RIO DE JANEIRO — Hotels in Argentina and Uruguay reportedly rejected reservations for Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters over accusations of antisemitism leveled at the British singer known for his pro-Palestinian views.
Waters was due to stay in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires ahead of shows scheduled for Nov. 21-22 as part of his “This is Not a Drill” tour, but the reservations fell through, with hotels citing a lack of availability, the Argentine newspaper Pagina 12 reported.
Hotels in Montevideo, in neighboring Uruguay, also refused to host him but did not provide a reason, a Pagina 12 story on Wednesday quoted Waters as saying.
The singer said that as a result he was still in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he performed a few days ago.
“I had a dinner date on the 16th with José Mujica, the former president of Uruguay, who is a friend of mine. And I can’t go (…) because the Israeli lobby and whatever they call themselves have canceled me,” Waters told Pagina 12.
The president of the Central Israelite Committee of Uruguay, Roby Schindler, sent a letter to the Sofitel hotel urging it not to host Waters, Pagina 12 said.
Waters “takes advantage of his fame as an artist to lie and spew his hatred towards Israel and all Jews,” Schindler said, according to Pagina 12. “By receiving him, you will be, even if you do not want to, propagating the hatred that this man exudes,” Schindler added.
Waters has been dogged by accusations of antisemitism for years, including criticism by the U.S. government earlier this year. The State Department said Waters has “a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”
Speaking to Pagina 12, he vehemently denied that. “They do it because I believe in human rights, and I speak openly about the genocide of the Palestinian people,” Waters said.
In a recent interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald, Waters said the surprise attack by Hamas militants in Israel on Oct. 7 “was blown out of all proportion by the Israelis inventing stories about beheading babies.”
Reported bombs at separate Jewish sites caused alarm on Saturday and prompted NYPD as anti-Semitic incidents sparked by the war in Gaza continue to rise, police said.
First, police were called to Holocaust Memorial Park on West End Ave. in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, just before 10 a.m. when someone walking through the park found a grenade among the markers dedicated to Jews killed during the Nazi regime.
The NYPD Bomb Squad was called and ultimately cleared the scene after the grenade was found to be inert, an NYPD spokesman said.
An NYPD counterterrorism officer stands in front of Central Synagogue after a bomb threat was received on Nov. 11, 2023, in Manhattan. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)
No one was injured and no arrests were made.
Less than an hour later, someone texted 911, claiming that he had left two backpacks filled with pipe bombs inside Central Synagogue on Lexington Ave. near E. 54th St. in Midtown.
Cops responded to the scene, but found nothing, cops said. The synagogue wasn’t evacuated.
The two incidents come as hate crimes against Jews in the city has nearly tripled during the month-long war in Israel.
Since Oct. 7, when a series of sneak attacks on Israeli communities near Gaza sparked the ongoing conflict, the NYPD has investigated 82 anti-Semitic incidents, 31 more than the previous year. That’s a jump of 164%, cops said.
NYPD officers responded to a bomb threat after a man called and stated he placed two backpacks filled with pipe bombs inside of the occupied Central Synagogue located on Lexington Ave. in Manhattan on Nov. 11, 2023. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)
There have also been eight hate crimes against Muslims. This time last year there were none, cops said.
Throughout October, 69 anti-Semitic incidents were reported in the city, compared to 22 in October 2022 — a 214% increase, officials said.
Blowback from the war in Israel is a daily concern for Jewish New Yorkers, Bob Moskovitz, executive coordinator of the Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol in Brooklyn, told the Daily News Wednesday.
“We’re feeling it 100%,” Moskovitz said of the uptick in hate crimes. “Our hotline, which the community utilizes to report any incident has probably increased in this last month and a half by 300%. The phone is simply not stopping.”
BERLIN — Across Germany, in schools, city halls, synagogues, churches and parliament, people came together Thursday to commemorate the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht — or the “Night of Broken Glass” — in 1938 in which the Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Germany’s main Jewish leader, Josef Schuster, spoke at an anniversary ceremony at a Berlin synagogue that was attacked with firebombs in October.
“Jews have been particularly affected by exclusion for centuries,” Scholz said in his speech.
“Still and again here in our democratic Germany — and that after the breach of civilization committed by Germans in the Shoah,” they are being discriminated against, the chancellor added, referring to the Holocaust by its Hebrew name.
“That is a disgrace. It outrages and shames me deeply,” Scholz said. “Any form of antisemitism poisons our society. We do not tolerate it.”
The commemoration of the pogrom comes at a time when Germany is again seeing a sharp rise in antisemitism in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, which started with an Oct. 7 Hamas incursion in southern Israel that killed 1,400 people. Israel responded with a relentless bombing campaign in Gaza that has killed thousands of Palestinians.
On Nov. 9, 1938, the Nazis killed at least 91 people and vandalized 7,500 Jewish businesses. They also burned more than 1,400 synagogues, according to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
Up to 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of them taken to concentration camps, such as Dachau or Buchenwald. Hundreds more killed themselves or died as a result of mistreatment in the camps years before official mass deportations began.
Kristallnacht was a turning point in the escalating persecution of Jews that eventually led to the killings of 6 million European Jews by the Nazis and their supporters during the Holocaust.
“I was there during Kristallnacht. I was in Vienna back then,” Holocaust survivor Herbert Traube said at an event marking the anniversary in Paris on Wednesday.
“To me, it was often repeated: ‘Never again.’ It was a leitmotif in everything that was being said for decades,” Traube said, adding that he is upset both by the resurgence of antisemitism and the lack of a “massive popular reaction” against it.
While there’s no comparison to the pogroms 85 years ago, which were state-sponsored by the Nazis, many Jews are again living in fear in Germany and across Europe, trying to hide their identity in public and avoiding neighborhoods that were recently the scene of some violent, pro-Palestinian protests.
Jews in Berlin found the Star of David painted on their homes, and Jewish students in schools and universities across the country have experienced bullying and discrimination.
Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said that “something has gone off the rails in this country. There is still an opportunity to repair this, but to do so we must also admit what has gone wrong in recent years, what we have been unable or unwilling to see.”
He said it’s wrong that pro-Palestinian protesters have been able to call for the death of Jews and the destruction of Israel openly in recent weeks across Germany, and said that hatred of Jews by far-right and leftist groups has been on the rise.
“We want to live freely in Germany — in our country,” Schuster said.
The German government has been one of Israel’s staunchest supporters since the Oct. 7 attack, and Scholz and other leaders have repeatedly vowed to protect Germany’s Jewish community.
Still, Anna Segal, manager of the Berlin Jewish community Kahal Adass Jisroel, which was attacked in October in an attempted firebombing, told The Associated Press that not enough is being done to protect them and other Jews in Germany.
She said the community’s 450 members have been living in fear since the attack and that authorities haven’t fully responded to calls to increase security for them.
“The nice words and the expressions of solidarity and standing by the side of the Jews — we are not very satisfied with how that has been translated into action so far,” Segal said. “I think there is a lack of a clear commitment that everything that is necessary is invested in the security of the Jews.”
___
Alex Turnbull contributed to this report from Paris.
Elon Musk said on Saturday that he will file a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against non-profit watchdog Media Matters and others, as companies including Disney, Apple and IBM reportedly have paused advertising on X amid an antisemitism storm around the social media platform.
Media Matters, a U.S. group that describes itself as “a progressive research and information center” that monitors “media outlets for conservative misinformation,” published earlier this week research showing that X has posted ads appearing next to pro-Nazi posts.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino previously said that brands are now “protected from the risk of being next to” potentially toxic content on the platform.
“The split second court opens on Monday,” Musk said in a post on X on Saturday. “X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company,” he said.
Musk also posted a statement with the headline “Stand with X to protect free speech” where he said that Media Matters “completely misrepresented the real user experience on X.” He also said that “for speech to be truly free, we must also have the freedom to see or hear things that some people may consider objectionable” and added that “we will not allow agenda driven activists, or even our profits, to deter our vision.”
Musk, owner of Tesla and Space X, who bought Twitter last year and renamed it X, was already under fire for tolerating and even encouraging antisemitism on the social media platform. The latest episode was this week when Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X as “the actual truth” of what Jewish people were doing.
The antisemitic post said that “Jewish communties (sic) have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The post also referenced “hordes of minorities” flooding Western countries, a popular antisemitic conspiracy theory.
The companies suspending advertising on X include Disney, IBM, Apple, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Comcast, Lionsgate and Warner Bros. Discovery, according to media reports.
The Paris prosecutor says two couples who allegedly stenciled dozens of blue Stars of David on buildings in Paris and two of its suburbs are linked by a third party living abroad
ByThe Associated Press
November 7, 2023, 2:44 PM
PARIS — Two couples who allegedly stenciled dozens of blue Stars of David on buildings in Paris and two of its suburbs last week are linked by a third party living abroad, the Paris prosecutor said Tuesday. The link was based on a telephone conversation by one couple in Russian, a statement said.
“At this stage, it is not excluded that the markings of the blue Stars of David in the Paris region were made at the explicit demand of a person living abroad,” prosecutor Laure Beccuau said. An investigating judge was taking over the case, “as much to identify the authors as to analyze the intentions that guided the operation.”
The war between Israel and Hamas has led to at least 1,040 known acts of antisemitism in France, the interior minister said Sunday. But the prosecutor’s office investigating the appearance of 60 blue stars, similar to those on the Israeli flag, has yet to conclude whether those who put up the stencils had antisemitic intent, Tuesday’s statement said.
Surveillance video showed a man and a woman marking buildings, with a third person photographing them, on walls in Paris and the suburbs of Seine Saint Denis and Hauts de Seine, the statement said. The couple fled France the following day.
The statement said that four days earlier, a separate couple from Moldova and lacking proper papers to remain in France was detained after being seen stenciling a star on a Paris building, then held for expulsion from the country.
“They declared acting under orders from a third person and for remuneration,” the prosecutor’s statement said, adding that an examination of their telephone revealed a conversation in Russian confirming the claim. Many Moldovans speak Russian.
“Telephone investigation allows us to think that the two couples … were in relation with the same third person,” or party, the statement said.
It did not indicate whether the nationality of the third party was known.
ROME — ROME (AP) — Pope Francis met with European rabbis on Monday and decried antisemitism, war and terrorism in a written speech he declined to read, saying he wasn’t feeling well.
Francis told the rabbis during the audience in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace that he was very happy to receive them, but added: “I’m not feeling well, and so I prefer not to read the speech but give it to you, so you can take it with you.”
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the pope “has a bit of a cold and a long day of audiences.” The 86-year-old pontiff ”preferred to greet the European rabbis individually, and that’s why he handed over his speech.”
Bruni said the pope’s scheduled activities would proceed, and they did. The activities included an hour-long meeting in late afternoon in a Vatican auditorium with some 7,000 children from 84 countries.
Francis seemed at ease, chatting with kids and answering their prepared questions, including about how to make peace — “extend your hand” — and about war — “war is always cruel, and who pays the price? Children.”
As he sat in a chair, he shook dozens of young hands and autographed many caps and at least one sports jersey.
In his prepared speech to the rabbis, Francis said his first thought and prayers goes “above all else, to everything that has happened in the last few weeks,” a clear reference to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, including the taking away of hostages to the Gaza Strip, and the ensuing Israeli-Hamas war.
“Yet again violence and war have erupted in that Land blessed by the Most High, which seems continually assailed by the vileness of hatred and the deadly clash of weapons,” Francis wrote in the speech.
With France, Austria and Italy among the countries in Europe recently seeing a spate of antisemitic vandalism and slogans, Francis added: “The spread of antisemitic demonstrations, which I strongly condemn, is also of great concern.”
The pontiff said believers in God are called to build “fraternity and open paths of reconciliation for all.”
“Not weapons, not terrorism, not war, but compassion, justice and dialogue are the fitting means for building peace,” Francis said in the speech.
The pontiff also advocated taking steps to “search for our neighbor” as well as acceptance and patience, and certainly not “the brusque passion of vengeance and the folly of bitter hatred.”
Francis in recent years has dealt with several health setbacks, including two abdominal surgeries and a chronic knee problem that forces him to use a wheelchair when walking longer stretches. Earlier this year, Francis was hospitalized for treatment of what the Vatican said was bronchitis, but the pontiff described as a bout of pneumonia.
Just a few days ago, in an interview with Italian state TV, Francis was asked about his health. The pope replied with one of his frequent lines: “I’m still alive, you know,” and also said he was going to Dubai in early December for the COP28 conference on combating climate change.
Cornell University has announced the cancellation of all classes on Friday, citing the “extraordinary stress” that its New York campus has experienced in recent weeks. This includes violent threats against its Jewish community and an unfounded weapons sighting.
Friday will serve as a “community day,” a spokesperson for the Ithaca school confirmed the decision to HuffPost following its announcement to students Wednesday.
“No classes will be held, and faculty and staff will be excused from work, except for employees who provide essential services,” university officials said in an email to students, which was obtained by the school paper, The Cornell Sun.
Students are seen walking at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The school announced that all classes will be canceled on Friday for a “community day.”
“We hope that everyone will use this restorative time to take care of yourselves and reflect on how we can nurture the kind of caring, mutually supportive community that we all value,” the letter continued.
The decision follows a volatile few weeks since war broke out last month between Hamas and Israel, sparking a global rise in antisemitic incidents, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
At Cornell, a 21-year-old junior was arrested Tuesday for allegedly posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications.
Patrick Dai allegedly threatened to “shoot up” the school’s Center for Jewish Living, prompting an increase in police security as the FBI assisted with investigating the threats.
A New York State Police Department cruiser is parked in front of Cornell University’s Center for Jewish Living on Monday.
The following day, campus police said someone reported seeing a male carrying a handgun on campus, triggering a public safety alert. The sighting was ultimately determined to be unsubstantiated.
“Even though it was unsubstantiated, it adds to the stress we are all feeling,” University President Martha E. Pollack said in a public letter Wednesday.
The letter listed ways that the school expects to work to make its community more inclusive and safe. These efforts will include new policies that will prohibit doxxing and strengthen its support services to those that are doxxed, she said.
Last month, a right-wing activist group drove a box truck around Harvard University’s campus showing photos of students linked to a political statement that expressed support for Palestinians and criticized the Israeli government.
Not all of the students identified personally backed the statement, however. Several CEOs regardless called for Harvard to publicly identify all students who are members of the school organizations that issued the statements, so their companies could decline to hire them.
In the wake of the war between Israel and Hamas, antisemitic incidents in the US are on the rise.
The Anti-Defamation League reported over 300 antisemitic incidents in US since the Hamas attack on October 7. That’s an increase of almost 400% when compared with October 2022.
College campuses are seeing an increase of antisemitic activities as well, like the threats against Cornell University’s Jewish community. The growing number of incidents on campuses compelled the Biden administration to take action.
The White House outlined measures the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education plan to take with campus and local law enforcement to provide support and resources.
It’s not just the US, however, that is dealing with this problem. The ADL is tracking a rise in antisemitic incidents across the world.
Vlad Khaykin, National Director of Programs on Antisemitism for the Anti-Defamation League, says hostility against Jews tends to gain ground during times of uncertainty: be that economic depression, war or pandemic. If there is anxiety, some people will turn to antisemitism as “an answer for why things are going wrong in the world.”
In the United States, Jews make up just over 2 percent of the population. But antisemitism affects everyone, and everyone should be concerned.
Khaykin points out that historically, persistent and patently untrue canards against the Jewish people reflect and amplify fundamental flaws in a society.
“It breeds conspiracy theories that distort our ability to make informed decisions, which are central to any democracy,” he says. “It is anti-democratic. It is anti-intellectual. It leads to contempt for knowledge, learning, expertise.”
Former US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power described it as the “canary in the coal mine.”
Here are a few things that everyone can do to help fight antisemitism.
Educate yourself and be an advocate
No matter where you live, you can help. As Khaykin points out, “you don’t need to know any Jews” to want to make the world a better place for everyone.
The ADL has many educational online programs and resources available. They range from anti-bias training to anti-Semitism education.
Advocate for others’ education and protection. Approach schools and centers of learning about adding programs and curriculums on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. Echoes & Reflections is an online program that focuses on Holocaust education in the classroom. Tennessee school officials said their vote to ban Holocaust graphic novel “Maus” was meant to shelter students from foul language and nudity. But advocates say books like these are important tools in teaching younger generations.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is another resource where one can learn not only about the Holocaust but find educational information on anti-Semitism and its impact today.
This means not just speaking out against hate speech you hear, but reporting what you see on social media. The pandemic has fueled a lot of conspiracy theories, and several prominentpeople have compared vaccine requirements or mask mandates to the Holocaust. This type of rhetoric demeans the actual atrocities of the Holocaust.
“Attempts to minimize through absurd comparisons, to minimize the horror and enormity of the Holocaust, are really pernicious,” Khaykin said. “Scholars of genocide have said that the final act of genocide is the denial of the genocide.”
Germany has strict laws against hate speech and Holocaust denials, but in the US such speech is harder to regulate. Private companies like Facebook, however, have rules against it. You just need to report it when you see it – every time you see it.
Be involved and aware of what is happening in your community. In August of 2021, the ADL, the Los Angeles Police Department and the FBI held a community outreach event raising awareness about how they work together to combat anti-Semitism. The ADL has 25 regional offices around the country and work closely with law enforcement agencies. As interest in communities grows about what is being done to combat hate, these type events are more likely to happen in the future.
Report it immediately. The ADL has an online form where you can report any incidents of “anti-Semitism, extremism, bias, bigotry or hate.” Note, this is not just for people who experienced anti-Jewish hostility. This is for anyone targeted for their “religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin or level of ability.” Reportable activity could be anything from seeing a hate symbol on the street to kids getting bullied at school or online.
Here you can upload video and photos of the incident and someone will contact you. The ADL keeps track of all reported anti-Semitic and hate crime incidents.
Khaykin said, “Anti-Semitism doesn’t just show up in our schools, in our workplaces. It’s everywhere. It pervades every aspect of our civilization.”
The only way to stop the cycle of ignorance and hate is through knowledge and love.
Cornell University administrators dispatched campus police to a Jewish center after threatening statements appeared on a discussion board Sunday.
Cornell President Martha E. Pollack issued a statement explaining there were a series of “horrendous, antisemitic messages” threatening violence against the university’s Jewish community, specifically naming the address of the Center for Jewish Living.
“Threats of violence are absolutely intolerable, and we will work to ensure that the person or people who posted them are punished to the full extent of the law,” Pollack said. “Our immediate focus is on keeping the community safe; we will continue to prioritize that.”
The Cornell University Police Department is investigating and has notified the FBI of a potential hate crime, she said.
Pollack said the website was not affiliated with the school in Ithaca, New York, about 227 miles (365 kilometers) northwest of New York City.
“The virulence and destructiveness of antisemitism is real and deeply impacting our Jewish students, faculty and staff, as well as the entire Cornell community,” Pollack said, noting antisemitism will not be tolerated at Cornell.
The content of the online threats appeared to be instigated by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and sent chills through Cornell’s Jewish community during the third week of the conflict in the Gaza Strip.
The menacing posts drew a swift rebuke from state officials.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted a message on X, formerly Twitter, calling the “disgusting & hateful posts” the latest in a series of concerning events on college campuses. The New York State Police is taking steps to ensure student safety, although she said it was not immediately clear if the threats were credible.
Hochul said she spoke with university leaders across the state to assure them law enforcement and the state government will continue to support efforts to keep students and campus communities safe.
“I also reiterated our strong belief in free speech and the right to peaceful assembly, but made clear that we will have zero tolerance for acts of violence or those who intimidate and harass others through words or actions,” Hochul said in her post.
New York Attorney General Letitia James called the threats targeting the Jewish community “absolutely horrific.”
“There is no space for antisemitism or violence of any kind. Campuses must remain safe spaces for our students,” she wrote in a post on X.
An employee with the Illinois comptroller’s office has been fired after she posted antisemitic comments on social media during an exchange about the latest Israel-Hamas war
ByThe Associated Press
October 20, 2023, 12:51 PM
FILE – The Illinois State Capitol is seen Tuesday, June 19, 2012 Springfield, Ill. An employee with the Illinois comptroller’s office has been fired after she posted antisemitic comments on social media during an exchange about the latest Hamas-Israel war. A spokesman for Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza said in a statement Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023, that the employee was “immediately fired” after she admitted to some of the posts. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
The Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — An employee with the Illinois comptroller’s office has been fired after she posted vulgar antisemitic comments on social media during an exchange about the latest Israel-Hamas war.
A spokesperson for Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza said in a statement Thursday that the employee was “immediately fired” after she admitted to some of the posts.
“Comptroller Mendoza has zero tolerance for anti-semitism or hate speech,” Mendoza spokesperson Abdon Pallasch said in the statement, which does not name the employee.
The vulgar comments were part of an Instagram exchange of insults with another user, who then publicly posted the exchange on their account, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Pallasch said in Thursday’s statement that the exchange was posted midday Thursday and also posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Social media postings identified the employee as Sarah Chowdhury, who worked as a legal counsel for the comptroller’s office.
Chowdhury, reached by phone Thursday by the Chicago Tribune, told the newspaper she was “extremely” sorry for the “inappropriate and reprehensible” comments and apologized to the person with whom she had the heated exchange, as well as anyone who read her comments.
Chowdhury said she was distraught over the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas and grew frustrated by the way the conflict was being covered by the media and discussed through social media platforms.
“I don’t know what came over me. I was in a state of panic,” Chowdhury said. “Antisemitism has no place anywhere.”
She said she has also resigned as head of the South Asian Bar Association of Chicago, which posted a statement saying its president, who is not named in the statement, was fired as soon as the group learned of her statements.
It’s as if one front in the Israel-Hamas war is playing out on the streets of Berlin.
The main battleground has been an avenue lined with chicken and kebab restaurants in Neukölln, a neighborhood in the south-east of the city that’s home to many Middle Eastern immigrants. Some pro-Palestinian activists have called for demonstrators to turn out almost nightly, and, as one post put it, turn the area “into Gaza.”
On October 18, hundreds of people, many of them teenagers, answered the call.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” chanted many in the crowd as a phalanx of riot police closed in on them. Berlin public prosecutors say the slogan is a call for the erasure of Israel, and have moved to make its utterance a criminal offense.
While similar scenes have played out across much of the world, for Germany’s leaders, they are profoundly embarrassing and strike at the heart of the nation’s identity, on account of the country’s Nazi past.
Germany’s “history and our responsibility arising from the Holocaust make it our duty to stand up for the existence and security of the State of Israel,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a visit to Israel on October 17 intended to illustrate Germany’s solidarity.
The difficulty for Scholz is that far from everyone in Germany sees it his way.
German leaders across the political spectrum expressed outrage when, after the Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, dozens of people assembled in Neukölln to celebrate. One 23-year-old man, a Palestinian flag draped over his shoulders, handed out sweets.
A community on edge
Since then, tensions in Berlin and in other German cities have rapidly escalated. A surge in antisemitic incidents has left many in the country’s Jewish community on edge and German police have stepped up security at cultural institutions and houses of worship.
At the same time, German police have moved to ban many pro-Palestinian demonstrations, saying there is a high risk of “incitement to hatred” and a threat to public safety. Demonstrators have come out anyway, leading to violent clashes with police.
Some in Germany, particularly on the political left, have questioned whether the bans on pro-Palestinian protests are an overreach of the state, arguing that they stifle legitimate concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza stemming from Israel’s retaliatory strikes.
But Berlin authorities say, based on past experience, the likelihood of antisemitic rhetoric — even violence — at prohibited pro-Palestinian demonstrations is too high.
Protesters demanding a peaceful resolution to the current conflict in Israel and Gaza demonstrate under the slogan “Not in my name!” in Berlin | Maja Hitij/Getty Images
Many on the far-left have joined those protests that do take place.
On Wednesday night, around the same time demonstrators assembled in Neukölln, a group of a few hundred leftist activists showed up at a planned vigil for peace outside the foreign ministry.
“Free Palestine from German guilt,” they chanted in English. Germany, the argument went, should get over its Holocaust history, at least when it comes to support for Israel. The irony is that there is much sympathy for this view on the far right.
One recent poll showed that 78 percent of supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany disagreed with the idea that the country has a “special obligation towards Israel.” Extreme-right politicians have also called on Germany to get over its “cult of guilt.”
For many in the country’s Jewish community — which in recent years has grown to an estimated 200,000 people, including many Israelis — the conflagration in the Middle East has made fear part of daily life.
Molotov cocktails
In the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday, two people wearing masks threw Molotov cocktails at a Berlin Jewish community hub that houses a synagogue. The incendiary devices hit the sidewalk, and no one was hurt. But the attack stoked profound alarm.
“Hamas’ ideology of extermination against everything Jewish is also having an effect in Germany,” said the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the country’s largest umbrella Jewish organization.
Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, several homes in Berlin where Jews are thought to live have been marked with the Star of David.
“My first thought was: ‘It’s like the Nazi time,’” said Sigmount Königsberg, the antisemitism commissioner for Berlin’s Jewish Community, an organization that oversees local synagogues and other parts of Jewish life in the city. “Many Jews are hiding their Jewishness,” he added — in other words, concealing skullcaps or religious insignia out of fear of being attacked.
It remains unclear who perpetrated the firebombing attack and Star of David graffiti. But historical data shows a clear correlation between upsurges in Middle East violence and increased antisemitic incidents in Europe, according to academic researchers.
In the eight days following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, there were 202 antisemitic incidents connected to the war, mostly motivated by “anti-Israel activism,” according to data compiled by the Anti-Semitism Research and Information Center.
Fears within the Jewish community were particularly prevalent after a former Hamas leader called for worldwide demonstrations in a “day of rage.” Many students at a Jewish school in Berlin stayed home. Two teachers wrote a letter to Berlin’s mayor to express their dismay that, as they put it, the school was nearly empty.
A pro-Palestinian demonstrator displays a placard during a protest against the bombing in Gaza outside the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on October 18, 2023 | John Macdougall/AFP via Getty Images
“This means de facto that Jew-haters have usurped the decision-making authority over Jewish life in Berlin,” they wrote. The teachers then blamed Germany’s willingness to take in refugees from war-torn places like Syria and Lebanon. “Germany has taken in and continues to take in hundreds of thousands of people whose socialization includes antisemitism and hatred of Israel,” they wrote.
Day of rage
Surveys show that Muslims in Germany are more likely to hold antisemitic views than the general population. Politicians often refer this phenomenon as “imported antisemitism,” brought into the country through immigration from Muslim-majority nations.
At the same time, it was a far-right attacker who perpetrated some of the worst antisemitic violence in Germany’s recent history. That came in 2019, when a gunmen tried to massacre 51 people celebrating Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, in a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle. Two people were killed.
German neo-Nazis have praised Hamas’s October 7 attacks in Israel. One group calling itself the “Young Nationalists” posted a picture of a bloodstained Star of David on social media next to the slogan “Israel murders and the world watches.”
During the Neukölln demonstration, officers arrested individual protestors one by one, picking them out from the crowd and dragging them off by force.
The atmosphere grew increasingly tense. Demonstrators lobbed fireworks and bottles at the police. Dumpsters and tires were set alight. By the end of the night, police made 174 arrests, including 29 minors. Police said 65 officers were injured in the clashes.
At one point amid the chaos, a 15-year-old girl with a Palestinian keffiyeh — a black and white scarf — wrapped around most of her face emerged amid the smoke and explosions to pose for a selfie in front of a row of riot police.
She said she was there to demonstrate for “peace.” When asked how peace would be achieved, she replied: “When the Israeli side pisses off our land, there will be peace. Won’t there?”
French soccer club Nice has suspended defender Youcef Atal until further notice after he shared an antisemitic message on social media
ByThe Associated Press
October 18, 2023, 9:34 AM
FILE – Nice’s Youcef Atal in action during the Conference League Group D soccer match between Nice and Partizan at Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice, France, on Oct. 27, 2022. The Nice public prosecutor’s office has opened a preliminary investigation targeting Nice soccer player Youcef Atal on charges “of praising terrorism and public incitement to hatred or violence.” The prosecutor’s office announced the opening of a preliminary investigation in a statement Monday Oct. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole, File)
The Associated Press
NICE, France — French soccer club Nice suspended defender Youcef Atal on Wednesday until further notice after he shared an antisemitic message on social media.
Nice said in a statement that it had discussed the issue with Atal and that he apologized.
“The player acknowledged his error by quickly withdrawing the sharing of the publication and has offered a written and public apology,” Nice said. “Nevertheless, given the nature of the publication shared, and its seriousness, the club has made the decision to immediately take the first disciplinary measures against the player, prior to any action that may be taken by sporting and legal authorities. To this end, the club has decided to suspend Youcef Atal until further notice.”
In Germany, Bundesliga club Mainz suspended Dutch forward Anwar El Ghazi for what it called an “unacceptable” social media post about the Israel-Hamas war.
Atal’s suspension comes after the Nice public prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation on Monday targeting Atal on charges “of defending terrorism” for sharing the message online. The prosecutor’s office said Atal is also being investigated for “public incitement to hatred or violence because of a particular religion.”
The 27-year-old Atal, who also plays for Algeria’s national team, apologized after reportedly reposting and then deleting a video in which a Palestinian preacher made an antisemitic statement.
French soccer federation president Philippe Diallo said Atal had relayed “appeals for violence” and that the case will be handled by the federation’s ethics committee.
Writing on Instagram, Atal said he understood that his post was shocking to some people and said he condemns all forms of violence, “no matter where in the world.”
SAN FRANCISCO — Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden said he doubts that Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, “meant what he said” when he made a series of antisemitic and other offensive remarks last year.
Almost a year ago, Adidas ended a major partnership with Ye over his statements, discontinued Ye’s line of Yeezy shoes and moved up the planned departure of its CEO. In a statement at that time, the company said it “does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech.” It added: “Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.”
Gulden struck a different tone on the investing podcast “In Good Company.”
“I think Kanye West is one of the most creative people in the world,” Gulden said in an episode released Sept. 12. “Very unfortunate, because I don’t think he meant what he said and I don’t think he’s a bad person. It just came off that way.”
Gulden did not elaborate in the interview. He took over as CEO last January. An Adidas spokesperson said the company’s position has not changed and that ending the partnership with Ye was an appropriate measure.
For weeks prior to his rupture with the sneaker company, Ye had made antisemitic comments in interviews and social media, including an October Twitter post in which he said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.
He had previously suggested that slavery was a choice and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast,” among other comments. He also took heat for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to Paris Fashion Week and putting models in the same design. In 2020, Ye’s then-wife Kim Kardashian said that the rapper has bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings.
Ye expressed some regrets in a podcast interview, but a few months later tweeted an image of a swastika merged with the Star of David, leading the platform to suspend him. After he received the same treatment on other social media outlets, Ye offered to buy Parler, a conservative social network with no gatekeeper. No deal ever materialized.
The break with Ye left Adidas with a huge supply of unsold Yeezy sneakers that it has begun to sell in limited batches. It has held two such sales — one in May, the other last month. For both of those sales, Adidas said it donated a portion of the proceeds to charities such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change.
The company has not said how many of those shoes remain in inventory, although the unsold shoes and Ye’s departure impacted Adidas profits. The company estimated that it held 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) worth of Yeezy inventory when it broke off its partnership.
The company faces other problems tied to the rapper. Investors sued Adidas in the U.S., alleging the company knew about Ye’s offensive remarks and harmful behavior years before the split and failed to take precautionary measures to limit financial losses.
The lawsuit — representing people who bought Adidas securities between May 3, 2018, and February 21, 2023 — pointed to reports of Ye making antisemitic statements in front of Adidas staff in addition to his other remarks.
The company said at the time that it rejected “these unfounded claims and will take all necessary measures to vigorously defend ourselves against them.”
SAN FRANCISCO — Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden said he doubts that Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, “meant what he said” when he made a series of antisemitic and other offensive remarks last year.
Almost a year ago, Adidas ended a major partnership with Ye over his statements, discontinued Ye’s line of Yeezy shoes and moved up the planned departure of its CEO. In a statement at that time, the company said it “does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech.” It added: “Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.”
Gulden struck a different tone on the investing podcast “In Good Company.”
“I think Kanye West is one of the most creative people in the world,” Gulden said in an episode released Sept. 12. “Very unfortunate, because I don’t think he meant what he said and I don’t think he’s a bad person. It just came off that way.”
Gulden did not elaborate in the interview. He took over as CEO last January. An Adidas spokesperson said the company’s position has not changed and that ending the partnership with Ye was an appropriate measure.
For weeks prior to his rupture with the sneaker company, Ye had made antisemitic comments in interviews and social media, including an October Twitter post in which he said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.
He had previously suggested that slavery was a choice and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast,” among other comments. He also took heat for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to Paris Fashion Week and putting models in the same design. In 2020, Ye’s then-wife Kim Kardashian said that the rapper has bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings.
Ye expressed some regrets in a podcast interview, but a few months later tweeted an image of a swastika merged with the Star of David, leading the platform to suspend him. After he received the same treatment on other social media outlets, Ye offered to buy Parler, a conservative social network with no gatekeeper. No deal ever materialized.
The break with Ye left Adidas with a huge supply of unsold Yeezy sneakers that it has begun to sell in limited batches. It has held two such sales — one in May, the other last month. For both of those sales, Adidas said it donated a portion of the proceeds to charities such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change.
The company has not said how many of those shoes remain in inventory, although the unsold shoes and Ye’s departure impacted Adidas profits. The company estimated that it held 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) worth of Yeezy inventory when it broke off its partnership.
The company faces other problems tied to the rapper. Investors sued Adidas in the U.S., alleging the company knew about Ye’s offensive remarks and harmful behavior years before the split and failed to take precautionary measures to limit financial losses.
The lawsuit — representing people who bought Adidas securities between May 3, 2018, and February 21, 2023 — pointed to reports of Ye making antisemitic statements in front of Adidas staff in addition to his other remarks.
The company said at the time that it rejected “these unfounded claims and will take all necessary measures to vigorously defend ourselves against them.”
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is starting a U.S. trip in California to talk about technology and artificial intelligence with billionaire businessman Elon Musk.
The Israeli leader posted Monday on Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that he plans to talk with the Tesla CEO “about how we can harness the opportunities and mitigate the risks of AI for the good of civilization.”
Netanyahu’s high-profile visit to the San Francisco Bay Area comes at a time when Musk is facing accusations of tolerating antisemitic messages on his social media platform, while Netanyahu is confronting political opposition at home and abroad. Protesters gathered early Monday outside the Fremont, California factory where Tesla makes its cars.
The video livestream kicked off shortly before 9:30 a.m. with Netanyahu and the Tesla CEO. Netanyahu’s official X account posted that he is holding a “one on one conversation” with Musk. The number of viewers hovered around 700-800 people.
The two kicked off with a joke about deepfakes and quickly launched into a discussion of artificial intelligence as both a blessing and a curse for humanity.
Netanyahu said an important question about more advanced AI is: “How do you get the international regime to control this thing?”
He said it starts by getting like-minded states to agree to a code of ethics and code of conduct to foster the benefits and “curb the curses” but said there will still be a need to “police the planet” against rogue actors.
The freestyle conversation, which included jokes from both men, soon turned to free speech and antisemitism, with Netanyahu telling Musk he hopes that within the confines of the First Amendment he can find a way to clamp down on antisemitism and other forms of hatred on his social media platform.
I encourage you and urge you to find the balance. It’s a tough one,” Netanyahu said.
Musk said that with 100 million to 200 million posts on X in a day, “some of those are gonna be bad.” He then reiterated the platform’s policy to not promote or amplify hate speech. Under Musk, the former Twitter changed its rules so that objectionable posts are not usually removed, but instead their visibility is limited so people have to seek it out if they want to see it. Musk calls this “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.”
Musk is facing accusations of tolerating antisemitic messages on his social media platform. The Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish civil-rights organization, has accused Musk of allowing antisemitism and hate speech to spread on X. Its director, Jonathan Greenblatt, said Musk had “amplified” the messages of neo-Nazis and white supremacists who want to ban the league by engaging with them recently on X.
In a Sept. 4 post, Musk claimed that the league was “trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.” In other posts, he said the league was responsible for a 60% drop in revenue at X.
The group met this month with X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino. Both Musk and Yaccarino have recently posted messages saying they oppose antisemitism.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken part in nine months of demonstrations against Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul Israel’s judicial system. Those protests have spread overseas, with groups of Israeli expats staging demonstrations during visits by Netanyahu and other members of his Cabinet.
From California, Netanyahu heads to New York, where he is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly and meet with President Joe Biden and other world leaders, his office said. They include German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.
Netanyahu says the judicial overhaul plan is needed to curb the powers of unelected judges, whom he and his allies say are liberal and overly interventionist. Critics say his plan is a power grab that will destroy the country’s system of checks and balances and push it toward autocratic rule.
Leading figures in Israel’s influential high-tech community have played a prominent role in the protests. They say weakening the judiciary will hurt the country’s business climate and drive away foreign investment. Israel’s currency, the shekel, has plunged in value this year in a sign of weakening foreign investment.
Netanyahu played down his overhaul as a needed, minor correction to curb what he described as excessive powers of his country’s judiciary. Critics say the plan, which includes a proposal for controlling the appointment of the nation’s judges, would concentrate power in the hands of Netanyahu and his allies. Netanyahu also made no mention of his corruption trial. Netanyahu describes himself as a victim of a witch hunt and his critics say the overhaul is motivated by his anger at the legal system.
BERLIN — The governor of the German state of Bavaria said Sunday that he will let his deputy stay in office despite a furor that started with allegations he was responsible for an antisemitic flyer when he was a high school student 35 years ago.
Governor Markus Soeder, a leading figure in Germany’s center-right opposition, said he had concluded that it would be “disproportionate” to fire Hubert Aiwanger, his deputy and coalition partner, but Aiwanger needs to rebuild confidence with the Jewish community and others.
Bavaria is holding a state election in just over a month. Soeder’s decision drew sharp criticism from political opponents and a cautious response from a Jewish leader.
On Aug. 25, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that, when Aiwanger was a teenager, he was suspected of producing a typewritten flyer calling for entries to a competition titled “Who is the biggest traitor to the fatherland?”
It listed, among other things, a “1st prize: A free flight through the chimney at Auschwitz.”
Aiwanger, 52, said last weekend that one or more copies of the flyer were found in his school bag but denied that he wrote it. His older brother came forward to claim that he had written it.
Aiwanger has acknowledged making unspecified mistakes in his youth and offered an apology but also portrayed himself as the victim of a “witch hunt.” He stuck to that tone on Sunday, saying at a campaign appearance that his opponents had failed with a “smear campaign” meant to weaken his conservative party.
The deputy governor’s crisis management has drawn widespread criticism, including from Soeder.
On Tuesday, Soeder demanded that Aiwanger answer a detailed questionnaire, and his deputy delivered the answers Friday. Soeder said he had a long conversation with Aiwanger on Saturday evening.
Over the past week, there was a steady drip of further allegations about Aiwanger’s behavior in his youth, including claims that he gave the Hitler salute, imitated the Nazi dictator and had Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in his school bag. Aiwanger described the latter as “nonsense,” said he didn’t remember ever giving the Hitler salute and did not rehearse Hitler’s speeches in front of the mirror.
On Thursday, Aiwanger said: “I deeply regret if I have hurt feelings by my behavior in relation to the pamphlet in question or further accusations against me from my youth. My sincere apologies go first and foremost to all the victims of the (Nazi) regime.”
Soeder told reporters in Munich that the apology was “overdue, but it was right and necessary.” He said that Aiwanger’s answers to his questions “weren’t all satisfactory,” but that he had distanced himself again from the flyer and given repeated assurances he didn’t write it.
“In the overall assessment — that there is no proof, that the matter is 35 years ago, and that nothing comparable has happened since — a dismissal would be disproportionate, from my point of view,” Soeder said.
But leaders of Bavaria’s governing coalition agreed “it is important that Hubert Aiwanger work on winning back lost trust,” and should hold talks with Jewish community leaders, Soeder added. He said that was discussed Sunday with Bavarian and German Jewish leaders.
One of them, Munich Jewish community leader Charlotte Knobloch, said in a statement that Aiwanger “must restore trust and make clear that his actions are democratically and legally steadfast.” She said recent days had been “an enormous strain.”
The allegations put Soeder, who is widely thought to have ambitions to challenge center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the 2025 national election, in an awkward position.
Aiwanger leads the Free Voters, a party that is a conservative force in Bavaria but has no seats in Germany’s national parliament. He has been the state’s deputy governor and economy minister since 2018, when his party became the junior partner in a regional government under Bavaria’s long-dominant center-right Christian Social Union.
Soeder, the CSU leader, made clear again Sunday that he wants to continue the coalition with the Free Voters, a more or less like-minded party, after the Oct. 8 state election. He dismissed the idea of switching to a coalition with the environmentalist Greens.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser accused Soeder of putting political tactics first.
“Mr. Aiwanger has neither apologized convincingly nor been able to dispel the accusations convincingly,” she told the RND newspaper group. Instead, she said, he has styled himself as a victim “and doesn’t think for a second of those who still suffer massively from antisemitism.”
“That Mr. Soeder allows this damages the reputation of our country,” she added.
Adidas has brought in $437 million from the first release of Yeezy sneakers left over after breaking ties with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West
ByDAVID McHUGH AP Business Writer
FILE – Yeezy shoes made by Adidas are displayed at Laced Up, a sneaker resale store, in Paramus, N.J., on Oct. 25, 2022. Adidas is releasing a second batch of high-end Yeezy sneakers after cutting ties with rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, as the shoemaker seeks to unload the unsold shoes while donating to groups fighting antisemitism. The online sale, to start Wednesday Aug. 2, 2023 through the Confirmed app, Adidas app and adidas.com, follows an earlier batch of sales in May. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
The Associated Press
FRANKFURT, Germany — Adidas brought in 400 million euros ($437 million) from the first release of Yeezy sneakers left over after breaking ties with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, as the German sportswear maker tries to offload the unsold shoes and donate part of the proceeds to groups fighting antisemitism and other forms of hate.
The first batch of shoes sold in June helped the company reach an operating profit of 176 million euros in the second quarter, better than it originally planned, Adidas said in a statement Thursday.
After Ye’s antisemitic and other offensive comments led the company to end its partnership with the rapper in October, Adidas has sought a way to dispose of 1.2 billion euros worth of the high-end shoes in a responsible way.
“We will continue to carefully sell off more of the existing Yeezy inventory,” said CEO Bjørn Gulden, who took over in January. Adidas said it sold out the first batch of Yeezy shoes and launched a second release on Wednesday.
“This is much better than destroying and writing off the inventory and allows us to make substantial donations to organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change and Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism,” Gulden said.
Several Jewish civic leaders contacted by The Associated Press said they weren’t planning to buy a pair of Yeezys themselves but generally welcomed the plan to support anti-hate organizations, saying the company is trying to make the best of a bad situation.
The Adidas chief executive added that the Yeezy sales are “of course also helping both our cash flow and general financial strength.”
The blow-up of the Ye partnership put Adidas in a precarious position because of the popularity of the Yeezy line, and it faced growing pressure to end ties last year as other companies cut off the rapper. Adidas said it now expects to report an operating loss of 450 million euros this year instead of 700 million euros.
Yeezy revenue from June were “largely in line” with sales seen in the same April-to-June period last year, Adidas said.
Adidas has not said how many shoes it is selling or whether Ye is receiving royalties from the sales. It has only said that “we will honor our contractual obligations and enforce our rights but will not share any more details.”
X owner Elon Musk is threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League for defamation, claiming that the nonprofit organization’s statements about rising hate speech on the social media platform have torpedoed X’s advertising revenue.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk said US advertising revenue is “still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!”
Musk also claimed that since he took over the platform in October 2022, the ADL “has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.”
“To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!” he said.
The ADL said as a matter of policy it does not comment on legal threats. But the organization noted it recently met with X leadership, including CEO Linda Yaccarino, who Musk hired to help revive ad revenue. Yaccarino thanked ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt following the meeting last week, saying in a post on X, “A strong and productive partnership is built on good intentions and candor.”
Meanwhile, Musk, the platform’s owner, has recently liked and engaged with a series of posts criticizing the organization.
A #BanTheADL campaign has spread on X, and the ADL accused Musk of “lifting” the campaign.
“ADL is unsurprised yet undeterred that antisemites, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and other trolls have launched a coordinated attack on our organization. This type of thing is nothing new,” an ADL spokesperson said.
The ADL and other similar organizations, including the Center for Countering Digital Hate, have found that the volume of hate speech on the website has grown dramatically under Musk’s stewardship.
In one instance, the CCDH found the daily use of the n-word under Musk is triple the 2022 average and the use of slurs against gay men and trans persons are up 58% and 62%, respectively. The ADL said in a separate report that its data shows “both an increase in antisemitic content on the platform and a decrease in the moderation of antisemitic posts.”
Musk called the reports in May by the two watchdog groups “utterly false,” claiming that “hate speech impressions,” or the number of times a tweet containing hate speech has been viewed, “continue to decline” since his early days of owning the company when the platform saw a spike in hate speech designed to test Musk’s tolerance.
Still, two brands last month paused their ad spending on X after their advertisements ran alongside an account promoting Nazism. X suspended the account after the issue was flagged and said ad impressions on the page were minimal.
Last month, Musk sued the CCDH, accusing the nonprofit group of deliberately trying to drive advertisers away from the platform by publishing reports critical of the platform’s response to hateful content.
It specifically claims CCDH violated the platform’s terms of service, and federal hacking laws, by scraping data from the company’s platform and by encouraging an unnamed individual to improperly collect information about Twitter that it had provided to a third-party brand monitoring provider.
In response, CCDH’s CEO Imran Ahmed previously told CNN that much of the lawsuit, particularly its claim about the unnamed individual, “sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory to me.”
“The truth is that he’s [Elon Musk] been casting around for a reason to blame us for his own failings as a CEO,” Ahmed said, “because we all know that when he took over, he put up the bat signal to racists and misogynists, to homophobes, to antisemites, saying ‘Twitter is now a free-speech platform.’ … And now he’s surprised when people are able to quantify that there has been a resulting increase in hate and disinformation.”
The Anti-Defamation League on Wednesday said it plans to resume advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, following a spat with owner Elon Musk.
Musk last month threatened to sue the ADL for defamation, claiming that the nonprofit organization’s statements about rising hate speech on the social media platform had hurt X’s advertising revenue. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt pushed back on the claims, saying that while the ADL was part of a coalition of groups that called on companies to pause advertising on the platform immediately following Musk’s acquisition last year, it had not been engaged in such calls in recent months.
Musk’s statements about thegroupalso amplified a campaign of antisemitic hate against the organization that had begun prior to Musk’s legal threat, leading to a surge of threats directed at the ADL, Greenblatt told CNN last month.
The rights groupreiterated in a statement Wednesday that “any allegation that ADL has somehow orchestrated a boycott of X or caused billions of dollars of losses to the company or is ‘pulling the strings’ for other advertisers is false.”
“Indeed, we ourselves were advertising on the platform until the anti-ADL attacks began a few weeks ago,” the group said. “We now are preparing to do so again to bring our important message on fighting hate to X and its users.”
Musk responded to the ADL’s statement in a post Wednesday saying, “Thank you for clarifying that you support advertising on X.”
The statement appears to mark a resolution — for now — to weekslong tension between Musk and the ADL, which has coincided with incidents of antisemitism rising across the United States. But the group says it will continue to monitor for antisemitic content on X.
“As we have noted in our research over the past several years, X – along with other social media platforms — has a serious issue with antisemites and other extremists using these platforms to push their hateful ideas and, in some cases, bully Jewish and other users,” it said. “A better, healthier, and safer X would be a win for the world … As we do with all platforms, we will credit X as it moves in that direction, and we also will call it out when it has not.”
The ADL and other similar organizations, including the Center for Countering Digital Hate, have said in reports that the volume of hate speech on the website has grown dramatically under Musk’s stewardship. (Musk has criticized the findings.)
Two brands in August paused their ad spending on X after their advertisements ran alongside an account promoting Nazism. X suspended the account after the issue was flagged and said ad impressions on the page were minimal.
X has emphasized its new “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” policy that aims to limit the reach of so-called lawful but awful content on the platform and to protect brands from having their ads appear alongside such content. CEO Linda Yaccarino has also promoted additional brand safety controls for advertisers, including the ability to avoid having their ads show next to “targeted hate speech, sexual content, gratuitous gore, excessive profanity, obscenity, spam, [and]drugs.”
Asked about Musk’s threats to sue the ADL in an interview last week, Yaccarino said, “I wish that would be different … We’re looking into that.” She added that the ADL should acknowledge X’s progress on addressing antisemitism.
It appears the platform may have more work to do. A search on Wednesday for Greenblatt’s name immediately surfaced multiple hateful and antisemitic tweets about the ADL leader.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans will be delving into claims of government censorship of online speech at a public hearing, asking Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to testify despite requests from outside groups to disinvite the Democratic presidential candidate after his recent antisemitic remarks.
The Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is set to convene Thursday. Republicans claim conservatives are being unfairly targeted by technology companies that routinely work with the government to try to stem the spread of disinformation online.
In announcing the hearing, the panel led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said it “will examine the federal government’s role in censoring Americans.” The panel said it will probe “Big Tech’s collusion with out-of-control government agencies to silence speech.”
The Big Tech companies have adamantly denied the GOP assertions and say they enforce their rules impartially for everyone regardless of ideology or political affiliation. And researchers have not found widespread evidence that social media companies are biased against conservative news, posts or materials.
The hearing comes after a federal judge recently sought to halt the Biden administration from working with the social media companies to monitor misinformation and other online postings. An appellate court temporarily paused the order.
Republicans are eager to elevate Kennedy, heir to the famous American political family, who in April announced his 2024 campaign for president. The son of Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy is mounting a long-shot Democratic primary challenge to President Joe Biden. He is set to testify alongside two other witnesses.
A watchdog group asked the panel’s chairman, Jordan, to drop the invitation to Kennedy after the Democratic presidential candidate falsely suggested COVID-19 could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
In the filmed remarks first published by The New York Post, Kennedy said “there is an argument” that COVID-19 “is ethnically targeted” and that it “attacks certain races disproportionately.”
After the video was made public, Kennedy posted on Twitter that his words were twisted and denied ever suggesting that COVID-19 was deliberately engineered to spare Jewish people. He called for the Post’s article to be retracted.
But Kennedy has a history of comparing vaccines — widely credited with saving millions of lives — with the genocide of the Holocaust during Nazi Germany, comments for which he has sometimes apologized.
An organization that Kennedy founded, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines.
Jordan said that while he disagreed with Kennedy’s remarks, he was not about to drop him from the panel. Speaker Kevin McCarthy took a similar view, saying he did not want to censor Kennedy.
The panel wants to probe the way the federal government works with technology companies to flag postings that contain false information or downright lies. Hanging over the debate is part of federal communications law, Section 230, which shields technology companies like Twitter and Facebook from liability over what’s said on their platforms.
Lawmakers on the panel are also expected to receive testimony from Emma-Jo Morris, journalist at Breitbart News, who has reported extensively on Biden’s son, Hunter Biden; and D. John Sauer, a former Solicitor General in Missouri who is now a special Assistant Attorney General at the Louisiana Department of Justice involved in the lawsuit against the Biden administration.
Ahead of the hearing, Morris tweeted part of her opening remarks in which she described an “elaborate censorship conspiracy” that she claimed sought to halt her reporting of Hunter Biden.
The U.S. has been hesitant to regulate the social media giants, even as outside groups warn of the rise of hate speech and misinformation that can be erosive to civil society.
