Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

SOAS Snowflakes cannot stomach the idea of an Israeli ambassador on campus

This entire article at The Guardian is amazing, not least because it is written as if the opinions expressed are perfectly normal for a university that specializes in teaching about the Middle East.

Students and academics at Soas University of London have said a visit by the Israeli ambassador Mark Regev this week could lead to serious tension and substantial distress on the campus.

Regev has been invited by two student societies to speak about the Middle East and prospects for peace on Thursday, but his visit has been criticised as provocative by other staff and students who are planning a protest.

More than 150 academics from Soas and other UK universities, plus 40 student societies at the university, have written to the Soas director Valerie Amos urging her to intervene to stop the meeting on Thursday at which Regev is due to speak.

A letter signed by more than 100 Soas staff says: “We fear that if this provocative event proceeds as planned, it will cause substantial distress and harm to many of our students and staff who are, have been or will be affected by the actions of what a recent UN report refers to as the Israeli ‘apartheid regime’.

“The event could further cause serious tension on campus and result in a charged atmosphere that will be detrimental to the wellbeing of all faculty, staff and students.”

This is not a spoof. This is not satire. This is seriously what supposed academics are claiming will be the outcome of an Israeli representative speaking on campus, a single Zionist speech among the hundreds of anti-Zionist talks, activities, lectures and boycotts that infest SOAS every year.

The students’ union challenged the university authorities over the staging of the event, raising concerns about possible safety and security risks posed by the ambassador’s visit and “the inability of students and staff – in particular Palestinian students – to participate openly in the debate, because of possible repercussions on their ability to enter Israel/Palestine”.

Apparently Israel is completely unaware of the anti-Israel activities they do the other 364 days of the year, but they will have Mossad operatives taking names on the day of the Regev speech just looking for excuses to ban Palestinians from coming home.

Prof Jonathan Rosenhead, one of the organisers of the academics’ protest letter to Lady Amos, said: “Holding this meeting at Soas, where staff and students have voted overwhelmingly in support of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, and in support of Palestinian rights, seems like a deliberate provocation.”

Calling for the destruction of Israel isn't a provocation. Holding a speech defending it is.

A statement posted on Facebook by the Soas students’ union said: “We stand with the Soas community in expressing our concern at Mark Regev’s presence on campus, and in rejecting the idea that our spaces of learning should serve as avenues for officials to put forward state propaganda.”

But perhaps the most outrageous comment about this speech came from Yair Wallach, the chair of the Centre for Jewish Studies at SOAS, who said “We see little value in the talk itself. This is the view of myself and other colleagues at the Centre for Jewish Studies. Therefore we suggest that the JSoc and the SOAS UN society reconsider the event.”

That is how thoroughly anti-Israel SOAS is. Even its "Jewish studies" leaders are against the idea of even hearing an Israeli representative speak.

Snowflakes.

Here is a list of speeches, available on podcast, hosted by the SOAS Student Union over the past couple of years that are considered to have more value than a speech by a representative of Israel. "Twerking as an act of resistance" sounds like it is hugely valuable.

The last time a representative from Israel visited SOAS in 2005, someone pulled a fire alarm at the outset of the speech, delaying it for an hour.

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British government officially refuses to apologize for Balfour Declaration

A few weeks ago an anti-Israel group called the Balfour Apology Campaign started an official petition to the British Government demanding that they apologize for issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917:

We call on Her Majesty’s Government to openly apologise to the Palestinian people for issuing the Balfour Declaration. The colonial policy of Britain between 1917-1948 led to mass displacement of the Palestinian nation.

HMG should recognise its role during the Mandate and now must lead attempts to reach a solution that ensures justice for the Palestinian people.

Calls to apologize for Balfour have been spreading since the 99th anniversary of the document, and even Mahmoud Abbas has been publicly insisting on an apology.

After some 13,000 signatures were received, the British Government responded with a resounding no:

The Balfour Declaration is an historic statement for which HMG does not intend to apologise. We are proud of our role in creating the State of Israel. The task now is to encourage moves towards peace.

The Declaration was written in a world of competing imperial powers, in the midst of the First World War and in the twilight of the Ottoman Empire. In that context, establishing a homeland for the Jewish people in the land to which they had such strong historical and religious ties was the right and moral thing to do, particularly against the background of centuries of persecution. Of course, a full assessment of the Declaration and what followed from it can only be made by historians.

Unfortunately, the response turns politically correct at this point.

Much has happened since 1917. We recognise that the Declaration should have called for the protection of political rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine, particularly their right to self-determination.

At the time there was next to no desire by Arabs in Palestine for an independent state - their leaders overwhelmingly wanted to be part of Greater Syria. The idea of a people called "Palestinian" was literally unheard of.

However, the important thing now is to look forward and establish security and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians through a lasting peace. We believe the best way to achieve this is through a two-state solution: a negotiated settlement that leads to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on the 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states, and a just, fair, agreed and realistic settlement for refugees.

We believe that such negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between Israelis and Palestinians, but with appropriate support from the international community. We remain in close consultation with both sides and international partners to encourage meaningful bilateral negotiations. We do not underestimate the challenges, but if both parties show bold leadership, peace is possible. The UK is ready to do all it can to support this goal.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

If they think that their "even handed" response will take the wind out of the sails of the haters who created the petition, they are sadly mistaken. The haters don't want a Palestinian state alongside Israel, they want an Arab state replacing Israel.

Which has been their goal since Palestinian nationalism started.

It is nice to see that Her Majesty's Government did not even consider the petition to have any merit to begin with. There was no apology for not apologizing. The rest is well-known British policy, and the only way that this policy will change is when the world governments start looking at things clearly and seeing that these moves are not meant to foster peace but to deny self-determination to the Jewish people.

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04/24 Links Pt2: Who Does the Anne Frank Center Represent?; U.N. Rewrites Balfour Declaration Parliamentary Debate Records

From Ian:

Who Does the Anne Frank Center Represent?

The center’s transformation was no accident. It recently got a new board chair, a private-wealth manager named Peter Rapaport, and he brought on Goldstein, who has a background in political organizing. It shuttered its small museum and disbanded its board of advisers comprised of Holocaust experts. All of the staffers who were working there when Goldstein arrived have left.
With just its famous name and a savvy social-media strategy, the Anne Frank Center has transformed into a putative authority on anti-Semitism and American politics. But it’s not at all clear the organization speaks for anybody other than its own leaders—not Holocaust scholars, Anne Frank’s family, or the Jewish community. Ultimately, by politicizing Anne Frank, the group may undermine her legacy.
And it’s acted accordingly. Over the last year and a half or so, all of the former employees, who mostly had backgrounds in museum work, have left. At least one was fired, said Rapaport. In an email, Yvonne Simons, the former executive director, said only that “the board of directors choose a different path for the Anne Frank Center and changed its mission after my 10-year tenure.” Several longtime board members have also departed.
In other words, it is a tiny organization in the process of reinventing itself. The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect and Understanding may not be a Holocaust organization, a Jewish organization, or one founded by Anne Frank’s father. Its may not have leaders with a scholarly background, a mass membership, or institutional standing among Jewish groups and Holocaust museums. But because it talks a big game and wields the name of Anne Frank, the media has awarded it authority it never earned.

The Recent Discovery of Heinrich Himmler’s Telegram of November 2, 1943, the Anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, to Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem

Himmler’s telegram, the Mufti’s response, and the demonstrative political rally of protest on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration show Nazi Germany’s positive support of the Palestinian Arabs and their reciprocally warm feelings. With the benefit of recent scholarship, we may better appreciate the nature and extent of this type of collaboration.
In his recent article in this journal, Johannes Houwink ten Cate cited the Swiss historian and journalist, Werner Rings, who identified four different forms of collaboration, according to their degree of identification with the ideology of Nazism, as follows: “tactical, neutral, conditional and unconditional collaboration.” Using these categories as his standard of comparison, Ten Cate concludes that Amin al-Husseini was one of the few unconditional collaborationists because of his ideological collaboration with the Waffen-SS. Separately, Barry Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz list examples of the Mufti’s contributions to the cause of Nazi-Germany. These include, “… fomenting a pro-Axis revolt and a massacre of Jews in Iraq; collaborating with Hitler; gathering intelligence for the Germans; recruiting Muslim army units for the German army and SS; preparing a Middle East Holocaust against the Jews; promoting pro-Axis revolts in Egypt and elsewhere; and conducting pro-Nazi propaganda by every means at his disposal.”
Any discussion of Amin al-Husseini’s ideological collaboration must also point out his remarkable claim that Nazism and Islam have a basic affinity. Examples of such shared values are the “Führer Principle,” discipline, and obedience which, according to him, find clear expression in the Koran. Rubin and Schwanitz observe that “… Islamists did not need to take ideas from German Nazis or Italian fascists. As al-Husaini had argued in the 1930s and 1940s, they had a parallel yet symbiotic world view, drawn from their own societies’ political traditions, history, and religion.” Such views clearly indicate that the Mufti’s commitment to the principles of National Socialism represented a form of unconditional ideological collaboration.
One should not overlook the essential fact that this ideological collaboration was reciprocal. The Nazi elite had a special respect and great admiration for Islam. Although these views have been documented, they have not yet been placed in context. In his recently published study, Islam and Germany’s War, David Motadel describes the admiration of the Nazi elite for Islam, an admiration which frequently predicated the rejection of Christianity. According to Motadel, who cites the scholarship of Peter Longerich, “The man who was perhaps most fascinated with the Muslim faith and enthusiastic about what he believed to be an affinity between National Socialism and Islam, was Himmler.” Himmler’s doctor, Felix Kersten, wrote an entire chapter on his patient’s “Enthusiasm for Islam,” which was excluded from the English translation. According to Kersten, “Himmler saw Islam as a masculine, soldierly religion.”

David Singer: United Nations Rewrites Balfour Declaration Parliamentary Debate Records

An official United Nations document published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat contains a deliberately altered record of a 1922 parliamentary House of Lords debate on the Balfour Declaration.
The Balfour Declaration – dated 2 November 1917 – called for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people – it being clearly understood that nothing would be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The Balfour Declaration was subsequently written into international law after being incorporated into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine on 24 July 1922.
The upcoming centenary of the Balfour Declaration has prompted a concerted international campaign calling on the British Government to apologise for another Government’s decision taken 100 years ago. Baroness Anelay – Minister of State (Foreign Commonwealth Office) – told the House of Lords on 3 April 2017 that no such apology would be forthcoming.

Nasreen Qadri is an Israeli Arab singer who became famous when she won a TV singing competition in 2014.

Qadri has been named to sing in both Israel's Remembrance Day and Independence Day ceremonies.

She says she is part of this country and represents it therefore it's an honor for her to sing at those ceremonies and that it gives her a sense of belonging. She hopes this will convey a message of peace and brotherhood and against racism and violence.

She toured the US with Radiohead together with another Israeli band, Dudu Tassa and the Kuwaitis, earlier this year.

(h/t Yoel)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The blood libels of Passover 2017 (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Some two weeks ago, Yair Rosenberg showed in a Tablet article how anti-Israel activists and Jew-haters used a tweet about a pre-Passover toast by Israel’s deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely to claim that “Israeli Foreign Ministry officials are literally toasting yesterday’s event [i.e. a chemical attack on civilians] in #Syria.” As Rosenberg noted, “this latest blood libel is a reminder, if one was needed, of the enduring nature of anti-Semitic tropes, which somehow find ways to adapt to new mediums and situations without shedding their essential characteristics.”

Even though many of the people who responded to the tweet pointed out that the toast was for the holiday, the tweet has remained up; other users tweeted similar versions and also left their tweets up despite being told that the toast was for Passover.

Unsurprisingly, among those who retweeted this new blood libel was Rania Khalek, though she quietly canceled her retweet after she was called out for it on Israellycool.

But Khalek couldn’t remain abstinent for long, and eventually she retweeted the view of notorious Assad apologist Sharmine Narwani that “Syria was targeted for destruction” so that Israel could push for a recognition of its annexation of part of the Golan Heights.

Khalek’s friends and former colleagues at the Electronic Intifada (EI) weren’t idle, either: they published a post by the vile David Sheen under the title “In Israel, the eliminationist camp is already in charge.”

Another EI tweet promoted Sheen’s post by insinuating that Israel was conducting a “campaign against African babies”.

In his relentless quest to demonize Israel, Sheen promotes in this post a video of a “lecture” in which he claims to present “some of the seediest scandals that plagued Israeli society in 2016.” As he notes: “Many of these were covered extensively by The Electronic Intifada and by this writer specifically, but otherwise received little attention from other media outlets.” Worried that promising coverage of Israel’s “seediest scandals” might not be enough to get EI fans to watch all of the video, Sheen urges his readers to really watch “the entire 90-minute lecture,” though he warns that doing so “all in one sitting can be somewhat exhausting and even deeply depressing as it contains a list of horrific crimes and the human suffering they cause.”

However, some of the almost 2000 people who did watch Sheen’s “examination of Israel’s state-sponsored race wars against indigenous Palestinians and African refugees” since it was posted on March 21 apparently felt it was a rather rewarding experience.

Commenter Khurram Aziz praised Sheen for his “excellent” work and promised to send his video “to all Dutch media outlets;” he also sympathized with Sheen’s complaint that the media were neglecting Israel’s evils, but had an explanation: “virtually all MSM news outlets including Reuters, and even Alt Media (Controlled Opposition) are under control of Rothschild Zionists and the partners in crime the Jesuits of the Vatican!”

Aziz also noted that as a musician, he observed “in the Jazz scene here in I💜AMSterdam and NY, a preponderance of Jewish musicians hogging the limelight […] admittedly very good in their own way, but clearly this is the result of the Hidden🔯Hand in the Music Industry.”

Aziz was so enthusiastic about Sheen’s work that he left several additional comments.

Sheen got some more comments from fans of his work.

Clearly, David Sheen’s most enthusiastic fans get his message. For the rest of us, anti-Israel activists like Sheen, Khalek and Abunimah as well as their fans are a reminder that the Jew-hatred that is reflected in the centuries-old blood libel still has plenty of proponents in the 21st century.

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04/24 Links Pt1: Israel pauses to remember 6 million murdered in Holocaust

From Ian:

Israel pauses to remember 6 million murdered in Holocaust

Israelis across the country paused for two minutes Monday morning in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered in Europe under Nazi rule as a siren pierced the clear blue sky in an annual marking of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The 10 a.m. siren was to be followed by ceremonies at schools, memorials and elsewhere in honor of those who lost their lives, as well as Shoah survivors.
The country’s central commemoration event got underway immediately after the siren at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, where dignitaries will lay wreaths next to a monument commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.
Among those taking part in the wreath-laying are President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein.

Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance) Siren 2017

Today at 10:00 AM something incredible happens: sirens sound all over Israel and for two minutes everything stops. Today we remember the Holocaust.

JPost Editorial: Never Again

Last year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, we published an editorial calling for measures to be taken to ensure that survivors in Israel do not live out their last years in poverty.
Despite the best efforts of volunteer and professional organizations and new legislation that provide some survivors with increased benefits, the goal of providing every survivor with the care and dignity that was robbed of him or her earlier in life is still far from being achieved.
According to data provided by the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Survivors, about 25% of the country’s approximately 200,000 Holocaust survivors live below the poverty line. A fifth skip meals because they do not have enough money to buy food.
A report issued last week by State Comptroller Joseph Shapira highlighted glitches within the system – whether it’s the failure to allocate sufficient financial, housing or medical assistance, or the failure to have a central authority responsible for standing up for Holocaust survivors, while pointing a finger at the government for inadequately safeguarding survivors’ rights.
“The state’s attitude toward survivors may affect the memory of the Holocaust for future generations,” Shapira’s report cautioned.
As The Jerusalem Post’s legal affairs reporter Yonah Jeremy Bob wrote, Shapira warned that time is running out and the government must improvement things for survivors, whose average age is 85.
According to the report, 16,000 survivors are waiting, some for years, to receive subsidized housing for which their eligibility has already been approved. In addition, in 2014 and 2015, NIS 60 million earmarked as aid to elderly survivors was never used for that purpose due to lack of oversight and of plans by the Social Equality Ministry to use the funds.

'The IDF is the voice of those lost in the Holocaust'

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot addressed the annual March of the Living in Poland Monday, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Eizenkot, who led the IDF delegation to this year’s event, brought the Torah scroll held by then-Chief IDF Rabbi Shlomo Goren (later Chief Rabbi of Israel) during the liberation of the Temple Mount and Old City of Jerusalem.
During his speech, Eizenkot emphasized the importance of the IDF’s inclusion in the March of Life and its role in sustaining the legacy of Holocaust victims and survivors.
“For generation after generation, our brothers and sisters lived scattered and separated from one another, but were joined in spirit, in their hearts, and in their vision from time immemorial to return to the land of their forefathers,” said Eizenkot.
“But before they could build a [national] home and defense forces, disaster struck, and many Jewish communities of Europe were destroyed.
“Here, on this land, they were taken off in darkened cattle cars, brutally ripped away from their families, and led away to the identical fate – extermination.
“Their only sin was being Jewish, and for that they were tortured, crushed, and put to death - because there was no one who would stand up and fight for them.”

During a rally in Bethlehem in support of Palestinians terrorist hunger strikers, I noticed that many of the demonstrators were wearing ski masks (often with keffiyehs) showing the Fatah "destroy-all-Israel" logo:

Terror is so mainstream for Mahmoud Abbas' "moderate" Fatah movement that it is now even manufacturing terror-style ski masks for its members to proudly wear.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

EoZ was the first site to examine and expose the bigoted and pro-terror Facebook posts of many UNRWA employees, including teachers and principals.

According to Arab media, the increased focus on that hate has led UNRWA to withhold salaries from some of their offending employees.

The UNRWA staff union released a statement today saying that UNRWA management has issued sanctions of deducting up to a full month's salary against some employees due to their use of Facebook for "national issues. "

The union's statement said that it absolutely rejects this punishment by UNRWA, denouncing "the arrogance of the Agency's management and attempt to impose its desires on the staff."

It added: "The relief agency and the laws of neutrality" would not be at the expense of Palestinian national identity and the staff that wants to express their anti-Israel views.

The Union warned that "such action would have serious consequences."

UNRWA unions are notoriously antisemitic. The Gaza teachers' union has engaged in Holocaust denial. So has the Palestinian teachers' union in Lebanon, where UNRWA dominates.

Notice that the rank and file of UNRWA staff are not only complicit in promulgating hate, but they bitterly oppose any efforts to rein it in.

It looks like the pressure from the West - and the tying of UNRWA's funding to its behavior - is having results.

Since this is the only thing that has ever prompted UNRWA to barely uphold its own standards, this means that the pressure should only be increased.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Tel Aviv Stabber was in Israel with "Natural Peace Tours" group

Times of Israel reports:

The Defense Ministry suspended single-day work permits for Palestinians to enter Israel Sunday, hours after a Palestinian teen injured four in a stabbing attack on Tel Aviv’s beachfront.

The attacker, identified as an 18-year-old from the Nablus area of the West Bank, apparently entered Israel with one such pass, as part of a group known as “Natural Peace Tours,” which is supposed to forge relationships between Palestinians and Israelis, a defense official said. He was not named.

The ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said the one-day permits granted to different organizations and groups will be “frozen” until an investigation of the matter can be conducted, the official said.

Four people were hospitalized with light injuries after the attacker, who has not been named, went on a stabbing spree in the Leonardo Beach hotel on Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Street, near the city’s famous beach, on Sunday afternoon.

There is very little about "Natural Peace Tours" online, but it appears to be more a for-profit tourist agency than a "peace NGO." One Facebook page that is no longer online looked like this:

The other Facebook page with that name has very little description but a number of photos of what are apparently Arabs taking tours and having fun in Israel - at the Lebanon border, at the beach, touring old Tiberias.

The best description I could find was a 2010 article in MEPeace.org from a Tel Aviv man named Neri Bar-On:

The idea is to provide a tourist experience for people, Natural Peace Tours provide the services to get the permit plan the tour and arrange the comfort of the customers but for us this is not "Palestinians" these are customers who get the service the deserve and we support them to enjoy the day.

check the photos here
Natural Peace Tours does not think in "conflict terms" we think of human experience term and we want to provide the best experience for the people who decided to spend their day of vocation [sic] with us.

This is a different approach then many "Peace activists" and it is build on Palestinians and Israelis who work together with "business" and "service" mind as it should be in the future of peace we all desire.

we have tours to Tiberia, Akka, Haifa, Tel-Aviv, el hama sorriya, and we provide service to groups and individuals of Palestinians only. all our work is legal and we measure our success with the income Palestinian get from this activity that injected back into the Palestinian economy.

the face book is open only for Palestinians and Arab speakers.
we do not address any political issue, we do not discuss it and do not try to make any political statement. we provide human experience with what exist in our reality we respect all interpretations as private.

Despite its name, the group is not really about peace, but about providing a way for Arabs to visit Israel, doing all the paperwork for a price. I saw nothing about any real interaction with Israelis in these tours.

An unnamed spokesperson for the group told Walla! that they were cooperating with police, and that the stabber could not have taken the knife from their breakfast because they went through security. He claimed that most of the people in that group were women and children.

(h/t Yoel)

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Comparing Trump and Obama Yom HaShoah statements

Here is President Trump's recorded speech to the World Jewish Congress for Holocaust Remembrance Day this year:

On Yom HaShoah, we look back at the darkest chapter of human history. We mourn, we remember, we pray, and we pledge: Never again. I say it, never again.

The mind cannot fathom the pain, the horror, and the loss. Six million Jews, two-thirds of the Jews in Europe, murdered by the Nazi genocide. They were murdered by an evil that words cannot describe, and that the human heart cannot bear.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, we tell the stories of the fathers, mothers and children, whose lives were extinguished and whose love was torn from this earth. We also tell the stories of courage in the face of death, humanity in the face of barbarity, and the unbreakable spirit of the Jewish people.

Today, only decades removed from the Holocaust, we see a great nation risen from the desert and we see a proud Star of David waving above the State of Israel. That star is a symbol of Jewish perseverance. It’s a monument to unyielding strength. We recall the famous words attributed to Theodor Herzl: If you will, it is no dream. If you will it, it is no dream.

Jews across the world have proved the truth of these words day after day. In the memory of those who were lost, we renew our commitment and our determination not to disregard the warnings of our own times.

We must stamp out prejudice and anti-Semitism everywhere it is found. We must defeat terrorism, and we must not ignore the threats of a regime that talks openly of Israel’s destruction. We cannot let that ever even be thought of.

To all of you tonight, who have come from around the world, let it be known, America stands strong with the State of Israel.

The meaning of that state for so many is captured by the words of a German Jewish musician. Escaping Germany before 1937, he settled in the ancient land of Israel. Sometime later, he received a visit from a British official, who found him living in a hut, with only his piano for company. The official recognized the musician and said: This must be a terrible change for you. The musician looked back at him and replied: It is a change - from hell to heaven.

Many of you here today helped fulfill the same dream, the dream of Israel for millions, a dream that burned in the hearts of oppressed and fallen and which now draws the breath of life from a joyous people each and every day.

Thank you for your leadership, for your service, and for your vision of a world that is more free, just and peaceful place for all of God’s people.

Thank you, and God bless you all.

Here is President Obama's statement last year on the same occasion:

Today, on Yom HaShoah, we solemnly remember the six million Jews and the millions of others murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

On this day, we honor the memory of the millions of individuals – the mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, friends and neighbors – who lost their lives during a time of unparalleled depravity and inhumanity. We reaffirm our ongoing responsibility as citizens and as a nation to live out the admonition, “Never forget. Never again.” And we commit ourselves to preserving the memories of those who lived through the horrors of the Shoah, so that their experiences are not forgotten by our generation or by our children or grandchildren.

We also honor those who survived the Holocaust, many of them spared from death because of the righteous individuals who risked their lives to save Jews and other victims from Nazi persecution. The stories of these survivors and their protectors remind us to confront persecution wherever it arises, and that silence can be an accomplice to evil. They remind us of our duty to counter the rising tide of anti-Semitism, bigotry and hatred that threaten the values we hold dear—pluralism, diversity, and the freedoms of religion and expression.

Today, and every day, we stand in solidarity with the Jewish community both at home and abroad. We stand with those who are leaving the European cities where they have lived for generations because they no longer feel safe, with the members of institutions that have been attacked because of their Jewish affiliations, and with the college students forced to confront swastikas appearing on their campuses. And we call upon all people of good will to be vigilant and vocal against every form of bigotry.

When we recognize our interconnectedness and the fundamental dignity and equality of every human being, we help to build a world that is more accepting, secure and free. This is the best way to honor the legacy we recognize on Yom HaShoah and to fulfill our responsibilities to repair our world from generation to generation.

President Trump does not have the oratorical skills of President Obama, but his message is a breath of fresh air after the stilted statements from the Obama White House.

Unlike President Trump, President Obama never related the Holocaust to the threats that Israel faces - not in 2016 and not in the previous years either. (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015).

I know that all these statements were drafted by White House speechwriters. But they do reflect the way the President and his administration think.

There is a world of difference between how Obama tried to universalize the Holocaust or would only discuss right-wing antisemitism, and how Trump draws a straight line between antisemitism and today's anti-Zionism.

Obama's White House believed, even if they never said it explicitly, that Israel causes antisemitism. Trump's White House accurately knows that Israel is the antidote to antisemitism.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The Holocaust in the New York Times, 1942-43

The news this week that the Allies knew about the Holocaust two years before they liberated the camps hardly seems like news.

The New York Times did report on the Holocaust in 1942 and 1943 - just they buried the very few reports they had deep inside the paper, sometimes barely mentioning Jews among the victims.

July 2, 1942, page 6:

February 28, 1943, page 12:

April 20, 1943, page 11:

August 8, 1943, page 11:

August 27, 1943, page 7:

Anyone who cared to know, knew, well before the war ended. Even though this is only a fraction of what was discovered about the Holocaust after the war, already in 1943 it was known that millions of Jews were murdered.

They knew. They chose not to do anything about it.

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04/23 Links: Four wounded in Tel Aviv terror attack; Zionism Denial

From Ian:

Einat Wilf: Zionism Denial

As Israel marks its national Holocaust Remembrance Day, many around the world will secretly roll their eyes. 'There they go again the Zionists, using their precious Holocaust to justify their state, their power, their faults, reveling in a world guilted into silence.'
There are those who believe, too many, that without the holocaust there would have been no Israel. Most of them make this assumption in good faith. The American President himself, in his June 4, 2009 Cairo speech, spoke of "the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied."
But when so many believe that without the Holocaust there would have been no Israel, those who want Israel erased from map and memory, or isolated as an illegitimate state come to resent the Holocaust, or at least its association with Israel.
The American President wanted to make an important stand against Holocaust denial in the capital of the Arab world. He did not understand that by reaffirming the dangerous equation that the global legitimacy for Israel is rooted in the Holocaust, he fanned the motivation to engage in Holocaust denial for those who continue to believe, as they always have, that Israel is not a legitimate state.
Holocaust denial, Holocaust minimization ('6 million is an exaggerated number') Holocaust 'equalization' ('there were other genocides and ethnic cleansings, the Holocaust was no different'), Holocaust reversal ('what the Nazis did to the Jews is what the Jews are doing to others'), Holocaust marginalization ('other people were also killed in the War') and Holocaust by association ('the Palestinians are the secondary victims of the Holocaust'), are all but different facets of the same effort—to rob Israel of what seems like a powerful and indisputable source of legitimacy.
The deceptively seductive canard that 'the Palestinians are the secondary victims of Europe's crimes' is one of the worst of all these lies, since to the untrained ear it sounds logical. In this tale, after World War II, when it became clear that the Final Solution was not final and the Jewish survivors could not be expected or welcomed to stay in Europe the Europeans decided to 'dump' the surviving Jews on unsuspecting Arabs who were living in an area that colonial Europe controlled.

Terrorist accused of killing a British student will be paid £800 a month by the Palestinian government which receives £25m-a-year UK foreign aid

A terrorist accused of murdering a British student in Jerusalem will be paid a salary of more than £800 a month by the Palestinian government – which receives more than £25 million a year from the UK in foreign aid.
Jamil Tamimi, who has a history of mental health issues, killed theology student Hannah Bladon in a frenzied knife attack on Good Friday after the 21-year-old gave up her seat on a tram to a woman with a baby.
The 57-year-old Palestinian told police that he attacked Hannah, a Birmingham University exchange student attached to Jerusalem's Hebrew University, in the hope that a soldier in the carriage would kill him.
Instead Tamimi was arrested and is almost certain to be lauded as a resistance 'hero' by the Palestinian Authority (PA), like hundreds of others before him.

Tom Gross: Trump & the Middle East: On Israel, Palestine, Syria, & Orwell’s “1984”

On Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian policies (“don’t rule out a deal”), and on his airstrikes on Syrian chemical weapons infrastructure (“the right thing to do”)
This is the original English-language interview by Tamas Maraczi for Hungarian TV (April 13, 2017).