They also have to understand that when they do these kinds of incidents ike a swastika, there is a pyramid of hate and, you know, the Holocaust didn’t happen in a vacuum. It started with words and it started with discrimination and bigotry and that’s why we’re gathered today because every single act that happens needs to be condemned and we need to set a tone that is not acceptable. So how do you create a healthy community? These are ways to do it.

Question: It’s a terrible story though. You know, kids—

Executive Director Lauter: Right.

Question: —you know, indulging in a toxic symbol like the swastika and being taken to the museum—

Executive Director Lauter: Right.

Question: I’m curious, have you been on any of these trips yourself, can you sort of explain to me what you witness as you see these kids?

Executive Director Lauter: These are profoundly impacting the kids, not just the tours of the museums but having survivors come and speak to kids. You see kids really understand the consequence of hate, as the survivor community is diminishing, these kinds of programs are more important than ever. I know some Assemblymen have been coordinating – that’s part of what our office is doing, is looking where these programs have been most effective and trying to scale them up immediately.

Mayor: Okay, wait, wait. Hold on, we have to keep moving along. Let me speak to your previous points. The – first of all, I think we’re starting to understand more and more. I feel for our young people too, and I don’t mean that in the sense of ever tolerating any hatred. I don’t tolerate any hatred. I feel for our young people because they are coming up in a more divided society, they are coming up in a more confusing society, they are exposed to – I say this as a parent – way too much information way too early, including hate speech. We have to understand, and it gets to Dermot’s point, some of this is inevitably, unquestionably, about the last few years, but some of this is much more foundational in terms of what’s happening in our society. It’s really dangerous. We didn’t know how to prepare ourselves for an age at which a 10-year-old could get access to all the information in the world, including horrible negative voices that that 10-year-old doesn’t know how to sort out from a positive voice. So we are in a brave new world here that’s not all good by any stretch and we’ve got to make sense of it. I think parents, that’s again a mix of what government can do and what the individual has to do, parents have to do their best to talk it through with kids, to provide a positive example, to address the problems. I know this is as a parent, when all that new information is coming into a child, you have to have a much more intense, engaged conversation to help them make sense of it.

So that’s part of it. I think all of us at the community level, houses of worship, community leaders are all going to have to work on dispelling hatred and working together and showing unity. Our schools, I agree with Deborah – we’re going to have to ramp up. The good news in that is that social-emotional learning actually fits very positively and early in a child’s educational time with having the ability to talk through these things, understand, respect people more, diffuse conflict, we’re going to be doing a lot more of that. But this is multi-multi layered.

On the question of the prosecutions, I don’t have a perfect vignette for you, but I can say that we know there’s been a culture throughout prosecutor’s offices – they have such volume to deal with, they do plea bargains, you know, they have to make practical, pragmatic decisions, we understand that, but I also think we can safely say – because hate crimes, unlike some other crimes, have gotten societally much, much worse, and against a back drop where hate speech is being given permission, one of the antidotes is more consequences. So we want to work with the prosecutor’s offices to make sure, whereas in the past there might have been understandably a plea bargain, now maybe there needs to be a harsher outcome. Or in other cases, maybe there could be a more positive outcome where it’s about education and community service. But we’ve got to rethink the whole equation at this point. Who has not gone, if you haven’t gone, I want to give you a chance. Yes?

Question: Can you elaborate on what you mean by a harsher outcome? Do you mean people should go to prison who ordinarily would not go to prison?

Mayor: I think it is case-by-case. So, please, everyone up here especially those in law enforcement would be the first to say each case is individual but I do think that we need to have a culture of consequence. So that means for some people, yes, some people should go to prison who are not, some people should go to prison for longer than they are going now. We’ve got to break the back of this problem.

Question: Can you just elaborate on what specifically you’re doing in Brooklyn? You mentioned that at the top.

Mayor: Yes, we’ll say more in the coming days but I think it is – no one is shocked by the fact that the biggest challenge we have faced in terms of the growth of hate crimes is in Brooklyn and in relatively few neighborhoods in Brooklyn. We have to double down, focusing on these neighborhoods, but that’s everyone. And the folks who are here from Crown Heights will tell you they have experienced some problems lately but they are also the place that can give the best example in this city of people banding together across different communities to address previous horrific hateful acts and really finding a way forward as a community. So we have to deepen that. We need to bring together leaders in Brooklyn and then citywide as well for a very immediate response. We are shaping that now and we’ll have more to say in the next few days.

Question: [Inaudible] more of the cops, you discussed earlier?

Mayor: Where the need is in terms of the Jewish community, obviously, it’s one of the biggest Jewish communities. Let me do these two and we’ll complete.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I wonder if you talked to your constituents who may feel that Jews are different, that Jews are to be feared – what would you say to them to [inaudible]? And Rabbi Niederman, I wondered if you could also answer that question.

Mayor: Rabbi Niederman will go in a second. I’ll say this. Marcia, it’s such a big question and a very fair question but important. Anyone who tells you that Jews are different than you is sowing the seeds of hate and destruction for all of us. It’s as simple as that. Deborah said it a moment ago, don’t treat the Holocaust like something that could never happen again. Don’t treat any horrible acts of hate against any community like they couldn’t happen here. History is trying to, not just talk to us, it’s screaming at us right now, that the exact same patterns are being played out. In Germany, it started with hate speech and it got more and more tolerated and more and more people felt they could say it out loud and then, you know, more and more people started to support them and it was all verbal in the beginning and symbols. And then it turned to physical acts of exclusion and denying civil rights, and then it turned into violence. And so many communities have suffered over the years.

I mean New Yorkers can understand the suffering of each of our own communities. Put yourselves in the shoes of the Jewish community right now. There are people living in this city who were in concentration camps. I have met some of them. There are people with those tattooed numbers on their arms from places like Auschwitz who are living in our community right now. It is not the distant past, its right here with us. So you have to understand how dangerous this situation is.

Now, if a lot of people in Germany in the1920’s and 30’s had stood up and said, ‘There is no way we’re going to accept this, we’re not going to be party to this,’ six million Jews and millions more beyond would have still been alive. So, people all play a role in this. There is a horrifying image and not the later images of murder on a vast scale but the lead-up after the Pittsburgh attack stood Rabbi Arthur Schneier who at the age of I think nine years old stood outside his own synagogue in Vienna on Kristallnacht and it was burning. Vandals – Nazi vandals, organized vandals in an act of terror burned down that synagogue. That was horrible but the worst part of the story – he recounted it to all of us – was that the authorities stood and watched. The fire department stood and watched. The police stood and watched. That wouldn’t have been true ten years earlier in Vienna.

So, the words of hate and the small acts of hate turn into a much greater danger that will threaten us all and it has to end here and now. This is a place where it actually can be stopped and we will use all the force of the NYPD but we have to go much, much deeper than that. Rabbi –

Rabbi David Niederman: Let me just – allow me to mention another wonderful gentleman who lost his life at the incident and that was a worker who worked at the store, not a member of the Jewish community, who I think was named Douglas. When we issued the press release we didn’t have the full details. May he rest in peace. He served everyone who came into that place fairly and our heart goes out. He is also part of what we now call a list of dead people because of horrific criminal activity. So, to your question – was why shouldn’t they be feared?

Question: [Inaudible] should not be feared which is what seems to be [inaudible].

Rabbi Niederman: I think the record we have been for – since our country was created, we were here and of course over the past 60, 70 years after the Mayor so eloquently presented the Holocaust in its real light because the [inaudible] is not only the six million and plus others who were killed but what has led to that and that is an important lesson. But I would say in the 60, 70 years we have been here, we have established organizations, charitable institutions, and you find a bad apple, yes. But we have been living in harmony with our neighbors. Let me talk to you second about Williamsburg. Williamsburg was the first of the first places where we accepted public housing when nobody wanted it. And we accepted that, and we have been for 50 years living in harmony together, come to Williamsburg, don’t believe what you hear. Come and see, side by side, a Jewish community member, a Latino, an African-American, the [inaudible] itself has buildings that we have built. We all live together, mixed, integrated. So therefore you should not be feared. Ask the people Schaefer – in Schaefer Landing, where we were the sponsors of 141 units, 42 are Jewish, the rest is everybody in the world. What we see in our mix and we live together. Look at what happened, this person, one of the members of the communities hospitalized and hopefully he’ll go home soon, he was – he ran out and who saved him? A community, minority neighbor pulled him into his house. This should be glorified and to show us that we should show us that we should stay together and that’s the answer, we are charitable, we are working with our neighbors, and as Deborah will tell you, I’ve been going out, I’ve met with the principals, thank you Mr. Mayor. The District – Superintendent called together her whole cabinet, and we are going to go into the schools – Deborah was there – and Mr. Mayor, I can just tell you God should give you the strength to continue to lead the city in a very safe and peaceful city.

Mayor: Gloria, last question.

Question: Mr. Mayor, there was some – and the Rabbi also alluded to this – there’s some [inaudible] hesitation perhaps in getting all the information outright at first from Mayor Fulop and not calling this an act of hate or an act of terror early on yesterday and until this morning. I wonder if then – for the Commissioner as well – if you have any insight as to why that was—

Mayor: As I turn to the Commissioner just to say – and I have great respect for Mayor Fulop and I think he’s handled a very difficult situation very well, as have all the police and other officials in Jersey City. When these situations are emerging and they are often chaotic and information is contradictory, you really have to be careful that when you say something, you’re absolutely sure. And for much of the afternoon yesterday, we got multiple, ever-changing stories, so I think the Mayor was right to make sure when he did speak, that he felt it was 100 percent accurate.

Question: Commissioner, if just – if I could add, I know the Jersey City Police Department is leading the investigation. With what’s been reported so far about what groups might have been behind this, is there any fear or are you guys looking into the possibility that those same groups are here in the city and that they might be some sort of copycat or an attempt at recreating—

Commissioner Shea: So on the second point first, there’s absolutely concern. This is what – this is what we do with our JTTF, with our Intelligence Bureau, with Fausto’s patrol, you know, the information comes in depending on what the information is and we deploy accordingly. Again, we have – we don’t give specifics, but we have hundreds of officers today deployed throughout New York City to strategic locations to make sure that all New Yorkers are safe and that’s a very important – and the facts of this investigation as any one, will lead us to wherever the truth is as we peel back and learn more about this incident in particular. To how it unfolded yesterday, I would just say in general terms, as any incident of this nature – the chaotic nature – this one in particular with the lengthy gun battle, essentially, that took place over protracted period of time, as the information through the afternoon, I think it was actually relatively quick that they were able to discern what they believed it was once the immediacy of the danger was subsided. The crime scene was dealt with, now you start to be able to interview people. You start to be able to review video. None of this is happening while there is an active gun battle with hundreds of hundreds of rounds, in its simplest terms. Many, many stories came out and as they often do, the facts turn sideways or completely, 180 degrees. Is it related to other crimes, is there a pursuit into this store? As it stabilized in real short term, they were able to discern and communicate to us what transpired.

Mayor: And just to conclude, Gloria, to your question, one – again – emphasizing there is no credible and specific threat directed at New York City. Two, the entire purpose of the unit that John Miller has created over these last weeks and now is going to gather strength is to look at these trends and look for potential connections. All the crimes – I’m so sorry, to Dermot’s point, what the new normal is, I’m sorry that John Miller had to recite a list of horrifying incidents from around the United States of America, and it was only the last year or two those incidents he recited. But this is why we will now have a unit that looks at all of these groups, these trends, these connections, looking for anything else that can be prevented because so many of the challenges, you know, right here in our own nation that we have address. Thank you, everyone.

Jeremy Corbyn Cutting into Boris Johnson’s Lead on Day Before UK Elections

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Member of Knesset (MK) Yair Lapid accused the United Kingdom’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn of being an anti-Semite and racist, just days before he is up for election in the Kingdom. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Conservative party still expected to win a slim majority in Parliament.

By: Batya Jerenberg

A day before Great Britain goes to elections, the Labour party has managed to trim the Conservative party’s lead down from double digits for the first time by focusing on serious problems in the health care system.

In the last survey before the country heads to the ballot box, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s party is now predicted to win an outright though slim majority of 28 Parliamentary seats, with a 43 percent share of the vote, vs. Labour with 34 percent.

This is not necessarily a comfortable lead, as the YouGov poll’s political research manager pointed out in the Daily Express.

“The margins are extremely tight,” Chris Curtis said, “and small swings in a small number of seats, perhaps from tactical voting and a continuation of Labour’s recent upward trend, means we can’t currently rule out a hung parliament. As things currently stand there are 85 seats with a margin of error of five percent or less.”

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour has gained support over the last two days after photos of children in hospital hallways were published in the pro-Labour Daily Mirror. The first showed a four-year-old being attended to by a doctor while lying on the floor because there was no bed for him.

Johnson scored an own-goal when he refused to look at the picture. The paper printed another photo the next day in which a mother is holding a nine-month-old on a hospital hallway couch. The article said they had waited there for six hours due to the lack of space.

Johnson is campaigning hard, hitting at the Labour party’s socialist platform and its non-commitment to Brexit – the controversial plan to leave the European Union, which the British voted for in a referendum in 2016.

The conservative leader also warned against anti-Semitism. “It would mean this country would be led by a Hamas-backing, IRA-supporting, anti-Semitism-condoning appeaser of the Kremlin, that is what he is, just look at the record,” he said.

Fifteen former Labour MPs took out advertisements Wednesday in northern newspapers to warn of the dangers in voting for Jeremy Corbyn, noting the rise of anti-Semitism in Labour and accusing the leftist leader of being “weak on national security.”

Nearly half of British Jewry have said that they would consider leaving the country if Corbyn is elected.

Britain’s chief rabbi took the unprecedented step, warning: “A new poison – sanctioned from the very top – has taken root” in the Labour party, and that “the very soul of our nation is at stake.” (World Israel News)

Read more at: worldisraelnews.com 

Hollywood Mogul Harvey Weinstein Reaches $25M Settlement Deal with Sex Abuse Accusers

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Insurance companies representing the Weinstein Company would cover the cost of the settlement, according to a report [Scott Heins/Getty Images/AFP]

Edited by: TJVNews.com

Disgraced Hollywood film mogul and producer Harvey Weinstein on Wednesday has announced through his attorneys that he has reached a financial settlement with dozens of women who claim that he molested and sexually abused them. According to an NBC report, Weinstein would be paying out approximately $25 million to compensate those women who allege to be his victims. Weinstein’s case heralded in the “MeToo” movement and raised the issue of women being sexually abused and preyed upon by high powered men in the expansive world of media and entertainment. Moreover, the board of directors of Miramax Films (Weinstein’s bankrupt film studio) have joined in the settlement agreement.

According to an NBC News report, Caitlin Dulany, an actor who accuses Weinstein of having sexually assaulted her during the Cannes Film Festival in 1996, said in an interview with the network that Weinstein, his former associates, directors and officers had negotiated a settlement of almost all the civil cases pending against him for nearly $47 million, about $25 million of which would compensate the women.
Recently, NBC experienced its own share of controversy when former NBC investigative journalist Ronan Farrow released his book, “Catch and Kill” last month which details his efforts to disclose the facts on Weinstein’s abuse of women. Farrow, the biological son of film auteur Woody Allen and Rosemary’s Baby actress Mia Farrow claimed that he has possession of e-mails sent to NBC by Weinstein in which he asks that the sex abuse allegations against him be suppressed and that Farrow not be given an opportunity to expose the filmmaker for his reprehensible behavior.

NBC also reported that under terms of the proposed deal, Weinstein wouldn’t be required to admit to wrongdoing or to pay his accusers directly, according to Dulany and the third woman’s attorney.
Instead, The Weinstein Co.’s insurance companies would be on the hook for $6.2 million that would go to 18 women who have sued Weinstein independently and for $18.5 million that would be set aside as a settlement fund in a class-action lawsuit filed in New York. That fund would be available to all of the class members in the suit even in cases in which statute of limitations have expired, according to NBC.
The NY Times report cited six lawyers in its coverage of the settlement, some of whom spoke about the proposed terms on the condition of anonymity.
More than 30 actresses and former Weinstein employees, who have sued the movie mogul for accusations ranging from sexual misconduct to rape, have agreed to the deal, according to the lawyers.
Aaron Filler, a lawyer for Boardwalk Empire actress Paz de la Huerta, told AFP news agency he expected his client, who accused Weinstein of raping her in 2010, to be part of the settlement.
But as soon as word of the proposal hit the web, some of the parties objected.
“This settlement breaks my heart,” Zoë Brock, a model who was one of the first women to accuse Weinstein of sexual misconduct, said in a statement.
Actress Katherine Kendall, 50, said she agreed to the terms of the settlement because she did not want to stop other plaintiffs from receiving recompense.
“I don’t love it, but I don’t know how to go after him,” she told the Times. “I don’t know what I can really do.”