Tuesday, February 14, 2023

02/14 Links Pt2: Sarah Idan: Don’t Buy Into The Anti-Israel Movement’s Pack Of Lies; Graduate suing uni after essay criticising Hamas was failed; Remembering Marc Chagall and the Righteous Rescuers of the Holocaust

From Ian:

Disturbed Frontman Tells Artists to Ignore Pressure From BDS Supporters About Performing in Israel
Disturbed frontman David Draiman said in a new podcast interview that he gives no attention to supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and they’ve in return come to realize that they’ll never be able to convince him not to perform in the Jewish state.

“F__k them. I don’t care. They know I don’t care, that’s why they don’t bother me,” the Jewish musician said during his guest appearance last week on the Sarai Talk Show, a new podcast hosted by human rights activist and former Miss Iraq Sarah Idan. He added, “I have 2,000 relatives living in Israel. I have parents, my brother, uncles, aunts, cousins — you’re really gonna try to say something to me about BDS? It makes no sense.”

Disturbed will embark on a world tour in April for its new album Divisive and will make a stop in Israel for a concert. It will be Draiman’s second time performing in the country and the heavy metal musician, whose maternal grandmother has Yemenite Jewish roots, said he is “excited” to visit Israel again.

Draiman is an avid supporter of Israel and also a member of the non-profit organization Creative Community for Peace, which promotes efforts to use the arts as a means to create peace and coexistence, as well as support against the cultural boycott of Israel.

Idan further asked Draiman about BDS supporters pressuring many artists in the past to not perform in Israel as a show of solidarity with Palestinians. The Sound of Silence singer expressed his own frustration by noting how ironic it is “that there’s not a single band that has played in Israel that has seen a negative impact whatsoever other than a whole lot of people being loudmouths online. It hasn’t negatively impacted their ticket sales [or] their record sales. If anything it increased them.”

He told Idan he thinks Israeli fans are “amazing and dedicated” and said he believes that music “should be the entity that brings people together, not continues to separate. It should build bridges and it’s not supposed to be something you withhold from people.”
Sarah Idan: Don’t Buy Into The Anti-Israel Movement’s Pack Of Lies
As Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid has poignantly written, “the BDS movement in its determination to oppose Israel is prepared to fight to the last drop of Palestinian blood. As a Palestinian who actually lives in east Jerusalem and hopes to build a better life for his family and his community, this is the kind of “pro-Palestinian activism” we could well do without.”

How can we understand a society that pursues such upside-down goals for its people? Like North Korea or Cuba, the PA-ruled West Bank is a broken society where all the rules are upside down. This is a society where the families of terrorists — including the killers of Americans like the young Afghanistan and Iraq veteran Taylor Force of Lubbock, Texas — are awarded huge stipends from the government itself that far exceed the average Palestinian monthly salary.

The Council of Foreign Relations has exposed that the total annual amount for Palestinian salaries for the ranks of major general, brigadier general, colonel and lieutenant colonel in 2016 reached over $66 million per year (USD), equivalent to the yearly salary of 13,000 Palestinian soldiers, although the total number of officers in the ranks is only 5,672. This is a society so dominated by corruption that even though the economy subsists largely on foreign aid, former PA Chairman Yasser Arafat reportedly died with a massive net worth of $1.3 billion (USD).

Those who seek peace in the Middle East should look to the changemakers of the next generation. Real Palestinian human rights activists have remained focused on the deeply corrupt autocracy around PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, currently serving the 19th year of his original four-year term after suspending both the Palestinian Legislature and Constitution, as well as years of elections.

The gaggle descending on Los Angeles this month, with their desire to destroy and expel their “enemies,” must represent the past and not the future. To ensure that outcome, Americans must not buy into BDS’s pack of lies. BDS is simply BS.
A Secular Jew Raises His Head and Doesn’t Like What He Sees
A mentally unstable celebrity finds inspiration in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion for his tweets. A former president whose daughter converted to Judaism dines with a rabid antisemite and insists that there’s nothing to see here, move along. In the grand and eternal scheme of antisemitism, these are mere blips. And yet … I can’t stop thinking about them. Why?

For most Jews, it makes no sense to ask why. Shouldn’t all manifestations of antisemitism make all Jews, not to mention all people of goodwill, worried and uneasy? Maybe, but the taxonomy of the genus “Jew” is complex, comprised as it is of species with different mixes of religious, social, and political identities. In my own cohort, reactions to episodes like these are suffused with an uncomfortable self-consciousness that blunts what might otherwise be an immediate and outraged response.

The fact is that I’m such a perfect example of a secular Jew that I could be the standard against which all other secular Jews are measured. My parents were Jewish but never went to temple. Our family celebrated Christmas with gifts for the children. During my brief, obligatory fascination with religion—the phase that all pre-adolescents go through, Jewish or not—we lit menorah candles at my insistence but recited no prayers. The fever passed. Passover was celebrated with a meal that sometimes included relatives but never the Haggadah.

In adulthood, I have been professionally successful in a world that, until just a few generations ago, would have been closed to me. I attended an elite, Eastern college, graduated from medical school, and became a tenured professor at Harvard. I’m now married to a wonderful woman who, in full disclosure, is half Jewish; my previous wife, who died after 30 years of marriage, was a blond-haired, blue-eyed echt WASP. I have, in a word, by the standards of my own tribe, or subtribe, arrived.

Although I cannot cite a single experience of overt antisemitism during my long march to assimilated respectability, and despite my background and elevated status within the secular “establishment,” I am acutely aware of my Jewish identity. I have always assumed that my position is tenuous, that my credentials can be revoked at any moment because of my religion. Several of my Jewish colleagues share this mindset. We make knowing comments to each other about watching for the boxcars whenever the antisemitic heat is turned up.

This disconnect between disinterest in any exercise of my Jewish identity and my anticipatory dread of Jewish victimhood manifests in other ways. I have a compulsive need to revisit antisemitism’s greatest hits, particularly National Socialism and the Holocaust. My bookshelves reflect this obsession. In the past few years alone, I’ve read two multivolume biographies of Hitler (Ian Kershaw’s and Volker Ullrich’s—spoiler alert: they both have the same ending) along with a dramatic history of the first hundred days of the Thousand Year Reich. Nicholas Wachsmann’s KL, an exhaustive and masterful detailing of the concentration camps, is there, too, waiting for me. On the shelf below is the four-volume History of Anti-Semitism next to Amos Elon’s The Pity of It All.


Israeli FM meets Erdogan in Ankara following devastating earthquakes
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey on Tuesday, during a solidarity visit following the earthquakes that killed tens of thousands of people in that country and Syria.

Cohen extended condolences on behalf of Israel and stressed Jerusalem’s commitment to providing ongoing assistance.

“Israel stands alongside Turkey at this difficult time and will continue to assist it through the activities of our forces and providing of humanitarian aid,” he said.

“Relations between our countries are important for regional stability, and we are working to strengthen them. Friends are especially measured in difficult times, and in this difficult time, Israel is reaching out to the Turkish people,” added Cohen.

Soon after touching down in Ankara, Cohen met with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu. He was also slated to tour the field hospital Israel has set up in the country.


More Than 300 Patients Treated in Israeli Field Hospital in Turkey, Diplomat Says
More than 300 people have been treated in a field hospital set up by Israel in Turkey, the deputy chief of Israel’s mission in Turkey wrote on Sunday.

The hospital, which has been fully operational since Friday morning, provides a range of care, from intensive care and pediatrics to general surgery and orthopedics. It was set up by the Israel Defense Forces in Kahramanmaraş, the epicenter of one of two massive earthquakes that devastated southern Turkey and neighboring Syria on Monday.

The deputy chief of mission, Nadav Markman, recounted the story of one patient, a 4-year-old boy who was rescued by Israeli teams several days after the earthquakes. “He arrived in a very cold state with low temperature at the emergency department,” wrote Markman. “He was treated by our emergency and intensive care team and transferred to the intensive care unit for further treatment with some improvement in his condition.”

IDF search and rescue teams — totalling more than 150 personnel — arrived in Turkey shortly after the earthquakes and managed to extract 19 living people from disaster sites, the military said. These included multiple children, among them a 14-year-old girl and her father. They also retrieved the bodies of Saul and Fortuna Cenudioglu, the elderly heads of the Jewish community in Antakya.

On Thursday, Israel’s Chief Rabbi David Lau released a statement urging that during the “holy shabbat,” field hospitals should “continue to function normally.”


BDS fails, Feb. 2022 (Stories you won't read in the British media) )
Here’s the latest installment in our ongoing series of posts documenting BDS fails – stories of Israeli success that are rarely covered by British media outlets.

Political BDS Fails
70,000 people from 95 countries make aliyah in 2022
Jewish Agency data for the period between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2022, shows that 37,364 olim arrived from Russia; 14,680 from Ukraine; 3,500 from North America, with assistance from Nefesh B’Nefesh; 2,049 from France; 1,993 from Belarus; 1,498 from Ethiopia as part of Operation Tzur Israel; 985 from Argentina; 526 from Great Britain; 426 from South Africa; and 356 from Brazil. Final totals for 2022 will be available after the year concludes.

Sudan to sign Abraham Accords in coming days

Morocco To Boost Military Ties With Israel Morocco’s army said Tuesday it had agreed with Israel to strengthen military cooperation including in intelligence and cybersecurity, following defence meetings in Rabat.

The two countries “agreed to further strengthen cooperation and expand it to other areas, including in intelligence, air defence and electronic warfare,” the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces said in a statement.

Puma is urged to ignore anti-Israel boycott calls
UK Lawyers for Israel, together with the Zionist Advocacy Centre, have written to the CEO of Puma International to congratulate him on continuing to sponsor the Israeli Football Association and to counter the anti-Israel groups who have been urging Puma to withdraw its sponsorship.
Anti-Israel campaigners have been pressurising Puma to withdraw from sponsoring the Israeli Football Association on the ground that some of its sanctioned football matches take place in so-called West Bank Settlements.
We wrote to remind Puma that boycotts relating to the West Bank are both immoral and costly to firms as was recently learned by Unilever and Airbnb.
Our letter explained that boycotts of trade with the “West Bank” are an antisemitic strategy to attack the Jewish state. They are a “camel’s nose” strategy because enemies of Israel realize that they cannot get support for general boycotts of Israel and so they call for West Bank boycotts as a first step towards a total boycott.


Anti-Semite Replaces Pedophile at Rally Protesting Aid to Ukraine
The Libertarian Party's rally to protest U.S. funding for Ukraine and urge heavy cuts to the Pentagon budget lost a pedophile speaker last week but has since added an anti-Semite.

Former Democratic congresswoman Cynthia McKinney will appear at the "Rage Against the War Machine" rally in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 19. McKinney, who served in the House until 2007, has an extensive history of peddling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In June 2021, she claimed that "Zionists" were behind the 9/11 attacks, and in 2020, she disputed that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. McKinney joined the event days after former U.N. weapons inspector and convicted pedophile Scott Ritter withdrew from the event following a Washington Free Beacon report on his criminal history.

McKinney joins a rogues’ gallery of speakers whose controversial pasts raise questions about the integrity of the push to oppose American aid to Ukraine. The rally has brought together the likes of Ritter and McKinney with high-profile libertarians and left-wing activists including former Reps. Ron Paul and Tulsi Gabbard, best known for their respective anti-Semitic leanings and defense of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Gabbard will headline the event, which is being billed as the first major anti-war rally since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. Organizers who are calling to "slash" the Pentagon budget, shut down all overseas military bases, abolish the CIA, and disband NATO.

McKinney has emerged as an anti-war activist since ending her political career, which included a run for president in 2008. After American military forces assassinated Qassem Soleimani, McKinney called then-president Donald Trump a "Zionist puppet" and alleged that his public statements about the air strike were "written in Israel." She has also met with leaders from the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas.


Graduate suing uni after essay criticising Hamas was failed is given June court date
A Jewish graduate who is suing Leeds University after her essay about crimes committed by Hamas against the Palestinians was failed has been given a June 26th date for the court case to proceed.

Danielle Greyman is suing the university alleging “negligence, discrimination and victimisation” after claiming her essay was failed by an academic because it did not blame the Jewish state.

Greyman, who said she had never before failed an essay at university, was forced to resit the module two years ago, which she subsequently passed.

But because she had to wait almost a year for the result of her appeal, the student was unable to take up a place on a Master’s course at Glasgow University.

Greyman confirmed to Jewish News that her case would now he heard at Clerkenwell and Shoreditch Count Court on June 26th.

She also tweeted”Very excited that this nightmare is almost over.”

She claimed:” No institution, or academic, should behave this way and I am glad to have the opportunity to hold Leeds accountable.”

In her initial essay, Greyman had referred to Hamas’s use of human shields, saying it was viewed as “a betrayal of the Palestinian people by their government”.

But a moderator’s note by that section said: “This ignores the fact that the Israeli state commits acts of violence.”

Greyman also gave eight examples of antisemitism she claimed were being taught to children in UNRWA schools in Gaza.


Labour suspends official accused of ‘virulently anti-Jewish’ tweets dating back years
The Labour Party has suspended a local party official after tweets downplaying or denying antisemitism in the party were uncovered, the JC can reveal.

It is understood that Vivien Burke, listed as the ‘Vice Chair – Membership' of Romford Labour, will be subject to an investigation after tweets were revealed in which she allegedly called claims of antisemitism a “witch hunt”, said that former Labour MP Joan Ryan and current leader Sir Keir Starmer are “paid puppet[s]” for Israel, and implied that a “Jewish lobby” is trying to “gag” people criticising Israel.

Alex Hearn, a director for campaign organisation Labour Against Antisemitism, who uncovered Ms Burke’s alleged tweets, described the content as “virulently anti-Jewish" and called on the Labour Party to expel her.

In reply to Jewish journalist Jack Mendel, Ms Burke tweeted that charges of antisemitism against Ken Livingstone were turning into a witch hunt'

Since 2017, Ms Burke has sent numerous tweets that downplay or deny antisemitism within the Labour Party. In May 2017 when Ken Livingstone facing expulsion from the party, she said in reply to a tweet by him that she was “dismayed at the Witch Hunt and the bullying going on against you”.

A month prior, she responded to a tweet by a Jewish journalist about Ken Livingstone, saying: “OMG this is definitely turning into a witch hunt the man is not a racist fought all his life against it! Get a grip.”


London hospital removes Gazan artwork after patients complain
A London hospital has been forced to remove an art exhibition by Palestinian schoolchildren that showed the Palestinian flag flying above a holy Jewish site, following complaints from patients.

The display in a Chelsea and Westminster Hospital foyer left several Jewish patients feeling “vulnerable, offended and harassed”.

Crossing Borders - A Festival of Plates was designed by pupils at two United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools in Gaza and placed at the entrance to the children’s outpatients department.

IMPACT-se, an NGO dedicated to the prevention of radicalisation of children, produced a report last year that was critical of UNRWA, which runs 370 schools for 320,000 Palestinian pupils across the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem.

It concluded that textbooks within the curriculum, set by the Hamas-led Palestinian National Authority (PA) have “consistently shown a systematic insertion of violence, martyrdom, overt antisemitism, and jihad across all grades and subjects, with the proliferation of extreme nationalism and Islamist ideologies throughout”.

The damning study said the curriculum promoted “rejection of the possibility of peace with Israel and the complete omission of any historical Jewish presence in the modern-day territories of Israel and the PA”.
Jews and the myth of greed - Opinion
A famous character that best depicts this example is Shylock, the greedy Jewish money lender in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Predating Shakespeare was a play called The Jew of Malta, written by Christopher Marlowe in about 1590, which was also a great public success. The play’s central theme is antisemitism, as the main character Barabas, a Jew, goes on a revenge killing spree of predominantly Christian victims.

This portrayal of Jews as greedy villains reinforced the notion that they were money-hungry and working against the honest man. When writing Jewish characters, English authors often resorted to antisemitic tropes.

The Nazis were all aware of this, which is why they, too, pushed the notion of Jewish greed in their antisemitic campaign. The Nazis produced three huge propaganda films, one titled Die Rothschilds Aktien auf Waterloo (The Rothschilds’ Shares in Waterloo) depicting the Rothschild family in an antisemitic light regurgitating the falsehood that they profited from the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan echoes the same notions in his speech, “The Conspiracy of the International Bankers,” claiming that the Rothschild banks are members of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which they are not (according to American Jewish Committee research).

The notion of Jewish greed has seeped into mainstream society and affects Jewish people today. Hollywood has even reinforced the stereotype of wealthy Jews in many movies and TV series. Popular shows like Never Have I Ever and Gilmore Girls depict Jewish characters as rich and snobby, an unfair and inaccurate representation of Jewish people.

Netflix’s new movie You People has also come under fire for playing into those stereotypes. Even the phrase “Jews are good with money” has become so normalized today that those saying it are convinced that it’s just a compliment.

The reality is that Jews come from all socio-economic backgrounds and associating us with greed is harmful. With the rise of antisemitic figures like Kanye West to spread his antisemitic rants about Jewish greed and control, it has never been more critical for us to tackle this false trope.

When politicians like Ilhan Omar or figures like Joe Rogan paint us as into money or claim that “the Benjamins” influence Jewish and American-Israeli policy, it feeds into the same stereotypes that have fueled centuries of antisemitism. Both must realize their comments contribute to the foundation for modern-day antisemitism.

The writer is a social media activist with over 10 years of experience working for Israeli, Jewish and cause-based NGOs. She is the co-founder and the COO of Social Lite Creative, a digital marketing firm specializing in geopolitics.
Open letter to Joe Rogan on antisemitic tropes
The myth of Jews and money gained new life in medieval Europe, when Jewish people were openly discriminated against, by law, and forced to live in the margins of society. They were excluded from participating in most professions, and in most cases from owning land; sometimes their only option for survival was crediting on interest. This worked out well for the Christian rulers, who considered doing so a sin, and so they recruited their local Jews to do it for them. The nobleman would loan money to the Jew, and the Jew in turn would loan money to the non-Jewish peasants around him. If the Jew did not collect on time, the nobleman would kill him. As a bonus, whenever things went bad and people complained to their leaders about their difficult financial straits, there was a ready-made scapegoat: the money hungry Jew.

Antisemitic ideas about money-loving Jewish traitors are also tied directly to the ones about Jewish power and control. This triad was concretized, for example, in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a wildly racist paranoid fantasy first published in Russia in 1903. It describes a plot by a secret cabal of wealthy Jews to subvert and control the world through their finances, and it quickly became the most widespread and one of if not the most influential pieces of antisemitic literature ever written.

You might be shocked to learn just how many Americans still believe this trash, on both sides of the spectrum; whether people are rallying against the Rothschilds on the right or George Soros on the left, there always seems to be a rich Jewish bogeyman secretly pulling the levers of power to bend the world to their will. The “Protocols” was used by the Nazis as “proof” of the Jewish people’s wickedness, greed and disloyalty, and the manuscript formed an important part of the Nazis’ justification for Jewish genocide. On your podcast, you said that saying Jews love money is just like saying Italians love pizza. But Jews did not invent money, and as David Baddiel has pointed out, Italians have not been slaughtered throughout history for loving pizza.

So no, Joe, Jews don’t love money any more than any other group. In fact, studies have shown that American Jews give a disproportionately large amount of their money away to charitable causes. Even if it is part of comedy for a comedian to play with stereotypes, when you tell a worldwide audience that a dangerously offensive antisemitic trope is true, in dead earnest, without a hint of irony, outside of any routine, and that people who disagree are just stupid, well, that isn’t comedy, and only feeds hateful stereotypes that have always led to violence against innocent people.

It is also worth noting how quickly your guest gleefully built off your comment to explain how “Jews love money” justifies Omar accusing American Jews of dual loyalty (yet another related trope) and outright bribery, all for the heinous crime of legitimate participation in the American political process. See how quickly the conversation can shift from Omar’s comments about how American politicians’ support for Israel is based on money rather than principle, to “Jews love money,” right back to “and that’s why American Jews with their dual loyalty conspire to pay off politicians with their money to support Israel”? Welcome to modern antisemitism.

Ilhan Omar “apologized” for using antisemitic tropes because she knew better—certainly after the first time, or the second time, or the third time she was told. You are different, and bear no responsibility to apologize. But especially in a time of rising antisemitism, even (and especially) among influential celebrities, you do have a responsibility to correct the record for your listeners. As a fan, I sincerely hope that you do.
Journalists Invited on Taxpayer-Funded ‘Terror Tour’ to the West Bank
Journalists are once again being invited on a week-long junket to the West Bank next month — totally gratis, thanks to unwitting European taxpayers who are clearly viewed as nothing less than a bottomless pit of cash by their elected representatives.

The Office of the European Representative in Jerusalem issued the invitation, which is part of a series of visits aimed at showing media outlets how the European Union and its member states give “assistance to the Palestinian people.”

But if there were any illusions about how fair and balanced this trip will be, one needs to look no further than the written invite itself, which vets prospective attendees to ensure any subsequently published articles do not stray from the intended purpose of the trip.

In addition to the regular formalities like sending a CV and details of the organization they work for, journalists hoping to snag a place are also told they must submit a “one pager explaining why [they] want to participate and how [they] expect to use [their] press visit for publication purposes.”

HonestReporting has previously highlighted the existence of these pro-Palestinian propaganda tours, including one last year in which a group of 11 journalists was taken to the offices of Qatari-owned Al Jazeera to discuss “challenges” faced by the press, as well as a visit to Palestinian NGO Al-Haq’s Ramallah HQ.

We specifically questioned the appropriateness of the agenda given how Al Jazeera has repeatedly printed anti-Israel libels, as well as the fact that Al-Haq has documented links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group that has been designated by the European Union itself.

And next month’s trip is even more troubling not only because it comes amid heightened tensions, including a spate of deadly terror attacks against Israeli civilians, but also in the wake of a bombshell report by watchdog group NGO Monitor that lays bare the extensive links between the PFLP and Palestinian NGOs that the EU is funding.


Antisemitism dramatically undercounted in 2022, AJC report says
Despite well-documented surges in antisemitism in America, new data suggests official numbers dramatically undercount the problem’s scope.

In 2022, more than one-quarter (26%) of U.S. Jews said they were targets of either physical or in-person or online verbal antisemitic attacks. Yet 84% of those targeted by antisemitic violence and 44% of those who experienced antisemitic remarks in person or online did not report the incident to police, social media companies nor Jewish organizations.

That’s according to the American Jewish Committee’s newly released State of Antisemitism in America report, which draws on phone and online interviews between Sept. 28 and Nov. 3 of last year with representative samples of Jews (1,507 people) and non-Jews (1,004 people), ages 18 and older.

AJC saw an increase of 10 percentage points in the number of Jews who feel less safe than they did in the previous year. In 2022, 41% felt less safe than in 2021, while in 2021, 31% reported feeling less safe than in 2020.

Per the report, 89% of Jewish and 68% of non-Jewish respondents said antisemitism is at least somewhat of a problem in America today. Forty-three percent of Jews and 22% of non-Jews said it was a very serious problem. Eleven percent of Jews and 24% of non-Jews said antisemitism is not much of a problem or not at all a problem in America.

Jewish and non-Jewish respondents were also divided on the degree to which U.S. antisemitism has increased in the past five years. Among Jews, 43% said it has increased a lot and 39% said it increased somewhat (total of 82%), compared to 16% of non-Jews saying it has increased a lot and 31% saying somewhat (total of 47%).

The general public was slightly likelier (91% compared to 89%) than Jewish respondents to say that antisemitism affects society at large, and not just Jews.
A New Firsthand Account of the Dutch Holocaust Sheds Light on History
History records that on Friday, May 10, 1940, the roar of propellers overhead heralded the arrival of a shower of Luftwaffe paratroopers that fell from the sky onto Dutch soil. Recently, a deluge of histories, accounts, and diaries of World War II have come to light, which illuminate the Netherlands’ response to the Nazis’ genocidal aims against the Jews of that country.

“The Diary Keepers” (HarperCollins Feb. 21, 2023) is a collection of diaries, gathered by a “second-generation survivor” — author and New York Times journalist Nina Siegal — who reveals the heretofore little-known stories of the Nazi conquest of the Netherlands, leading to the Dutch Holocaust. Siegal gleaned much of the history for her book from interviews of survivors, and from the archives of the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. The institute serves as a repository where ordinary people can deposit their notebooks, scrapbooks, letters, index cards, photographs, and diaries, to serve as written witnesses to the greatest crime of man against man in human history.

A trove of first-hand accounts written by ordinary Dutch citizens shatters the illusion of Dutch neutrality, revealing the Dutch authorities’ shameful complicity of silence in the face of the persecution of their fellow Jewish citizens. The reasons for the cooperation were as varied as they were deceitful. There were government officials who said they felt helpless, defenseless, and afraid, while others were eager accomplices. The Dutch government felt the horrors visited upon the two percent minority population of Jews was better than it being put upon the rest of the population. As they explained, it was “the lesser of two evils.” Therefore, they discouraged any resistance against the Nazis, by the majority population.

But not all Dutch citizens remained silent. During February 1941, the Nazis, with the aid of local NSB (Dutch Fascist Party) thugs, unceremoniously dragged more than 400 Jews out of their homes, beat them, and then pushed them into trucks destined to haul them to terminals of death. Unlike their government, outraged Dutch citizens did not remain silent; they courageously called a two-day strike of 300,000 workers. It was a landmark event of resistance and valor, known until this day as The February Strike.
French Prime Minister Recalls Her Father’s Deportation to Auschwitz in Address to Jewish Community
The prime minister of France delivered a deeply personal address to the country’s Jewish community on Monday night, speaking candidly about the deportation of her father to Auschwitz during the Nazi occupation.

“There are dates that mark a destiny,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told the annual dinner of Crif — the umbrella body representing French Jews — in Paris on Monday night.

“For my father, but in reality for my whole family, it was December 25, 1943,” Borne continued. “That day, with my grandfather and my uncles, he was arrested by the Gestapo. Then it was the sealed wagons, the orders, the beatings, the humiliations. Drancy [a concentration camp near Paris], Auschwitz. They were 1,250 at the start. Six came back.”

Borne’s Jewish father, Joseph, was a French resistance fighter deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland along with his father, Zelig Bornstein, who perished there, and his brother Isaac, who survived. “When we arrived, the ashes were flying up into the air. When it was windy and the chimneys were burning, it smelled foul everywhere. And the elders, the elders who were in the camp, said to us, ‘You see, that is your parents who are going to heaven. They are burning,'” Isaac Bornstein later recalled in video testimony recorded by the French Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA).

In 1972, when Elisabeth Borne was 11 years old, Joseph, then 47, took his own life. As a result, Borne became a “Pupil of the Nation” – a status in France given to the children of victims of war, terrorist attacks, or those who have perished while serving the country, entitling them to a full scholarship to pursue their education.

Borne told the Crif dinner that her father had described his ordeal in Auschwitz in two letters. The letters were “the only testimony of his that I have,” she said. “For all those who returned, a different life was beginning. Some succeeded in maintaining hope and faith in life. Others did not. I know this only too well.”
Netflix Releases First Look At Limited Series About Rescue Team in Nazi-Occupied France
Netflix has released first look images for its upcoming limited series about an international group which helped more than 2,000 refugees in France escape Nazi-occupied Europe and the Holocaust, Variety reported.

Set in Marseille, Transatlantic is inspired by the true story of American journalist Varian Fry, who arrived in France in 1940 and led the Emergency Rescue Committee with help from American heiress Mary Jayne Gold. Fry later became the first American to be named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for saving so many Jewish refugees during World War II.

“Risking their lives to help refugees escape occupied France, including many artists on the Nazis’ most-wanted list, an international gang of young superheroes and their famous charges occupy a villa at the edge of the city, where the threat of mortal danger gives way to unexpected collaborations and intense love affairs,” says the Netflix synopsis for the limited series.

The seven-part show from Unorthodox creator Anna Winger will premiere on Netflix on April 7. It was filmed on location in Marseille, France, and inspired by Julie Orringer’s novel The Flight Portfolio, according to Variety. The cast is led by Gillian Jacobs (Community), Corey Stoll (House of Cards), Grégory Montel (Call my Agent) and Lucas Englander (Parliament).

“The human ability to live fully, find joy and keep a sense of humor even in the darkest of times lies at the heart of Transatlantic. I can’t wait to bring audiences into this story,” Winger said in a statement.

Transatlantic will make its world premiere on the closing night of the 2023 Series Mania, taking place in March in Lille, France.
World Jewish Congress President Agrees to Restitution Agreement With Jewish Heirs of Klimt Painting: Report
Ronald Lauder, the president of World Jewish Congress, has agreed to return a painting by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt to the heirs of a Jewish woman who owned the artwork before World War II and repurchase it for an undisclosed amount.

Lauder originally bought The Black Feather Hat (1910) in 1973 in Austria, according to a press release on Feb. 10 announcing the restitution agreement. The artwork has been displayed in several exhibits at New York City’s Neue Galerie, which the billionaire philanthropist and art collector co-founded in 2001 to showcase German and Austrian art.

The painting previously belonged to Irene Beran, who was born in 1886 and lived in the city of Brno, which is now part of the Czech Republic. Research showed that she owned the painting as early as 1928 though it became a part of her family’s art collection years earlier through her father-in-law, Lauder and Beran’s heirs said in a joint statement. Beran maintained possession of the painting through at least 1934.

Beran and her husband fled Europe during World War II, fearing Nazi persecution, and first traveled to Canada before moving to New York in 1947 while their family members that remained in Europe were killed at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, The New York Times reported. Beran died in 1979.

It remains unclear what happened to the painting between 1934 and 1957 despite much research into finding its whereabouts, according to Lauder and Beran’s descendants. The oil-on-canvas was then discovered in an exhibit in Stuttgart, Germany, co-organized by Australian art dealer and former Nazi party member Friedrich Welz.

In 2018, Lauder agreed with Beran’s heirs to look into the work’s provenance history.

“Together with the Beran family, we have worked arduously to uncover the full history of this artwork and trace its trajectory through time,” Lauder said in a statement. “While our joint research leaves gaps remaining, I have long championed the importance of restitution. In the spirit of the Washington Conference Principles, I felt it was of utmost importance to arrive at a just and fair solution that recognizes the family’s history with this painting.”

Beran heirs said in a joint statement that they are “confident that Irene would be delighted to know that The Black Feather Hat found a home in New York, a city that had, at an important juncture in her refugee life, also been Irene’s home.”
In first, Polish priest sentenced on charges of spreading antisemitic hate speech
A Polish priest with a long track record of antisemitic comments has been sentenced to community service after being convicted of insulting Jews and inciting hatred against them, in what his critics say is a landmark case.

Father Michał Woźnicki, a Catholic priest from the city of Poznan, must perform 30 hours of community service a month for the next six months, according to the order handed down by a judge earlier this month.

Woźnicki was on trial for comments made during a sermon in October 2021. “Jews in the world have assumed the role of a leech, a tick, a body that lives on the host’s body, swells, leading the host’s body to death, moving on to the next one,” he said, according to Polish media. He also said that Jews were in league with the devil and responsible for the spread of sexual impropriety in Poland.

Woźnicki is already facing sanctions from the church because of his record of controversy, and he delivered the sermon online because he has been suspended from his pulpit. But because he remains an ordained priest, his conviction is groundbreaking, according to the civil society group that pressed for him to face charges.

The group, Otwarta Rzeczpospolita or Open Republic, is devoted to fighting antisemitism and xenophobia in Poland.

“This is a precedent case,” it said in a statement. “It was not Woźnicki’s first hateful sermon, but the first one that the prosecutor’s office dealt with.”

Jewish leaders in Poland are cheering the verdict
“Woźnicki is well known for his antisemitic diatribes and anti-church tirades (he has called Pope Francis a heretic),” Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by email. “The Polish court has handed down a clear verdict that antisemitic hate speech is illegal in Poland. We are hopeful that the Polish courts will continue to find others guilty of this crime.”

After the Polish judge ruled that Woźnicki was guilty of insulting Jews because of their nationality and inciting hatred on the basis of national differences, the priest lashed out in comments to journalists.

“I am convicted of preaching,” Woźnicki reportedly said. “Apparently, the Jews do not like me very much because I love the Lord Jesus. As a non-Jew, I concede to the Jewish king, while the Jews do not so much to their king.”


Tom Gross: We must not forget the Soviet dissidents
On August 21, 1968, Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia. Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops put an end to the ‘Prague spring’ pro-democracy reforms. (East German liaison officers joined them, but with memories of the Nazi era still fresh, even the Soviet leadership thought it unwise to include German troops.)

There was outrage in the West. But those living under communist repression were too afraid to speak out – if, that is, they even knew what was going on. State media presented the military “intervention” as “brotherly help” to the people of Czechoslovakia in their “fight against counterrevolutionary forces… The Soviet people have been consulted and unanimously approved this decision.”

But a brave few people were determined to protest. Four days after the invasion, on 25 August, eight people travelled to Moscow to demonstrate in Red Square against the invasion. They held small hand-written signs saying “For your freedom and ours” and “Hands off Czechoslovakia!” Within five minutes they were beaten by KGB thugs. Some were then sent to Siberian penal colonies.

Others faced what was described by those who experienced it as an even worse punishment. They were locked up in psychiatric prisons, subjected to horrific physical and mental abuse and held for years with genuinely mad people. One was the Jewish dissident Victor Fainberg, who died last month at the age of 91.

Fainberg, who suffered for standing up for Russian and Czech rights, was of particular interest to me because as an undergraduate during the final years of communism I went on trips to both Moscow and Prague to deliver materials to Russian and Czech dissidents (including Vaclav Havel, later Czech president) and smuggle out written testimonies and tape recordings they had made.

(I perhaps felt an additional affinity because my maternal grandmother Vera Feinberg’s parents, also of Russian Jewish origin, were murdered in the Holocaust.)

So I was looking forward to a first screening last month of a new film about Fainberg’s life, “Madly in Dissent,” by the exiled Russian film directors Ksenia and Kirill Sakharnov, hosted by the Czech and Slovak embassies in Israel, to which I was invited. But Fainberg died a few days before the screening and was buried in Israel.

The screening of the film in Tel Aviv turned into an impromptu memorial service for Fainberg, attended by other former Soviet dissidents now living in Israel. It was a moving occasion.

However, more than a month after he died, it is disappointing that no British or American newspaper has paid tribute to him, especially since he had a connection to London.

Fainberg had been so defiant towards his Soviet captors, refusing to be broken by them, that eventually they released him and expelled him to Israel in 1974, although they made him leave his son Yuri behind in Leningrad.
Victor Fainberg (1931-2023), a hero for human rights, locked up in a Soviet psychiatric hospital

Béla Dekany, Holocaust survivor and violinist who led the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Times Radio)
Times Radio with Mariella Frostrup: Looking back on the life of Bela Dekany (April 22 1928 – Dec. 27 2022) with Andy Dekany and Tom Gross. Broadcast on Feb 9, 2023)

(I was standing outside an airport terminal about to enter when they called me for this live interview, so the sound quality is not as good as it might otherwise have been.)


Remembering Marc Chagall and the Righteous Rescuers of the Holocaust
“In the Garden of the Righteous” by Richard Hurowitz (Harper, 2023)

“In the Garden of the Righteous” chronicles extraordinary acts at a time when the moral choices were stark, the threat immense, and the passive apathy of millions predominated. Deeply researched and astonishingly moving, it focuses on ten remarkable stories of rescuers during the Holocaust who provided hiding places, participated in underground networks, refused to betray their neighbors, and secured safe passage for Jewish victims. They repeatedly defied authorities and risked their lives, their livelihoods, and their families to save the helpless and the persecuted. “In the Garden of the Righteous” is a testament to their kindness and courage. Below is an excerpt from the book:

When France capitulated to the Nazis in June 1940, the Germans occupied the north, including Paris, while a collaborationist regime headquartered in the resort town of Vichy remained in place in the rest of the country. Under the armistice signed by Marshall Phillipe Pétain, the head of the new government, the French agreed to “surrender on demand” anyone the Nazis demanded. In particular peril were the many prominent artists, writers, political opponents and intellectuals who had spoken out against fascism, many of whom had taken refuge in France. Within days, a group formed in New York called the Emergency Rescue Committee which sent the thirty-three-year-old Harvard-educated journalist and book editor, Varian Fry, on a mission to help get them to safety.

Armed with a list of artists compiled by Alfred Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, a roster of writers assembled by Thomas Mann, scores of other names, and several thousand dollars, Fry left for what he assumed would be several weeks in the south of France handing out special visas for safety in the United States.

He would stay for over a year. Fry quickly found that getting out even prominent refugees was a difficult task and often involved false papers, hiding places, and smuggling people across the border to Spain. He quickly attracted a circle of helpers, some American idealists, some foreigners who were refugees themselves. Of critical importance was his relationship with Hiram Bingham IV, known as Harry, the son of the famous discoverer of Maccu Pichu. The Yale graduate, then in his early forties, was posted as vice consul in Marseilles when Fry arrived there to set up his operation. Bingham, almost uniquely among American diplomats, was sympathetic to refugees and would issue visas to people fleeing for their lives, pulling them out of internment camps, and even hid the famous writer Lion Feutchwanger and his wife in his villa until they could escape.

Almost everyone else at the State Department was opposed to allowing refugees to come to the United States, many of whom they viewed as socially undesirable, following the lead of the Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, a notorious anti-Semite who issued directives to keep Jews out. Bingham and Fry were forced to use every trick they could to help those fleeing for lives. The two men quickly became, as Fry later put it, partners “in the crime of saving human lives.” A highly cultured man and a humanist, Bingham, like Fry, was determined to help both ordinary people but also the geniuses on the ERC’s list.




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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