06/02 Links Pt2: Yes Peter Beinart Anti Zionism is Anti Semitism; How low can the UN sink?

From Ian:

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Yes Peter Beinart Anti Zionism is Anti Semitism

Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, brought about the establishment of the State of Israel, and views a Jewish, Zionist, democratic and secure State of Israel to be the expression of the common responsibility of the Jewish people for its continuity and future.
Therefore to be Anti-Zionist is to declare that the Jewish people, unlike every other people does not have the right to self determination, Being anti Zionist means viewing the creation of the Jewish state, as an “injustice and historic error” that should be reversed . It is anti-Semitism pure and simple.
One would have hoped Mr. Beinart would be far more than “worried” about the trends he describes among young American Jews. Mr. Beinart is self-proclaimed believer in a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian democratic state, calling out Anti Zionism for what it Isanti Semitism it is an imperative to do this at every opportunity…and regardless one’s position on current Israeli policy to aggressively challenge it at every opportunity.
In his article Beinart notes the following:
Omar Barghouti declared late last year at Columbia University: “We’ve got to give credit to Netanyahu. Without him we could not have reached this far.
But Barghouti is not an opponent solely of “settlement” nor does he share Beinart’s 2 state solution and his definition of occupied Palestine stretches from the “river to the sea” it doesn’t stop at the Green Line. Barghouti is gloating that he has succeeded in a giant shell game gaining support for a policy opposed to the existence of Israel by manipulating opponents of the occupation into supporters of BDS. Yet Beinart puts the blame on current Israeli policies with regards to areas over the Green line not Baarghouti’s anti-Semitic denial of the right of Jews to self-determination. And his reaction to this is limited to “worry”.
How much better would it be if Mr. Beinart a self-proclaimed advocates of a two state solution with two democratic states and the young students he describes to ask the Mr. Barghouti and his followers 2 questions. 1. Please draw a map of what you consider to be occupied Palestine? 2. In your envisioned outcome would Jewish citizens have exactly equal rights to all other citizens anywhere in Palestine/Israel?

How low can the UN sink?

But the UN’s next move against Israel is already being planned: according to a Y-Net report, the “UN secretary-general’s envoy for Children and Armed Conflict recommended this week to include the IDF on a blacklist of countries and organizations accused of regularly causing harm to children. The blacklist includes terror organizations like al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Islamic State, and Taliban, as well as African countries such as the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and others.”
As the report notes, the UN is “facing heavy pressure from the Palestinians, their supporters and human rights organizations to include the Israeli army on the list.” However, few people know that this kind of “pressure” is in part generated by the UN itself, which sustains “a whole network of anti-Israel institutions ” that were built up in the wake of the infamous “Zionism is Racism”-resolution of 1975. Even though the resolution was repealed in 1991, this “network of extremely well-funded UN structures and offices” continues to exist to this day.
Needless to say, those who love the Nazi-slogan “Die Juden sind unser Unglück” in its 21st-century version “The Jewish State is our misfortune” are excited about the prospect to have the IDF equated with terror organizations like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) – and as was only to be expected, Max Blumenthal tweeted the Y-Net report adding the hashtag JSIL, which he popularized to associate Israel with the terror group Islamic State (once known as ISIL, i.e. Islamic State in the Levant) as “Jewish State in the Levant” (JSIL).
If the UN will once again please Jew-haters everywhere with yet another bigoted condemnation that puts the IDF on the same level as savage terror groups like IS remains to be seen. But in the unlikely case that the UN actually cares about the welfare of Palestinian children, Leila Zerrougui, the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, could highlight the longstanding abuse of Palestinian children as child-soldiers – indeed, campaigning against this kind of child abuse is supposedly an important part of her work. While all Palestinian factions have used children to fight, nowadays mostly Hamas and other Gaza terror groups openly boast of providing military training to children; one of the most recent examples is a “graduation ceremony” in a Gaza kindergarten. (h/t Alexi)

'Catch a Jew' Reveals Surprising 'Tribe' Fueling Hate (h/t zozosophie)

When it comes to Middle East peace, the world often asks what prevents Israelis and Palestinians from making it work. A new book blames a hidden party for fueling the hate between the two.

A time for unity

One year ago, our families were thrust into a nightmare beyond anything we could have ever imagined.
Our sons, Eyal Ifrach, Gil-ad Shaer and Naftali Fraenkel, had been kidnapped while making their way home from school. For 18 days, we hovered somewhere between despair and hope while we prayed for their safe return.
Tragically, that would not come to pass. Our boys joined the thousands before them who lost their lives as Jews and in the name of our ancient homeland.
During that period of uncertainty we all shared an intense sense of unity, unlike anything our people had experienced in recent years, with the message of “Bring Back Our Boys” reaching people from so many different backgrounds and places. The feeling of togetherness, of belonging and caring for one another only increased in fervor during the funerals and the shiva. And today we are incredibly inspired by the actions people have taken to continue this spirit in memory of our boys.
During the shiva, our homes overflowed with visitors seeking to offer us comfort, and so many conversations stood out.
But in one interaction, with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, who made his way to each of our homes, a seed of an idea was hatched that we knew needed to be developed. He said that we needed to find a way to harness that spirit of unity and keep it alive because this would serve as the ultimate legacy for our sons.
And so the idea of the Jerusalem Unity Prize was conceived.

‘Part of my heart is gone and yet I have to continue’

“I am on my way home,” were the last words Eyal Yifrah, 19, told his mother over the phone right before he was kidnapped and killed by Hamas on the night of June 12, along with Naftali Fraenkel, 16, and Gil-Ad Shaer, 16.
In the difficult year that has followed, the phrase “on my way” has come to symbolize for Eyal’s mother, Iris, her son’s love of life and the fervor with which he lived it.
“He was young. He loved to do things. He was always on his way somewhere. In almost every message he left me, he would say, ‘I’m going to meet friends. I’m heading to the yeshiva. I’m leaving for the trip.”
She and her husband, Uri, spoke with The Jerusalem Post Sunday night in the living room of their home in Elad.

Memorial Held for 3 Jewish Teens Murdered by Hamas ahead of ‘Unity Day’

More than 1,000 people attended a memorial ceremony on Monday in the Judea and Samaria community of Talmon marking one year since Israeli teenagers Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists.
Though the three boys are believed to have been murdered on the day of their abduction, their bodies were not found until 18 days later. Among those present at the ceremony were members of the search teams who looked for the boys, as well as the special Israel Defense Forces unit that assisted the families during the search last summer.
Friends, relatives and youth group leaders spoke about their memories of the boys.
“Exactly one year ago, I opened a new file on my computer and named it, ‘Waiting for Gil-adush,’” said Bat-Galim Shaar, using an affectionate nickname for her late son. “Since then, the file has filled up, and, in a way, our lives emptied.”

‘We haven’t shown enough outrage’

The other day, I had occasion to watch once again French Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ extraordinary speech to the National Assembly in Paris, delivered in January just after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris.
His passionate comments about the rise of anti-Semitism and the threat it poses to France ought to be obligatory viewing.
One sentence in particular has stuck with me. “We haven’t shown enough outrage,” the French leader proclaimed.
This comment was directed at the French political class and public at large. But, from my experience, these words could also apply to some Jews, especially in the U.S.
To be sure, many are well aware of the evolving situation and concerned about it. At the same time, the Jewish response to danger has always been rather complicated.
There are those Jews who seek to downplay or deny the danger; or convince themselves that it’s not directed at them, or that their particular place in life walls them off from it; or believe, in a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome, that it can in some way be justified and, therefore, requires behavioral changes by (other) Jews; or hope that by telling the world how much the Jews have done for everyone in science, medicine, culture, and philanthropy, we will change anti-Semitic attitudes; or reject the Jewish belief that “All Jews are responsible for one another,” so what happens in Paris or Brussels is essentially irrelevant to life across the ocean; or invoke the “IOI Syndrome” – “If only Israel” acted differently, all would be hunky-dory.

What if the Holocaust had never happened?

‘Things could have been much worse had the cataclysm of the Holocaust not happened,” said Dr. Jeffrey S. Gurock recently over lunch at a Jerusalem café.
A statement like this is hard to swallow if you don’t realize that his new book, “The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jewry, 1938-1967,” deals with counterfactual history, a speculative exploration of what-ifs, and the author is in no way dismissive of the murder of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
What Gurock demonstrates in his book is that World War II was a major turning point in American Jewish history, and that many positive things came out of it for American Jews as well as for US-Israel relations. Had key moments in the run-up to and during the course of the war played out differently, the Holocaust may not have happened. Gurock posits that instead, Jews in America would have had to “run for cover.” They would have had to assume—and maintain—a low profile, never achieving the level of empowerment and agency that we associate with American Jews today.
This is the first time that Gurock, a professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University and author and editor of 14 books, including “Orthodox Jews in America” and “Jews in Gotham: New York Jews And Their Changing City,” has tried his hand at counterfactual history. “It is, at the very root, the idea of conjecturing on what did not happen, or what might have happened, in order to understand what did happen,” wrote Jeremy Black and Donald M. MacRaild in their study guide, “Studying History.”
“I’m going out on a limb in a way, but people won’t saw it off,” said Gurock. “I’m emphasizing turning points in history, and I am using primary sources and important secondary sources.”

Rajoub Warns He May Try to Oust Israel from the Olympics

Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian Authority’s FIFA soccer official who failed to remove Israel from the organization last week, now is going for the Olympics.
He told a welcome home crowd of 2,000 people in Jericho last night:
If Israel does not change its attitude towards the settlements and continues to be racist against Palestinians, there will be an acceleration of moves with the possibility of ousting it from the Olympics.
Rajoub deserves the idiot’s gold medal for failure and buffoonery.
He also deserves to be in jail, at best, for terrorist attacks against Israel and for which he was sentenced to life, which in Israel means a few months or years before being released in exchange for a hostage or dead bodies.

Jordan May Revoke Rajoub’s Citizenship over FIFA Vote

Karame Press cites informed sources saying that the Jordanian government has decided to ban the head of the Palestinian Football Association Jibril Rajoub from entering the Kingdom of Jordan, and is weighing revoking his Jordanian nationality over the next few hours.
The sources report that the move comes in reaction to Rajoub’s Friday vote in the international football federation FIFA elections. They have accused him of supporting the incumbent president, Joseph Blatter, over his rival, Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein.
According to the same sources, Rajoub has been desperately trying to convince the Jordanians that he had given the Palestinian vote to Jordan, but it seems that Rajoub’s close relationship with Blatter and his positions supporting him on behalf of the Palestinian delegation have swayed the votes of many heads of international federations who sympathize with the Palestinians cause in favor of Blatter.

Sheldon Adelson to host meeting on stemming BDS tide on campuses

Sheldon Adelson will host a private meeting in Las Vegas of Jewish philanthropists and organizations aiming to counter rising anti-Israel activity on college campuses.
The meeting to brainstorm and fund strategies will be held this weekend at Adelson’s Venetian casino, the Forward reported. Joining Adelson as hosts are Hollywood entertainment tycoon Haim Saban, Israeli-born real estate developer Adam Milstein and Canadian businesswoman Heather Reisman.
Among the Jewish organizations invited are Hillel, StandWithUs, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of North America. The self-described “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street U, which opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, was not invited.
The philanthropists initiated the meeting amid the growing BDS drive on campuses. In the past year, student governments at 15 US universities have adopted resolutions calling for their schools to divest from companies deemed to be complicit in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.
Saban, a billionaire who has close ties to announced Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has been discussing the idea for over a year with Israeli officials such as Michael Oren, the former US ambassador and now a Knesset member, according to the Forward. (h/t Alexi)

Israeli ministers take boycott efforts head on

Science, Technology and Space Minister Danny Danon plans to convene the heads of Israel's universities next week to discuss the efforts waged to thwart boycotts against Israeli academics, scientists and researchers.
Danon explained Monday that Israeli researchers seeking recognition from leading research institutions overseas must often contend with "passive rejection," meaning they are politely deferred or ignored.
There has also been a significant decrease in scientific collaborations with international research companies, which fear consumer boycotts over their association with Israel, the minister said.
"We must forge a united front and fight the boycott attempts against Israeli researchers and scientists. Unfortunately, we have to deal with organizations and agencies that have made it their mission to undermine Israel rather than promote research and development," Danon said.
Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev also announced Monday that her ministry will form a special task force to prevent and counter academic and cultural boycotts against Israel.

BDS is an asymmetric war for world opinion

The biggest problem with the BDS movement is that it isn’t an armed conflict but a conflict of the consciousness, an asymmetric war for public opinion, on the base of legitimacy and perceived support. The weapons are claims of human rights abuses - mostly construed, sometimes altogether fictional; the battleground is in the west - in the liberal states to which Israel belongs.
The term asymmetric warfare was meant to explain what happens when a large military fights guerilla movements and terror organizations. The average Israeli knows the limits of strength; Hamas uses civilians and children as human shields - everything to keep the IDF from being able to shoot.
Terror organizations don’t have rules and moral boundaries in warm and we are seeing the same characteristics in the fight against BDS. In this battle there are no rules, no moral boundaries, no truths and no lies.

A Swedish Student's Unexpected Israel Experience

Today I had the pleasure of attending a meeting with three Swedish University professors and professors and staff at IDC Herzliya where I attend school. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss potential cooperation between IDC and the relevant Swedish University, and how to better market IDC among Swedish students. Two other Swedish students and I were invited to give our input as Swedish students living and studying in Israel.
Israel may not be an obvious choice for students looking to study abroad. Many don’t realize that Israel offers high quality graduate and undergraduate programs in English for International students.
People in Sweden know very little about Israel, and what we do know, we pick up from the distortions of the media showing Israel as a country associated mostly with conflict and war. In reality, Israel is much more than that.
To guarantee that everyone will always feel 100% safe in Israel would be a lie, because nobody can make such a promise. On the other hand, I would also not promise anyone absolute safety in Sweden, either.
In the almost six years that I have lived in Israel there has been only one month - last summer during the war with Gaza - when I actually felt relatively unsafe in my home in Tel Aviv. Usually, I feel safer than I do back in Sweden for a number of reasons.
I am never afraid to walk home alone in the night in Tel Aviv. There are always people outside, day and night.
Many feel uncomfortable about the security connected to public places and transportation in Israel. However, due to these precautions I actually feel safer. Security here is a top priority, so if and when something happens, everyone is prepared and knows what to do.

Deputy FM mulls ways to stop left-wing Israeli NGO's exhibit in Zurich

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely on Tuesday has instructed diplomats to convene an “urgent discussion” aimed at mulling “actions that we will take against Breaking the Silence’s activities in Switzerland.”
Breaking the Silence, a left-wing NGO comprised of former Israeli soldiers who recount their experiences during their service in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is scheduled to hold a series of events and exhibits in Zurich beginning later this week.
Hotovely said on Tuesday that she has also asked Israeli diplomats in Switzerland to “immediately examine what courses of action to take against the Breaking the Silence exhibit.”
“We cannot accept a situation whereby an organization whose entire purpose is to sully the names and reputations of IDF soldiers is operating internationally in order to cause serious damage to the State of Israel’s image,” Hotovely said. “The Foreign Ministry will continue its extensive activity against those same elements that are working against Israel both at home and abroad.”

NGO Monitor: Putting Israel on trial at the Zurich ‘Kulturhaus’

In response, Israelis are asking what can be done to fight back against these campaigns of libel and defamation.
The most appropriate response is based on “naming and shaming” the Swiss government, the City of Zurich and other funder-enablers.
By repeatedly and emphatically calling attention to this moral travesty, the exposure of blatant human rights hypocrisy is a powerful form of counter-pressure.
On this basis, the Israeli government, as the elected representatives of the public, should issue a strong, public diplomatic protest directed at Swiss government officials. Similarly, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee should summon the Swiss ambassador to Israel to provide an explanation, and respond to the protests of soldiers who risked their lives and saw their comrades killed in Gaza.
The Swiss public should not be surprised if these protests are directed to the Swiss Embassy in Tel Aviv, or if other soldiers travel to Zurich to make sure their anger is heard and seen.
In political attacks that exploit the universal values of human rights, including the one being prepared by Breaking the Silence in the Zurich “Kulturhaus,” staying silent is not an option.

Tel Aviv Legal Group Threatens Park Slope Food Co-op With Lawsuit Over BDS Measures

A prominent Israeli activist litigation group has threatened the Park Slope Food Co-op with a lawsuit if the supermarket adopts a boycott of Israeli products, the Algemeiner has learned.
“The Park Slope Food Co-op has to understand that we will not hesitate to file a lawsuit against them the minute they implement any anti-Israel boycott,” said Tel Aviv-based Shurat HaDin Director Nitsana Darshan-Leithner in a statement.
“Boycotts are not protected speech and they are actionable in [New York] under both criminal and civil law as illegal discrimination” on the basis of race or national origin, she said.
The Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center said it sent the Park Slope Food Co-op President William Penner and General Manager Joseph Holtz a letter warning them “not to implement a boycott of Israeli manufacturers, products or services.”

UK, France decline to take part in Israel defense expo in Tel Aviv

The exhibition is considered one of the more prestigious events that attracts visitors eager for a glimpse at the latest in police, military, and paramilitary equipment to hit the market. It is also a venue that affords those in the global arms trade to conduct business meetings.
Israel’s defense establishment sees the expo as an opportunity to browse and purchase the most sophisticated innovations from abroad. Yet any defense contractor wishing to erect a booth in the show must first obtain permission from the government in its country of origin.
In the days and weeks leading up to this year’s exhibition, a number of companies were denied permission to participate in the Tel Aviv show by the governments of France, Britain, the Scandinavian countries, and other western European nations. One Spanish defense firm will present its wares in a booth but under a different name so as not to risk economic ties with nations that have boycotted Israel.
“There are companies that have no desire to attach their names to the expo and to be seen selling offensive weapons to Israel,” a defense official told The Jerusalem Post’s Hebrew-language sister publication Ma’ariv Hashavua.
When asked if this was damaging to Israel, the official declined to answer, though it is clear that the absence of leading firms does not allow the defense establishment full access to the most sophisticated products on the market.

Daphne Anson: Unlocking Hatred: Huge Anti-Israel Propaganda Fest in "The City of Dreaming Spires"

Well, Oxford University is termed "the home of lost causes," but it's courtesy of both "town and gown" that the pro-Israel cause is set to take a bashing.
What an odious, divisive lot of mischief is planned for 4-21 June, with the Lord Mayor (Rae Humberstone, Labour) adding the prestige of his person (and therefore the sanction of his council) to proceedings.
Councillor Humberstone  succeeded Councillor Mohammed Abbasi as mayor, and was himself succeeded as sheriff of Oxford by Sajjad Malik.
Participants in this hatefest include "household name" Israel-demonisers such as Mustafa Barghouti and Mads Gilbert.
To quote from the publicity brochure:
Palestine Unlocked – celebrating life and culture
Welcome to Oxford’s first Palestinian festival!
From 4th-21st June 2015 the city will be filled with Palestinian creativity and life. The festival will be showcasing Palestinian theatre, film, food, music, art, photography, craft and dancing, as well as ‘unlocking’ the realities of life in Palestine.

Dutch government warns: Beware stone-throwing settlers

The Dutch government issued a travel advisory (Dutch) to anyone heading to the West Bank to be on the alert for Jewish settlers throwing stones at Palestinian and foreign vehicles.
“Be careful if you are driving in these areas,” the government warning advised, according to the Ynet news site. “There are regular demonstrations and violent incidents in the area. Jewish settlers live in illegal settlements in the West Bank. These settlers organize on a regular basis demonstrations close to the roads. These demonstrations are sometimes violent. This happens when settlers throw rocks toward Palestinian and foreign vehicles.”
Posted online last month, the warning continued: “One should be alert around Jewish settlers in proximity to the settlements, especially in the hills around Hebron and Nablus. As such, pay attention in the closed military areas of Hebron (H2 around Shuhada Road and the Abraham Mosque / Tomb of the Patriarchs). Also there, extremist settlers are liable to be hostile.”

The advisory drew an angry response from the Israeli embassy in Amsterdam.

“It is not acceptable to tarnish the reputation of an entire community. We will convey our protests to senior officials in the Netherlands,” the embassy said in a statement.

Honest Reporting: Time Correction, Battling the BBC, and Weymouth’s Double Standards

The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth interviews an Israeli and a Palestinian official, but makes clear whose view she thinks is more reasonable. HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl joins VOI’s Josh Hasten to discuss this and other media coverage of Israel. HR readers force Time magazine to correct a false headline relating to a recent Palestinian rocket attack. The HR petition to the BBC Trust is online, so Frankl says now is your chance to stand up to anti-Semitism at the BBC.

Palestinian boy beaten by Palestinian extremists in Jerusalem. UK media and NGOs are silent

According to one of the Jerusalem Hug organizers, Vitali Markov, the event this year was to be attended by 250 Palestinians who had received permission from Israeli authorities to come from the West Bank to Jerusalem.
Located between Damascus Gate and New Gate, the event was to begin at 3:30 p.m. at the Mishol Hapninim Garden, under the picturesque trees and walls of the Old City. Arab youngsters were practicing parkour and photographers had gathered to watch them. As if to coincide with the beginning of the event, several young men arrived and spoke to the Arabs who were participating, many of them wearing “Jerusalem Hug” shirts.
They told the Arab participants to leave the “normalization event” and tried to pull a woman and her child.
Arguments broke out and those with cameras were threatened by the Arab anti-normalization youths to delete film of them harassing the participants.
Of course, in addition to the silence by NGOs and assorted “peace” groups, we were unable to find even a brief mention of the attack anywhere in the UK media.
As Frantzman said, “wrong victims, wrong perpetrators”.

Is The Telegraph correct? Is Israel’s proposed rock-throwing law “draconian”?

As is typical with UK media reports critical of Israeli policy, no context or comparative analysis is provided. So, readers are unable to objectively assess whether or not the proposed Israeli law is indeed draconian.
So, we decided to review sentencing guidelines for rock-throwing in a few democratic countries, and here’s what we found:
Australia: Up to 5 years
New Zealand: Up to 14 years
United States: Up to 15 years
So, whilst reasonable people can of course still disagree with a 10-year sentence for throwing rocks at moving vehicles, it’s quite relevant to note that two Western democratic nations (the U.S. and New Zealand) actually impose harsher penalties for the same crime.
All of this makes us wonder: Did The Telegraph’s Robert Tait do any background research at all before concluding that Israel’s proposed rock-throwing law was “draconian”?

Major Jewish Group Appalled at Proposal to Exempt German Muslims From Concentration Camp Visits

Leading Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) expressed shock on Monday over a call by a Bavarian parliament member to exclude German Muslims and other immigrant students from visiting concentration camps as part of Holocaust educational programs.
“There are a lot of children from Muslim families who do not have a connection to our past,” said Christian Society Union (CSU) MP Klaus Steiner, justifying the exclusion in a speech to the Bavarian Parliament. “We have to approach this topic carefully with these children.”
SWC Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, registered the group’s objections in a letter to German Federal Education Minister Dr. Johanna Wanka saying her Bavarian coalition partner is promoting Holocaust denial with his proposal.
“To hear such language from a mainstream German politician reeks, at best, as Holocaust denial,” he wrote, according to a statement, “and, far worse, a German endorsement for such radical Islamist and Iranian intents, summed up as, ‘the Holocaust is a lie, let’s make it a reality.’”

Demented, Dying, but on Trial, the Last Nazis Reveal Their True Evil

As the trial of Oskar Gröning, the 93-year-old bookkeeper of Auschwitz, drags on, the old man appears to be fading fast.
Week after week the German court reveals in graphic detail the smoothly run murder machinery behind “the final solution,” the Nazi effort to exterminate Europe’s Jews. But will Oskar Gröning’s trial have the chance to come to its natural conclusion now that he is nearing the end of his own life? In deference to his frailty, some court sessions have been canceled, and each new one is limited to just three hours, meaning the proceedings could go on until November, at least, assuming he lives that long.
If it is up to Gröning, the trial must go on. Ever the punctilious bookkeeper, according to his lawyer, he is “anxious to bring the process to its ‘proper’ completion.”
Yet, judging from all that he has said and done in the past and at the trial, it is unlikely that Gröning will feel the remorse that anyone else listening to the testimony would expect. We have learned a lot over the years about what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil, but the Gröning case is about the bean-counting of horror: the work of a public servant committed to the Nazi philosophy and convinced, to this day, that his role in the systematic slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people was simply a matter of his performing his duty to his government in the midst of an all-out war.

Austrian paper sorry for Nazi obituary

A major Austrian newspaper has apologized for printing a death notice that carried the Nazi elite troop rank of the deceased.
The announcement of the death of Lois Plock in the Kleine Zeitung noted that he was an “Untersturmfuehrer” — a paramilitary rank of Hitler’s special SS forces. SS members served as Hitler’s bodyguard and formed elite units that carried out many of the era’s Holocaust crimes and other atrocities.
The announcement also listed a Nazi-era decoration of the deceased and carried a verse associated with the oath of loyalty sworn by Nazi troops to the German dictator.
Glorifying the Nazi past is a crime in Austria. Chief Editor Hubert Patterer apologized for printing the notice on Sunday, one day after it appeared. He called it a “horrible mistake.”

Monsignor Giacomo Meneghello awarded the title “Righteous Among the Nations”

My father has always taught me the importance of remembering the good people who saved his life (and thus mine) during the war.
I am therefore delighted that Monsignor Giacomo Meneghello has been awarded the title “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust remembrance authority, after my father nominated him.
He arranged for my father and his brother, Vittorio, to be hidden in a convent. They were only 5½ and 2½ years old when they were separated from their parents (who also survived). When the convent was about to be raided by the SS, my grandfather removed them, only to be caught himself by uniformed fascists. He escaped. Monsignor Meneghello arranged for Don Giulio Facibeni to collect and take my father and uncle to one of his orphanages in Montecatini. They stayed in Montecatini until Florence was liberated, and soldiers of the Palestine Brigade Water Company (British army) came to take them back to their parents in Florence.
We can never fully express our gratitude for the acts of humanity and bravery carried out by the ordinary people who risked their own lives to save others in such dark times. Others failed to act, or could not. While I pray that I will never need to do so, I hope that I would follow their example, should I ever have the opportunity, inspired by their ever-lasting gift to my family and my people.

Remembering a Fighter Against Oppression of Jews and Blacks

Before he gained fame for posing as an African-American in order to expose racism, journalist John Howard Griffin secretly helped rescue Jewish children from the Nazis. With race relations in America now at the center of a national debate, this summer’s 75th anniversary of Griffin’s rescue work in Nazi-occupied France takes on special meaning.
Griffin, author of the best-selling book Black Like Me, grew up Texas in the 1920s, in an era when racial segregation was strictly enforced and bigotry was the norm. He began reconsidering his assumptions about race after his casual use of an anti-black slur earned him a memorable slap across the face from his grandfather.
Frustrated by the limited educational opportunities in Texas, the precocious Griffin responded to a newspaper ad for a high school in France in 1935 and, to his surprise, won a full scholarship. After graduating from the Lycee Descartes school, Griffin stayed in France, studying psychiatry at the University of Poitiers and working as assistant director of an asylum, where he helped introduce the therapeutic use of music.
What happened next was a chapter in Griffin’s life that he never wrote about, but he described it in later interviews with his biographer, Robert Bonazzi, and with famed journalist Studs Terkel.
In May 1940, the Nazis invaded France. Griffin’s American passport was his ticket to escape—yet he refused. “France had helped to form me,” he recalled. “I could not see deserting my friends there in a time of crisis.” The director of the asylum was soon drafted into the French army, leaving 20 year-old Griffin in charge of the 120 patients.
But that was just his day job. Together with former classmate Jean Hussar, Griffin surreptitiously joined the French Underground. Recognizing the acute danger facing France’s Jews under the Nazis, Griffin and Hussar devised a unique plan to smuggle Jews out of the country. They disguised Jewish children as mental patients, dressing them in straitjackets and driving them out of town in the asylum’s ambulance.

Jewish violinist finishes father's performance that Nazis broke up

In 1933, promising young Jewish-German violinist Ernest Drucker left the stage midway through a Brahms concerto in Cologne at the behest of Nazi officials, in one of the first anti-Semitic acts of the new regime.
Now, more than 80 years later, his son, Grammy Award-winning American violinist Eugene Drucker, has completed his father's interrupted performance. With tears in his eyes, Drucker performed an emotional rendition of Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, over the weekend with the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra.
"I think he would feel a sense of completion. I think in some ways many aspects of my career served that purpose for him," the 63-year-old Drucker said of his father, who passed away in 1993. "There is all this emotional energy and intensity loaded into my associations to this piece."
Thursday's concert, and a second performance Sunday night, commemorated the Judischer Kulturbund, a federation of Jewish musicians in Nazi Germany who were segregated so as not to "sully" Aryan culture.

Tosca, Carmina Burana take Masada

The Fifth Masada Opera Festival – the largest international cultural event in Israel – gets underway this week with two masterpieces being staged at the foot of the majestic UNESCO World Heritage site.
The Israeli Opera, which is celebrating its 30th season this year, will present Tosca by Giacomo Puccini and Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, over the weekends of June 4-6 and June 11-13. There will be four performances of Tosca and two performances of Carmina Burana.
“Every year I remind myself that it all started with a fantastic dream that was hard to believe would come true… Now our festival takes shape for the fifth year, and this time we are privileged to stage not one, but two huge productions that are totally different from each other, on the same gigantic stage that is rebuilt every year especially for the Opera Festival at the foot of Masada,” says Hanna Munitz, Israeli Opera General Director.
The Masada Opera Festival launched in 2010. Since then it has become one of the leading international opera festivals in the world and has positioned the Israeli Opera as an important and significant international opera house, says Munitz.

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