The Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Incidents of 2014

Calling this year one of “unprecedented explosions of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hatred,” the Simon Wiesenthal Center released its list of the top Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel incidents in the world during the past 12 months. An eerie reminder of the hatred building across the world eighty years ago, most of the incidents described took place in European countries ranging from Belgium to Hungary. Arguably the number one organization protecting Jews against Anti-Semitism across the world, The Wiesenthal Center believes these ten examples are tragically indicative of burgeoning threats and challenges to the Jewish people not encountered since the end of WWII. Their list was good, but it only told part of the story.

The number one incident was the outrageous story of a doctor in the Belgian city of Antwerp who refused to treat a 90 year-old Jewish woman who’d broken a rib. He told the woman’s son who had called in her behalf, “Send her to Gaza for a few hours, then she will get rid of the pain. I’m not coming,” he said and hung up.

A doctor in Belgium refused medical help to a 90-year-old Jewish woman with a fractured rib, telling her son who called the medical hotline on her behalf: “Send her to Gaza for a few hours, then she will get rid of the pain. I’m not coming,” he said and hung up.

Earlier in the year, a shop in Antwerp refused to serve a woman because she was Jewish, and a café in Liège has a sign hung with the message ‘Dogs welcome, Jews not.”

The center also pointed out that Belgium was the site of the deadliest attack on a Jewish target this year, when a terrorist murdered four people during a gun attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May.

Second on the list was the Jordanian Parliament, which held a moment of silence for the Palestinian who butchered four Rabbis during Shachariet prayers in a Shul in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood and also killed the Druze policeman who tried to protect them.

“I ask God to envelop them with mercy and to grant you with patience, comfort and recovery from your grief…” wrote Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour to the families of the terrorists.”

Third was one of the many Anti-Semitic incidents in France. In December, criminals forced their way into an apartment in the Paris suburb of Creteil, they tied up a young, Jewish man and woman. “Tell us where you hide the money,” one of the assailants demanded, “You Jews always have money,” as they ransacked the house and raped the 19-year-old woman.”

According to French Interior Minister Cazeneuve, it was a hate crime; he confirmed the “anti-Semitic nature (of the attack)…” adding that the criminals “Started with the idea that being Jewish means having money.”

It was a particularly violent year for Jew-hatred in France. A recent poll revealed that things have gotten so bad 74% of France's Jewish population have contemplated leaving the country to escape Anti-Semitism and to "preserve their Judaism."

Moving to Germany for the next incident, the Wiesenthal Center related the incident, which took the day after commemoration of the anniversary of Kristallnacht. The Left party invited notorious Anti-Semites and Israel-bashers, Max Blumenthal and David Sheen to present one of their “expert talks” in the Party’s meeting room in the Bundestag.
Blumenthal Jew-hatred casts Zionism as racism and he likes to paint Israel with Nazi imagery. “That was too much for top party leader Gregor Gysi who canceled the usage of the Party’s meeting room. The incident came to be known as “Toiletgate” because Gysi was forced to barricade himself in a bathroom to escape the wrath of Blumenthal and Sheen.”

Turkish columnist, Faruk Köse, published in Yeni Akit, a newspaper close to the Erdogan government, that the Turkish government levy a special tax on the country’s Jews and any Jews who do business in the country as a way to pay reparations to the people of Gaza after Operation Protective Edge. Köse also demanded as punishment for a failure to pay a Jew’s business license should be revoked and his property seized. There was no mention of the Hamas terrorism that provoked Israel to attack Gaza and eliminate the threat against her population.

Other incidents listed included the demand by the leader of the extreme right-wing Sweden Democrats, Björn Söder, that Jews must give up their Jewish identity in order to be considered full Swedes, the hanging of effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin by the anti-Semitic mayor of Erpatek in Hungary, and the growing support for the Anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in U.S. academic circles, and the murder of three people at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park Kansas

Not mentioned by the SWC was the blood libel of the mainstream media during the Gaza War claiming that Israel wasn’t doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties while ignoring Hamas’ use of human shields and President Obama’s stance that Jews were not allowed to purchase homes from Arabs in East Jerusalem, or the Anti-Semitism which runs rampant among the broadcasters at MSNBC.

The summer of 2014 saw Anti-Semitic rallies and protest across Europe and the United States, synagogues, Jewish institutions, and people were attacked in the name of supporting Hamas and the people of Gaza. Even in the Governments of Europe, the terrorist records of Anti-Israel organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah were ignored, as were the incitement of hatred by the supposedly moderate Fatah and Palestinian Authority. Qatar a country charged with funding the terrorist Hamas became a more important ally to the west. Even the US government Middle East negotiator Martin Indyk was revealed to be on the payroll of the terrorist-funding Qatar. And as the year drew to a close, the Obama Administration used a willing Jew writing for The Atlantic as a tool to scapegoat the Prime Minister of the Jewish State, or as they called him “chicken sh*t.”

Sadly 2014 was a year of increasing acceptance of Jew-hatred and Israel hatred in the mainstream media, at the top levels of government across the world and in the social fabric of polite society.