Tuesday, October 08, 2019
MEMRI: Incitement Against Jews Within BDS And Pro-Palestinian Facebook Groups – Part II
The Facebook groups examined in this report are focused on promoting the Palestinian cause and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. In this report we present posts that appeared in eight BDS groups between January 2016 and July 2019, with explicit and blatant antisemitic incitement against Jews and Judaism without any context linking them to Israel or its policies.Stand With Us: UCLA Student & StandWithUs Submit Title VI Complaint Against UCLA Alleging Inaction on Antisemitism
For the first part of this series, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 1455, Incitement Against Jews By U.S.-Based Neo-Nazi And White Supremacist Members Of Pro-Palestinian And BDS Facebook Groups, May 16, 2019.
Groups Examined (see Appendix for details):
- Boycott Israel[1]: Public group with 10,000 members.
- BDS FIRST[2]: Public group with about 2,000 members.
- Stand with Palestine[3]: Public group with 60,000 members.
- ANTI ZIONIST – BOYCOTT ISRAEL[4]: Closed Facebook group with 4,000 members.
- A group for Palestine and its friends[5]: Closed group with 24,000 members.
- Boycott Israel.... Support the BDS[6]: Closed group with more than 35,000 members.
- Boycott Israel️. Free Palestine ANSWER ALL 3 QUESTIONS PLZ!![7]: Closed group with more than 11,000 members.
- BOYCOTT ISRAEL NEWS AND MEDIA.[8]: Closed group with 800 members.
This report focuses solely on posts[9] published in these groups (most of which are very active) that express explicit hatred and vilification of Jews and incite against them. Members of these groups represent a wide range of geographic locations, religious beliefs, and political ideologies.[10] Incitement against Jews is rampant in all these groups, demonstrating that antisemitism transcends geographic, political and religious divides. As of this writing, none of the posts mentioned in this report were deleted or criticized by group administrators or moderators. In fact, many of the posts were created by them. This report includes only a small sample of the anti-Jewish incitement spread in these groups. It nevertheless is an accurate reflection of attitudes towards Jews that are rampant in BDS groups.
An analysis of the personal Facebook pages of users quoted in this work shows that they are based in Western countries such as the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia, in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Pakistan, as well as in South Africa and India. They express diverse positions towards politically charged issues in the U.S., including abortion, immigration, and gun control. The religious identity of members is diverse as well, with many members indicating that they are practicing Muslims and Christians, while others are ardent atheists.
Conspiracy Theories, Jewish Warmongering, And Holocaust Denial
Members of BDS groups and pro-Palestinian Facebook groups often claim that Jews are nefariously behind various major global catastrophes throughout history. They claim that Jews regularly carry out "false-flag" attacks in order to implicate other groups (most recently Muslims) and to bring war and strife worldwide. They also claim that Jews falsify or stage attacks and persecution of their own people in order to gain sympathy and to further their plans for world domination. This can include accusing Jews of orchestrating their own persecution during World War II, and denying the veracity and/or extent of the Holocaust as well as of other modern antisemitic events.
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) student Shayna Lavi and the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department have submitted a complaint against UCLA to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”). The complaint alleges that the university is in violation of its obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, due to the administration's inaction in response to antisemitism experienced by UCLA Jewish students.Israel Advocacy Movement: SQUAD FAILS
Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs receiving federal financial assistance. According to OCR, Jewish students enjoy the protections of Title VI, including protection from antisemitic harassment that creates a hostile environment. Ms. Lavi’s experiences, as detailed in the complaint, fall squarely within OCR’s definition of antisemitism.
Ms. Lavi was subjected to ongoing antisemitic discrimination and harassment during the spring 2019 quarter. This began with a diatribe by a guest lecturer in one of her classes, "Anthropology M144P: Constructing Race." The lecturer, San Francisco State University Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, singled out Ms. Lavi and attacked a core component of her Jewish identity, such as by calling Zionists "white supremacists." After Ms. Lavi objected to this attack, Ms. Lavi’s professor, who had invited this guest lecturer, proceeded to target her with additional harassment in subsequent classes. When informed of this, UCLA failed to respond adequately or effectively.
In addition to Ms. Lavi’s experiences, the complaint describes a pattern of antisemitic incidents at UCLA dating to 2012, and the administration’s failure to address this hostile climate.
“StandWithUs is proud to support Ms. Lavi and commends her courageous willingness to confront antisemitism at UCLA. UCLA's Jewish community remains vibrant and resilient, with strong support from Hillel and other Jewish institutions on campus. At the same time, there is no excuse for the UCLA administration's disturbing indifference to years of well-documented abuse and harassment of Jewish students. It is time for OCR to hold UCLA's administration accountable and demand that it comply with its legal requirements under Title VI,” said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs.
The 'Squad' are complete hypocrites who:
🔸 Want to ban fossil fuels… take hundreds of flights
🔸 Claim the rich avoid taxes… don't pay their tax
🔸 Protest the 1%… are stinking rich
Share if you’re tired of AOC, Ilhan and Rashida's hypocrisy!
Anti-BDS group backed by Adelson heads to 6 countries outside US
A Jewish group founded and funded by the Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to oppose the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on American campuses will be expanding its efforts to six countries outside the US in the next academic year.
From the start of the new academic year, the Maccabee Task Force will grow its presence to countries “in Europe and beyond,” where it plans to fund and assist pro-Israel campus groups facing boycott Israel campaigns, the organization’s executive director, David Brog, told The Times of Israel.
He would not reveal which countries the task force was heading to.
Established in 2015, the task force works with pro-Israel students on programs countering efforts to boycott or divest from Israel, sending representatives to campuses to solicit ideas from students and groups on campus, and then fund those it deems viable.
The idea, Brog said in an interview, was to be “a clearinghouse for good strategies that we could fund and then offer to our other campuses, and then we could enable the strategies by bringing the funding and the ideas.”
He explained the model of MTF as providing the financial resources to allow campus pro-Israel groups to counter BDS in whatever ways they deem most effective for their particular campus.
The ruthless Ottoman suppression of three 'dhimmi' peoples
Important article in the Tel Aviv Review of Books by Shmuel Trigano pointing to the essential Islamic context behind the violent suppression by Ottoman sultans of the nascent nationalism of three dhimmi peoples - Greeks, Armenians and Jews - in the 19th and 20th centuries. Professor Trigano's book 'Juifs en terre d'Islam' was recently published in Hebrew.Far-Left Activists Continue Yom Kippur Effort to Oust Jewish Labour MP Critical of Antisemitism in Party
Succumbing to the pressure of the European Christian powers, the Ottoman Empire was forced to change the status of dhimmis . The Tanzimat reforms of 1839, enacted by Sultan Abdul Mejid, followed by the edict of Hatt-I humayun of 1856, enshrined the principle of equality for all subjects of the empire irrespective of their religion. However, it preserved the structure of communities or “nations” , by changing their administrative function and keeping the hierarchy intact (with the Greeks, Armenians and Jews at the very bottom).
If these reforms had in effect undermined the established order of the communities and emancipated their members, it was a traumatic insult for the Muslims whose millet had lost its privileged status, making it one nation among many— an insult compounded by the fact that the reforms were imposed by Christian powers. For the Muslims, this evolution was nothing short of the complete capitulation of Islam and the abandonment of its legitimacy. Yaron Harel has shown that in Syria and Lebanon, the Tanzimat reforms changed nothing regarding the segregation of the communities across all areas of everyday life.
In fact, before the Tanzimat the longing for independence among the dhimmi peoples had already begun with Greece’s 1822 War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. Greece’s victory showed that Independence seemed within reach. Though generally forgotten, Zionism began in the Turkish Balkans in Sarajevo with Yehuda Alkalai and not in Europe with Herzl. Inspired by the Greeks, Alkalai developed an extensive theory of Jewish sovereignty and travelled throughout Europe and the Middle East to spread his ideas. Herzl heard of him in Vienna.
After the Greeks and the Jews it was the turn of the Armenians. The national awakening of these three dhimmi people led to the Arab nationalist movement and also the first Islamic repression. The Armenians, under the impetus of the movement of nationalities, committed an act of rebellion against the dhimmi by fighting for national autonomy. After several rebellions in the Caucasus, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation was established in 1890 in Tiflis, and advocated an armed struggle for liberty.
A Jewish Labour MP who has been outspoken on the issue of antisemitism within her party is facing two more attempts to force her out of office a day before a no-confidence motion against her is set to be considered on the eve of Yom Kippur.Being Jewish in New Zealand and the concerning rise of antisemitism.
Critics decried the scheduling of the motion, which was seen as a ploy to prevent MP Louise Ellman from participating in her own defense.
The motion expresses no confidence in Ellman because she has expressed understanding of Jewish concerns about Labour antisemitism and has criticized party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Jewish Chronicle reported that far-left elements in Ellman’s local Constituency Labour Party (CLP) proposed two further motions against Ellman, calling an emergency meeting to discuss them on Monday evening.
Moderate Labour activist Luke Akehurst called the move “vicious bullying” and compared it to the treatment of Luciana Berger, a Jewish MP who quit Labour over the antisemitism issue.
“The targeting of these two Jewish MPs cannot be coincidental — it stinks of antisemitism and misogyny,” he said.
However, Akehurst noted, the motions in and of themselves could not force Ellman out. This could only be done by means of a “trigger ballot.” Instead, he believed the motions were a tactic “designed to sap her morale before the trigger-ballot selection process.”
He decried “a pattern of bullying Dame Louise by hard-left activists in her CLP since 2015,” the year Corbyn became the head of Labour.
Antisemitism mutates over time. Today, we face it not only from the extreme right, such as the Holocaust denial that social media is awash in, or the attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue in October last year in which 11 Jews were murdered, or more recently the Poway, California synagogue attack, leaving another Jew murdered. We face it from Islamists who have targeted and murdered Jews in France. And also from the extreme left. This ‘new form’ of antisemitism takes cover in the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel. To be sure, criticism of Israeli policies and actions is not antisemitic. Israel should be subject to the same scrutiny and standards as every other country. However, it is not mere criticism to erase Jewish peoplehood and history in Israel, or to accuse Jews of ‘dual loyalty’, or to apply the same dehumanising tropes and conspiracy theories to the Jewish state or Zionists that were once applied to Jews – so that the Jewish state and its supporters, rather than individual Jews, are treated as being a uniquely evil controlling force, the source of all ills, whose elimination is necessary to save humanity.
All these forms of antisemitism have manifested in New Zealand, to varying degrees, in social media, leaflets, protests, speeches at mosques, graffiti, vandalism, and some verbal and physical abuse. In 2014, protesters marched down Queen St during the Gaza war, shouting, “Cut their fucking heads off,” and wielding an Israeli flag with a swastika replacing the Star of David. John Key’s election billboards were defaced with antisemitic imagery (his Austrian mother was a Jewish refugee). I wondered for the first time whether my children had a future in New Zealand – a profoundly disturbing thought. I resolved to do whatever I could to fight back. That’s why I am spokesperson for the New Zealand Jewish Council, and speak and write frequently about antisemitism.
The horrific terrorist attacks on the Christchurch mosques have indeed confirmed New Zealand is not immune to terrorism, as the Jewish community has feared for some time. Like all New Zealanders, we are devastated for the Muslim community, struck down at prayer in what should have been their sanctuary. In a stark reminder of the common hatred that Jews and Muslims face, the Poway synagogue gunman cited the Christchurch gunman as inspiration in his manifesto.
Our sense of vulnerability is heightened. Indeed, for the first time in our long and proud history in New Zealand, on police advice our synagogues were shut on the Sabbath immediately after the mosque attacks.
In 1943, as the Nazis were executing their abominable plan to exterminate Jews, my great-grandfather Rabbi Katz delivered a speech to the Wellington Jewish community on its centenary that included these words: “So we meet today… in thanksgiving to God, who directed the footsteps of our fathers to these blessed shores, where they found a haven of peace – a land of freedom, justice and opportunity, where barriers of race or religion do not exist, and a person was allowed to worship God and practice the dictates of their religion according to their own conscience.”
Having seen our fellow New Zealanders so cruelly deprived of their haven of peace in their house of worship, we now know how hard we must work to ensure those words continue to hold true.
.@ArielElyseGold and @codepink, folks https://t.co/Nm4ZRONaix #Iran
— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) October 8, 2019
Cape Town Friday Sermon by Activist Cassiem Khan Following Royal Visit to Local Mosque: Prince Harry Is an Enemy Combatant pic.twitter.com/r5E5SyeHAx
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 8, 2019
Ofcom determining sanction for Islam Channel over “antisemitic” broadcast accusing “tyrannical” Jews of plotting to distort Koran
Ofcom has determined that the Islam Channel broadcasted “very harmful and highly offensive antisemitic content” in its programme, The Rightly Guided Khalifas.New York Governor Pledges Extra Police Officers to Protect Jewish Institutions on Yom Kippur
According to its website, the Islam Channel broadcasts from London and describes itself as providing “alt news, current affairs and entertainment programming from an Islamic perspective,” and it broadcasts to over 136 countries worldwide.
The Rightly Guided Khalifas, a religious education series on the history of the Koran and the measures used to preserve its original wording, claimed that Israel printed hundreds of thousands of deliberately distorted copies of the Koran in 1961 for distribution in Africa and Asia, an assertion based on government propaganda from the period.
The Arabic narration also quoted a “telegraph” from the last century accusing Israel of being “formed on the basis of tyranny and aggression…[and it] continues to live in this tyrannical frame of mind…[and] seeks the destruction of our belief and religion” by distorting the Koran. “In this way, it continues to practice what their forefathers [i.e. the Jews] had done before.”
The English translation on-screen also accused Israel of “poisonous acts”, while the English subtitles added that “the occupying state of Israel (the jews)…is still living in this world with the same evil mind…by doing so the new jews tried to do the same thing their ancestors did when they displaced words from (their) right places [sic].”
Amid a surge in antisemitic attacks in New York City, worshipers attending Yom Kippur services on Tuesday night and Wednesday will be protected by an increased police presence, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo confirmed on Monday.Man shouts “I am going to f***ing get you!” and swings fists in antisemitic assault in Hendon
Cuomo said the increased presence would be deployed in time for the Kol Nidrei services that usher in the holiest day of the year for Jews.
“As members of the Jewish community gather Tuesday evening to begin the observance of Yom Kippur, I am directing the State Police to increase patrols around Synagogues and religious centers to ensure this sacred day is not disturbed by anyone seeking to spread division or fear,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo added: “Recent antisemitic incidents, including an attack against a Synagogue in Williamsburg over the Rosh Hashanah holiday, underscore the need to protect against antisemitism and hatred of all kinds. At the same time, we must redouble our commitment to working together to root out bigotry and ignorance and to achieve the promise of an equal, safe and secure society for all.”
New York City’s own police department confirmed that it would be placing extra officers around Jewish institutions as well.
A Jewish man walking in the vicinity of Middlesex University was followed by a suspect screaming “Jews should f*** off” and “they let the Jews in in 1533 [sic]: they never should have been let in.” He also repeatedly threatened: “I am going to f***ing get you!”.“Let’s get a hold of them...I have a gun”, say youths as they assault Jews in Stamford Hill
Shomrim North West London, a Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol, reported that the suspect also tried to hit the man and was seen pulling an elderly lady’s shopping trolley with one hand as he swung the other with a closed fist.
The incident took place at 12:20 today on The Burroughs in Hendon, North London, and the suspect was described as 5’10 in height with tanned skin, black hair, a full black beard and no spectacles, wearing a zipped-up dark blue bomber jacket with dark blue trousers.
Police and Stamford Hill Shomrim, a Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol, are investigating verbal and physical assault against multiple Jews in the Stamford Hill area.Canadian synagogue targeted with swastikas and anti-Jewish symbols
The incidents, which took place around Ilan Square during the Jewish Sabbath on 5th October, involved several youths, reportedly aged between 10-15 years old, on bicycles, harassing passersby on the pathway near the swings, shouting “let’s get a hold of them; Jews control everything” and “I have a gun”, while physically assaulting the Jewish passersby with their bicycles.
One witness added that the youths yelled: “Stop! Where are you from? Where are you from?” in an effort to cause an altercation.
Responding to the incident, the Mayor of Hackney tweeted: “Glad this is being investigated, disgusted to hear this has happened.”
Swastikas and other symbols were drawn in chalk on the grounds of a Canadian synagogue in Ontario.Celine Dion adds second summer concert date in Tel Aviv
The drawings, which were found in four spots at Beth Jacob Synagogue in Hamilton, were discovered Saturday morning when the rabbi arrived for Torah study before Shabbat services, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported. The graffiti also included the word Jews with a line drawn through it.
Rabbi Hillel Lavery-Yisraeli told Canada’s Global News that surveillance camera footage showed four teenagers drawing the graffiti on Friday night.
The Hamilton Police hate crimes unit is investigating.
Lavery-Yisraeli said the synagogue hired a security guard after last October’s attack on the Tree of Life synagogue building in Pittsburgh killed 11.
Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger is scheduled to visit the synagogue during Yom Kippur services.
Diva Celine Dion added another performance in Tel Aviv in August 2020 after tickets sold quickly for her first show in Israel.Injured Birds Get Flying Lessons at Israeli Animal Hospital
Dion’s first-ever concert tour in Israel will see her perform on August 4, on Tu B’Av, Israel’s Valentine’s Day, and August 5.
The additional performance will make good use of the special, outdoor amphitheater being built at Park Hayarkon for Dion’s concert, which is meant to mimic her iconic Las Vegas performances.
It appears that flying isn't like riding a bicycle.Tourist Entries to Israel in September Increased by 44 Percent Year-Over-Year
The Israeli Wildlife Hospital, operated by the Nature and Parks Authority and the Ramat Gan Safari Park is building a new enclosure, set to become a flight school for injured birds before they return to the wild.
The hospital has been operating for 14 years, and while in the beginning it treated about 300 animals a year, today patients number 6,000 a year.
The rising intensity calls for enlarging the hospital, and the three organizations have decided on two new enclosures and new and on purchasing new and modern equipment.
The Ramat Gan municipality, where the Safari and the hospital are located, has also decided to support the initiative.
The new facilities are set to serve birds, and especially birds of prey, that arrive in the hospital for various reasons, like electrocutions, injuries and poisonings.
Birds often arrive in the hospital with severe injuries and have to go through complicated orthopedic surgeries that call for a long rehabilitation period. Many end up unable to fly even after rehabilitation.
In order to be released back into the wild, these birds require a second rehabilitation period, that focuses on re-learning how to fly and practicing it.
Approximately 405,000 tourist entries into Israel were recorded in September, 44 percent more than in September 2018 and 46 percent more than September 2017, the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics said Thursday. Between January and September 2019, nearly 3.3 million tourist entries were recorded, compared to 2.9 million in the same period last year, an increase of 13 percent.Israeli EMTs go all the way with the Tetris Challenge
Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport saw its busiest month ever in August, with 2.8 million passengers buzzing through it, the Israel Airports Authority (IAA) announced last month. In September, approximately 2.3 million passengers traveled through the airport, while October will see an estimated 2.28 million travelers. The most popular destinations for flights leaving Israel’s main airport are Turkey, Greece, the US, Italy, and Russia, the IAA said.
The airlines that flew the most passengers last month to and from Israel were Israel’s national carrier El Al, which flew 541,000 passengers; low-cost airline WizzAir, which flew 121,000 passengers; and Turkish Airlines, with 107,000 passengers to and from Ben Gurion Airport.
Volunteers in Israel’s United Hatzalah emergency-response network just had to do their own version of the viral meme #TetrisChallenge that’s been sweeping social media – and in classic Israeli style, they had to do it bigger.
On Monday morning in Tel Aviv, 70 volunteers from across Israel spent two hours arranging themselves and their gear — oxygen tanks, defibrillators, trauma kits, bulletproof vests, 20 ambucycles, six ambulances and assorted other rapid-response vehicles — on the ground in neat formation resembling blocks in the Tetris video game.
A TV crew from Channel 13’s morning show “HaOlam HaBoker” filmed the entire process, but the crowning image is the overhead photograph of the finished scene. That’s the crux of the Tetris Challenge that’s tearing up Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Reportedly started last November by the New Zealand Police Department’s shared photo of meticulously arranged gear and personnel, the Tetris Challenge has lately captured the imagination of emergency, military and law-enforcement units around the globe.
And many of the 6,000 volunteers in United Hatzalah were clamoring to get in on the fun.
“As soon as this started going viral, some of our volunteers were doing small Tetris Challenge initiatives on their own. A lot of them texted us and said,‘Why don’t we do a big one and break the record?’” United Hatzalah founder and president Eli Beer tells ISRAEL21c.
Israeli Researcher on Yom Kippur, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Artificial Intelligence
This week marks the 40th anniversary of Douglas Adams’ popular science fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Over 14 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide, and it was made into several television and film adaptations. While some aspects of the book are quite dated, many of the underlying themes relating to the advancement of technology, and how humans interact with that technology, are still pertinent.100,000 Jews gathered for Selichot prayers at Western Wall
Similar to Yom Kippur — the Jewish day of atonement which, coincidentally, also takes place this week — Adams’ book highlights our relative insignificance within the entirety of the universe. Carl Sagan famously described Earth, as seen in the iconic image taken by the interstellar space probe Voyager 1, as a “pale blue dot.” Similarly, Adams portrays Earth as nothing consequential in the vastness of space: his book begins with Earth being destroyed simply to make room for a new intergalactic highway.
Yom Kippur also highlights the frailties of humanity and, notably, Adams wrote human weaknesses into his fictional artificial intelligence robots. To wit: Marvin the Paranoid Android, a robot aboard the spaceship carrying the book’s protagonists, is depressed and bored. Acknowledged as one of his memorable performances, in the 2005 film adaptation Marvin is voiced by the late great Alan Rickman.
Adams was particularly percipient in his incorporation of humanity into AI. While we often see AI as a tool for reducing problematic human-like qualities such as biases and human errors, many researchers and companies are now specifically aiming to introduce human-like characteristics into AI algorithms.
Roughly 100,000 Jews gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem late Thursday night for special Selichot prayers ahead of the Yom Kippur holiday.Worst-injured Israeli soldier in 2009 Gaza war marries in emotional ceremony
The mass Selichot prayer event was hosted by the two Chief Rabbis of Israel: Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau, along with the Chief Rabbi of the Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, the Mayor of Jerusalem Moshe Lion, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, and MK Gabi Ashkenazi, the chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
According to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, an estimated one-and-a-half million people visited the Western Wall Plaza during the month of Elul, which precedes the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur holidays, and the ten days in between the Jewish new year and Jewish day of atonement.
“The great flood of people during the past month to the Western Wall Plaza during all hours of the day brought together people from all different groups and backgrounds – religious and non-religious, young and old – testifies to the deep ties all different groups in Israel have to the Western Wall and to Jewish tradition,” the Western Wall Heritage Foundation said in a statement.
The worst-injured Israeli soldier in the 2009 Gaza war was married on Monday, more than 11 years after he nearly lost his life in the fighting.Schindler honored by children of those he saved — and a single survivor
Ben Spitzer was a fresh soldier in the IDF’s elite Golani Brigade when the war with Hamas, known in Israel as Operation Cast Lead, broke out at the end of December 2008. Several days after the fighting started, Spitzer’s unit was deployed to the northern Gaza border, where it came under accidental fire by fellow Israeli soldiers.
According to reports, when IDF tank units stationed nearby observed movement along the border in the early morning of January 5, they fired artillery shells at the group, not knowing they were Israeli troops.
The friendly fire strike killed four soldiers, and injured 24 others, including Spitzer.
Spitzer was rushed to hospital in critical condition with severe head injuries and a crushed right arm.
He underwent several life-saving procedures including multiple head surgeries and the amputation of his right hand. He spent years undergoing operations and in physical therapy.
On Monday, Spitzer married a Bat Yam native named Linoy in a large ceremony surrounded by friends and family.
A group of Israelis who owe their lives to German industrialist Oskar Schindler visited his grave site in Jerusalem on Monday, to mark 45 years since his death.
With the number of Jews who lived through the Holocaust dwindling every year, the assembly at Mount Zion’s Catholic cemetery was made up mostly of the children of those he saved — and one lone survivor.
Ruth Sachs, 93, told Channel 13: “All my family, my parents and my brother, they all died in the Holocaust.”
But Sachs was among some 1,200 people Schindler saved from the Nazi death machine by claiming them as essential workers at his factories that were supplying ammunition to the German army.
Sachs was among a group of several hundred women workers who nearly perished after being sent to Auschwitz by mistake — as depicted in Steven Spielberg’s 1994 film “Schindler’s List.”
Once there, it was nearly impossible to convince German officials to allow them to leave. But thanks to a campaign of lobbying and bribes to officials, Schindler managed it after a few weeks.
“We didn’t believe when we got to Auschwitz that we would get out of there,” she said on Monday.
Also at the cemetery, Lea Guterman said her parents, saved by Schindler, “raised five children. Those five children reared 36 grandchildren and over 120 or 150 great-grandchildren — after 120 we stopped counting.”
