Shoah or Sinai?

The mass murder of one third of world Jewry was one of the most traumatic events in Jewish history, an event which almost completely wiped out Jewish life in Eastern Europe. It is an event which has no parallels in history, and stands alone in infamy by its sheer scope, the depth of hatred and the level of horror and barbarity perpetuated by man with the help of modern technology. In the aftermath of the carnage of the Holocaust, survivors arrived on the shores of America and the Holy Land determined to rebuild the life that was callously snuffed out. In defiance, the Jewish state arose, its rallying cry, "Never Again!". The vow was that never again would Jewish blood be cheap, that Jews suffer in silence, that they should be powerless to defend themselves.

As the years progressed, many Jews lost their connection to Judaism, yet the raw emotions aroused by the Holocaust stirred their hearts and feelings. For Israelis, surrounded by a sea of hostile nations determined on destroying the Jewish state, the specter of the Holocaust hovers in their minds. The State of Israel, according to many, is the insurance policy of the Jewish people in case of another Holocaust. For American Jews, the suffering and pain of their Europeans forebearers colours their identity. They are even on the look-out for signs of impending disaster, of anti-semitism, resolving never again to be caught off guard.

For many Jews, Judaism is synonymous with Holocaust. The Holocaust occupies a significant amount of curriculum in the Jewish schools. For those with little or no formal Jewish education, their first Jewish emotion is often a visit to the Holocaust museum. At every Jewish event that they attend, whether it be the occasional "temple" service, bar mitzvah or celebration, the Holocaust is mentioned and commemorated. A new (and frightening) practice has arisen where bar mitzvah boys are paired up with a child murdered in the Holocaust who did not have a chance to celebrate his bar mitzvah.

The transformation of Judaism into a cult of the Holocaust should repulse and shock every observant Jew. It is a recipe for disillusionment and assimilation, as Judaism becomes something negative, a burden of anti-semitism and tragedy. The Holocaust provides no reason for an unconnected Jew to remain Jewish, to marry a Jew and lead a Jewish life, besides possibly guilt. The Holocaust tells us nothing about Judaism, about the beauty and depth of it's spiritual teachings, or the profoundness of its moral legacy.

Similar to their American brethren, many Israelis believe that the State of Israel exists only because of the Holocaust. Every single foreign delegate is taken to Yad VaShem to bear witness to the destruction of the Jews of Europe, the subtle message being that this is Israel's alternative to fighting. It is in this climate that the dictator of Iran, as well as many educated and sophisticated Arabs, deny the Holocaust with impunity, believing that without the Holocaust, the whole edifice upon which Zionism stands will collapse.

The memory of the six million holy Jews murdered in the Holocaust must be perpetuated and remembered. However, it must be stressed over and over again that Yad VaShem is not Israel and Auschwitz is not Judaism. There was a Judaism long before 1939, and that persecution and oppression need not be an integral part of our identity. The Jewish state exists not because of the Holocaust, but in spite of it.

The heart of Judaism is, and must always be, the public revelation of the divine at Sinai, and the eternal covenant between the Jewish people and G-d. Judaism lives and dies on the fact that G-d revealed Himself before millions of people at Mount Sinai and gave the people of Israel His Torah. It is G-d's instructions manual for life, a guide to live a life of goodness, blessing and meaning. Every single Jew is bound by its commandments and dictates, and must follow its precepts and teachings. By living by the Torah's laws, a Jew reaches holiness and G-dliness. It is this belief that kept Jews strong despite centuries of terrible conditions. When their situation could be alleviated by baptism, conversion or assimilation, they clung tightly to their Torah and to their G-d. This is what prevented the Jew from disappearing among the nations, because His G-d spoke to him from the fire and bound him to Him in an everlasting contract.

Our right to the Land of Israel comes from Sinai and not from Wansee. The same G-d who proclaimed to the Children of Israel, "I am the L-rd, your G-d", promised them Land of Israel. By His word, the Jewish people entered the land and conquered it, by His word they were exiled after rebelling against His commandments, and by His word they are returning to reclaim their stolen heritage. By basing Israel's right to exist on the Holocaust, we provide an opportunity for Ahmadinejad to ask rhetorically why the Germans shouldn't compensate the Jews by giving them land for which to build a state. If Israel is simply meant to be a haven for persecuted Jews, there is no reason why the Arabs should suffer for the crimes of Europeans. Israel draws its legitimacy from Sinai and the modern state is simply a continuation of the kingdoms of David and Solomon, and the Hasmonean dynasty, resumed after a 2000 year hiatus.

The focus of the State of Israel cannot simply be defiance to Hitler and the Final Solution. We must always remember the Holocaust and fight to prevent it from ever occurring again, yet it cannot be the focal point of the Jewish state. To silence our haters and critics, we must embrace our deep roots in the Land, and re-affirm our commitment to the values of Sinai. Yad VaShem should not be the first and only stop for visiting diplomats, but one of many that showcase the complexity of Jewish history, the highs and lows of our people. Diplomats should be taken to Jerusalem, the rebuild capital of the Jewish nation, about which our ancestors wept as they were led into captivity, vowing, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning!". They should be taken to Hebron, the home and burial place of our Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They should visit Masada, where the brave Judean warriors took their own lives rather than be taken as slaves by the Romans. They should see the synagogue and yeshivot of the Old City, to demonstrate how Judaism has come home to its birthplace.

The legacy of Sinai must prompt us to be a Light unto the Nations, to fight for freedom and human rights and dignity. The Holocaust and its horrors can only be understood through the traditional framework of Judaism. Alone, it provides us nothing of value about Judaism, and gives us no sense of direction or meaning. Only by embracing Sinai can we hope to build a society based on morals, ethics and the values of holiness. It is Sinai that will re-energize the apathetic masses, that will re-invigorate the disconnected Jewish youth. The Torah, and not the Nuremberg Laws, will stop the tide of assimilation and spiritual oblivion. It is what will give us the courage to fight for our land, and the strength not to bend and apologize in the face of the haters. It is Sinai which is the core of authentic Judaism.

The Real Meaning of Never Again

"We, pilots of the Israeli Air Force, flying in the skies over the extermination camps, arose from the ashes of the millions of victims, carrying their silent cries, saluting their bravery, and vowing to be a shield to the Jewish Nation, and to its Land, Israel."

An oft-repeated cliche repeated by both Jewish leaders and the international community is that of "never again". Presidents and Prime Ministers visit Yad VaShem, pay tribute at Holocaust Memorials and shed crocodile tears over the Jews murdered in the Holocaust, while proceeding to condemn and attack Israel. The same leaders that stood silently in commemoration of the Holocaust denounced Israel with the most hateful vitriol during its moment of greatest need, as it was fighting to defend itself and its citizens. Never again, they pledged. Never again? Is that really so?

The Holocaust teaches many universal messages. It teaches mankind to be ever vigilant against the forces of hatred and intolerance, whenever they arise against any people or group. It warns us never to allow bigoted speech and ideas fester and grow. It shows the ease with which an entire nation can descend to the depths of depravity and immorality. Yet, for the Jewish people, the Holocaust has one sharp and poignant message: Never again to be weak.

Since the destruction of the Second Temple, for two millenia, Jews lived as strangers in foreign lands, minorities under the rule of others. In Christendom and in Islamic lands, Jews were forced to lived in ghettos, mellahs or juderias, to wear distinctive and humiliating clothing, had restrictions on their professions and employment and endured severe discrimination. Jews were at the mercies of the lords of the land and had to comply with their wishes, whether it be being forced to hear a conversionist sermon delivered by a priest in a synagogue on Shabbat, or to pay a jyziah tax in a debasing ceremony to their Muslim overlords. Jews were spat upon and cursed, beaten and abused at will. The two thousand years of Jewish life in Europe and the Middle-East, with the exception of occasional periods of prosperity and tranquility, was marked with constant fear and insecurity. Ravaged by pogroms and Crusades, Inquisitions and forced conversions, massacres and jihads, Jews lived with their lives always hanging in a narrow balance. A new king or pope, ruler or clergyman, could put the Jews in peril.

In this climate of ingrained loathing and despising of the Jews, Hitler came along. He used the traditional anti-semitic motives of the Catholic church as well as new anti-semitic racial theories to stir up the people's hate. The policies of the Nazi Regime, even before the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem was implemented, were designed to crush and dehumanize the Jews. The Jew looked in trepidation at the Nazi brownshirts, Gestapo and SS, unable to defend or stand up for himself. Like animals, Jews were crammed into cattle cars, suffocated in gas chambers and burnt in ovens. The Nazi beasts could not have accomplished their genocide without the help of their Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, etc. collaborators and executioners. Nor could they have managed without the world's silent approval. The Pope looked away when the Jews of Rome were rounded up from under his very window. Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill all knew about the death camps, about the killing fields and mass graves in the Ukraine, about the gas chambers and crematorium in Poland, yet closed their doors to Jewish refugees. Allied bombers flew over Auschwitz but the military didn't see the use of bombing the train lines. As Jews needed a place to flee to, the British, at the urging of the Arabs and the Nazi-collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseini, may his name be accursed, prevented Jewish aliyah to the Land of Israel, and even sent refugees back into the hands of the Nazis.

Just yesterday, on Holocaust Memorial Day, a group of partisans who fought the Nazis in the forests of Europe, visited an IDF air force base. One woman asked an officer in our air force if our pilots could reach Iran. "They can reach anywhere," he answered. This answer, powerful and moving for its simplicity, conveys the true meaning of never again. Never again will we wait in vain for Allied planes to bomb the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for world aid which did not come. Never again will we allow ourselves to be weak, to be victimized, to be powerless. Never again will we accept any conditions on where we can live, what we can wear, on our professions or possessions. Never again will we be at the mercies of the gentiles, begging for our lives. This pilot was saying that we may have been 60 years too late for the Jews of Europe, but we were not too late for the Jews of Yemen or Ethiopia. Never again will we be too late! We may not have been able to save the Jews of Warsaw, but our planes reached Iraq and Entebbe. Our planes can fly to Lebanon or Gaza, and they may yet fly to Iran, destroying the enemies of the Jewish people. We will not stand idly by our brothers blood, whether they are being rounded up and deported to annihilation, living under constant bombardment and rocket attacks or in the shadow of a nuclear attack. We know that the world abandoned the Jews to their fate, that deals were not made and safe havens closed off. Today, we can reach anywhere.

Another survivor made her own request of the air force of Israel, "What I ask of you is to make sure that there will not be another Holocaust." As long as brave Jewish men and women don the uniform of the Israeli Defense Force and protect the Jewish people from on land, sea and air, there can never be another Holocaust. We have learnt the terrible price of being weak. Being defenseless and without a homeland came at the horrendous cost of a third of our nation. The hatred of the world for the Jews has not diminished one iota since the trains came to a halt and the crematoriums stopped giving off their accursed smoke. Across Europe and North America, in public forums and university campuses, the Jewish State is being delegitimized and marked as a pariah. We must not heed the words of these haters for we know too well how dearly we pay without a state of our own. The only thing that stands between us and Auschwitz-Birkenau are the soldiers of the IDF. Those who condemned the army going in to Gaza must know that they only went in there to protect and defend the Jewish people. They are what keeps us from the narrow brink, from the mound of ashes at Majdanek, from the halls of shoes and piles of hair. To the Jews of Europe, massacred because of the world's apathy and our own weakness, scattered in the forests of Teblinka, the fields of Birkenau or the mass graves of the Ukraine, we promise never again to be weak, to allow ourselves to be bullied and beaten. For this is the true meaning of "Never Again".



Cross-posted to Stop Raping Israel

1939 Again

Monday night, the 27th of Nissan, is Yom HaShoah v'Hagevurah, Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Day. On this day, we bear witness to the worst crime in human history, to the unfathomable murder of 6 million Jews of Europe, 1.5 million of them children.

The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers or crematorium. The road to Auschwitz-Birkenau was a gradual process, one that began with the delegitimization and isolation of Jews from general society. The Final Solution, which almost completely wiped out European Jewry, began with words of hatred and intolerance. It began with the demonization of Jews as disloyal to their countries, foreign parasites destroying the culture, race and homeland from the inside. Children were taught in schools that Jews were the enemies of the Aryan race, and in the papers, on the radios and in speeches, Jews were denounced. Before official government policies could separate and ostracize Jews, Nazi propaganda made them persona non grata, completely loathsome and rejected by German society.

Singled out for persecution, Jews were forced to wear yellow stars on the clothes. Restrictions were imposed on where Jews could go, what they could own and where they could work. They were completely separated from society at large. Jewish businesses were boycotted and German who patronized them were humiliated. This process of state-sponsored hate exploded into a full-fledged government-initiated pogrom on November 9th, 1938, Kristallnacht. On this Night of Broken Glass, SS thugs murdered 91 Jews, vandalized tens of thousands of Jewish businesses, destroyed 200 synagogues across the Reich and sent 25 000- 30 000 Jews to concentration camps. This marked the beginning of the end of the Jews of Europe, and beginning of the Final Solution. It was no longer sufficient to burn Jewish books, businesses and synagogues, but to burn Jews themselves.

The Holocaust was not a German crime against the Jewish people- the Eastern European nations, the Litvaks, Poles, Ukrainians, Serbs, Croats, etc. happily became Hitler's willing executioners. The Holocaust was a conspiracy of silence against the Jews, as half of the world actively murdered Jews while the other half shut its eyes and ears to their cries. Just as the Jews of Germany were searching for safe havens to flee to, the world closed its doors. The United States imposed strict quotas on immigration. Canada's response to the numbers of Jews to be allowed in was "none is too many". The British, succumbing to Arab pressure, led by the Mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler-admirer, Haj Amin al-Husseini, may his name be accursed, shut firm the gates to the Land of Israel. Jews who had escaped on ships such as the St. Louis were turned back to, sent to Hitler's infernos. Seeing that the world was simply not interested in helping Jews, Hitler realized that he would have no opposition in implementing the Final Solution.

The entire German state apparatus devoted itself to systematically and bureaucratically rounding up, rooting out and exterminating every single Jew in Europe, and eventually around the world. The German PhD's used their expertise to further the goal of making Europe judenrein, German engineers built factories of death and German doctors and scientists devised ways of turning Jewish skin into lampshades and Jewish bones into soap and fertilizer. From as far south as Greece and as far north as Norway, Jews were transported to their annihilation in the death camps of Poland. Entire Jewish communities were snuffed out in these factories of death, their names living on in infamy: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, Belsec and Chelmo.

In these gas chambers and killing fields, a culture was murdered. Some of these communities were ancient, millennia old. Old and well-established communities, such as the Sephardic Jews of Saloniki, Bulgarian Jews, Polish and Italian Jews, were completely decimated. Two thousand years of Jewish life in Europe was erased. Fortresses of Torah Judaism, good pious Jews were destroyed. Nothing we have today even compares to the depth and vibrancy of Jewish life in pre-War Europe. Today, beautiful and majestic synagogues sit abandoned and derelict as their congregants are ashes in the fields and forests of Poland.

Incredibly, barely 60 years since the world closed its eyes to the plight of the Jews caught in the fires of Nazi Final Solution, Jews are once again targets of hatred and anti-semitism. This year, due to the economic crisis and conflicts in the Middle-East, has seen the worst outbreak of anti-semitism since before Kristallnacht. The ferocity of this renewed hatred manifested itself in the self-righteousness and hypocritical protests around the world in support of Hamas and against Israel. While Israel was bombarded with 10 000 rockets, the world kept silent. Not a peep was heard over the Russian bombings of Chechnya, the US in Iraq or Afghanistan or the genocide in Darfur. Yet, when Israel finally decided to launch an offensive to end constant rocket fire, hateful and violent rallies were held worldwide. Crowds in Europe, North America and the Islamic world equated today's Jews with their 20th century executioners, all while screaming things like: "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas!" and "Death to the Jews!". Jewish institutions around the world, synagogues, businesses and schools were vandalized and attacked. In January, while Israel was fighting against a terrorist organization in Gaza, over 250 anti-semitic incidents were reported worldwide. In Toulouse, France, assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue, causing damage but no injuries. That same day in southern Sweden, a Jewish congregation was attacked when someone broke a window and threw a burning object inside. In the United States, vandals used shaving cream to paint swastikas on a Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue, and shattered one of its windows in mid-January. On one sabbath, 4 synagogues in Chicago were defaced. France saw an explosion of anti-Jewish attacks. The incidents included a stabbing of a a young Jewish man by two masked car thieves outside Paris, and two firebombing attacks against synagogues in Saint Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, and in Strasburg.



Israel has become the proverbial Jews among the nations. "Zionism" has replaced the defense of the Aryan race as the rallying cry of that so offends anti-semites. Alone of all the national liberation movements around the world, Zionism is singled out and defamed as "racist". Israel, the state that arose like a phoenix out of the ashes of the Holocaust, has never been subjected to such vile hatred. This very hatred made a Jewish state necessary, after the world stood idly by as the Jews were rounded up and murdered, powerless, during the Holocaust. On college campuses across the United States and Canada, there was a week-long hate-fest of "Israeli Apartheid Week". In York University in Ontario, crowds surrounded the Hillel House (Jewish student organization), besieging and trapping the Jews inside, while screaming: "Die Jews!". The legitimacy of the Jewish state is constantly challenged, 61 years after its founding, by denying the Jews the right to self-determination, or that they even constitute a nation. Beginning April 20th (ironically, Hitler's birthday), the UN will convene in Geneva to have a follow up to the 2001 Durban Conference in Support of Racism and Anti-Semitism. At this conference, the Jewish delegates were abused and attacked. Protesters compared Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, while selling copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf, and bemoaning that Hitler didn't finish the job.

Israel has become a pariah in the international community. Hatred for Israel has allowed anti-semites to justify and explain away every single Arab excess and act of terror, every single brutal murder of a Jew. Teenagers gunned down in a yeshiva studying Torah or axed to death, Israelis blown to smithereens by Hamas rockets, all of these are legitimate targets. "Occupation", "racism" or the failure of the "peace process" are valid reasons for an Arab to crush mothers and babies with a bulldozer on the streets of Jerusalem. Settlers, after all, deserved it.

The world, and unfortunately Jews as well, have not learned from history. Just as Nazism began with the Jews but threatened the entire world, so does radical Islam today. Israel is the canary in the coal mine. It always begins with the Jews but never ends with the Jews. It seems that, for the Jewish people, its is 1939 again as we find ourselves unwelcome in a growing number of countries. In Venezuela, armed thugs broke into a synagogue, scrawled "Death to the Jews" on the walls, defiled the Holy Ark and stole information regarding the synagogue membership, right after the President of the country denounced and accused the Jewish community. The only difference today is that we have a state and an army and we will not allow ourselves to become victims again. Never again will we wait in vain for bombs on gas chambers that never came, or for the world to rescue us. History demonstrates that the world is blind and apathetic at best to the suffering of Jews. As the witnesses to Hitler's crime are slowly dying out, we must stand us and say: Never again! Never again will our blood be cheap, will we be persecuted and killed wantonly.

Never again!

Chutzpadik Haters

During the recent conflict in Gaza, anti-Israel rallies were held worldwide. They were noted for their sheer ferocity and aggressiveness. During these rallies, slogans such as "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas" and "Burn Jews as fossil fuel" were chanted. Another feature of these rallies were signs comparing Israel to the Nazis. A favourite tactic of Israel-bashers is to make comparisons between the IDF and the Nazis, thereby delegitimizing the State of Israel. Israel is demonized as apartheid and racist, guilty of the original sin of being in existence. By claiming such a state is the epitome of racist evil, Israel's foes legitimize her destruction.

Close to 70 years ago, one third of world Jewry were brutally murdered in the greatest crime ever committed in human history. The Jews of Europe were dehumanized, forced into ghettos, chocked and gassed, and then burnt in ovens and crematorium, while the world stood by silently. Once the war came to an end, the world realized the depths of depravity and evil to which it had sunk and resolved never to repeat the horrors of the Shoah. Today, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the wicked Nazis who wantonly spilled Jewish blood are leading the campaign against the Jewish state. Instead of regretting their crimes, they have been denying and minimizing the Holocaust. Racked with guilt over their grandparents complicity to murder, they have decided to downplay and belittle the Final Solution with cynical and obscene comparisons between Israel and the Nazis. As witnesses to the Holocaust are dying out and becoming ever more rare, such historical revisionism cannot go unchallenged, especially as anti-semitism continues to rise in Europe and America. For the Jewish people, it seems to be 1939 all over again.

The German National Democratic neo-Nazi party announced that it will be holding a solemn vigil in downtown Berlin for the victims of 'the Gaza holocaust'. The NPD has seats in the national parliament, and has gained significant support both at the local and federal levels. "Joint hatred of everything Jewish is unifying neo-Nazis and Islamists... German-Palestinians protestors unashamedly admitted that they would vote for the NPD during the next election," Charlotte Knobloch, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, warned in her speech at a pro-Israel rally earlier this month in Munich. In a similar vein, the Spanish government has cancelled its Holocaust memorial ceremony in protest of the supposed 'genocide' in Gaza. Marking the Jewish Holocaust while a Palestinian Holocaust is taking place is not right," a local City official told Barcelona's La Vanguardia newspaper. Other European countries have taken to Holocaust references. A Norwegian diplomat stationed in Saudi Arabia sent a mass-distributed email stating that "the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are doing the same thing to the Palestinians, as the Nazis did to their grandparents," using her official Norwegian Foreign Ministry address.

This abuse of history is so sick and twisted. Whatever one's opinion on the Gaza conflict, there is no comparison between the systematic campaign and extermination and annihilation waged by the Nazis against the Jews and a military struggle between a sovereign nation and terrorists. It is an insult to the victims of the Holocaust to equate them with civilians killed unintentionally in the cross-fires of battle. Apparently, anti-semitism and Holocaust denial allows history and events to be perverted. The same countries that happily delivered up their Jews for destruction are denying the grossness of their crimes, and allowing such a travesty to occur again.

Since the beginning of the Israeli operation in Gaza a few weeks ago, anti-semitism has flared up worldwide. Jews in Europe and North America have suffered the worst wave of anti-semitism since the Second World War. In Britain, there have been over 220 anti-semitic incidents, including bombings and vandalization of synagogues, Jewish institutions and kosher restaurants. Jews have been beaten up on the streets. In France, dozens of synagogues have been bombed as well as Jews threatened. Over Shabbat in Chicago, 5 synagogues were defaced. A homemade bomb was found outside of a Chabad House in Florence. In Rome, a trade union has proposed and put forth legislation to identify and boycott Jewish-owned businesses. Protesters have marched violently through Jewish areas in Antwerp and Paris and Italian police had to prevent protesters from entering Venice's historical ghetto area.

The hateful and ridiculous comparisons between Israel and the Nazis have made Jews targets once again. While any person has the prerogative to disagree with the specific policies of the State of Israel, accusing Israel of 'genocide' in Gaza is akin to blood libel. Those who besmirch Israel attempt to demonstrate the state as so evil that the only solution to the conflict is a Final one. According to their logic, such an apartheid racist state must be dismantled and destroyed. All decent and moral people must renounce their moral inversion and recognize that this is a conflict between terrorists and a democratic state. There are no similarities between those who shoved Jewish children into gas chambers, and Israeli soldiers trying to prevent jihadi rockets from falling on civilian targets. Those who are condemning Israel for defending itself are of the same stock as those who sat by while the Jews of Europe were being murdered. It appears that the world never learns.

Not a Tear!

Faced with a barrage of new footage of dead children, Israel's PR is negligible. Hamas has proven that it has no shame in abusing the dead, but gleefully shows pictures of maimed or killed children. The terrorists in Gaza use death pornography to further their nefarious plans of defaming Israel. The crowds worldwide scream "stop the holocaust in Gaza!" while employing the most cynical and obscene comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. Suddenly, the world pretends to be interested in human rights and uses them as a weapon against the Jewish state. Politicians and celebrities denounce the supposed massacres in Gaza and even Jewish leaders preface their support of Israel with apologies over civilian deaths.

Save me the pieties over Gaza. The very same people marching in the streets against Israel had nary a word to say when over 4000 rockets fell on Southern Israel during the past 3 years. When Jews were murdered by Hamas missiles, schools and hospitals bombarded and lives torn apart, the world was silent. The streets of Europe were empty as long as Arabs did the killing and Jews the dying. That is "peace" according to the "humanitarians". There were no pictures in the media of grieving Jewish mothers and fathers, or of children who lost limbs to jihadist bombs. Where were the marches and protests when a gunman murdered 8 teenagers studying in a yeshiva, or a berserk Arab bulldozer driver crushed a mother and her young daughter?

The same day that the operations in Gaza began, a Sunni suicide bomber blew himself up in a Shiite mosque in Iraq, murdering 40 people. This barely made news. When Jews kill Muslims, it is a massacre. When Muslims kill each other, it's like the weather. Nobody pays attention. In the past few years, close to a million black Africans have been murdered by Arab janjaweed militia in Darfur. Thats is a real humanitarian crisis. If the same protesters opposing Israel's right to self-defense would have used even a fraction of that energy to protest the situation in Darfur, there would be no genocide. The protests have little to do with human rights but are just another excuse to demonize and vilify the only democracy in the Middle-East. Over 60 years after the Holocaust, many are still uncomfortable with the idea of Jews fighting back. A "ceasefire" is when rockets fall on Jews and they do not retaliate.

The mainstream media feeds us constant images of dead Arabs. They inform us that women and children were among the dead in Israel's attacks. Somehow they neglect to mention that the blame for the dead lies squarely on Hamas, which hides among civilians when firing rockets at Israel. Hamas brazenly uses schools, mosques and hospitals to store weapons and attack Israel, then cries about Israeli retaliation. It has used women and children to carry out its murderous attacks against Israeli targets. The same group that self-righteously complains of Israeli attacks on children fires missiles on kindergartens and schools in Sderot, Ashklelon and Ashdod. They raise their children on a diet of hate, death and anti-semitism.

I have not a tear to spare for any Arab killed in Gaza. The international community treats Gazans as pawns, not letting them take responsibility for their own actions. Last year, the people of Gaza democratically voted Hamas, a terrorist organization, into power. They chose, of their own free-will, to have Hamas represent them as their government. As such, they should suffer the consequences of their choices. After the attacks on Merkaz HaRav in March, thousands of Gazans danced in the streets, giving out candies and celebrating the cold-blooded killing of Jewish teenagers. My tears are spent on the victims of Hamas, not their enablers. I wish that Israel would attack Gaza with a true proportionate response, letting the people of Gaza know the pain of the citizens of Sderot who have not had a complete night's sleep in a decade, or of the Jewish mothers and fathers who lost children to Hamas jihadist attacks.



The world does not deserve our apologies. They forfeited their rights to moral superiority after 2000 years of deportations, expulsions, forced conversions, persecutions and pogroms. A world that did not treat Jews as human beings for two millenia has no right to lecture us on how we may defend ourselves. At anti-Israel rallies worldwide, crowds chanted "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas!", hoping that the wicked smoke of the ovens should blow over to the Holy Land. A world that still dreams of Auschwitz does not deserve any explanations or justifications.

Am Yisrael Chai!

Cross-posted to Goat's Barnyard

Kristallnacht: See No Evil

Tonight is the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the most severe pogrom of the century and the beginning of the end of European Jewry. On November 9-10, 1938, SS officers and German mobs destroyed Jewish property throughout the Reich. Over 90 Jews were murdered, 26,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps, close to 200 synagogues were burnt or razed, and almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed.

While Hitler claimed that the pogrom was a spontaneous outburst following the assassination of German official Vom Rath by Jewish boy, Hershel Greenspan, the attacks were methodically planned. Kristallnacht marked the transition from discriminatory and racist measures to physical violence and terror against Germany's Jews. Despite the violence against Germany's Jews, no country was willing to open their doors to them. As Germany's Jews sought refuge from Nazi hatred and persecution, the world was closing the ways of escape. Paltry protests notwithstanding, the world was largely silent in the face of the orgy of hate that was Kristallnacht. By not heeding the warning signs, 6 million Jews were murdered as the world stood idly by. As half of the world collaborated with the Nazis to exterminate the Jews, the other half closed their eyes and ears to the evil.

If the Holocaust is commemorate once a year on Yom HaShoah, why do we mark Kristallnacht? On Yom HaShoah we mourn the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. We contemplate the barbarity of the Final Solution, the death camps, the killing fields, the gas chambers and ovens. Kristallnacht, however, marks the beginning of the end. Yom HaShoah marks the end product while Kristallnacht is all about the process. Holocausts do not begin with deportations or gas chambers. They begin with words, with demonizations and delegitimization, accompanied by silence.

It is incredible to think that 70 years after Kristallnacht, the world has scarcely learned this lesson. A month and a half ago, the President of Iran spoke before the United Nations, an international organization founded in the wake of the genocide of Europe's Jews, and repeated all of the classic anti-Jewish canards and myths to the applause of world leaders. He told the assembled representers of the world's nations that the current financial crisis is the fault of the Jews. This man put his anti-semitism in vivid display as he repeated the lies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He denies the Holocaust while planning a second one. His hatred for the Jewish people goes ignored by the world leaders, who chose to honour him with a dinner at the Hyatt Hotel. He has called the State of Israel "a stinking corpse", "a rotten tree" and many other vile things. He pledges to finish Hitler's mission and wipe the Jewish state "off the face of the Earth". He funds terror groups around the world and incites his people to genocide. And the world is silent.


This satanic silence during the Holocaust has no better symbol than that of Pope Pius XII. Currently on the road to sainthood, the wartime Pope said and did little to protect Europe's Jews. A man whose word commanded millions of Catholics worldwide and carried moral authority, was not able to clearly condemn the Nazi atrocities against the Jews. When the Jews of Rome were rounded up from right under his window, literally, and send train-bound to Auschwitz, the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church held his tongue and allowed the damned to suffocate in the gas chambers. Today, the Vatican seeks to exonerate him from his complicity in mass murder and raise him to the level of a saint. Instead of dealing with its tragic and cowardly history, the Church prefers to whitewash the events of the past.

As the witnesses to this most dark era in human history die out, it is our duty to remember those who died at the altar of hate because the world looked away. Today, the fires of anti-semitism in the Islamic world, Europe and North America burn brightly. The most insidious hate hides behind humanitarian pretenses and seeks to delegitimize the Jewish State. The UN is getting ready for the Second Durban hate-fest. A neo-Nazi leader in Austria was given a state funeral and full miliatry honours, his death having been blamed on the Mossad. On this eve of Kristallnacht, the first nail in the coffin of European Jewry, it is the duty of every moral and decent Jew and non-Jew to protest anti-semitism and hatred in all of its various forms. Otherwise, we do a disservice to the memory of the 6 million, and invite disaster upon ourselves once again.

***

God full of mercy who dwells on high
Protector of widows and father for the fatherless
Please be not silent and show no restraint
on behalf of the Jewish blood that has been spilled like water.
But grant perfect rest on the wings of Your Divine Presence
In the lofty abode of the holy, pure and valiant
who shine as the brightness of the heavens
to the souls of our brothers and sisters
Six million Jewish
men, women and children
Who were put to death, slaughtered, burned,
starved, buried alive
Or who suffered other forms of unnatural death
at the hands of the accursed Nazis
and their associates - may their name be wiped out!
In Auschwitz, Treblinka, Maydanek, Malthausen
and in other death camps in Europe
And who gave up their lives in order to Sanctify God's name.
Because we are at one with their memory
and we pray for the elevation of their souls
Their resting place shall be in the Garden of Eden.
Therefore, shall the Master of mercy care for them
under the protection of His wings for all time
And bind their souls in the bond of everlasting life.
O Earth! Do not conceal their blood
and let there not be a resting place for their cry
In their merit shall the remnant of Israel
return to its rightful place
And as for the holy ones, their righteousness
shall be in front of the Lord as an everlasting memory
They will come in peace and will rest in peace
They will meet their rightful destiny at the end of days
and let us say Amen.



Cross-posted to Goat's Barnyard, Jewish Vengeance and Stop Raping Israel

Spitting on the Ashes

Of the most disgusting and absurd charges levelled against Israel is the charge of genocide. It is made particularly reprehensible by the term "Palestinian holocaust". The soldiers of the IDF are often slandered as "occupiers", "racists" and of course "Nazis". It is not uncommon to hear comparisons between Israel's defensive actions and the sadistic tortures of the Nazis. Unfortunately, in a world without a moral compass, any brutal act of anti-semitism can be legitimized.

The Holocaust was unique in the annals of human history. Never before had mass murder been perpetrated so methodically and bureaucratically, and on such a widespread scale. The Germans used state-of-the-art technology to exterminate the Jewish people. Trains ran like clockwork from as far north as Norway and as far south as Greece to transport Jews to their deaths in death camps in Poland. The murder of the Jews served no political purpose, was not to gain their property and was not to settle an old tribal feud. It was a goal, equal, if not more important than winning the war against the Allies. In the last days of the War, when Hitler was given the choice between diverting trains to send supplies to the front or shipping Jews to the gas chambers, he chose the latter, despite the harm that he did to German soldiers. Half of the world conspired to murder every single Jewish man, woman and child while the other looked on in silence, deaf to the plight of the suffocating and burning Jews. Jews were brutalized in every way imaginable, thrown into cattle cars, chocked in gas chambers, subjected to sadistic medical experiments and then burnt in the ovens and crematorium, turned into bars of soap or had their skin made into lampshades. There is no parallel between the Holocaust and any other episode of racism, massacre or genocide in all of history.

Taking a page write out of Goebbel's playbook, "Palestinians" and Arabs leaders now whine about a "Palestinian holocaust" (all the while plotting their own Final Solution to the Zionist Question). It is so evil as it turns the victims into the perpetrators. This strategy seeks to eliminate any sympathy the world still feels about its role in the Holocaust by pointing out that the Jews are no better, and besides, the same thing is happening to the "Palestinians". Israel turns in to the embodiment of evil, the state that emerged out of the Holocaust only to continue the Nazi legacy of hatred. This charge is so dangerous and hideous that it desecrates the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis by trivializing their suffering. Suddenly, everything is a Holocaust. When Israel shoots back at those who fire rockets from Gaza, this is a "Final Solution". When Israel stops weapon shipments into Gaza, it is a "concentration camp". Jews settling in Judea and Samaria is lebenspraum and IDF soldiers protecting them are SS officers. And when everything is a Holocaust, nothing is a Holocaust. The uniqueness of the Nazi genocide against the Jewish people is cheapened as Holocaust terminology become common place, and they are used against Jews by those who support Hitler's goals.

It has been claimed that Gaza is the new Warsaw Ghetto. According to the lies, Israel has forced millions of innocent "Palestinians" into the tiny area of Gaza, shut it off from the world, cut off food and water supplies and is essentially reinacting the Nazi liquidation policies. Only in a mad world can this comparison hold. When the Nazis stormed in to Poland, Jews compromised over a third of the population of Warsaw. In 1940, over 440 000 Jews were confined into an area that was 4.5% of the size of Warsaw and surrounded by high walls with guards. Jews were given 253 calories per day, 8% of what Germans were allotted. 300 000 Jews went from the train depot at Umshlagplatz to their deaths in the gas chambers of Treblinka and Belzec. Finally, on January 18, 1943, the 56 000 Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto decided to resist the Germans rather than go to their deaths. For over three months, these Jews held out. The final attack came on Passover 1943 when the Germans systematically burnt down the Ghetto, and any Jew they could find, liquidatting the Ghetto and blowing up the Great Synagogue on May 16, 1943. The situation in Gaza cannot even be equated. In 1967, Israel liberated Gaza from Egyptian occupation, in a defensive war in which it was attacked by 6 neighbouring countries. It brought with it increased living standards. Slowly, Jews began to return to Gaza and built new life where there was only squalor and destruction. In the summer of 2005, Israel decided to withdraw the 7 000 Jews living in Gaza and give the Arabs a chance at self-determination. Instead, they voted in a terrorist organization and began to rain rockets down on Israeli cities. Like any sane nation, Israel has cut off (mostly) weapons supplies and other non-essential goods going in to Gaza in the hopes of stopping the rockets. Some Palestinian civilians have been killed in collateral damage as Israel has tried to stop terrorists, yet this can be expected in war. Arab terrorism is not resistance but aimed at the destruction of Israel, at killing and maiming as many innocent Jews as possible. Since the creation of Israel, the Arabs have fought against it and tried to destroy it to no avail. There is no Israeli policy of extermination towards the Arabs and such a charge is as libelous as claiming that Jews use Christian babies' blood for the Passover matzot.

60 years after the Holocaust, as the survivors are dying out, many are beginning to forget its terrible legacy of anti-semitism and hatred. Anti-semitism has proven to be one of the most virulent forms of hatred on Earth and seems to change forms to suit every age. Once upon a time, Jews were christ-killers and enemies of G-d. In the modern era, Jews were said to be of an inferiour race. Now, anti-semitism poses as anti-Zionism, with all the traditional stereotypes involved. Israel is said to control the world, to wield demonic power and is dehumanized constantly by its foes. Attacks and slander against it cannot go unchallenged. We cannot let our cries of 'Never Again' ring hollow. Hatred towards Israel and Zionism will not be tolerated. It is our duty to ensure that the Final Solution to the Zionist Question is never implemented by our peace-loving and tolerant Islamic neighbours.

Cross-posted to Goat's Barnyard

Same Old Deceiver

The wicked Esau was a very cunning and manipulative man. The Torah tell us that his father Isaac loved him over Jacob ki tzayid be'fiv (Gen.25:28). Literally, this means that that he would ensnare him with his mouth. Esau would pretend to be ultra-devout and asked Isaac questions to which he knew the answers, such as how much tithes must be given on salt and straw, already aware that these are exempt from tithing. Isaac believed that Esau was very pious and interested in the minutia of observance. This blinded him to the idolatry of Esau, his murder and rape. He could not believe that his son, who mouthed all the words of righteousness and payed them lip service, could be so cruel and evil.

It seems like Esau has never stopped being a deceiver. On Monday, French President Nicholas Sarkozy spoke before the Knessey, reassuring Israel that France stood by her and was a true friend. Sarkozy vowed, "France will always be Israel's friend and will always stand in the way of those calling to destroy it." Once he gained the trust of the members of the Knesset, he prompty said that Israel must stop building in Judea and Samaria, pass a Knesset bill to compensate the Jews living in these lands, and to deport them all. Aparently, a good friend of Israel is one who firmly believes that portions of Israel's territory must be judenrein. While Sarkozy said "Israel will always be every Jewish person's sanctuary. It is the only place where Jews will always be safe," he clarified that of course he did not mean that as a good thing, but rather would like to divide Jerusalem and ensure that Jews have no where to be safe. (France certainly doesn't cut it. Just the other day, a Jewish teen was brutally attacked in a Paris suburb by "immigrants"-- Chinese immigrants? I don't think so.) Sarkozy visited Yad VaShem museum this morning yet he seems to have learnt no lesson. In a report by the New York Time, Sarkozy pledged French aid for Israel. "France is ready to provide its guarantee, ready to mobilize its diplomatic services, its resources, its soldiers. You can trust France." Israel has no need for France's help on the battlefield. History has shown the French to be pretty useless in this department. However, the French have traditionally excelled in deporting Jews, a skill that could come in handy in Judea and Samaria. On July 16-17, 1942, the infamous "Round-Up of Paris", French police captured 12 000 Parisian Jews and whisked them off to Drancy, only to meet their ends in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. While the Nazis asked for 8 000 Jews, the French, not known for their proficiency, added a bonus 4 000 Jews for the German crematorium, and herded them off in cattle cars. In light of this horrendous history, France, while claiming to have turned over a new leaf, demands that Israel carve itself in half, deport 100 000 Jews to the greater Tel-Aviv ghetto, and effectively surrended to the genocidal forces of barbarism, Islam. But we shouldn't worry- he promised as that he's a good friend of Israel. The same old Esau, luring us to our deaths with his promises and flowery praises.

Just think of Barack Obama firmly stating that Jerusalem is the individed capital of Israel, only to explain that what he meant by that is that Jerusalem should be divided and should be the capital of "Palestine". But Obama has a lot of Jewish friends... go back to sleep. Unfortunately, Israel is so quick to find friends that it doesn't listen in between the lines. No true lover of Israel would demand that it carve itself in half and create a terrorist state on the outskirts of Jerusalem. There is already one Arab State in "Palestine". Its called Jordan. It is very unwise for Sarkozy to get into the habit of capitulating to Islam, especially since his banlieues and suburbs are fast becoming the newest provinces of the House of Islam. But Esau and Ishmael are often able to set aside any difference in their desire to destroy Jacob. Actions speak louder than words. Saying that you are a friend of Israel is meaningless when that really means that you promise to lead the funeral procession and will pay the funds for the next museum dedicated to the murdered Jews. If Sarkozy's friendship, or that of anyone else, mandates putting ourselves at risk, it is no deal. Let him save his lofty words. They are meaningless. The world did not love us in the 1500s as hot irons combed our skin, nor did they love us in 1945 when the evil poison filled our lungs. They may cry crocodile tears when Israel is overrun by massacring Arabs (G-d forbid), but they mean nothing. It is an eternal rule: Esav soneh et Yaakov. Esau hates Jacob. The world hates the Jews. The end. Period. Point final.

We must not carried away by the offers of friendship by the murderous Esau. He is treacherous and wants only to see the end of the nation of Israel. We must remember that we are always but a handsbreath away from annhilation and we have ourselves ourselves (and HK"BH) to rely on. As for Esau, G-d has already decreed his end. "And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the LORD hath spoken... And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the LORD'S." (Ob. 1:19-21) Amen, speedily in our days.

I Have Never Forgotten You

My heart sank as I read the news this morning. Henryk Mandelbaum, Poland's last surviving Sonderkommando (Jews who were forced to man the Nazi gas chambers) passed away on Tuesday at the age of 85. Mandelbaum was forced as a prisoner to strip victims' bodies of their valuables, pull out their gold teeth and fillings and carry them to crematoria for burning. It makes me very sad to think that the survivors who keep the memory of the Holocaust alive are slowly disappearing. Without Mandelbaum, who will be able to teach the world about the gas chambers, the Sonderkommando, about the Holocaust? Will we allow the horrors of our past to simple fade away and turn to dust?

I recently came back from an amazing trip in Poland and Israel, to commemorate our tragic past and to affirm our glorious future. I sat in synagogues and yeshivot that once housed thousands of Jewish worshippers and students and now sit emtpy. Krakow's beautifully decorated and extremely ornate Tempel Shul is unused for most of the year. In Lublin, a city which was once refered to as the Jerusalem of Poland, if one did not know to look for a Jewish cemetary or synagogue, one would have no idea that Jews once lived there. In Poland, I noticed how easy it was to forget. In Placzow work camp, a park was created out of the mass grave. On the bones of 20 000 Jews (one of the survivors who accompanied us on our trip explained to us that her cousin of 6 was shot right were we stood), Poles sunbathe and walk their dogs. The distance between Auschwitz and Birkenau is flanked with restaurants and shops. Majdanek, certainly the most evil place on Earth, is 5 minuted from the center of Lublin. Inhabitted houses sit at the edge of the barbed wire, standing while its horrible furnaces burnt human flesh. In Warsaw, nothing of the ghetto remains besides two walls. The area was rebuilt and today is full of apartments and stores. In Umschlagplatz, the train depot from which 300 000 Jews were taken to the gas chambers at Treblinka, these tracks now carry tour trolleys and cable cars. While we emersed ourselves bitterly in the pain of our people over 60 years ago, the Poles continued their daily lives, undaunted.

On Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, we marched the 2.5 kilometres between Auschwitz and Birkenau in solidarity of the millions murdered. At the end of the Birkenau death camp, we had a ceremony with survivors, at which the former chief rabbi of Israel and the IDF Chief of Staff spoke to us. Sitting in a cold and damp barrack, the 5 survivors who accompanied us told us their stories and experiences. One eldery woman told us that when the war finished, she would often meet with other survivors to speak about their experiences. She had always assumed that when she would die, her story would die with her. She told us that now, she has no fear of this. She knows that we will keep her story alive.

What an incredible responsibility! I am scared of this challenge. We are the first generation to live in a world without Holocaust survivors. With the ever-rising anti-semitism and alarming Holocaust denial, will we be able to stand up and set the record straight? Or will we simply let the memories of the Holocaust victims turn to dust. On our last day in Poland, we visited Treblinka, a death camp in which one millions Jews were gassed. Treblinka was completely destroyed after the war and nothing stands there besides a monument of granite slabs representing the train tracks into annhilation and tens of thousands of enormous pillars representing communtites that were wiped out. Treblinka is surrounded by a beautiful forest which the Germans grew on the ashes of murdered Jews used as fertilizer, in an attempt to cover up their horror. Standing in that awful place, I felt so alone, so empty, so forsaken. The million that were exterminated there went up in smoke and ashes. They have no tomb, no yarzheit. They had no funeral, nobody sat shiva over them or said kaddish for them. Another survivor told us how his entire village besides his family and a few other were rounded up and sent to Treblinka. He is the sole survivor of his 60 young classmates. He told us that he thinks about them every day. When he, after 120 years, passes away, will I be able to do their legacy honour? I cannot let time make their names and memories grow cold. I promise to educate people about the Holocaust, about the dangers of anti-semtism and intolerance, in the memory of the 6 million murdered Jews.

Many years after the war had finished, Simon Wiesenthal, the legendary Nazi hunter, went to visit a friend of his in New York. This friend, after the war, had moved on with his life and had become a businessman. He wanted to know why Wiesenthal did not do the same. "You're a religious man," replied Wiesenthal. "You believe in God and life after death. I also believe. When we come to the other world and meet the millions of Jews who died in the camps and they ask us, ‘What have you done?,’ there will be many answers. You will say, ‘I became a jeweler,’ Another will say, ‘I have smuggled coffee and American cigarettes,’ Another will say, ‘I built houses,’ But I will say, ‘I did not forget you’." There must certainly be great agitation in the heavens as the President of Iran claims that the Holocaust is a myth and that he will wipe Israel off the map. As anti-semitism from the Far Right and Islamofascists continues to rise in Europe and North America, we can ill afford to forget.

To the 6 million men, women and children, holy and pure martyrs, killed because they were Jews, who have vanished to the wind: I have never forgotten you.

Cross-posted to Goat's Barnyard

Dear World

Dear World,

I see that you're in an uproar again. Israel is building homes in East Jerusalem and you are not happy about it. Its really amazing, given your reputation as being slow-moving and inefficient, at your speed if the Jews are the culprits. Nothing escapes your watchful eyes, does it? And yet, what brings about this newfound rapidity and resolution with regards to Israel? You seemed to sit around on idly while thousands were being slaughtered in Rwanda and as thousands continue to die in Darfur. But no one will ever accuse you of ignoring the situation in Israel.

Dear World, why did you not jump and issue condemnations when Hitler marked the Jewish people for destruction? And where were you when the Jews of Europe were burnt and suffocated? Why did you shut your eyes to the cries and pleas of the oppressed and close your doors to them? When the St. Louis, bearing refugees escaping the Nazis, came to your shores, you could find no place for these Jews and delivered them into the hands of their tormenters, directly to the gas chambers. And when the Jews of Rome were deported right under the Pope's windows, why did you keep quiet? You flew bombers over Auschwitz but destroying the gas chambers in which 12 000 Jews a day were murdered never seemed to be a priority. You closed every avenue of escape and looked on apatheticaly as the Jews were rounded up from every corner and humiliated, tortured and massacred. A conspiracy of silence abandonned the Jews to their fate. But thankfully, 60 years later, you have regained your voice.

Dear World, why did you abandon the inhabitants of the fledgeling State of Israel to the Arab onslaught, determined to drive its people into the sea? Could you not find one word of condemnation for their genocidal rhetoric and intentions? And when close to a million Sephardic Jews were expelled from lands in which they had lived for millenia, where were you? Could some of your sympathy focused on the "Palestinian" refugees, displaced by their own accord, have been directed towards the expelled Jews? Or did Jewish suffering not move you? When the Jordanians bombarded and besieged Jerusalem, you had nothing to say. For the first time in thousands of years, Jerusalem's Old City was empty of Jews. Jews were forbidden access to their holiest of sites. As the Jewish Quarter in the Old City was made judenrein, synagogues desecrated and Jewish gravestones used as latrines, you held your tongue. Luckily, you do not make the same mistake today.

Dear World, why, when Stalin and the Soviets, closed off the portals of escape from their Communist prison and tried to suppress Judaism, were you deathly silent? When the Iron Curtain fell, trapping millions of Jews, you did not stand up for their freedoms. You had your own problems and the troubles of a few Jewish dissidents in Siberia did not trouble you. You were unswayed by the cries of "Let My People Go!" coming from the Soviet Union and worldwide Jewry. Why should you care if some Jews were forbidden to go to Jewish school, lay tefillin or keep their holidays? And yet, these things disturb you greatly if performed in Judea and Samaria.

Dear World, when the Arabs tried to annhilate the people of Israel in '67, '73 and all the subsequent wars and terrorist attacks, could you not lend any support to the Jews? Not a helping hand, a smile, a kind word. You were too busy ranting and raving about the "Occupation", "apartheid", "the refugee crisis", "land-for-peace" and all the other code words for the Final Solution. World, you find in yourself the strength to protest whenever Israel's defense accidentally killed an Arab civilian. Strange that your voice seemed to disappear when Israeli teens were blown to smitherenes in a discotheque in Tel-Aviv or when terrorists massacred families celebrating the Passover holiday in a Netanyah hotel. You were sure to denounce Israeli "ethnic cleansing" in Gaza, but said nothing about the constant barrage of rockets falling on homes, schools and businesses in Sderot. When Israeli yeshiva students, aged 14-20, were gunned down in cold blood studying Judaism's sacred texts, there was no solidarity or sympathy. Instead, you issued cold rationalizations and understanding of the terrorist's motives. As Iran's president is publically vowing to wipe Israel off the face of the Eart, you lull us to sleep and complacency.

Dear World, you have proven too many times in the past not to have the best interests of the Jewish People at heart. In fact, some may say that you are downright hostile to us. It is odd that you perk up every time Israel defends herself, a Jew build a home in Judea and Samaria or wants to pray on the Temple Mount. Millions can be denied civil rights in China or Saudi Arabia, women condemned to death for being raped in Iran, blacks slaughtered in Darfur and crisis in Burma, but you can only blame the Jews. Dear World, we have learnt better than to listen to you. You will not be happy until we are wiped out, dead, destroyed.

Well world, that is not an option.

Sincerely,

A Proud Jew

Cross-posted to Stop Raping Israel, Goat's Barnyard and Jewish Vengeance

Never Again?

Having posted my experiences in Poland, before I post about Israel, I feel that it is important to draw some lessons from the horrors of the Holocaust. Clearly, the Holocaust was the worst crime ever perpetrated by humanity. It is our duty to ensure that it never occurs again, either to the Jewish people or to any other nation. Did we learn anything? Is the world any different? Is there hope?

As Hitler intensified his persecutions of the Jews, culminating in the pogrom of Kristallnacht in 1939, the world decided to close its doors to those who needed asylum the most. During the war, when Allied intelligence reported the extermination of European Jews, the world still chose to keep silent. Allied airplanes even bombed a factory attached to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex yet didn't feel that bombing the gas chambers or crematorium was an important goal. There was a conspiracy of silence against the Jews: half of the world tried to wipe us out, while the other half prefered to sit silently and watch. Only once the war was over did world leaders open their eyes to their complicity and began to realize how they could have prevented such a tragedy. If only we had known before! If only we saw! Never Again, they cried as they cried crocodile tears for the murdered Jews. They beat their chests in anguish and pledged never again would they be apathetic in the face of hatred and genocide. Unfortunately, 63 years since the end of the Holocaust, their words ring hollow.

Since 2003, Arab janjaweed militia backed by the Sudanese government have been systimatically murdered, raping, torturing and killing black Darfuris. They have massacred entire villages and destroyed food and water sources to exacerbate the drought and famine. About 400 000 thousand lives have already been lost. While some may claim (erroneously) that the Holocaust was hidden from public knowledge, no such thing can be said about Darfur. The horrors of ethnic cleansing, massacres and rape have happened in full view of the international community. Endless parades of diplomats, world leaders and officials have visited Khartoum with sporadic, unclear and incoherent messages. Diplomacy has failed the people of Darfur as thousands are slaughtered each day. We are our brother's keeper. It is not enough to build museums and monuments after the genocide, but to stop it or prevent it from happening in the first place.


Neither has the world learnt the dangerous and deadly results of unchecked anti-semitism. In recent weeks, violent attacks against Jews have taken place in Los Angeles, New York and London. In LA, a 58-year old man wearing a kippah was attacked by two men who called him a "dirty Jew" before punching him and beating him down. The police report a steep rise in anti-semitic attacks, including vandalism and a improvised bomb at a Jewish community center. In Germany, an Arab man was sentenced to three years in jail (only?!) for stabbing a rabbi repeatedly. Walls, shops and sidewalks outside four synagogues in northeast London Clapton Common and Stamford Hill neighborhoods were desecrated with anti-Jewish graffiti last week. The slogans called for 'Jihad to Israel' and 'Jihad to Tel-Aviv'. A 16-year old Jewish boy was severely beaten and mugged last week. A Jewish man living in Ireland last week had his home defaced with Nazi symbols and swastikas, with the slogan "Go Home, Jew". In fact, anti-semitic incidents are up almost 400% worldwide in recent years. It is actually the most worrisome increase in attacks since the Second World War. Violent attacks and desecrations of synagogues and cemetaries is commonplace in much of Europe. Jewish communities, such as those of Paris and London, feel as if under siege and live in constant danger. In Western Europe, fanatical imams incite their flocks against the Jews and the Zionists, the source of all of their problems. In the East, where the Muslim population is insignificant, neo-Nazi groups are undergoing a revival. During the first year of the commemoration of Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, it was defaced with swastikas five times.

This anti-semitism is not only the workings of hateful individuals or fringe groups. For the first time since Hitler, there is a world leader publically calling for the destruction of the Jewish people. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced his intentions to "wipe Israel off the map" and called the Holocaust "a myth", even holding a conference to spread his poisonous denial. Ahmadinejad threatened, on Yom HaAztmaut, that Israel will soon be destroyed. "The Zionist regime is dying," said Ahmadinejad during a speech in northern Iran. "The criminals assume that by holding celebrations ... they can save the sinister Zionist regime from death and annihilation... Nations of the region hate this criminal fabricated regime [Israel] and will uproot this fabricated regime if the smallest and shortest opportunity is given to them." His terminology is very reminiscent of Nazi speech as he dehumanizes Jews and demonizes Israel, calling it a "cancer" and insisting on its demise. These are not the mere rantings of a lunatic. Ahmadinejad is rapidly advancing his country's nuclear arms program which he will certainly use as a weapon to bring about his hoped-for destruction of Israel. Iran is responsible for arming Hizbullah and supporting them during their war with Israel, two summers ago. Hizbullah's leader, Nasrallah, an Iranian pawn, made very clear his genocidal intent when he said that "the Jews should all gather in Israel to save us [Hizbualllah] the trouble of going after them worldwide." Just as people prefered to do nothing as the Jews chocked to death in the gas chambers or burnt in the ovens, thinking that Hitler was "just a Jewish problem", the world does not condemn Ahmadinejad for his incitement to genocide. Quite the contrary- he was even invited to spead before the UN, granting him worldwide legitimacy.

Once Iran bombs Israel, G-d forbid, the world will be quite to realize its fault. Leaders will beat their chest in sorrow and cry bitter crocodile tears at their willful blindness. Surely, monuments will be built to commemorate the now-extinct Jews. International money will pour in to build museums to memorialize the tragedy and people will use this blood money to atone for their collective guilt. No! This is not enough! Now that there is still a chance, Ahmadinejad must be brought to justice for inciting hatred against the nation of Israel. We do not want another Yad VaShem or a Holocaust memorial day. What we want is for the world to wake up and to make good on its promise of never again. As Jews, we must know that the world will never realize until its too late and that we cannot go once more like sheep to the slaughter.

NEVER AGAIN!

Warsaw Ghetto and Treblinka

May 6th

After a 3 hour bus ride from Lublin, we finally arrived in Warsaw. We visited the immense cemetery of Warsaw which dates back to medieval times and contains hundreds of thousands of people. The richness of the ancient city’s Jewish community is outstanding. The cemetery is full of old monuments and tombs of famous rabbis, scholars, professors and writers. We toured the cemetery and read the incriptions, until we noticed a large empty space marked by black lines. The tour guide explained that this is a mass grave for those who died in the Warsaw Ghetto. 70 000- 80 000 bodies are buried in that little space, without even a tomb marker. They are nameless, without monument or identity, unmourned with no kaddish or shivah. I was asked to recite the El Maleh Rachamim prayer and a surge of emotion came over me as I pleaded with HaShem to remember and have mercy on those poor souls who died.

Later on, we toured the ghetto, little of which is left. Only a few fragments of the walls survive. The ghetto best captures my feelings in Poland: constricted, restrained, trapped. I am not wanted here.



Walking into Umchlagplatz, the train depot from which 300 000 Jews were sent to Teblinka, I was in awe. It was the last stop for hundreds of thousands before the gas chambers, and I could walk out freely. I cried when the madrich said that we would not be going to our deaths but priviliedged to fulfill the dream of thousands: going to Eretz Yisrael.

It is astonishing to see Poles living in formerly Jewish areas. Next to the remaining ghetto wall are apartments and the Poles living there yelled at us for trespassing. At the heart of the ghetto, the Poles felt the need to erect a huge crucifix in honour of one of their saints, and a huge church sits on the main street. Not only were the Jewish bodies desecrated but the Jewish soul is spat upon. Cable cars with Kitkat advertisements run on the same haunted tracks as cattle cars used to. Have the Poles simply forgotten or chosen to forget? I think the little Jewish figurines holding money bags, sold at the hotel giftshop, answers my questions.

One final ceremony with all of the Canadian delegates was held at the Warsaw University. A righteous gentile who saved 25 Jews, and a few others were honoured. I am eternally grateful to their heroism. The Holocaust survivors also spoke. They are filled with such courage and inner strength. They suffered such horrors yet they have returned to the land of their torment to teach us. After that, 300 delegates sand Hebrew songs and danced, bringing Jewish music back to the city where it was extinguished 63 years ago.

May 7th

A short 3h drive from Warsaw is Treblinka- death, destruction, torture. There is nothing left of the camp as the Nazis tried to hide all evidence. It is surrounded by a lovely forest, growing from the ashes of murdered Jews which the Nazis used as fertilizer. At Treblinka, there is a stone monument representing the train tracks to oblivion. Stones stretch as far as the eye can see, representing communities that are no extinct. Over 17 000 communities were wiped out at Treblinka. Where the gas chambers used to stand, there is a large monument with engraving of chocking Jews in their last moments.


Treblinka means death. It is but a short distance from the trains to the gas chambers. Arrivals were greeted by an orchestra and were given postcard to send to their loved ones. Deceived, they were sent to the gas chambers.

We sang Ani Maamin like so many did in their last moments. We then proceeded to walk out alive from that factory of death.

Majdanek and Shabbat in Lublin

May 2nd

In the morning, we drove to see the medieval Jewish cemetery of Lublin. It is filled with rabbis, mystics, scholars, etc. Lublin was once considered the Jerusalem of Poland, with an extremely strong and vibrant Jewish community. It was the site of the famous Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin. What is incredible now is that unless one knows to visit a Jewish cemetery or synagogue, one would have no idea that Jews ever lived there. A mezuzah, a kippah, or a kosher restaurant will not be found.

Smoke and ashes. This entire civilization vanished in the gas chambers and torture of Majdanek. Majdanek is hell on Earth. In that evil place, tens of thousands of people were brutalized, dehumanized, sadistically tortured and murdered. They lost everything. All that is left of them is a mound of ash. This accursed camp sits but a few minutes from the heart of Lublin, not hidden away in some remote area. On its edges, there are homes which have stood there since the day when its furnaces burnt human flesh.

We began our day at Majdanek at the huge monument of 6 scarred pillars, symbolizing the 6 million, with steps leading down through a valley of jagged rocks, representing the valley of the shadow of death. We then took the same path as the inmates of Majdanek took upon entering. The accursed villa of the commandant stood mocking the pain adjacent to it. We read testimony of survivours describing it as a lovely house, complete with a white picket fence, a garden, pets and a loving family. The banality of evil shocked me.

At the entrance to the camp, with a sign reading “Bath and Disinfection”, are the experimental gas chambers. When we entered the gas chambers, where so many went to their deaths, I broke down. The walls are stained blue from the Zyklon B and covered in scratches. I touched the walls and jumped back from shock. I was crushed by the pain of those gasping for their last breathe of life. The cruelty of our enemies is outstanding. Amazingly, as we left the gas chambers, alive, unlike thousands, we were hugged and comforted by our survivours.

In one barrack stood thousands upon thousands of shoes taken from those who were killed. Who wore them? They sit silently, eternally forlorn. Among the multitudes of grey, I noticed one pair of red shoes. Did the bearer believe herself to be going to a safe haven and wore red to celebrate? I will never know.

At the end of the camp, we saw the prime gas chambers. And inspiring site was yarzheit candles lie on the dissection table where Jewish prisoners were forced to search the bodies of the murdered, and a survivor recited kaddish over it. The evil commandant’s bathtub build next to the crematorium and heated with the suffering of our people, glared wickedly. The crematorium was ablaze once more, but this time not with human corpses, but with yarzheit candles.

The last sight was the enormous mountain of ashes, in a domed monument outside. I cried as I thought of how many people vanished into smoke and dust, leaving nothing but ashes in a mound. They have no tombstone, no yarzheit, no name. Nobody sat shiva for them or recited kaddish for their souls. Tearfully, we said kaddish for them and sang the Shemah, indicating that the Jewish faith has not died.

“Shemah Yisrael, HaShem Elokeinu, HaShem Echad!”

May 3rd

Shabbat in Lublin was an interesting experience. Our hotel was located directly opposite the seat of German occupation government during the War. We lit Shabbat candles Friday night and then had dinner. Spontaneously, we broke out in song and dance for well over an hour. Broken from our morning visit to Majdanek, we all somehow felt the need to greet the Shabbat with joy.
Shabbat morning, we had an upbeat service in a room above the lobby, ironically looking out on the building where the cruel plots against our nation were hatched. 63 years later, we prayed with all our might and sang the Shabbat praises. As one of our Holocaust survivor was called to the Torah, I felt a wave of emotion. The Torah is still alive.

After Shabbat lunch, we made our way to the famous Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin. It is quite ornate although tragically silent. Its libraries which one held thousands of seforim were empty. When the Nazis conquered Lublin, they made a bonfire of all of the holy texts, outside the Yeshiva walls. To hide the bitter weeping of the Jews forced to watch, they had an orchestra play. In the yeshiva, we studied Talmudic texts and then sang Jewish songs of life, in order to drown out the wicked music of the Nazis. “Coincidentally”, one guy had been studying a daf yomi and completed the tractate that day. We held the siyyum in the yeshiva and the sound of Torah once again returned to Lublin.

At night, we had a beautiful havdallah with participants all from all over Canada.

One thought that kept running through my mind is how Jewish life in Lublin simply vanished. It breaks my heart to think of the hassidim who no longer sing and dance, the yeshivot that sit silent, that Torah scrolls that grow dusty and the synagogues that will never again see another bar mitzvah or wedding. Even though we still live, the shtetl culture and the Yiddish language have been murdered. Did the streets of Lublin really once teem with Jews? Was it really the Jerusalem of Poland? It seems impossible, like a dream. It surely disappeared in the ashes of Majdanek.

Krakow, Placzow and Auschwitz-Birkenau

With the goal of perpetuating the legacy of the Holocaust and of describing the incredible miracle that is the State of Israel, I will share excerpts from my journal. I will post some more every few day

April 31st, 2008

We landed in Krakow late morning. We drove to the Placzow labour camp in the outskirts of the city. Nothing remains of this torture facility and mass grave. Across the streets from this place of evil are restaurants and shops. Without the stone monuments commemorating the murder that went on there, the Polish sunbathers might tempt you into believing that this is nothing but a lovely park. One of the survivors who accompanied us on our trip, told us about her experiences in Placzow and how her little cousin of 6 was shot by the Nazis on the very ground on which we sat, and how his resting place is unknown. It was extremely moving.

We toured the Kazimicz region of Krakow, the Jewish Quarter. We saw the synagogue of the Ramah, and the medieval cemetery attached to it, full of legendary rabbis. The stories told of the amazing feats and miracles that they performed were quite amazing. Krakow had such a rich Jewish history; everything remains he same, with lovely synagogues, cemeteries and Jewish symbols- except there are no more Jews. It is incredible to this that an entire community of tens of thousands of people just vanished, gone. We saw the remains of the ghetto and were witnesses to how this most vibrant community was forced into such a small area. Jewish life in Krakow has disappeared. And the Poles continue to live, unabated.

May 1st



Auschwitz, the most evil place on Earth, is a museum. Gone are the trains, the snarling dogs, screams, ashes rising from the chimney. It is cleaned up, sanitized, almost plastic. It was very difficult to imagine the horrors that went on there through the crowds of marches and giggling girls. Auschwitz left me cold as we rushed from exhibit to exhibit with barely time to process. It was very disturbing to see a place that was literally hell on Earth, behind glass, with signs and displays.

The March itself was not what I expected. It was hard to maintain the mood because of the enormous mass of people. It was inspiring, though, to see 15 000 Jews draped in Israeli flags marching the same march of death between Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Birkenau was an unsettling sight. One enters the accursed gates to see a line of trees, train tracks, barracks and ruined chimneys. At the end of the camp, we had a ceremony with survivors, the IDF chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, chief rabbi of Tel-Aviv, HaRav Meir Lau, and a choir. Ashkenazi, as head of the IDF, vowed that never again will Jews be weak and powerless and that never again shall we allow Jewish blood to be spillt cheaply. The chazzan led us in a moving prayer and I’m sure that he pierced the heavens with his cries.

Finally, we stood in a cold and dark barrack and lit yarzheit candles. Survivors shared with us their experiences. It was chilling to be in the very place where they endured such torment. Afterwards, we prayed a quick minchah in the barracks at Birkenau. Imagine the beauty and absurdity of the scene: Jewish prayer continues in a place where our foes tried to wipe us out but 63 years ago.