Friday, April 14, 2023

04/14 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The real lesson for Israel from Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement

From Ian:

Mark Regev: Holocaust Remembrance Day: Did the Allies do enough to help the Jews?
The US and the Holocaust
America’s vital role in the defeat of Nazi Germany is unquestionable and can be readily appreciated firsthand by touring the Normandy beaches of the June 1944, D-Day landings – as I did in 2019 together with my daughter, an IDF officer.

Steven Spielberg’s epic Saving Private Ryan, which we watched again the night before the voyage from Plymouth to Le Havre, gives cinematic expression to the enormity of the Allied effort and to the immense sacrifice of American blood.

Here too my family has a personal debt. Until his death, my father celebrated April 13, the day in 1945 when the US Army’s 102nd infantry division entered Uetz and liberated him – in his words, “a very lucky day.”

But while America was instrumental in the victory over Germany, it is sometimes forgotten that Washington didn’t declare war on the Nazis – it was Hitler who declared war on the US.

Germany invaded Poland in September 1939; Denmark and Norway in April 1940; Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France in May 1940; Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941; and the Soviet Union in June 1941. All the while, America remained neutral.

Although president Franklin Roosevelt backed the Brits in the 1940 Battle of Britain, the US was not a combatant, and to Churchill’s great chagrin, London had to pay for Washington’s Lend-Lease support.

American isolationism ended on December 7, 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Hypothetically, just as the Soviets fought the Germans without fighting the Japanese, America could have fought the Japanese without fighting the Germans. But any strategic dilemma Washington faced was solved by the December 11, 1941, Nazi declaration of war.

Throughout, America maintained strict restrictions on the admittance of Jewish refugees – the State Department consistently opposed giving any priority to immigrants fleeing racial or religious persecution.

In 1939 alone, close to 300,000 German Jews applied for US visas, creating an 11-year waiting list.

Public opinion bolstered bureaucratic callousness. A 1938 poll showed that 82% of Americans opposed admitting larger numbers of Jewish refugees.

The voyage of the St. Louis was emblematic of the situation. Carrying 937 refugees, the ship sailed from Hamburg for the Western Hemisphere, but was denied entry to Canada, Cuba, and the US. Despite a campaign by Jewish organizations, Washington refused to budge, and the vessel was forced to return to Europe, where many of its ill-fated passengers ended up in the camps.

On April 4, 1944, Auschwitz was first overflown by US reconnaissance aircraft. Over the following months, American bombers conducted a series of operations in proximity to the notorious death camp, including raids upon nearby oil refineries and industrial targets.

In parallel, from May 15 to July 9, 1944, Hungarian Jews were being transported en masse to Auschwitz: 45 cattle cars per train, 4 trains per day, 12,000 Jews in a single day – 424,000 gassed in total.

Reports about the mass murder at Auschwitz had been broadcast by the BBC (June 15, 1944) and published in The New York Times (June 20, 1944). Yet despite the activity of American bombers in the immediate vicinity, no attempt was made to destroy the extermination facilities or the rail lines leading to them.

Surely, this history also deserves a place in our national memory.
JPost Editorial: Israel must reassess its handling of Holocaust school trips to Poland
Yad Vashem issued a statement stating that the group trips must maintain “complete historical accuracy, including the role of Poles in the persecution, handing in, and murder of Jews during the Holocaust, as well as in acts of rescue... We believe that all educational visits from Israel to Poland in the future will be conducted accordingly.”

There are many educational facilities and sites within Israel that can provide excellent background material and preparation for the trips, addressing the unique relevance to young Israelis.

Care should be taken to ensure that today’s youth realize the true scope and aims of the Nazis: to destroy the entire Jewish people. Most of the Holocaust took place in Europe because it spread from Nazi Germany. The Nazis established many of their concentration camps in Poland, which it had invaded. Nonetheless, the Shoah was not only an attempt to eradicate European Jewry, but world Jewry – Jews wherever they were found. Sephardic Jews were killed in Greece, Libya, Tunisia and elsewhere, and if the Nazis had had their way, millions more Jews would have been murdered. The Holocaust was not an atrocity against Ashkenazi Jews but against Jews, period.

The role of Righteous Gentiles – those brave people, in Poland and elsewhere, who risked their own lives to save Jews – needs to be acknowledged, along with the fact that they were the minority. That is what makes their acts so courageous and commendable. The complicity of locals willing to help destroy Jewish communities and kill Jewish neighbors should not be overlooked.

Finally, the trips must be affordable for all. No student should be denied the chance to travel to see the sites where the Nazi atrocities took place for lack of funds. At the same time, there needs to be a greater effort to prevent the trips from turning into a shallow experience – they should not be considered glorified, fun school trips.

As we approach Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we should take the opportunity to reassess how Israel handles Holocaust education and commemoration – not in response to Polish demands, but for Israel’s own sake.


Melanie Phillips: The real lesson for Israel from Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement
The Democrats appear to think that, as with Israel, they have the right to dictate a particular outcome in Northern Ireland. Despite their pieties about “peace,” that outcome is clearly a united Ireland—an agenda that constitutes a direct attack on the identity and integrity of the United Kingdom.

Early last week, Clinton and Gerry Adams topped the bill at what the Spectator described as a “grand back-slapping affair for Sinn Féin and their unnamed comrades” in New York to celebrate 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement.

The event organizer, Marty Glennon, spelled out that the true purpose of the agreement was “the reunification of Ireland.” After expressing satisfaction at the way the unionists were continuing to lose to the republicans, Clinton added that even so, “we need to finish the job there.”

For his part, after delivering in Belfast some meaningless platitudes about peace, Biden proceeded to insult Britain. After no more than a coffee with Sunak and a brief meeting with local party leaders, Biden departed for two full days in the Irish Republic where he loudly lauded everything and said he felt he was “coming home.” For good measure, he also snubbed the coronation of King Charles III on May 6 by announcing that he would be absent and that his wife would be present instead.

That’s how Biden is treating America’s most significant ally in the west. When it comes to Israel, America’s only true ally in the Middle East, arrogant magical thinking moves closer to outright malevolence.

For the Biden administration continues to ignore the Palestinians’ murderous agenda of exterminating Israel. It continues to fund the Palestinian Authority despite its “pay-for-slay” policy of rewarding terrorists’ families for killing Israelis. It refuses to hold the P.A. to account for inciting violence over fabricated threats to Temple Mount. Instead, it threatens Israel not to take the action that’s needed to protect Israeli lives and Jewish human rights.

It has displayed its disapproval that Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel’s prime minister by failing to invite him to the White House. It has interfered in Israel’s internal row over judicial reform by issuing not-so-veiled threats if Netanyahu doesn’t abandon the policy.

Privileging murderous aggressors over their victims, America continues to interfere in the affairs of other sovereign nations like high-handed colonial administrators.

The outstanding similarity between Northern Ireland and Israel is that the Biden administration is treating its two principal global allies like dirt while continuing to empower the enemies of civilization.
Joe Biden poses for a selfie with alleged IRA member and former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams - after his advisors scrambled to insist he was NOT anti-British
Joe Biden on Thursday posed for a selfie with Gerry Adams, the former leader of Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, in yet another blow to his advisors scrambling to insist that he is not anti-British.

Adams has spent his life trying to secure a united Ireland, and end British rule in the North. Despite years of rumors, Adams has always denied any membership with the IRA and has refuted any involvement in their terror campaign during the decades of the Troubles.

Biden addressed a joint session of parliament at Leinster House in Dublin, delivering a speech he said was 'to reflect on the enduring strength of the connections between Ireland and the United States, a partnership for the ages.'

Among those listening was Adams, the 74-year-old former Sinn Fein leader, who has known Biden for many years.

Adams, who stood down as Sinn Fein chief in 2018 after 30 years, posted a selfie of the pair together, captioned: 'A President Biden Selfie.'

The selfie does little to help White House aides, who insisted on Wednesday that Biden is 'not anti-British'.




"Haifa Hosting 2023 International Sambo Wrestling Competition, and There’s a Scandal"
The Israeli city of Haifa will host two major continental SAMBO tournaments from April 19 to 23. Men and women, juniors, youth, as well as cadets will compete for the title of the strongest SAMBO athletes in Europe. Competitors from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Germany, Greece, Israel, Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania, North Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Russia, and Belarus will start sparring on the Carmel mountains this Wednesday.

Sambo, a martial art that originated in the Soviet Union, is an internationally practiced combat sport, and a recognized style of amateur wrestling included by UWW in the World Wrestling Championships alongside Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling. The word sambo is an acronym for samozashchita bez oruzhiya, meaning self-defense without weapons. It was developed in the early 1920s by the Soviet precursor of the KGB, the NKVD, and the Red Army, to improve the hand-to-hand combat abilities of their servicemen. The poster for the Haifa Sambo championship / Screenshot

The Haifa competitions already experienced their first scandal: on January 25, 2023, the International Olympic Committee Executive Board permitted inviting athletes from Russia and Belarus to international sports tournaments but only provided these athletes not be “actively supporting” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and only if they do not compete under the flags of Russia or Belarus, which were banned from all international team events.

Russian Olympic Committee President Stanislav Pozdnyakov said the decision was “absolutely unacceptable,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the decision discriminatory.


Avi Mayer: These are our values
A leading news outlet in the Jewish world
But the Post has also cemented its position as the leading news outlet in the Jewish world, drawing millions of readers a month and offering a platform for some of the most important debates shaping the future of Israel and the Jewish people.

Being invited into our readers’ homes – or, increasingly, onto their computer monitors and mobile phone screens – is a privilege that we do not take lightly. It is a privilege that must be earned through trust, credibility, quality and an unwavering commitment to the truth.

As I take the helm of this remarkable paper, I would like to take the opportunity to share our values with you. These values will guide our coverage and our content. We will uphold them in how we approach and report the news, in the views reflected on our pages and in the myriad ways we engage you every day.

We are a Zionist paper. We believe in the Jewish people’s inalienable right to self-determination in its ancestral homeland and we rejoice in Israel’s sovereign existence as the living realization of that fundamental right.
We are a pro-democracy paper. We believe in the principles of equality and freedom enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence and we will stand fast against efforts to undermine those principles.
We are an antiracist paper. We reject and will actively oppose hate and prejudice against any group, including antisemitism in all its forms and bigotry targeting Israel’s minorities.
We are a marketplace of ideas. Our writers and contributors represent a vast array of views and opinions from across the political and religious spectrum in Israel and the Jewish world. We will, from time to time, provide a platform for perspectives we find difficult to swallow because we believe they inform and enrich the conversation.
We will doggedly pursue the truth and we will faithfully report it, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.
We aspire to both accuracy and speed but when the two come into conflict, we will choose to get the story right, even if it means we won’t be the first.
We will hold our leaders accountable. We will support them when they get it right and we will take them to task when they get it wrong.
We will hold ourselves accountable. When we get it wrong, we will say so and we will seek to make it right.
We are a paper of integrity. We will eschew the sensationalist and the lurid to maintain a high standard of decency.
We are critical and we are skeptical but we are not cynical.

The future of The Jerusalem Post is bright and exciting. Our dedicated team is second to none and together we are working to create the newspaper of tomorrow. We will develop new and innovative ways of getting the news to you while constantly working to improve and optimize our current offerings. We will be both faster and more in-depth than ever before.
CNN's selective problem with who did what
According toCNN International, while Israelis shoot and kill Palestinians, Israeli cars “receive” bullets and the occupants die in a “crash.” That is how, at least, two separate incidents were described during a single segment on Isa Soares Tonight on April 10.

On Friday, April 7, a mother, Lucy Dee, and her two daughters, Maia and Rina Dee, were murdered in a terrorist attack in the Jordan Valley. Terrorists fired on them as they were driving to Tiberias as part of a family trip, causing the car to veer off and crash. The terrorists then fired again at the Dee family to make sure they were dead. Lucy lived for several days before succumbing to her wounds while the two young women died instantly.

How did CNN correspondent Frederik Pleitgen describe this incident?

“But earlier in the West Bank, there was a shooting incident where a car received a bullet shot, or gunshots, with the family in it. It was a mother and her two daughters, and the two daughters were killed in that crash.”

The car “received…gunshots.” The mother and her daughters were “killed in that crash.” It was a “shooting incident” instead of a terror attack (not even “terror attack” in scare quotes, or qualified by the word “suspected.”) Who the suspected shooters were is left entirely unaddressed.

The description stands in stark contrast to how another “shooting incident” was covered by the same correspondent.

On Monday, April 10, a Palestinian Arab, Mohammad Fayez Balhan, was killed during an Israeli military raid in Aqabat Jabr, near Jericho. The Israel Defense Forces were operating in Aqabat Jabr to detain a suspected terrorist when “Palestinians confronted the soldiers,” according to Palestinian Authority’s Wafa News Agency, during which “suspects hurled explosive devices and Molotov cocktails and opened fire” at the Israeli soldiers, according to the IDF. The exact circumstances of Balhan’s death are not clear, however.

Did the CNN correspondent use the same evasive, circuitous style of speaking as he did to describe the murder of the three Israelis? No.
BBC’s Knell amplifies church’s politicised talking points
A report by the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Yolande Knell appeared on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page under the headline “Churches criticise Israeli curbs on Orthodox Easter event in Jerusalem” on the evening of April 12th. Its opening lines inform readers that:
“Church leaders in Jerusalem say Israeli police are imposing “heavy-handed and unnecessary restrictions” on access to an important Orthodox Easter ritual.

They say numbers who can attend Saturday’s Holy Fire ceremony at the Holy Sepulchre Church are being limited to 1,800, down from 10,000 last year.”

Knell’s claim that ten thousand people attended the ritual last year is inaccurate. In April 2022 the Jerusalem Post reported as follows:
“This year, police asked that participation be limited to 1,000 people in the church and 500 on its outskirts in an effort to avoid a security or other disaster, sparking anger and frustration by church leaders. Ultimately, it upped that number to 4,000 people, including 1,800 inside the church itself.

“The limitation of the crowd during the ceremony in the area of ​​the church area was due to safety reasons only and in order to avoid overcrowding that could endanger the safety and security of the public,” the police said in a statement. “The purpose of the police activity was to enable the Christian public practice the freedom of worship and the ceremony to be held safely and securely and so it was.””

The same JP report noted that:
“In the past, the light set fire to people’s clothes, even their hair, said Tareq Abu Gharbiyyeh, East Jerusalem’s fire chief who has been fire-proofing the ceremony for the last 30 years.”

Nevertheless, Knell’s report goes on to state:
“In a joint statement, church leaders said the Israeli authorities were “enforcing unreasonable, and unprecedented restrictions on access to the Holy Sepulchre – more so than last year”.

They added that these would particularly affect the local Christian community.”

And:
“…Christian leaders say their ceremony has long taken place without serious incidents.”

Knell’s account of the efforts of the authorities responsible for public security in Jerusalem to ensure that a religious ceremony passes without incident even includes amplification of calls to ignore safety directives:
“Church officials are now urging Christians to ignore the restrictions.

“We will hold the ceremony and invite all who wish to worship with us to attend,” Father Mattheos Siopsis of the Greek Orthodox Church told a news conference on Wednesday, also attended by representatives of other denominations governing the holy site.”

There is of course nothing very novel about Christian leaders in Jerusalem, who long since jumped on the bandwagon of politicised narratives, now using safety directives of the kind employed around the world as an excuse to claim “restrictions on access” to a religious ritual at a Christian site with limited space.

Sadly for the BBC’s funding public, neither is it much of a surprise to find Yolande Knell – who since February has been promoting the theme of ‘tensions’ based on calendarial clashes – amplifying such politically motivated narratives. However, the day after the Greek Orthodox church’s press conference was held and media reports began to appear, the Israeli police put out a statement which they requested journalists include in their reporting.


How Austria’s Jewish chancellor helped country evade responsibility for Nazi past
For more than a decade after he came to power in 1970, Bruno Kreisky dominated Austrian politics and placed the small central European country firmly on the world stage.

Born to an upper-middle-class Jewish family, Kreisky was Austria’s longest-serving chancellor, winning four consecutive terms in a country with a long and dark tradition of antisemitism.

But as Israeli diplomat Daniel Aschheim explores in his new book, “Kreisky, Israel and Jewish Identity,” in the eyes of many, Kreisky’s personal and political achievements were colored — if not tainted — by his “ambivalent and often-confrontational relationship with his Jewishness, Jews, and Israel.”

Imprisoned by the Gestapo soon after the Anschluss, the youthful Kreisky managed to escape Austria and spent World War II in Sweden. At least 20 members of his family weren’t so lucky and perished in the death camps.

But after he returned to Austria in 1945, Kreisky helped to propagate — and throughout his years in office sustain — the convenient myth that his homeland had been the passive first victim of the Nazis; a myth which, for at least four decades, brushed Austria’s complicity in the Third Reich’s crimes under the carpet.

As the country’s Socialist chancellor, Kreisky unapologetically appointed former Nazis to his government; engaged in a virulent and bitter feud with his Nazi-hunting fellow Austrian Simon Wiesenthal; and publicly defended conservative Kurt Waldheim when he was accused of war crimes during the 1986 presidential election.

And Kreisky — a trenchant anti-Zionist — repeatedly criticized Israel in harsh terms while lavishing praise on Arab despots and dictators. After rolling out the red carpet for Yasser Arafat, the chancellor became the first Western leader to officially recognize the PLO. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kreisky was a regular target of the Israeli press, which labeled him a “self-hating Jew.”
Death penalty looms over Pittsburgh synagogue massacre trial as jury selection nears
The man charged in the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history tried for years to avoid a federal jury trial, which would decide whether to convict him of shooting to death 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Ultimately those efforts failed, and jury selection is less than two weeks away.

Court filings show 50-year-old Robert Bowers had offered to plead guilty in the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue, a crime for which he was arrested at the scene and made incriminating statements to police. He indicated he was willing to accept life without parole and relinquish appeals rights.

But his offer came with a condition that the US Justice Department declined: In return for a guilty plea, he would no longer face the death penalty. Much of the legal battling that has stretched on for more than four years has been looking to the critical sentencing phase after the guilt-or-innocence portion of the trial is over.

The families of some victims have endorsed a deal for life without parole, which would avoid days or even weeks of painful testimony and the grisly details of autopsy results, crime scene photos and 911 recordings, including calls from two of those slain.

But in a November letter to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, family members of nine victims said the attack merits the death penalty, and that having Bowers plead guilty would “rob us of our ‘day in court’ and will prevent the Justice Department from punishing the perpetrator to the full extent of the law, as we have sought for the past four-plus years.”

In the end, the Justice Department said no to Bowers’ offer and flatly declined his lawyers’ request for details about the secretive process by which federal death penalty decisions are made.
US intel leak suspect allegedly railed against Jews in online rant at shooting range
Jack Teixeira, the National Guard airman arrested on charges of leaking a large trove of US intelligence documents, reportedly recorded himself making antisemitic and racist slurs before opening fire on a target.

The Washington Post first reported the video of the antisemitic rant, which was shared with members of the chat group where Teixeira allegedly shared sensitive intelligence. Teixeira, 21, was the suspected administrator of the group, and the FBI arrested him Thursday at his Massachusetts home.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, the influential Republican congresswoman from Georgia who has drawn fire from Jewish groups for remarks described as insensitive and antisemitic, has come to Teixeira’s defense. She tweeted that “Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.”

Greene appeared to be an outlier in her embrace of Teixeira, even in her own party. “No, it makes him an enemy to America. Leaking classified documents, especially this sensitive in nature, is a crime and he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Mike Lawler, a New York Republican, replied to Greene on Twitter. “His conduct is indefensible and should be universally condemned.”

The Post was the first news outlet to track the leaks to a Discord group of about 25 gamers allegedly led by Texeira. At the time of that report, on Wednesday, the Post did not know his name — only his handle, “OG” — but interviewed other gamers in the group who identified him as the person delivering the rant and disseminating classified material.

The Post account describes a video Teixeira shared in which he is at a shooting range. He “yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target,” the account said. It did not further detail what slurs he used.

In a follow-up report on Thursday, the Post named Teixeira and quoted a friend who said he was a “devout Catholic” who often spoke of God in the chats. He also reportedly referred to government raids on far-right compounds in the 1990s, events that have spurred extremist antigovernment anger.
Basketball Governing Body Launches Investigation After Greek Fans Attack Israeli Counterparts During Game in Athens
The Basketball Champions League (BCL), the chief organization for the sport in Europe, said on Thursday it will take disciplinary measures following the violent attacks that fans of Hapoel Jerusalem faced from fans of the Greek basketball team AEK as the two teams competed in the FIBA Champions League quarterfinal series in Athens a day earlier.

“The BCL Single Judge has opened disciplinary proceedings whose outcome will be communicated to all relevant parties once the process has been concluded,” BCL, also known as the FIBA Champions League, said in a released statement. It added that it “condemns all instances of violence inside our sport arenas and reaffirms that the safety of fans attending BCL games remains our priority.”

During Wednesday’s game in Ano Liosia Olympic Hall in Athens, AEK fans hurled rocks at the over 500 Hapoel Jerusalem supporters in the stands and also threw firecrackers at Israeli fans and players, Ynet reported. They additionally burned the Israeli flag, carried Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, held up banners that had pro-Palestinian messages and reportedly chanted antisemitic slogans. A Hapoel Jerusalem fan attending the game also told Israel Hayom that from the beginning of the match, AEK fans pointed laser beams at their eyes.

During the post-game match press conference, Hapoel Jerusalem head coach Aleksandar Džikić mentioned an Israeli fan who was injured in the stands, but did not specify if the supporter was hurt by the violent attacks carried out by AEK fans.

Hapoel Jerusalem owner Eyal Chomsky denounced the violence in a video and said Israeli mothers were protecting their children in the stands because they were being “traumatized” by the ordeal. He added that Greek fans threw enough firecrackers that could have caused a fire and burned people in the stands.


European space mission carrying Israeli tech blasts off for Jupiter’s moons
The European Space Agency’s JUICE space probe successfully launched Friday on a mission to discover whether Jupiter’s icy moons are capable of hosting extraterrestrial life in their vast, hidden oceans.

The launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana came after a previous attempt on Thursday was called off due to the risk of lightning.

Once it reaches the planet in 2031, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, also known as JUICE, will deploy a range of scientific instruments, including one designed and managed by Israeli scientists, to get a read on the gas giant and its moons.

Despite cloudy skies, the rocket took off as planned at 9:14 a.m. local time on Friday, as guests including Belgium’s King Philippe watched from the Guiana Space Centre.

A little under half an hour later, the uncrewed six-ton spacecraft separated from the rocket at an altitude of 1,500 kilometers (930 miles), which prompted an outbreak of applause at the center.

Stephane Israel, the CEO of French firm Arianespace in charge of the rocket, said the launch was “a success.”

After a few tense minutes, ground control were relieved to receive the first signal from spacecraft.
Remembering Israel's fallen heroes who died defending Kfar Etzion
This is a story of two young men who could not have been more different.

Yechezkel (“Chatsi”) Berelowitz, born in 1918, was the eldest of six sons and two daughters. Tzvi Lipschitz, born in 1921, was the youngest of three. While Berelowitz was born and lived all of his formative years in Johannesburg, Tzvi, who was born in Ukraine, had a nomadic childhood, as his family immigrated to Lithuania and then to Johannesburg.

Lipschitz, whose mother tongue was Yiddish, was a fierce, uncompromising idealist who expected the highest standards of idealism from himself and his peers. He was a leader by example, a fiery, charismatic orator steeped in Jewish texts. In contrast, Berelowitz was a laid-back, genial soul whose favorite activity was landscape gardening. He led by a gentle hand and by suggestion rather than by command.

When they met for the first time in the late 1930s, it was in a dingy back room of a house in Doornfontein. This lower-middle-class suburb was home to the many Eastern European Jewish immigrants who had fled the pogroms and poverty of the Pale of Settlement for the promise of South Africa.

This modest room was the hub of the fledgling South African branch of the Hashomer Hadati youth group, which later morphed into the modern Bnei Akiva movement. Despite their distinctly different personalities, Berelowitz and Lipschitz shared a passion for Religious Zionism and a resolve to practice what most others simply preached at that time. Both were determined to go to Palestine to play their part in the establishment and development of the Jewish homeland.

In 1944, Berelowitz was the first to make the long, arduous trip to Palestine, by air, sea and land. And he had a very specific destination. For in that Doornfontein room hung a portrait of Avraham Katz.

Katz had been the first oleh of the movement, arriving in Eretz Yisrael in 1935. There, he had joined Kvutsat Avraham – a group of young religious men and women, mainly from Eastern Europe, who had gathered in a common cause on a hill outside of Kfar Pines. They learned agricultural skills and self-defense in preparation for establishing their own settlement.

In 1938, volunteers were needed to help establish and secure Kibbutz Hanita, a Tower and Stockade kibbutz on the Lebanese border surrounded by hostile Arab villages. Katz signed up with alacrity.

It was there that Katz was shot and mortally wounded by Arab marauders while on guard duty. He lingered for five weeks in a Haifa hospital. His last words are said to have been: “Take me back to Hanita. My place is there.” His funeral was attended by hundreds, and he became a legend and hero for the Religious Zionist youth, both in Palestine and South Africa, including Berelowitz and Lipschitz.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising survivor to light torch at Yad Vashem on 80th anniversary
Tova Gutstein was born in Warsaw the year Adolf Hitler took power in Germany. She was 10 years old when the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto launched the first act of collective defiance against the Nazis in Europe.

Now 90, she is among the few remaining witnesses of the ghetto uprising — and a vanishing generation of Holocaust survivors — as Israel marks the 80th anniversary of a revolt that has shaped its national consciousness.

On Monday night, Gutstein will be one of six Holocaust survivors honored by Israel as torch-lighters in its annual ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. She said the horrors are still seared in her mind.

“Over 80 years have passed, and I can’t forget it,” Gutstein told The Associated Press at her home in central Israel.

Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, marked with solemn ceremonies in schools and workplaces nationwide, begins at sundown on Monday. Theaters, concerts, cafes, and restaurants close, and television and radio broadcasts break into Holocaust commemorations.

A two-minute siren brings the country to a standstill; traffic freezes as people exit their cars and stand silently in the streets to commemorate the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its allies.

A year after occupying Poland in 1939, Nazi Germany confined hundreds of thousands of Jews — 30% of Warsaw’s population — into just 2.4% of the city’s area in what became known as the Warsaw Ghetto.

At the height of the ghetto’s horrors in 1941, one Jew died on average, every nine minutes from infectious diseases, starvation, or Nazi violence, said David Silberklang, a senior historian at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
PodCast: What Matters Now to Yad Vashem head Dani Dayan: Warsaw Ghetto Jews were divided, too
Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now.

This week, like every week, antisemitism has captured media headlines around the world, ranging from “‘Death to the Jews’ chants heard at Berlin rally” to “Bone-chilling antisemitic display in Poland sparks condemnation.”

These modern iterations of antisemitism are, of course, of concern to Israel’s national Holocaust memorial museum Yad Vashem. But it was yet another headline this week that caused Yad Vashem head Dani Dayan to speak out, “‘Polish propaganda’: Critics assail deal to resume Israeli youth trips to Poland.”

As a guardian against the distortion of Holocaust memory, in the past year, the Buenos Aires-born Dayan, a former head of the settler movement and a past consul general to New York, has spoken up in several other cases, including when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban made comments this summer that evoked Nazi ideology.

Speaking with The Times of Israel on Thursday, Dayan says he sees results.

This week, days before Israel marks Yom Hashoah, the national Holocaust memorial day, we ask Yad Vashem head Dani Dayan, what matters now?




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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 over 19 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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