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Saturday, July 22, 2023

07/22 Links: The Oppenheimer irony; ‘Reasonableness’ bill advances to final Knesset votes; ‘Jews in the Garden’ uproots Poland’s homegrown Holocaust perpetrators

From Ian:

The Oppenheimer irony
Perhaps the most striking moment, however, is when Z. goes beyond Israel and addresses the Jews as a whole: “Listen, friend, if that celebrated Jewish mind had spent less time saving the world, reforming humanity—Marx, Freud, Kafka and all those geniuses, and Einstein, too—and instead had hurried up a bit, only 10 years, and set up a tiny, Lilliputian Jewish state, sort of an independent bridgehead just from Haderah down to Gedera, and invented in time a teeny-weeny atom bomb for this state—if they’d only done those two things—there never would have been a Hitler. Or a Holocaust. And nobody in the whole world would have dared to lay a finger on the Jews.”

“It would have been enough just to have a bomb like that in some Jewish storage shed in a tiny little state back in 1936 or ’39, and no Hitler would have dared to come near a Jew,” Z. asserts. “And those who died would still be alive—they and their offspring.”

In principle, there is little one can argue with in this passage. While it is absurd to think that the Jews could have built an atomic bomb on their own, it cannot be denied that the Jews of the modern world have tended to achieve extraordinary things for other people in return for very little. Oppenheimer, who became a victim of the Red Scare, was one of them.

As Z. puts it, “There’s also cunning in history, a dialectic, irony.”

Indeed, there is no word but irony for the Jews who expend their energies on the world’s behalf only to have the world decide that it doesn’t particularly care—though it is, of course, happy to reap the benefits for itself.

Today, there is a deeper and even more terrible irony at work. If the latest reports are to be believed, the Islamist regime that rules Iran is at most weeks away from a nuclear weapon. All that is required is for the ayatollah to give the order. This regime has stated innumerable times that it intends to use such a weapon to annihilate Israel and its people.

What this means is that a weapon some of the 20th century’s most brilliant Jews labored mightily to build, mainly because they feared Hitler might have it first, could soon be in the hands of Hitler’s heirs, who intend to use it to finish the job their predecessor started.

There appears to be no one willing or able to do what is necessary to prevent the Iranians from becoming death, the destroyer of worlds. Their own people are crushed and powerless. The U.S. is clearly unwilling to act and appears to be preventing Israel from doing so. As for the various countries of Europe and the United Nations, the less said the better.

There is one final irony at work, however. While it may have come too late to save the six million, this tiny Lilliputian Jewish state, from Rosh Hanikra down to Eilat, did acquire what the Jewish people could not in the past. Today, though it has never been publicly admitted, the Jews have their “teeny-weeny atom bomb” and, according to some reports, a great deal more than that.

This is all-important, because a weapon so many Jews worked to build being used to commit a second Holocaust is an irony that cannot be permitted. The Jews today possess the power to insist that it cannot be permitted. They should make use of it, if only as a threat, if only as a reminder to Iran that it is not the only one who can become death, the destroyer of worlds.
At the heart of the film ‘Oppenheimer’ is a clash between real-life Jews
In 1945 physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was a national hero, hailed as the “father of the atomic bomb” and the man who ended World War II.

Less than a decade later, he was a pariah, after the United States Atomic Energy Commission revoked his security clearance following allegations about his left-leaning politics at the height of the anti-communist McCarthy era.

Christopher Nolan’s biopic, “Oppenheimer,” which opens in theaters on July 21, will star Irish actor Cillian Murphy as the famous scientist. But it will also feature Robert Downey Jr. as a lesser known real-life character, Lewis Strauss (pronounced “Straws”), the chairman of the AEC and one of Oppenheimer’s chief inquisitors.

The clash over the nuclear bomb
The clash between the scientist and the bureaucrat was a matter of personalities, politics and the hydrogen bomb (Strauss supported it, Oppenheimer was opposed). But according to amateur historian Jack Shlachter, the two represented opposites in another important way: as Jews. Shlachter has researched how Oppenheimer’s assimilated Jewish background and Strauss’ strong attachment to Jewish affairs set them up for conflict as men who represented two very different reactions to the pressures of acculturation and prejudice in the mid-20th century.

Shlachter is in a unique position to explore the Jewish backstory of Oppenheimer: A physicist, he worked for more than 30 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the New Mexico complex where Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project that developed the bomb. Shlachter is also a rabbi, ordained in 1995, who leads HaMakom, a congregation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as well as the Los Alamos Jewish Center.

“A hero of American science, [Oppenheimer] lived out his life a broken man and died in 1967 at the age of 62,” The New York Times wrote last December, after the secretary of energy nullified the 1954 decision to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Lewis Strauss died in 1974 at age 77; his funeral was held at New York’s Congregation Emanu-El, where he had been president from 1938 to 1948.

When I asked Shlachter what drew him to the story of Oppenheimer and Strauss, he told me, “At this later stage of my life, I realized that things are not black and white. The common narrative that I think I have heard in town puts Oppenheimer at 100 and Strauss at zero. I just tried to balance that a little bit, and I thought that their Jewishness was one way to see that there’s some nuance in the relationship.”
California editor: A Jew was ‘one too many’ for new ‘Oppenheimer’ film
tomic bomb “father” J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was Jewish, is one of history’s most famous theoretical physicists. Yet from the start, filmmaker Christopher Nolan had a non-Jew—the Catholic actor Cillian Murphy—in mind for the role, writes Malina Saval, the editor of Pasadena Magazine, in Newsweek.

“When it comes to casting, should it matter that Oppenheimer was a non-observant Jew, a Jew who essentially denounced his Jewish identity? It should not,” Saval wrote. “Judaism is an ethnoreligion. We are a religion, we are a people, we are an ethnicity. Jews originated in the Levant. There are varying degrees of religious observance. But when it comes to one’s ethnic identity, there is no litmus test for how Jewish one is.”

Nolan does not seem to have considered the possibility that a Jewish actor might be able to more accurately portray Oppenheimer, given that the latter “was in a perpetual state of identity crisis, constantly wrestling with the fact of his Jewishness.”

The decision is “par for the course in today’s entertainment industry,” according to Saval, who was features editor at Variety for a decade. She notes that Rachel Brosnahan (who is not Jewish) played the Jewish comedian at the center of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” for five seasons, and Bradly Cooper (also not Jewish) is slated to play Leonard Bernstein, the renowned Jewish composer.

“Jews are rarely cast in the roles of prominent Jewish characters,” she wrote. “The collective Hollywood push for diversity, equity and inclusion when it comes to on-screen representation has almost entirely eluded the Jewish community.”
The ‘Funny Girl’ Jewface controversy is nothing to laugh about
Still, there are those who claim that Brice is such an archetype of the American Jewish woman that it’s simply unthinkable for someone with a different background to play her.

Brice was an early 20th-century star of the vaudeville circuit who made it on Broadway as a comic foil to the more glamorous female members of the cast of producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.’s “Follies.” From there, she went on to be a star on radio in the heyday of that medium, portraying an annoying child called “Baby Snooks” to the delight of a generation of Americans who lived through the Great Depression and Second World War.

But if Brice is remembered today, it is only because of the 1964 Broadway musical “Funny Girl,” which was very loosely based on her life. Which is to say that her place in American culture is inextricably linked with that of Barbra Streisand. The singer’s performance in the play at the age of 22, and then the film version that gained her an Academy Award for Best Actress and a sequel (the 1975 “Funny Lady”), launched her on a career that made her one of the most iconic and influential performers of the last 60 years.

So, when people complain about a non-Jew playing Brice, what they’re really saying is that they can’t envision them as Streisand.

The play was so closely associated with the superstar that it was not revived on Broadway until last year—58 years after its first performance. The revival opened to decidedly mixed reviews largely because of the inability of audiences and critics to accept Beanie Feldstein in the title role made famous by the larger-than-life Streisand. The revival gained more applause when she was replaced first by Julie Benko (who had a triumph the night I attended the play) and Lea Michele, who, like Feldstein, are both also Jewish. They seemed better able to step into Streisand’s shoes and make a case for a musical whose virtues have long been overshadowed by the idea that it was merely a vehicle for the woman who would become a dominant figure in both popular music and Hollywood.

But when we transpose this sort of disconnect onto the ideas that pass for intellectual fashion among those who control the arts world, what we get is claptrap like “Jewface.”

Just as Jewish actors have no difficulty pretending to be all sorts of non-Jewish characters, so, too, can non-Jews capture the essence of those who are Jewish. Indeed, the most stereotypical Jewish character in recent television history—the title character of the Amazon program “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”—was successfully brought to life by Rachel Brosnahan, who is of British and Irish descent. Would Midge Maisel have been funnier or more likable if played by Sarah Silverman, a real-life Jewish comic? All we know is that Brosnahan was able to convincingly portray a Jewish housewife turned comedian in a way that made millions love her and the show.

The same could be said for many other classic acting performances when Jews played non-Jews and vice versa.

Jews gain nothing by trying to get in on the victimhood game that is behind the talk of Jewface. We would all be better off if our society—and popular culture—was less obsessed with race and identity, and more willing to think of everyone as individuals with equal rights rather than as people trapped in an identity and status as victim/oppressor from which the ideologues allow us no escape. Doing so doesn’t undermine Jewish peoplehood or show disrespect to any other group. But it would make for a saner and less divisive world, as well as better theater, films and television.


Netanyahu says he’ll undergo surgery tonight to implant a cardiac pacemaker
A week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was hospitalized for dehydration and had a heart monitoring device implanted, the premier says that device beeped earlier in the evening, which necessitates immediate surgery to implant a pacemaker, a device that prevents one’s heart from beating too slowly.

In a video message, Netanyahu says he will undergo the procedure tonight, that he’s feeling “excellent” and that he’s adhering to his doctors’ advice.

Netanyahu says his medics told him he’s expected to be released tomorrow from Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan in time to take part in potential votes on the coalition’s controversial “reasonableness” bill. The Knesset begins debating the bill tomorrow morning, ahead of its second and third (final) readings, expected Monday or Tuesday.

The legislation, part of the wider plan to overhaul the judiciary, has drawn intense opposition, with hundreds of thousands protesting and some 10,000 reservists saying they’ll halt their volunteer duty if it passes into law.
‘Reasonableness’ bill advances to final Knesset votes
The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee late Wednesday night approved for final readings a bill to limit the Supreme Court’s use of the reasonableness standard.

With nine lawmakers voting in favor and seven opposed, the amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary will now head back to the plenum for the second and third readings needed for it to become law.

Opposition Knesset members caused a scene during the deliberations over the bill, which would bar “reasonableness” as a legal justification for judges to reverse decisions made by the Cabinet, ministers and “other elected officials as set by law.”

Critics say the standard is legally vague and has been used by the court to encroach upon the government’s authority. Opponents say the legislation will erode Israel’s system of checks and balances and lead to abuse of power.

Members of the opposition shouted “Shame” and Labor MK Gilad Kariv was removed after waving pictures of the International Criminal Court and accusing committee chairman Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionism) of neglecting IDF soldiers.

“What is currently on the table is a bad law that violates the basic rights of Israeli citizens and may harm their security as well,” Yisrael Beiteinu MK Yulia Malinovsky said.

“It is not too late to open the text to revision because what is currently in the text completely neuters the legal system and deprives the citizens of Israel of any tools to deal with the bullying of the politicians,” the lawmaker continued.

The vote came after a marathon session with almost 28,000 reservations (proposed amendments) lodged by opponents of the bill.

Coalition members welcomed the approval.
JPost Editorial: Netanyahu must act to halt reforms, save Israel
The protests against the reforms are getting bigger, and the police response to the demonstrations is getting more aggressive with each passing week.

It seems clear that a collision is on the way. It’s time for the government – and especially Netanyahu – to do something about it, before it’s too late.

As Eliav Breuer wrote in Friday’s Post, Israel’s pro- and anti-judicial reform camps are at each other’s throats, and time is running out before the controversial reasonableness standard bill is set to pass into law on Monday afternoon.

Only Netanyahu can end this unrest
Only one person is capable of stopping this runaway train.

It is time for Netanyahu to take the reins of the listing ship, and say “enough.” For the good of the country, and to prevent the crisis in which we find ourselves now from deteriorating further, the prime minister should call a halt to the legislative process and invite the leaders of the opposition to enter talks immediately.

As he told Biden in their call, broad support for judicial reform is needed. Why, then, go through with the reasonableness bill when there is none?

In his address to the nation on Thursday night, he hinted at his understanding that it is the responsibility of the majority – which the coalition and its supporters never tire of reminding detractors that they are – to listen to the sizable minority and recognize their rights. Democracy is not merely a case of majority rules, especially with issues as divisive as judicial reform.

Netanyahu’s allies in the coalition need to realize that their ambitions for comprehensive reform will result in a small victory for them but a potential calamity for the country.

If we don’t want to see Shauli’s Eretz Nehederet vision of a civil war turn into a reality, then Netanyahu must act now. He can cement his legacy as the man who brought Israel back from the brink.


Anti-overhaul march reaches Knesset as multitudes protest looming vote to limit courts
Hundreds of thousands of protesters demonstrated across the country Saturday evening against the coalition’s controversial judicial overhaul plans, with tens of thousands rallying outside the Knesset in Jerusalem following a mass march from Tel Aviv, as part of a last-ditch effort to prevent the passage of a bill that would curtail judicial oversight of government decisions.

The mass demonstrations came as over 10,000 reservists including pilots and others in top military units announced they were halting their service, amid threats of strikes by various professional groups, growing calls for civil disobedience and with the country’s largest labor union meeting to decide on a course of action.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared undeterred, however, with multiple anonymous coalition officials telling Hebrew media that they would not capitulate and were determined to pass the legislation. Kan news said Netanyahu has commented behind the scenes that “either we reach a compromise by tomorrow or the bill will pass.”

In addition to the landmark march in Jerusalem, believed to draw some 90,000 on its final leg, some 170,000 demonstrators converged on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street for the main weekly rally for the 29th week in a row, according to estimations by the CrowdSolutions firm cited by Channel 13 news.

Tens of thousands more demonstrated at some 150 other cities, towns and intersections across the country. Opponents of the legislation rallied outside Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem.

After seven straight months of the most sustained and intense demonstrations the country has ever seen, the grassroots protest movement has reached a fever pitch.

Organizers claimed some 500,000 people took part in rallies overall, though this figure could not be independently confirmed.
Aylana Meisel: American Jews should diffuse the fire, not intervene
In this week’s episode of Top Story, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discussed the debate over judicial reform in Israel as well as the way American intervention in the controversy – both from the Biden administration and from U.S. Jews — Aylana Meisel, the founder of Tikvah Fund Israel’s Law and Liberty Forum.

They discuss
- the reasonabless principle and the substance of the argument over judicial reform
- Is Israel really a democracy?
- what is the role of the American Jewish Community in an internal debate in Israel




Rep. Andy Ogles Moves To Censure Dem Rep Over ‘Antisemitic’ Remarks
Republican Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles introduced a censure resolution Thursday condemning Democratic Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal for calling Israel a “racist state.”

Jayapal, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, promised attendees at the left-wing Netroots Nation conference that she and other members “have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state.” She faced bipartisan criticism for the comments, made less than a week before Israeli President Isaac Herzog addressed a joint session of Congress. The House overwhelmingly passed a joint resolution, which Jayapal supported, describing Israel as a key ally and condemning the remarks.

The censure resolution also mentions Jayapal’s previous comments condemning Israel. She claimed in 2021 that Hamas fired rockets at Israel due to “the continued annexation that Israel has been undertaking for years.” The same year, Jayapal sought to block an arms deal between the U.S. and Israeli governments.
‘The Democratic Party Has Become so Radicalized’: Former NYC Assembly Member Dov Hikind Announces Switch to Republican Party
Longtime New York politico and unapologetic pro-Israel advocate Dov Hikind on Thursday announced that he and his wife were registering as Republicans and teased a possible run for elected office.

Hikind in his decades in New York politics has frequently been described as a kingmaker for his influence among New York’s Orthodox Jewish electorate. The 48th Assembly District that he represented from 1983-2018 contains the Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park, one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities in the world.

The lifelong Democrat said that the party no longer reflected his values.

“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has become so radicalized,” Hikind said alongside his wife Shani in a video posted on Twitter. “People who are moderates or conservative Democrats are not welcomed in the Democratic Party, Shani, and I’ve had enough. The Democratic Party turns its back on its friends, like Israel, the Biden administration, right now in policy after policy. I’m just tired. I’ve had enough.”

Asked if he intended to run for office, Hikind said, “we shall see.”

Despite being a registered Democrat, Hikind has endorsed only Republicans for the presidency since 2004. After not voting for Donald Trump in 2016, Hikind endorsed him in 2020, but has said he would not be endorsing Trump again after the former president hosted antisemitic rapper Kanye West and Holocaust denying alt-right figure Nick Fuentes for a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club in 2022.

Hikind’s switch to the Republican party comes amid political shifts in the New York Orthodox community as a whole. Once reliable ground for the Democratic party, New York City neighborhoods with large Orthodox populations like Borough Park, Crown Heights, and Williamsburg swung hard for Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin in the 2022 election, contributing to the best performance by a Republican candidate for governor in two decades.


The Israel Guys: Joe Biden Literally Fell Asleep in His Meeting With Israel’s President Herzog in the White House…
Israel’s president Herzog visited Washington this week, and Joe Biden literally fell asleep in the meeting. Yeah that happened. We’re going to go through all of that plus a controversy at the Western Wall that might not mean exactly what the world is making it out to mean.




Shin Bet says stabbing in Jerusalem’s Gilo was terror, 3 Palestinians arrested
The Shin Bet said Saturday that a stabbing earlier in the week, in which a man was seriously injured in East Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood, was a terror attack.

Three Palestinian teens aged 17-19 from the West Bank city of Bethlehem were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the attack, the Shin Bet said.

The three were detained in a joint operation between the security agency and the Israel Defense Forces.

Authorities had previously said they believed the Thursday incident was terror, but had not yet confirmed the motive.

The family of 25-year-old Or Sayer said Friday that they were sure it was a terror attack, despite the apparent delay by officials in declaring it as such.

Sayer’s uncle Boaz Weiner told Channel 12 news on Friday that his nephew was stable but not out of danger after he was brought to a Jerusalem hospital with a knife still embedded in his back.
Race against time to save Jewish antiques in West Bank
For Palestinians, a source of Income, and for Jews a part of their history
An underground war is taking place between local West Bank Palestinians and Jews over antiquities


Hamas raids Islamic Jihad mosque in Gaza, arrests prominent cleric
Police in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip swarmed a mosque and arrested a prominent religious figure affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group this week.

Sheikh Yahya Mansour’s hand was broken by police during the arrest on Tuesday, while PIJ members and other civilians were wounded in the raid on Rafah’s Al Awda mosque, a PIJ stronghold, the Tazpit Press Service reported, citing eyewitnesses.

Unnamed Gaza sources told TPS that the raid was part of a broader strategy by Hamas to take control of mosques in the enclave and subjugate PIJ.

Mansour later claimed in a video that the Hamas members “wanted to kill me.”

“They beat me with chairs and objects that were in the mosque and I miraculously survived,” he said.

It was unclear exactly why Mansour was detained.


Protesters try to storm Baghdad Green Zone over apparent burning of Quran in Denmark
Hundreds of protesters attempted to storm Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses foreign embassies and the seat of Iraq’s government, early Saturday following reports an ultranationalist group burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Iraqi Embassy in Copenhagen.

Security forces pushed back protesters, who blocked the Jumhuriya bridge leading to the Green Zone, preventing them from reaching the Danish Embassy.

The protest came two days after people angered by the planned burning of the Islamic holy book in Sweden stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad. Protesters occupied the diplomatic post for several hours, waving flags and signs showing the influential Iraqi Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr, and setting a small fire. The embassy staff had been evacuated a day earlier.

Hours later, Iraq’s prime minister cut diplomatic ties with Sweden in protest over the desecration of the Quran.

An Iraqi asylum-seeker who burned a copy of the Quran during a demonstration last month in Stockholm had threatened to do the same thing again Thursday but ultimately stopped short of setting fire to the book. He did, however, kick and step on it, and did the same with an Iraqi flag and a photo of Sadr and of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Amid fury over Quran desecrations, Iran says it won’t accept new Swedish ambassador
Demonstrators marched in the Iraqi and Iranian capitals Friday to denounce Sweden’s permission for protests that desecrate the Quran, as Stockholm withdrew staff from its Baghdad embassy.

Hundreds of people gathered in Baghdad’s Sadr City after Friday prayers, chanting “Yes, yes to Islam, yes, yes to the Koran,” an AFP correspondent said.

In Tehran, protesters waving Iranian flags and carrying copies of Islam’s holy book chanted, “Down with the United States, Britain, Israel and Sweden” as some burned the Swedish flag.

Iran said late Friday it will not allow a new Swedish ambassador into the country.

The rallies came amid heightened tensions between Stockholm and Muslim countries over a Sweden-based Iraqi refugee who last month burnt pages of the Quran outside Stockholm’s main mosque.

In the latest such incident on Thursday, the refugee, Salwan Momika, stepped on the Quran but did not burn it. His act triggered renewed condemnation across the Muslim world.


‘Jews in the Garden’ uproots Poland’s homegrown Holocaust perpetrators
When investigative journalist Judy Rakowsky located the mass grave of five relatives murdered in the Holocaust, she and her cousin decided not to mark the site for fear of attracting vandals, grave-robbers, and irate townspeople. Instead, she wrote a book about them — and their probable murderers.

Published on July 11, “Jews in the Garden: A Holocaust Survivor, the Fate of His Family, and the Secret History of Poland in World War II,” follows Rakowsky’s inquiry into two sets of relatives murdered under mysterious circumstances near the end of World War II.

On a farm outside Kraków, five of Rakowsky’s relatives were murdered after hiding for 18 months. One of them — 16-year-old Hena Rozenek — escaped the massacre, and Rokowsky became determined to learn her fate.

As one eyewitness told Rakowsky about her relatives who hid on the farm, “[The family] were buried next to a big cherry tree. Each year, the tree bore fruit, but the cherries quickly turned dark. Everyone was afraid to eat them, thinking that they might be poisoned or cursed by the Jews buried below. Then the tree died.”

Pursuing dozens of leads across three decades of research, Rakowsky partnered with her cousin — 98-year old Holocaust survivor Sam Rakowski Ron — on nine research trips to Poland.

During their early visits to Poland, Rakowsky and her cousin gained increasing access to archival materials. In more recent years, however, the situation deteriorated significantly, she said.
Antisemitic Vandals Strike Jewish Institutions in Florida and Michigan
Two antisemitic incidents of vandalism were reported on Friday by StopAntisemitism, a nonprofit that tracks antisemitic incidents across the world.

In Florida, an unknown individual heaved a brick — graffitied with a swastika and a message saying, “No Jews, F*** K****” — through the window of the Pensacola Chabad Jewish Center located in the Goulding section of the city. In another incident targeting the house of University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Greek fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu, a swastika and homophobic slur were graffitied on two windows and the front door.

“We are in constant communication with law-enforcement agencies who have assigned a detective who is investigating the incident,” Pensacola Chabad Rabbi Mendel Danow and his wife Nechama Danow said on Thursday in a joint statement. “Thank G-D, at this time we are not aware of any safety threats on the Chabad facilities or its members, but we remain vigilant and aware.”

The Algemeiner has asked Pensacola Police to comment on this story. It will be updated accordingly.

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor president Santa J. Ono said on Friday that the administration is aware of the incident and has asked the Ann Arbor Police Department (AAPD) to investigate it.

“The university condemns these acts of vandalism, which included broken windows and spray-painted messages that are vile, homophobic and antisemitic,” Ono said. “These types of incidents are in direct conflict with the university’s deeply held values of respect and inclusion and have no place within our campus community or in the broader Ann Arbor community.”

StopAntisemitism on Friday noted that University of Michigan scored a C in a Sept. 2022 report it authored about the campus climate for Jewish students.
Landmark exhibits shed light on post-Holocaust life in German displaced person camps
Rachel Salamander was born in an in-between time and place: The time was just after the end of the Holocaust, when no one knew what the future would bring for the remnants of European Jewry.

The in-between place was a displaced persons camp at Deggendorf, Germany. Her parents Samuel and Riva — survivors from Poland — were among the flood of refugees arriving from the east.

The refugees and other local DPs, as they were nicknamed, were “survivors of concentration camps or gulags, or just people who had everything taken away from them, totally at the end of their rope physically and mentally,” says Salamander.

Her family moved from Deggendorf to another DP camp, in Föhrenwald, and eventually settled in the Munich area. “They gave all their love and attention to us children, because we were their future, their hope.”

Life in the DP camps is the subject of a collaborative exhibition between Munich’s Jewish Museum and its City Museum, situated across the square from each other in the city’s center. Called “Munich Displaced: The Surviving Remnant,” and “Munich Displaced: After 1945 and without a Homeland,” the twin exhibits, which run through January 2024, tell the stories of tens of thousands of displaced persons — Jewish and non-Jewish — in post-war German limbo.

The exhibition project is, say its organizers, the first to focus on the lives and fates of all those people who fled, were displaced or deported during World War II and then found themselves in or near Munich after 1945.
Morocco: Israelis top list of e-visa beneficiaries
Morocco's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said over half of the electronic visas granted in 2022 went to Israelis

Israel topped the list of beneficiaries of electronic visas, according to official data released by Morocco's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The initiative, launched in 2022, has issued over 150,000 visas, with approximately 55 percent being granted to Israelis, followed by India with 10 percent, Nigeria with 4.4 percent, and then Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan.

Nearly all of the e-visas granted were for tourism purposes, with just 3.4 percent being given for business travel.

The statement from Morocco's MFA indicated that people from 110 difference nationalities had made more than 160,000 requests for e-visas, with 150,000 of them being granted. As a result, the tourism sector has seen a boost thanks to the simplified process, which allows travels to enter Moroccan territory and stay for as little as 30 days and up to a maximum of 180 days from the date of issue.

Since Rabat signed onto the historic Abraham Accords agreement in December of 2020, millions of Israelis with Moroccan roots have traveled to the North African country, including a stream of Israeli government officials such as Israeli Parliament Speaker Amir Ohana, Transportation Minister Miri Regev, and National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi.

Rabat and Jerusalem have also quickly established deep security and strategic relations, with the IDF recently appointing a military attaché.

Israel also recently declared recognition of Morocco's sovereignty over the contested Western Sahara region, with Moroccan King Mohammed VI breaking the news, and inviting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the country.

The Moroccan sovereign wrote in a letter to the Israeli premier that such a visit will “open new opportunities for strengthening the ties between our nations." Netanyahu's office said it was working to set a date soon for his first-ever visit to Morocco. In addition, Israel is examining the "opening of a consulate in the town of Dakhla," located in the Moroccan part of Western Sahara.
Yanal Ashmoz, a Circassian Israeli MMA fighter (The Red Fox)
Meet the Muslim Israeli MMA fighter Yanal Ashmoz, AKA the Red Fox, and learn more about the Circassian community in Israel! Learn more about the Circassian community in Israel!


‘Truly remarkable’ letter from David Ben-Gurion proves rare wedding gift
A former Americans for Ben-Gurion University fellow has shared a letter his grandmother received from David Ben-Gurion in 1965, two years after the latter had served his second tenure as Israeli prime minister.

“Knowing that my grandma had a personal exchange with such an iconic Israeli figure was truly remarkable,” said David Schuman, who was part of the A4BGU Zin Fellows Leadership Program.

Schuman received the letter as a wedding gift from his aunt. His grandmother, Jean Grossman, who died at the age of 91 in 2019, had been “a noted philanthropist and a pillar of the Jewish community in Scottsdale [and] Phoenix, Arizona,” according to Americans for Ben-Gurion University.

In the letter, which seems to be dated Aug. 22, 1965, the Israeli founding father and former premier wrote from Tel Aviv: “Dear Mrs. Harold I Grossman, I am glad to know that your nephew followed your advice and is coming to Israel as a teacher. He should apply to the Ministry of Education; I will also be glad to see him. Yours sincerely, D. Ben Gurion.”

The address for Schuman’s grandmother was in Minneapolis.

“I was beyond thrilled to receive it as a wedding gift. I had a vague recollection of its existence, but it was almost like family folklore,” Schuman said. “It helped to bridge the gap between generations and connected me to the very roots of the institution I had grown to love. It deepened my appreciation for the visionary leader who played a pivotal role in shaping the university’s values and mission.”




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