| UNESCO teaching how to stop antisemitism? I have questions.noreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 29 Dec 05:45 AM UNESCO announced that it has launched a US | | UNESCO announced that it has launched a US-wide online professional training programme for school teachers, superintendents and principals to address antisemitism.
Their partners are the University of Southern California's Shoah Foundation, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Jewish Committee. Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director General, said, "Antisemitism is an attack on our shared humanity. It must be confronted head-on, without naivety and with perseverance. This is the commitment of UNESCO, the UN agency mandated to promote education on the Holocaust and the prevention of genocide. We are proud to support American teachers to raise young people's awareness of the nature and impact of this toxic hate speech and ideology that drive discrimination." The name of the course is "Shine a Light." It does not mention too many details, just a general description: "Participants will develop their knowledge, skills and confidence to teach about antisemitism and to dismantle antisemitic stereotypes. They will also learn strategies to address antisemitic incidents in schools, and to respond effectively to conspiracy theories including Holocaust denial and distortion." I am all for training teachers about how to combat antisemitism, but I fear that this is only addressing a...Read More |
From Ian: The Democrats must have a 'Sister Souljah moment' on antisemitism The recent rise in American antisemitism is the result of a lack of consequences for those engaging in it. For example, Americans Against Antisemitism studied 194 anti-Jewish assaults and 135 attacks on Jewish property in New York that have taken place since 2018. According to their July 2022 report, only two of the perpetrators actually went to prison. A similar situation is occurring on college campuses. Students who harass Jews are rarely if ever suspended or expelled, and almost never face any consequences at all. This has emboldened antisemites on campus, with a chilling effect on Jewish and pro-Israel voices. Colleges have codes of conduct according to which harassment of other students can result in serious ramifications. These codes have not been enforced against antisemites. In the realm of politics, when Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar engaged in anti-Jewish and anti-Israel comments, and expressed support for BDS, their fellow Democrats were initially prepared to take action against them. A resolution passed by the House of Representatives (H.R.183) sought to "ensure safety" for Jews. It stated, "Accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel or to the Jewish community than to the U.S. constitutes antisemitism." The resolution was a response to Omar's comments, with Tlaib by her side...Read More |
The Washington Post was harshly criticized - justly - for illustrating an article about a measles outbreak in the Somali community of Columbus, Ohio with a photo of Chassidic Jews in Brooklyn on Tuesday. What makes this worse is that the Somali community is known for its low vaccination rates. They had a breakout of measles in 2017 and also this year in Minnesota. The Hill wrote about the Ohio breakout without mentioning them at all, and NPR's 2017 article tried to explain why the Somali community was reluctant to immunize.
The contrast with how the media treated the Orthodox Jewish community during COVID could not be starker. The Somali angle is minimized and contextualized; the Jewish angle was trumpeted.
The Washington Post has another problematic article, on a completely different topic: a review of a biography of famed children's book author Roald Dahl, the review written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Dirda.
Near the end, it mentions:
Yet to adult eyes, Dahl frequently goes uncomfortably too far in depicting an anarchic Hobbesian world of savagery...Read More |
An invitation to the Jewish Media Summit is both an honor and an opportunity. The honor part became even more apparent after the fact, when some attendees of the last summit complained at having been left off the guest list this time around. As for opportunity, where else would you meet some 100 Jewish journalists from all over the world, representing Milan, Rome, Paris, Istanbul, Zagreb, Buenos Aires, and so many other faraway places where Jewish journalists are hard at work? Perhaps they were invited to bring home a rosy picture of the state of things in the State of Israel. Instead, the visiting foreign journalists were to hear an oft-repeated refrain: the incoming Israeli government is extremist, nay even corrupt. The idea that the new government is far right and extremist was first voiced by outgoing Minister of Diaspora Affairs Nachman Shai, the first speaker at the opening gala. Shai had a brief period of fame as the voice on the radio that soothed Israelis in their safe rooms during the 1991 Gulf War. "Drink water" he would say to us calmly as the world crashed and burned outside our windows and our babies drank milk from bottles through a weird plastic tent. Outgoing Minister of Diaspora Affairs Nachman Shai But that was a long time ago. Today Shai is an outgoing MK. And in his speech, as in the speeches of the other outgoing ministers who spoke to us during the four-day summit, one can detect the taste of sour grapes: "Some of the elected officials lack sufficient...Read More |
Terrestrial Jerusalem and Ir Amim, two Jewish NGOs that spend all of their energy to oppose any Jewish rights in Jerusalem, are alarmed: On December 27, 2022, the Elad settlers of Silwan accompanied by a heavily armed detail of Israeli police, took over a large plot of land immediately adjacent to the Pool of Siloam in Silwan (from which the name Silwan derives). The settler takeover is not exclusively a settler initiative. In a press release touting the commencement of excavations on the site, this is being presented as a joint venture between the Elad settlers, the Israel National Parks Authority (INPA), and the Antiquities Authority (IAA). For all those needing proof, this is further evidence that in Silwan, the settlers and the Government of Israel are one of the same. The land in question has been owned by the Greek Orthodox Church and leased to a Palestinian family since the 1930s. A family member was arrested last night (26 December) in a pre-emptive arrest, and three more were detained this morning. The Government of Israel and the settlers have decided there is no better time to take over Church property, in a place of cardinal importance to Christianity, than the Christmas week. There is nothing new in this. The settlers and the Government customarily reserve Christmas week for their most problematic...Read More |
From Ian: The European Union's deceit and the Israeli response The EU insists that Israel should abide by the Oslo Accords, as it still believes that within this area, a Palestinian state should be established within the framework of a comprehensive peace agreement. At the same time, according to the leaked document, it tries to strip Israel of its rights per that same agreement. So that's where humanitarian law comes in; the very set of laws that are supposed to help the EU circumvent Israel's authority in Area C. This means that the EU has found a way to fund construction in Area C without violating the Oslo Accords, or so we are tricked to believe. The claim is that the construction is meant for humanitarian ends and is not politically motivated. Yet the EU construction takes place in locations that are highly sensitive, precisely for the sole purpose of creating new facts on the ground and preparing the area for a Palestinian takeover without any final peace agreement. Many times the political motivation is obvious, as the construction is conducted without permits and in such places where Israel has no choice but to demolish it, for example, a school adjacent to a dangerous highway or other construction in places where there are no facilities and thus are not considered habitable environments. The political motivation becomes even more obvious when the document explicitly states the EU's plan to curb Israel's archeological...Read More |
Fatah's pro-violence logo
On January 1, Fatah will celebrate its 58th anniversary. Well, not really. It is the 58th anniversary "of the launch of the contemporary Palestinian revolution," meaning the anniversary of their first terror attack, That attack was meant to disrupt Israeli's access to water. It was a direct attack on civilian infrastructure, and those terror roots are an inherent part of Fatah, today.
It came up with a typically unwieldy slogan for the occasion: "Just as we dropped the deal of the century and the annexation project...we will defeat the neo-fascists." Fatah is taking credit for Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century" not being successful.
How did they accomplish this Herculean task?
By saying "no."
The same way they "defeated" every other chance for peace and an end to conflict with Israel.
Their desire to keep the conflict going is something they are very proud of!
What happened after their latest rejection of any peace plan without a counter-offer? Bahrain and the UAE said, we've had enough of the Palestinians acting like spoiled babies, so we will normalize our own relations with Israel, ignoring their long standing demand that they hold veto power over our foreign policy.
But we want something in return - so they demanded that Israel rescind a partial annexation plan. The far-right extremist Netanyahu, wanting peace, agreed.
So I guess, in a convoluted way, the Palestinians were responsible for...Read More |
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The Journal of International and Intercultural Communication (JIIC) is published by the National Communication Association. JIIC says it "publishes original scholarship that expands understanding of international, intercultural, and cross-cultural communication" and that "articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, including screening by the editor and review by at least two anonymous referees."
Its most recent issue featured the theme, "Writing occupied Palestine: Toward a field of Palestinian communication and culture studies." Of course, the articles in the issue have little to do with Palestinian culture and everything to do with demonizing Israel under the rubric of "communications studies."
Besides the introduction and forward, there are four articles in the issue on this theme.
"Boycott eurovision singing to the song of its own tune: Global boycotts as sites of hybridity" has a classic impenetrable abstract:
Following (Kraidy, M. M., & Murphy, P. D. (2003). Media ethnography: Local, global, or translocal? In P. D. Murphy & M. M. Kraidy (Eds.), Global media studies: Ethnographic perspectives (pp. 299–307). Routledge; Kraidy, M. M., & Murphy, P. D. (2008). Shifting Geertz: Toward a theory of translocalism in global communication...Read More |
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