Meet the First Muslim Mayor of London

• Conservative Party candidate Zac Goldsmith accused Khan of giving “platform, oxygen and cover” to Islamic extremists. He also accused Khan of “hiding behind Britain’s Muslims” by branding as “Islamophobes” those who shed light on his past.
• “The questions are genuine, they are serious. They are about his willingness to share platforms with people who want to ‘drown every Israeli Jew in the sea.’ It’s about his having employed someone who believed the Lee Rigby murder was fabricated. It’s about his career before being an MP, coaching people in how to sue the police.” — Conservative Party candidate Zac Goldsmith.

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• “A Muslim man with way too many extremist links to be entirely coincidental is now the Mayor of London. I suppose this is hardly a shock, though. The native English are a demographic minority (and a rapidly dwindling one) in London, whilst Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh are a rapidly expanding demographic.” — British politician Paul Weston.

Labour Party politician Sadiq Khan has been sworn in as mayor of London. He is the first Muslim to lead a major European capital.

Israelis Turn to Self-Defense as Anxiety Rises Over Knife Attacks

An armed man walks in the centre of Jerusalem October 19. A recent spate of knife attacks has made residents uneasy. Reuters/Ronen Zvulun

 

Updated | Business is booming at the Haboleshet Spy Shop in central Tel Aviv. Mor, who has worked for six months at the self-defense store, says customers laugh when he tells them that the shop’s stock of pepper spray, tasers and batons is sold out. The past two weeks have been the “craziest and busiest time,” Mor says in a phone interview with Newsweek.

The shop, one of the only stores that stocks self-defense equipment in Israel’s largest city, is selling 20 to 40 batons and 50 to 100 canisters of pepper spray a day, Mor says. In previous times, that would have amounted to three weeks’ worth of stock.

‘We are looking at the beginnings of a Holocaust’

The situation facing European Jewry is “simply intolerable, unacceptable and inexcusable,” Israeli Jewish Congress president Vladimir Sloutsker told MKs and foreign diplomats at a special session of the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Committee on Monday.

Calling the rise in anti-Semitic incidents accompanying Israel’s invasion of Gaza an “SOS situation,” Sloutsker warned that if left unchecked, such behavior could lead to another European genocide.

“Never before since the Holocaust, have we seen such a situation as today,” he said, referring to the continent-wide demonstrations by pro-Palestinian activists, a number of which have generated into violence and many of which have featured racist rhetoric.

“We are potentially looking at the beginning of another Holocaust now. These events [violent demonstrations and expressions of anti-Semitism] will only grow in scale across Europe,” he asserted.