When the Netanyahu regime hosted the Auschwitz commemoration, they hurried in “humility” and did not take a look over the apartheid wall and further denied the suffering of the occupied, racial discrimination, ethnic cleansing and displacement – and what was only a few kilometers away happened in Gaza.
The Criminalization of Criticism of Israel and the Shameless Attempt at Politics to Abuse the Holocaust and Auschwitz
By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski
If the memory of the Auschwitz concentration camp’s liberation by the Red Army moves to Poland and Germany this week, a German-Jewish circle will be closed that excludes Palestinians and will only refer to Steinmeier’s words: “We stand with Israel” and “We protect Jewish life”. But doesn’t the legitimate question arise here of how one can protect Jewish life here if one stands firmly on the side of an apartheid and occupying state like the German federal government? Doesn’t this policy endanger Jewish life? Do you really do a favor to German citizens of Jewish faith if you make them blanket supporters, even hostages, of international and human rights crimes committed by the “Jewish state”?
German-Jewish governor of the Zionist state terror regime
Are German Jews really so naive today that they close their eyes to it? Or have they succumbed to the tireless Israeli Hasbara (propaganda) who wants to convince them that anti-Semitism has increased to such an extent that “they look where the suitcase is”, as the President of the Central Council of Jews, Schuster, put it? And isn’t it precisely these German-Jewish governors of the Zionist state terror regime who are trying to make their fellow believers the goal pursued by the “Jewish state” of making Israel “only” tasty for Jews as a “safe haven”?
Not only that in Yad Vashem Steinmeier almost melted with hypocritical humility and was not ashamed to pray in Hebrew at the beginning of his speech – with the words: “Praise the Lord that he will let me be here today” and cheerfully cheerfully: ” What a grace, what a gift “that I can speak to them here in Yad Vashem today.”
But a wasted gift! If Steinmeier thinks that the great German guilt he bears in the “soulfulness” of reconciliation to forget everything that is happening today, he is wrong. And he also ignored at the event that the Gaza concentration camp was very close but forgotten. How history repeats itself is terrifying. No, there is no factory murder in Gaza, but “only” a gradual one. If Germany really did live up to its responsibility, the answer to the phrase “never again” would only know one answer. The responsibility, as Steinmeier means, has been registered in the Federal Republic of Germany from day one. If this Germany would only do justice to itself and its historical responsibility, then it should do so. And that’s part of it, not to close your eyes to the suffering of the Palestinians and the occupation of Palestine. Had Steinmeier forgotten that the floor on which he gave his “humility speech” was Palestinian?
Peace order according to Zionist-judaizing “peace ideas”
Did Steinmeier really believe what he was saying when he said in the “Terrible Auschwitz” that the world has learned lessons, has established a peace order based on human rights and international law? Isn’t it the “Jewish state” on whose side we stand that is trampling on exactly these human rights and international law and only accepting a peace order according to its Zionist-judaizing “peace ideas”?
Didn’t the meeting between Pence and Netanyahu immediately after the end of the commemoration at the US embassy in Jerusalem, where the idea of the “ultimate Trump deal” (peace plan!) For Israel and Palestine be discussed? In fact, Palestinians will not exist, just like their hoped-for state – all in the spirit of the “Jewish State”! Thanks to the “generous” opening and at Netanyahu’s request, opposition leader Gantz was also invited to the White House, which was like a humiliation. When Gantz and Netanyahu had spoken out in favor of annexing the Jordan Valley after winning the election. When the “ultimate deal” was unveiled in Washington on Tuesday, it was the “ultimate fraud” of the century. So what can still happen on the way to the final solution of Judaization? But Steinmeier didn’t notice anything about it, since he was too busy praising the gentleman who let him take part in this spectacle.
Federal President Steinmeier’s embarrassment and infamy cannot be beaten
No, Steinmeier, who, by the way, said this prayer without kippah, could not be beaten for me in embarrassment and infamity, especially since he pursued the main tactic of denigrating criticism of Israel as allegedly growing anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel with the assertion: “if under the guise of alleged Criticism of Israeli politics kicks out crude anti-Semitism ”, stall. But hello, crude anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel, isn’t that a little cheap, Mr. President? Isn’t criticism of Israel particularly important in times of Israel’s attempt to judaise the last remaining Palestine, make the lives of the Palestinians increasingly unbearable and make them eternal prisoners in their own country?
Yes, it’s always the same evil, but with new perpetrators following the old pattern. When people rise above others and think they have the right to do so just because they have suffered. You, Mr. Steinmeier, were so moved by philosophy that you fell into the trap of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic ideas of right-wing extremists, who had so far been neglected in Germany, lumped together with the so important criticism of the politics of ” Jewish State ”. To be on the side of a state that disregards everything that Germany has in the Basic Law is unworthy of a German President, and I turn ashamed and disgusted.
Ronald Lauder: a particularly bad example of false speeches
Do we need a Holocaust commemoration day with the most mendacious speeches? A particularly bad example in Auschwitz was the speech by the President of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, who actually dared to abuse this memory and call on all states to no longer support the “shameful fixation” of the United Nations on Israel. Where no other country was willing to accept Jews in their distress. They would have established a living democracy, they would have performed miracles after another, and they would have had to defend their existence every day like no other country in the world. And that is why Israel is condemned by the UN, journalists and even some politicians. In the past seven years alone, the UN General Assembly has passed 202 resolutions, where countries around the world are sentenced. Of these 202 resolutions, 163 were directed against Israel and only 39 against other countries. 163 against Israel, 39 against the rest of the world.
“We all know that these decisions are absurd,” says Mr. Lauder. No, they are correct and important. The “Auschwitz Minister” already announced that he would advocate fairer UN resolutions for Israel. And then the highlight came as the crowning conclusion of the Lauder propaganda speech that it was completely clear that this obsessive anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. – The untruths that the President of the World Jewish Congress spread in this Hasbara speech and, moreover, on this occasion was scandalous. After all, the “Jewish State” is the only state in the world that has illegally occupied and displaced a people for decades and that means that due to the Holocaust, they have every right on their side to negate criticism and UN resolutions and to continue so thanks to US aid , forever. Those who have such inconsiderate leaders as Lauder at the top shouldn’t be surprised to be treated with dislike. No, Mr. Lauder, anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, but a democratic belief.
Don’t support instrumentalization of the Holocaust!
The only thing that really touched me was the speeches on Monday, January 27th, in Auschwitz. Former inmates spoke and reported about their suffering. By then at the latest, we should all be aware that history repeats itself. Is it not always possible to fight the persecution and murder of innocent people based on their religion, national identity or skin color? But we must also not support the instrumentalization of the Holocaust if the Zionist-Jewish colonial state, whose foundation is based on a racist ideology that sent all morality and humanity to the desert, engages in racist discrimination against the Palestinians who move from the Holocaust directly to the Nakba led. The Western Alliance left the Nakba to make up for their own failures, the catastrophe of the theft of historic Palestine and the displacement of its inhabitants. They have not even tried to prevent these crimes, but have supported this new crime. While the “Millennial Empire” with its crimes lasted only six years, the Zionist crimes have been in full swing for decades, supported by the “hypocritical Judeo-Christian community of values”.
When the Netanyahu regime hosted the Auschwitz commemoration, they hurried in “humility” and did not take a look over the apartheid wall and further denied the suffering of the occupied, racial discrimination, ethnic cleansing and displacement – and what was only a few kilometers away happened in Gaza. The screams and misery would have been a warning especially for the participants of this propaganda event. But this opportunity was wasted. Only the Jewish-Zionist regime was allowed to commemorate past suffering, but not without using this memory for dirty agitation against Iran. What Netanyahu, Pence and Rivlin put forward against Iran in this regard was unworthy. No, Iran is certainly not planning a Holocaust, but even this country, which has not yet attacked any other country, every right to self-defense, as the “Jewish State” claims for itself. When Israeli President Rivlin also emphasized that the international community must stand together like “a solid wall in favor of human rights”, it left you speechless! Rivlin, Steinmeier’s friend, as a newspaper called him, “Defender of Values”, will be in Auschwitz with Steinmeier and will then fly directly to Berlin with the presidential plane to meet the German after a state banquet and a meeting with Merkel on Wednesday Bundestag to hold this year’s commemorative speech at the special event in the German Bundestag on the occasion of the commemoration day for the victims of National Socialism in Berlin. What an unfortunate decision let the highest representative of a state speak, of all people, who represents exactly what is despicable. Rivlin, who supports a “Greater Israel” (it looks like it will soon get it) and rejects a Palestinian state as a “defender of values”, only shows what can be thought of such “values”.
In Berlin, people rolled over as a “greeting for Rivlin. Bundestag President Schäuble called for more to be done against anti-Semitism. He clearly referred to “our” basic law: “Human dignity is inviolable”. We would have to stand up for this every day, and not just at commemorative events. True, Mr. Schäuble, but doesn’t that also apply to the Palestinians and their inviolable dignity?
Mandatory propaganda visits to the “Jewish State”?
When Rivlin’s “state visit” began on Tuesday, he and Steinmeier attended Jewish Moses Mendelsohn High School and asked students to visit Israel, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, and former concentration camps. Steinmeier called this a necessary addition to school lessons. So after compulsory concentration camp visits, the compulsory propaganda visits to the “Jewish State” should now come, of course without the illegally occupied areas, including Gaza. Are these the “German Value Travel”? Then came a visit to the “Minister of War Kramp-Knarrenbauer”, who was already very eager to intensify military cooperation with the President of the “Jewish State”. Will Bundeswehr soldiers “push services” in the occupied territories in accordance with the “German Reason”.
In memory of Auschwitz, shouldn’t Steinmeier actually encourage those Germans who reject the occupation policy and show solidarity with the Palestinian people in order to protect them from further genocide and final displacement? No, it cannot be repeated often enough, the Holocaust is no justification for supporting the continuing historical injustice to which the Palestinians are still exposed. Auschwitz and the Nakba are inextricably linked. These are the lessons from Auschwitz that must finally be drawn 75 years after liberation.
If the churches and Pope Francis remember the liberation and are aware of their “history of guilt” and say the beautiful sentence: “Indifference is unacceptable”, then a new guilt builds up if they are indifferent to the sufferings of the Palestinians. Yes, it is the same evil that is happening in Palestine, under all our eyes, and again with German support. It is a mockery that the “Auschwitz Minister” Maas, of all people, worries about whether Germany is still a home for people of Jewish faith, and Minister of Culture Grütters makes the suggestion, which cannot be surpassed by feeble embarrassment, of wearing the Star of David in one day out of solidarity who is not only a symbol of oppression for the people of occupied Palestine. If the anti-Semitism commissioner for “Jewish life” wants to brand Israeli criticism as anti-Semitism and fantasize about a threat from an increase, then this is not the case. According to the historian and anti-Semitism researcher Prof. Wolfgang Benz, the media-fueled anti-Semitism debate obscures the view of new problems. He hits the mark. And the former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor, sees no increase in anti-Semitism. In fact, however, there is an increase in criticism from German citizens about the politics of the “Jewish state”, and it does not come from the AfD, which is firmly on the side of the Jews and the Jewish state, but from democratic citizens, who took Auschwitz to heart and learned their lessons from it and are not indifferent. We should and can be proud of this together.
UN on the side of supporters of the non-violent BDS campaign
And we can feel strengthened that the UN is on our side, which recently criticized the inglorious “anti-Semitism decision of the Bundestag”, which restricts freedom of expression, especially at events by supporters of the non-violent BDS campaign. Where and in which major newspaper was this exposed in a prominent place? Enough shameless criminalization of criticism of Israel.
The liberators of Auschwitz should also think of this when they meet this week in Yad Vashem for commemoration, and do not remain silent when injustice occurs, especially when the Jewish state is guilty.
NEVER AGAIN, and that doesn’t just apply to Auschwitz
By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski
If on January 27th the heads of state of this world will travel to Jerusalem to commemorate the victims of National Socialism and to liberate the Auschwitz extermination camp, then one thing is certain: they will become part of a staging of the Jewish-Zionist occupation regime that is second to none examined.
“Unique” event
As Haaretz reported, “fittingly” to the event, the Mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Leon, invited the participants in the World Holocaust Forum, which is taking place this week in Jerusalem, to a “unique” event with live music and a DJ Cave under the old town. This Zedekah Cave, also known as the “Solomon Quarries,” is operated by the state-owned East Jerusalem Development Company. (A Jerusalem “judaizing” authority) When this draft of the invitation had leaked unplanned, the party was tried to play down as an event for the press, that the invitation was “only” a draft that was leaked to the media while in the official version no DJ or “after party” is mentioned. (1)
Auschwitz as a synonym
Four days before this anniversary, a memorial event will take place in Yad Vashem, which Auschwitz wants to remember as a synonym for uniqueness. In fact, Auschwitz and the factory-like extermination and persecution of Jews is unique in Nazi Germany, but still comparable to later crimes and genocides. It is in no way a matter of offsetting if we make comparisons, probably not equating them, between the persecution of Jews and the ongoing expulsion and occupation in Palestine. That must be allowed 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz and the end of World War II.
More than questionable memory
If today it is wholeheartedly pointed out that on the 75th anniversary the representatives of the Allied States of the victorious powers will deliver their speeches which have freed the world from the Holocaust, together with Germany as the perpetrator who has recognized the guilt ”, together with Israel the representative the “Jewish nation”, then this commemoration is more than questionable.
Turks bashing and Israeli state terror
Few states and people offered protection to Jews from persecution, housed them, and saved them from annihilation. I would like to explicitly refer to Turkey, which provided shelter for many Jews and saved them from persecution. It should not be forgotten that Turkey currently welcomes around 3.8 million Syrian refugees. The Netanyahu regime should not forget this when it attacks the Turkish government, which, under Erdogan, is one of the few who repeatedly criticize the crimes of the illegal occupation and their consequences. In fact, Erdogan is right when he compares the Gaza concentration camp to the Holocaust and attacks the Israeli “state terror”. Finally, the strictest standards are imposed on Turkey, and the media outbid Erdogan criticism and Turkish bashing, while Israel and Jews are placed on a pedestal and protected as “treasures”. Germany, which itself welcomed so many refugees, should support Turkey in its pursuit of EU membership instead of rejecting it. Muslims are in a very bad position in society, are marginalized, defamed and attacked. While anti-Semitism is excessively exaggerated and the anti-Semitism officers of almost every federal state ignore the main problem, the justified criticism of Israel’s politics is instead branded as anti-Semitism by all means in order to silence it forever. In the same context, Muslims are demonized as new anti-Semites because they no longer want to silently accept the occupation crimes visible to all in the “Jewish state”. Islam hatred has long been established in Germany and we have to defend ourselves against it. Muslims as New Jews? It is precisely the memory of Auschwitz that makes it necessary to fight against the prevailing Islamophobia and to show solidarity with the Muslims instead of with international crimes under Jewish law. (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Wasn’t it also Allies who refused to accept Jewish refugees and weren’t they blind to the persecution of the Jews? Who made Hitler so strong and who supported him and his Nazi regime financially and ideologically? The British Chamberlain and the Petain-Vichy government in France, Mussolini and Franco as allies contributed much to the strength, fighting power and possibility of war. Large US corporations, as well as international, sometimes professing anti-Semites, were fired up for Hitler and his henchmen. (7) (8) (9) (10)
Anti-Semitism turned into Philosemitism
German industry and banks, which are now infamously closing the accounts of Israeli-critical Jews and organizations in order to celebrate a new anti-Semitism and who outbid themselves in their friendship with the “Jewish state”, are the example of how anti-Semitism has turned into philosemitism.
Myth of the “Jewish people”
While the Jewish-Zionist establishment, from left to right, still denies the disaster of the Palestinian people, the Nakba, when Israel was founded in 1948, and does not want to acknowledge that this indigenous Palestinian people was expelled and expropriated, with the intention of this people To deny his identity, the myth of the “Jewish people” was invented and the “invention of the Jewish people” was born. Judaism is a religion like any other and by no means a “people”, as Schlomo Sand impressively stated in his book. But only with these myths could the Zionist regime advance recognition of the existence of a “Jewish state”, with the constant judaization of Palestine as a reason for the state. (11)
No “German Reason” for the “Jewish State”
So how can one recognize a Jewish apartheid state 75 years after Auschwitz that uses a Nakba law to deny government funds to cultural and educational institutions that commemorate the Israeli atrocities that the Palestinians suffered and to make shabby attempts To rewrite, cover up and deny parts of the story? The same applies to the Nation-State Law, a completely one-sided and discriminatory law that deliberately excludes minorities and unilaterally favors the Jewish population. With this “race law” and apartheid model, the “Jewish state” has finally become an ethnocracy only for Jews, which the Chancellor has declared to be the “German Reason” and whose false demand for “right to exist” has to be recognized by the Germans. (12)
The “Jewish state” tries to silence us all
Have Jews forgotten the Holocaust when they persecute Palestinians as descendants of the victims, persecute human rights defenders and BDS supporters, and the hypocritical community of states also allows these crimes if they deal with the past incorrectly. No, we are all committed to helping the Palestinians achieve their freedom because we cannot allow them to remain the last victims / victims of the Holocaust, and it is completely without fault. The “Jewish State” is trying to silence us all, to cover up and continue to commit the crimes in peace, now even more strengthened by the US and the Trump administration than willing helpers.
Disgusted by this lobbyism
Why do you think the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which leads the international smear campaign against the increasingly successful non-violent BDS movement, is funding its anti-BDS propaganda in major news outlets and buying space in mainstream Israeli newspapers to cover up its messages spread of objectivity in these paid articles. We also find this influence of the Israel lobby increasingly common in German Leit (d) media. The Zionist regime and its lobbyists are trying more and more to spread this opinion-making process, but readers and media consumers are becoming increasingly awake and disgusted by this lobbying and find out information in reputable internet media. And that is exactly what is a thorn in the side of lobbyists they know about the danger of this competition. The media, politics and lobby should not be too stupid and think that we cannot distinguish very well what is offered on the Internet. We notice very quickly when we are presented with Hasbara propaganda, and more and more often after trips to journalists paid for by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No matter how proud the ministry is, it has created a “network” of national and international organizations to implement its policies. That does not make this apartheid state more democratic, even if we are repeatedly instructed to do so. Ultimately, it will not benefit them, it will only harm them and expose them as the eternal illegal occupiers of Palestine. (13) that we cannot distinguish very well what is offered on the Internet. We notice very quickly when we are presented with Hasbara propaganda, and more and more often after trips to journalists paid for by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No matter how proud the ministry is, it has created a “network” of national and international organizations to implement its policies. That does not make this apartheid state more democratic, even if we are repeatedly instructed to do so. Ultimately, it will not benefit them, it will only harm them and expose them as the eternal illegal occupiers of Palestine. (13) that we cannot distinguish very well what is offered on the Internet. We notice very quickly when we are presented with Hasbara propaganda, and more and more often after trips to journalists paid for by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No matter how proud the ministry is, it has created a “network” of national and international organizations to implement its policies. That does not make this apartheid state more democratic, even if we are repeatedly instructed to do so. Ultimately, it will not benefit them, it will only harm them and expose them as the eternal illegal occupiers of Palestine. (13) No matter how proud the ministry is, it has created a “network” of national and international organizations to implement its policies. That does not make this apartheid state more democratic, even if we are repeatedly instructed to do so. Ultimately, it will not benefit them, it will only harm them and expose them as the eternal illegal occupiers of Palestine. (13) No matter how proud the ministry is, it has created a “network” of national and international organizations to implement its policies. That does not make this apartheid state more democratic, even if we are repeatedly instructed to do so. Ultimately, it will not benefit them, it will only harm them and expose them as the eternal illegal occupiers of Palestine. (13)
In the end, the truth will prevail
No matter how many propaganda articles, letters to the editor and threats against us are published, in the end the truth will prevail that cannot be covered up in the long run.
Seventy-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, it is time for an avenue to honor the people who hid and helped Jews to hide their lives. There is no need for stealing, no monuments, but the memory of the righteous in Germany. As a warning for a NEVER AGAIN, also a NEVER AGAIN, if Palestinians and Muslims are affected. So I want to remind you of my father Heinz Galinski’s legacy. “I did not survive Auschwitz to remain silent about a new injustice.”
Don’t be silent if the “Jewish state” is wrong
The liberators of Auschwitz should also think of this when they meet this week in Yad Vashem for commemoration, and do not remain silent when injustice occurs, especially when the Jewish state is guilty.
Never again; and that doesn’t just apply to Auschwitz
The Bitter (by Erich Fried)
You don’t want to hear me because you don’t want to be robbed of what I’m telling you it’s wrong. Do you think I can say it easily and without hesitation?
Do you think I enjoy speaking against people, many of whom have only been driven astray by persecution and despair , where they have run away?
Do you think it is very easy to call in all four winds that some of my relatives who escaped the SS took their murderers’ actions as their role models? I’m almost as reluctant to say that as you hear it
Do you think it leaves me cold to get a letter from an old mother whose three sons were gassed in Auschwitz and who asks me how can I speak against my own people because so much blood has been spilled from our blood?
I know that I am not really speaking against the Jews, but only against the wrong way of those Jews who believe in crimes against the Palestinians , a country and a future can be built
I know that I am trying to help save the Jews in Israel and their children by timely complaining against those crimes in their name that would otherwise be their doom
But before the letter from the woman with the dead sons it is no consolation that I know better
Time and again, attempts are being made to establish the Holocaust as the break with civilization, which it was, as the ONLY day of remembrance. Why is there no Nakba day of remembrance so inextricably linked to the Holocaust? And what about the 872 days (from 1941 to 1944) of the siege of Leningrad by German troops, which also ended on January 27? During this siege with the aim of the Nazis to systematically starve the Leningrad population, estimates estimated that between 630,000 and 1.5 million people died.
The Motherland Calls is a breathtaking 85-m high statue, the centrepiece of the “Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad” memorial at the Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd (former Stalingrad) commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad. It is the world’s tallest statue depicting a female figure
Remedy remembrance culture
By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski
The commemoration of the victims of National Socialism and the International Day of Remembrance of Holocaust Rembrance Day (Holocaust Victims) on 27 January has again become a nefarious “non-memorial day”. Time and again, attempts are being made to establish the Holocaust as the break with civilization, which it was, as the ONLY day of remembrance. Why is there no Nakba day of remembrance so inextricably linked to the Holocaust? And what about the 872 days (from 1941 to 1944) of the siege of Leningrad by German troops, which also ended on January 27? During this siege with the aim of the Nazis to systematically starve the Leningrad population, estimates estimated that between 630,000 and 1.5 million people died.
It is incomprehensible until today, which cruelties the Germans did to these trapped humans. It was the inferno par excellence and comparable to an extermination camp. More than 700,000 dead army fighters lost their lives fighting for Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. The German Wehrmacht knew what it was doing and reported exactly about the conditions.
Infame Journaille not to outnumber perversity
If today, 75 years after this crime against humanity, the Süddeutsche Zeitung thinks nothing better than to pull the liberation of Leningrad and the Russian commemoration and thus the victims in the dirt, then that should concern us. No, not Moscow “abuses” the memory of the victims, as Silke Bigalke in their dirt commentary “Blocked Remembrance” in the SZ January 25 to the best. Russia has every right to remember that day. How this is to happen is certainly not to be decided by German journalists. We should all be ashamed of all this abominable behavior of an infamous journalist. (1)
Also, that 75 years after the end of the siege of Leningrad, a German government supported by nothing to justify sanctions against Russia, and thus figuratively starve Russian citizens starve, can not be beat for perversity. Apart from that, you are harming our economy and thus us, the citizens and sovereigns! We German citizens are well aware of Russia’s ever-extending hand and its magnanimity towards Germany, who shy away from the belligerent transatlanticists in the government like the devil shuns the holy water. The “generous gesture as a symbol that we are aware of our responsibility” of Foreign Minister Maas, with 12 million euros to support surviving victims in Russia, is not enough! It would have to be 12 billion and the immediate lifting of the blockade against Russia.
What happens instead? Russia is becoming the bad boy of the INF agreement, and massive conventional armament is threatening. While NATO is boasting ever-increasing arms spending – at the expense of the taxpayer who wants to live in peace – the US and even Israel are getting stronger, without controls and threats of action.
So how can a contract be rescued that wants to be canceled by the US, with all the dirty tricks? How can we get the US or Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty before forcing other countries to comply with the treaty? What a mendacious policy of double standards, which now guides our foreign policy. Especially Germany should always be aware of its responsibility towards Russia.
Are we again in the Cold War and the nuclear deterrent as a weapon? It seems like you have not learned anything and are getting back into forgotten strategies. In this context, I am thinking of “Operation Unthinkable,” a war plan commissioned by the then British Prime Minister, Churchill, on May 22, 1945, shortly after the German surrender of the Wehrmacht, the military repulse of the then Soviet Union, and the restoration of Poland by Great Britain and the US, but was classified by the British Chief of Staff Committee as military impracticable. Thus, fortunately, nothing came of Churchill’s fantasies about the “Third World War” against the Soviet Union, except for his treacherous slogan “we slaughtered the wrong pig. (2) (3) (4)
Under the hypocritical term “western values”
Even today we experience similar simulation games and Nato fantasies under the guise of “peacekeeping measures”! This ranges from the brutal Nato-Ost fraud, the grotesque “defense of Germany in the Hindu Kush” and other warlike aggression to “regime changes” and blunt interference in the affairs of sovereign countries. Everything under the hypocritical term “western values”.
The USA has been operating regime changes for decades, for example in Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Syria and Egypt, and they are currently trying to do so in Venezuela. It supports the US puppet, the self-proclaimed transitional president and parliamentary president Guaido in his coup attempt against elected President Maduro. I find it extremely reprehensible that the EU and Germany at the front line behind these putschists and sets in Gutsherrenmanier Maduro an ultimatum until 3 February to start new elections, otherwise they threaten the recognition of the putschists. The USA, Canada, Australia, some Latin American states and Israel (!) Have already done this. Is this really compatible with “western values”? I mean no, because if those are the values, we can not really lower any more. A statement by Washington in the UN Security Council to support Guaido failed to support China and Russia. Turkey, too, thankfully backed Maduro.Once again, with the old trick of smugglers, the shortage of food and payments on the screw, people are forced to make a coup.
So the solidarity of the more than 70 intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and other well-known personalities, is so important that in an open letter “in the interest of the Venezuelan people, the region and the principle of national sovereignty” an end to the US Intervention in Venezuela. Critical German voices are sought in vain! (5)
The policy of the German government under Merkel leads us into the uncritical transatlanticization and arms trap, which inevitably leads to the abyss. So, if 75 years after the end of the war and the liberation of Auschwitz, German soldiers are stationed in the “Jewish State” and trained to be armed combat drones, then the responsible German politicians have learned nothing from our history. German soldiers are trained by brutal and murderous Jewish “defense soldiers”, an army that does not shy away from brutal extrajudicial executions, brutal occupation crimes and genocide in Gaza. (6)
Chancellor Merkel can not be beaten by malicious hypocrisy
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statement, which never interferes in “internal affairs” in the “Jewish state,” described Iran’s policy as “threatening to Israel” in a radio interview with an Israeli broadcaster on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is not malignant to outbid is.
Because not Iran – who has never attacked another country militarily – is a threat to the “Jewish state”, but the militarily armed Israel threatens and combats for years already Iran by all means. Merkel’s kowtowing goes so far as to show understanding for the “concerns of Israel over Iran” and that she considers it “important and correct” that Israel represents its “security interests”, and refers to the Israeli – in violation of international law – air strikes against Syria does not condemn them, but actually says: “Israel must secure its existence, and the situation in Syria is, of course, a very threatening one for Israel as well”. In addition, Merkel continued, “we are also committed to ensuring that, for example, no Iranian forces come so close to the Golan Heights”. But Merkel can speak as she wants: the occupied Golan is and remains Syrian and will one day be liberated! (7)
As it turns out, Merkel’s statements are not in line with our democratic principles. Their comments on the illegally occupied Golan Heights, which the “Jewish State” claims to be forever, are hardly reconcilable with international law. If this is our official policy, then we have moved away from all norms. While Russia was promptly sanctioned because of the secession of the Crimea after a previous referendum – because many international lawyers are by no means concerned about an “annexation” – the “Jewish state” is allowed to land their land every day. The Israeli crimes against international law, human rights, illegal occupation and the policy of apartheid against the Palestinian people have never been sanctioned.After all, according to Merkel, these are “internal affairs” of the “Jewish friends” who can still enjoy their support and shameful denial of Palestinian rights. This is the philosemitic “Christian-Zionist” Merkel policy 75 years after the end of the war and with the empty mantra “Never again”.
To include Russians and Palestinians equally in commemoration!
The “Jewish State” abuses the memory of the victims of the Holocaust – and with energetic German help. There is no memory without peace, and Israel was never ready to make peace with the Palestinians. When the Bundestag commemorates the victims of the Nazi regime on January 31, it would be time to finally include the Russians and the Palestinians in this commemoration on an equal footing, otherwise this ritual will remain as unnecessary and hypocritical as every year, and it will degenerate to the weapon of remembrance culture.
As Israelis commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, we here at DesertPeace pay tribute to one survivor that truly believed in the words “NEVER AGAIN” …TO ANYONE!
In Memory of Hedy Eptein
Hedy Epstein in her St. Louis neighborhood Photo provided by Dianne Lee
(St. Louis Public Radio) – Hedy Epstein was arrested 10 days after Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, in August 2014.
She didn’t like the way people who were demonstrating against the killing were being treated by police and the National Guard, so she joined a group of peaceful protesters. They marched to Gov. Jay Nixon’s office in the Wainwright Building in downtown St. Louis.
Arrest wasn’t initially in her plans, but Ms. Epstein figured if she could survive the Holocaust, she could survive a brief stint in jail, even if she was 90 years old.
“I was just going to be somebody in the crowd,” Ms. Epstein told Newsweek. “I guess maybe I was impulsive: Someone said, ‘Who is willing to be arrested if that happens?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m willing.’”
Ms. Epstein, who had been on the front lines of fighting for causes she believed in for most of her life, died Thursday, May 26, of advanced metastatic cancer at her home in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood. She was 91.
“I’ve been an activist since I was 16,” Ms. Epstein said last year as she walked briskly near her Waterman Boulevard condo, something she’d done almost daily for the past 30 years. She expressed no dismay at being arrested at 90 on failure to disperse charges (later dismissed), saying simply: “Why not me? They handcuffed all nine of us.”
After the massive protests died down, the Black Lives Matter movement continued. Ms. Epstein supported the effort by putting a Black Lives Matter sign in her window, despite knowing that someone had complained about another neighbor doing so.
“I did not take my sign down,” Ms. Epstein smiled defiantly, “and no one said anything about it.”
Escaping the Holocaust
Few people dared cross Ms. Epstein, a diminutive force to be reckoned with. Her fearlessness had been forged by the horrors of the Holocaust.
Hedwig Wachenheimer was born Aug. 15, 1924, in Freiburg, Germany. As Adolph Hitler rose to power, her parents began to see signs of trouble to come.
The Nazis confiscated the dry goods business her father operated with his brother. Ms. Epstein was kicked out of school with the words of her principal ringing in her ears: “Get out, you dirty Jew!” That day, she arrived home to a ransacked house. Her father was arrested and led away in his pajamas.
Unable to secure travel documents for themselves, Ms. Epstein’s parents, Hugo and Ella (Eichel) Wachenheimer, arranged for their 14-year-old only child to escape Germany on May 18, 1939. She traveled to England on a ship as part of Kindertransport, the British rescue operation that saved 10,000 children from the Nazis. Her parents died at Auschwitz in the summer of 1942.
Most of Ms. Epstein’s relatives did not survive the Holocaust. She remained in England until 1945, when she returned to Germany to work as a research analyst for U.S. prosecutors during the Nuremberg Doctors Trial.
A Matter of Justice
Ms. Epstein immigrated to the United States in 1948. She arrived in New York City and immediately began working at the New York Association for New Americans, an agency that brought Holocaust survivors to the U.S.
She and her husband, Arnie, whom she later divorced, moved to St. Louis in the early 1960s. She soon became a volunteer with the Freedom of Residence, Greater St. Louis, an organization that was instrumental in ending housing discrimination in the city. She became the organization’s executive director in the mid-1970s. During the 1980s, Ms. Epstein worked as a paralegal for Chackes and Hoare, a law firm that represented individuals in employment discrimination cases.
As an advocate for equality and human rights, Ms. Epstein spoke out against the war in Vietnam, the bombing of Cambodia, and restrictive U.S. immigration policies. She supported the Haitian boat people and women’s reproductive rights, and, after the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila, Ms. Epstein began her work for peace and justice in Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories.
Throughout her life, Ms. Epstein continued to advocate for a more peaceful world. In 2002, she was a founding member of the St. Louis Instead of War Coalition. Much of her later activism centered on efforts to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
In 2014, she jumped eagerly into Black Lives Matter.
“It’s a matter of racism and injustice, and it’s not only in Ferguson… .” she told Newsweek during the volatile period following Brown’s death. “Racism is alive and well in the United States.”
“Her life was about service and it was about justice, about everybody having the right to be treated fairly and with dignity,” said her longtime friend and fellow activist, Dianne Lee. “Everything she did was motivated by that.”
Ms. Epstein founded the St. Louis chapter of Women in Black and co-founded the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee and the St. Louis chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. She traveled to the West Bank several times, first as a volunteer with the nonviolent International Solidarity Movement and repeatedly as a witness to advocate for Palestinian human rights. She attempted several times to go to Gaza as a passenger with the Freedom Flotilla, including as a passenger on the Audacity of Hope, and once with the Gaza Freedom March.
Her autobiography, Erinnern ist nicht genug: Autobiographie von Hedy Epstein (“Remembering Is Not Enough: The Autobiography of Hedy Epstein”), was published in 1999 by Unrast-Verlag, a German company and is available in German.
As a member of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center’s speakers’ bureau, she gave countless talks at schools and community events. She shared her Holocaust experiences with thousands of Missouri youth as a featured speaker at the Missouri Scholars Academy for more than 20 years. She was a sought-after national and international speaker.
Not Guilty
Ms. Epstein concluded every presentation with “If we don’t try to make a difference, if we don’t speak up, if we don’t try to right the wrong that we see that is happening, we become complicit.”
“I’m sure I’m guilty of a lot of things,” she said, “but I don’t want to be guilty of not having tried my best to make a difference.”
Myriad honors confirmed her relentless pursuit of justice. They included a Fair Housing Achievement Award from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1975. In 1988, she received the Inspiration for Hope Award from the American Friends Service Committee and the Ethical Humanist of the Year Award from the Ethical Society of St. Louis.
In recent years, she was honored with the Imagine Life Education through Media Award and the American Friends Service Committee’s “Inspiration for Hope Award.
Survivors include her son Howard (Terry) Epstein, of Columbus, Ohio, and granddaughters Courtney and Kelly.
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To the honorable and heroic people of Poland: I am impressed and encouraged by the stubborn refusal of the Polish people and parliament to submit to persistent Zionist efforts to incriminate Poland for the Holocaust.
Auschwitz: Auschwitz, Nazi Germany’s largest and most lethal concentration camp, located in southern Poland.
To the people of Poland: Israel wants to enslave your collective conscience over Auschwitz…just as they did in America
By Khalid Amayreh
To the honorable and heroic people of Poland: I am impressed and encouraged by the stubborn refusal of the Polish people and parliament to submit to persistent Zionist efforts to incriminate Poland for the Holocaust. These repulsive and shameless efforts, behind which stand powerful Zionist circles in North America, are tantamount to trying to colonize and enslave the collective conscience of the great people of Poland. They seek to make each and every Pole feel guilty, either for imaginary crimes that never occurred, or for crimes Poles never really committed. I am joining the fray because Zionist Jews are lying rather obscenely about crimes against humanity they have been committing (and are committing) in Palestine before our eyes. Hence the question: Couldn’t they likewise lie about crimes that occurred more than seventy years ago.
My intention is never to belittle the suffering of any people, including Jews. But, we must never allow lies, half truths and concocted narratives to obfuscate historical truth and fabricate a virtual “history” based on mendacity.
You may wonder why a Palestinian journalist is concerned for this matter. Well, I am concerned because in the name of the Holocaust, Israel has been carrying out a slow-motion holocaust against my people. I am not making hyperboles, and I do know what I am talking about.
They came from Eastern Europe and other places, they massacred our people, and they destroyed our homes, bulldozed our villages and then expelled us around the world. And when we tried to resist their Wehrmacht, Gestapo and SS, they hurled the anti-Semitism canard in our faces and called us terrorists!
In 1952, the very Zionists who now want every Polish man, woman and child to be guilt-ridden over the Holocaust, exterminated my innocent and peaceable family nearly completely. Until this day, 66 years later, our tormentors haven’t even acknowledged their crime, let alone apologized or expressed willingness to pay compensation for what they did. ( see My Story Under the Israeli Occupation-http://umkahlil.blogspot.com/2006/02/my-personal-experience-with-israeli.html)
The reason is amply clear. Zionist Jews don’t attach any real value to non-Jewish life, whether Palestinian or Polish. For them, we are inherently and intrinsically inferior and our lives have absolutely no sanctity, this is the reason they murder our children, so haphazardly, so indifferently and with so much ease. This is the reason, they kill first and ask question later. This is the reason they strive to instate anachronistic Talmudic laws treating non-Jews living in Israel as slaves, or water carriers and wood hewers, using Biblical language.
To reiterate, I would like to urge and advise you: Don’t give in to their blackmailing tactics aimed at confiscating your freedom and sovereignty as they have done to so many nations.
Now they want to get you to apologize, then demands for reparation would come next. Then, using external pressure, they would pressure you to change your history textbooks to suit their whims. And if you showed the slightest reluctance or opposition, they would unleash the American sword against Poland. This is the way Zionism has brought many nations to their knees.
Don’t allow Poland to be enslaved by international masonry and global Zionism. Let Poland remain a free nation.
On the 27th of January, the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army will be celebrated. This Memorial Day should force us to think. Our times are characterised by a grave danger of freedom of the press and of expression. Any kind of objective criticism and reporting about Jewish-Zionist crimes in Palestine is defamed as anti-Semitism. However, we should not resign, but struggle against this situation with conviction. In fact, only real anti-Semites and not invented ones must be opposed to.
Resigning means Lying!
By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski,, English translation by Milena Rampoldi
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If this Memorial Day, which this year will be celebrated on the 31st of January in the German Bundestag, with a memorial speech hold by the Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, we have to hope that Miss Wallfisch will also deal with the matter of the occupation and the role of the “Jewish State” in parallel to this Memorial Day. These last Holocaust survivors can still speak out and refuse to be exploited as messengers for the crimes of the “Jewish State”.
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While the Holocaust in the “Jewish State” is used for all purposes useful for the Zionist mission and the illegal occupation of Palestine, these last survivors are financially forgotten and some of them live in misery. Then let us ask ourselves where all the German reparation payments have gone. In fact, for bureaucratic reasons, welfare organisations like the “Jewish Conference” in New York got back the refund of expropriated assets to Holocaust victims. What happened with the 17 employees and the employees of the Claims Conference, accused of the misappropriation of 42 million US-Dollar since 1993? This problem has been known for years now, but it is repeatedly hushed. (1)
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Hungry Holocaust Victims in the “Jewish State”
Already in 2010, in an article published by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, entitled „Die vernachlässigten Opfer“ (The neglected victims), dealt with this shameful situation in the “Jewish State”. It was shocking to read that Holocaust survivors continued to languish in poverty with a mini pension and had to choose between drugs and food, as the Israeli association “Amcha” reports. (2) This January, Russia Today reported about the hungry Holocaust victims in the “Jewish State”. (3)
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At the moment in Germany we experience a witch-hunt against all critics of the ineffable occupation and oppression politics in the “Jewish State”. While Jewish people – but only that who are at the right front – are declared victims and “saints”, Jewish peace activists are marginalized as anti-Semites or “Jewish self-haters”.
*
With the support of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Muslim hatred is promoted. Rallies and protests against the crimes of the Jewish State violating international law and against occupation are accused of being the expression of anti-Semitism. People think to get control of Israel critical rallies, by accusing them of being the expression of hatred toward Jews. (4)
*
I understand Palestinian, Arabic, Turkish, and Muslim citizens very well, if they opposed to the politics of the “Jewish State” also in Germany, because very often their family members or faith fellows are involved.
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Solidarity with Muslim citizens!
As engaged German citizens, having been struggling for the freedom of Palestine for a long time now, we should express our solidarity with Muslim citizens exposed to Muslim hatred.
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Who accepts refugees, does not import anti-Semites or Muslim haters of Jews to Germany, as it is exactly the opposite. And it is good to face the Central Council of Jews with the occupation politics of the Jewish State violating international law.
*
When the president of the Central Council Schuster asks for the limitation of the assembly and opinion right, and even for a legislative change to remove all obstacles of “Jewish and Israeli” interests, the red line has been crossed.
*
In fact, it is part of the understandable expression of opinion, if the David Star is burnt as symbol of oppression or if the Palestinian kafiya is worn with proud. It is not a symbol of hatred toward Jews, as the former president of the Council Knobloch urges us to believe. Instead, it is the proud symbol of Palestine, I also like wearing. So when the Springer Press with its incomparable philo-Semitism diffuses such a rabble-rousing with its editor Martin Niewendick, then we should all oppose to it! (5)
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It is quite enough with Fake News, denigrations, and concerted rabble-rousing actions!
It is quite enough with Fake News, denigrations, and concerted rabble-rousing actions. Up to now, fake news about the “death to Jews” are diffused on the internet, and have still not been deleted. In fact, these slogans were not shouted during Berlin rallies, while “death to Arabs” is a daily slogan shouted in the “Jewish State” by Judaistic extremists or written on building facades. (6)
*
On the 16th of January, the fractions of the parties CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen made the shameful motion, entitled „Antisemitismus entschlossen bekämpfen“ (Struggle decisively against anti-Semitism). In this document, the German constitution and human dignity, which should be valid for all citizens, are nullified and trampled underfoot.
*
Of course, Germany has its responsibility for Jews. However, this responsibility also concerns all other citizens, Muslim, Christians, and Atheists. What do they want to urge us to believe? That Jews are something special? If this is not anti-Semite…. Shortly, a competent person for anti-Semitism will be nominated. In the end, this person will only be the command receiver of the Israel lobby and their Christian-Zionist groups. So this will be a totally inadequate mean, and a horrifying symbol of the limitation of the democratic environment in Germany. Instead, we need a person competent for racism, opposing to all kind of racism. And a particular focus should be on islamophobia.
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Cooking a philo-Semite inedible, toxic soup?
With this dishonest motion, contrary to international law and the constitution, attempts are made to lump together anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, Israel critics, and to cook a philo-Semite, inedible, toxic soup to silence us all. (7)
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When I heard about the debate around the Bundestag motion, the most nauseating was the Israel lobbyist and philo-Semite CSU politician Dobrindt. He mixed up German leading culture and patriotism connecting it with this motion.
*
So in the next future this German patriotic leading culture will cause a tsunami of anti-democratic measures. And the starting point is the refusal of public rooms for events daring to criticise the racist Jewish occupation policy or to support the BDS movement. This application also clearly opposes to EU law. In the end, this motion, supported by all parties, is a gift to the right-wing party AfD. And exactly the parties CDU/CSU promoted the proposal supported by the Central Council of Jews to implement deportations of Muslim refugees who oppose to the rules of the Israel lobby. In 2011, I already wrote: “We are all made anti-Semites.” And this thesis has been realised in the meantime, as who does not accept the (fictive!) existence right of the State of Israel or questions the Holocaust, can be deported from Germany.
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And we can imagine the consequences of all this. If this motion swears to “democracy and constitutional state”, then this is an insult. Will BDS supporters and all Israel critics follow the Muslim refugees? Will we stand trial because this philo-Semite representative of the “leading culture” accuse us of mass instigation if we criticize the crimes against international law and human rights committed by the “Jewish State”? Or if we oppose to the concept of the “Jewish and democratic state” because democratic and Jewish exclude one another since an ethnic group and a religion are preferred. Is this the German reason of state of the leading culture? No, thanks. This is simply nauseating.
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Will the future (big) coalition lead by the Christian-Zionist Merkel continue to silence on the crimes of the “Jewish State” and celebrate this year as “year of jubilation” for Israel? This is what I fear: they will “philosemitically” celebrate the 70th anniversary of the foundation of Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people.
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Nauseating application to cooperate with an occupation regime of the worst type
On the 31st of January, during the celebration of the Holocaust Memorial Day, we have to oppose to the application submitted to the Bundestag, as it supports apartheid, crimes against human rights, oppression of Palestinians and the continuation of the illegal occupation of Palestine. It is a nauseating application to support an occupation regime of the worst type. Not in our name! If we remain silent, we will be guilty again.
*
Resigning means lying! (Erich Mühsam) We will not resign!
Born in Germany, she had survived the Nazi genocide because her parents evacuated her to England as part of the Kindertransport.
She was dearly loved, and became known to many of us for her fierce advocacy of universal human rights, particularly for Palestinians.
Her steadfast refusal to be silent about what Israel is doing to Palestinians made her the target of accusations of anti-Semitism from one of the lobby’s fiercest gatekeepers, the Anti-Defamation League.
And earlier this month, the death of Elie Wiesel was followed by an outpouring of tributes for the Auschwitz survivor who like no one else came to embody Holocaust memorialization.
I was recently reminded that these two survivors had at least one face to face encounter, shown in the video above, when Epstein challenged Wiesel to break his silence over Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.
It was on 1 December 2009, when Wiesel came to speak at Saint Louis University, in Epstein’s hometown in Missouri.
Epstein was due to join hundreds of other activists a few weeks later on the Gaza Freedom March, an attempt to break the siege of Gaza to mark the first anniversary of Israel’s December 2008 invasion.
Wiesel’s presentation was characterized by his usual schtick – purporting to preach universal lessons for humanity.
“We cannot allow ourselves not to feel the pain of others,” Wiesel said. “We can’t give in to indifference.”
This is the kind of thing that bagged him the ultimate establishment accolade, the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.
But outside the official hagiography, Wiesel was notorious for erasing non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust – Roma and LGBTQ – and defending Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.
In his later years, he also became an apologist for US imperial interventions, including the calamitous invasion of Iraq.
When author Max Blumenthal pointed out these and other inconvenient truths about Wiesel in a searing article, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton sent her spokesperson out to tell him, effectively, to shut up.
But on that day in 2009, Epstein and two other women from St. Louis also insisted on confronting Wiesel.
“Elie Wiesel, come with us to Gaza,” the women called out.
Wiesel replied curtly, “I have heard you,” and then turned his face away. He never addressed the situation of Palestinians and moved on to the next question as if the women were not there.
It was, you might say, a stunning display of indifference.
Various reforms in recent years have led to a significant improvement in the life of Holocaust survivors, but 60,000 of them still can’t afford food, medical care or heating; ‘It is shameful what they give us,’ says 85-years-old Shmuel Shteiner.
Third of Holocaust survivors in Israel live below the poverty line
Lea Karsik, a Holocaust survivor who escaped the horrors of war with her mother, hasn’t got enough money to buy meat. Shmuel Shteiner, whose father was murdered in Auschwitz, said that last winter he slept wearing two coats to keep warm in the cold because he didn’t have enough money for heating. He suffers serious vision impairment and is worried that he will not be able to afford new glasses either.
“It’s a disgrace that the state took money for Holocaust survivors, but didn’t give it to us,” he told Ynet.Lea Karsik, a Holocaust survivor who escaped the horrors of war with her mother, hasn’t got enough money to buy meat. Shmuel Shteiner, whose father was murdered in Auschwitz, said that last winter he slept wearing two coats to keep warm in the cold because he didn’t have enough money for heating. He suffers serious vision impairment and is worried that he will not be able to afford new glasses either.
For many Holocaust survivors, this is the reality they deal with. Despite a significant, and even historic, improvement in their socio-economic situation brought about by government reforms, many of them continue to live in poverty.
There are 200,901 Holocaust survivors living in Israel. Data from the Welfare Ministry and the Finance Ministry’s Authority for Holocaust Survivors’ Rights shows that almost a third of them, some 60,000 people, are living under the poverty line while some 65,000, receive income support benefits.
Holocaust survivors’ situation is not unlike to that of many senior citizens in Israel. Indeed, the poverty rate among the elderly rose by one percent in 2014, reaching 23.1 percent. Similarly, despite the increase in old-age benefits and the income support provided to the poor elderly – which amounts to hundreds of shekels per month – the rate of poverty among them remains among the highest in the Western world.
“The government needs to look Holocaust survivors in the eye. What they’re giving us is not enough. We need more help,” said Lea Karsik, an 83-year-old childless survivor who lives alone in a small two-room apartment in Ashkelon.
She was a young child when Nazi forces came to Ukraine, forcing her family to flee. “We dealt with hardships. Dad fought, and we ran away with mom when there were bombings, even on a train full of people. Mom was wounded, and we hid. For a long time we didn’t have food at all. In a situation like that, your body goes mad,” she recounted.
Lea says that while she has food, her monthly salary of a mere NIS 3,000 does not enable her to pay for other basic commodities.”I don’t buy fish or beef, it’s too expensive,” she said.
She lives on the third floor of a building without an elevator, in a public housing apartment, and moves around using a cane. Despite her condition, she has been volunteering for many years in aiding other Holocaust survivors. “I translate for other elderly people who don’t speak Hebrew, and try to help them,” she said.
Karsik asked that she is approved more nursing care hours because of her deteriorating health and difficulty climbing up the stairs and leaving her home.
Reforms for the survivors
About two years ago, the government approved a national plan to aid Holocaust survivors, led by then welfare and finance ministers Meir Cohen and Yair Lapid. The plan included significant changes to the two main laws dealing with Holocaust survivors: The Victims of Nazi Persecution Act and the Holocaust Survivors’ Benefits Act. Among other things, the 18,000 survivors who made aliyah after 1953 were granted the same rights as the survivors who made aliyah before that time. In addition, survivors were ensured free medicine and an annual grant of NIS 3,600 was allocated to survivors of the second circle (refugees who fled as a result of the Holocaust but were not in the extermination camps or ghettos).
Since the institution of that plan, several other measures were taken, including increasing the old-age benefits by hundreds of shekels every month for poor seniors. Approximately three months ago, the Finance Ministry, led by Minister Moshe Kahlon, recognized Holocaust survivors from Morocco, Algeria and Iraq, as well as survivors from Romania who endured hard labor during World War II. This recognition means these survivors will now be entitled to free medical treatment and annual grants as well.
Last month, Welfare Minister Haim Katz announced a plan to “give back” money to some 20,000 survivors that he says did not exercise their full rights, losing out on over NIS 100 million in benefits.
Earlier this week, Finance Minister Kahlon announced a NIS 500 million plan to increase old-age and income support benefits to poor seniors, including Holocaust survivors. The Finance Ministry said the plan will be part of the next state budget.
However, these plans all failed to right some historical wrongs, including giving some 90,000 survivors of the second circle the same benefits as other survivors, or improving government bureaucracy that puts many different bodies in charge of Holocaust survivors.
26,000 survivors turn to aid center
Despite a significant improvement reported, data from the Social Equality Ministry obtained by Ynet indicate the bureaucracy with which the survivors still have to deal.
Out of 100,000 elderly people who called the *8840 aid call center to receive assitance, 26,000 were Holocaust survivors.
“The data indicates that the center serves a major need for Holocaust survivors, and makes it easier for them to deal with bureaucratic and financial issues and exercise their rights,” said Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel.
Despite these improvements, the fact remains that 90,000 Holocaust survivors, many of whom suffer dire economic hardships, receive neither monthly stipends nor pensions.
The vast majority of the survivors are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who receive meager annual grants of NIS 3,600. They also include elderly people, without acceess to pension or other rights, who immigrated to Israel in the 90s. Others include immigrants from Romania, Bulgaria, Libya and Tunisia who came after 1953 along with immigrants from Morocco, Iraq and Algeria.
Shmuel Shteiner, 85, who was born in Romania and now lives in Netanya, receives a sum total of NIS 4,000 per month. “It is shameful that this is what they give,” he said. Shteiner moved to Israel in the 70s and worked for many years as a photographer but did not accumulate pension rights. “This is the money that there is today. I am trying to get by with but it isn’t enough,” he continued.
International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) President Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein said that “tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors live without the means to support themselves with the most basic necessities such as food, dental treatment, heating in the winter and adequate roofing. Most of them are too exhausted or too sick to make themselves heard. Most of them live in terrible solitude far from the public eye, they cope alone with difficult memories, with loss and, most fundamentally, with the terrible feeling that nobody cares about them,” Eckstein said.
“The time has come to place the treatment of Holocaust survivors at the top of the agenda. When each day 40 of them pass away, we don’t have any more time to wait,” he continued. “We are obligated to to act here and now and therefore we invite the public to donate so that there will be no more deprived Holocaust survivors in Israel.”
Each year the IFCJ assists 20,000 Holocaust survivors who lack food, panic buttons, urgent medical services and dental treatment and who suffer the burden of loneliness.
Deputy Finance Minister Itzik Cohen insisted that his ministry places Holocaust survivors at the top of the agenda: “The ministry allocates vast resources in order to assist Holocaust survivors and to expand their rights. The allocated budget for 200,000 survivors stands at NIS 4.2 billion. We are continuing to initiate and to advance additional programs,” he said.
A controversial West Bank rabbi now living in eastern Jerusalem reportedly said the attacks in Paris were punishment for what Europe did to Jews in the Holocaust.
Rabbi Dov Lior, the former chief rabbi of the Kiryat Arba settlement, made his remarks during a eulogy on Sunday at the Jerusalem funeral for a father and son killed in a West Bank terror attack, according to the Hebrew-language news website Srugim and The Jerusalem Post, which cited the Hebrew-language Walla! news website.
“The wicked ones in blood-soaked Europe deserve it for what they did to our people 70 years ago,” Lior said, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Lior moved from Kiryat Arba to the Mount of Olives in eastern Jerusalem several months ago.
In 2011, police questioned the rabbi over his support for the scholarly book “The King’s Torah,” which reportedly discusses situations in which it is permissible for Jews to kill non-Jews.
Lior is also known for saying that Jews should not rent homes to Arabs in Israel and for a proposal calling on Israeli soldiers to refuse orders to remove Jews from West Bank settlements.
In the terror attack, Rabbi Yaakov Litman, 40, and his son Netanel, 18, were killed on Friday afternoon as seven members of the family drove to a Shabbat pre-wedding celebration of their daughter and sister. Litman’s wife and 16-year-old son also were injured. Three daughters — ages 5, 9, and 11 — were treated for shock.
Here’s the REAL Reason for the terror as seen by Latuff
At Kristallnacht gathering, MK Zoabi compares Israel to Nazis
In Amsterdam speech to event hosted by far-left Jewish group, Joint List lawmaker says Jewish state engaged in ‘ethnic cleansing’ against Palestinians
Joint (Arab) List MK Hanin Zoabi speaks at a Kristallnacht commemoration event in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter on November 8, 2015. (Matt Lebovic/The Times of Israel)
“The central lesson of the Crystal Night has not been learned,” said Zoabi during her 15-minute speech, delivered in English. Accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” modeled on Nazism, she denounced half a dozen Israeli officials by name for what she referred to as recent efforts to “justify the use of violence toward Palestinians.
Proof of her words can be seen in the following photo essay, perhaps she should have presented this to her audience as well …
This photo essay was put together by the head of the Norweigan Embassy in Saudi Arabia. It origanilly appeared on MWC News.
THE GRANDCHILDREN OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FROM WORLD WAR II ARE DOING TO THE PALESTINIANS EXACTLY WHAT WAS DONE TO THEM BY NAZI GERMANY …
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISON
Hitler Yesterday ~ Israel Today
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
ARRESTS & HARASSMENTS
DESTROYING HOMES & LIVELIHOODS
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
THE CLASSIC PROPAGANDA MACHINE – YOU WILL FIND THE PICTURE IN BLACK & WHITE IN ALL AMERICAN AND SOME OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES HISTORY BOOKS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS, LIBRARIES, MUSEUMS… THAT DEPICTS A YOUNG JEWISH BOY WITH HIS HANDS UP WHILE NAZI TROOPS POINT THEIR GUNS AT HIM AND HIS FAMILY IN ORDER TO EXPEL THEM FROM THEIR HOMES… (IT’S SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU SYMPATHIZE WITH THE VICTIMS & TO SUPPORT THEIR CAUSE FOR JUSTICE & A HOMELAND) THE ISRAELIS PRACTICE THE SAME TACTIC
Some of you might remember the old school desks with an inkwell in the upper right corner ….
Today, in some cases, documents or speeches are written using a different kind of well. This usually results in a complete falsehood of the intended subject. This was obviously the case when Netenyahu rewrote historical events regarding the holocaust ….
The first thing we can conclude is that Netanyahu is no historian. Himself the son of a crackpot historian, Bibi has adopted a fringe and discredited theory with no historical basis and made it the cornerstone of his understanding of the most traumatic and decisive event in Jewish history. read more:
The second takeaway from Tuesday night’s speech is that Netanyahu has lost it. He’s raving. His hatred of the Palestinians and his frustration at their refusal to succumb to his brutality has become an obsession in which even Hitler, the archetype of evil and Jew-hatred, has to play second fiddle to Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian predecessors.
Hitler’s plan to exterminate European Jewry dated back to years before his meeting with Husseini, noting references to it in “Mein Kampf,” which was published in 1925, as well as the 1933 Nazi party charter and remarks in the Reichstag in 1939, when Hitler threatened to “exterminate the Jewish people.”
Yad Vashem’s Chief Historian on Hitler and the Mufti: Netanyahu Had It All Wrong
There is no evidence that Haj Amin al-Husseini proposed the ‘final solution’ to Hitler, according to Yad Vashem chief historian Dina Porat
Prof. Dina Porat, chief historian of Yad Vashem, called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Hitler did not seek to exterminate the Jews until his meeting with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem at the time, Haj Amin al-Husseini “completely erroneous, on all counts.”
Porat, a senior historian at Tel Aviv University who specializes in Holocaust studies, told Haaretz on Wednesday: “Hitler did not need anyone to encourage the final solution. In terms of the facts, there’s no debate … all these actions, Hitler’s obsessions, have no link to the mufti.”
In his speech to the 37th Zionist Congress in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Netanyahu ostensibly quoted from the conversation between Hitler and the mufti at their meeting in Berlin in November 1941: “And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’”
According to Netanyahu, Hitler asked Husseini, “So what should I do with them?,” to which the mufti replied, “Burn them.”
When asked whether Netanyahu fabricated the dialogue that he quoted, Porat said that Netanyahu is very knowledgeable about Jewish history. “He grew up in a home full of Jewish history. But what he said is not in the minutes of the meeting. That should be clear.”
The meeting between Hitler and Husseini was documented only with general statements and topic headings, and was not transcribed word for word. There is no record of Hitler asking Husseini what to do with Europe’s Jews.
“The mufti did not speak to Hitler in terms of ‘you should do this,’ or ‘what do you think of a final solution?’ Nor is it recorded that the mufti told Hitler to ‘burn them.’ Hitler never asked anyone what to do with the Jews,” Porat said. She did say, however, that Hitler told the mufti that he would “’continue his plans,’ meaning that he had already begun, and certainly not because the mufti asked him to.”
According to Porat, “all of the facts show that during Hitler and the mufti’s meeting, the ‘final solution’ was already under way.”
Porat explained that Hitler’s plan to exterminate European Jewry dated back to years before his meeting with Husseini, noting references to it in “Mein Kampf,” which was published in 1925, as well as the 1933 Nazi party charter and remarks in the Reichstag in 1939, when Hitler threatened to “exterminate the Jewish people.”
“And there’s no debating later on, with the invasion of Poland, the orders from Berlin to build ghettos, which were documented as a stage of the ‘final solution,’” Porat said.
Later, mass killings of Jews began with the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. “The order to kill wasn’t signed by Hitler, but the first death camp, Chelmno, began operating in December 1941, a few weeks after the meeting with the mufti — and it’s something that had been worked on long before,” added Porat.
Husseini asked Hitler to advance the final solution in the Middle East, but he certainly didn’t come up with the plan himself, Porat said. “Had Netanyahu added the words ‘in the Middle East’ to his speech, he wouldn’t be in this mess. But he didn’t add them,” Porat said: “That’s what the mufti wanted, and that’s why he went to Berlin.”
Our resident PsychoGal comes to the rescue of our Psycho PM in the following …
Husseini was indicted as a war criminal in Nuremberg. Rather than try him, the allies allowed him to flee to Egypt in 1946. There he was greeted as a war hero by King Farouk.
Once the laughter and groans have died down, the unorthodox version of Holocaust history offered by Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem the other day confronts us with a deeply unsettling question: What to make of the fact that the Jewish state, of all places, has a Holocaust revisionist for a prime minister?
Why Benjamin Netanyahu’s Defense of Hitler Matters So Much
Once the laughter and groans have died down, the unorthodox version of Holocaust history offered by Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem the other day confronts us with a deeply unsettling question: What to make of the fact that the Jewish state, of all places, has a Holocaust revisionist for a prime minister?
Too harsh? Perhaps “Hitler apologist” would go down easier. What’s the proper term for a politician who stands before an international audience and declares that “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews,” but was talked into it by someone he’d just met?
That’s the thesis that Netanyahu laid out in his keynote address to the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem on October 20. According to the prime minister, the idea of killing the Jews was pitched to the fuehrer by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, when the two met over tea in Berlin on November 28, 1941.
“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time,” the prime minister said. “He wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here,’” meaning Palestine. Netanyahu continued: “’So what should I do with them?’ he asked. He said, ‘Burn them.’” (You can watch Netanyahu’s comments here on Ynet, here at Haaretz or here on CNN.)
The remark has prompted an international uproar, with barbs flying in every direction. Critics say Netanyahu “plays into those who would trivialize or understate Adolf Hitler’s role in orchestrating the Holocaust,” in the words of the Anti-Defamation League’s rookie national director Jonathan Greenblatt. Supporters are, predictably, supportive. The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s associate dean Abraham Cooper and in-house historian Harold Brackman, wrote in a Jewish Journal op-ed that the prime minister “went too far” in claiming that Hitler needed Husseini’s help thinking up mass murder, but was “right on” in his larger point, namely that the the accusation of Jews threatening the Al Aqsa mosque can be traced back to the Holocaust-supporting Husseini, way back in the 1920s.
The implication, apparently, is that the mosque accusation is a Nazi-style, genocidal delusion. The further implication is that when current-day Palestinians and other Muslims accuse Israelis of planning to impinge on Muslim religious hegemony over the Temple Mount, they’re merely carrying on the ravings of the mufti who dreamed up the Holocaust.
Netanyahu tried to walk back his statement the next day, saying he didn’t mean to absolve Hitler of responsibility, since Hitler was the one who “made the decision.” He doubled down on Husseini’s role, though, citing a German official’s testimony at the Nuremberg trials to the effect that Husseini had been deeply involved in the gestation. The German, Adolf Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny, has been quoted as testifying that the mufti and Eichmann were “best friends” and that the mufti “constantly incited” Eichmann to “greater extermination measures.” The Wisliceny testimony helped inspire the urban legend, which has circulated for years among right-wing Israelis, that Husseini was in fact one of the architects of the Final Solution.
The legend is so deeply rooted, and the facts so tangled up in myths, high-intensity polemics and endless volumes of dry history, that many journalists reporting Bibi’s latest fuehrer furor have given up trying to find the truth. Numerous news accunts of the dustup simply report, like CNN’s Greg Botelho, that the facts can’t be nailed down. “There’s no video or audio, not even a transcript, that can definitively prove Netanyahu’s account of the conversation between Hitler and Husseini,” Botelho wrote.
Actually, there is a record — possibly two, in fact. Hitler’s translator, Paul Otto Schmidt, took notes at the meeting, and they’re readily available. (Find the English translation here or here.) Moreover, the mufti himself kept a diary. The common Internet version of what are said to be his notes from his Hitler powwow (here) tracks closely with Schmidt’s minutes.
What the records show is that the mufti did not pitch genocide to Hitler. Husseini did express support for Hitler’s plan to eliminate the Jews, which he had plainly heard about before the meeting. Hitler proceeded to describe the plan to him in general terms. Husseini said “the Arabs” supported Nazi Germany because they shared the same enemies, namely Great Britain, the Jews and the communists. Hitler told Husseini that he opposed the British-sponsored Jewish national home in Palestine. Husseini asked for a public statement from Hitler endorsing the “elimination” of the Jewish national home. Hitler turned him down.
Both documents make clear that Hitler was already engaged in his genocidal final solution, and that the mufti was an enthusiastic fan. (He would later become an active participant.) Hitler favored extermination because he believed the Jews were trying to take over the world through their domination of capitalist Great Britain and communist Russia. Husseini wanted Jews removed from the Arab world because they were trying to take over Palestine.
There’s also abundant public record documenting the substantial progress Hitler and his lieutenants had made in gearing up the final solution by the time of the November 28 Hitler-Husseini chat. The organized mass killing of Jews by the Nazis had begun in June 1941, immediately after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hitler gave broad instructions to SS chief Heinrich Himmler to “physically eliminate” any perceived threats on July 17, 1941. On July 31, according to the museum, Hermann Goering, Hitler’s chief deputy and designated successor, “authorized SS General Reinhard Heydrich to make preparations for the implementation of a ‘complete solution of the Jewish question.’”
By the end of November, when Hitler met Husseini for the first and only time, planning was well underway for the Wansee Conference, which assembled various German government department heads in January 1942 to coordinate the immense bureaucratic blueprint for genocide that Heydrich had mapped out. Heydrich actually sent out the invitations to the conference on November 29, the day after the mufti met the fuehrer.
Netanyahu’s version of history is so demonstrably and utterly at odds with the historical record that it’s hard to fathom what could have driven him to offer it in a heavily watched keynote address to an international convention. The prime minister famously prides himself on his grasp of history. He makes frequent and facile use of the Holocaust as an object lesson for humanity. Even his harshest critics must have difficulty absorbing the realization that he can be so ignorant of the most basic facts of that history. There’s no lack of observers who disagree, often sharply, with his policies. But this goes to his competence.
There’s another, perhaps larger question raised by Netanyahu’s speech. It goes to the rapidly escalating level of vitriol that the prime minister is directing at Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. One of the clearly evident goals of the Zionist Congress speech was to draw a straight line between the Final Solution and today’s Palestinian national movementand its leader. At a time when Abbas has been peppering nearly every major speech with an appeal for a two-state solution, for a Palestinian state alongside Israel within defined borders, trying to paint him as an heir to the Nazis perverts the truth. Nor does the prime minister stop there. Just hours after the Zionist Congress speech, during a joint press conference with United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon, he said that Abbas had “joined” with Hamas and ISIS.
If Netanyahu’s goal is to pave the way to an eventual reconciliation and coexistence, as he so often claims, he’s picked a funny way of doing it. If his goal is, as he says it is, to discourage slander, demonization and incitement, practicing those very things is a bad first step.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has re-affirmed her country’s responsibility for the Holocaust, following controversial comments by Israel’s prime minister.
Benjamin Netanyahu was criticised for saying Adolf Hitler had only wanted to expel Jews from Europe but that a Palestinian leader, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, told him to “burn them.”
Speaking at a joint news conference with Mr Netanyahu, Mrs Merkel said she was “very clear in [her] mind” that German soldiers were responsible.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s obvious hatred of the Palestinian people has finally come to a head via his remarks this week ….
An apology to the people of Palestine, as well as to the six million Jewish victims of the holocaust, their descendants and the survivors themselves is definitely in order.
This to be followed by by his resignation from the office of Prime Minister as he has definitely proven to be mentally unstable and not in a position to continue.
Nothing short of that would be acceptable.
Netanyahu said on Wednesday there was “much evidence” to back up his accusations against Husseini, including testimony by a deputy of Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust, at the Nuremberg war crimes trials after World War Two. (FROM) And that is a reliable source of historic events?
Words that upset are not nearly as bad as the crimes that were committed …
“The continuation of the extermination of the Assyrians by the jihadists, the invasion and occupation in northern Cyprus, the Kurdish issue, the blockade of Gaza, the genocidal dismemberment of Yugoslavia, and the Ukraine crisis.”
Stop the Holocaust in Gaza: A pro-Palestinian protester at a Berlin rally Friday, July 18, 2014. (Micki Weinberg/The Times of Israel)
Greek Official Slammed for Comparing Gaza to Holocaust
A Greek official is accused of abusing the memory of the Holocaust by mentioning Gaza during a speech about the genocide, and saying that “victims become bullies.”
The criticism by The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a watchdog group, was over a speech that Panagiotis Sgouridis, a deputy minister of rural development, gave on June 7 in the northern city of Kavala during the unveiling ceremony for a monument in memory of the area’s murdered Jews.
Noting that atrocities continue today despite the lessons of the Holocaust, Sgouridis listed “the continuation of the extermination of the Assyrians by the jihadists, the invasion and occupation in northern Cyprus, the Kurdish issue, the blockade of Gaza, the genocidal dismemberment of Yugoslavia,” and the Ukraine crisis as examples.
He concluded his speech by saying that monuments like the one unveiled at Kavala are important “because unfortunately many times the roles switch and the victims become bullies.” Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations, said that Sgouridis’ speech was “not only an inversion of the Holocaust by listing it alongside the blockade on Gaza, but also served to banalize it.”
The Kavala unveiling was preceded by an international uproar over reports that the city’s mayor objected to the incorporation of a Star of David in its design, though she denied this. The monument that was unveiled features that symbol.
Public discourse in Greece about Jews and Israel has become “more toxic,” said the center, amid a financial crisis and the rise of Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party that became Greece’s third-largest following the 2015 legislative election.
Sgouridis’ party, the rightist Independent Greeks, has called on Germany to pay Greece reparations for its invasion and occupation of the Balkan country.
“The speech, the place, the time and the back story all combine to make Sgouridis’ speech inappropriate,” Samuels said.
Even before the UN issues its report dealing with the last blitzkrieg in Gaza, Israel issues a report justifying their actions ….
Israel’s Protective Edge report: 44% of Palestinian casualties were terrorists
Government-sanctioned report is released as ‘pre-emptive strike’ ahead of international UN report due to come out this month; authors say report provides evidence to justify Israel’s decision to launch war in Gaza based on international law.
Here’s a photo of the ‘terrorists’ they speak of
Palestinian children killed in IDF bombardment (Photo: AP)
At least 44 percent of the 2,125 Palestinians killed during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza last summer were identified by the IDF as armed fighters belonging to Hamas or other terror organizations in the Strip, according to an Israeli report released Sunday.
The Foreign Ministry’s report presents Israel’s diplomatic, military and legal positions on the events of Protective Edge, ahead of the release of a UN committee’s report on Monday.
The international report will only be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 29, but the two warring sides, as well the members of the UN Security Council, will receive a copy of it this week.
The 277-page report, which cited Israel’s internal probes and statements from Western leaders backing its right to self-defense, suggested the Netanyahu government hoped to defuse criticism from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) inquiry in advance.
Deeming the HRC biased, Israel boycotted its investigators as it did those from the council who looked into its 2008-09 Gaza offensive. That HRC inquiry was harshly critical of both Israel and Hamas.
But this time around, the stakes are higher. The Palestinians have joined the International Criminal Court and are pursuing war crimes charges against Israel. The council’s new report, expected as soon as this week, could play a key role in the case against Israel.
“Having on the record our view of this war is extremely important, and we have nothing to hide,” Dore Gold, the new director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters at a special briefing held to unveil Israel’s own investigation into the war.
Gold was accompanied by the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Tzipi Hotovely, and governmental and military legal experts who worked on the report.
Palestinians have said that the IDF violated the rules of war, which include giving adequate warning to civilians, using proportionate force and distinguishing between civilians and combatants. They have pointed to the high civilian casualty count as evidence.
In Sunday’s report, Israel defended itself with the same arguments it has been making since the fighting ended, albeit with a level of detail never shown before.
According to Israel, the actions of Hamas and other terror groups in the Strip that are detailed in the report constitute as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and a blatant violation of international law.
UN numbers of casualties in Gaza differ from Israel’s, stating 2,256 Palestinians, including 1,563 civilians, were killed in the 50-day conflict.
The report disputes the UN figures, saying confirmed non-combatants made up 36 percent of the Palestinian dead and many militants were misidentified as civilians.
“Harm to the civilian population also occurred as the result of unfortunate – yet lawful – incidental effects of legitimate military action in the vicinity of civilians and their surroundings, and as a result of the inescapable constraint of commanders not being infallible, intelligence not being perfect and technological systems sometimes failing,” the report says.
The Palestinians rejected the Israeli report. “The Israeli decision to deny targeting civilians in Gaza is the logical continuation of what Israel did in Gaza,” Ehab Bseiso, spokesman of the Palestinian unity government told AFP. Therefore, the report published on Sunday “does not change our position to demand an international investigation,” he said.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, meanwhile, called the Israeli report worthless, saying “Israeli war crimes are clear because they were committed in front of live cameras”. Hamas has denied any wrongdoing, saying it acted to protect Palestinians.
Izzat Risheq, a senior Hamas official, called the report a “lie promoted by the occupation to cover up its crimes.” He said “the hand of justice will reach the perpetrators.”
Hamas’ war crimes
The Israeli report presents a list of war crimes committed by Hamas and the other terror organizations in the Gaza Strip and includes testimony and seized Hamas documents which prove, according to Israel, that Hamas’ strategy was to encourage its fighters to move in civilian areas, knowing that it would constrain Israel’s ability to act and turn the civilian population there into a human shield.
The report includes what Israel says are seized Hamas documents encouraging its fighters to move in civilian areas, knowing that it would constrain Israel’s ability to act.
“We were a bit struck and surprised with the amount of documentation that we managed to recover during the operation actually indicating that this is a strategy of Hamas,” said Eran Shamir-Borer, a lawyer in the Israeli military’s international law department.
It also lists the locations of military command centers operating from civilian structures, mosques used as firing posts for snipers, schools used to store weapons and rockets, explosives planted in civilian structures and tunnels dug from inside civilian structures and residential areas.
The report also includes examples of instances in which Hamas forced civilians to arrive in fighting zones and stay there, and instructed them to ignore IDF warnings given before attacks on targets in those areas.
The Israeli report further details several instances in which the Palestinian militants posed as civilians or as IDF soldiers.
Also detailed are the main events that led to the launch of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s main objectives, the terror targets the IDF acted against, the humanitarian aid Israel allowed into the Gaza Strip, the damage caused to the Israeli civilian population, Israel’s inspection and investigation mechanisms, and more.
“From 2000, Hamas’ terror activity has led to the death of at least 1,265 Israelis; Hamas fired over 15,200 rockets and mortars at Israeli citizens (4,500 of which during Protective Edge), covering some 70 percent of Israel’s population; Hamas dug at least 32 tunnels which cross the border between Gaza and Israel, meant to commit terror attacks against Israeli population centers,” the report states.
Therefore, “Israel’s decision to launch a large-scale military operation against Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip as part of the ongoing armed conflict these organizations led was justified according to international law.”
The report also details Israel’s humanitarian efforts to send medical equipment, food and other supplies into the Gaza Strip during the fighting, despite the fact Hamas and the other terror groups were attacking the border crossings while supply was being let through.
With regards to the proposals for ceasefire, the report states that “had Hamas accepted the first Egyptian-mediated ceasefire, the one Israel accepted on July 15 that had the same conditions as the ones Hamas eventually accepted on August 26, 90 percent of casualties could have been prevented.”
According to the report’s authors, the information collected focused on facts, data and the legal aspects of the fighting against Hamas and the other terror factions in the summer of 2014.
Israel has been working on the report for several months and its authors says the report proves that Israel followed international law and made great efforts to avoid hurting innocent people, whether by using the “Knock on the Roof” procedure or by dropping leaflets, phone calls, radio broadcasts and warning strikes with unarmed shells ahead of live airstrikes.
Shamir-Borer showed reporters what he said was a declassified “target card” that laid out the calculations Israel took before striking a suspected arms cache hidden in the home of an Islamic Jihad leader in southern Gaza.
The “operational directives” listed on the card call for destroying the arms while avoiding civilian casualties. It calls for a single airstrike on the home, at night and only after warning people to leave, and “real-time surveillance” to be on the lookout for civilians.
Shamir-Borer said the home was hit, and there was a “secondary blast,” indicating weapons were stored there. The report said the army was unaware of any casualties from the strike. Shamir-Borer said the army went through a similar process in all 5,000 preplanned airstrikes carried out during the fighting.
The report calls to examine the incidents in which civilians were hurt in Gaza must be against the backdrop of the war crimes committed by Hamas and its use of civilian population, alongside Israeli effort to prevent harming civilians and adhere to international law.
Israel, the report says, did not intentionally act to cause damage to the civilian Palestinian population and its surroundings during the confrontation, and deeply regrets this damage.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli report was meant to be a pre-emptive strike, noting that “this report is especially important because the State of Israel is under an unprecedented de-legitimization attack. This attack is not relevant, it’s political. Its goal is to tarnish the State of Israel, and we intend to respond to this attack… We will act wherever we need to for as long as we need to in order to deal with false claims and anti-Israeli initiatives.”
Israeli military prosecutors closed a probe into the death of four children in Gaza last year and opened three new ones — including an alleged revenge shelling.
The Israel Defense Forces’ announcement Thursday on the closure of the probe said the children’s deaths on a Gaza beach in July as a result of an airstrike were an accident and did not affect the legality of Israel’s military actions in Gaza. No action is being taken against those involved. The strike was on a compound known to be in use by Hamas’ naval commando unit, the statement said.
Also on Thursday, the Military Advocate General announced it would look into the death of nine people in July at a café in Khan Younis hit by IDF artillery
A second probe concerns the suspected revenge shelling of a Palestinian clinic. Armored Corps troops are believed to have targeted the clinic as payback for the slaying of two of their comrades on July 22 by a Palestinian sniper whom the suspects believed fired on them from the clinic. The third probe concerns the alleged beating of a Palestinian prisoner.
All incidents occurred during Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza in July and August of 2014 following Hamas’ firing of rockets at Israel civilians. A United Nations committee of inquiry into Israel’s actions in Gaza — which the Palestinians and other countries said amounted to war crimes — is due to submit its report next week.
Additionally, the advocate general said it would indict three soldiers suspected of looting in Gaza on July 29.
The International Court of Justice is also looking into Palestinian complaints on Israel’s summer offensive in Gaza. Some legal analysts have said the ICC, a U.N. court, has no jurisdiction to investigate the matter or prosecute alleged offenders because Israel’s judiciary is investigating the conduct of its own troops in compliance with international judicial standards. However, Israel’s critics dispute this.
So far, the Military Advocate General has received 190 complaints about Israeli troops’ conduct during Israel summer offensive, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said in a statement. Of those, 105 have been processed. Of the processed complaints, seven have been deemed to merit criminal investigations.
Another 15 incidents were investigated by local units and not at the general staff level.
Cover of the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. Description of book HERE from Wikipedia
Russian bookstores began removing a graphic novel about the Holocaust from their shelves due to the large swastika on its cover.
The stores reportedly removed the book “Maus” by Art Spiegelman over concerns about raids by the authorities to remove the symbol ahead of May 9, when Russia will observe 70 years since the victory over the Nazis.
The book won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and was first published in Russia in 2013, according to the French news agency AFP. About 10,000 copies of the book have been sold in Russia, the publisher told AFP.
Russia passed a law banning Nazi propaganda in December. Toy stores and antique shops have been raided for Nazi symbols.
The Respublika bookstore chain confirmed to the New York Times on Monday that it had removed the book because it was concerned about the raids. Inspectors seeking “book covers with Nazi symbols, in particular drawings of the swastika led the company to consult with lawyers about the legitimacy of selling this book in our chain,” Anastasia Maksimenko, a representative for Respublika, told the Times in an email.
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, while confirming that Nazi and fascist symbols were unacceptable, said that “everything needs to be in moderation.”
Russian stores pull Holocaust graphic novel Maus over swastika on cover
Russian bookstores were hastily removing an award-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust from their shelves on Monday, reportedly because its cover shows a Nazi swastika.
Maus, by American artist and author Art Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and was published in Russian in 2013.
But Varvara Gornostayeva, the chief editor at the book’s publisher Corpus, said major bookstore chains were taking it off their shelves and internet sites.
“They have removed the book,” Gornostayeva told AFP. “It was selling very well and nobody had ever sent us any official complaints.”
A reporter for Echo of Moscow radio, Darya Peshchikova, toured bookstores and said staff were expecting raids by the authorities ahead of 9 May, when Russia marks 70 years since Soviet victory over Nazi forces in the second world war.
“They are waiting for checks and decided to clean up their shelves,” Peshchikova wrote on Twitter. “The reason is the swastika, employees say.”
Russian authorities have moved to censor Nazi insignia, even raiding toy stores and antique shops which carry period paraphernalia, citing a law which forbids “Nazi propaganda” passed last December.
“There is no Nazi propaganda in it, this is a book that should be on the shelves on Victory Day,” Gornostayeva argued.
“It’s one of greatest anti-fascist books, with a deep and piercing message.”
Maus tells the author’s personal story of the Holocaust through the memories of his father, a Polish Jew who moved to the United States. It uses animal metaphors and minimalist graphic style, portraying Jews as mice and Germans as cats.
The Russian book’s cover features two mice – a father and a son – and a stylised swastika image in the background, with the face of Hitler as a cat in the centre. About 10,000 copies of the book have been sold in Russia, according to the publisher.
By Monday afternoon, three of Moscow’s largest bookstores – Biblio Globus, Moskva, and Moskovsky Dom Knigi – had removed the book from their internet stores.
Cached versions of store catalogues showed that all three carried it just a few days ago, but all denied this when contacted by AFP.
“It must be a mistake,” said a woman in the PR department of Biblio Globus when asked why a days-old version of the store’s webpage show the book as in stock.
What, exactly, was remembered during Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day this week?
Not the victims of Israel’s latest slaughter in Gaza, where more than 2,200 civilians were killed less than a year ago. In the propagandistic world of “Holocaust memory” only Jews can be victims, so mainstream media marginalize the hundreds of Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants who publicly condemned “the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza” (their words). Instead, a leading Israeli newspaper informed us this week that “adult children of Holocaust survivors in Israel tend to be more anxious than their peers … about the Iranian nuclear threat” — even though Iran has no nuclear weapons and has never attacked Israel.
Why was Palestinian suffering forgotten on Holocaust Remembrance Day?
An Israeli army delegation marches into Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in 2007. (“Israel Defense Forces”/Flickr)
What, exactly, was remembered during Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day this week?
Not the victims of Israel’s latest slaughter in Gaza, where more than 2,200 civilians were killed less than a year ago. In the propagandistic world of “Holocaust memory” only Jews can be victims, so mainstream media marginalize the hundreds of Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants who publicly condemned “the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza” (their words). Instead, a leading Israeli newspaper informed us this week that “adult children of Holocaust survivors in Israel tend to be more anxious than their peers … about the Iranian nuclear threat” — even though Iran has no nuclear weapons and has never attacked Israel.
A similarly selective silence surrounds the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Several governments represented at an Auschwitz commemoration in January sent troops into that slaughter, so eerily reminiscent of Germany’s criminal invasion of Poland in 1939. “People forget what Auschwitz was,” said Halina Birenbaum, who was in the notorious death camp as a child, “and that terrifies me, because I know to what kind of hell it leads.”
We should be doubly terrified, it seems to me, when such an event is used to promote precisely that kind of forgetfulness, at least where Arab deaths are concerned.
The Israeli writer Boaz Evron warned years ago that “Holocaust awareness” is now “an official, propagandistic indoctrination … the real aim of which is not at all an understanding of the past, but a manipulation of the present.” Anyone doubting these words need only listen as world “leaders” emphasize the sort of wrongs whose memories they want to preserve — while noting the atrocities they ignore.
Resolve to fight prejudice?
The UK Prime Minister David Cameron, for instance, recently intoned that all of “us,” “whatever our faith, whatever our creed, whatever our politics … stand united in our resolve to fight prejudice and discrimination in all its forms.”
But Cameron hasn’t fought Israel’s apartheid regime in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip; in fact, he refused to halt Britain’s arms sales to Israel even as Israel used its arsenal in repeated attacks on Gaza’s hospitals (killing more than a dozen health care workers) and the bombardment of residential neighborhoods, where the death toll included more than 500 children, destroying 22 schools and leveling more than 10,000 homes.
Apart from dividing worthy victims from unworthy ones, Holocaust “memorials” adopt the priorities of Western power politics. That’s why the president of the country that bore the brunt of defeating Hitler, and actually liberated the Eastern European death camps, did not even attend the memorial for the seventieth anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. President Vladimir Putin was “absent,” as the Associated Press’ Vanessa Gera delicately put it, as a “result of the deep chill between the West and Russia over Ukraine.”
In plain English, Putin was in the doghouse for opposing the US-backed coup that put Nazi sympathizers into power in Kiev (where their predecessors assisted in the slaughter of some 30,000 Jews in 1941), so naturally he didn’t belong at a Holocaust commemoration. On the other hand, none of the event’s organizers seemed to object to the representation of countries that supported the empowerment of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, whose capital (as everyone present certainly knew) was less than 600 miles from the site of the ceremony.
Exploitation of history
World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder used the ceremony to decry complaints about last summer’s massacre in Gaza as “vilification of Israel.” Hollywood’s Steven Spielberg echoed that message, blaming the “perennial demons of intolerance” on “anti-Semites, radical extremists, and religious fanatics” and warning of “a growing effort to banish Jews from Europe.” (He presented no evidence of this “growing effort”; as far as I know, the only prominent politician who has been calling for the removal of Jews from Europe is Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.)
Claims of rising European anti-Semitism represent yet another exploitation of Jewish history for the benefit of Israeli propaganda. “The question of whether Jews have a future in Europe is an, unfortunately, timely one,” Johns Hopkins University Professor Dorothea Wolfson wrote recently, following a conference at which Benjamin Ginsberg, another Johns Hopkins professor, ominously claimed that it is now “harder for Jews to be openly Jewish in Europe without being harassed.”
Apologists for Israel have an obvious motive for spreading such a message, but the facts tell a different tale. In France and Germany, the countries most often complained about in recent fearmongering, Jews received overwhelmingly favorable marks in a 2008 Pew Research Center poll on views of religious groups — and this despite growing public anger over Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestinian land and the ostentatious support of that occupation by most of the world’s Jewish leadership.
A recent survey taken by France’s National Human Rights Consultative Committee actuallyconcludes that “Jews are by far the best accepted minority in France today” — much better accepted than Blacks and immigrants of North African origin, and far and away more accepted than Muslims. Yet the propaganda churned out by Jewish groups and their apologists would have us believe that Jews, and only Jews, are in Europe’s crosshairs.
Apart from being untrue, the hype about a “new anti-Semitism” is cynical. Deborah Lipstadt’s typical column in The New York Times last August — perfectly timed to deflect attention from the Israeli massacre in Gaza — contained predictable hand-wringing about the growing threat to Jews in Western Europe. “This is not another Holocaust,” she wrote, “but it’s bad enough.”
The better to serve the Israeli cause, Lipstadt also took a sideswipe at the Hamas charter as a fount of resurgent Jew-hatred. But nowhere in her column did Lipstadt even mention Ukraine, the one country in Europe — probably in the world — where a political movement linked to genocidal anti-Semitism really has made a comeback.
If anti-Semitism had been her real subject, Lipstadt could hardly have missed a target so obvious. But the neo-Nazis in Ukraine are supported by the United States and haven’t been condemned by Israel, so — well, enough said.
Moral imperative
All that is bad enough, but the worst thing about the propaganda, it seems to me, is that it manipulates Holocaust memory to obscure what should be its most important teachings. There is a dangerous wave of bigotry sweeping much of the world today, but it is aimed predominantly at Muslims, not Jews.
According to the Pew Research Center’s figures, unfavorable attitudes toward Muslims exceed favorable ones in an astonishing number of countries: the list includes France, Germany, Spain, Poland, India, South Korea, Japan, China, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico andSouth Africa. This is particularly troubling when we remember that since 2001, attacks by Western forces have killed (at least) hundreds of thousands of people in predominantly Muslim countries including Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
Under these circumstances, the sensible thing for Jews to do is to make common cause with Muslims in opposition to religious intolerance, and to campaign against the imperialist wars that have devastated so much of the Muslim world — the all too obvious global consequences of which include anger, sometimes violent, over Israel’s role in many of those wars.
Writing as a Jew myself, and specifically in light of Holocaust history, I find such a response more than political common sense; for me, it is a moral imperative. And for the same reason I cannot remain silent while Jewish elites turn the lessons of the Nazi genocide upside down — incidentally using the very methods the Nazis used to convert Germany into a killing machine.
“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders,” Hermann Goering, a leading Nazi, told an Allied-appointed psychologist while on trial at Nuremberg. “All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
Even as the corpses piled up in the rubble of Gaza last summer, overloading some morgues so badly that the bodies of children had to be housed in ice cream freezers, many Jewish leaders were following Goering’s line, with one writer from my own Orthodox circlesmusing about “the courage, motivation and faith” of the Israeli killers, sneering at Jews who speak of “the evils of modern Israel” and condemning the defenders of Gaza, who allegedly “primed teenagers with suicide bomber belts.” No evidence, of course, was given for this claim.
The worship of power and military force, the usurpation of religion to cloak conquest in sanctimonious rhetoric, the demonization of those people unlucky enough to stand in the way of the dominant race’s appetites — all this, unfortunately, has clearly survived the fall of the Third Reich.
That it has infected so much contemporary Jewish discourse only proves that Israel’s memorials of the Nazi genocide serve no decent purpose. Until we are prepared to turn its lessons inward — where all moral lessons belong first and foremost — it would be far more respectful to the victims if we could simply resolve, in the words of Norman Finkelstein, “to preserve their memory, learn from their suffering and let them, finally, rest in peace.”
On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel once again pulls out the infamous ‘Victim Card’, portraying itself as target …
Jewish communities around the world faced an “explosion of hatred” last year, with the number of violent anti-Semitic attacks rising by 38 percent, according to an annual report released by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University released on Wednesday, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“There is a worsening in expressions of anti-Semitism. Jews today worry about their future,” according to the report, which also notes a connection between Israel’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza over the summer and the rise in anti-Semitism.
Read the following before continuing with the rest of this post from yesterday … (Click on link)
Who will stand in silence for the victims of the Living Holocaust?
Tonight at sundown Israel will commemorate the Holocaust. On Thursday morning a siren will sound throughout the country and all traffic will come to a halt, all work will stop and the nation will stand at attention for a minute of silence for those that perished in those dark days.
A nation in mourning
Young Jews from Israel and around the world will join in the March of the Living and visit the sites of concentration camps in Poland. The Holocaust must never be forgotten!
BUT WHY POLAND???
Why go on ‘The March of The Living’ when the Living Holocaust is right here to see …. Image by Derkaoui Abdellah
A trip to the other side of the wall of apartheid in Israel would demonstrate that nothing has been learned from the Holocaust as it repeats itself daily in the Occupied West Bank and in Gaza. Observers can see first hand, with their own eyes the use of child labour on settlement farms … (Click on links)
A trip to Gaza would be an eyeopener for tourists as they watch the residents continue to dig out of the rubble from the last Israeli blitzkrieg …
Yes, the Holocaust is alive and well right here , no need to go to Poland. And if it’s historical comparisons you want to see, just look at this collage of photos …
This photo essay was put together by the head of the Norweigan Embassy in Saudi Arabia. It origanilly appeared on MWC News.
THE GRANDCHILDREN OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FROM WORLD WAR II ARE DOING TO THE PALESTINIANS EXACTLY WHAT WAS DONE TO THEM BY NAZI GERMANY …
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISON
Hitler Yesterday ~ Israel Today
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
ARRESTS & HARASSMENTS
DESTROYING HOMES & LIVELIHOODS
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
THE CLASSIC PROPAGANDA MACHINE – YOU WILL FIND THE PICTURE IN BLACK & WHITE IN ALL AMERICAN AND SOME OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES HISTORY BOOKS, ENCYCLOPEDIAS, LIBRARIES, MUSEUMS… THAT DEPICTS A YOUNG JEWISH BOY WITH HIS HANDS UP WHILE NAZI TROOPS POINT THEIR GUNS AT HIM AND HIS FAMILY IN ORDER TO EXPEL THEM FROM THEIR HOMES… (IT’S SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU SYMPATHIZE WITH THE VICTIMS & TO SUPPORT THEIR CAUSE FOR JUSTICE & A HOMELAND) THE ISRAELIS PRACTICE THE SAME TACTIC
Desertpeace 