Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS, JULY–DECEMBER 2012 379Twitter’s lawyer in France that his client had scored an “important victory”over the micro-blogging site. The student union on Thursday threatened toseek an injunction against Twitter to make it remove the offending tweets.The tag, #unbonjuif, has been one of the top trending words on Frenchlanguagetweets, and is often followed by comments such as: “#AGoodJewis a dead Jew.”Auckland, Australia, October 19: Vandals defaced Jewish gravestones incentral Auckland with graffiti including Nazi swastikas, the AFP newsagency reports, in a crime the Israeli embassy condemned as “vile desecration.”About 20 graves, some dating back to the 1880s, were spray-paintedin the Jewish section of the Karangahape Road Cemetery, the New ZealandHerald reported. Photographs showed rows of graves sprayed with swastikas,and the number 88—a code used by neo-Nazis to mean “Heil Hitler,”with H being the eighth letter of the alphabet, a reference to HH andantisemitic messages. The Israeli embassy in Wellington urged New Zealandauthorities to bring the vandals to justice.The Hague, October 19: Belgium’s recent local elections triggered “anunprecedented wave of manifestations of antisemitism,” according to thecountry’s organization of French-speaking Jews. The October 14 electionand the campaign that preceded it “were characterized by a flood ofantisemitic events the likes of which we have never before seen,” MauriceSosnowski, president of the CCOJB, said. In Schaarbeek, a municipalitynear Brussels, “candidates who belonged to the Jewish community wereattacked for their affiliation,” and the municipality saw a “hate campaignunder the pretext of anti-Zionism,” according to Sosnowski. On October 8,Belgian health minister Laurette Onkelinx had complained to police about apamphlet naming Yves Goldstein, a Jewish member of her party who ranfor a seat on the city council of Schaarbeek, an “enemy of Islam.” TheTurkish-language pamphlet called him “an active Zionist and an enemy ofIslam,” Onkelinx said at a news conference. The pamphlet was preceded byemail warnings to voters to cast ballots against Onkelinx’s and Goldstein’sSocialist Party. Doing so, the email said, would be like “stabbing Palestiniansin the back.” Local politicians have been less resolute than Onkelinx incondemning this “hate speech,” according to the CCOJB statement.Montreal, October 21: A kosher restaurant in Montreal was firebombed,according to a report on the website of the weekly newspaper Toronto Shalom.The report said that the restaurant Resto Bar Chops, which is located inthe city’s Snowdon district, was attacked by two masked men who arrivedat the restaurant at four in the morning, smashed its front window, andthrew a firebomb into it. In addition, Toronto Shalom reported, an attempt