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Tuesday, September 06, 2022

09/06 Links Pt2: David Collier: I told the truth about ‘Palestine’ – and this happened; British Fantasy Writers and the Jewish Question; Israeli wine is Zionist wine

From Ian:

David Collier: I told the truth about ‘Palestine’ – and this happened
Two things are key to my outlook – truth and historicity. Being driven by a need for honesty however, does mean that I am not so big on being ‘politically correct’. I believe that following such an ‘unchained’ strategy exposes the weaknesses of the anti-Israel propaganda machine far better than other, more ‘diplomatic’ methods.

So on Sunday I put out a simple, factual tweet. I accept that it was the type of tweet that some of my more dovish supporters cringe at. They likely consider it provocative and unnecessary. I believe that challenging the pillars holding up the fake narrative of our enemies is vital work, even if now and again I make others around me feel uncomfortable. The truth in a tweet

This is what I said:
There has never been a state of Palestine.
They have had no ruler. No common identity.
No currency.
No history.
No borders.
It was an invention created to help fight Israel.
The concept may exist now – but it never did before.
So stop making stuff up.

There is nothing factually wrong in those words. It is a simple statement that reflects part of the historical reality behind the conflict. ‘Palestine’ as a term was just a reflection of the Christian heritage of the colonial powers, For over 1000 years it was a word that meant ‘Holy Land’ to those in Europe that used it. It was alien, not native, to the region. The ‘Palestinians’ just did not exist in the Arab world in any sense whatsoever.

None of this is about ‘people’ today, nor their rights, so there is nothing to get angry with. Except the anti-Israel narrative exists upon pillars of falsehoods. Which means it has to reject rather than accept the truth. So the simple tweet went viral, with about 350,000 ‘impressions’. Over 785 people commented on it.

When told the truth – most just become abusive:

The key response was just sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming ‘racist’:

There is obviously nothing racist in my tweet at all. These people do not like what I am saying but have no way of actually countering the facts. Using their favourite smear – ‘racist’ – is all they are left with.

Those comments above were just some of the 100s of abusive tweets. Apart from calling me a ‘racist’, I was also called an ‘Islamophobe’, a ‘Nazi’, a bigot, and various curse-words than I have no intention of repeating here. Verbal abuse was by far the most popular response.
PodCast: Arnold Roth joins ‘Limited Liability Podcast’
On Aug. 9, 2001, in the late afternoon of what had been a typical day in Jerusalem, families gathered for lunch, as they often did, at Sbarro on the corner of Jaffa Road and King George Street. A bustling area, the kosher pizzeria was a particularly popular spot among neighborhood children and members of the area’s religious communities. That Thursday, the restaurant was packed. Fifteen-year-old Malki Roth, a citizen of Israel, Australia and the U.S., was there with her best friend.

At the same time, Malki’s father, Arnold Roth, the head of a drug development company, was taking his lunch break amid an afternoon of nonstop meetings. He had just finished when, around 2 p.m., he answered a call from his wife screaming into the phone. There had been an attack.

Malki, her best friend and 13 others — mostly young mothers and children — were killed when a Hamas terrorist entered the restaurant and detonated a bomb, killing himself in the process. An additional 130 people were injured.

In the 21 years since Malki’s death, Arnold and Frimet Roth have worked tirelessly to preserve her memory and seek justice for their daughter, creating the Malki Foundation (Keren Malki) in her honor. This week, on the most recent episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” co-hosts Rich Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein were joined by Arnold to talk about Malki: her life, her tragic death and the family’s efforts to hold her murderers accountable.
Journalist forced to flee after capturing rare images of Iranian Jews publishes book
Jewish prayer in a mosque. Hookah smoke in a kosher kitchen. Hebrew school study under portraits of ayatollahs.

When former Associated Press photographer Hassan Sarbakhshian spent almost two years between 2006 and 2008 among the Jewish communities in Iran, those are some of the images he collected for a book project. The photographs offer a rare look inside Jewish homes, synagogues and other spaces, which the Jewish community normally keeps fairly locked down to outsiders.

In Iran, a nation whose post-1979 revolution government regularly calls for the violent destruction of Israel, Jews are famously allowed to practice their religion freely and feel a strong connection to their country. There is a permanent Jewish representative in parliament.

But when Sarbakhshian submitted the book to Iran’s culture ministry for publication, he ran up against the country’s pervasive anti-Zionist culture.

The ministry argued that he was an agent of Israel promoting anti-Islamic values. They forced him out of working for the AP, and he eventually began to fear for his and wife’s safety. He and his wife, Parvaneh Vahidmanesh, a journalist and human rights activist who was involved in the project, moved to Virginia.

Nearly 15 years after taking his last photos for the book, “Jews of Iran: A Photographic Chronicle,” which will finally be published on Tuesday by Penn State University Press, Sarbakhshian still calls the project that led to the ordeal one of the best experiences of his life.

“We traveled to more than 15 cities on a bus with [Iranian Jews]. We laughed with them, we ate with them. We lived with them, actually,” he said.

As of 2020, there were 9,000 Jews living in Iran. It’s a far cry from a pre-revolution peak Jewish population of around 100,000, but the country is still home to the Middle East’s second-largest Jewish population after Israel. Some of Sarbakhshian’s pictures almost look like they could have been taken in an American suburb: kids playing soccer, people having a picnic in the park, family members running around slapping each other with scallions.

But other photos in the book demonstrate Jews’ precarious status in a country that makes them continually pledge loyalty to the Muslim theocratic state. One shows a Jewish leader at a mosque attending a celebration of Quds Day, a day of pro-Palestinian rallies that often include Israel flag burnings and anti-Israel rhetoric.


Shamir - War, Peace & A Dream
Yitzhak Shamir, the 7th Prime Minister of Israel, led a storied life now showcased in a riveting documentary, Shamir: War, Peace & A Dream. The film brings together a veritable roll call of Israeli politicians and generals to talk about his legacy. Interviews with Shamir’s confidants, colleagues and family, alongside reflections of former Prime Ministers, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, complement behind-the-scenes footage and archives.

The little-known personal history of Shamir is revealed onscreen, as director Igal Lerner offers a rare glimpse into Shamir's early years in Poland, his family in Israel, and his leadership of the Stern Gang (Lehi) up through his years as Prime Minister.


British Fantasy and the Jewish Question, pt. 1
J.R.R. Tolkien once commented that the dwarves of his fictional world were loosely modeled on Jews. As Michael Weingrad explains in a series of four articles, Tolkien drew on a long history of British writers of fantasy and historical romance who put Jews—sometimes disguised, sometimes overt—into their works:

While the band that shows up at the home of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit has roots in northern European sources such as the Poetic Edda, Tolkien also gives [their leader] Thorin Oakenshield and company a story of exile and a powerful yearning to return to the homeland from which they were dispersed. Thorin recalls how the dwarves who survived [the dragon] Smaug’s devastation “sat and wept” by the side of the Lonely Mountain, echoing Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” He continues: “After that, we went away, and we have had to earn our livings as best we could up and down the lands.” The Jewish experience of diaspora, the persistence of Jewish memory, and the Jewish determination to win ancestral sovereignty once again—these resound in Tolkien’s portrayal of his dwarves.

Weingrad traces this literary tradition from the 19th century, and the works of Benjamin Disraeli and Walter Scott, through the 1960s. Among the earliest examples he cites is Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1838 Leila, or the Siege of Granada:

This novel focuses on the Jew Almamen and his daughter Leila during the final stages of the Christian reconquest of Spain in the late 15th century. Like Ivanhoe and other works of the period, it attempts to square the opposed conceptions of Jews as, on the one hand, a noble, biblical warrior people, and, on the other, a devious and clannish commercial people. Bulwer-Lytton’s anti-hero Almamen embodies the passions of Jewish nationalism under conditions of exile.

Under less impossible conditions Almamen might have been able to achieve political success, and provide his people with the security and dignity they lack. However, it is all Almamen can do to try to win some modest legal rights and protections for the Jews, a minority without territory or army, struggling for survival between the contending powers of Christendom and Islam.

With its mix of philo-Semitic admiration and anti-Semitic stereotype, Bulwer-Lytton’s Almamen is a precursor to Tolkien’s dwarves and especially Thorin Oakenshield.
Tom Gross: Who is Liz Truss, Britain’s new (& third female) prime minister?

Ruthie Blum: Is Israel forfeiting border security in hopes of obtaining US visa-waiver status?
The announcement last October by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that Israel was among four countries being considered for inclusion in the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs visa-waiver program should have been cause for relief. Israelis embarking on trips to America have always anticipated their interviews with clerks at the U.S. embassy with trepidation about having their request for a visa rejected.

To stave off this possibility, they arrive equipped with reams of documents (such as university transcripts, rental contracts or deeds of home ownership; or salary slips) to prove that their visit will be temporary.

But it was pretty clear that Washington was dangling a coveted carrot that came with a stick. President Joe Biden’s administration knew full well that Israel has been trying since 2005 to obtain visa-waiver status, as is enjoyed by 40 other countries, whose citizens are free to enter America for up to 90 days without a visa, as long as they register electronically before boarding a flight.

Two U.S. congressional bills in 2013, one proposed by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and a different version by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), contained clauses about adding Israel to the visa-waiver program.

The then-administration of Barack Obama felt that such legislation would be unfair to Muslims, on the grounds that it didn’t adequately tackle the problem of Israel’s “discriminatory” practices against Arab Americans en route to the Palestinian Authority.

One example cited was Israel’s preventing certain Arab visitors from landing at Ben-Gurion Airport, compelling them instead to fly to Jordan, and go the rest of the way by land.

A letter to then-Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, signed by 16 members of Congress—15 Democrats and one Republican—accused Israeli border officials of “disproportionately singling out, detaining and denying entry to Arab and Muslim Americans.”

Oren responded in a letter of his own, presenting the facts on the ground: that a total of 142 Americans were denied entry into Israel in 2012, compared to 626,000 who were welcomed with no problem.
Explaining the IDF’s moves to the world’s media – in a strong Scottish accent
A couple of years ago, when Britain’s former Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier, who is from Kilmarnock, first heard Richard Hecht speak, it is fair to say that his jaw dropped open. His deputy, Sir Stuart Atha, from Ayrshire, was similarly astonished.

For Hecht was then head of the Israeli air force’s international policy relations — and despite many years living in Israel, his speech is pure, unadulterated Glaswegian English.

This month Hecht, now a Lt-Colonel, took over in one of the hottest seats in Israel as the IDF’s international spokesman, the man tasked with the challenge of explaining the actions of the military to foreign reporters in print, TV and online. And Hecht — who has both vast operational experience as a battalion commander, as well as a self-imposed mission to “bridge both cultures” — couldn’t have started his new job at a stickier time, only the day before Operation Breaking Dawn, Israel’s most recent conflict with Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Hecht’s presentation to the two British RAF officers was, for him, a form of closure. “It was a secret obsession with me: my grandfather had served in the RAF and talked to me about being a Jew in the RAF, and that it had been complicated. So to some extent it was closing a circle; I said to my guys, let’s not do training just with the Greek air force, let’s try and work with the British RAF”. The British officers came to Israel and Hecht acted as master of ceremonies. He takes great pleasure, today, in remembering Hillier and Atha’s expressions as he began to speak. “They were looking around for Candid Camera!”

He told his commander at the time: “You will never understand what it means to me, a diaspora Jew, to see you walking into the RAF Officers’ Club.” During Hecht’s tenure with the Israeli Air Force, Israeli pilots took part in joint exercises with the RAF and also took part in celebrating the RAF’s centennial. “It was a massive deal”, Hecht says, almost purring with satisfaction.

It is certainly a long journey from the heavily Jewish suburb of Glasgow’s Newton Mearns, where Richard Hecht and most of his siblings began life (their youngest sister is the only sabra, born after the family made aliya in 1983). Hecht and his identical twin brother are the eldest of the tribe. “Our parents wanted to make a new start, I think they were tired of the diaspora. But it was traumatic: we left a very comfortable lifestyle to live in spartan Israel in the 80s”.
Pro-Violence Message Dominates Anti-Israel Events — It’s Time to Speak Up
Iran ranks among the world’s greatest destabilizing and oppressive forces. Its nuclear weapons program could one day realize leaders’ oft-stated goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth. At the very least, a nuclear Iran could spark a Middle East arms race.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic continues to finance terrorist groups — especially those that seek to kill Israelis and their supporters — with hundreds of millions of dollars. That figure stands to skyrocket if Iran wins sanctions relief in a new nuclear deal with the West.

“[Palestinian] Islamic Jihad has an open tab in Iran,” Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said last month.

To Ali Abunimah, who co-founded the highly-visible website Electronic Intifada, this Iranian support is just fantastic.

“And I only hope that that is true because Islamic Jihad is a legitimate resistance group engaged in resistance against a brutal and illegitimate occupation,” Abunimah said during an Aug. 14 appearance on an online program called “Freedom Side.”

“And Palestinian resistance groups have an absolute right to receive aid and assistance from anyone who will give it to them. And as far as we know, Iran is the only country that provides military assistance to the Palestinian resistance. And I think the answer to those who object to Palestinians receiving resistance to Iran is to advocate for more countries to provide assistance to the armed resistance against Israel’s occupation apartheid regime.”

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) targets civilians and seeks mass casualty attacks. Its by-laws call for creating “a state of terror, instability and panic in the souls of Zionists and especially the groups of settlers, and forc[ing] them to leave their houses.” It also rejects “any peaceful solution for the Palestinian Cause, and [affirms] the jihad solution and the martyrdom style as the only option for liberation.”

More countries, Abunimah believes, should send this group money.

The problem for Abunimah and those who share his views is that more countries are seeing the value in moving away from such animosity and making peace with the Jewish state.
Ben & Jerry’s Makes Fresh Push to Stop Israel Ice Cream Deal
The Vermont-based ice-cream maker will confirm as early as Tuesday that it plans to file a revised complaint in New York federal court in the coming weeks, said two people familiar with the matter. Ben & Jerry’s independent board wants to stop Unilever’s sale of its brand and trademark to local licensee Avi Zinger as the deal allows the ice cream to be sold in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The board, which first sued its corporate parent in early July, argues that the sale conflicts with Ben & Jerry’s long-held “core values” and breaches a legal agreement made when Unilever bought the brand in 2000.

The move comes two weeks after US District Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. denied Ben & Jerry’s request for an injunction to block the sale, saying the brand failed to show that it would suffer irreparable harm if the deal wasn’t blocked.


Anti-Defamation League head secures bodyguard due to threats - interview
When Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt arrived at the 125th anniversary celebrations of the World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, last week, he was followed by a bodyguard the whole time.

“I get death threats,” Greenblatt told The Jerusalem Post in an interview. “That’s the reason that that guy is sitting over there,” he said, pointing at his bodyguard, who easily blended in with the audience.

Asked if this new security detail was related to the fact that he was in Europe, Greenblatt said he has security everywhere he goes, except for Israel. “Things have really ratcheted up in the past several months,” he said.

One of the reasons for the extra security around Greenblatt, and ADL institutions in general, is directly related to BDS Mapping Project. What is the BDS Mapping Project?

The BDS Mapping Project is an interactive map that charted Jewish and Zionist institutions in Boston and framed them as “structurally tied” to US media, police and government. The map ties Zionism to the “harms” of US imperialism, ableism, ecological harm, gentrification, the prison-industrial complex and more.

Institutions perceived by the activists as guilty of these “harms” are connected to the network and, subsequently, to Jewish and Zionist establishments.

“The Mapping Project is an initiative put together by a collection of anonymous activists for the sole purpose of intimidating, marginalizing and really terrorizing the Jewish community in trying to create an approach which encourages and really enforces what I’ll call anti-normalization, which is not about Zionism nor about Israel. It’s about Jews,” Greenblatt said.
Italy's Juventas, Inter Milan soccer club fans make antisemitic chants
The Italian Football Federation has launched an investigation following the antisemitic chanting of fans of Inter Milan and Juventus soccer teams over the weekend, AFP reported.

The fans of Inter Milan were shown on video chanting "the champions of Italy are Jews" at the stadium before the game began, calling their rivals Jews. The AC Milan Twitter account criticized the chanting, remarking "such a shame." Inter Milan also criticized the chanting.

"We have been Brothers of the World since 1908. It is a commitment we have always made. It is in our history, it is who we are," Inter Milan tweeted, along with the hashtag #NoToDiscrimination.

This took place during the Milan Derby, also known as the Derby della Madonnina or Derby di Milano, which is a match between Inter Milan and AC Milan, the two biggest Milanese soccer teams.

This game also saw incidents of violence occur, with supporters of Inter Milan and AC Milan clashing in the San Siro stadium, according to AFP.

AC Milan won the derby 3-2.

Juventus soccer fans make antisemitic comments too
Fans of the Italian Juventus soccer club also took part in antisemitic chanting the same day, shouting "the Viola aren't Italians, they're a pack of Jews" during their game at the Artemio Franchi Stadium in Florence, AFP reported.

The Italian soccer world has long been struggling with the problem of racism in its stadiums. Players of color are booed continuously by the rival team fans, and antisemitic banners have often appeared on the terraces.
Neo-Nazi head of Goyim Defense League arrested in Poland
Jon Minadeo II, the man who for several years has used Petaluma as a home base for creating and distributing antisemitic literature, has been arrested in Poland for demonstrating against Jews at the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, according to his own Sept. 4 post on the conservative social media platform Gab.

"Got handcuffed & arrested in Poland today for (((Hate Speech))) regarding Auschwitz," Minadeo wrote. "Just got released tonight with a fine and my chains and computer temporarily confiscated. Life's good! You can't keep me down Jews!"

The three sets of parentheses around "Hate Speech" are a device first used by bigots to single out Jews online and later adopted by members of the faith to identify themselves in a gesture of defiance. One of Minadeo's necklaces, visible in other recent posts of his, dangled a swastika.

His arrest was first reported in the press by J, the Jewish News of Northern California.

Auschwitz, the busiest of the Nazi regime's death camps, is located in the suburbs of the Polish city of Oswiecim. The Nazis murdered an estimated 1.1 million Jews, including 200,000 children, there between 1940 and 1944.

Minadeo had also posted a photo of his stunt at the concentration camp. In the image, he smiles alongside an accomplice identified by the Anti-Defamation League as Robert Wilson. Both are dressed casually and holding up handmade signs. Wilson's reads "Shoah the ADL" — Shoah, the Hebrew word for "catastrophe," is commonly used by Jews to denote the Holocaust. Minadeo's sign is a profane attack on Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.


New Hampshire Libertarians tweet image of Zelensky with Hitler mustache
The New Hampshire Libertarian Party posted a photo on Twitter of Ukrainian-Jewish President Volodymyr Zelensky with a photoshopped mustache that's supposed to resemble that of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

"When you order a Hitler on Wish dot com," the party's tweet read.

The watchdog NGO StopAntisemitism criticized the party for their tweet, noting: "The President of Ukraine’s grandfather fought against the Nazis in WW2; to put a Hitler mustache on [Zelensky], a direct Jewish descendant of a man who put his life on the line fighting Hitler, is atrocious!"

Criticizing foreign aid to Israel and other countries
The centrist party in New Hampshire also sent out a series of tweets last week that criticized foreign aid to Israel.

"Regardless of whatever atrocities Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, China or Russia commit, they are not supported by your tax dollars. Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and NATO countries are," the New Hampshire Libertarian Party tweeted. "If you want to stop murder and genocide, start with severing support for those countries."


Samsung subsidiary buys Israeli developer of health monitoring system for passengers
A Samsung subsidiary has acquired an Israeli tech startup that developed a radar-based monitoring system to track the health and vital signs of vehicle occupants.

Harman, Samsung’s audio electronics company, said in an announcement Tuesday that it bought Netanya-based startup Caaresys to expand its automotive product offerings and “offer new levels of in-vehicle safety, comfort, and well-being in its growing product line.”

“With the acquisition of Caaresys, we gain market-leading in-cabin radar sensing technology and radar-enabled features that can quickly integrate into our products,” said Christian Sobottka, president of the automotive division at Harman.

“And by partnering with Harman, automakers can deliver the key safety and well-being features that consumers demand – today as opposed to years from now,” added Sobottka in a company statement.

The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Caaresys was founded in 2017 by entrepreneurs Ilya Sloushch, Vadim Kotlar, Konstantin Berezin, and Alex Arshavski, and built an in-cabin, camera-free passenger monitoring system powered by contactless, low-emission radar. The system can monitor and track passengers’ general health state, their vital signs like their respiration and heart rates, as well as their location, to ensure their safety. The company also developed a specialized solution that monitors young children and pets to prevent tragic accidents.
New York’s hottest restaurant is chef Michael Solomonov’s most Israeli establishment yet
It’s 95 degrees and a blazingly humid summer evening on the roof of the Hoxton hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where the open kitchen at the trendy new restaurant Laser Wolf has the air feeling even hotter than steamy Wythe Avenue down below.

According to chef Michael Solomonov, a co-owner of the buzzy establishment, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be at a shipudiya, or Israeli skewer house, where kebab-style meats are cooked on charcoal grills.

“It’s hot as shit and there’s smoke everywhere,” Solomonov, 44, told the New York Jewish Week, describing a typical shipudiya. “It feels very much like a Tel Aviv restaurant.”

Yes, Laser Wolf — named for Lazar Wolf, the shtetl butcher from the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” — may be located in Brooklyn’s trendiest neighborhood, atop a $100 million hotel development that opened in 2019. But it also might be the most Israeli thing the famed restaurateur has ever done.

“There’s a couple shit-holey awesome little restaurants there like this — with this concept — and that was really the catalyst for opening an Israeli food [establishment like this] in the United States,” Solomonov told our party of three, seated at a table overlooking the East River and the Lower East Side skyline in the hazy distance.
Israeli Wine Is Zionist Wine
I taste, rate, and write often about Israeli wine on many platforms. I argue that there are biblical and Zionist echoes in every glass of good Israeli wine. Al-Jazeera doesn't like this. Earlier this year, a columnist for the Qatar-sponsored Al-Jazeera accused me of being "drunk on Zionism" and "wine-washing the occupation." (By "occupation" Al Jazeera means of all Israel.)

"Israel is using its wine industry to distract from its other domestic pastimes like ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and the periodic massacre of Palestinians," bleated the sour writer. I plead guilty to the former charge. In fact, the tagline of my website is now "Drunk on Zion." I also am proud to be the first Israeli accused (as far as I know) of the new crime of "wine-washing." I consider this a badge of honor!

(I suppose that wine-washing is akin to pink-washing and green-washing, which are terms that allege Israel promotes its openness to LGBT rights and its environmental prowess as methods of obscuring its "occupation" of Palestinians.) In any case, I remain drunk with conviction that the Israeli wine revolution is a sign of divine favor; what Jewish tradition calls a siman muvhak – an undeniable, stark indication of support from the heavens.

The professional wine publications seem to agree. The upcoming October 2022 issue of the prestigious Wine Spectator magazine features Israeli wines on its front cover, predicting "an exciting future for this emerging wine region." (The magazine published a similar story in September 2016: "Surprising quality from an emerging region.") The new tasting report highlights an Israeli focus on grape types (varietals) that are indigenous to the Rhone Valley and on white wines.


Israeli president says Yizkor for Holocaust victims in emotional address to German parliament
President Isaac Herzog addressed Germany's parliament on Tuesday about atrocities committed during the Third Reich, while at the same time praising the close and friendly relations that have emerged between the two countries since the end of the Holocaust.

Six million European Jews were murdered by Germany's Nazis and their henchmen during World War II.

"Never in human history was there a campaign like the one the Nazis and their accomplices conducted to annihilate the Jewish people," Israeli President Isaac Herzog told lawmakers at the Bundestag.

"Never in history was a state responsible, as Nazi Germany was responsible, for the loss of all semblance of humanity, for the erasure of all mercy, for the pursuit of the worldwide obliteration, with such awful cruelty, of an entire people."

Herzog also spoke about his father, former Israeli President Chaim Herzog, who was among the liberators of the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany in April 1945, as an officer of the British forces.

"I shall never forget how he described to me the horrors he witnessed. The stench. The human skeletons in striped pajamas, the piles of corpses, the destruction, the hell on earth," the Israeli president told German lawmakers. During the address, Herzog put on a yarmulke and recited the prayer of Yizkor in memory of those who were murdered by the Nazis. "Only the dead have the right to forgive... the living have no right to forget," he said, echoing the words of his father.


Ending Germany trip, Herzog visits concentration camp his father helped liberate
President Isaac Herzog on Tuesday toured the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, wrapping up a three-day state visit.

Herzog visited the site with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Tens of thousands died at the notorious camp, including the diarist Anne Frank.

After meeting survivors and German high school students, Herzog gave a speech invoking his father, the late president Chaim Herzog, who helped liberate the concentration camp in April 1945 as an officer of the British forces.

“When the camp was liberated, a military convoy rolled into the site headed by an officer, who stood on a wooden crate and shouted in Yiddish, in front of hundreds of people, hundreds of human skeletons: ‘Yidden! Yidden! Es leben noch Yidden!’ In English: ‘Jews! There are still living Jews!’ There are still Jews in the world! That Jewish officer was my father, Chaim Herzog, of blessed memory, later president of Israel,” Herzog recounted.

He noted his father visited Bergen-Belsen again as president in 1987.

“Four decades later, my father returned here as the Sixth President of the independent, strong, and democratic Jewish State of Israel. My father chose to begin his visit here, at the same place where I conclude my visit,” he said, standing next to a stone his father had brought.

“Here he addressed the victims of the Holocaust and said: ‘In the name of the Jewish People, and in the name of the State of Israel, I repeat our oath never to forget you, and to be forever faithful to your bequest: the imperative of life,’” Herzog added.

“Thus said my father, and thus say I today as President of the State of Israel, the state of the Jewish People. Here, in this terrible place, we remember the imperative that is binding on us all: the imperative of life, the imperative of the eternity of Israel, and of the duty to work for its sake in every generation.”

The president said the foremost task at the moment is to preserve the memory of those who died and to help the survivors.

“It is a duty to remember and to remind people of the Holocaust and the resistance, from generation to generation,” he said.




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