June 29, 2018

Spanish Court Bars City Councils from Boycotting Israel

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / Aaron Bandler

A Spanish court struck a blow against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement with a recent ruling declaring that it is illegal for city councils in the country to boycott Israel.

According to a press release from The Lawfare Project, which spearheaded legal action against BDS in this case, The High Court of Justice in Astrurias, located in the northwest region of Spain, nullified a resolution passed by the City Council of Catrillion that boycotted “Israel, Israeli businesses and companies doing business with Israel in August last year.”

“The successes we’re achieving are setting legal precedents that not only offer protection to Jewish communities but to every other minority,” Lawfare Project Executive Director Brooke Goldstein said in a statement. “We’ve been working in Spain for almost two years. We’ve seen that however the vicious, anti-Israel BDS campaign disguises itself, time and again it is hitting the rocks of the rock solid constitutional guarantees and legal standards of the Spanish courts.”

Lawfare Project Spanish Counsel Ignacio Wenley Palacios said in a statement, “After our string of court victories, the boycott campaign doesn’t dare use its name in Spain but hides behind motions passed in city, provincial, and regional councils that use loaded, discriminatory language. Or they run new sub-campaigns such as the ‘Space Free of Israeli Apartheid,’ or petitions for an arms embargo of Israel. In due course, these, too, will be rejected by the courts, which uphold solid legal traditions of fair play, individual freedoms, and strict accountability of government offices.”

This is the latest in a string of recent victories for The Lawfare Project against BDS in Spain, as there have been 28 BDS resolutions nullified by the courts in Spain since June 2017.

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Polish E-Commerce Company Removes Nazi Paraphernalia from Website in Face of Backlash

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / Aaron Bandler

A Polish e-commerce company has removed more than 1,000 items from its website that were emblazoned with Nazi content.

According to the NEVER AGAIN Association, a Polish NGO that focuses on removing anti-Semitic content from the Internet, the Allegro company relented to NEVER AGAIN’s campaign against them and removed “necklaces, signet rings and badges with Nazi swastikas, contemporary imitations of Nazi military decorations, a brass bust of Hitler, watches, lighters and flasks with emblems of the Third Reich” as well as CDs that featured Nazi music.

Additionally, Allegro and NEVER AGAIN are partnering on a program called The Rights Protection Cooperation to ensure that such Nazi products and their ilk are not up for sale ever again on their site.

The NEVER AGAIN Association has been spearheading the fight to remove the aforementioned items from Allegro’s website since 2009. The fight made its way to the Polish Supreme Court in 2015, as Allegro argued their rights had been infringed by NEVER AGAIN using a picture of Allegro’s logo where the two L’s were modified into a swastika. The Supreme Court upheld an appellate court ruling that the image was legal under Polish law, stating that it was “a socially legitimate interest” to fight back against the rising tide of fascism in Europe.

“The Internet has become a space in which hatred is propagated on a large scale and in various ways,” NEVER AGAIN’s Dr. Anna Tatar said in a statement. “Allegro, the largest e-commerce company in Poland, has decided to strive to eradicate this type of offers and we are more than pleased with the results of our cooperation. A lot of effort is still needed to make objects or publications with racist and anti-Semitic content disappear from this site for good.”

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I am a Remnant of Jacob – A Poem for Haftarah Balak by Rick Lupert

Leave a Comment / Blogs / Rick Lupert

I am a remnant of Jacob.
His blood and flesh, part of
my blood and flesh.

I see him in my toenails and
whenever I need a bandaid.
I am a remnant of Jacob.

Whenever I go to Temple
I begin to see how I can
piece him back together.

I am a remnant of Jacob.
I’ve got Egypt and Canaan
coming out of my nostrils.

I’ve got memories of
cities destroyed for my kin
the other remnants of Jacob.

I am a remnant of Jacob.
I don’t know from graven images.
If you ask me to do sorcery

I wouldn’t know where to begin.
I am a remnant of Jacob.
I hold memories of promises

to be lifted above my oppressors
to have my enemies vanquished
to be made like rain upon the soil.

I am remnant of Jacob.
Call me Jacob when you see me.
I’ll know what you mean.

Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created the Poetry Super Highway (an online publication and resource for poets), and hosted the Cobalt Cafe weekly poetry reading for almost 21 years. He’s authored 22 collections of poetry, including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion“, “I’m a Jew, Are You” (Jewish themed poems) and “Feeding Holy Cats” (Poetry written while a staff member on the first Birthright Israel trip), and most recently “Beautiful Mistakes” (Rothco Press, May 2018) and edited the anthologies “A Poet’s Siddur: Shabbat Evening“, “Ekphrastia Gone Wild”, “A Poet’s Haggadah”, and “The Night Goes on All Night.” He writes the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine. He’s widely published and reads his poetry wherever they let him.

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Rosner’s Torah Talk: Parshat Balak with Rabbi Jonathan Freirich

Leave a Comment / Israel, Rosner's Domain, Rosner's Video, Videos / Shmuel Rosner

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich is the rabbi of Temple Beth Zion in Buffalo.

Rabbi Freirich received rabbinic ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1999. Since becoming a rabbi, he has served Jews of all ages at Hillel organizations on college campuses in Tucson and Cleveland, at Jewish homes for the aged, at a vibrant Reform congregation named Temple Bat Yam in the mountains of South Lake Tahoe, and most recently, at the premier Reform synagogue of the Carolinas, Temple Beth El in Charlotte.

This Week’s Torah portion – Parashat Balak (Numbers 22:2-25:9) – features the famous story of the prophet Bilaam, who was sent by the Moabite king Balak to curse the people of Israel. On his way, Bilaam is berated by his Donkey who sees an angel of God blocking the road. Bilaam tries to curse the people of Israel three times (from three different vantage points) and each time ends up blessing them. He then continues to prophesize on the end of days and the coming of the Messiah. Our discussion tries to examine Bilaam’s odd story, its message, and its special status in Judaism.