Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, February 06, 2015

The homeless Palestinians no one cares about

There have been weekly stories like this one from Reuters:

Egypt and Norway urged donors on Thursday, including Gulf states squeezed by low oil prices, to keep promises of providing $5.4 billion in aid for the Palestinians after the devastating war in Gaza last year.

The two nations, who led a donors' conference in Cairo in October when the cash was pledged, wrote an open letter to donors and said people in Gaza were suffering with a slower-than-expected pace of reconstruction.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the two felt it had become necessary to remind donors who had promised to help rebuild Gaza that they "should fulfil their obligations in this regard."

"No one has said to us that they're not committed to what they have pledged, but also due to oil price and other issues in the Gulf, there has been a bit of a lingering," Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende told a news conference.

"We know that there are houses now being built and reconstructed but the pace of this is not at a level where we had foreseen and where we had wished it, so this is very important," Brende said.

While it is interesting that donor nations, especially Arab states, have not been keen on paying their pledges, they at least paid lip service to helping the poor Gazans who are homeless because of Israel's bombing of terror infrastructure in their neighborhoods.

What about Palestinians who are homeless because of Lebanese bombing of terror infrastructure in their neighborhoods?

From May to September 2007, the Lebanese army heavily shelled the Nahr el-Bared camp in northern Lebanon to destroy the Fatah al-Islam terror group. The camp was completely destroyed and some 30,000 residents made homeless.

UNRWA estimated it would cost $345 million to rebuild the camp. Today, nearly 8 years later, only about half that amount has been raised and far less than half of the residents are back in homes.

There was no major summit to rebuild for Nahr el-Bared. No 5K walks to raise money. UNRWA has been much quieter about the wanton devastation done by Lebanese forces than the much more directed actions of the IDF.

It is much easier to make people care about Palestinian Arabs when Israel can be blamed for their plight.

Funny how that happens.

The EU is building illegal settlements (video)

From The Daily Mail:

The EU is acting illegally by funding unauthorised Palestinian building in areas placed under Israeli control by international law, say an NGO, international lawyers and MEPs.

More than 400 EU-funded Palestinian homes have been erected in Area C of the West Bank, which was placed under Israeli jurisdiction during the Oslo Accords – a part of international law to which the EU is a signatory.
The Palestinian buildings, which have no permits, come at a cost of tens of millions of Euros in public money, a proportion of which comes from the British taxpayer.

This has raised concerns that the EU is using valuable resources to take sides in a foreign territorial dispute.

Official EU documentation reveals that the building project is intended to ‘pave the way for development and more authority of the PA over Area C (the Israeli area)’, which some experts say is an attempt to unilaterally affect facts on the ground.

Locally, the villages are known as the ‘EU Settlements’, and can be found in 17 locations around the West Bank.

They proudly fly the EU flag, and display hundreds of EU stickers and signs. Some also bear the logos of Oxfam and other NGOs, which have assisted in the projects.

Questions have also been asked about the conduct of EU workers in the region, after a picture emerged of a man in EU uniform threatening soldiers and bystanders with a rock outside a settlement in 2012. An EU spokesperson declined to comment on the picture.

The claims have been made by Regavim, a right-of-centre Israeli NGO which has closely been documenting the construction. Its findings are backed by senior international lawyers and two MEPs.

Maja Kocijancic, a Brussels-based EU spokesperson, denied that this was happening.

‘The EU's funding will provide training and expertise, to help the relevant Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministries to plan and build new infrastructure and enable people to reclaim and rebuild their land there,’ she said.
‘To date, no construction has started yet under these programmes. The EU is not funding illegal projects.'

When shown sequences of photographs showing construction taking place, she declined to comment. She also did not comment on an EU-Oxfam sign stating that the 'main activities' of construction work are 'rehabilitation and reclamation' of land.

However, her statement appeared to be contradicted by Shadi Othman, a spokesman for the EU in the West Bank and Gaza. Speaking on the telephone from the West Bank, he accepted that the construction was taking place.

'We support the Palestinian presence in Area C. Palestinian presence should not be limited Areas A and B. ...

An Oxfam spokesperson acknowledged that unauthorised construction was taking place, but said that it was justified on humanitarian grounds.

'In recent years, around 97 percent of Palestinian permit applications for building in the Occupied Palestinian Territory have been rejected by the Israeli Government.' he said.

'This means many Palestinian communities in Area C, which is under full Israeli Government control, are being prevented from building basic, essential structures such as homes and schools.

If Oxfam says that "97% of Palestinian permit applications for building in the Occupied Palestinian Territory have been rejected by the Israeli Government" then that means that Oxfam does not consider Areas A and B to be "occupied," since Israel doesn't control building permits there - and there is plenty of building taking place in PA-controlled areas.

The Israeli politician Yariv Levine, Chairman of the House Parliamentary Committee in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, added:

'It is hypocritical of the EU to criticise Israeli construction while at the same time actively supporting and practically taking part in illegal Palestinian settlement construction on Israeli land.'

The largest of the alleged 'EU settlements' is Wadi Abu Hindi, which is about five miles away from Jerusalem. It is comprised of more than 100 houses, of which about 30 display EU signs.

Another, Khan Al Amar, is located one kilometre north of Highway One, which bisects the West Bank. It is comprised of about 50 houses, all of which displaying EU signs.

A third, Mak-Hul, in the northern West Bank near Nablus, is located on an Israeli military firing range. A fourth is Susia, in the south near Hebron.

Alan Baker, an international lawyer who took part in drafting the Oslo Accords in the Nineties, said that the EU’s actions were illegal.

‘The EU is a signatory to the Oslo Accords, so they cannot pick and choose when they recognise it,’ he said.

‘According to international law, all building in Area C must have permission from Israel, whether it is temporary or permanent.

‘The same principle applies anywhere in the world. If you want to build, you need planning permission.

‘The EU is ignoring international law and taking concrete steps to influence the facts on the ground.’

Professor Eugene Kontorovich, an international lawyer from the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, said: ‘There’s no question, the EU is openly in violation of international law.'

According to Mark English, a European Commission spokesman, Britain – which is the seventh-largest financial contributor to the EU –is likely to have 'full knowledge' of any Palestinian settlement project.

So-called "human rights" lawyer to testify on behalf of PLO terrorists

From Wikipedia:

Michael Sfard is a lawyer specializing in international human rights law and the laws of war. He has served as counsel in various cases on these topics in Israel. Sfard has represented a variety of Israeli and Palestinian human rights and peace organizations, movements and activists at the Israeli Supreme Court....Sfard and his law office provide legal counsel for Yesh Din. Sfard is also the legal counsel for Peace Now.

Yesh Din? Peace Now? Well, they care about justice, don't they?

Now, in New York, there is a trial for a lawsuit against the PLO for their support of terror act during the second intifada.

According to NRG, the PLO will be calling Michael Sfard as a witness for their side. (Also Hanan Ashrawi, who is founder and chairperson of Miftah, which has praised terrorists in the past.)

How can a self-proclaimed human rights lawyer defend an organization being sued for blowing people up? What exactly does defending terrorists have to do with human rights?

Apparently, for leftists like Sfard, "human rights" means that Arabs have the human right to blow up Jews, and Jews clearly do not have the human rights to object to being blown up.

It's all so simple.

(h/t Yenta)

02/05 Links Pt2: Did Sky News Presenter Justify Anti-Semitism?; UK '14 Record year for anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Anne Bayefsky: How the UN Mixes Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Israeli War Crimes

At the end of the anti-Semitism meeting – which was informal because formal agreement by the General Assembly to address the subject would have run smack into Arab and OIC intransigence –a joint statement was issued. The lack of formality meant it could not take the form of an official UN resolution. It does not explicitly mention Israel, but it is tangible. Fifty states signed on to what could be called the New York declaration on anti-Semitism.
Tellingly, 90 percent of the signatories are fully free democracies (on the Freedom House scale), while only 45 percent of all UN member states are fully free. The countries that participated in the event but refused to sign the commitment to combating anti-Semitism, not only included Lebanon, Turkey, Qatar and Russia, but, disgracefully, Brazil, India, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, South Africa, and Switzerland.
Less than a week later, at the UN Holocaust commemoration held on January 28, 2015 in New York, listeners heard the gut-wrenching story of one of the few surviving twins of the Nazi Dr. Mengele’s hideous experiments. Jona Laks concluded her account of the horrors of Auschwitz and surviving the Nazi death marches, only to be turned away from her former home in Poland, with this: “In 1948, an orphan, and completely alone, I made my way…to the soon to be born State of Israel. I began to rebuild my life. Only then, I began to get the feeling that I was a human being again, with a name and no more just a number.”]
It was a precise and authentic message understood long ago by the majority at the United Nations, but no longer.

Did Sky News Presenter Justify Anti-Semitism?

During Thursday morning’s review of the press on Sky News, the two studio guest reviewers made this point perfectly clear, particularly Jonny Gould. But what about Sky News presenter Eamonn Holmes’ reaction?
Jonny Gould: “The fact that it is happening around the Gaza conflict and as a consequence of it might be an understanding as to how to tackle it, but it can never be justification.
Eamonn Holmes: “It can, if you are Palestinian.”
Jonny Gould: “If you are an anti-Semitic Palestinian, yes.”
What exactly did Eamonn Holmes mean? The context of the conversation was specifically dealing with anti-Semitism in Britain. Would Holmes find it justifiable for a Palestinian living in the UK to carry out an anti-Semitic act against a British Jew?
Or is he simply stating that Palestinian anti-Semitism against Israeli Jews is understandable and even justified?

Why Do Palestinians Believe Crazy Things?

We have not seen any polls that asked Palestinians whether they believe there was a Holocaust. But a May 2009 poll by the University of Haifa found 40% of Israeli Arabs believe the Holocaust was a hoax. Note that this astonishingly high number was among Arabs who have been far more exposed to modernization and Western thinking. It seems likely that the number of Palestinians who live in Judea-Samaria or Gaza and deny the Holocaust is even higher.
Why do Palestinians believe this stuff? We leave it to sociologists, historians, and political scientists to analyze the religious and cultural factors that encourage conspiratorial thinking. We merely take note of the fact that such thinking is widespread among the Palestinians, and the implications for Israel are significant.
Hamas, in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority, in part of Judea-Samaria, already each have a de-facto state. Hamas lacks one major thing: total control of its borders. Israel’s partial blockade prevents them from acquiring tanks and jet fighters. The PA, for its part, also lacks one major thing: a full-fledged army.
So when the international community, the Jewish left, and the State Department demand that Israel lift the Gaza blockade and give the PA a sovereign state, Israelis have to ask themselves: Who would be in charge? Would reasonable, rational people run the State of Palestine? Or would the tanks and planes be in the hands of people who – by an overwhelming majority – sincerely believe crazy things, whether about 9/11 or the Holocaust or a dozen other issues?
Wishful thinkers – and there is no shortage of them in the Obama Administration, the pages of the New York Times, and the offices of various “peace” groups – look at the rest of the world and think that everyone is pretty much “just like us.” But the polls say otherwise.

Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech at the inauguration of a new headquarters of the PA's Radio and Television Corporation in Ramallah on Wednesday.

During the speech, he made it clear that an independent media is not what he is interested in.

We inaugurate today this new building of the General Authority for Radio and Television. We dreamed of this past that we hear the word 'voice of Palestine', and we were deprived of them, and you remember in the fifties the word Palestine was taboo and forbidden [in Arabic media! - EoZ], and one could not hear the name of Palestine, but only the word "refugees."

This remained a dream for many years, we yearned for it, and we did not hear during the fifties and early sixties that we were like the rest of the world and the people, we want to hear as it was in the Lebanese, Syrian and Iraqi radio, "Palestinian radio" - but we did not hear it, I wonder if this was forbidden for us, it was very difficult and we felt like we're these people that do not exist.

...There are types of media that are objective and others inflammatory and provocative that leads to peril, and this is what we do not want....

What is needed is to have media that deals with our national cause and nationalism, and must address national issues in an objective manner, and our goal is basically the national interest, in this way we have a fourth authority of Media in collaboration with three other authorities [branches of government: executive, legislative, and judiciary -EoZ], doing the right thing and conveying correct information without abusing anyone.

Or else!

Ken Roth tries to give a lesson in context

From the New York Times:

Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that both forms of killing should be condemned.

“ISIS’s despicable conduct shouldn’t make us lose sight of the largest killer of civilians in Syria: Assad’s barrel bombs,” he said in an email.

Really? Ken Roth is giving the world lessons on how to put human rights in context?

As I showed recently, the latest world report from Human Rights Watch implies that Israel is only slightly better than Syria and worse than every other nation on the planet, judging from the amount of attention HRW gives to Israel. But here is a list of counts of fatalities from conflicts in 2014:

Syria 76,000
South Sudan 40,000
Iraq 21,000
Afghanistan 14,000
Boko Haram/Africa 11,000
Mexico 7,000
Yemen 7,000
Pakistan 5,500
CAR 5,200
Ukraine 4,700
Somalia 4,400
Libya 2,800
Gaza 2,200
Darfur 2,100

Judging from that 2015 HRW report, Israel more worthy of attention than South Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen - combined.

So sorry if I have to laugh when Ken Roth reminds the world that ISIS isn't so bad compared to Syria. When it comes to distorting the seriousness of human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch does not have a very good record.

Speaking of not being able to distinguish between events that are different by orders of magnitude, another HRW researcher today compared Gaza to the Holocaust:

@BBCKimGhattas @DRovera @HolocaustMuseum @BBCNewsUS should also show pics of death and destruction in #Gaza
— Sarah Leah Whitson (@sarahleah1) January 29, 2015

(h/t EBoZ)

02/05 Links Pt1: Israeli Blood is Cheap in UNSC; PA TV sermon: Jews are "apes and pigs"

From Ian:

PA TV sermon: Jews are "apes and pigs"

In Friday's sermon on official Palestinian Authority TV, the cleric demonized Jews as "apes and pigs."
"Many Muslims are being harmed these days by a group whose hearts were sealed by Allah. 'He made of them [Jews] apes and pigs and slaves of deities' (Quran, 5:60). They are harming the livelihood of the believers [Muslims]... They withhold their [the Palestinians'] money and collect interest on it."
[Official PA TV, Jan. 30, 2015]
A few months ago, a Palestinian youth recited a poem on official PA TV, also demonizing Jews as apes and pigs, as Palestinian Media Watch reported:
"You have been condemned to humiliation and hardship
O Sons of Zion, O most evil among creations
O barbaric apes, O wretched pigs"
[Official PA TV, Sept. 12, 2014]

PA cleric: Jews are "apes and pigs and slaves of deities"

Amb. Alan Baker: UN Commission of Inquiry Violates International Norms on Fact-Finding Missions

The recent resignation of Canadian Prof. William Schabas as Chair of the UN Gaza inquiry has raised some interesting issues in the general context of UN fact-finding procedures. Shabas’ glaring anti-Israel bias was demonstrated in statements made by him over the years and now confirmed by the revelation of the clear conflict of interest arising from his consultancy work for the PLO and concealed by him from the UN and from its Human Rights Council.
The UN fact finding procedures have developed over the years through a number of declarations and studies by prominent international organizations and legal authorities, and ostensibly should have guided the UN in determining the mandate for any such commission of inquiry and in choosing the Chair of any fact-finding mission or inquiry.
However, it appears that the UN knowingly chose to ignore these well-established procedures in appointing William Schabas to chair the Gaza inquiry, and as such, the UN itself, in addition to William Schabas, have prejudiced any findings and outcome of the Commission of Inquiry and created grave doubts as to any credibility of such findings or outcome.
The following documents set out the various rules and norms for fact finding commissions, each one stressing the importance and centrality of impartiality – both of the mandate, as well as by the head and members of the commission:

Anne Bayefsky: William Schabas’ appointment was testament to the corruption at the UN Human Rights Council

As he tells the Council in his resignation letter, he imagined his “legal opinion” to the PLO on how to capitalize on the International Criminal Court “was a tiny part” of his “enormous body of scholarly work.” (Non-lawyers and the less erudite might call this being a tiny bit pregnant.) He rants, further : “when I was asked if I would accept nomination to the Commission of Inquiry, I was not requested to provide any details of my past statements and other activities concerning Palestine and Israel.”
In a final stunning display of hubris, Schabas claims that none of this should affect the legitimacy of the inquiry’s forthcoming report, to be presented to the Council in March and then being sent to the ICC. According to Schabas, the research and evidence-gathering phase he had conducted, managed and directed for five months – which will form the basis of the entire report – was “largely completed.” Indeed, “the work on the drafting of the report is beginning.”
Obviously, the credibility of the final product is irrevocably discredited — to all but the Human Rights Council, which is simply reassigning the job of Chair to one of the two remaining inquiry members (both also chosen on the basis of their prior displays of anti-Israel bias).
It is no accident that a Council notorious for applying double-standards to Israel embraced Schabas, or that a lawyer like Schabas embraced the Council. But there is no excuse for the the free world not to shun both of them and renounce their legal pogrom.

"Jihad against Israel is the only thing that unites Arabs"

From MEMRI:

Speaking on the Lebanese Mayadeen TV channel on January 31, 2015, Abd Al-Bari Atwan, former editor-in-chief of the London-based newspaper "Al-Quds Al Arabi," said: "All our guns must be turned toward that enemy [Israel], regardless of our differences, because this is the only thing that unites us."

Following is an excerpt:

Abd Al-Bari Atwan: In my view, Jihad must be directed, first and foremost, against the Israeli enemy. This is the enemy about which there is a consensus. Arabs who do not think that Israel is an enemy are neither Arabs nor Muslims. Our compass must point toward that enemy. All our guns must be turned toward that enemy, regardless of our differences, because this is the only thing that unites us.

"So if Arab unity is important to us, we've got to kill more Jews! It's the only thing we can agree on!"

Two more of those "children" killed in Gaza

Today, Islamic Jihad published a memorial for two twin brothers who were both fighters for them during the Gaza war.

Their names were Anas and Saad, and I don't think their surnames are published. They were both killed on July 20, 2014.

Here they are:

What is interesting is that the article says that they were born on December 5, 1996 - which means that they were 17 when they were killed - and considered "children" by NGOs. Furthermore, we are told that they joined Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades in late 2012, which would have been around their 16th birthdays.

Of course these martyr photos and videos were created months before they were killed.

I noted last year that 70% of th e children killed in Gaza between the ages of 9-17 were boys. The ratio goes up the older the teens are, from 62% of those 9-11 to 79% of those between 15-17. Given that we have evidence (same link) of children as young as nine being used by terror groups, a significant number of the "children" killed in Gaza must have been helping out Hamas or other terror groups.

The Meir Amit ITIC, in their latest report on how Gaza terror groups recruit children, says "An examination of the names of Gazan fatalities in Operation Protective Edge indicated adolescents who served in the military-terrorist wings of the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip. The extensive recruitment of young men and the intention to use them as auxiliary forces for the regular military-terrorist units is liable to increase the number of those killed and wounded in future confrontations between the terrorist organizations and the IDF, serving Hamas as propaganda material to use against Israel."

It may be far worse than that. Documentary filmmaker Pierre Rehov wrote last year in Gatestone:

When making one of my documentaries, the Palestinian who was leading my crew offered me a scoop. As I was French, he trusted me to be on the Palestinians' side. "You know," he said, "what pays well? When an Israeli soldier kills a child. Are you interested?" he continued. "We can arrange that. For $10,000, I can organize everything." Was he talking of a staging, or the real killing of a child? I did not dare to ask. I still nurture hope, despite the facts, that people would not willingly sacrifice children just to promote a show.

Sacrificing children is part of thee war strategy for these sick organizations.But that idea is so heinous that Westerners just don't want to believe it.

(h/t Pilpula, Yenta)

From European NGO ForMENA:

President Abbas’ and the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) long-fomenting crisis of legitimacy has reached new levels, with representatives of three hundred and fifty unpaid public-sector employees denouncing the administration in a scathing letter sent to the Arab League, European Union representatives and the Palestinian Legislative Council. Seen by ForMENA, the letter criticises Abbas’ personal appropriation of power and the increasing authoritarianism of his regime. The authors state:

“The Palestinian Authority – supposedly committed to the liberation and defence of our people – has joined the ranks of Palestine’s oppressors. The PA now violates, rather than ensures, the rights of Palestinians; it systematically destroys, rather than builds, the institutions of a future Palestinian state; it appropriates funds for its own political purposes, rather than using them to create a democratic, professional and accountable government.

“The PA is not currently fit to represent the Palestinian people, who have no confidence that, under this administration, their struggles and sacrifices will lead to an independent and free state.”

The letter also claims that the PA’s failure to pay the salaries of its employees – including doctors, civil servants and security personnel – is politically motivated, targeting those who criticise Abbas’ policies. It comes in the context of significant dissent from figures within Fatah itself, who similarly accuse Abbas of playing politics with public money. With around 150,000 people on the PA payroll, the ability to switch cash flows on and off at will through allegedly extra-legal means gives the President significant coercive power over a considerable section of the Palestinian population.

The letter goes on cite a litany of other abuses, including a flagrant disregard for human rights, the executive’s unconstitutional domination of the judiciary, arbitrary arrest and incarceration of dissenters and a despotic personalisation of power by Abbas and his inner circle. The signatories also urge the United Nations and foreign governments to pressurise the Palestinian Authority into finally holding elections, with the democratic mandate of President Abbas having long expired.

Not surprisingly, this story (which appears to be about a month old) wasn't published in the Palestinian Arab media, and therefore was missed (as far as I can tell) by every news organization. As I posted yesterday, 80% of Palestinian Arab journalists admit to not publishing the entire truth because of fear of retribution from the PA or Hamas.

To any unbiased observer, it was long obvious that Abbas is much closer to Bashar al-Assad than to Thomas Jefferson. But the Western media and Western governments are so heavily invested in the lie that Abbas is a Western-style, peace-seeking, democratically elected leader that they will bury these sorts of stories that contradict that lie anyway.

Herzog Blasts Bibi: Half Israeli Incomes Below National Average (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Tel Aviv, February 4 - Opposition leader Isaac Herzog laced into incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the economic front today, citing Netanyahu's failure to bring the incomes of the bottom half of Israeli households above the national average.

Central Bureau of Statistics data indicate that during every year that Netanyahu has been in office, fully half of Israeli families failed to earn more than the median figure for all Israeli households. Herzog called a press conference to discuss the findings at the "Zionist Camp" campaign headquarters, and to trumpet what he called "Bibi's unwillingness to help struggling families."

"It is long past time for Binyamin Netanyahu to retire from politics," asserted Herzog, whose political alliance with Hatnuah leader Tzipi Livni is polling at a dead heat with Netanyahu's Likud. "Half of this country's households cannot hope to bring in more than the median income. This statistic is a searing indictment of Netanyahu's policies on the domestic front. Only a socialist-minded government that we would assemble can hope to bridge that gap."

Herzog's ally, former Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni, seconded his remarks. "The math is so simple I am not entirely certain why it took us this long to notice," she said. "But as the statistics indicate, this inequality has been going on for years. "It's a documented feature of the Israeli economy that you can see right from the day Netanyahu took office."

Other Netanyahu opponents weighed in on the data, as well. "Our party has been saying for a very long time that Binyamin Netanyahu is the wrong choice to lead this country, and not only because of our opposition to his policies on the Palestinian front," said Meretz Chairwoman Zahava Gal-On. "As the Statistics Bureau data make clear, half the country's families are wallowing below the median income. This is no way to run an economy."

Meretz MK Ilan Gilon added that he had checked Central Bureau Of Statistics figures for Netanyahu's term in office during the late 1990's and found the same result. "This is not something you can simply blame on the global economy, or a recession," he said. "The late nineties were a time of economic upturn. It's when this country's tech sector really started taking off. But if you look back at the statistics from the first Netanyahu government, it stares you right in the face: back then, as well, half the families in Israel were unable to pull in enough money each month to meet the national average."

Likud representatives declined to comment on the statistics. Sara Netanyahu, the premier's wife, suggested that struggling families could collect used beverage bottles and redeem them for thirty agorot each to help defray expenses.

02/04 Links Pt2: Barry Rubin’s Improbable Journey; Israel & Holocaust historian Martin Gilbert dies 79

From Ian:

Barry Rubin’s Improbable Journey

Today, February 3, marks one year since Barry Rubin, scholar and friend, lost his bout with an aggressive cancer. He was sixty-four. The many tributes published upon his passing celebrated him as a prolific and passionate advocate for his adopted country, Israel, and as a tireless scholar who generated a steady flow of writings and an astonishing array of initiatives: a think tank, several journals, and many conferences. His highly regarded expertise made him the go-to source on the Middle East for journalists, diplomats, and some Israeli public figures.
This was Barry Rubin, the finished product. Had you told me thirty-five years ago, when I first met him, that he would become not only “one of the great intellectual defenders of Israel,” but an Israeli, I would have dismissed you. Nothing would have seemed so improbable.
Barry grew up in northwest Washington to well-to-do parents who strived to assimilate. He later recalled having “no sense of my own history, coming from a family which had tried to obliterate its own past.” Barry had no Zionist upbringing whatsoever—no youth movement, no summer camp, no family trip to Israel. “When I attended one-day-a-week religious school at Washington’s premiere Reform synagogue,” he later wrote, “we were told that Jewish history began with the discovery of the New World. Hebrew was taught without any reference to the existence of the state of Israel.” (Personal experience would inspire the mature Barry to write a book-length critique of Jewish assimilation.)

‘Pugnacious Zionist’ Martin Gilbert was the chronicler of modern Jewry

To the outside world, Sir Martin Gilbert was an eminent historian, a member of Britain’s Iraq Inquiry chaired by Sir John Chilcot, and – overall – Churchill’s biographer.
But to the Jewish world Martin Gilbert, who died Tuesday, was a passionate Jew and Zionist, a Soviet Jewry campaigner and chronicler of the Holocaust, repeatedly using his forensic skills to unpick telling details of the Jewish experience in the 20th century.
In his last summer vacation from Magdalene College Oxford, in 1959, Gilbert, who described himself as a “pugnacious Zionist” at university, went with a group of friends to visit Treblinka, Auschwitz and Birkenau, seeing “the doors of the huts, flapping in the wind.”
It was an unusual trip to have made at the time, but it undoubtedly sowed the seeds of Gilbert’s life-long, clear-eyed commitment to recording the Holocaust. It eventually led to one of Gilbert’s most popular and accessible books, “The Boys,” the personal stories of 732 concentration camp survivors, men and women, who ultimately made their second homes in Britain.
Even the most assiduous you-never-know-when-it-might-come-in-useful research couldn’t really account for the sheer volume of his work, I noted, wondering how on earth he did it.