YOUR DAILY SPIEL FOR WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16

Your Daily Spiel is The CJN’s (almost) daily roundup of trending stories in the Jewish world.

Canada

Yazidi Commemoration: Operation Ezra, an ongoing initiative to commemorate the Yazidis suffering in Iraq under ISIS, is being led “by a number of Winnipeg Jewish community organizations”. The program has so far raised close to $500,000 and brought seven Yazidi families (41 individuals) to Winnipeg.

READ: DEATH OF A HOLOCAUST DENIER: WITH ZUNDEL’S PASSING, WHAT CAN WE TAKE AWAY?

United States

Tapper Tantrum?: CNN’s Jake Tapper said in an interview in Rolling Stone that the media treated Obama differently than Trump:

Israel/Palestine

Congratulating Kim: The Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas expressed his admiration for North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un for the country’s Liberation Day celebration. Abbas wrote that the Korean people made, “the greatest sacrifices for the sake of its freedom and dignity,” according to an official PA news site.

Europe

Swiss Hospitality: A sign was posted at a hotel in Switzerland directing “Jewish guests” to shower before swimming. The anti-Semitic sign drew an official complaint from the Foreign Ministry of Israel.

“I have nothing against Jews … I may have selected the wrong words” says #Swiss hotel owner who posted this sign! https://t.co/vv4zN3oKPC pic.twitter.com/HQyuAYkniZ

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) August 15, 2017

Column of the Day

We’ve Been Here Before: Nathan Englander’s recent Op-Ed in the New York Times is prescient. Entitled “What Jewish Children Learned From Charlottesville,” Englander portrays an America grappling with tremendous internal strife:

There is the trauma of those assaulted by Nazis on American soil and the tragedy that is Heather Heyer’s murder that belongs to her and her family alone. And then there is what all the rest of us share — the pain and violence and the lessons we draw from them. Because the children who witness a day like that, and a president like this, will not forget the fear and disrespect tailored to the black child, the Muslim child, the Jewish child.