Thursday, September 22, 2022

09/22 Links Pt2: How Not to Talk About the Holocaust; How the UN gives international legitimacy to murderous regimes; Fighting for social justice while ignoring Arab slave masters

From Ian:

Yair Rosenberg: How Not to Talk About the Holocaust
It’s rarely a good sign when the Holocaust trends on social media, and this week was no exception. On Sunday, in an interview with 60 Minutes, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi declared that he needed more evidence to determine whether the Holocaust took place. “There are some signs that it happened,” he said. “If so, they should allow it to be investigated and researched.” That same day, on Twitter, a writer engaging in the usual internecine feuding on the left falsely claimed that America’s entry into World War II accelerated the Holocaust; a pile-on predictably ensued.

As a grandson of Shoah survivors who is named after one of its victims, I certainly found these spectacles discomfiting. But they are far from unique. Indeed, it seems as though every month we are subjected to another politicized paroxysm over the Nazi genocide, in which the millions murdered are victimized once more by partisans who instrumentalize their deaths for contemporary political debates.

To be fair, it can be quite difficult to discuss the Holocaust, a travesty so vast that it defies description. But we can know what not to say. To that end, here is a handy five-point guide explaining how not to talk about the Holocaust. Feel free to share it on social media the next time you see someone trying to dragoon the calamity’s victims into their latest political pet peeve.

1. Don’t compare things to the Holocaust that aren’t the Holocaust. In some senses, this is obvious. Whatever one thinks of them, vaccine passports are not the mechanized murder of millions of Jews and other undesirables. Mask mandates are not the Nuremberg Laws. But these are easy cases.

The truth is, some things do warrant comparison to the Holocaust. Personally, I can think of no more relevant frame for understanding China’s heinous treatment of its Uyghur Muslim population. But just because some things can be likened to the Holocaust doesn’t mean they should be. The reason is sadly simple: When you compare something terrible to the Holocaust, the argument inevitably becomes about the comparison rather than the terrible thing you intended to decry. Instead of raising awareness about an atrocity, you end up distracting from it.

Invoking the Holocaust seems like a shortcut, but it is actually a dead end. The term Holocaust has rhetorical power because so many people already understand its awfulness. By definition, contemporary catastrophes do not have that cachet, and any effective advocate needs to use specifics and facts to impose the urgency of their cause on the public. Skipping this step and jumping straight to Holocaust elides the hard but necessary conversation required to educate and motivate outsiders to action.
Fighting for social justice while ignoring Arab slave masters
The hypocrisy of those purporting to believe in social justice and ranting about white privilege and colonialism is well documented. The antisemitic obsession of those who see Israel as the world's only violator of human rights and declare their fealty to the Palestinians is especially galling given their lack of interest in the abuses committed by Palestinian leaders against their own people, the persecution of Palestinians in Lebanon, and the torture and murder of Palestinians by the Syrian regime. Even more remarkable is the silence of human rights advocates regarding slavery in the Arab world.

The subject received brief notoriety in the 1980s with the publication of John Laffin's book The Arabs as Master Slavers (1982) and Murray Gordon's Slavery in the Arab World (1989). Both traced the history of slavery in the region. Laffin noted that "the slave trade was first begun in Africa by the Arabs; they were the procurers and suppliers" and that "from the earliest period of the history of Islam in Africa, slaves were frequently mentioned as tribute or taxes paid to political superiors."

Laffin quotes The Economist from 1956: "Saudi Arabia seems to be the most guilty as far as 'classical' slavery is concerned." The Saudis were the last to abolish slavery in Arabia – in 1962. Nevertheless, Laffin noted that "by the 1960s slavery in Arabia was flourishing as never before."

Fast forward to the present.

A report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) was just released that found an estimated 50 million people living in modern slavery conditions in 2021, including 3.3 million children. Of these, 28 million are trapped in forced labor and 22 million in forced marriage.

Over 10% of them were in the Arab states, which had the highest rates of forced labor (5.3 per thousand people) and forced marriage (4.9 per thousand people).

According to the Global Slavery Index (GSI), more than 500,000 people are slaves in Arab countries.
Howard Jacobson: The Kveen - An English Jew pays his respects
I have no warrant to talk for other Jews, but if there was one thing about her comportment that spoke to me as a Jew it was precisely this seriousness. Life was not a lark to her.

When Jews speak of being chosen they are not asserting spiritual superiority. The covenant God made with them demanded a renunciation of frivolity and self-assertion in favor of the pursuit of ethical purpose. Call it a covenant of impersonality and disinterestedness. In 1954 the queen entered into a near identically sober and demanding covenant.

British Jews have had good reason to feel safe under the protection of the British royal family. It is well-known that the Duke of Edinburgh’s mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg was honored by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for hiding Jewish children in her house during World War II. In accordance with her own wishes, she is buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Prince Charles is a regular guest at Jewish charitable events and has spoken out often and eloquently against antisemitism in all its forms. Whether or not the interest the royal family takes in Jews extends to their knowing many or reading the books they write or trying the food they eat, I can’t pretend to know. But atmospherically, by virtue of its principled a-political lukewarmness, the royal family seems to promise refuge.

The queen herself had less to say, in public anyway, on these matters. But it served her well to be above the fray, not only above politics, which ends up muddying whoever it touches, but above definitiveness. Wasn’t it some such symbolic abstraction that was enjoined on her when she was anointed in quasi-Old Testament language? The God of the Jews is invisible, an idea, the more sacred for being impalpable and quite probably not there at all. Whenever I looked at a portrait of the queen, or heard her speak, I thought I saw, not indifference to the storms that shook the country, but the dispassionateness of someone who listened to a higher authority than parliament or the people.


Eight lightly hurt in suspected terror stabbing near Modiin; assailant shot dead
Eight Israelis were lightly hurt in a suspected terror stabbing attack near the central Israeli city of Modiin on Thursday evening, medics and police said.

Officials said the alleged assailant stopped his vehicle at a traffic light, close to the Shilat junction, and began to open car doors and attack people with a knife and pepper spray.

According to the Magen David Adom ambulance service, two men in separate cars — aged 39 and 23 — were treated for minor stab wounds to their hands.

Another five people — passengers of the two cars — were treated by MDA medics after being maced with pepper spray.

The alleged attacker was shot dead by an off-duty Border Police officer who was in the area, police said.

MDA added that the officer was also treated for a minor injury.

Police officials said the alleged assailant was a 22-year-old Palestinian from the Ramallah area. In a separate statement, police said he was a resident of East Jerusalem.

Police described the incident as a terror attack. The Shilat Junction is close to the West Bank security barrier.
How the UN gives international legitimacy to murderous regimes
Dictatorships and murderous regimes regularly band together to approve United Nations resolutions. As a result, these documents can then enjoy international legitimacy. This represents one of the challenges at the core of how the United Nations functions, according to Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

In a conversation with Adam Scott Bellos on this week’s “Wine with Adam,” Neuer explains how decades ago the Soviet Union persuaded Arab states to develop an anti-Western alliance. As they talk, the two enjoy a glass of Bravdo Merlot.

“They built an automatic majority. As a result, they passed one resolution after another, condemning Israel, again, with the imprimatur of the United Nations, with all of its grandeur and gravitas,” Neuer notes. He also stresses how this mechanism continues to characterize the United Nations to this day.

“Anti-Zionism was a Soviet disinformation/KGB campaign, in the 1960s and ‘70s, exported to the world stage of the United Nations,” he says. Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

The problem goes well beyond Israel, he adds.

The most hated man in the United Nations
For this reason, Neuer and his group are fighting to keep the United Nations accountable. This has made him, in Bellos’s words, “the most hated man in the U.N.”

“It’s a badge of honor, because those hating me are either the murderous dictators, or they’re apologists among the West,” says Neuer. “But it’s not easy. You need to develop a thick skin. The knowledge that what I’m doing is right empowers me … We’re fighting for the United Nations to live up to its founding principles,” he adds.




Berlin mayor torpedoes event honoring head of UN probe into Israel
A Berlin event scheduled to honor the head of an ongoing UN probe investigating alleged Israeli crimes against Palestinians was called off this week after the city’s mayor pulled support for the city hall ceremony.

Mayor Franziska Giffey said the event planned for Tuesday by the non-governmental United Nations Association of Germany to fete Navi Pillay at the Rotes Rathaus, or Red Town Hall, was not representative of the views of Berlin’s denizens.

“Holding a presentation of this kind at the Red Town Hall, which is the town hall of all Berliners, is based on the assumption that the presentation meets with the broad approval of Berlin’s population,” a spokesperson for Giffey told The Times of Israel on Monday. “That is not the case for this event.”

Pillay is head of the three-person UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. Critics say both Pillay and the inquest are biased against Israel, and the decision was hailed by Israel’s ambassador to Germany, who had pushed for the mayor to nix the award.

“In view of the circumstances, we have decided against having the German Association for the United Nations hold the event at the Red Town Hall,” Giffey’s spokesperson said. “In addition, we have decided against having a member of the Berlin Senate present the award.”

With the mayor and Berlin’s lawmakers avoiding the event, the prize ceremony was canceled altogether by the NGO, which did not respond to requests for comment.

According to the UN Association of Germany’s website, the organization “strives to inform the German public in an impartial and critical manner about the objectives, institutions and activities of the United Nations.”

Giffey’s volte-face came about as the result of a conversation she had with Israel’s ambassador to Berlin Ron Prosor last week, the diplomat told The Times of Israel.
UN to probe PA, Hamas on torture allegations: UN Watch's Dina Rovner on i24News, July 19, 2022
The UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) will investigate this week the West Bank's Palestinian Authority (PA) and Gaza's Hamas following multiple reports of the extensive use of the practice against prisoners by the Palestinian factions.

While the CAT is meant to review all 174 signatories of the United Nations Convention Against Torture every four years, this will be the first time ever that the committee probes the actions of the PA, which signed on to the convention in 2014 under an “observer state” status.

The treaty body of human rights experts will look into allegations against the PA and Hamas of torturing political dissidents, women, LGBTQ+ members, and so-called collaborators with Israel.

“This is nothing new. There have been major reports in the past few years of the systemic nature of Palestinian torture,” Dina Rovner, legal advisor to the UN Watch, told i24NEWS.

Rovner referenced the high-profile case of Nizar Banat, a critic of the PA who was arrested and beaten to death by Palestinian authorities in 2021, prompting mass protests in the West Bank.

A delegation of 17 senior PA officials will represent the Palestinian side at a panel review session on Tuesday, headed by Ziad Hab al-Reeh, commander of the PA’s Preventive Security Service that was accused of Banat’s torture and death, among other cases in the past.

“They can’t force the Palestinians to do anything, but the state parties (to the Convention Against Torture) take these matters seriously, and if [the CAT] criticizes them or tells them they must improve, they should take that seriously,” Rovner said.


JPost Editorial: Jordan's King Abdullah Jerusalem comments were hypocritical and dangerous
Unparalleled chutzpah
This represents unparalleled chutzpah, for two main reasons.

First, because the king knows that it is not true, and that Israel zealously protects the rights of the churches in Jerusalem, as well as the freedom of worship for Christians throughout the city. He is also certainly aware that while the Christian community in his own country is shrinking, across the River Jordan in Israel it is growing.

Secondly, Abdullah’s presenting himself as some kind of guardian of religious liberty is misleading, considering that Jordanian officials at the border with Israel regularly prevent Jews crossing into Jordan from bringing in with them religious objects they need for daily ritual practice, such as tallitot and tefillin.

In one instance written about in the Post just last week, Jordanian border officials prevented two Jews carrying US passports who were traveling to Saudi Arabia via Jordan from bringing their tallitot and tefillin into the Hashemite Kingdom, and even checked under their caps to make sure – God forbid – they weren’t wearing kippot.

Yet Abdullah is lecturing Israel about religious freedoms.

Beyond the utter cheek of the matter, there was something else problematic about Abdullah’s words. At a time when tensions are running high in Jerusalem on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, responsible leaders of goodwill – among whose ranks Abdullah wants to be counted – should seek to lower the temperature, not artificially raise it.

But by accusing Israel of threatening Christianity in Jerusalem, Abdullah was doing just that. Listening to Abdullah speak, one could conclude that not only is al-Aqsa Mosque in danger under Israeli control, as the Muslim Brotherhood wants everyone to believe, but that Christianity as well is under siege.

None of this was mentioned, understandably, in the short statement that Lapid released after he met with Abdullah. The prime minister was looking to improve – not harm – the atmosphere between Israel and Jordan.

We earnestly hope, however, that Lapid took Abdullah to task in private for his outrageous remarks, and urged him to carefully weigh his words regarding Jerusalem, especially at a time of increased tension. Improving the atmosphere between Jerusalem and Amman is a Jordanian interest as much as it is an Israeli one. We hope Lapid made this clear.
Christian Zionists dispute King Abdullah’s claim that their faith is ‘under fire in Jerusalem’
During his address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Jordan's King Abdullah II claimed that Christianity in Jerusalem is "under fire." A spokesperson for Christians United for Israel (CUFI) disputed Abdullah's remarks, saying that "Jerusalem never knew true peace or prosperity until its liberation by Israel....It is because of Israel's respect for liberty that Jews, Christians, Muslims and all others enjoy true religious freedom in Jerusalem and throughout the Holy Land."

Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said, "Under Israeli rule since 1967, there has been a clear effort to ensure religious freedom for all three monotheistic faiths. I don't think anyone could argue that Christian holy sites are imperiled in any way."

Schanzer pointed out that Israel provides Jordan with crucial assistance in the areas of water, gas, intelligence and security. "Israel guarantees Jordan's stability," he said. Schanzer said that "Jordan has dropped from the warmest peace with Israel some five years ago to the coldest."
I Was Failed for Speaking the Truth About Israel
Over a year ago, I was submitting my final assignment of my three-year Sociology degree at the University of Leeds.

I had just finished my dissertation and received my offers for postgraduate study, and was feeling excited for the next step in my life. I was the first in my family to go to university, had never failed an assignment, and had a strong academic record. I received scholarships. I was a good student with full faith in academia and the integrity of academics.

The assignment I was writing was a 5,000-word case study on state crime and immorality. We were encouraged to take on a controversial topic, and I received approval on my topic from two members of the staff.

I decided to write about Hamas’ crimes against Palestinian civilians, with the aid of the UN. There was so much literature on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but a real lack of academic literature on the suffering of Palestinians from Hamas.

My module tutor discouraged me from addressing Israel in the essay, which made sense because the essay wasn’t about Israel. So I wrote about Hamas stealing humanitarian aid and redirecting it for military/personal use; Hamas’ use of human shields; and the disgraceful educational experience provided to Palestinian youth — which celebrates terrorism and encourages the murder of Jewish civilians.

I compared demographics and statistics between Gaza and the West Bank to prove the culpability of Hamas. Two groups with the same ethno-national-political identity, in the same region, with the same neighbors, have very different living standards and life experiences. Palestinians living in Gaza have a higher infant mortality rate, unemployment rate, and other adverse factors compared to Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Despite my assignment not being about Israel, the feedback I received from my grader was almost entirely attacking me for not blaming Israel.
Cornell Must Tackle Rising Antisemitism
On September 14, 2022, a banner was hung across from the Center for Jewish Life at Cornell, with the message: “Burn Prisons. Free Them All. From Attica to Palestine.”

This attempt to conflate prison reform in the US with the detainment and imprisonment of terrorists by Israel is the latest ploy by anti-Zionist extremists to prey upon the sensibilities of socially conscious college students.

Someone also drew an image in the dirt not far from the banner that equated the Star of David with a Nazi swastika — further demonstrating their actions as a deliberate effort to target the Jewish community.

In light of these incidents, Cornell President Martha Pollack released a statement that fails to adequately identify and address increased hostility toward Jewish students. “Over the past couple of months,” she wrote, “there have been a small handful of incidents on our campus that are completely at odds with [one of Cornell’s] core value[s]; specifically, incidents that have involved racial targeting and that have involved antisemitism.”

In her statement, President Pollack downplayed the long history of antisemitic events at Cornell. According to the AMCHA Initiative, there have been 59 documented incidents of antisemitism since 2015.

For instance, a September 23, 2021, event sponsored by Cornell’s Institute for Comparative Modernities featured Noura Erakat, a Rutgers University professor and anti-Zionist activist. Erakat has alleged that “Zionism, like colonialism, like apartheid, should be considered an abomination,” claimed that “all Israelis are settlers,” and professed that “Israeli rule, wherever it exists, is equal to apartheid.”

On November 18, 2021, another event held by the Institute and moderated by Cornell professor Natalie Melas featured speakers Virginia Tilley and Loubna Qutami, who demonized Israel throughout their talk. Tilley stated, “you can’t endorse Jewish statehood, just as you can’t endorse Aryan statehood.”


Marvel to modify Israeli superhero after anti-Zionist backlash
What Sabra is really named after
However, it should be noted that Sabra being named after the 1982 massacre is impossible because Sabra made her debut two years prior in the 1980 Incredible Hulk comic series.

The Sabra character was actually named after a term that describes any Jewish person born in Israel and also comes from “tsabar,” the Hebrew name of a cactus fruit – a representation of Israel that it’s tough on the outside but sweet on the inside.

More backlash
Other Twitter users shared a recurring page from the 1981 Hulk issue "Power and Peril in the Promised Land" where the Hulk shows anger towards the Israeli character for initially showing little remorse over the death of an Arab boy.

“Boy died because boy’s people and yours both want to own land! Boy died because you wouldn’t share!” Hulk tells Sabra.

A report by CNN also states that Sabra fought against offensive Arab stereotypes in the comics and critics have shown concern that such stereotypes could be shown on the big screen. One Sabra comic saw the superheroine’s son, Jacob, killed by Palestinian terrorists who attacked a school bus, i24 reported.

Etgar Keret, an Israeli graphic novelist and author told CNN that the Israeli hero was created in a different time with a simpler story. “This Sabra was created before two [Palestinian] Intifadas, it was created before the failing of the Oslo Accords. It was created in a totally different reality and state of mind.”
Rashida Tlaib: You can't hold progressive values, back Israel's apartheid gov't
“I want you all to know that among progressives, it has become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values, yet back Israel’s apartheid government,” said Rashida Tlaib, US representative for Michigan’s 13th congressional district, during an online advocacy seminar held on Tuesday by Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action), and co-sponsored by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). “We will continue to push back and not accept this idea that you are progressive, except for ‘Philistine,’ any longer.” She spoke of “victories” that the anti-Israel movement has achieved “due to the work of all of you, and so many others that continue to speak truth to power. When we center our beliefs and our actions on the truth that all human life is precious, that every person deserves to live free of fear and have the opportunity to achieve their full potential. “The need to oppose Israel’s government’s apartheid rule is obvious. The path to freedom for Palestine is long and daunting, we must see through to its end. We owe it to not only Palestinians, [but] oppressed people all over the world who understand that our struggles are linked to one another.”


Football club loses sponsors after Palestinian flag hoisted over pitch
Forest Green Rovers football club has been dumped by two sponsors after it flew a Palestinian flag on match day and displayed anti-Israel billboards around the pitch.

League One club owner Dale Vince also invited Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, to the ground for an interview in which the owner expressed his solidarity with Palestinians and explained how he and his club supported their cause.

Around the two men, digital advertising boards read: “End the invasion and occupation of Palestine”.

Advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has written to the club and the Football Association arguing that flying the Palestinian flag and using pitch-side boards to condemn Israel is a breach of the club’s own charter, as well as FA regulations on keeping politics out of the sport.

Mr Vince, a wind-turbine entrepreneur worth £107m, has repeatedly flown a Palestinian flag at the club’s home ground The New Lawn in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire.

On one occasion, the flag appeared when the Jewish owner of a company that had paid to sponsor the match ball was at the game with his two sons.

This week, ethical pet care company Hownd announced it was terminating its three-year sponsorship deal with the club as a result of Mr Vince’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Activist: Zionists Antisemitic Because Israel Didn’t Bomb Auschwitz (satire)
The leader of a pro-Palestinian group at the City University of New York leveled a new charge at the people he accuses of oppressing and dispossessing Palestinians, arguing that those people cannot, as they claim, serve as an answer to the Holocaust, because during the Holocaust itself they neglected or refused to send aircraft it they would not possess for years to destroy the extermination camps in Poland, or even the railroad tracks leading to those camps.

Watda Fuq, a junior at the City College of New York, challenged Zionists to explain their movement as pursuing Jewish rights and protection, when that same movement sent exactly zero long-range bombers to disrupt the mass murder taking place at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Majdanek, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, or any of the other sites where Nazis and their local collaborators gassed, starved, shot, asphyxiated, crushed, burned, hanged, or otherwise tortured, maimed and killed six million Jews between 1939 and 1945. Israel achieved statehood and established an air force in 1948; the death camps of Poland and the killing sites elsewhere in Eastern Europe still lie beyond the strike range of the IAF today.

“It’s not just that the Zionists pursued an alliance with the Nazis,” he charged, mischaracterizing a desperate attempt by the Jewish Agency to negotiate with the Third Reich for the rescue of thousands of Jews. “It’s that their other actions belie their contention that the movement cares for Jews, as opposed to seizing control over Palestine and displacing its native population.” Fuq’s latter statement evinced a second willful mischaracterization, in that the “dispossession” occurred entirely in the context of Arab opposition to Jewish property ownership and self-governance in the ancestral Jewish homeland, though the Zionists-as-imperialists trope has exhibited considerable staying power in antisemitic circles.
Whitewashing Antisemitism at the NYT
It is the sort inconsistency that has marked Sarsour’s career: She displays malevolent hatred toward the Jewish state and its supporters while accusing them of being the ones who harbor malice toward Islam, Muslims, Palestinians or whatever other cause she is espousing on any given day. In 2011, for example, she posted a vile tweet against feminists who criticized certain misogynistic practices among some Muslims. That tweet was later scrubbed from her twitter feed, but is still preserved in archives and screenshots. Sarsour suggested that these feminist do not “deserve to be women” and attacked them in crude and mysogynistic terms.

It is this exclusion of anyone who does not share all her positions – be they Jews who do not publicly denounce Israel or feminists who criticize misogyny in Arab countries –that contributed to fissures in the progressive Women’s March movement – that, as well as the affiliation of co-chairs Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory with the notoriously anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam. The NYT reporter mentions the Farrakhan aspect fleetingly, but attempts to justify the refusal of Women’s March co-chair Tamika Mallory to forthrightly condemn Farrakhan for his open antisemitism. The reporter tries to explain:
Ms. Mallory grew up in Harlem, where many viewed the Nation of Islam and its founder positively, as crusaders against urban violence. Pressured to disavow Mr. Farrakhan, she refused, though she said she did not share his antisemitic views. After her son’s father was murdered, she explained, “it was the women of the Nation of Islam who supported me.”

“I have always held them close to my heart for that reason,” she said.

For more accurate and serious analyses of the dissolution of the Women’s March see here and here. The New York Times account with its excuses, its mischaracterization of BDS and its failure to specify Sarsour’s actions that elicited condemnation appears to be more the type of advocacy journalism that whitewashes and normalizes both antisemitism and its practitioners.
Prominent German filmmaker using “anonymous” Twitter account to spread vile antisemitic views
Originally from the USA, Jan Ralske is a well-known filmmaker and media artist. Graduated at the Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB) in 1996; Ralske lives and works in Germany. In 1998, he won the German Film Journalists’ Award for best feature film of the year for Not a Love Song. He served as European filmmaker-in-residence at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2003 and taught at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles as a visiting professor. Ralske was also a long time film editor for Harun Farocki and a guest artist and scholarship holder during 2017-1018 at Tarabya Cultural Academy; an institution of the German Federal Government. He was also working as a lecturer at Akademie der Bildenden Künste Vienna and appears to have also produced films for ZDF and Arte televisions.

Ralske also runs an “anonymous” Twitter account filled with blatant antisemitism, and he is not shy about sharing his antisemitic views. Whilst repeatedly comparing Jews to Nazis, he uses the White Supremacist term “ZioNazi”.

In the next screenshots, Ralske uses the iconography of the mediaeval blood libel. Generally, blood libel refers to the false allegation that Jews use the blood of non-Jews for ritual purposes, usually Christian children. Blood libel imagery was frequently used by Julius Steicher’s newspaper Der Stürmer in its antisemitic propaganda by the Nazis to demonize Jews. In his tweets, Jan Ralske repeats this.

The screenshots below show Ralske’s obsession with comparing Jews in Israel to Nazis. For Jews, this accusation is meant to trigger painful memories and is easy to refute. Two features of Nazism stood out: military expansionism and racism/bigotry that led to the coldblooded murder of six million Jews and ten million non-combatants. It is important to note, however, that Israel does not engage in any racist activities and even less in genocide. Throughout Israel’s history, wars have been fought in self-defense against attacks from military forces and terrorists.
Jewish Genealogy Website Helps Lviv Digitalize Records Amid War
JewishGen, a non-profit organization and website for Jewish genealogy, announced on Tuesday a partnership with the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv to help the latter preserve historical records that are at risk of being lost or destroyed amid the country’s ongoing war with Russia.

JewishGen is an affiliate of New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, which has donated to the Archives a planetary scanner—a device used for scanning rare books and other easily damaged documents—so archivists in Ukraine can digitize more of their records.

The Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv is one of the largest and oldest archives in the country and holds more than 1.1 million files, dating back to the 12th century. It is located inside the 17th-century former Bernardine Monastery and Royal Arsenal in the city’s Old Town, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Olesya Stefanyk, director of the Lviv Archive, said archivists are “extremely grateful” for the scanner.

“Ukrainian archivists are doing everything they can to preserve the historical heritage, cultural assets and documentary memory of our nation,” Stefanyk explained. “Some of our employees are currently defending Ukraine in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine; others are making every effort at their workplaces. JewishGen’s support is not only an invaluable contribution to ensuring the preservation of Ukraine’s historical heritage, but also an important moral support.”

The New York museum is also financially supporting the digitization of documents about Jewish communities during the late 18th through late 19th centuries in the region historically known as Galicia, which is now western Ukraine and southeastern Poland.
Auschwitz-Birkenau Launches Project to Save Thousands of Holocaust Children’s Shoes From Crumbling
An initiative for the “urgent” conservation of thousands of pairs of shoes of children killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp has been launched to try and save the footwear from falling apart with the passage of time.

The two-year project “From Soul to Sole” is for the preservation of more than 8,000 shoes stored at the Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland, which belonged mostly to Jewish children, but were “found to be rapidly disintegrating” over time.

“Without immediate conservation, these shoes are in danger of disappearing as historic documentation of life and death,” the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation warned.

Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Director Piotr Cywiński, noted that in a recent exhibition “one of the objects that speaks most to the emotions of visitors is a child’s shoe with a sock in it.”

“At the Memorial itself, for many people one of the places that moves them most is the room where several thousand shoes belonging to the youngest victims are displayed,” said Cywiński. “There is nothing surprising in this, as through the tragic fate of the children in the camp we are able to look into the limitless depths of human evil at Auschwitz.”

About 1.1 million people from across Europe were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau out of which an estimated 232,000 were children, mostly Jewish. When Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, there were about 500 children under 15 years of age left in the Nazi camp.
Dutch Museum Returns Looted Kandinsky Painting From WWII to Heirs of Former Jewish Owner
A museum in the Netherlands is returning a painting by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky to the heirs of a Jewish art collector who owned the work before it was stolen during World War II.

The 1910 painting “Blick auf Murnau mit Kirche” (“View of Murnau with Church”), which has been stored at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven since 1951, will be handed over to the relatives of the late Berlin-based collector Johanna Margarethe Stern-Lippmann, the museum announced on Sept. 15.

Stern-Lippman’s descendants first contacted the Dutch museum in 2015 in an attempt to reclaim the painting. The family and the Eindhoven municipality then turned to the Dutch government’s Restitution Committee to make a ruling in the matter. In January 2018, the Committee ruled to not return the artwork to the family because it could not establish sufficient information about the time period when Stern-Lippman lost possession of the painting.

Stern-Lippman’s family filed a second request with the Restitution Committee for possession of the artwork in 2019. The Restitution Committee said in a statement that following an additional investigation, which was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a decision to return the painting to the family was recently reached, as new facts have surfaced about Stern-Lippman’s ownership of the painting.

The Committee “has concluded it is highly likely that the work originated from the family’s collection and there is sufficient evidence that the family lost possession of it against their will through circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime,” the museum said.
Austrian Government Ministers Pledge to Keep Fighting Antisemitism
The government of Austria is expanding its efforts to counter antisemitism, government officials said on Wednesday.

Following a Council of Ministers meeting, constitution minister Karoline Edtstadler and education minister Martin Polaschek told reporters that antisemitism in Austria is a “cross-sectional” issue that must be headed off online and challenged with education.

Their remarks come amid a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents an Austria, a problem the government pledged in 2021 to address with its National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. Since then, it has enacted nearly 40 measures to reform everything from content moderation policies on social media to the way students learn about the Holocaust.

“The fight against antisemitism is a cross-sectional issue, which is why prevention work on the internet is particularly important,” Edtstadler said.

According to an Austrian daily, Kurier, Austrian teachers have also received additional training in Holocaust studies and schools textbooks have been improved to reflect the full extent of its atrocities.

“We must not close our eyes to the danger of antisemitism,” Polaschek said. “We use educator training, school development as well as professional ethical standards in education to fight antisemitism decisively.”
Bollywood is coming to Israel
The story of how a minimally armed unit of Indian soldiers fought and beat the Ottoman army to win Haifa on Sept. 23, 1918, will soon be made into an action-packed, feature-length film by top producers from Bollywood. The movie will be made in Israel.

Golden Ratio Films (GRF), the digital content production arm of Vistas Media Capital, announced the project on Thursday at a ceremony in Haifa. “Heroes of Haifa” will be co-produced by GRF and Yalestar films, in collaboration with Hundred Films.

Indian soldiers from the Jodhpur Lancers, Mysore Lancers and Hyderabad Lancers fought in the battle, which is considered one of the most successful cavalry charges in the history of modern warfare. The men were armed only with lances and swords, yet they outclassed Ottoman, German and Austrian troops who were equipped with machine guns, cannons and other modern weapons.

“This is such a substantial event that is important to Indians and Israelis, yet few people know about it,” Hundred Films co-founder Atul Pandey told JNS. “This is a story that needs to be told to the whole world.”

He said that a lot of research has been conducted on the “minute details and considering the nuances of the battle… The shooting of ‘Heroes of Haifa’ will be set in the actual theater of the First World War in the Middle East, which will enhance the friendship between the two nations through cinema.”
Adam Sandler dreams more than anything of coming to Israel
In 2008, Adam Sandler gave Hollywood one of its most memorable Israeli characters ever: the Zohan, an Israeli Defense Forces operative with superhuman abilities who leaves the anti-terrorism grind to become a hairdresser in New York. “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” was a blockbuster hit.

But Sandler has never actually been to Israel.

In an interview with AARP published on Wednesday — at 56, Sandler recently entered the group for older Americans’ historic membership demographic, and he has been using a cane for an ailing hip — the Sandman was asked what’s on his bucket list after so much success.

“Well, I haven’t been to Israel and I’m the Zohan, for God’s sake. I’m excited to get there,” he said. He also said he’d like to get better at playing guitar and to learn to “speak another language, like fluent Hebrew.”

Sandler is currently in Canada filming his next Jewish-themed flick, “You Are SO Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah!” — which is based on a young adult coming-of-age novel of the same name. He’s there with his entire family, and some of them will reportedly show up in the film, including his 84-year-old mother Judy.

The AARP interview also touches on Sandler’s foray into more serious roles over the past several years, including his lauded performance as a Jewish Diamond District salesman in “Uncut Gems.”
Max Eisen’s lasting words on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism
Digging a ditch with other prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp, Max Eisen thought that he might have some security. Letting his guard down, together with his two fellow prisoners, they slowed down the gruesome work. Digging a ditch would have been difficult for anyone to do, but especially for slave laborers who were afforded no more than 300 calories a day. They needed a rest. Then came a blow to the back of his head.

Eisen, who died on July 7 at the age of 93, would later recall that he did not feel any pain, just dizziness and a buzz behind his ear. When he tried to lift his shovel again, he felt something warm dripping down his neck. He turned around to see what happened and saw a soldier standing over him. He realized he had been struck by the German’s gun. For a moment, their eyes locked, he recalled. “I saw his twisted, evil grimace. I thought I was looking at the devil.”

For more than three decades, Eisen, a successful Canadian businessman, would retell the story to thousands of people. “It must have been painful to tell the stories,” says Eli Rubenstein, director of education for the International March of the Living, “but he had a higher mission, and he went to those painful places and told the stories.”

In the ditch, Eisen felt he was going into shock and collapsed. He watched as the German commander, writing him off as dead, didn’t even bother wasting a bullet on him. Instead, he made a circular motion with his hand, meaning that the teenager would soon be one of the many whose ashes would rise through the crematorium’s chimney.

During what he believed were his last moments on Earth, Eisen thought about what his father told him the last time he saw him: “If you survive, you must tell the world what happened here.” But now it would be the end of the Eisen family and “I knew that I would not be able to fulfill his final wish.”
Famous Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg dies at 96
Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg passed away Wednesday, surrounded by his loving family in New Jersey at the age of 96. He became one of the biggest supporters of the March of the Living and was the honorary President of the From The Depths Foundation. Mosberg devoted the last years of his life to Holocaust education. Almost all of his family were murdered during the war, including his parents, sisters and more.

“The world has lost a giant, a true leader, never afraid to speak his mind and tell the truth, he survived true hell and through that was able to build the most loving family and has left a legacy that will continue. The lessons he taught me and the example he showed me will stay with me forever, Baruch Dayan HaEmet, I will miss him deeply,” said Jonny Daniels founder of From The Depths.

Mosberg spoke at the last March of the Living event in Poland just a few months ago. He urged the world not to compare the war in Ukraine to the Holocaust, "The holocaust was completely different," he said emotionally. "I feel sorry for those people... but never compare this [war] to the Holocaust."

Mosberg's story
Mosberg was born on January 6, 1926, in Kraków, Poland. He had two sisters, Halina and Karolina. His parents, Bronislawa and Ludwig, owned a department store; they prayed in the Popper synagogue. According to a testimony he gave to USC Shoah Foundation, a little more than a year after World War II broke out in 1939, a ghetto was established in Kraków. Ed’s immediate family, grandparents and aunt settled in one apartment there.

According to the testimony, Mosberg brought them food and provided much-needed employee IDs and other papers. In 1943, the Kraków ghetto was liquidated and the Mosberg family was moved to the Plaszów camp on the outskirts of Krakow. As an office worker in the camp, Mosberg said that he witnessed "many atrocities," committed by an infamous camp commander named Amon Goeth, who would later be tried, convicted and hanged as a war criminal.

The following year, Mosberg's mother and sister were taken to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Poland. He was deported a few days later, first to Auschwitz and then to Mauthausen, a concentration camp in Austria, where he performed slave labor. After liberation, he briefly returned to Poland, but was met with fierce antisemitism and moved to Belgium, where he married a woman named Cecile. The couple immigrated to the United States and had three children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren as of Mosberg's USC Shoah Foundation interview in 2016.




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