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Highlights from Sebastian Kurz's Keynote Speech on EU-Israel Relations and Jewish Life in Europe
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Gaza Media Rules
Rule Number 1: Don’t report the facts. In this must-read satire column for New Europe, Daniel Schwammenthal, Director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute, offers a 10-point reporter’s guide for gullible journalists who are covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and want to demonstrate that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Israel and Gaza: Moral Clarity, Moral Fog
In this forceful column for The Times of Israel, AJC CEO David Harris issues a powerful call for moral clarity. “Hamas celebrates death, something too few outside observers can truly understand,” he writes. “Israel celebrates life... And it is determined to defend life — as it should, as it must.”
AJC Welcomes MEP Letter to EU Commission to End Incitement in Palestinian Textbooks
5 May 2021 – Brussels – The AJC Transatlantic Institute welcomed a letter by 17 Members of the European Parliament to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urging the Commission to help end the widespread incitement and glorification of martyrdom in textbooks issued by the Palestinian...
The Growth of Transatlantic Far-Right Networks
The storming of Capitol Hill on 6 January shocked Americans and Europeans alike. However, to analysts studying the online disinformation and extremist ecosystem, the events were hardly surprising. And there even was a recent precedent: In August 2020, far-right groups brandishing QAnon and neo-Nazi flags had rioted on the steps of the Bundestag. Watch this timely discussion featuring Jacob Davey and Jakob Guhl, both from the UK-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), on how governments and civil society can combat the growing far-right networks spanning across the Atlantic. The event was moderated by AJC Berlin Senior Associate Eric Adamson.
HRW Defames Israel - AJC Reacts
Last week Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel of pursuing a policy of “apartheid and persecution.” AJC Director for Diplomatic Affairs Aaron Jacob exposes the HRW report’s most glaring biases, including the organization’s attempt to portray the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as racial in nature when, in fact, it is “a political conflict between two peoples with competing national goals – and should be addressed as such. Attempts to transform it into a racial or religious conflict make it much more difficult to resolve. By embracing the two-state solution and making generous peace overtures, Israel has made it abundantly clear that it does not want to rule the Palestinians.”
Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
On 19 April 1943, the vastly outnumbered and outgunned Jewish members of the Warsaw Ghetto underground rose up against the German Nazi occupiers. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the single largest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Marking 78 years since the courageous uprising, Dr. Sebastian Rejak, Acting Director of AJC Central Europe, hosted Marian Turski, a 94-year-old Auschwitz death camp survivor, for a special conversation commemorating this heroic chapter in Jewish history and its enduring legacy.
Why the Armenian Genocide Matters Today
April 24th marked the annual commemoration of the Armenian genocide, the systematic annihilation of approximately 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. U.S. President Joe Biden’s recognition of the genocide was a groundbreaking event, one that American Jewish Committee (AJC) had long been advocating for. AJC CEO David Harris explains why in his latest op-ed in The Times of Israel.
Kuwait Airways Denies Boarding to Israeli in Germany
Five years ago, Kuwait Airways denied boarding to a student living in Germany because of his Israeli citizenship. The state-owned airline cited the country's own antisemitic 1964 boycott law. AJC Berlin Senior Associate Annina Fichtner argues in Jüdische Allgemeine that Berlin must urgently take decisive action to end this anti-Jewish discrimination on German soil: “If the fight against antisemitism is not to be simply lip service, and as long as Kuwait Airways is not prepared to make any changes, Germany should resort to suspending the airline's take-off and landing rights.”
Hamburg Cooperates with Supporters of Terrors and Antisemites
Backed by the city of Hamburg through an official state cooperation agreement since 2012, the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) is Iran’s direct affiliate in Germany. According to German intelligence, the IZH is Tehran's most important hub in Europe. "The Islamic Center Hamburg is not only tasked with spreading Iran's antisemitic, anti-democratic, misogynistic, and homophobic state ideology, but serves as a hub for Hamburg’s Hezbollah supporters," writes AJC Berlin Director Remko Leemhuis in this Welt opinion article calling on the city state to ban the IZH and its activities.
Energy Diplomacy Opens New Chapter of Independence for Greece
As modern Greece marked its bicentennial this month, celebrating the nation’s emergence from 400 years of rule under the Ottoman Empire, the recent discovery of natural gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean continues to energize the Israel-Greece-Cyprus trilateral relationship. Backed by the U.S., the region is fast transforming into a real political and economic hub. For the first time, a major source of natural gas in the region is controlled largely by Western democracies. AJC Senior Director of Policy and Political Affairs, Julie Fishman Rayman, writes in the Greek daily Kathimerini that Greece and Cyprus, the U.S., and the entire region have much to gain from deepening this strategic partnership.