Today is a landmark judgment that has been brought against Alison Chabloz who was convicted of two counts of causing obscene material to be sent and one of sending obscene material. These incidents occurred in 2016. It is another line that is drawn on those who think that freedom of expression entitles them to make grossly offensive and menacing statements: in Chabloz’s case, denying the Holocaust and accusing Jewish people, including Holocaust survivors, of fabricating claims of genocide.

Holocaust denial is far more than a false presentation of history. So-called Holocaust ‘revisionists’ are motivated by their own Jew-hatred.  Their aim is to expose the Jewish people to further hatred by making the indefensible claim that Jews are lying about a historical reality which destroyed the lives of more than a third of the world’s Jewish population.

I have seen the impacts of the Holocaust first-hand having visited the death camps in Poland and the Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust’s victims.  I saw the personal items of those who walked to their deaths in the vain hope that they were having a shower. They were killed because they were Jews.  Seeing the shoes, the wedding rings, the photographs and confiscated property left an indelible mark on me. It is our duty to never forget the victims and to educate the generations that come after us about the vicious consequences of antisemitism.

The sad reality is that people like Chabloz are adept at exploiting people and playing off communities against each other to further their malicious aims. Chabloz even attempted to use the national project opposing hatred against Muslims, Tell MAMA, to pursue her vendetta against Jewish people.  In 2013 and 2014, she sent written reports to Tell MAMA in the hope that this would lead to the investigation and humiliation of Jewish people for pushing anti-Muslim hatred.  In reality, she didn’t care about the Muslim community or the Tell MAMA project.  This was a disguised attempt to target Jews, because they were Jewish. In September 2014, when we learned of Chabloz’s disturbing antisemitic views, we cut off all communication. I am glad to see that today justice has been served.   

There’s a lesson for all of us here.  In the fight against hatred and discrimination, not everyone who offers help and assistance is a friend. Their smiles may hide other motives, reinforcing the need for enhanced due diligence and vetting of sources.  Alison Chabloz’s antisemitism and Holocaust denial show her true colours, which run totally contrary to the values of Tell MAMA, which works closely with groups like the Community Security Trust.

That’s why Tell MAMA and Faith Matters have added layers of compulsory internal due diligence checks on all those who communicate or engage with us. Whilst this has increased our admin load, rigorous vetting is essential in today’s world. Chabloz’s attempt to divide the Muslim and Jewish communities has also resulted in us seeking to work ever more closely with Jewish communities in the fight against antisemitism. We are partnering with the Jewish community to ensure that the younger generation understand what antisemitism is and that it is an affront not only to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, but also the dignity of Jewish communities today.

We must send out the strongest possible message that no-one can take sides in the battle against hate. There is no ‘picking and choosing’. In the end, antisemites have no problem abusing both Jews and Muslims – something we must never forget.

To effectively fight anti-Muslim hate we must all of us learn about the unique hatred that is antisemitism. I, for one, have sought to further my understanding of Jewish history, culture and heritage. I think it’s important that everyone travels to the sites in Europe where the crimes of the Holocaust were committed and pays homage to the memories of those Jewish brothers and sisters that were murdered only because they were Jewish. Seeing what the Jewish people endured only 70 years ago has helped me see why we should never allow the flags and symbols of terrorist groups that have a history of kidnapping and murdering Jews to be displayed on the streets of London.

We must protect the memory of the Holocaust, highlight it, shout about it.  It’s everyone’s responsibility to tackle anti-Semitism wherever it is found.   Hatred against Jews is an attack on our society as a whole and an attack on our common values. It’s our responsibility to show our Jewish brothers and sisters that they are not alone.

Fiyaz Mughal was the Director of Tell MAMA from 2012-2017 and is the Director of Faith Matters

We are pleased to announce that the Role of Righteous Muslims exhibition boards that Faith Matters put together as part of an educational drive for civil society organisations and schools, has been accepted by a Holocaust Museum in the United States.

The posters depict stories of Muslims who saved Jews in the Holocaust and the educational boards will be placed within the Holocaust Museum in the United States to ensure that people reflect on such stories and on the personal drives that led some Muslims to save the lives of Jews that they had lived, worked with or known.

We are pleased to add to the collection and exhibition of the museum in the United States and we would be happy to donate a further set to any Holocaust educational centre who thinks that they can add value to learning around the Holocaust. It is vital that all communities be exposed to learning about the greatest catastrophe to befit Jewish and other communities in modern history and how communities can be castigated and dehumanised within a short space of time.

The leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on Tuesday, laying a wreath under the engraved names of towns in Austria from where Jews were expelled by the Nazis.

He said anti-Semitism had no place in his party and urged a common front against Islamists.

Strache’s party, which last year expelled a member of its parliamentary group for anti-Semitic comments, has sought to redress the worst of its past while retaining popular support with outspoken opposition to Muslim migration.

During his visit, Strache kept a Fedora hat firmly on his head as a sign of respect and declined to answer questions. But afterwards he explained why he was visiting Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Communities, where the names of 5,000 towns and cities where Jews once lived are listed on monumental stone walls.

“For us, it’s important to act against anti-Semitism and also against Islamism and terrorism and to discuss the issues we have in common,” he told Reuters by telephone. “Anti-Semitism often emerges anew from Islamism and from the left.”

The Israeli foreign ministry said it had nothing to do with Strache’s visit and the Austrian embassy in Tel Aviv also said it was not involved. Strache said he was invited by Likud, the right-wing party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We have a lot in common,” Strache said of Likud. “I always say, if one defines the Judeo-Christian West, then Israel represents a kind of border. If Israel fails, Europe fails. And if Europe fails, Israel fails.”

Michael Kleiner, a Likud party member and a former lawmaker, confirmed to Israel’s Army Radio that Strache had been invited by his party and said he was a friend of Israel.

RISING FORCE

Strache, 46, is a rising political force in Austria. His the Freedom Party won 20 percent of the vote in the small Alpine republic’s last elections in 2013. In some recent polls its support has been put at as much as 30 percent.

Strache, who failed in a bid to become mayor of Vienna last year, has himself been accused of anti-Semitism in the past.

In 2012, he was vilified over a cartoon posted on his Facebook page that depicted a fat banker with a hooked nose and six-pointed star buttons on his sleeve. The banker was gorging himself at the expense of a thin man representing “the people”.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer called it “the low point of political culture which deserves to be universally and roundly condemned”. Strache denied being anti-Semitic and has since repeatedly denounced anti-Semitism.

The memorial Strache visited on Tuesday is a poignant reminder of the impact of persecution on a race. Asked what thoughts this prompted about the displacement of Muslims, he said the two could not be compared.

“Every time people are driven away from their homes it’s dramatic,” he said, mentioning the threat from Islamic State insurgents in Syria and Iraq. “All of us in the western-liberal, Judeo-Christian community with common values must stand up against this inhumanity.”

 (Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla in Vienna; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt/Mark Heinrich)

The story of Muslims in the Holocaust is deliberately and mischeviously being re-written post 9/11 as though Muslims supported the efforts of the Nazis. The vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims supported the war efforts against the Nazis and fought for the liberation of France, for England and King and Country and in the battlefields of Burma, South East Asia and Italy. There were those in the minority who misguidedly supported the Nazis who won their support by manipulating local tensions and issues. The Bosnian brigades are an example of this and these elements cannot be written out, nor should they be. Localised tensions and ethnic divides were used to manipulate groups to join the Nazi effort and 60 years later, many Bosnian Muslims were they themselves persecuted and killed in a genocide by Serbs who created death camps and who used rape as a weapon of war against many Bosnian women.

We also take this opportunity to honour those, regarded as ‘Righteous’ by Yad Vashem, who were Muslim and who have been honoured for risking their lives and the lives of their families in protecting the lives of persecuted Jews. These are their names. May their names and the names of others live on in history and be a source of pride for Muslims and people who believe in the value of life.

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NEW YORK (JTA) — In April 1941, members of the Kavilio family of Sarajevo fled their house as Nazis rampaged through the city destroying Jewish homes. As they ran toward the mountainside, a Muslim friend of the family, Mustafa Hardaga, spotted them and offered shelter.

Shortly after, when Josef Kavilio thought the family could be moved to safety, the Kavilios relocated to Mostar, an area under Italian control, but Josef stayed behind. He was arrested by the Nazis and held captive in chains in the freezing snow.

Hardaga’s wife, Zejneba, found Kavilio and smuggled him food until she could help him escape to safety, where he stayed with the Hardaga family again. Kavilio later rejoined his family, but their relative security did not last. When the area fell under German control, the Kavilios again sought refuge with the Hardagas.

Decades later the Kavilios, by now living in Israel, petitioned the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem to recognize the Hardagas’ bravery and name them Righteous Gentiles.

To read more click here for the source: JTA By Lauren Greenberg, July 21, 2010