Judar som vill förinta yttrandefriheten

Formellt handlade arbetet endast om att rapportera sympatier för terrorism, men dokumenten visade att även antirasistiska grupper som International Network Against Cyber Hate och den kontroversiella Israel-närstående lobby*organisationen Ligue internationale contre le racisme et antisémitisme deltog i det hemliga lagstiftningsarbetet. Detta ledde till misstankar om att även antisemitiska och invandringskritiska åsikter skulle komma att kartläggas och rapporteras till myndigheterna i framtiden.

Anita Möllring, pressekreterare för det tyska Piratpartiet, varnar för att Clean-IT är ett ”Internetcensurpaket” och tar kraftigt avstånd från planerna. Även Berlinpolitikern Jonas Westphal från de tyska socialdemokraterna SPD är kritisk. På twitter kallar han projektet för ”ytterligare ett censurförslag av orwellska proportioner”, skriver Junge Freiheit.

I Sverige har det talats tyst om förslaget, som förutom i IT-pressen endast har uppmärksammats i Fria Tider. Den 24 september skrev ledarskribenten Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein ett inlägg i SvD:s ledarblogg med rubriken ”Internetförtrycket på global frammarsch” där han ondgjorde sig över hur ”repressiva regeringar och diktaturer” som Bahrain, Pakistan och Etiopien fallit rejält i neokonservativa Freedom House rankning av internetfriheten i världen. Inte med ett ord nämnde Silberstein det då nyligen avslöjade CleanIT-projektet.

BERLIN (AP) — A German court is making a fresh attempt to punish a British ultraconservative Catholic bishop for denying the Holocaust in a television interview.

The regional court in the southern city of Regensburg has issued an order of punishment against Richard Williamson after an earlier conviction was overturned on a legal technicality last year.

Court spokesman Thomas Rauscher said Thursday that if Williamson accepts the order of punishment, he will be required to pay an unspecified fine. If he objects, the case will go to trial again.

The 72-year-old Williamson told a Swedish TV station in 2008 that he did not believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II. Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany.

Williamson is a member of the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X.

Lithuania’s central elections committee is reportedly probing two nationalist politicians for using allegedly anti-Semitic and Nazi imagery in elections material.

Marius Galinis' campaign material for the Oct. 14 parliamentary elections features a black shirt and a Hindu swastika, according to the news site Delfi.

Unlike the Nazi symbol, the earlier Hindu sign faces right instead of left. Galinis denied the symbol was related to Nazism.

He is running for parliament as a candidate for the Coalition for Lithuania in Lithuania, a political movement made up of four nationalist parties.

In its Oct. 3 report, Delfi said that Julius Panka, another Coalition candidate, distributed leaflets featuring a caricature of a smiling ultra-Orthodox Jew boasting about receiving money from the Lithuanian government.

Delfi quotes Justinas Zilinskas, a member of the elections committee, as saying that the committee may demand that the Nationalists cease distribution of the materials, or else “refer the matter to law enforcement on grounds of ethnic persecution.”

Panka denied the caricatures were anti-Semitic.

Text accompanying the caricature in his campaign literature reads: “Kubilius gave me 130 million and will give more,” an apparent reference to the recent decision by Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius to offer compensation for confiscated Jewish property.

A caption in the leaflet reads: “Vote for No. 10, Coalition ‘For Lithuania in Lithuania’ will not throw the money away.”

In April, the Lithuanian government announced the creation of a $50 million fund to compensate Jews for property confiscated during the Nazi and Soviet eras.

The council of the London borough of Tower Hamlets has called in the police and reportedly given the owner of the property 28 days to remove it. [...]

A local council member and long-time resident of East London Peter Golds asked the police to consider prosecuting Ockerman under race hate laws. “When I saw the mural I was shocked. It’s horribly similar to the propaganda used by the Third Reich in Nazi Germany,” said Golds, according to the Daily Mail. “It’s intensely racist and has caused a great deal of offense.”

The civil rights office of the U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation into allegations of anti-Semitism at the University of California, Berkeley.

The investigation stems from a complaint filed by two recent graduates of the university, who charge that campus officials allowed a hostile campus environment for Jewish students to continue unabated by not stopping anti-Israel protests on campus, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The complaint alleges that the campus officials have violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says that recipients of federal funds are barred from discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education extended Title VI to include the protection of Jewish students from anti-Semitism on campuses.

A year and a half after the federal government extended a landmark civil rights law to cover Jewish students, Jewish groups have yet to succeed in using this law against what they see as anti-Semitic anti-Israel activity on campus.

A survey by the Forward has found that at least 10 anti-Semitism cases have been filed with either the Department of Education or in court under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In only one of these cases so far has the complainant been favored: a high school case in which Israel played no role.

Six of these cases involve anti-Israel activity. One has been closed after administrative review. Another case has been rejected by a federal court, but the complainant has been invited to amend the complaint.

For some, this track record raises questions about the utility of civil rights law to combat campus anti-Israel activity. But advocates for Jewish students say it’s too soon to come to conclusions about what kinds of cases will work under the new law.

“We are still in the testing phase and seeing where these cases are going to come out,” said Deborah Lauter, the Anti-Defamation League’s director of civil rights. “We are pleased to see the Office for Civil Rights taking cases seriously as they are required to do, and I think it is really too early to tell.”