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Wednesday, November 02, 2022

11/02 Links Pt2: The Holocaust Is Not Your Metaphor; The Balfour bogeyman; AOC’s ‘obsession’ with Israel is ‘shameful’; LA Council Passes IHRA Definition of Antisemitism

From Ian:

The Stories She Never Told
My mother loved to talk politics, real estate, and cooking. She’d happily offer intelligent insights on nearly any subject except one: her own life. With stops in prewar Hungary, Auschwitz, the Sorbonne, Mexico, and finally Manhattan, my mother’s life was extraordinary, but she kept it to herself. I hated that, but I knew why. So tender-hearted that news of terrorist attacks or natural disasters brought her to tears, she needed to distance herself from the pain of her own past. Still, as her child, I needed to understand her and the world that created her.

As a teenager and young adult, I plied her with questions, but I was only partly successful. I uncovered the scaffolding of her past but not its interiority. My mother is gone now, but my curiosity remains. I still search for her by immersing myself in stories of prewar Hungarian Jewry. Surprisingly, a new book about a Sephardic Holocaust survivor has opened a window into my mother’s inner life.

One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World, a Natan Award winner, is a Tuesdays with Morrie-style recollection of journalist Michael Frank’s conversations with nonagenarian Stella Levi, who grew up on the island of Rhodes. My mother was born thousands of miles and a universe away in the Romanian city of Satu Mare, the small Romanian city better known by its Yiddish name Satmar—the birthplace of the Satmar Hasidic sect—yet their lives seem to mirror each other.

They were born within two years of each other in the mid-1920s; both grew up in religiously observant but non-Hasidic families (prewar Satmar was home to many non-Hasidic Jews), and both belonged to the last generation of Jews to feel deeply rooted in their European birthplaces. My mother’s forebears had lived in or around Satmar for more than two centuries. Levi’s family had been part of the Juderia, Rhodes’ Jewish district, since the Spanish Inquisition. Both grew up in the embrace of aunts, uncles, and cousins in a world that moved to the eternal rhythms of the Jewish calendar.

Living within a 5-mile radius in Manhattan, both Levi and my mother viewed themselves as consummately modern women, yet both were intensely nostalgic for their childhood homes. Levi spoke of “a place where old women sat outside and told stories … took dishes to be baked in the communal oven … and where a granddaughter learned to prepare her grandmother’s sweet and savory dishes.” Unable to access the right words, my mother expressed her longing to recreate the flavors of her childhood and by carrying a crumpled photograph of her doomed aunts and cousins inside of her wallet.
Daniel Greenfield: The Holocaust Is Not Your Metaphor
"A production of Romeo and Juliet for non-binary performers"

This is what happens when the Holocaust becomes universalized, a free-floating metaphor and finally woke kitsch.

Yes, that’s the problem there.

This production, which has now been canceled, comes on the heels of things like the various Anne Frank revisions, including the Latino/ICE one. The underlying problem though is the use of the Holocaust and Hitler as a metaphor for everything bad.

The Holocaust is not a lens. It’s certainly not a lens for whatever woke nonsense is trying to appropriate Jewish history to make claims about the “rise of fascism” today.

There, is to a much lesser degree, similar objections to Netfix’s Dahmer movie which distorted and rewrote the history of the murders to score political points.

Treating real events, especially the murder of people, as a metaphor reduces the dead to the means of a political end while robbing them of their voice, their history and their identity.

The Holocaust is not slavery, slavery is not the Holocaust, whatever some sexual minority is upset by is not either one, and real events are not interchangeable. Neither are real people.
The Balfour bogeyman
In the eyes of the Palestinian Authority, one historical act is attributed with all future Palestinian suffering. That act is the Balfour Declaration, issued today, Nov. 2, in 1917. The declaration was the first contemporary, internationally recognized expression of the right of the Jewish people to establish a national homeland in the geographical area known as “Palestine”.

“His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

As exposed by Palestinian Media Watch, the PA Ministry of Information called the Balfour declaration: “The greatest crime in the history of mankind,” and the official PA daily called it “The crime of the century.”

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who also serves as the PA’s Supreme Shari’ah Judge recently claimed that the Balfour declaration violated international law:
“Israel’s very existence contradicts international law. On what right do you bring people who have no connection to this land and plant them here and tell them: This is your national home? Who gave Britain a right to give a national home? Was Palestine the land of [former British Foreign Secretary Arthur] Balfour’s father?”

[Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Oct. 10, 2022]

So how then, can one answer the PA’s claim?

While the Balfour Declaration was an important statement of policy on the part of the UK government, it certainly did not have the ability to bring about the creation of the Jewish state without wide international consensus.

Historically, the declaration was issued as part of a new regional order that was born out of World War I and the demise of the Ottoman Empire, which, inter alia, had controlled most of the Middle East for centuries. As part of the new order, new borders were drawn and countries were, for the first time, carved out.

In the Ottoman Empire, “Palestine” as the separate national country and identity, as the PA claims, never existed. Rather, the region was merely just another region of the empire with no specific definition.


Abbas’ advisor: Israel’s existence contradicts international law

Top German Official Calls for Cancellation of Upcoming Roger Waters Concert Tour
One of Germany’s top officials charged with combating antisemitism has called on German music venues to cancel the forthcoming tour of Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd vocalist who has emerged as one of the world’s most vocal supporters of the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign targeting Israel.

Speaking on Monday, Uwe Becker — the antisemitism commissioner in the central state of Hesse — commented that Waters had “developed more and more into a hateful opponent of Israel.”

“For years, Waters has been using his reputation to agitate against the Jewish state in a defamatory way and to question its legitimacy,” Becker said. “Waters is a bad example of aggressive, Israel-related antisemitism and he should therefore not be given an artistic platform in Hesse.”

Waters’ “This is Not A Drill” Tour in 2023 will see him playing at venues across Europe. Concerts in the German cities of Hamburg, Cologne, Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt. Becker called on the organizers of the May ’23 concert in Frankfurt, the largest city in Hesse, to cancel the event, echoing a similar call issued last month by Ludwig Spaenle, the antisemitism commissioner in Bavaria, for Waters’ concert in Munich to be canceled.

Becker referred to the display of antisemitic tropes at Waters’ previous concerts, included balloons shaped like pigs and bearing a Star of David. “Roger Waters is not welcome in Hesse with his antisemitic worldview,” he said.
Newark School District adds anti-Israel book to sixth-grade curriculum
Tuchman told JNS it is frightening that “impressionable sixth-grade students are being taught to hate Jews and Israel based on ugly, racist lies.”

“The book that is required reading falsely paints Jews and Israelis as stealing land and as oppressors,” she added. “ The book also falsely portrays Israelis as cruel and heartless, oppressing Palestinian Arabs and making their lives miserable.”

As part of the lesson plan for the book, the curriculum guide originally included an introductory video by Jewish Voice for Peace—a BDS-supporting left-wing group—that teachers can choose to show students.

In the video, Jews are painted as oppressors who are stealing other people’s land. It claims that Arab Israelis are “second-class citizens” and that Israel “demolished thousands of Palestinian homes and orchards, confiscated Palestinian land, bombed a captive population in Gaza and punished resistance with raids, arrests and assassinations, all to gain maximum land.”

Following its letters to the district, ZOA said it was told the video was removed from the lesson plans.

Roz Rothstein, CEO of the Israel education organization StandWithUs and a daughter of Holocaust survivors, said assigning the book promotes “propaganda that dehumanizes Israelis and paints a distorted picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“Given the alarming rise in anti-Semitic activity across the country, we would hope that educational institutions would take steps to counter the problem, not add to it,” Rothstein told JNS.

According to the Anti-Defamation League’s 2021 audit of anti-Semitic incidents, New Jersey has the second-highest number of recorded incidents in the country, second only to New York.


AIPAC affiliate spends over $1 million to oppose progressive candidate
A political action committee affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is spending upwards of $1 million in a second bid to oppose Summer Lee, a Pittsburgh-area progressive who once likened Israel to white people who shoot Blacks.

The move by United Democracy Project so close to the election next week drew fury from progressive Democrats, including Senator Bernie Sanders, the Jewish Vermonter and progressive standard-bearer who has clashed with AIPAC in recent years.

“The billionaires who fund AIPAC are spending $1 million against @SummerForPA because she stands with working people and against corporate greed,” Sanders said Tuesday on Twitter. “Democrats must unite and condemn this Super PAC, and do everything possible to elect Summer.” Also attacking AIPAC was Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the prominent New York progressive in the House.

AIPAC replied: “We oppose Summer Lee because of her dangerous views of the US-Israel alliance. AIPAC and our 2 million grassroots members proudly support progressive candidates — including 148 Democrats this cycle — who don’t check their values at the door when it comes to standing with Israel.”

United Democracy Project is spending close to $1 million on TV ads and another $80,000 on fliers depicting Lee, a state representative, as a “radical” who seeks to defund the police. Neither the flier nor the TV ad mentions Israel or UDP’s AIPAC affiliation.

UDP already spent more than $2 million in an unsuccessful effort to keep Lee from winning the primary in May.


Antisemitism watchdog: AOC’s ‘obsession’ with Israel is ‘shameful’
A nonpartisan antisemitism watchdog group has condemned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for criticizing the top pro-Israel lobbying group for opposing a progressive congressional candidate in Pennsylvania.

“AOC’s ongoing obsession with both AIPAC and the Jewish state is shameful,” Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism, told the New York Post on Tuesday.

Ocasio-Cortez called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, on Monday for using their super PAC to fund mail and TV ads against Democrat Summer Lee, who is running in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District.

“Shamefully, AIPAC is working for Republican control of Congress and further destabilization of US democracy,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Monday. “Let’s rally for [Summer Lee]. Help her out with a volunteer shift or donation today,” the congresswoman added.

AIPAC’s United Democracy Project super PAC spent close to $3 million to defeat Lee during her primary battle and has dropped nearly $700,000 on TV and mail ads against her in recent days, according to the Intercept.

Lee is running against Republican Mike Doyle to replace a retiring Democrat in Congress who is also named Mike Doyle.

Republican candidate Mike Doyle speaks to a crowd gathered during a get-out-the-vote rally on May 15, 2022 in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

StopAntisemitism told the Post AOC’s tweet singles out the Jewish group and that the lawmaker ignores other bipartisan and left-leaning groups working against Lee.

“She is ignoring numerous bipartisan and left-leaning groups working to also keep Justice Democrat candidate Summer Lee out of office and we have to ask ourselves why?” Rez said.

The Justice Democrats PAC, which backs Lee and AOC, echoed Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet bashing AIPAC.

Liora Rez called Ocasio-Cortez’s obsession with Israel “shameful.”

“Seems like AIPAC & the GOP have the same agenda,” Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi said on Twitter on Sunday.


Congressman Urges Berkeley to Cut Off Cash to “Jewish Free Zones” Groups
This time a Democrat has stepped forward on UC Berkeley’s Jewish Free Zones. He’s also pretty much the only pro-Israel Jewish Democrat left in Congress.

“This unacceptable decision comes at a time where antisemitic speech and incidents are on the rise in California and across the country – with antisemitic incidents in 2021 hitting the highest amount ever recorded in the United States. California ranked the third highest in number of antisemitic incidents last year, which of course includes the shocking incident in Spring of 2021 where several people waving Palestinian flags beat diners in a Los Angeles sushi restaurant while chanting “death to Jews” and “Free Palestine.” There have also notably been a flurry of antisemitic incidents across Los Angeles just this week and in Berkeley over the summer,” Rep. Brad Sherman’s statement reads.

“However, the adoption of this bylaw makes it so that many students, particularly Jewish students, will not be able to access student organizations that their tuition funds as a result of those students exercising their free speech rights. As a result, the funding and registered status that Berkeley provides to these student organizations must be made conditional on this discriminatory and antisemitic bylaw being revoked. At a time of rising antisemitism, we must stand firm against attempts to alienate and demonize the Jewish community. I urge Berkeley Law to stand with its Jewish students and cease funding to any student organizations that effectively bar Jewish speakers and students from participating,” his statement concludes.

It’s a strong statement, but avoids actually threatening consequences. Rep. Sherman urges UC Berkeley Law to cut off funding to the campus hate groups involved in this, but fails to do so himself.

And without a consequences process, it’s quite toothless.
Why Kanye West’s Anti-Semitism Matters
Much discussion about the threats to American Jews seem to revolve around whether to be more worried about the hatred emanating from the anti-Israel left or that from the white-supremacist right—or perhaps equally worried by both. The popular recording artist Kanye West’s recent series of anti-Semitic pronouncements, Tal Fortgang writes, suggest our attention should be directed elsewhere:

For better or worse, West is better known than, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Edward Said. He made his comments on radio shows and podcasts that enjoy big followings but evade outgroup attention, much less analysis.

Another lesson concerns the responses of West’s interlocutors. Sadly, those interviewing him during his outburst tended to nod along, rather than question him, and they certainly did not try to signal to the public that West was trafficking in anti-Semitic lunacy.

Finally, it’s impossible to miss the striking similarity between West’s rantings and those we are long accustomed to hearing from Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam, and Black Hebrew Israelites. Watchdog groups offer various estimates, but West’s pitch-perfect imitation of Farrakhan suggests that they may be undercounting how many are influenced by the Nation of Islam leader, who regularly suggests that Jews are demons and exploiters. The basketball star Kyrie Irving, it’s worth noting, recently promoted a 2018 film redolent of Black Hebrew Israelite themes, including the accusation that Jews controlled the slave trade and worship the devil.

We know that Farrakhan is an icon in some black communities—his image appears on everything from Black Lives Matter murals to Democratic National Convention photographs, smiling next to Barack Obama—but this brand of thinking might be far more influential among regular Americans than previously known.
NBA Greats Slam ‘Idiot’ Kyrie Irving Over Promotion of Antisemitic Film
Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving is feeling pressure off the court as some of basketball’s key influencers lined up to condemn him as an “idiot” for promoting a documentary about the slave trade regarded as antisemitic.

Speaking on TNT’s “Inside the NBA” show, NBA Hall-of-Famer Charles Barkley turned an unforgiving eye on both Irving and the Nets, who are in crisis following the firing of coach Steve Nash on Monday.

“When you’re somebody as great at basketball as (Irving), people are going to listen to what you say,” Barkley commented. “I blame the NBA, he should have been suspended.”

Barkley argued that NBA commissioner Adam Silver should have taken decisive punitive action against Irving.

“I think Adam should have suspended him,” he asserted. “First of all, Adam is Jewish — you can’t take my $40 million and insult my religion. You gonna insult me, you have the right, but I have the right to say, ‘You can’t take my $40 million and insult my religion.’ I think the NBA, they made a mistake. We’ve suspended people and fined people who have made homophobic slurs. And that was the right thing to do. If you insult the Black community, you should be suspended or fined heavily.”


ABC Australia – where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing
In blatantly barracking for the Labour Party’s anti-Israel agenda, as well as highlighting irrelevancies, Lyons does not even begin to engage with the sorts of issues that any objective analyst would have raised as part of a balanced analysis despite him stating that “…the main [issue] being that in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there are two sides.”

Nor does he ever refer to the fact that the 1947 Partition Plan could have become a binding international treaty had both Jews and Arabs accepted it, where, while, in fact, the Jews did accept it, the Arabs not only rejected it, rendered the status of Jerusalem as a separate entity entirely moot by going to war, but then belatedly demanded a return to the status quo ante, something Lyons analyses as eminently reasonable.

To bolster any semblance of objective analysis as the ABC’s global affairs editor, Lyons needs to acknowledge that the Arabs (now Palestinians) never intended to honour either the recognition of a Jewish state per international law and UN resolutions, nor accept the internationality of Jerusalem as a Corpus Separatum per the Partition Plan.

Yet, and in Lyons’ own triumphant words in a context he didn’t particularly envisage, “…There it is on Israel’s own official website….”

In his analysis John Lyons gives his opinion that he favours a 2 state solution.

However, as Dr Martin Sherman accurately stated on Oct 21, 2022, “Little analytical acumen is needed to grasp that a Palestinian state will comprise a multi-dimensional threat to Israel. Whether one considers height, width, length, or depth, such a state would entail existential dangers for Israel…..Support for a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is driven either by malice or by ignorance: Either malice reflecting a desire to gravely undermine Israel’s national security and/or the personal safety of its citizens; or ignorance reflecting a gross lack of knowledge and/or appreciation of the consequences that such a state would have for Israel.”

Without putting too fine a point on it, Sherman then quotes Zaki Abbas: ”In a 2009 article, headlined “Palestinian Official Says Two-state Solution Will Destroy Israel,” the Palestinian Ambassador to Lebanon and member of Fatah’s Central Committee, Zaki Abbas, candidly asserted: “With the two-state solution… Israel will collapse… What will become of all the sacrifices they made – just to be told to leave? … The Jews consider Judaea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward.”

With regard to Sherman’s comment of malice vs ignorance for supporters of the 2 state solution in the present political climate, and, indeed, in light of the historic Arab refusal to accept Resolution 181, I do not make a case for either malice or ignorance with regard to Mr Lyons or even that he advocates for Israel’s “collapse” per Mr Abbas.

What I do make a case for is Lyons’ apparent inability to bring to bear a broader and balanced political acumen as befits a global affairs editor, as to why the resolution he quotes from the Israeli MEF’s own website (in acceptance of partition) has not resulted in 2 states for two peoples.

Ignoring the elephant in the room changes a purported analysis to a party political broadcast, arguably written specifically for a less well informed reading public.

In the end, Lyons’ personal slant on the decision of the Albanese Labor government to “un-recognise” Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is possibly best summed up in the comment a wag sent me a few days ago: “The whole world knows that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel; but does the whole world realise that Canberra, not Sydney is the capital of Australia?”
SUMMARY OF BBC NEWS WEBSITE PORTRAYAL OF ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS – OCTOBER 2022
BBC coverage of internal Palestinian affairs during October did not include a case of administrative detention, clashes between clans in Hebron, a new dress code for girls at schools in the Gaza Strip, the deaths of detainees in Palestinian prisons, the death of a Hamas operative, an attack on a church, an attack on a hotel or – as noted here previously – foreign trips by Palestinian leaders.


Los Angeles City Council Passes IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
The Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed a resolution endorsing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism on November 1.

The resolution, which was introduced by City Councilmember Paul Koretz, noted that “hate crimes reported statewide increased 32 percent from 2020 to 2021 and are at their highest reported level since 2001,” according to a report from the California Attorney General. “Contemporary manifestations of antisemitism may include: calling for, aiding, or justifying the harming of Jews; making dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews; denying the fact, scope, mechanisms, or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people during the Holocaust; accusing Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust; accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations; denying the Jewish people their right to self determination; applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation; using symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism; drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis; accusing Jews of being responsible for wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group; or holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel,” the resolution stated.

The resolution concluded with a request for “City departments, staff, elected and appointed officials, and contract agencies to familiarize themselves with the IHRA definition of antisemitism, associated IHRA reference materials, examples, and articles, and incorporate their use where appropriate.”

Jewish groups praised the city council for passing the resolution.

“Those who understand this hatred as it appeared in Nazi Germany may not recognize all the ways Jews experience it today in Los Angeles,” American Jewish Committee Los Angeles Regional Director Richard Hirschhaut said in a statement. “As a result, many incidents of antisemitism are misidentified, unaddressed, or underreported. Adopting the IHRA definition will make our city government more informed, and help government leaders, law enforcement, educators and the media properly identify antisemitism and take appropriate action. We thank Councilmembers Paul Koretz and Bob Blumenfield for their leadership in spearheading this important effort.”


A Dawson College Student Was Accused Of Wearing A Nazi Uniform & There's A Video Online
Montreal's Dawson College has launched an investigation after a student was accused of wearing a Nazi uniform at the school on Halloween.

A video originally posted to Instagram shows the student marching through a common area wearing what appears to be a military uniform and gas mask. The details of the costume are not visible in the video, but several commenters interpreted the costume and strut as Nazi symbolism.

The video was reshared on Twitter by the account StopAntisemitism.

In a statement, Dawson said a staff member intervened shortly after the end of the video to question the student and order them to remove the mask. The student claimed the uniform represented the post-World War II East German military.

"The College deeply regrets that this incident occurred and that a staff or bystander intervention did not occur fast enough to prevent it," the statement reads. "Dawson recognizes the actions of this student threatened many students’ fundamental sense of safety. Dawson College also strongly condemns antisemitism and discrimination in any form."

An investigation, which Dawson says will include an interview with the student, is ongoing. The school vowed to take "appropriate action" pending its results. It also said it would meet with Jewish students, staff and community members to "advance a respectful environment and repair the harm done by this incident."

Dawson further committed to issuing a Halloween costume guideline next year.

"Dawson has a deep and longstanding dedication to nonviolence and the College remains committed to fostering education for justice and peace, and creating a safe, shared and respectful space for all students and employees," the statement concludes.


5 Israeli universities feature among top 50 producers of entrepreneurs
Five Israeli universities were listed in the top half of PitchBook’s 2022 ranking of the 100Good new undergraduate programs that produce the most VC-backed entrepreneurs, including Tel Aviv University, which ranked in the top 10 for the fifth consecutive year.

The 2022 PitchBook study ranked programs across categories such as top 100 undergraduate programs, top 100 graduate programs, top 50 undergrad programs for female founders, and top 50 graduate programs for female founders. The 2022 study was released on Monday.

PitchBook Data is a company that delivers data and research covering mergers and acquisitions, VC and private equity funds.

In the ranking for undergraduate programs, Tel Aviv University came in at 7th place, up one spot from the previous four years when it placed 8th; the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology dropped to 15th place, down three spots from 12th, a ranking it held for the previous two years; the Hebrew University of Jerusalem held its spot at No. 31 for the second consecutive year; Reichman University (formerly the IDC) was a newcomer to this list, ranking in 38th place, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev dropped to the 45th spot, down one from 2021.

Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University nabbed first, second and third place respectively, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Pennsylvania rounded out the top five — all keeping their respective ranks from 2021.
The Israeli Nurse Who Travels the World to Disasters
“When you see a young man dying on the floor of the hospital because there’s no bed and we can’t do anything to help him, and his mother is crying, it breaks my heart,” says Odeda Benin-Goren.

This Israeli nurse has traveled the world for the past 30 years to help people in areas that are devastated by floods, earthquakes, fires and wars.

The bleak scene she’s describing took place last August in South Sudan, a country that has been jolted by civil war since its independence in 2011. In much of the country, there’s no running water and the electricity functions only a few hours each day.

“People’s basic needs aren’t met,” Benin-Goren tells ISRAEL21c.

On a mission of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Agency for International Development Cooperation (MASHAV), she went to South Sudan for 10 days with Dr. Hadas Stiner, an emergency medicine specialist and general practitioner at Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva; and Dr. Nimrod Aviran, a surgeon and trauma specialist at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera. Odeda Benin-Goren flanked by Dr. Nimrod Aviran and Dr. Hadas Stiner in South Sudan. Photo courtesy of Odeda Benin-Goren

The three Israelis brought medical equipment, beds and supplies to Juba Teaching Hospital to set up and train hospital staff to run an emergency and trauma unit.

During her visit to South Sudan, she was reminded of how “life is very fragile and I can’t change that.”

But she can help change patient outcomes for the better.
In Berlin, 2 married couples who saved Jews from Nazis given honor by Yad Vashem
Germany and Israel on Wednesday paid posthumous tribute to two married couples who rescued Berlin Jews from the Nazis, at an emotional ceremony attended by four generations of the families’ descendants.

Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor presented granddaughters of the rescuers with Righteous Among the Nations medals from Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial at the Berlin City Hall in the first such ceremony there in seven years.

Prosor, whose own family fled the Nazis for Israel in the 1930s, called the couples — Bruno and Anna Schwartze and Friedrich and Helene Huebner — “heroes in the fight for freedom.”

“Even in Berlin, where my father was born, there were people who fought for good and didn’t forget humanity and compassion,” he said.

Moritz and Henriette Mandelkern survived the Holocaust only thanks to the help of their neighbors, the Schwartzes, and the Huebners, a farming family.

The Mandelkerns lived in the capital’s Mitte district with their son Siegfried, who was imprisoned at Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of the city in 1939 and deported to Poland the following year.

It is believed he perished at Auschwitz.

To save his father, a tailor, from a similar fate, the Schwartzes took Moritz Mandelkern into the attic of their flat from December 1942 for 18 months.

Mandelkern never left his cramped hiding place during that time, fearing discovery by the Gestapo.

His wife Henriette found safe haven at the same time on the Huebners’ farm in the village of Gross-Schoenebeck, 50 kilometers (30 miles) away, where her cousin had already sought refuge.
150 Jewish communities around the world to commemorate Rabbi Sacks
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks speaks at the Holocaust Memorial Day 2013 UK Commemoration event

More than 150 Jewish communities from six continents will commemorate the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks next month by discussing his philosophies and learnings.

The event will take place November 13 and 14, marking the second anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Sacks.

The intercontinental commemoration called “Communities in Conversation,” offers participants to discuss the writings and philosophy of Rabbi Sacks on this year’s theme “From Optimism to Hope.”

Communities and Jewish day schools across Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Austria, Australia, Bahrain, Indonesia, Kuwait, The Netherlands, Mexico, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are expected to join the day of learning, inspired by Rabbi Sacks’ teachings and his passion for learning through dialogue.

“His mission to inspire deeper conversations on what Judaism means to the individual remain just as relevant on his second yahrzeit as they were when he first spoke them,” Rabbi Sacks Legacy chief executive Joanna Benarroch said.

The multifaceted lesson plan, which includes curated videos and source sheets, is aimed at sparking discussion among participants of all ages and all religious backgrounds.

“In his memory, we will bring communities and schools together to learn and to discuss, sharing his wisdom and his teachings with each other and with the world,” she added.

“My father learned from books, from text, from laws, history, and from world events. But mainly, he learned from people,” Rabbi Sacks’ daughter Gila said.




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