jews and jewish education in germany today - The Westbury Group

if the people in the Ministry don’t want it, then… It’s such a sensitive issue, so that’s why it’s really
important to have independent Jewish sponsorship.
● The current financing of Ha Galil is entirely from donations?
The current financing isn’t purely from donations, there’s also a bit from advertising, but most of it is from
donations.
● Is the work with Ha Galil done on a volunteer basis? Can you can pay someone to supervise and update
the site?
Of course we can. There are two people who work on it full-time and then there are many freelancers all over
and independent of one another in Paris, Budapest and so on, who do mostly work for free, out of necessity
still..
● And it’s updated daily?
As events unfold.
● Can you say how many hits there are a day? On average?
I don’t know off hand. The weekly hits are more significant. There are 400,000 different users a month.
● 400,000?
Yes, 400,000 people, who apparently speak German. And half of those come directly to a topic via a search
engine and the other half, the smaller half, comes regularly.
● Have you had any problems with hackers or attacks, has anyone tried to disrupt the site?
Yes, there have been some attacks from the very beginning. A few times this has led us to take action beyond
the direct attacker. We could go after the infrastructure that had been built up and see from the outside which
server was attacking, what else there was on anti-Semitic content and press charges against that as well. We
could sometimes find out who the publisher was. For example, if the site is registered in the USA, but the
publisher is sitting in Stralsund, then he can be held liable in Stralsund.
● So you were able to use that technology and turn it around?
It is very useful and there have also been ramifications in Parliament. Half of all of those prosecuted, when
charges were pressed successfully in the area of Nazi propaganda offenses, were exposed by Ha Galil.
● Good work!
Yes, good work, but then you’ve got to ask yourself what are the federal agents, the social workers, all those
people doing who are actually supposed to be dealing with this? Who also have a completely different arsenal
of resources at their disposal? And then they’re splitting the smaller half of cases amongst themselves.
● Now I would like to ask a few questions about contemporary Jewry in Germany. What do you see as the
major challenges facing Jewry in Germany today?
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