B’nai B’rith International will make disaster relief funds available for victims of storms in the southern United States that have killed 40 people.

The tornadoes and torrential rains throughout Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Texas started early last week.

Some 14 tornadoes hit Mississippi on Dec. 23 and continued through Tennessee, Texas and Arkansas. Nine tornadoes in North Texas over the weekend left more than 1,450 homes destroyed and 11 dead. Heavy rains and floods in the Midwest also left 13 dead.

B’nai B’rith said in a statement that it would work in coalition with other agencies to provide emergency support relief efforts and long-term rebuilding plans through its Flood, Tornado and Hurricane Disaster Relief Fund.
“B’nai B’rith will, without fail, always offer help, to anyone, anywhere in need,” said Daniel Mariaschin, the group’s international executive vice president. “I commend our volunteers, who are already on the ground assisting in the clean up, for their swift response to this devastating situation. We will continue to monitor the type of supplies and assistance needed in the coming days,”

The Jewish Daily Forward continued media coverage of the U.N. recognizing Yom Kippur as an official holiday. A B’nai B’rith statement is quoted in the story, saying “this is a modest, common-sense step toward fairness for personnel at the United Nations and respect for Judaism as a major world religion. It should be emulated at the U.N.’s offices across the world, and built upon across an international system in which politics often supplant mutual respect and equality.” Click here to read the article at Forward.com

The United Nations will for the first time recognize Yom Kippur as an official holiday.

Starting in 2016, no official meetings will take place on the Jewish day of atonement at the international body’s New York headquarters, and Jewish employees there will be able to miss work without using vacation hours, the Times of Israel reported Friday.

Other religious holidays that enjoy the same status are Christmas, Good Friday, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. This is the first time in its 70-year history that the U.N. has recognized a Jewish holiday.

In a statement issued Friday, B’nai B’rith International, which in a 2014 Op-Ed for The New York Times pushed for the international body to recognize Yom Kippur, said it “welcomes” the news.

In 2014, ambassadors from 32 countries signed a letter in support of recognizing Yom Kippur.

“This is a modest, common-sense step toward fairness for personnel at the United Nations and respect for Judaism as a major world religion,” the B’nai B’rith statement said. “It should be emulated at the U.N.’s offices across the world, and built upon across an international system in which politics often supplant mutual respect and equality.”

“We strongly commend the diplomats of the United States, Israel and many other nations who made possible the progress seen yesterday,” the statement added.

Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to United Nations, said the decision means there is finally “an official place for the Jewish religion in the world’s parliament.”

“Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people, and the U.N. should have recognized this holiday many years ago,” Danon said.

Like B’nai B’rith, he thanked U.S. diplomats, specifically US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, reports the Times of Israel, for blocking attempts to kill the proposal.

For the first time in its 70-year history, the United Nations has officially recognized a Jewish holiday.

U.N. employees who observe the Jewish faith will have the day off and no official meetings will take place on this date from now on, according to the Israeli mission to the organization.

Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, considered the most important Jewish religious holiday, will join two of the world's other monotheistic religions in having one of its high holidays observed by the world body.

Christmas Day, Good Friday, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha have all been recognized by the United Nations as official religious holidays.

B'nai B'rith International, in a statement, said Thursday's decision on how the holiday would be practically observed was a "modest, common-sense step."

In the past, the opening week of the General Assembly fell on at least one of the Jewish holidays, which are typically celebrated toward the end of September. This has caused Israeli delegates to miss sideline meetings and official debates, according to the Israeli mission to the organization, which has been a member state since 1949.

Efforts to have the United Nations recognize Yom Kippur were led by Israel's former ambassador the United Nations, Ron Prosor, who began lobbying almost three years ago.

Starting in 2016, according to the decision by the United Nations, the organization will no longer have 10 official holidays -- there will be nine official holidays and each employee will be able to choose one of seven floating holidays as a 10th holiday.

Yom Kippur, along with Day of Vesak, Diwali, Gurpurab, Orthodox Christmas and Orthodox Good Friday, in addition to Presidents' Day, will be considered floating holidays. The United Nations said the move was "in the interest of respecting the diversity of United Nations staff members."

The decision implements General Assembly resolution 69/250, which recognized the significance of a number of other holidays, and was adopted last year.

"The decision to recognize Yom Kippur allows for more diversity in religion and opened the door for other holidays, in addition to Yom Kippur," Israeli diplomat Yotam Goren told CNN in a phone interview.
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Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, played a crucial role in negotiating the initiative, according to the Israeli mission. "The partnership with the U.S. Mission prevented the anti-Israel majority at the U.N. from blocking the resolution," the Israeli mission said in a press release.

American Jewish groups across the board echoed Israel’s harsh condemnation of new European Union guidelines for labeling products made in territory captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Jewish advocacy group the American Jewish Committee said it was “dismayed” by the EU announcement. 

“Today’ s decision will play into the hands of those determined to demonize the Jewish state; offend mainstream Israelis who favor territories compromise and encourage maximalist Palestinian positions,” said the director of AJC’s Transatlantic Institute, Daniel Schwammenthal.Schwammenthal warned that the activists promoting a boycott of all Israeli products would ultimately use these new guidelines as fuel for their political activities. Referring to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, Schwammenthal said, “This BDS movement will no doubt use these EU rules to intensify its shameful policy of picketing shops and intimidating consumers and business owners to outright ban Israeli settlement products as a first step in their strategy to boycott all Israeli goods.”

As Israeli leaders have said, Schwammenthal stressed the singling out of Israel from among the world’s nations regarding the labeling of products from disputed territories.

Schwammenthal also criticized the EU’s labeling of products manufactured in the Golan Heights — such as award winning Israeli wines — saying regular Israelis would see this as removed from the reality on the ground, where neighboring Syria has crumbled under several years of sectarian violence. This could have the effect of “weakening the EU’s standing as a credible player in the region,” he said.

WJC CEO Robert Singer called the move a “misguided attempt to hamper trade with Israel and to exert political pressure on the government in Jerusalem.”

“This does nothing to advance the peace process. On the contrary, all it will do is strengthen those hardliners in the Middle East and in Europe who reject the Jews’ right to live in peace in the land of Israel,” he said.

The Anti-Defamation League called the EU regulations unproductive and one-sided, criticizing the EU for applying external pressure with the hopes of achieving a breakthrough in the peace process.

“It is for Palestinians and Israelis – not the Europeans – to determine future borders between them, not Europe. European countries have not had much luck drawing boundaries in the Middle East,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.

“In fact, this unhelpful policy to apply diplomatic pressure only on Israel only serves to reinforce Palestinian unwillingness to rejoin direct negotiations with Israel,” he said in a statement.

“If the EU wants to play a positive role in the Middle East peace process, it will not pressure Israel through economic sanctions, but use its influence to bring the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table, and end the wave of Palestinian incitement and violence,” he said.

B’nai B’rith International said the move was an anti-Israel measure that obstructed any resolution with the Palestinians.

“It also encourages and reinforces the Palestinian narrative at a dire time when anti-Semitic incitement is thriving and there have been more than 60 knife, gun and car attacks on Israeli Jews,” the group said.

“The European Union would better spend its time encouraging Palestinians to get to the negotiating table, as these guidelines only prolong the process, rather than resolve it,” B’nai B’rith said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile called the move hypocritical and said it held the Jewish state to a double standard, “dealing just with Israel and not the 200 other conflicts throughout the world.”

“The European Union decided to label Israel alone and we are unwilling to accept the fact that Europe is actually labeling the side that’s being attacked with terrorism,” he said, according to Army Radio.

The new Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said in a press release that he was appalled by the EU move, saying it amounted to condemning the “entire Zionist enterprise as Racist [sic] and discriminatory.”
He said just as the 1975 UN resolution saying Zionism was a form of racism was repealed, “so too will this disgraceful decision be retracted.”
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The new guidelines apply mainly to Israeli agricultural goods and products, such as olive oil, fruits and vegetables, eggs and poultry, as well as cosmetics, from Israeli owned businesses and farms operating in the disputed territories of the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

A wide range of Nazi-related items are  available for sale on Amazon, which still seems unable to control the sale of this hateful paraphernalia.
 
B’nai B’rith International joins with Bnai Brith Canada in condemning the sale of these disgusting and hate-filled objects calling on the online retailer to swiftly remove this merchandise from  its store.
 
B’nai B’rith has frequently spoken out against online outfits such as Etsy, Ebay and Sears, peddling everything from Nazi sneakers to Holocaust denial books.

Below you'll find a recent story from CBC on the offensive items sold on Amazon, a B'nai B'rith call to web retailers to remove hateful and anti-Semitic objects from their stores, and a story about a call that was heeded by Amazon—to remove blood-stained Israeli flag merchandise from its website. 

CNN owes its viewers a correction and an apology in the wake of Ashleigh Banfield’s “interview” with Jeffrey Lord, a Donald Trump supporter, former Ronald Reagan staffer and current CNN commentator.

The conversation on “Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield" was billed as a discussion about Trump’s plan to bar Muslims from entering the United States (a plan which B’nai B’rith spoke out against).

Instead, Banfield used a marginal Jewish group to make an inappropriate comparison, revealing, again, her long-standing, well-documented bias against Israel. In trying to demonstrate the absurdity of the Trump plan, Banfield compared ISIS terrorists of today with the three-decades old actions of a fringe Jewish group, the Jewish Defense League (JDL). She created a preposterous link to the radical Islamic terrorists of today that is just not relevant.

In her farfetched analogy, she makes it seem like a small, fringe Jewish group that committed acts of violence in the 1980s is somehow equivalent to a mass movement like ISIS, which aims for an end to Western civilization.
This dangerous lack of context left viewers with the impression there are hordes of Jewish terrorists who have committed attacks in the United States.

Banfield was clearly not interested in Lord’s view, talking over him repeatedly as he tried to denounce her absurd claims. Even when he asked incredulously: “Are you really saying to me that there's an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world?" Banfield didn’t budge.

Sticking to the biased script she has clung to for more than a decade, Banfield concluded the segment again talking about the threat Jews are to the United States.

Her incomplete and irresponsible line of thought was presented as fact. What a disservice to viewers. 

Donald Trump’s call last week to bar all Muslims from entering the United States “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” has set off a deluge of criticism in America and around the world, from US House Speaker Paul Ryan to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
 
“Prime Minister Netanyahu rejects Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Muslims,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. “The State of Israel respects all religion and strictly adheres to the rights of all its citizens.”
Trump’s December 7 remark also spurred numerous Jewish organizations to speak up.
 
Here’s a roundup of some of the notable Jewish organizational responses, as well as some of those that have stayed silent.
 
Jewish defense organizations:

• Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt: “A plan that singles out Muslims and denies them entry to the U.S. based on their religion is deeply offensive and runs contrary to our nation’s deepest values.”
• American Jewish Committee Associate Executive Director for Policy Jason Isaacson: “We are deeply disturbed by the nativist racism inherent in the candidate’s latest remarks.”
• B’nai B’rith International: “Singling out an entire religious community for diminished rights amounts to bigotry, and it should not be accepted.”

An Australian Jewish group has criticized author Camille Paglia for referring to Taylor Swift as an “obnoxious Nazi Barbie.”

The chairman of the Australian B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission said Paglia’s comments, which she published in an article for the Hollywood Reporter on Thursday, were “obscene.”
 
“While Paglia is entitled to her views about Taylor Swift’s music and performance, her absurd and offensive comparison of Swift to the Nazis, whose genocidal policies and actions resulted in the systematic persecution and slaughter of six million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust, betrays an ignorance of what really happened in Hitler’s Third Reich,” said Dvir Abramovich, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday.
 
“Such obscene and insensitive equations have no place in our cultural discourse and only serve to demean and trivialize the memory and suffering of the victims.”

Paglia, an eminent feminist academic and social critic, made headlines last week with her polarizing essay about Swift, who is among the best-selling American musicians of all time.

“Swift herself should retire that obnoxious Barbie routine of wheeling out friends and celebrities as performance props,” Paglia wrote.

Paglia’s argument focused on Swift’s “girl squads” and the way she often surrounds herself with celebrity friends on and off stage.

“Writing about Swift is a horrific ordeal for me because her twinkly persona is such a scary flashback to the fascist blondes who ruled the social scene during my youth,” she said.

​Two prominent modern Orthodox Jewish groups issued a joint statement rejecting Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
 
The Conservative movement also issued a statement Thursday condemning Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim entry. Together with the condemnation of the Reform movement earlier this week, Trump’s plan has now been rejected by groups from every major American Jewish religious stream.
 
Unlike a number of other groups that have condemned the call by the Republican presidential candidate, the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America did not name Trump or mention Muslims specifically in their statement.
Instead, the two organizations said they “reject calls to limit immigration to the United States based on religion.”
 
“We call on all Americans to reaffirm that discrimination of any group solely upon religion is wrong and anathema to the great traditions of religious and personal freedoms upon which this country was founded,” O.U. Executive Vice President Allen Fagin said in the statement.

Berlin – A diverse group of German and American Jewish organizations sharply criticized on Tuesday German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration for its endorsement of the labeling of Israeli settlement products.

The Jerusalem Post asked Jewish organizations in Europe and the United States to assess Merkel’s decision to impose labels on Israeli merchandise made in east Jerusalem, on the Golan Heights and in the West Bank.

“It’s a disgrace. Throughout her years as chancellor, Angela Merkel in word and [mostly] in deed has stood as a friend of Israel. She must certainly know that the EU labeling move does nothing to advance peace, but does further embolden an array of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic forces. Hiding behind a decision by the EU doesn’t hide the fact that she has violated a historic German responsibility when it comes to the Jewish State: Do no harm,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said, “As this is not a mandatory European law, but merely guidelines, we had hoped that given history and importantly the anniversary of 50-years of relations between Germany and the State of Israel, that there would be sensitivity to a labeling regime which singles out one people in the whole world for a political, and therefore discriminatory, designation.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League in New York, told the Post, “European officials might insist that the decision is technical, but in fact, these guidelines send a political message, and one that will surely be co-opted by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement, which opposes the two-state solution. Even if European Union officials claim it does not support BDS, this policy will have a similar negative affect on European consumers, who are unlikely to make the intended distinction.”

Elvira Noa, head of the Bremen Jewish community in northern Germany, said “I find it [German approval of labeling] very negative. It is a stigmatization and the danger exists of calls to boycott and stoking of anti-Semitism.”

She said the danger that lies behind the labeling system is “Don’t buy from Jews!” and “Don’t buy from Israelis!” “It damages the coexistence for Palestinians that work with Israelis. It makes no economic sense,” she added.

Bremen’s Jewish community has 1,000 members. Anti-Israel activists marched into local stores in November seeking to label Israeli products.

B’nai B’rith International executive vice president, Daniel Mariaschin, said this EU labeling mandate prejudges the outcome of any future Israeli-Palestinian negotiation.

“It set backs the peace process and does not advance the peace process. As long as the Palestinians feel that outside of negotiations they can accomplish unilateral moves, they will have no incentive to go the table and negotiate.”

He said “Germany has a special role” in countering the labeling action. The EU labeling system “is another example of double standards being imposed.”

Asked what advice he would offer Germany: “Don’t implement.”

A spokesman for the German Federal Food and Agriculture Ministry, told the Post on Tuesday that Minister Christian Schmidt does not want the EU guidelines to be “instrumentalized politically” and “should not be a basis for agitation.”

The spokesman said the ministry has not received any complaints or questions from the 16 federal states that maintain control over imports and correct labeling. The German government rejects boycotts of Israeli merchandise.

Reinhard Schramm, the chairman of the Jewish community in the central German state Thuringia, said he “considers the decision [German government’s labeling of settlement products] wrong. “It is not right what Europe does and Germany’s participation.”

He expressed, however, his admiration for Merkel as Chancellor and her support for Israel and human rights.

Arkadij Schwarz, a representative of the Jewish Königs Wusterhausen community in the state of Brandenburg, said the decision “reminds me of the times when we were labeled [with yellow stars].”

He said he was disappointed with the administration’s embrace of labels.

“Not every [EU] decision must be followed,” he added.

Nathan Gelbart, a prominent Berlin lawyer and chairman of the German branch of United Israel Appeal, said the EU settlement guidelines are a “discriminatory decision” and a “political regulation and not a technical rule.”

He “welcomed the decision from Hungary and Greece not to participate” in the implementation of the EU guidelines.