Roger Van Boxtel, the chief executive officer of the Dutch national railway company, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), would do well to stop in his tracks and reconsider one of his recent decisions. Last month, NS announced it would donate five million euros ($5.6 million) to four Dutch centers dedicated to combating antisemitism and memorializing the Holocaust, … Read More
Keir Starmer, the new leader of Britain’s Labour Party, lived up to a solemn promise and did the right thing by sacking his shadow education secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, on June 25. Starmer, who succeeded the discredited Jeremy Corbyn as party leader in April, pledged to root out antisemitism within its ranks and rebuild trust with … Read More
I can think of no better a statue to remove from its lofty pedestal than that of Queen Isabella I of Spain. Statues of the monarch, who expelled Jews from Spain in 1492 under the infamous Alhambra Decree, are found in a plethora of countries. Streets have been named after Isabella as well. A thoroughfare … Read More
Facebook in recent days has removed more than 900 social media accounts linked to the white supremacist organizations Proud Boys and American Guard. Facebook sprung into action after discovering that their members had discussed plans to bring weapons to protests across the United States condemning last month’s murder of an African American man, George Floyd, … Read More
Since the tragic death of George Floyd, an African American man who was murdered by a white policeman in Minneapolis on May 25, the United States appears to have embarked on what could well be an historic reckoning with the scourge of racial discrimination. A rainbow of protesters across the nation are demanding not only … Read More
I strongly disagreed with an op-ed opinion piece by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (Republican, Arkansas) which appeared in The New York Times earlier this month. Taking his cue from President Donald Trump’s misconceived and misguided threat to call up the army to quell violent nation-wide protests that erupted in American cities in the wake of … Read More
This is a tragic and gut-wrenching moment in America. The nation-wide protests, riots and looting ignited by the murder of an African American man by a white police officer on May 25 have torn the country asunder. These eruptions broke out amid a deadly coronavirus pandemic, which has exacted a disproportionate toll on African Americans … Read More
The Department of Veterans Affairs should remove the headstones of two German prisoners of war buried in military cemeteries in the United States. The gravestones of Alfred Kafka and Georg Forst, who died in U.S. internment camps in 1943, each bear a swastika — the hated symbol of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement — and an … Read More
Apart from having claimed the lives of nearly 300,000 persons around the world, the deadly coronavirus pandemic has emboldened xenophobes, white nationalists, white supremacists, racists and antisemites in the United States. The outbreak, which has killed 79,000 Americans so far, has forced a multitude of businesses to close and lay off or furlough millions of … Read More
Antisemitic tropes and stereotypes, honed and refined over centuries in a multitude of countries, are so deeply engrained that they can turn up in the unlikeliest of places. This is precisely what happened a few days ago when Guy Smith, the president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, the largest union in the province, … Read More