Showing posts with label Holocaust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holocaust. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 03, 2022

Whoopi Goldberg Really Needs to Stop Talking about the Holocaust and All Things Related (Judean Rose)

Whoopi Goldberg really needs to stop talking. Preferably altogether, but certainly when it comes to talking about Nazis and the Holocaust.

via GIPHY

First she said Nazis were white people attacking other whitepeople. That was in February. 

Now, only six months later, Goldberg has lumped the members of a conservative student association with neo-Nazis after the latter protested outside a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) summit last week. Goldberg falsely asserted that TPUSA allowed the protesters into their event, and was therefore “complicit.” “You let them in and you knew what they were, so you are complicit,” she said.

Except that never happened. TPUSA never let these horrible people into their summit. TPUSA security, in fact, made every effort to disperse the neo-Nazi protesters. Since the protest took place on a public sidewalk, however, security was unable to remove them. 

TPUSA participants themselves went out and confronted the demonstrators, but could not persuade them to leave. Only after the TPUSA students gave up and entered the building for their event, did the protesters at last quit the scene.

This was all easily verifiable. Today, everything is verifiable. Because everyone has a phone, duh.

But Whoopi, of course, has absolutely no interest in verifying what happened or in learning the truth. Her only interest is to demonize those who are different from her, in this case, conservatives. Goldberg took one small piece of information—the fact that neo-Nazis protested outside the event—and embroidered it to suit her narrative, claiming that TPUSA welcomed the protesters, something that never occurred. Then Goldberg broadcast the slanderous falsehoods to the world, leading her audience to believe that conservatives in general, and Republicans in particular, are in fact, neo-Nazis, and share the same Nazi beliefs.

Even if we are to give Goldberg the benefit of the doubt that she received bad information—that someone did, in fact tell Goldberg that TPUSA let the neo-Nazis into their event, it was Goldberg’s job to verify the story before blabbing it to the world. But Goldberg—or rather Caryn Elaine Johnson, Goldberg’s real name—already knows that she can libel anyone she likes: Jews, conservatives, Republicans, and whites, and nothing much will happen to her. At most, she’ll eventually be forced to give a lackluster apology and perhaps receive a short suspension. All worth it for the ability to continue spreading her toxic and xenophobic views to her idiot audience of millions.

After Goldberg’s obnoxious comments of last January, in which she described the Holocaust as white people fighting each other, “This is white people doing it to white people, so y'all going to fight amongst yourselves,” she apologized the next day, and received a two-week suspension.

This time, Goldberg qualified her comments later in the same show, saying “My point was metaphorical.”

It was only after TPUSA issued a cease and desist letter to ABC, threatening legal action, that anyone bothered to apologize for all the vicious lies spread not just by Whoopi but other cast members of The View, for example Joy Behar, who told  the audience that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis “did nothing” to stop the protesters. DeSantis had attended the event a day earlier, when no demonstrations were taking place. But what does The View care about the truth?

But back to the apology, because it was too slow to come and even when it did, it didn’t begin to address the malignant nature of the on-air defamation. The slander took place on a Monday. The apology, which was not really an apology and didn’t come from Whoopi, came only on the following Wednesday, in the form of a legal note read on air by The View co-host Sarah Haines:

“On Monday we talked about the fact that there were openly neo-Nazi demonstrators outside the Florida Student Action Summit of the Turning Point USA group,” read Haines. “We want to make clear that these demonstrators were gathered outside the event and that they were not invited or endorsed by Turning Point USA.

“A Turning Point USA spokesman said the group ‘100 percent condemns those ideologies’ and said Turning Point USA security tried to remove the neo-Nazis from the area but could not because they were on public property. Also, Turning Point USA wanted us to clarify that this was a Turning Point USA Summit, and not a Republican Party event. So, we apologize for anything we said that may have been unclear on these points.”

In other words, The View doesn’t apologize for its assertions, only that said assertions should have been clearer.

TPUSA was not at all satisfied with the on-air reading of a legal letter by Haines, nor should it have been. According to Fox News, “A TP spokesperson balked at Haines, not Goldberg, making the apology.”

The lame, forced apology from Goldberg, such as it was, came only one day later, a full three days after she broadcast her libelous claims. “You know, in Monday’s conversation about Turning Point USA, I put the young people at the conference in the same category as the protesters outside,” said Goldberg. “I don’t like it when people make assumptions about me, and it’s not any better when I make assumptions about other people, which I did. So my bad. I’m sorry.” 

Even now, Goldberg-really-Johnson apologizes not for her calumny, as she should, but for mistaken assumptions. In so doing, Goldberg/Johnson has minimized her vilification of a student organization as some minor error in understanding, rather than a wholesale effort at character assassination. In such an apology, there is no mistaking the insincerity of the supplicant. This is not ignorance, but hate.

Not that it matters. Caryn Elaine Johnson’s audience laps up every lie she feeds them, even begging for more. And anyway, she can always apologize some more or take a two-week vacation.

Exploiting the Holocaust and Nazi ideology to serve her own egocentric interests? Why not? What does she care about a mess of "white" people, fighting? 

And anyway, nothing really happens to her when she says these things. People like her, and listen to her. So she stays.

For her, it’s a win-win situation. Johnson/Goldberg can say what she likes with impunity.  And cry all the way to the bank. 

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Monday, August 01, 2022

Yes, @NYTimes, photographs can mislead. And you have published lots of them yourself.

The New York Times has an interesting article about the revelation that Herman Heukels, who took most of the famous photographs of Jews getting ready to be transported from Amsterdam to work or death camps, was a Nazi.

With this knowledge, we now understand that he intended to demean the Jews whose photos he was taking. He didn't take any photos of the police rounding them up, for example. 

In some images, the Jews' dignity shine through anyway.


But this changes the interpretation of the photos.

Janina Struk, author of the 2005 book “Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretations of the Evidence,” said that in the postwar period, photos taken by bystanders, perpetrators and victims were “all kind of mixed together,” and hardly anyone asked who had shot the photos or for what purposes.

In recent years, she added, there has been a greater emphasis on contextualizing the images, explaining how they were made, so that viewers have a better understanding of what they’re looking at — and so people can make better ethical choices about how to present them.

I wish the New York Times cared this much about the context of photos from Gaza taken by modern antisemites.

Here are two photos from last year's war in Gaza that are obviously staged, as I pointed out then:

The New York Times also hires freelance photographers in Gaza who have every incentive to show Israel in a bad light and ignore Hamas war crimes like shooting rockets from populated areas. The NYT is highlighting obviously staged photos as well, like this one, with a bassinet that somehow landed right side up, meters  away from the demolished building that supposedly housed it - and without a speck of dust on it. The photographer was also amazingly lucky to find a photogenic, sad boy who just happened to be walking right in front of it, but to the side, so we could see both. 


Or this one, where elderly women climbed over dangerous rubble where they could fall and break their hips so they could sit (one on a convenient plastic chair) and look sad in this supposedly candid shot:




Seeing the beach in the background, this airstrike may have been at the Shati camp, where Israel said Hamas leaders were meeting - but the New York Times won't mention that. 
Context is everything. Photographers stage their photos and direct the subjects as actors when they won't get caught. They gather ahead of time in likely trouble spots but ensure that the other dozens of photographers crowding around are never in the shot. They choose the ones that tell the story they want to tell and don't submit the ones that contradict them. The freelancers provide the background information that is believed implicitly by the editors. 

Is there any moral difference between publishing context-free photos from people who hated Jews in the 1940s and those from people who hate Jews today? 

The last paragraph of the article about the Nazi photos is the best summary of the topic, and one that fair media would be attuned to if they cared about context and objectivity.

Struk added, “We need to move away from the idea that a photograph is just a window on the world. It isn’t. It’s a very edited version of what the photographer chose to photograph.”  

 

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Monday, July 25, 2022

Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to believe antisemitic conspiracy theories

A study was just released asking "Are Republicans and Conservatives More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories?"

The methodology of the study that determines that both Republicans and Democrats are roughly equally susceptible to conspiracy theories is a little suspect - a lot depends on which theories the authors decide to test. But two of the questions that they evaluated were specifically Jewish conspiracy theories, and their results show that the self-described Left and Right are equally likely to believe them.

The two questions that are explicitly Jewish conspiracy theories are:
The official account of the Nazi Holocaust is a lie and the number of Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II has been exaggerated on purpose. 
A powerful family, the Rothschilds, through their wealth, controls governments, wars, and many countries' economies.

A slightly larger percentage of Republicans (it looks like 1%)  believed these conspiracy theories compared to Democrats.


And, if anything, partisanship seems to make one more likely to believe antisemitic conspiracy theories. A significantly lower number of independents believed either of these theories.


The numbers themselves are alarming. These polls indicate that about 18% of Democrats and Republicans (15% total)  voters believe the Holocaust is a lie and about 30% of them buy into the idea of a powerful Jewish family controlling many world governments (26% total.) 

A 2020 survey showed that 23% of young Americans 18-39  think the Holocaust is a lie, but it didn't break down the percentages that believe that by politics, religion or age.

At any rate, anyone who claims that their political opponents are more likely to be antisemitic - even when discussing classical, not new, antisemitism - is being blind to the problems in their own side. And when either side uses antisemitism as a political football to attack their opponents, and ignores it on their own side, it shows that they don't really care about antisemitism to begin with.

And believe me - we Jews notice. 


Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Thursday, July 07, 2022

Iran upset when Muslims admit the Holocaust happened (update)



Iran's Ahl al-Bayt News Agency (ABNA), a Shiite news site whose views mimic that of Iran's leadership, reports that Saudi authorities designated Muhammad bin Abdul-Karim al-Issa, Secretary-General of the Muslim World League, to perform the sermon and prayer on the Day of Arafa at the Namirah Mosque in Mecca for Hajj this year.

This is upsetting to the Iranians. 

Why?

It is noteworthy that Al-Issa visited the so-called "Jewish genocide camp" in Poland, "Auschwitz", in conjunction with the commemoration of the "Holocaust".

The “Israel in Arabic” account, affiliated with the Israeli enemy’s Foreign Ministry, had published a video clip of Al-Issa as he “leads a delegation, to pray in Auschwitz, in sympathy for the dead Jews. ”
The photo accompanying the article shows Al-Issa accepting a plaque from a Jew.

The word Israel or Zionist does not appear in this article. Iran's problem with al-Issa is that he showed sympathy for millions of dead Jews. 

Remember that next time Iran and its useful idiot supporters claim that Iran isn't antisemitic, merely anti-Israel. It is pretty obvious that to Iran, there is no difference between the two. 

UPDATE: It isn't only Iran.  A fatwa against al-Issa has been re-circulated, calling him a Muslim apostate - because he once referred to Christians and Jews as "brothers." The fatwa, by an 87-year old Saudi scholar, says that Jews and Christians are infidels and enemies of Allah and it is sacrilegious to refer to them as "brothers." 

Similarly, Al-Hassan bin Ali Al-Kettani , president of the League of Maghreb Scholars and a member of the League of Muslim Scholars has also denounced the appointment.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Thursday, June 02, 2022

Three minutes of color film footage of the Jews of Nasielsk, Poland, on the eve of the Holocaust (video)



In January, The New York Times wrote a story about a new documentary about the discovery and preservation of a remarkable color home movie.

Glenn Kurtz found the film reel in a corner of his parents’ closet in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., in 2009. It was in a dented aluminum canister.

Florida’s heat and humidity had nearly solidified the celluloid into a mass “like a hockey puck,” Kurtz said. But someone had transferred part of it onto VHS tape in the 1980s, so Kurtz could see what it contained: a home movie titled “Our Trip to Holland, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, France and England, 1938.”

The 16-millimeter film, made by his grandfather, David Kurtz, on the eve of World War II, showed the Alps, quaint Dutch villages and three minutes of footage of a vibrant Jewish community in a Polish town.

Old men in yarmulkes, skinny boys in caps, girls with long braids. Smiling and joking. People pour through the large doors of a synagogue. There’s some shoving in a cafe and then, that’s it. The footage ends abruptly.

Kurtz, nevertheless, understood the value of the material as evidence of Jewish life in Poland just before the Holocaust. It would take him nearly a year to figure it out, but he discovered that the footage depicted Nasielsk, his grandfather’s birthplace, a town about 30 miles northwest of Warsaw that some 3,000 Jews called home before the war.

Fewer than 100 would survive it.

Now, the Dutch filmmaker Bianca Stigter has used the fragmentary, ephemeral footage to create “Three Minutes: A Lengthening,” a 70-minute feature film that helps to further define what and who were lost.
It isn't so easy to find the actual footage as a whole, but I found a lower-resolution version with some added background music. 



The kids are excited, making faces, jumping into the view, even hitting each other. Men and women help their elderly parents down the stairs of the synagogue. It is all utterly unremarkable except that nearly all of them would be gone within a few years. 

This is a rare view of how dynamic and alive the Jews of pre-war Europe were, and how many distinct worlds were lost in the Holocaust.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Wednesday, June 01, 2022

A Holocaust Survivor Competes for Queen in the Palestine Emergency Show Pageant (Judean Rose)



Holocaust Survivor Lillian Riess Widess left Europe behind just two years before becoming an entrant in the 1948 Queen of the Palestine Emergency Show pageant. Both her parents were murdered in the Holocaust along with her older brother Alfred. The story goes that they were murdered in the streets during a Nazi-sponsored pogrom in Taurogge, Lithuania. Of the other members of the family, only Lillian’s sister Hilda escaped death, having married and moved to South America with her husband’s family in 1933.

Lillian, my husband’s paternal first cousin once removed, survived the Kovno Ghetto and two labor camps, before landing in a DP camp south of Munich, in Landsberg. In 1946, sponsored by her aunt and uncle, she was at last able to leave the blood-soaked ground of Europe for Chicago. She came with nothing—bereft even of the comfort of a family photo. Surviving relatives and friends embraced Lillian by gathering up and sending her all the pre-war family photos they could find. Because of this, Lillian was at least in part, able to recover a portion of her collection: faces to go with the memories of loved ones stolen by Hitler.

Lillian was a beauty. Even the war had not robbed her of that. No one knows how she ended up a contestant in the Queen of the Palestine Emergency Show pageant or even whether she won. But everyone acknowledges that she had what it took to compete.

Lillian Riess, circa 1946-1948, Chicago

Little could be found by this writer of the Palestine Emergency Show that featured the beauty pageant. The competition for "queen" was an obvious draw for residents of local Jewish neighborhoods, a way to encourage attendance at the rally, to be held in Chicago Stadium. Lillian Riess competed as a representative of the Southwest Side of Chicago.

Lillian Riess, at bottom right


What did the new Jewish State mean to someone like Lily Riess, who was caught and treated like vermin to be crushed, her family murdered in the streets, only because they were Jews? Was her participation in the pageant a statement of survival against all odds--her contribution to ensuring that her people could and would be restored to their homeland, never to be at the mercy of evil again? From this distance, we can only guess at Lillian's reasons for taking part in a 1948 beauty contest in Chicago. But there is no doubt that she once again felt a part of a community, and was glad to play an active role in local Jewish life.

After the tragedy in Europe, Lillian went on to have a full life in America. On her honeymoon in Carmel, 1948

Lillian, 1956


Late 1960s

At home with her daughter Karen, circa 1972.


As we can see in this full page ad from the Chicago Sentinel, the rally was definitely a big deal, with a slated appearance by renowned tenor Jan Pierce, a “gigantic” symphony orchestra, and not less than 50 cantors “in ceremonial dress.” The purpose of the event? Among other things, to protest against Britain’s furnishing of arms to the Arabs in their war of aggression against the Jews; to force the US to lift its embargo on supplying munitions to Israel; to raise funds for “the defense of the new Jewish State,” and to “unmask the sinister underlings in the State Department who defy the will of the American people."


The advertisement for the event refers to “Palestine” rather than Israel, possibly out of long habit and perhaps to ensure that prospective attendees understood what the demonstration was all about. Headed by a most frightening prediction, “A massacre is coming—unless . . ” followed by a list of dire possibilities threatening the fledgling nation state of the Jewish people, the advertisement could not fail to catch the eye. It was expected that tens of thousands would attend.

Did the event live up to the hype? It is difficult to say. I could find nothing more in the Sentinel archives, and nothing in the Chicago Tribune—nothing about the number of attendees, the amount of money raised, or who won the beauty pageant.* But there are still facts to be gleaned from an old newspaper clipping about a beauty pageant and a full-page ad for a rally held just one month before the end of Israel’s War of Independence, when things did not look so good for the Jews or their state:

Fact one: American Jews understood the ominous threat to the Jewish State and felt a deep kinship to their brethren there, to the point they were willing to go to bat for them against the State Department, Britain, Bevin, the Mufti, and anyone else who stood in their way.

Fact two: American Jews understood that Palestine was really Israel, indigenous Jewish territory; that the Jews had a right to self-determination in their homeland; and that the Arabs, and not the Jews, were the occupiers and aggressors.

Fact three: The Jews of Chicagoland didn’t just talk the talk but proved their devotion to their people through action, organizing a massive, logistically complicated, and likely expensive demonstration in Chicago Stadium.

Fact four: The organizers of the Palestine Emergency Show fully believed they could easily draw tens of thousands of attendees who cared enough about Israel and the Jews who were living and dying there, to buy a ticket and represent.

It could never happen today.

*Hoping my readers will uncover further details

In memory of Lillian Widess, 1927-2005. Her birthday would have been this week. 

(All photos courtesy of Karen Widess)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 



Wednesday, April 06, 2022

The Holocaust is Not the Reason for the State of Israel (Judean Rose)

Delegates to the San Remo conference in Italy, 25 April 1920

People are always saying that the Holocaust is the reason and justification for the creation of the Jewish State. I find this a terrible concept. The Jewish nation has no need for justification in getting our land back or having self-rule. The land was ours thousands of years before the Holocaust took place, and if you don’t believe in God, we can back that fact with ancient texts and artefacts. And yet people of every stripe, from President Obama on down to the Holocaust survivors themselves, continue to say that the Jewish State was created on the ashes of the Holocaust.

It is quite fair to say that without the Holocaust, those fleeing Europe would have had no place to go. There is nothing dishonest in saying so, and in fact, in my opinion, it is a fine thing to thank God that Israel exists. And still, we would have had this state, in one form or another, with or without the Holocaust. The State of Israel was a done deal all the way back to San Remo, as stated by Salomon Benzimra, P. Eng. Founder Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights (CILR):

Ninety five years ago, prime ministers, ambassadors and other dignitaries from Europe and America gathered in the Italian Riviera. Journalists from around the world reported on the pending San Remo Peace Conference and the great expectations the international community placed on this event, just a year after the Paris Peace Conference had settled the political map of Europe at the end of World War One.

On Sunday, April 25, 1920, after hectic deliberation, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S. acting as an observer) adopted the San Remo Resolution -- a 500 word document which defined the future political landscape of the Middle East out of the defunct Ottoman Empire.

This Resolution led to the granting of three Mandates, as defined in Article 22 of the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations. The future states of Syria-Lebanon and Iraq emerged from two of these Mandates and became exclusively Arab countries. But in the third Mandate, the Supreme Council recognized the “historical connection of the Jewish people to Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country” while safeguarding the “civil and religious rights” of the non-Jewish population.

Subsequently, the British limited the Jewish Homeland in Palestine to the area west of the Jordan River and allowed eastern Palestine to be gradually administered by the Hashemites. The territorial expansion to the east eventually gave birth to the Kingdom of Transjordan, later renamed Jordan in 1950 . . .

 . . . The San Remo Conference should be more than a mere remembrance. It enjoins us to consider the legal reach of the binding decisions made in 1920 and to ensure that we do not entertain incompatible positions when political expediency clashes with unassailable rights enshrined in international law, namely the acquired rights of the Jewish people in their ancestral land.

Of course, one must make the distinction between the Land of Israel and the State of Israel, two different things. For one thing, the Land of Israel is larger. Also, from a Jewish perspective, the Land of Israel existed before the founding of the state. The State of Israel, in other words, does not cancel out the Land of Israel, which is something tangible. You can hold its soil in the palm of your hand, smell or even taste the land, irrespective of official state status. That official state status does, however, speak to access as much as it speaks to the right to Jewish rule.

Think about it. It’s actually incredible. The Jews had self-rule only until 135 BCE, yet we never let go, not really, and not in actual fact. Some of us always clung on, and we spent our lives in remembering. For 1,813 years then, the Jews had no sovereignty in their own land, no self-rule in their national home. This is a tragic thing. In that sense, and not only in that sense, the State of Israel is a triumph.

And still, it’s important to remember that these are just desserts. We have a right to this land. We have a right to self-rule. These are not rights that go back to the Holocaust, but long before. Dr. Elana Heideman, Holocaust scholar and Executive Director of The Israel Forever Foundation, points out the inherent opportunism in drawing a link between the Holocaust and the creation of Israel (emphasis added):

The idea that the Holocaust is the reason or justification of the existence of Israel denies the history of Jewish sovereignty and the thousands-year old dream of a return for which Jews prayed fervently from every corner of the world. There is great danger to imposing this causal relationship, especially in a world that continuously seeks to erase the Jew and Jewish rights for the sake of universalist agendas or ideologies often steeped in traditional antisemitic tropes.

Israel exists because of our ancestral right of return to our indigenous homeland, recognized by every nation for 3000 years and affirmed again and again in international law both before and after the Holocaust. The Holocaust served as the impetus for the political establishment of the reborn Jewish state primarily because of its influence on human emotions - when the world had little choice but to recognize the extent to which people would go in order to eliminate the Jew. Both Jewish sovereignty and refuge in our homeland were established fact throughout the centuries long before the Holocaust, and any attempt to claim otherwise is little more than charged propaganda of those who seek to revise history or, worse, continue to apologize for the mere existence of a Jewish state to such an extent that any and every excuse possible will be conceived.

It’s important to speak out and say these things because the other side uses the Holocaust argument to say that we only have the land because of the Holocaust—that the world took pity on us and gave us land that isn’t ours because of, to paraphrase Caryn Elaine Johnson, white Europeans fighting each other. Whoopi wasn't the first to distort the meaning of the Holocaust to make an ideological point, and she won't, unfortunately, be the last. 

Obama did it at Buchenwald--used the Holocaust, while standing on the bones and blood of Jewish people, to suggest an illegitimate European landgrab of Arab land (emphasis added):

When the American GIs arrived they . . . never could have known the world would one day speak of this place. They could not have known that some of them would live to have children and grandchildren who would grow up hearing their stories and would return here so many years later to find a museum and memorials and the clock tower set permanently to 3:15, the moment of liberation.

They could not have known how the nation of Israel would rise out of the destruction of the Holocaust and the strong, enduring bonds between that great nation and my own.

These words hint at the words behind the words. The idea that it's not fair that the Jews have the land--that they only have it because of the Holocaust. As if there were no Jewish connection to the land before that time. As if it were only the State of Israel, and not the Land of Israel.

We should not help them by agreeing that this is so. These are things they say out of hatred and antisemitism. They are saying we have no right to the land. 

Well then. They can say it, but it won’t make it true. Because since the time of Abraham, the Jews have been in Israel, sometimes hanging on only by our bare, bloodied fingernails. When forced to leave, we yearned to return, and spoke of it all day long, in our prayers.

We had no inkling that a Holocaust of our brethren--a Holocaust of mythic proportions--would someday occur. We knew only that the land was ours, and prayed in the language of our people.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Dani Dayan, the Grand Mufti, and the Case of the “Disappearing” Photo (Judean Rose)



Dani Dayan, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, is taking the heat for the removal by the museum, of a large, floor-to-ceiling photo of the well-known meeting between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin El Husseini and Adolph Hitler. That the photo has disappeared from view is not in doubt. But what does the disappearance of the photo signify? 

Was its removal from public eye motivated by politics and political correctness, or was it more about museum function and management? 

More to the point: Was the photo removed in the first place?

Several important voices, for example Lyn Julius, Ellie Cohanim, and Daniel Greenfield, have alluded to the removal of the photo as politically motivated. And in fact, the disappearance of the photo does seem political, even shockingly so. 

For one thing, the Bennett government coalition includes Ra’am, the Arab list. This is one of the larger factions of the coalition, and it is in Bennett’s best interests to avoid offending Arab sensibilities. Dani Dayan, meanwhile, is a Bennett appointee. Could Dayan be behind the removal of the photo in order to satisfy some injunction from above?

If so, preserving the government would have come at the expense of the public’s understanding of this grievous chapter in Holocaust history. Those who saw the photo while it was still on display, speak of its stark impact. There was Shalom Pollack, who said, “As a tour guide since 1980, I have visited the old museum numerous times and remember clearly how my tourists were shocked by the duo in the photo.”

Pollack described his efforts to get the photo reinstated:

When I wrote to Yad Vashem and asked why they removed the photo from the new museum, I was told that the new museum "concentrates on the victims and less on the perpetrators". However just a few feet from the small Husseini - Himmler photo is an entire wall of perpetrators - the architects of the "Wannsee Conference" that drew up the plans for the Holocaust.

I asked a number of local official Yad Vashem guides about the photo. They either did not know of it or said it was political and they did not discuss it with visitors. They were uncomfortable with my inquiry.

I wondered if associating Palestinian Arabs with Nazis was no longer politically correct since the Oslo accords with Arafat in 1993.

Undeterred, Pollack looked for a more sympathetic ear. Dani Dayan was a son of the right. For six years, Dayan had chaired the Yesha Council, which represents Judea and Samaria, settlements and settlers. Pollack thought he might have finally found an ally in Dayan:

Today there is a new chairman of Yad Vashem,

Mr. Dani Dayan came to the position with "right wing" credentials, so I renewed my efforts. I wrote to him asking that he return the photo and asked for a meeting with him about the subject. I was refused a meeting and told that there will be no changes made.

I then encouraged people to write to Yad Vashem and request that the photo be returned. The letter writers were made to understand that there never was such a photo. Emails began bouncing back to the senders. I enquired with Yad Vashem and was told that they changed the email address. I was told the new one and the letter campaign resumed.

Knowing of Pollack’s determination to reach Dayan, his brother found a way to put the two in touch:

In mid-November 2021, Mr. Dayan addressed a well-known and affluent synagogue in Westhampton, NY. My brother, a member of the community, approached Mr. Dayan and told him of my concern. He said he was aware of it and assured him it is not political. My brother asked if he would meet me. He agreed and so I received a call from his office for a meeting.

At the meeting Dayan told me he did not meet with me earlier because he did not like the tone of the letters written to him. He told me that "no one will lecture him on Zionism and love of Israel. His credentials speak for themselves." That is true, which is why I had expectations.

He claimed that I was interested not in historical record but the politics of the Jewish - Arab conflict. I said it was both, which he did not accept. He added that Yad Vashem is not a museum of the Arab - Jewish conflict, that Husseini played only a tiny part in the Holocaust and did not warrant more space than he has in the museum.

Next came a denial that the photo was ever displayed to begin with (emphasis added):

[Dayan] told me that he is in charge and won't bring the photo back, if there ever was one. His advisor chimed in: “There was never such a photo." She asked me if I had photographic proof and I reminded her that it is forbidden to bring cameras into the museum. I asked her if the many signed testimonies of veteran guides that I have gathered is proof enough and she said it was a possibility.

Mr. Dayan was frustrated that I continued to hold firm to my position. I told him that there are growing numbers of people, Jews and non-Jews, who want the truth not be hidden at Yad Vashem and the photo returned. He asked that I leave his office.

Who was right about the photo? Pollack, or Dayan’s advisor? Dayan’s official statement appears to back assertions that the photo has never been on display at the museum (emphasis added):

To anyone who mistakenly believes differently, the facts are that the picture of the meeting between Adolf Hitler and the Mufti was never displayed in the old historical museum at Yad Vashem (it does, however, appear on the Yad Vashem website).

Here is where Dayan flubbed it. This was a denial of a fact and it made Dayan look bad, as though he were lying. He was also insulting, as much as calling those who said they saw the photo, liars.

Dayan had an important platform that gave him the chance to make things better, but he’d only made it worse. Hence the communal umbrage.

Mort Klein of the ZOA came to the fore to defend Pollack:

The decision by Yad Vashem to remove the photo of the Mufti tying him to Hitler did not go over well with Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton Klein, who “slammed the museum and its head Dani Dayan for an ‘appalling’ censorship of history.” Klein didn’t mince words, nor should he have done so, since the decision by Yad Vashem has worrying implications, particularly given the contemporary rise in Islamic antisemitism throughout Europe and North America.

From Breitbart (emphasis added):

“I can vouch and state as a matter of fact that I, Morton Klein, personally saw that picture on Yad Vashem’s wall when I was there,” he asserted.

Though photography is forbidden in the museum itself, the author of the recent op-ed attacking the museum gathered twenty signed testimonies of veteran guides over the last month attesting to the photo’s original presence, before it was allegedly removed and never returned during renovations in 2005.

Other voices have testified to having seen the photo in the “old” museum, prior to renovations, contradicting Dayan’s denial:

Former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem David Cassuto, a longtime member on the museum’s council, told Breitbart News on Sunday that the photograph was absolutely part of the museum’s previous exhibition.

“I remember it; I saw it there,” Cassuto said, as he expressed his bafflement as to why it was ever removed. 

“They have to bring it back and out it in a prominent point in the exhibition,” he added.

Cassuto, who met with Dayan over the issue last month, disregarded Dayan’s denials. 

“[Dayan] has no idea because he was not there at the time.”

Ephraim Kaye, who served as the director of international seminars for educators from abroad at the museum for over 25 years, also confirmed the prior display of the photograph and its subsequent removal.

“Everyone remembers the picture of the Mufti and Hitler, it was towards the end of the museum — it was there,” Kaye told Breitbart News. “It was up until 2005 when we closed the old museum and opened the new one.” 

Dayan is certainly not culpable for the original decision not to exhibit the Mufti/Hitler photo in the refurbished museum. That happened in 2005, when Dayan was not on the scene, as Cassuto rightly states. Nonetheless, reading Dayan’s statement is to understand why the subject blew up. 

This could have been handled so much better. But Dayan is new to the job. And Israelis are notoriously bad at public diplomacy.  

In light of Dayan’s statement/denial, it was not unreasonable for the public to presume that Arab sensibilities were at least a partial factor in the disappearance of the photo of Hitler and the Mufti. If true, that's a shocking thing: a Jerusalem Holocaust museum putting history into hiding to keep Bennett’s government intact.

The disappearance of the photo is viewed as the museum downplaying or minimizing the importance of the Mufti-Hitler meeting. The museum looks culpable of purposely hiding history. Dani Dayan, who represents the museum, looks as though he is capitulating to Arab and woke sensibilities by refusing to find a way to restore the photo to public scrutiny.

But what if he isn’t?

I spoke to Dr. Elana Heideman, Holocaust scholar and Executive Director of The Israel Forever Foundation. Heideman suggests that the controversy may not be a controversy at all. I reviewed with her what other writers are saying. She reminded me that each of these parties has a particular focus: “Mine is integrity of memory. If you want to make an issue, then it should be for using this as an example of the danger of extracting details that are uncomfortable to contemporary rhetoric. And that this should raise questions not only in Jerusalem, but everywhere, as to the complete exclusion of any reference to the Muslim/Nazi connection and shared ideology.”

Heideman described the exhibit, which I had not seen. It was true that the photo of the Mufti and Hitler was floor-to-ceiling, but Dr. Heideman told me that in the former exhibit, each photo had had a corresponding same-sized photo on the opposite wall. That salient fact had been omitted from most other accounts I had read. Reading the op-eds, I had been under the impression that the photo of the Mufti and Hitler was the only large photo in the exhibit, and perhaps the largest photo in the entire museum, or at least one of the largest.

Discussing this with Heideman was confusing for me. She had me contemplating the idea that I’d gotten hung up on the word “removal,” when the photo had not been “removed” so much as not placed on exhibition in the new museum. The refurbished museum had all new exhibitions. According to Heideman, all the voices speaking of removal imply that the photo was displayed in the museum and subsequently taken down for the sake of political correctness. 

Heideman, who knows about these things, mentioned that it takes a lot of thought to create new exhibitions, and how best to present the museum’s holdings to the public. That the photo is not currently on display, does not exclude the possibility that it will be on display in the future. A new exhibition may even be in the works. It would take a lot of thought and planning to create an exhibit on the Muslim-Nazi connection with maximum impact on visitors to the museum. 

In other words, maybe shifting stock is just what museums, do. And in fact, that’s exactly what this museum did. They put up other things instead. Just not that thing.

What Heideman said made me pause and think about how it would be a difficult and complicated conversation to have. How should we portray the Muslim-Nazi connection to museum goers? How might we best teach the subject in the classroom? How much space do we give to this part of Holocaust history? One chapter in a textbook? Ten?

Every chapter of Holocaust history, in fact, requires a difficult conversation for educators and others who strive to engage the public on the subject. As Dayan suggested in his statement, it may be legitimate for a museum to consider how large a part the Muslim connection plays in the greater scheme of the things:

Research shows that the meeting between the Mufti and Adolf Hitler had a negligible practical effect on Nazi policy. Attempting to pressure Yad Vashem to expand the exhibit on the Mufti in the Holocaust History Museum is tantamount to forcing Yad Vashem to partake in a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is alien to its mission.

But while it's legitimate for a museum to decide the best way to utilize its inventory and space, it's also legitimate for museum accusers to want that photo back up, not only because it is an important part of history, but because it still has relevance for us, today.

Pollack said so to Dayan's face:

He claimed that I was interested not in historical record but the politics of the Jewish - Arab conflict. I said it was both.

We are supposed to learn from history, lest we repeat it. But wokism means that if we talk about the  Muslim/Nazi ideology connection, we're accused of Islamophobia. This is similar to the way we are now not allowed to say that the vast majority of antisemitic attacks in New York have been perpetrated by blacks. The facts may be facts, but bringing them to light is definitely construed as racist in the prevailing zeitgeist. 

Dov Hikind has spoken of the need to change this dynamic:

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, former longtime Democratic New York State assemblyman Dov Hikind said that there is “a problem with many young people in the black community, but not just young people.”

He pointed to antisemitic comments made by Joan Terrell-Paige, a member of the Jersey City Board of Education, following the Jersey City antisemitic shooting, who alleged that “brutes of the Jewish community” had “waved bags of money” at black homeowners, and alleged that “six rabbis were accused of selling body parts.”

Hikind also noted that members of the Hudson County Democratic Black Caucus, representing elected officials at the state, county and local levels in New Jersey, said that while it did not agree with “the delivery of the statement” made by Terrell-Paige, they said that the issues she raised “must be addressed and should be a topic of a larger conversation” between the African-American and Jewish communities.

“This is unreal,” said Hikind. “This to me indicates something much deeper at play. Whatever it is, we shouldn’t be afraid to discuss it.”

The Mufti-Hitler photo may or may not have been removed with conscious political intent, but on whichever side you fall in the debate, it is the way Dani Dayan handled things that drew public scrutiny, especially in regard to his response to the complaints. Dayan had a platform. Still does. His statement should have been seen as an opportunity to correct or at least redirect the narrative to avoid harm to the museum. That is his job.

Instead, he denied the photo had ever been there, when he should have refrained from mentioning this at all. There are lots of things he could have said. He could have made a forceful statement and said that the photo had not been hidden from view.

He could have said that the museum was taking time to consider how best to use the photo in a future exhibit on Muslim-Nazi relations--true or not.

But he said none of these things. Dayan blew it. And that put winds in the sails of the idea of “removal” as opposed to “not currently on display.”

Dayan should have registered how his behavior and statement would look and feel to the public. That floor-to-ceiling photo had made a strong impact. People noticed its absence. They feel a loss. They feel as though we, as a people, scuttled an opportunity to confront the world with a shocking and important image that helps make our tragedy real to them. 

As an inexperienced spokesman, Dani Dayan created a massive PR blunder. His statement is not as it should be and stands to this day on the Yad Vashem website as a giant gaffe. It should not have gone down this way. Dayan's actions have only fueled public outrage and lent it credibility.

This leads to the thought that Dani Dayan may have been good at minor politics, but he quite frankly sucks at his new job. This issue is not going to die an easy death. It is only getting worse. 

But there is still one thing the museum can do to fix things, with or without Dani Dayan:  

Find a place to display that photo on the walls of Yad Vashem.

And soon. 


Thursday, December 30, 2021

The Yellow Spot: Detailed, contemporaneous accounts of Nazi persecution of Jews 1933-1935 sound a lot like today's antisemitism (PDF)

I just found this 1936 book, The Yellow Spot, which documents in detail the beginnings of Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany, with lots of photos and facsimiles from Nazi media.

The terror in reading this book is in the knowledge that the horrific facts recounted here in mind-numbing detail - the pogroms, the arrests, the anti-Jewish laws, the ordinary Germans enthusiastically joining the hate - were only the opening act to what was to come. All of the events in this book occurred from 1933-35, more than three years prior  to Kristallnacht. 

The echoes to today's modern antisemitism are striking. 

Just like BDS, the Nazi media had their own "cancel culture," taking photos of Germans - especially women - shopping in Jewish-owned stores and publishing them to shame them. 

The German call to boycott Jewish businesses sounds a lot like the "BDS call" to boycott Israel:

We ask you, German men and women, to fall in with this boycott. Do not buy in Jewish shops and department stores ! Do not go to Jewish lawyers ! Avoid Jewish physicians ! Show the Jews that they cannot drag Germany’s honour into the mire without being punished for it ! Whoever does not comply with this demand proves himself thereby on the side of Germany’s enemies !   

There are hundreds of examples of official and semi-official antisemitism. Just like the UN today says that everything Israel does is a war crime, the trade journal of the National Socialist hairdressers wrote: “A German hairdresser who enjoys ridding Jews of their bristles commits a crime against the community.” 

Like the Arabs who find Jews acting like normal people are being "provocative" and saying that their attacks on Jews are the Jews' fault, we see Goebbels in 1934 saying that Jews who aren't "provocative" won't be hurt but those who insist on acting like German citizens will be justifiably attacked:

We have been very lenient with the Jews. But if they think that therefore they can still be allowed on German stages, offering art to the German people; if they think that they can still sneak into editorial offices, writing for German newspapers ; if they still strut across the Kurfiirstendamm as though nothing had happened, they might take these words as a final warning. Jewry can rest assured that we will leave them alone as long as they retire quietly and modestly behind their four walls, as long as they are not provocative, and do not affront the German people with the claim to be treated as equals. If the Jews do not listen to this warning, they will have themselves to blame for anything that happens to them.

The Nazis' propaganda wasn't only against Jews, but against "Judah"as a nation. Again, the parallels between them and the anti-Israel propaganda in Arab media are obvious.

 Judah has striven to harm the German people but has given it a blessing. On Saturday, 1st April, at 10 a.m., there begins the German people’s defence against the universal criminal, the Jew. There starts a fight such as has never been dared before throughout all the centuries. Judah has asked for the fight, it shall have it ! It shall have it until it recognises that the Germany of the Brown battalions is no Germany of cowardice and surrender. Judah shall have the fight until the victory is ours! (Volkischer Beobachter, March 31, 1933)

Iranian media sounds exactly like this today. 

The parallels to today's antisemitism continue. Compare this photo from Der Sturmer in 1934 to Roger Waters' inflatable pig in concert:



Compare the Nazi mistranslations of the Talmud with that of celebrated poet Alice Walker:

Der Sturmer:
This Jew (his name and address follow) belongs to the alien race that believes itself able to carry on its race defilement with impunity just as before. He is acting according to the Talmudic principles of his race. Jewesses are too good for his vileness. Accordingly he runs after non-Jewesses. Non-Jewesses are, according to the Talmud, to be regarded as cattle ; the Jew can, therefore, defile and ruin them with an easy conscience...“ A non-Jewish girl may be defiled as soon as she is three years and one day old.” 
Alice Walker, in her poem, "It Is Our (Frightful) Duty To Study The Talmud:"

Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews, and not only
That, but to enjoy it?
Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse?
Are young boys fair game for rape?
Must even the best of the Goyim (us, again) be killed?
Pause a moment and think what this could mean
Or already has meant
In our own lifetime.

You may find that as the cattle
We have begun to feel we are
We have an ancient history of oppression
Of which most of us have not been even vaguely
Aware. You will find that we, Goyim, sub-humans, animals
-The Palestinians of Gaza
The most obvious representatives of us
At the present time – are a cruel example of what may be done
With impunity, and without conscience,
By a Chosen people,
To the vast majority of the people
On the planet
Who were not Chosen.

Antisemitic poems in Der Sturmer sound a lot like the hypnotizing anti-Israel "from the river to the sea" rhymes we hear at anti-Israel rallies:

Jewish hands are red with Christian gore,
 We demand Jewish blood and more ! 
The people hope one day to see a time 
When shooting the last Jew will be no crime !  


The Nazis carefully prepared things so that Jews literally cannot defend themselves. And that is exactly what the modern antisemites are doing with Israel, accusing it of false war crimes and false apartheid, changing international law itself to put the Jewish state in a corner, twisting anything Israeli Jews to be immoral or to be covering up for immorality, setting up UN commissions whose only purpose is to justify the eventual ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East and to call it a moral imperative.  They know Jews can defend themselves militarily now, so they are using other means to try to destroy it, but the goal is the same.

Both the Nazis in this book and the modern antisemites are preparing the world to celebrate a future genocide.

Here is the entire book. It is the most frightening thing you will read this year.








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