Spain

I used to live in Spain. There didn't seem to be much racism about, but there wasn't much racial diversity either. The two groups most in evidence were gypsies and Moroccans - and they hated both of those.

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Spain: The "Most Anti-Semitic Country in Europe"
Hudson NY
by Soeren Kern
April 7, 2011

Spain emerged as one of the most anti-Semitic countries in the European Union in 2010, and the Spanish government has done nothing about it, according to the authors of an annual report that tracks anti-Semitic violence on the Iberian Peninsula. The "dangerous" and "extraordinary" rise in anti-Semitism comes at a time when Spain is mired in the worst economic recession in its modern history, and the authors of the report conclude that Jews are increasingly becoming a scapegoat for the economic and social problems facing Spain.

...[A]ccording to a poll commissioned by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 58.4% of Spaniards believe that "the Jews are powerful because they control the economy and the mass media." This number reaches 62.2% among university students and 70.5% among those who are "interested in politics." More than 60% of Spanish university students say they do not want Jewish classmates. "These numbers are as surprising as they are worrying: the most anti-Semitic people are supposedly the most educated and well-informed," the report says.

In other polling data, more than one-third (34.6%) of Spanish people have an unfavorable or completely unfavorable opinion of Jewish people. But as in other European countries, anti-Semitism is more prevalent on the political left than it is on the political right. For example, 34% of those on the far right say they are hostile to Jews, while 37.7% of those on the center-left are hostile to Jews. And sympathy for Jews among the extreme right (4.9 on a scale of 1-10) is above the average for the population as a whole (4.6).

Among those who recognize themselves as having "antipathy for the Jewish people," only 17% says this is due to the "conflict in the Middle East." Nearly 30% of those surveyed say their dislike of Jews has to do with "their religion," "their customs," and "their way of life." Nearly 20% of Spaniards say they dislike Jews although they do not know why.

The new findings corroborate earlier research. For example, according to a September 2008 study published by the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center, nearly half of all Spaniards have negative views of Jews, a statistic that marks Spain as one of the most anti-Semitic countries in Europe. According to Pew, 46% of Spaniards hold negative opinions of Jews, up more than double from the 21% of Spaniards with such views in 2005.

Spain is also the only country in Europe where negative views of Jews outweigh positive views; only 37% of Spaniards think favorably about Jews. By comparison, 36% of Poles have negative views of Jews while 50% have positive views; in Germany, 25% negative versus 64% positive; in France, 20% negative versus 79% positive; and in Britain, 9% negative versus 73% positive. (By way of comparison, according to Pew, 77% of Americans have favorable views toward Jews, compared to 7% unfavorable.)

Another report about European anti-Semitism published by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League says that 54% of Spaniards believe that "Jews have too much power in international markets." And 51% of Spaniards believe that "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country."

The survey data on Spanish anti-Semitism raises many questions, including one that seems never to have been asked: How many Spaniards have actually ever met a Jew? Not very many, it would appear. In fact, Spain today has one of the smallest Jewish communities in Europe; the country has only around 40,000 Jews out of a total Spanish population of 47 million, which works out to less than 0.08 percent.

By contrast, in France - which with 500,000 Jews has the third largest Jewish population in the world (after Israel and the United States) - attitudes towards Jews are relatively positive when compared to those in Spain. (Of course, it is entirely possible that Spaniards are just being more honest than other Europeans about their true feelings towards Jews, thereby skewing the statistics and masking the true extent of the problem on other parts of the continent. After all, there are good reasons why more than one quarter of French Jewry wants to leave France.)

What explains the dramatic increase in Spanish anti-Semitism since 2005, especially considering that the only exposure most Spaniards have ever had to Jews is through television?

[M]ost professional observers of contemporary Spanish politics lay the blame squarely with Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who took office in 2004, and since then has managed to drive Spanish-Israeli relations to their worst point since bilateral diplomatic ties were established in 1986.

Zapatero, who makes no secret of his postmodern dislike of Zionism, is well known in Spain for his anti-Israel and anti-Jewish outbursts. At a dinner party in the Moncloa Palace (the Spanish White House) in 2005, for example, Zapatero addressed his guests by launching into a tirade of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric that ended with the phrase: "It is understandable that someone might justify the Holocaust."

Zapatero has also sought to restore Spain's traditionally strong ties with the Arab world by ingratiating himself with Israel's enemies. During the 2006 Lebanon War, for example, Zapatero participated in an anti-Israel rally where he wrapped himself in a Palestinian kaffiyeh (scarf) and gratuitously accused Israel of using "abusive force that does not protect innocent human beings." Zapatero then dispatched his foreign minister to Syria, a move the Israeli foreign ministry said proved that the Spanish government was "closer to Hezbollah terrorists than to the Israeli government."

Zapatero, who refuses to visit Israel (even though the two countries commemorated 20 years of diplomatic ties in 2006), also refers to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a "cancer" that is metastasizing into all the other conflicts in the region. As a disciple of postmodern moral equivalency, Zapatero naturally believes the "cancer" is Israel, not Islamic terrorism.

Spanish anti-Semitism is also being stoked by the non-stop anti-Israel rhetoric of Spain's leftwing intellectual and media elites, most of whom are enthusiastic sycophants of Zapatero and his pro-Arab, pro-Islam worldview. Indeed, Spanish radio, television and print media, much of which is directly or indirectly controlled by the Socialist government, is notoriously biased against Israel. As most Spaniards do not speak foreign languages, they have little or no access to alternative sources of information, which goes a long way toward explaining Spanish attitudes towards Jews, especially of the Israeli variety.

Add to this the Spanish media's bizarre obsession with neo-conservatism, which in Spain has become a pejorative term denoting a conspiracy to promote Jewish domination of the world. Many ordinary Spaniards, who otherwise show little interest in foreign affairs, seem to have deep-seated opinions about those Jews Frum, Kristol, Pearle, Podhertz and Wolfowitz, et al.

Zapatero and his cabinet ministers have also played the neo-con card to explain to the Spanish public why the Spanish economy is tottering on the edge of catastrophe. Although analysts had warned for many years that the Spanish housing bubble was unsustainable, Zapatero ignored them, saying those fears were overblown. But now that the bubble has burst, Spain's unemployment rate has skyrocketed to more than 20%, the highest level in the industrialized world. Some 4.7 million Spaniards are now without work and looking for someone to blame.

Zapatero says Spain's problems are due to "the neo-conservative model based on capitalism without borders nor limits nor ethics." That's postmodern Zapatero-speak for "the Jews are to blame." More recently, Zapatero ordered Spain's official intelligence agency, the National Intelligence Center (CNI), to investigate whether the "Anglo-Saxon media" (aka the English-language press dominated by Jews) is conspiring to undermine the Spanish economy.

The official anti-Semitic rhetoric in Spain has reached such a fever pitch that members of the U.S. Congress recently sent a letter to Zapatero in which they expressed their concerns about growing anti-Semitism in Spain. The ADL has also published a special report titled "Polluting the Public Square: Anti-Semitic Discourse In Spain." The report says: "ADL is deeply concerned about the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism in Spain, with more public expressions and greater public acceptance. Opinion makers in the media and in politics are crossing the line that separates legitimate criticism of Israeli actions from anti-Semitism and the results are evident."

But just as Spaniards get smug about their self-perceived racial superiority, along comes a study which says that many Spanish anti-Semites actually have Jewish blood. An examination of the genetic signatures of the Spanish population shows that 20% of contemporary Spaniards have Jewish origins. As it turns out, far fewer Jews than previously thought complied with the Edict of Expulsion in 1492, by which the estimated 800,000 Jews in Spain were ordered to leave the country. Many of them simply converted to Roman Catholicism instead.

Many of those so-called conversos tried to blend in by adopting surnames that indicated trades or professions. One such Sephardic name is Zapatero, which means shoemaker.

BBC bias over Israel

Given that a rat farting in Israel can create headlines (if it’s a Zionist rat anyway), can anyone give me a decent reason why a sectarian attack by a deranged psycho who killed an entire family in cold blood, including hacking the head off a baby, didn’t seem to exercise the BBC at all?

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A family slaughtered in Israel – doesn't the BBC care?
Telegraph Comment
By Louise Bagshawe (MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire)
24 Mar 2011

Who is Tamar Fogel? The chances are that you will have no idea. She is a 12-year-old girl who arrived home late on Friday, March 11, to discover her family had been slaughtered. Her parents had been stabbed to death; the throat of her 11-year-old brother, Yoav, had been slit. Her four-year-old brother, Elad, whose throat had also been cut, was still alive, with a faint pulse, but medics were unable to save him. Tamar's sister, Hadas, three months old, had also been killed. Her head had been sawn off.

There were two other Fogel brothers sleeping in an adjacent room. When woken by their big sister trying to get into a locked house, Roi, aged six, let her in. After Tamar discovered the bodies, her screaming alerted their neighbour who rushed in to help and described finding two-year-old Yishai desperately shaking his parents' blood-soaked corpses, trying to wake them up.

I found out about the barbaric attack … via Twitter… Horrified, I went to the BBC website to find out more. There I discovered only two stories: one a cursory description of the incident… and another focusing on Israel's decision to build more settlements, which mentioned the killings in passing.

... All the most heart-wrenching details were omitted. The 2nd story, suggesting that the construction announcement was an act of antagonism following the massacre, also omitted key facts and failed to mention the subsequent celebrations in Gaza, and the statement by a Hamas spokesman that "five dead Israelis is not enough to punish anybody".

There were more details elsewhere on the net: the pain and hurt, for example, of the British Jewish community at the BBC's apparent indifference to the fate of the Fogels. The more I read, the more the BBC's broadcast silence amazed me. What if a settler had entered a Palestinian home and sawn off a baby's head? … On Twitter, I attacked … the BBC. The next morning, the BBC's public affairs team emailed me a response that amounted to a shrug. The story "featured prominently on our website", they said. It was important to report on the settlements to put the murder in context, they said.

In reply, I asked a series of questions: for how long did the massacre feature on TV news bulletins? On radio? On BBC News 24, with all that rolling airtime? Why were the Hamas reaction and Gaza celebrations not featured? And what about the omission of all the worst details?

It was only when I tweeted about their continued indifference that the BBC replied. Then they informed me that the Fogel story had not featured on television at all. Not even News 24. It was on Radio 4 in the morning, but pulled from subsequent broadcasts. The coverage of Japan and Libya, they said, drowned it out. Would I like to make a complaint?

… The BBC has long been accused of anti-Israeli bias. It even commissioned the Balen report into bias in its Middle Eastern coverage, and then went to court to prevent its findings being publicised. …[A]t the confirmation hearing of Lord Patten as chairman of the BBC Trust… he said that he would give up his membership of a Palestinian aid organisation. …[A]sked about bias against Israel. Lord Patten denied any existed. … The day after Lord Patten uttered those words, the Fogel children were butchered to almost complete silence from the BBC.

I have asked the corporation why, if the story was "prominent on the website", it was not deemed of sufficient merit to broadcast on television, and barely on radio, to explain the inaccuracies and omissions in the reporting, and what non-Japan, non-Libya stories made it to air, in preference. 24 hours later, I have yet to receive a reply.

… I am not a BBC basher; I have never before complained. I do not support nor do I condone the Israeli settlement building. But none of that matters. This is a story about three children and their parents, slain with incredible cruelty, and its effect on the peace process. As a mother, I am shocked at the silence. As a politician, I am dismayed at the apparent bias and indifference. …

Goldstone Report - author backtracks

Goldstone: If I Had Known Then What I Know Now…
April 3, 2011
Honest Reporting

Judge Richard Goldstone, head of the infamous UN panel that issued the Goldstone Report in 2009, backtracked on his most serious accusations on Friday.

The Goldstone Report had accused Israel and Hamas of “actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity” during the 2008 Gaza War.
Goldstone’s about-face includes a reversal on the contentious claim that Israel intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians.

Investigations into some 400 incidents from the war, cited by another recent UN report, “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy,” Goldstone wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Post:

“I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.”

Goldstone starkly admitted, “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

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While the Goldstone Report cited civilian casualty numbers obtained from Hamas, which were considerably higher than the IDF’s figures, Goldstone now admits that “the Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas”, adding however, that Hamas may now be exaggerating the number of terrorists killed by the IDF.

Put simply, the IDF’s figures were correct all along.

But it remains to be seen if the media recognizes that the commonly quoted numbers of “1,400 dead, including mostly civilians” – cited by the Goldstone Report – are inaccurate. The caption for the following image, taken from BBC’s coverage of Goldstone’s revelations, shows that the Beeb has yet to assimilate the new information.

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An op-ed is not enough. Goldstone must officially inform all other bodies which received his false report: the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the International Criminal Court, and all the 192 UN member states which — based on his recommendations — were officially asked by the world body to open criminal prosecutions of Israeli leaders and officers.

Goldstone must also write to the Swiss government to call off their effort, based on the Goldstone Report, to convene an international conference of the Geneva Convention signatories to condemn Israel. Goldstone will never be able to undo the poisonous anti-Israel libel that he spread around the globe, but as a judge we call on him to do the bare minimum that legal ethics and common sense require.

While most of the mainstream media has covered the story, two of Goldstone’s biggest cheerleaders , The Guardian and The Independent have yet to report on the about-face. In particular, The Guardian’s over-reporting of Israel — as expressed by this map produced by British Views of the World behooves the paper to follow through.

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