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Prominent German critic of Israel who had claimed to be Jewish now says he’s not
As Jewish as Senator Elizabeth Warren is Native American. [IsraelTimes] Fabian Wolff, who campaigns in support of BDS, says he’s not actually Jewish after embracing the identity based on a hint from his mother.He was celebrated on the left as a prominent Jewish critic of Israel. But the German journalist and teacher Fabian Wolff has revealed that he is not Jewish after all, sparking criticism of the way he framed his political positions. In other words, he is merely a plain vanilla Jew-hater instead of a self-hating Jewish tool of the PLO in another tentacle of their war against the existence of the Jewish state. In a personal essay published on Sunday in Zeit Online, Wolff said that he had not known the truth himself until recently. He had written columns for the Juedische Allgemeine, Germany’s leading Jewish newspaper, for years.Wolff, 33, explained in the essay titled "My Life as a Son" that his mother had once hinted that her maternal great-grandmother had been an Orthodox Jew. Based on this story, Wolff had embraced a Jewish identity and underwent a circumcision, he wrote. It takes more than a small snip and an announcement, idiot. Being of Jewish descent is easy — probably half of Europe has as much Jewish DNA after over 2,000 years of residence — but actually being Jewish according to Jewish law requires a direct line of descent of mothers who had not converted to any other religion. A single great-grandparent might satisfy Hitler and other one drop of blood racists, but not the Orthodox Jewish rabbis who make the judgements in Germany, who would have required him to formally convert in order to legitimately claim the label. The snip happens last, not first. But his mother, who died in 2017, had been mistaken."I will not speak from the position of a Jew in Germany, because I cannot and I am not," he wrote. Wolff has been known for his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and his rejection of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which covers some forms of Israel criticism. He had, critics say, used his supposed Jewish identity as a shield against backlash from Jewish community organizations. Indeed. A few years ago, after Wolff signed an open letter in support of a German-Paleostinian journalist, he learned that someone had warned other signatories and members of the Jewish community that he was not Jewish, "based on private information," Wolff wrote. He said he took a step back from expressing his Jewish identity publicly and stopped taking writing assignments "if I had the feeling I was being asked first and foremost as a Jew."It’s the only product he had to sell, so no wonder they bought it. A long search through many archives led him to the conclusion that there was no truth to his mother’s story about having Jewish roots."In journalistic circles, the question was not when Fabian Wolff’s costume Judaism would be exposed, but only who would make it public first," wrote journalist Philipp Peyman Engel of the Juedische Allgemeine. "Because in September 2021, some journalists in Berlin received detailed research into the extent to which Wolff’s Jewish biography was made up from start to finish." The episode spurred debate online about Wolff’s political stances. The fact that Wolff is not Jewish "does not change anything about his justified and important criticism of Germany and Israel," wrote one Facebook friend. Another answered: But "the man lied, faked a family history and made a career with it." So when is he going to return the profits he stole from a genuine Jewish Israel-hater through his pretense? This kind of thing goes far beyond playing dress-up in another identity, after all. In 2019, a German historian and blogger named Marie Sophie Hingst died by suicide after it was revealed that she had falsely claimed to be descended from Holocaust survivors.Easier than actually apologizing for the lie, apparently. Posted by: trailing wife 2023-07-23 |
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