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New book compiles young Jews’ human rights stories

The project seeks to highlight the minimizing of Jews’ human rights amid surging antisemitism in the wake of Oct. 7.

The cover of "Human Rights," a compilation of stories by 40 young Jews from around the world. Credit: Courtesy.
The cover of “Human Rights,” a compilation of stories by 40 young Jews from around the world. Credit: Courtesy.

A compilation of scores of texts about human rights written by young Jews from 40 countries around the world is being published in Portugal.

The project, an initiative of Bnai Brith Portugal together with the International Observatory for Human Rights, comes in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, and seeks to highlight that Jewish human rights are frequently forgotten or minimized at a time when Israel is globally isolated and antisemitism is surging.

“The Jewish people are all too often linked to tricks, money, selling out the homeland and other similar canards and stereotypes,” Gabriela Cantergi, President of B’nai Brith International Portugal, told JNS on Wednesday. “The State of Israel is a kind of ‘Jew of the nations,’ always linked to brute force, heartless governments and the murder of children.”

The young authors of the 40 stories, who range in age from 16 to 30, come from countries across the globe, including India, Australia, Hong Kong, France, South Africa, Thailand, Israel and the United States.

The book will be available free of charge through international organizations, and go online as well in June.

Etgar Lefkovits is an award-winning international journalist who is an Israel correspondent and feature news writer at JNS. A native of Chicago, he has two decades of experience in journalism having served as Jerusalem correspondent in one of the world’s most demanding positions. He is now based in Tel Aviv.
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