WJC Discussion Forums

why they hate Israel and they are a part of it? (1 reply)

Rachidi — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:06:11 +0200

I was so suprised to find out about your website in youtube ,bellow one video about the latest Demonstration in Iran . and i really try so hard to find which relation is it between this video and this link (worldjewishcongress.org)...so for this occasion i would like to know if there is something happening deeply between the Republic of Iran and the Israel nation ...or it is just the games which they used to play???? for me as a muslim i do respect both of israelian and iranian because they are friendly and more smarter than the arabs , which they always hate them even the jews were and still become a part of their lives .....so in generally i should ask why they should hate the jews more than iranians? why we should be the palestinians more than themselves? i think the jews have also the rights of life like the rest of people ??????

Vatican appoints new official in charge of dialogue with Jews (no replies)

WJC — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:40:51 +0200

German Cardinal Walter Kasper is retiring as head of the Vatican body that promotes relations with other churches and with Judaism. He will be replaced by Bishop Kurt Koch of Basel, Switzerland, ‘Vatican Radio’ has reports. The 60-year-old Swiss has informed his colleagues by letter that he had been requested by Pope Benedict XVI to take up the post of president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, which includes the chairmanship of the Commission for Relations with the Jews, from 1 July.

The Council for Promoting Christian Unity is considered one of the most important of the eleven pontifical councils in the Curia. Its aim is to develop inter-faith dialogue. Koch has served as a member of the council since 2002. It is expected that he will be appointed a cardinal in the Fall.

What should be done to improve Catholic Jewish relations?

Israel - Our Motherland (1 reply)

wisebliss — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:06:28 +0200

Lets support Israel our motherland...... We all can build a better nation.
The link below is informative for all:
www.beninportal.com

WHAT IS AN "ANTI-SEMITISM" ? (1 reply)

Juri Belov — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 01:15:40 +0200

Waht ist the term anti-Semitism? The meaning of the term has been corrupted over the years to mean discrimination only against Jewish people. It actually means discrimination against Semitic peoples, of which majority of Arabs are a part of. The Semits are most Arabs (95 %) and really minority are Jews (about 5 %).

The Newspeaking comes from the George Orwell term “newspeak” where a term has its meaning altered to suit the political current propaganda. Like in the former "USSR" with "Bolscheviki" (majority - 1917 only 10 %) and "Mensheviki" (minority - 1917 with 90 %) - this ist the same lie, the same political correct nonsence include both: rassism and hate. Ich am not fun of Arabs, but I mean "Anti-Semitism" shows no respect against the majority of Non-Jewish people. This ist a heavy ideological Abuse of term, and more: rape of normal common human language.

For people hammering with it, that just goes with the schism between "jewish" as religious distinction and "jewish" as biological race. Sorry, I am not a rassist...

Just have one question? (3 replies)

WHITEANDPROUDSOWHAT — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:22:10 +0200

Don't you think what Israel is doing to Palestine is similar to what the Nazi's did to the jews?
And what's the deal with gypies being so mistreated in Jerusalem? Gypies shared alot of the horror's which was the holocaust, you think jews and gypies would have some kind of brotherhood going through something like that together.
It almost seems like the jewish people learned how to treat other people from the ones who mistreated them the most. I don't need people saying some crap like im racist or something cuz I ask these questions. Questions always need
to be ask when something isn't right.

Pledge of Support for Israel (6 replies)

WJC — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:07:15 +0200

The world is unfairly obsessed with Israel.

Vicious attacks on the Jewish state have become fashionable everywhere.

The various bodies of the United Nations spend more time singling out Israel for blame while ignoring the real political problems in today’s world.

At sporting events, Israeli athletes are sometimes disturbed by protestors, shunned by their opponents, or even denied entry visas.

Trade unions around the globe are calling for one-sided sanctions and an economic boycott to be imposed on Israel.

Media and human rights organizations focus excessively on Israel’s alleged misdemeanours and ignore the realities on the ground.

Double standards are applied: the Middle East’s only country that is democratic, guarantees religious freedom for all its citizens, and upholds the rule of law, is being demonized. Its right to exist and to defend itself against terrorist attacks is constantly questioned.

For over 3,000 years, Israel has been the spiritual homeland of the Jewish people. Israel’s well-being is central to Jewish life.

show you support for Israel by signing our pledge - www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/petition

Holocaust Denial in the Catholic Church (3 replies)

WJC — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:07:50 +0200

Bishop Richard Williamson is a Holocaust denier. In a TV interview broadcast last year he reaffirmed his view that not a single Jew died in the Nazi concentration camp gas chambers. On 16 April he will be tried in a court in Germany for Holocaust denial.

The Pope has suspended Bishop Williamson and called on him to retract his statements. But despite widespread international condemnation, more than a year on, Bishop Williamson still has not retracted his statements nor apologized.

Lamentably Bishop Williamson is not alone in the Catholic Church. Other clergy hold and express similar views. At a time when Catholics and Jews throughout the world are striving to develop mutual respect, we call on Benedict XVI to ensure that there is no place in his Church for Holocaust denial nor those who practice it.

Please add your voice to this campaign, and sign our petition. http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/petition

Russell Simmons Speaks About The Power Of Black / Jewish Partnerships (no replies)

ChrisBarclay — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:08:53 +0100

(I was looking for the proper place to post this. Sorry if this is an inconvenience to move to another thread.)

http://chrisbarclay.com/blog/archives/672

The Power Of Black & Jewish Partnerships !
By Russell Simmons

There is no question about the well documented history where the Black and Jews have stood together in their fight for civil rights, equality and political power. But, not so much is said about the creative alliances in business where Blacks and Jews are and have been forging new businesses and ideas that have helped enable Blacks and Jews to enter the mainstream in American business. These are the partnerships that have and will create goodwill and change the future.

There are many examples of how Blacks and Jews have come together to fight against hatred and bigotry. In fact, as my friend Rabbi Marc Schneier at The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, often states (and he even wrote a book about it called Shared Dreams), that Dr. King was an ardent supporter of Israel and the Jewish people, including taking part in efforts to ease discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union and the safety and security of the State of Israel. Dr. King also spoke out strongly against anti-Semitism in the United States. We all know that no segment of the American population provided as much and as consistent support to Dr. King and to African Americans as did the Jewish community.

But, like any relationship, the bond between Jews and African-Americans has experienced its ups and its downs. However, despite claims to the contrary, the relationship between Blacks and Jews today remains strong.

Maybe it’s because the Jewish community has suffered from tremendous anti-Semitism throughout history and as a result of their plight, Jews have been able to better sympathize with the struggles facing Blacks. Or maybe it is because the Jewish community know that if it happens to the Black community it can also happen to them.

So for generations, Jews and Blacks have marched together in the streets of Birmingham and Washington, and shared the stage at venues in Harlem and elsewhere. Our two communities are not afraid to stand side by side, continually defying those who would prefer to see us behind solitary bars and forgotten, not in front of cheering crowds.

Rabbi Schneier and I, travel the country sharing these stories, discussing our tale with anyone who will listen - Blacks, Jews, or otherwise. This is true in synagogues and churches as well as college universities like Queens College – which Rabbi Schneier and I will address next week.

Despite the years of anti-Semitism, the Jewish community has not let the hatred of others hinder their ambitions or drive for success. The Jews have been resourceful and have stood together and time and time again prospered in business, medicine, law and entertainment. This is a great example of what a tight knit family and education can accomplish even against a world filled with shut doors and hate.

While I have many first hand experiences in records, jewelry, fashion, internet, tv, film, financial services, and much more, I have also noticed Jay Z, Puffy, and most of hip-hop out-branding the record business that is dying its own death, and building partnerships in areas previously reserved for white men. Both Jay Z and Puffy are truly creative entrepreneurs, and both have learned a lot of these skills from their Jewish partners and suppliers.

Entrepreneurs are usually raised in cultures that feed that free spirit that allows them to dream up new ideas and break the mold. Without documentation I can still safely state that in most hoods, and certainly in mine, going to school to "get a good job" was the goal.

But I built many businesses with Jews who didn't let school dim down their dreams and they were comfortable with the idea to let go of the idea of job security and fly. This I learned from Orthodox Jews, Syrian Jews, Reform Jews and other sects of Judaism. All of these communities have welcomed me.

Since the days when the white gang "The Green Ways" in Queens chased me into the white housing development where the kids and mothers accepted me, and I learned the difference between the "different whites in Queens," the Jewish community has proven to be a safe haven and a place to empower myself and other Blacks.

From our president to everyone in the hip-hop community, we have a strong history and partnership with the Jewish community and today I thought I would restate this fact in case there is any doubt about who else has struggled like Blacks and who else has stood by Blacks in our most difficult times. We know that we still have work to do, however, each individual must exude the kind of tolerance and love that we would want to receive ourselves. We must learn how to love everyone, not just within our own community, as the world is too small, and our potential is too great.

Nazi-like Iranian Cabal Charges Bahais With Spreading 'Corruption On Earth' A Historical Context: Part 1 (no replies)

RonPrice — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:00:06 +0100

Nazi-like Iranian Cabal
Charges Bahais With Spreading 'Corruption On Earth'
A Historical Context

In Iran’s Goebbels'-style show trial of 12 January 2010 in Teheran, a Nazi-like cabal has charged seven Bahá'ís with "spreading corruption on earth." This ridiculous charge against members of a peaceful religious community lends credence to the view that Iran is in the process of intensifying its official and systematic quasi-genocidal pogrom to exterminate the Bahá'í Faith from Iran. This threat of genocide is part of a process that has been an on-again-off-again exercise in Iran for more than a century and a half.

The charges against these seven Bahá'í leaders in Iran are so ludicrous that if it were not for the severity of the consequences related to their trial, the charges would be laughable. Yet no one is laughing. That's because the knavish Nazi-like Iranian cabal of religious clerics has charged Bahá'ís with Mofsed fel-Arz. In English this translates as spreading corruption on earth.

The penalty in Iran for this crime is death. It's not very funny when the possible consequence is murder by hanging. There are other charges against the seven according to accounts in government-sponsored news media. These charges include: espionage, propaganda activities against the Islamic order, the establishment of an illegal administration, cooperation with Israel, sending secret documents outside the country, acting against the security of the country, and Mofsed fel-Arz.

“The international Bahá'í community finds these charges completely outrageous given that these seven people have been held purely because of their religious beliefs. The charges are also in total denial of their legitimate human rights and in contradiction of any natural and humane community standards," said Diane Ala'i, the Baha'i International Community's representative to the United Nations in Geneva.

The Iranian mass media quote the tyrannical Islamic regime in stories, and, if the world is fortunate, the quotations from this mass media will include a statement by the Bahá'í International Community. This story in 21st century Iran is much like the one in Germany between 1933 and 1945. It’s much like quoting Goebbels or Hitler in the run-up to The Holocaust and then balancing their quotes with quotations from Western sources decrying the threat to Jews in Germany and the rest of Europe.

It’s not just a dangerous exercise in journalistic "objectivity" that the media play. It’s dishonest, unjust and criminal. By pretensions of objectivity, the media grant legitimacy to tyrannical, oppressive and murderous regimes for the sake of appearing "balanced." Such media coverage shows how contemporary journalism shames itself by holding to the myth of presenting "both" sides in every story.

Yet there are not two sides in the equation of quasi-genocide when a tyrannical regime is the one that holds all the power and does all the murdering. That is especially true when one needs to consider that the Bahá'í Faith's laws--which guide Bahá'ís throughout the world—prohibit the Bahá'ís from resorting to any sort of violence against a regime to resist their religious persecution.

Thus, the Baha’is are easy pickings for such genocidal regimes and their misguided adherents who have semi-deified the Islamic Republic of Iran. In Iran, Bahá'ís are the ideal scapegoats for a criminal regime that attempts to distract the public's attention from problems caused by that very same regime. Mythical threats posed by Iran's largest religious minority of approximately 300,000 adherents in a country of nearly 75 million are an old story going back to the 19th century.

With a numerical advantage of 1 to 250 one has to wonder what the Islamic clerics fear. Perhaps they fear the truth. Perhaps that is what the clerics have always feared. Iranians should be ashamed for their complicity in allowing the genocide of Bahá'ís to continue for at least five generations with hardly a whisper of opposition. Indeed, some academics have recently expressed their public shame on an internet document/letter in their continuing to ignore the treatment of the Iranian Baha’i community for over a century.

For generations Iranians have been coming for and at the Bahá'ís and treating them with unbelievable atrocities. No one complained because it did no good. Often groups of Iranians came for the Bahá'ís and killed hundreds of them; periodically since 1844 the Babi-Bahá’í religion has seen thousands of its adherents slaughtered. The total dead in modern history is, arguably: 25000 to 30000 from 1844 to 2010.

This quasi-genocidal experience over some 17 decades and humanity's near silence and inaction has got lost in a sea of other international atrocities and tempests. In recent years and months it is clear that the Iranian government and its several arms of authority have turned on a wide cross-section of the Iranian people—not just the Baha’is. Now Iran, so very tragically and so very sadly, is beginning to reap the fruit of the harvest that generations of religious intolerance has sowed.

In 1979 the Iranian people threw off a despotism and swept its counterfeit claims to modernity into history's dustbin. Their revolution was the achievement of the combined forces of many groups, but its driving force was the ideals of Islam. In place of wanton self-indulgence, people were promised lives of dignity and decency. Gross inequities of class and wealth would be overcome by the spirit of brotherhood enjoined by God. The natural resources with which providence has endowed so fortunate a land were declared to be the patrimony of the entire Iranian people, to be used to provide universal employment and education. A new "Islamic Constitution" ostensibly enshrined solemn guarantees of equality before the law for all citizens of the republic. Government would endeavour conscientiously to combine spiritual values with the principles of democratic choice.

How do such promises relate to the experience being described after more than 30 years by the great majority of Iran's population? From all sides today one hears cries of protest against endemic corruption, political manipulation, the mistreatment of women, a shameless violation of human rights and the suppression of thought. What is the effect on public consciousness, one must further ask, of appeals to the authority of the Holy Qur'an to justify policies that lead to such conditions?

Iran's crisis of civilization will be resolved neither by blind imitation of an obviously defective Western culture nor by retreat into medieval ignorance. One of the most appalling afflictions, in terms of its tragic consequences of Iran’s flight into a quasi-medievalism, has been the slander of the Bahá'í Cause perpetrated by that privileged caste to whom Persia's masses had been taught to look for guidance in spiritual matters. For over 150 years, every medium of public information-- pulpit, press, radio, television and even scholarly publication--has been perverted to create an image of the Bahá'í community and its beliefs that is grossly false and whose sole aim is to arouse popular contempt and antagonism. No calumny has been too vile; no lie too outrageous.

At no point during those long years were the Iranian Baha’is, the victims of this vilification, given an opportunity, however slight, to defend themselves and to provide the facts that would have exposed such calculated poisoning of the public mind. This show-trial in Teheran is just the latest chapter in what is now approaching to be two centuries of persecution of the Bahá'í Faith.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above article has been paraphrased and edited by Ron Price, a Bahá'í living in Tasmania. The original article was located at the internet site Bahá'í epistolary and was posted at that site on January 12th 2010 by Glenn Franco Simmons. This article by Ron Price has also drawn on information from: (a) another news item dated 20/1/’10 at the internet site: Bahá'í World News Service of the International Bahá'í Community and (b) from a letter of the Universal House of Justice dated 26 November 2003. Ron Price thanks all three of these sources in putting together this brief historical comment on the present trial of the seven Baha’is in Iran.
(1300 words)

Dore gold on US Iran policy (2 replies)

judyinjerusalem — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:55:27 +0100

In a paper released today, former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold says: "The common assumption in Washington policy circles today is that even if Iran reaches the nuclear finish-line, the U.S. can fall back on the same Cold War deterrence that was used against the Soviet nuclear arsenal. However, Iran is a true revolutionary power whose aspirations extend into the oil-producing states. It is involved in both the Afghan and Iraqi insurgencies, while its support for terrorism reaches into Lebanon, Gaza, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. With Iran threatening the flow of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz as well, through which roughly 40 percent of the world's oil flows, the nuclearization of Iran has global - and not just Middle Eastern - implications."

To read the complete article go to www.jcpa.org

The Iranian Elections - free and fair? (no replies)

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:10:06 +0200

How fair were the recent Presidental elections in Iran?

WJC Petition for a boycott of Ahmadinejad at the UN (5 replies)

admin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:14:55 +0100

The WJC has a launched a petition calling on the members of the UN General Assembly to boycott Ahmadinejad's speech to the Assembly at the end of September 2009.

Have you signed the petition? What do you think it will achieve?