Author: Joel Schalit
Joel Schalit is the author of Israel vs. Utopia, and Jerusalem Calling. He has edited some of America's most influential magazines including Punk Planet and Tikkun and served as the news editor of the Brussels-based Euractiv. Schalit is the editor of Souciant and The Battleground. He also comments on EU affairs for Israel's i24News and China's CGTN.

“We changed the picture,” the Russian editor said over the messaging client from Brussels. “Jean is here, and he agrees. We substituted it for something more appropriate.” (More…)

His rifle was pointed at a projection of Berlaymont, the European Commission HQ. “Is that the real thing?” I asked him. “I’m not telling, mate,” the reporter said, laughing. “You sort it out.” (More…)

They couldn’t have given the article a more pointed title. Publishing an AFP wire on Sunday morning entitled Macron condemns antisemitic abuse during gilets jaunes Paris protest, The Guardian waded back into a longstanding controversy over whether criticising Israel is racist. (More…)

San Francisco, April 2008

Every weekday morning, I watch the news as I pick up our bedroom before heading off to work. Last Friday was no different. (More…)

Security wouldn’t let them through. “Please, please,” the mother entreated the officer in Hebrew. “I need to get my daughter to the bathroom.” Her pleas fell on deaf ears. (More…)

Her eyes were filled with fear, and her breath reeked of alcohol. “Andare, andare,” the activist yelled, telling me to leave. Unable to figure out why I shrugged my shoulders out of surprise. I was on her side, after all. “Your camera,” she replied, touching my Pentax. “Go.” (More…)

It couldn’t have been more personal. Granted, the topic was European anti-Semitism. I happen to be Jewish and live in Berlin, and I worked for a French news outlet for nearly four of the last five years. (More…)

Swap the AfD for hummus,” read the placards.  Carried by Jews protesting the formation of the appropriately named Juden in der AfD – (‘Jews in Alternative for Germany’) the satirical statement was an appropriate response to the formation of a Jewish auxiliary of an anti-Semitic party. (More…)

Skinheads used to be a common site on Karl-Marx-Straße. Every so often you’d see them strolling down the street in their green flight jackets and white laced combat boots throwing menacing looks at passersby. (More…)

Few cities are as hyped for their cosmopolitanism more than Berlin. Home to a bewildering array of nationalities, it caters to fantasies of a fully globalised space that could be designated capital of a world without borders.  (More…)

Marine Le Pen’s partner had just left the country. A Jew of Algerian background, Louis Aliot had been dispatched to Israel to raise funds for the Front National (FN).

Money was tight for the populists in 2012, and they were fishing for cash everywhere. Even from North African Jewish expats, sympathetic to the Front’s Islamophobia. (More…)

Few words strike fear into the Jewish heart more than pogrom.  Russian shorthand for the state-sponsored persecution of minorities, it comes second only to Shoah, the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. It’s not a big jump to the Nazi genocide. One, at least historically, if not logically, precedes the other. (More…)