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In 1492, the Catholic monarchs of Spain issued the Alhambra Decree and gave the Jews of their kingdom a brutal choice. Convert, leave, or die.
Families that had lived there for centuries packed what they could carry and headed for the ports while mobs and officials stripped them of everything else. Ships were scarce.
Many drowned trying to escape. Others were robbed or enslaved at sea. Europe mostly turned its back. But one ruler on the other side of the Mediterranean did something extraordinary. He sent his navy to pull them out.
This is Jerusalem during the Jordanian occupation, prior to the reunification of the city on June 5, 1967.
Jordan destroyed the entire Jewish Quarter of the Old City, including 52 synagogues. Pictured is a Jordanian soldier standing on the ruins of Hurva Synagogue.
JEW-HATRED IS REAL
A shared experience. My husband Thomas Finn takes the floor.👇🏽
Last week we were sitting at a lunch restaurant down by the harbour in Skagen. High season, thirty degrees, full tables, children and draft beer and fried plaice - Denmark at its most Danish.
A young couple sat down at the table next to us. Mid-twenties, from a mid-sized Danish town, he a tradesman, she friendly and well-spoken.
We fell into conversation, the way you do while waiting for the food - where are you from, what do you do - and the conversation drifted, as conversations do these days, onto the culture war, which he in particular was preoccupied with. Islam, Christianity, the EU, political life.
A completely ordinary conversation between completely ordinary Danes over lunch.
And then he says it. Calmly, out of the blue, as if he were remarking on the weather:
"If you ask me, we obviously need to keep an eye on Islam - but the real threat is the Jews."
Krisztina was about to get up. I managed to put a hand on her leg under the table and send her the look that, between partners who have been together for decades, means - wait.
Not because the sentence didn't deserve an answer - but because I wanted to know how deep the well was before I said anything. So I asked, as neutrally as I could -
"Ok. Well, some people do think that. Are there many around you who feel that way?"
"Yes, pretty much all my friends."
Krisztina tried again, by way of history - "But surely you know the history. They have always been persecuted - and during the war Hitler killed six million of them..."
She never got to finish the sentence.
"Well, they deserved it. They brought it on themselves."
The sun was shining. The plaice arrived.
I looked at Krisztina, and we understood each other without words - not here, not now.
We had driven to Skagen for the day's sake and for each other's, and there were families with children at every other table. You have to know when a conversation is a conversation - and when it is merely an occasion.
So we ate our food in peace, wished them a good day and walked out into the sun.
But the sentence came with us.
And it is still lying on the table between us.
A nice, normal, friendly young couple - and the sentence Europe has spent eighty years promising itself never to hear again, served over lunch, as if he were noting that the food needed salt.
What I want to tell you today is that this sentence was not a bolt from a clear sky. I had expected to hear it out in the open this year.
Because it is not one stray young man in Skagen. It is the surface of something that has grown larger than most people quite notice, beneath us, while we were looking away - and I can document it - as can many others here on this platform - because I, or we, have been standing in it all year.
Over the course of this year I have written a series of exhaustive texts and hundreds of long comments about Jews. About their three-thousand-year history, from Abraham through the exiles to the rebirth of the State of Israel. About their traditions, their scriptures, their way of carrying memory through the centuries.
About everything the Western world stands on without knowing it - that Man bears the image of God, that the law stands above the king, that conscience cannot be owned, that every child should be able to read - foundation stones that are all Hebrew, and which were carried out to us through a Jewish saviour and his Jewish apostles.
I have written about the causes of the persecution, its patterns and its costumes through a thousand years. About the grammar of Jew-hatred - the kind that cannot imagine a human being who freely holds an opinion, or a people that wants something of its own.
And about why it is crucial that the world stands up for and in front of this people - not because they are worth more than others, but because the attack on them has always been the first act in the attack on Man as such. MORE👇🏽
Macron, Starmer, and the "Spanish Stallion" Pedro Sanchez compete for the ultimate prize in a room full of broken promises and velvet curtains. This isn’t the news; it’s the hustle.
☕ Caffeine in -> 🎬 Videos out- You know the drill. LInk in Profile.
Political Satire, Pedro Sanchez, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Voter Pandering, Dark Comedy, Monologue, European Politics, High-Stakes Hustle, Spanish Politics, Gritty Satire, Bureaucracy Parody, Political Opportunism. #PoliticalSatire #PedroSanchez #Macron #Starmer
Marking 52 years since Turkey launched its invasion of Cyprus, leading to 3,000 deaths, mostly civilians, and displacing 220,000 Cypriots.
Turkey continues to illegally occupy 37% of Cyprus.
Cyprus is the only EU member state under occupation.
https://t.co/2eGLBsEHYC
Dear TikToker,
I don't know where you got this idea that that anyone calling out anti-LGBTQ+ policies in Middle Eastern countries is doing so because we want to bomb them. A lot of us just want their societies to stop oppressing them. That is why we speak up.
Could someone make this argument in bad faith? Maybe!
But when you say that anyone speaking up against the anti-LGBTQ+ policies of, say, the regime in Iran (which executes gay people) or Hamas (ditto) is a warmonger, you are effectively silencing LGBTQ+ Middle Easterners who want a better life.
Signed,
A gay Israeli
Jewish patients are afraid to reveal they are Jewish in Australia, while Jewish healthcare workers report being excluded, mocked, and targeted for mentioning the October 7 massacre or Israeli hostages.
One intensive-care nurse resigned after more than a decade, saying management failed to act on colleagues' antisemitic social media posts.
According to a major investigation by The Australian, anti-Israel slogans and symbols appeared inside hospitals, including "From the river to the sea" badges and crossed-out Stars of David.
At Melbourne's Alfred Hospital, a crossed-out Star of David sticker was allegedly placed near the bed of a dying Jewish patient.
The investigation also cites several patients who believe they were mistreated after staff learned they were Jewish. Charlotte Frajman, daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, said a nurse's demeanor changed after seeing her records and that he unsuccessfully attempted to insert her IV four times, causing severe pain and bruising.
Orit Brand said a radiographer failed eight times before another staff member inserted the IV immediately. The report notes there is no proof these incidents were deliberate, but says hospital protocols limiting repeated IV attempts may have been breached.
Other allegations include a Jewish woman left for hours without pain relief after a C-section, an ICU patient whose nurse denied both the Holocaust and the October 7 massacre, and a grief counselor who criticized a woman mourning relatives murdered on October 7 for not expressing equal sympathy for people in Gaza.
A pro-Pal at the march on Saturday was stopped for this placard saying: “Martyrs do not die their blood blooms revolution” with the Hamas red triangle. The sign was confiscated and her details taken. It’s good to see action taken on this symbol of terror.
🎥 @AuditingBritain
A man shows up to the Spanish World Cup celebrations with a Palestinian flag and chanting “long live Spain and long live Palestine”
The Spanish fans quickly ripped his Palestinian flag to shreds.
A man shows up to the Spanish World Cup celebrations with a Palestinian flag and chanting “long live Spain and long live Palestine”
The Spanish fans quickly ripped his Palestinian flag to shreds.