Watchdog calls for House committee to uninvite RFK Jr. after his comments are blasted as antisemitic

Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan. (Photo/Wikipedia)
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Updated 18 July 2023
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Watchdog calls for House committee to uninvite RFK Jr. after his comments are blasted as antisemitic

  • Democrats and anti-hate groups quickly condemned the comments from Kennedy, who comes from one of the country’s most famous political families as the son of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy

NEW YORK: A Democratic watchdog group has called for a US House committee to rescind an invitation to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after the Democratic presidential candidate was filmed falsely suggesting COVID-19 could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, sent a letter to Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, asking him to disinvite Kennedy from a hearing scheduled for Thursday after the candidate’s comments at a New York City dinner last week prompted widespread accusations of antisemitism and racism.
A spokesperson for Jordan said he plans to move forward with the hearing Thursday despite disagreeing with comments Kennedy made.
In the filmed remarks first published by The New York Post, Kennedy said “there is an argument” that COVID-19 “is ethnically targeted” and that it “attacks certain races disproportionately.”
“COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” he added. “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted at that or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential of impact for that.”
After the video was made public, Kennedy posted on Twitter that his words were twisted and denied ever suggesting that COVID-19 was deliberately engineered to spare Jewish people. He asserted without evidence that there are bioweapons being developed to target certain ethnicities, and called for the Post’s article to be retracted.
Researchers and doctors pushed back on the assertion, including Michael Mina, a medical doctor and immunologist.
“Beyond the absurdity, biological know-how simply isn’t there to make a virus that targets only certain ethnicities,” Mina wrote on Twitter.
Democrats and anti-hate groups quickly condemned the comments from Kennedy, who comes from one of the country’s most famous political families as the son of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy.
“These are deeply troubling comments and I want to make clear that they do not represent the views of the Democratic Party,” read a Saturday tweet from Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee.
“Last week, RFK Jr. made reprehensible anti-semitic and anti-Asian comments aimed at perpetuating harmful and debunked racist tropes,” US Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement on Sunday. “Such dangerous racism and hate have no place in America, demonstrate him to be unfit for public office, and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.”
Asked about the video on Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Kennedy’s claims were false and “vile” and that “they put our fellow Americans in danger.”
The Anti-Defamation League also responded to the comments with a statement saying Kennedy’s claim is “deeply offensive and feeds into sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories about COVID-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years.”
And another anti-hate watchdog, Stop Antisemitism, tweeted, “We have no words for this man’s lunacy.”
On Monday, Kerry Kennedy issued a statement saying, “I strongly condemn my brother’s deplorable and untruthful remarks last week about Covid being engineered for ethnic targeting,” adding that the remarks don’t represent “what I believe or what Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights stands for.” She is president of the human rights organization.
Kennedy is set to address the GOP-led House subcommittee during a hearing Thursday to examine “the federal government’s role in censoring Americans.”
He has long railed against social media companies and the government, accusing them of colluding to censor his speech during the COVID-19 pandemic when he was suspended from multiple platforms for spreading vaccine misinformation.
Herrig’s letter to Jordan called Kennedy “a total whack job whose views and conspiracy theories would be completely ignored but for his last name.”
It asked the chairman to disinvite the candidate from Thursday’s hearing because of “video evidence of his horrific antisemitic and xenophobic views which are simply beyond the pale.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy threw cold water Monday on the idea of disinviting the presidential candidate from testifying before Congress.
“I disagree with everything he said,” McCarthy said. “The hearing that we have this week is about censorship. I don’t think censoring somebody is actually the answer here. I think if you’re going to look at censorship in America, your first action to censor probably plays into some of the problems we have.”
Kennedy has a history of comparing vaccines – widely credited with saving millions of lives – with the genocide of the Holocaust during Nazi Germany, comments for which he has sometimes apologized.
His first apology for such a comparison came in 2015, after he used the word “holocaust” to describe children whom he believes were hurt by vaccines.
But he continued to make such remarks, ramping up during the COVID-19 pandemic. An AP investigation detailed how Kennedy has frequently invoked the specter of Nazis and the Holocaust in his work to sow doubts about vaccines and agitate against public health efforts to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control, such as requiring masks or vaccine mandates.
In December 2021, he put out a video that showed infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci with a mustache reminiscent of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. In an October 2021 speech to the Ron Paul Institute, he obliquely compared public health measures put in place by governments around the world to Nazi propaganda meant to scare people into abandoning critical thinking.
In January 2022, at a Washington rally organized by his anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy complained that people’s rights were being violated by public health measures that had been taken to reduce the number of people sickened and killed by COVID-19.
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” he said.
The comment was condemned by the head of the Anti-Defamation League as “deeply inaccurate, deeply offensive and deeply troubling.” Yad Vashem of the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem said it “denigrates the memory of its victims and survivors,” as well as others.
After initially sticking by his remarks, Kennedy ultimately apologized, tweeting, “I apologize for my reference to Anne Frank, especially to families that suffered the Holocaust horrors.”
Then, days after he launched his presidential campaign this April, he wrote on Twitter that “the onslaught of relentless media indignation finally compelled me to apologize for a statement I never made in order to protect my family.”
 

 


Indonesian NGOs demand Israel be held accountable over atrocities in Gaza

Updated 5 sec ago
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Indonesian NGOs demand Israel be held accountable over atrocities in Gaza

  • No health facility operational in northern Gaza as of Friday
  • Palestinians receiving inadequate aid after prolonged blockade

JAKARTA: Indonesian civil society organizations are urging the international community to hold Israel accountable for its attacks on Gaza, as Tel Aviv’s latest military onslaught on the besieged enclave pushed the territory’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.

All hospitals in northern Gaza were out of service as of Friday, according to Jakarta-based NGO Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, which funds the Indonesia Hospital located in the Gazan city of Beit Lahiya.

Al-Awda Hospital — the only remaining facility providing health services in north Gaza — evacuated its patients on Thursday following orders from the Israeli military, which launched a wave of new attacks earlier this month across the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of people and forcing most public facilities in the area to close.

“Even after various condemnations and warnings, Israel the colonizer continues to commit crimes across the Gaza Strip,” said Dr. Hadiki Habib, chairman of MER-C’s executive committee.

“MER-C’s stance is in line with the Indonesian constitution, in which we do not recognize colonization in any shape or form … Israel’s colonization and crimes against humanity (in Gaza) must be held accountable at the international level.”

Indonesia is a staunch supporter of Palestine, and sees Palestinian statehood as being mandated by its own constitution, which calls for the abolition of colonialism.

The Indonesia Hospital was one of the first targets hit when Israel began its assault on Gaza, in which it regularly targets medical facilities.

Attacks on health centers, medical personnel and patients constitute war crimes under the 1949 Geneva Convention.

Israel’s latest offensive comes after a two-month blockade on the enclave after Tel Aviv unilaterally broke a ceasefire with the Palestinian group Hamas in March.

It is a continuation of Israel’s onslaught of Gaza that began in October 2023 and has killed more than 54,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 124,000. The deadly attacks have also put 2 million more at risk of starvation after Israeli forces destroyed most of the region’s infrastructure and buildings and blocked humanitarian aid.

Aid only recently began to enter the besieged territory, although only in limited quantities.

“The suffering of the people is massive due to starvation, and there is limited aid because of the blockade,” Habib said. “A humanitarian crisis must not be used as a transactional tool. Stop this war and open the food blockade in Gaza. We will continue to voice this demand.”

Various scholars and human rights organizations have said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, including Amnesty International and the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.

“Zionist Israel’s crimes in Gaza must be held accountable. They must be put on trial and punished for genocide. There is no longer doubt that their crimes constitute genocide,” Muhammad Anshorullah, who heads the executive committee of the Jakarta-based Aqsa Working Group, told Arab News on Saturday. “Netanyahu’s regime must be arrested, tried and punished, just like how the Allied powers arrested, tried and punished Nazi elites through the Nuremberg Trials. There is nothing more urgent globally aside from stopping the genocide in Gaza.”


A small plane crashes into the terrace of a house in Germany. 2 people are dead

Updated 24 min 38 sec ago
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A small plane crashes into the terrace of a house in Germany. 2 people are dead

  • The plane hit the terrace of the building and a fire broke out

BERLIN: A small plane crashed into the terrace of a residential building in western Germany on Saturday and two people were killed, police said.

The crash happened in Korschenbroich, near the city of Mönchengladbach and not far from the Dutch border.

The plane hit the terrace of the building and a fire broke out. Police said two people died and one of them was probably the plane’s pilot, German news agency dpa reported.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the other person had been on the plane or on the ground.

Officials had no immediate information on the cause of the crash.


Georgia’s foreign-agents act ‘a serious setback’: EU officials

Updated 48 min 5 sec ago
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Georgia’s foreign-agents act ‘a serious setback’: EU officials

  • Georgia’s law is inspired by US legislation which makes it mandatory for any person or organization representing a foreign country, group or party to declare its activities to authorities

BRUSSELS: A new law in Georgia that from Saturday requires NGOs and media outlets to register as “foreign agents” if they receive funding from abroad is a “serious setback,” for the country, two top EU officials said.

Alongside other laws on broadcasting and grants, “these repressive measures threaten the very survival of Georgia’s democratic foundations and the future of its citizens in a free and open society,” EU diplomatic chief Kaja Kallas and EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos said in a joint statement.

They stressed that the law, which they dubbed a tool “by the Georgian authorities to suppress dissent (and) restrict freedoms,” jeopardized the country’s ambitions of one day joining the European Union.

“Georgia’s Foreign Agents Registration Act marks a serious setback for the country’s democracy,” they said.

Georgia’s law is inspired by US legislation which makes it mandatory for any person or organization representing a foreign country, group or party to declare its activities to authorities.

But NGOs believe it will be used by Georgia’s illiberal and Euroskeptic government to further repression of civil society and the opposition.

The Black Sea nation has been rocked by daily demonstrations since late last year, with protesters decrying what they see as an increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russia government.

Tensions escalated in November when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that Georgia would postpone EU membership talks until 2028.

“The EU is ready to consider the return of Georgia to the EU accession path if the authorities take credible steps to reverse democratic backsliding,” Kallas and Kos said in their statement.


France’s prison population reaches all-time high

Updated 31 May 2025
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France’s prison population reaches all-time high

  • Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has called the overcrowding crisis “unacceptable,” has suggested building new facilities to accommodate the growing prison population

PARIS: France’s prison population hit a record high on May 1, with 83,681 inmates held in facilities that have a capacity of just 62,570, justice ministry data showed on Saturday.
Over the past year, France’s prison population grew by 6,000 inmates, taking the occupancy rate to 133.7 percent.
The record overcrowding has even seen 23 out of France’s 186 detention facilities operating at more than twice their capacity.
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has called the overcrowding crisis “unacceptable,” has suggested building new facilities to accommodate the growing prison population.
The hard-line minister announced in mid-May a plan to build a high-security prison in French Guiana — an overseas territory situated north of Brazil — for the most “dangerous” criminals, including drug kingpins.
Prison overcrowding is “bad for absolutely everyone,” said Darmanin in late April, citing the “appalling conditions” for prisoners and “the insecurity and violence” faced by prison officers.
A series of coordinated attacks on French prisons in April saw assailants torching cars, spraying the entrance of one prison with automatic gunfire, and leaving mysterious inscriptions.
The assaults embarrassed the right-leaning government, whose tough-talking ministers — Darmanin and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau — have vowed to step up the fight against narcotics.
And in late April, lawmakers approved a major new bill to combat drug-related crime, with some of France’s most dangerous drug traffickers facing detention in high-security prison units in the coming months.
France ranks among the worst countries in Europe for prison overcrowding, placing third behind Cyprus and Romania, according to a Council of Europe study published in June 2024.


Evacuation order for 11 villages on Ukraine border with Russia

Updated 31 May 2025
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Evacuation order for 11 villages on Ukraine border with Russia

  • Russia’s defense ministry on Saturday said its forces had taken another Sumy village, Vodolagy, known as Vodolahy in Ukrainian

KYIV: Authorities in Ukraine’s Sumy region bordering Russia on Saturday ordered the mandatory evacuation of 11 villages because of bombardments, as Kyiv feared a Russian offensive there.
“This decision takes into account the constant threat to civilian lives because of the bombardments of border communities,” Sumy’s administration said.
Russia’s defense ministry on Saturday said its forces had taken another Sumy village, Vodolagy, known as Vodolahy in Ukrainian.
Russia in recent weeks has claimed to have taken several villages in the northeastern region, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week that Moscow was massing more than 50,000 soldiers nearby in a sign of a possible offensive.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s border guard service, Andriy Demchenko, on Thursday said that Russia was poised to “attempt an attack” on Sumy.
He said the Russian troop build-up began when Moscow’s forces fought Ukrainian soldiers who last year had entered the Russian side of the border, in the Kursk region.
Russia has recently retaken control of virtually all of Kursk.
Currently, Russia — which launched its all-out invasion in February 2022 — controls around 20 percent of Ukrainian territory. The ongoing conflict has killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians on both sides.
Washington has been leading diplomatic efforts to try to bring about a ceasefire, but Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of not wanting peace.
The Kremlin has proposed further negotiations in Istanbul on Monday, after a May 16 round of talks that yielded little beyond a large prisoner-of-war exchange.
Kyiv has not yet said whether it will attend the Istanbul meeting, and is demanding that Moscow drop its opposition to an immediate truce.