The Algemeiner quoted our tweet marking the anniversary of the March 17, 1992 terrorist bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.

Israeli, Jewish, and Argentine leaders and institutions commemorated on Wednesday the anniversary of the March 17, 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 people.

A memorial service was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Israel’s embassy in Argentina produced a video in which the presidents and foreign ministers of Argentina and Israel, the Israeli ambassador to Argentina, and many others said the Spanish word “presente” — figuratively meaning “remember.”

Foreign Minister Ashkenazi marked the anniversary in a speech, saying, “We remember with pain the 29 victims of the attack and the dozens of injured, victims of a criminal act of terrorism.”

“We send our condolences to the families of those killed and our support to the injured,” he continued. “My heart and the hearts of the people of Israel are with the families of the victims, including the Israeli diplomats, their spouses, the dedicated Argentinian workers at the embassy, the passers-by who were caught up in the attack, and with the entire people of Argentina who also fell victim to such a severe terrorist attack.”

“Twenty-nine years have passed, and to this day none of those responsible for the criminal act have been brought to justice,” Ashkenazi noted. “This despite the fact that it is known that Iran was behind not only this attack but also the attack on the AMIA Jewish center that took place two years later, in 1994, in which 85 people were killed and hundreds were injured.”

“The State of Israel will continue to stand with the families of the fallen and demand that Argentina brings those responsible for the attack to justice,” he said.

Dan Poraz, a policy advisor to Israel’s Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, outlined the attack in a Twitter thread, mourning the 29 victims — including three Israeli diplomats who left nine children behind — and noting the findings that Iran was behind the attack.

A joint Israeli-US-Argentine investigation, Poraz wrote, found that the attacks were authorized by Iran’s current “supreme leader” Ali Khamenei and that Hezbollah was ordered to carry out the atrocity by Iran’s minister of intelligence. Also collaborating in the attack were Iran’s ambassador and cultural attaché to Argentina.

“Since the ‘79 Islamic Revolution, the Iranian regime sees terror as a legitimate instrument to promote its political interests. #Iran has attempted, and in many cases succeeded, to carry out terror attacks, in all 5 continents,” Poraz said.

The American Jewish Committee tweeted, “We mourn the 29 people murdered and remember the heroism of those who saved lives. AJC awarded one of the heroes, U.S. Marine Corps Lt. B.G. Willison, our Moral Courage Award in 2017.”

The IDF tweeted, “Today, we remember the victims of the terror attack carried out by Hezbollah at the Israeli Embassy in Argentina 29 years ago.”

“Hezbollah’s terror is not only a threat to Israel but to the entire world,” it added.

B’nai Brith International commented, “The perpetrators must be brought to justice!”
“May those lost forever be a blessing,” they added.

Jason Greenblatt, who served as a Middle East advisor to the Trump administration, tweeted in response, “Thank you @IDF for all that you do to protect the Jewish State of Israel. Thank you for reminding people about this terrible attack at the Israeli Embassy in Argentina 29 years ago.”

“And let’s not forget who is behind Hezbollah and the murder & destruction that they cause,” he added, referring to Iran.

Remembrances came in from Argentina as well, with Álvaro González — a Buenos Aires deputy for the political coalition “Juntos por el Cambio” — tweeting in Spanish, “29 years after the attack on the Israeli embassy, we remember the victims and we continue to demand justice.”

B’nai B’rith International CEO Daniel Mariaschin called it “a cheap shot at Jewish customs” that plays into “blood libel” stereotypes, while the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s (SWC) associate dean and director of global social action Rabbi Abraham Cooper expressed outrage and frustration that in the media “no one else is fair game except our community.”

Their anger was directed at NBC, which has received significant backlash in the Jewish community for airing programming on two recent occasions that has been labeled by many as promoting “classic anti-Semitic tropes.”

One of the two offending incidents occurred on Feb. 9 airing of the drama, “Nurses,” which featured a young hasidic or Orthodox boy named Israel who injured his leg and is warned by his father not to accept a bone graft because it might come from a woman or Arab donor; and the Feb. 20 airing of the Weekend Update segment of Saturday Night Live (SNL) where host and chief writer Michael Che quipped, “Israel is reporting that they vaccinated half of their population. I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half.”

In the “Nurses” episode Israel asks, “You want to put a dead leg inside me?” and the father responds, “A dead goyim leg from anyone—an Arab, a woman” and tells his son that the “Creator” will heal him. The son ultimately refuses the graft. There are no prohibitions in Judaism against receiving a bone graft from a cadaver.

In response to the controversy, NBC has pulled the “Nurses” episode from all its digital platforms but has not commented on either show.

“Nurses” is a Canadian series that was picked up by NBC in late 2020 to fill holes in its original programming schedule caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The two incidents engendered swift and strong response from both national and local Jewish organizations that accused the network of spreading lies about Jews and Judaism, particularly Orthodoxy and Israel.

“There needs to be recognition and sensitivity in media outlets to the Jewish community and community practices,” Mariaschin told The Jewish Link in a phone interview from his Washington office. “It’s not humor and it’s not even good drama.”

He said NBC pulling the “Nurses” episode was insufficient and the network needed to apologize for its portrayal of the Orthodox community and its failure to research Jewish practices, although he said there is an industry-wide problem of insensitivity to the concerns and practices of the Jewish community.

“This is a blood libel and what Michael Che was able to do was what has been done since the Middle Ages about blood libels, that what we want to do is harm others,” said Mariaschin of the SNL piece. “There are millions of people in those audiences. What they heard was not only wrong, but outrageously wrong and we don’t want them learning about our community through off-handed comments.”

However, he expressed optimism the negative publicity resulting from these incidents might serve as a wake-up call to the industry.

Read the full article here.

​Paramedics and EMTs with MedStar in Fort Worth got a special dinner Wednesday from Jewish service organization B’nai B’rith, the group’s way of showing their thanks.

“They worked through this pandemic and most recently through the winter storms and we wanted to show our thanks for that,” said Dan Sturman, vice president of the local B’nai B’rith chapter.

MedStar is the fourth group of frontline workers to receive this thanks since last year. Before COVID-19 found its way to Texas, B’nai B’rith served food to the firefighters at Fire Station 26 on Hulen Street and to the police at south division. Since COVID hit, the group delivered food to COVID ICU nurses and, now, MedStar.

​This time, the service group brought meals for 70 paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers and other MedStar employees. Each meal came in a bag with a Jason’s Deli box lunch and a frozen chicken dinner, homemade with fried chicken, mashed potatoes and asparagus., for later.

Paramedic George Webster said the recognition was special to him because a lot of times it seems that MedStar’s work goes unnoticed.

​“Of course we don’t do this for recognition, but it is nice to see and to know that our work makes a difference,” Webster said.

Alex Nason, president of the local B’nai B’rith chapter, said he got the idea to bring food to MedStar when they responded to a call from his house.

Nason’s wife, Sophia Nason, was feeling unwell but didn’t want to go to the hospital. When Alex Nason called MedStar, they came and sat with Sophia Nason, monitoring her condition, until she was feeling better.

But Nason said they deserved the recognition for all the work they’ve done in the past year, and that’s one of the things his organization exists for.

“We are a bunch of people who want to make a difference in the community,” Nason said. “Sometimes that’s in the Jewish community and sometimes that’s just in the community as a whole.”

​The event was also attended by Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes and City Councilmember Brian Byrd.

Leading American Jewish and pro-Israel groups condemned the International Criminal Court’s decision Wednesday to open an investigation into alleged war crimes in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem.

“The ICC’s effort to intrude into matters outside its mandate undermine its credibility and legitimacy, and cast significant doubt on its future as an unbiased judicial forum,” said leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in a statement.

“By continuing these efforts to weaponize a judicial institution for political purposes, the Palestinian Authority inflames existing tensions and obstructs the path to peace,” continued Conference Chairman Arthur Stark, CEO William Daroff and Vice Chair Malcolm Hoenlein. “We call on the international community to speak out in forceful objection to this disgraceful action by the ICC.”

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda — whose term ends in June — announced the investigation in a statement Wednesday, several weeks after an ICC ruling that the court had jurisdiction in the territories.

B’nai B’rith International President Charles O. Kaufman and CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin argued that the ICC had no such jurisdiction, and that Israel’s legal system was capable of investigating any alleged offenses.

“The acquiescence of the prosecutor to politicize the ICC and exploit it as a propaganda tool not only batters the standing of the court and distracts it from truly grievous and systematic crimes around the world, but also intolerably stands to handicap law-abiding nations’ abilities, rights and fundamental duties to combat the brutal asymmetric warfare of terrorist organizations,” they said.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee called the probe “a baseless and discriminatory attack on the Jewish state” in a statement.

“The outrageous investigations into America & Israel represent significant overreaches of the ICC’s mandate and jurisdiction that must be condemned by the administration and Congress,” it continued.

Hardly a day passes without reading of someone, somewhere uttering an antisemitic trope. That part is not new; for millennia, this has been the norm. In the pre-Internet era, one could read, primarily in the Jewish media, about an antisemitic public official, a neo-Nazi, or a desk clerk at a restricted hotel uttering hateful comments or spinning conspiracies about Jews.

What is new, or relatively so, is that today we’re learning of Jew-hatred in real time, within hours of it being spouted. It comes from expected, and from unexpected, quarters. And sometimes it’s simply the portrayal of Jews that sends an antisemitic message.

Take the recent Canadian-produced NBC series “Nurses,” whose premise centers around five nurses and the lives and people they interact with. The most recent episode involved a young Hasidic accident victim named Israel and his father, whom we meet in a hospital room, where they’re engaged in conversation with one of the nurses.

The young Hasid needs a bone graft, he is told, and that will require using the bone of a cadaver. Israel expresses shock at the idea of having a “dead leg” inserted into his body, to which his father — dressed in a Hasidic black hat and coat, and wearing payot — says disgustedly: “A dead goyim leg — from anyone. An Arab, a woman.” The nurse, belittling both the father and son, responds: “Or, God forbid, an Arab woman.”

Never mind that Orthodox practice would allow for this graft, much more important, is that the picture presented to the viewer is classic antisemitism. Dressed in black and closed-minded (with one of them literally named Israel), the message is that these Jews are both peculiar and bigoted.

Any stereotyping is dangerous. But the Orthodox community often gets the brunt of this kind of instant presumptuousness. They are portrayed as an oddity or as an easy foil. The show made no attempt to give any kind of context to Orthodox Jewry or its medical worldview. The writers of this episode needed highly identifiable Jews to make the story work — and who cares about who might be hurt as long as it fits neatly into the one-hour timeframe.

But murderous attacks on Jews in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Poway, California, or Monsey, New York, are just a few examples of how antisemitic rhetoric can turn violent.

My guess is that most viewers of this program are not Jewish. Those who know us only at a distance would understandably not know about how diverse we are. We have a communal spectrum that runs from left to right, and everything in between, and includes the religious and the secular. Is the viewer’s education about the Jewish people to be gleaned from the likes of “Nurses” and other highly watched programs that traffic in biased presentations about sectors of our community?

I’m old enough to remember episodes of “Dr. Kildare,” “Gunsmoke,” and other TV dramas, that treated Jewish subjects with compassion and a seriousness of intent. That those programs aired at a time when Jews were subjected to admissions quotas, restricted neighborhoods, corporate glass ceilings, and other forms of discrimination made this treatment of Jews all-the-more important in fostering mutual respect.

Today though, in the broader world around us, there seems to be a growing tolerance toward anyone saying anything about whomever they wish, without any filter or fear of opprobrium. And increasingly, Jews have become the target.

“Saturday Night Live’s” Michael Che delivering a blood libel about Israel and the COVID vaccine masked as a “joke”; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)’s assertion that a Jewish space laser and the Rothschild family were responsible for California’s wildfires; and Lowell, Massachusetts, School Committee board member Robert Hoey’s referring to a former city employee as a “kike” on live public access TV are just a few very recent examples of what is becoming a frightening trend.

The Canadian producer of “Nurses” has apologized for the offensive episode, and NBC has pulled this episode and others from the air.

“Contrition tours,” where networks, politicians, comedians, and others offer a quick, “If I offended anyone, I’m sorry,” or give apology interviews with friendly journalists, is one way of getting these kinds of controversies quickly out of the way. But that is not enough.

The media can play a large role in sensitivity training for the public at large, but first it needs to take a course or two itself. Playing off Jewish stereotypes for shock value, or for a few laughs, is both irresponsible and reckless.

We need to see more positive programming about the Jewish community and its many contributions — in so many fields — to this country. School systems need to utilize textbooks that teach about our story as an immigrant people who came to America from dozens of countries to find a land of opportunity denied to them in the darker corners of Europe and elsewhere. And while people may know a bit about the Jewish religion, more attention needs to be paid to its history, customs, and traditions. Doing that might prevent a repeat of the “Nurses” debacle.

In May, we will observe the 15th anniversary of Jewish American Heritage Month. While positive programming about our community should be a 12-month-a-year endeavor, this special designation on the national calendar offers many opportunities for educators, government officials, media operatives, and others to spotlight our community in a positive way.

The danger we face is the mainstreaming of antisemitism. Where once these expressions of hatred were confined to the margins or were never discovered because there simply was no Internet megaphone, today they are seemingly everywhere, including network television.

As is often said, it may start with the Jews, but it never ends there. It’s not just about us: just follow what is written or said on social media, TV and talk radio, statements from political figures, and off-handed comments by celebrities; they are everywhere. It is one long parade of insults, put-downs, threats, loose talk, and worse.
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Is the “Nurses” episode a wake-up call, or just another statistic in a week or month of egregious incidents? Our task is to speak up each time this happens, and as important, to ensure that our friends, neighbors, colleagues, and others beyond our community do not become inured to the threats before us.