Pope's 'man of peace' says murdering Jews not a crime
At the same event at which Pope Francis I called '
moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen a 'man of peace,' the peaceful man had some choice comments about
murdering Jews. This is from Tom Gross.
(4) There is also concern in Israel that the Pope called Palestinian
Authority Leader Mahmoud Abbas a “man of peace” today at an event where
Abbas, in the Pope’s presence, repeated his demand that any Palestinian
who murders an Israeli must not be punished at all.
Gross also has some comments about the
infamous picture of the Pope praying at the 'security fence.'
But none of the Western media I have seen have drawn attention to the
exact spot that the Pope chose to pray: in front of large graffiti
comparing Bethlehem to the Warsaw Ghetto.
The photo above is from the main EU-funded Palestinian media outlet,
the Maan news agency.
(There is another version of this photo below.)
A few comments:
(1) Comparing Israel with Nazi Germany forms part of the working definition of anti-Semitism formulated by the EU and others.
...
(2) Bethlehem is a relatively prosperous town where restaurants and
juice bars are packed, and BMWs, Mercedes and Humvees compete for
parking spaces in the center or town. By contrast, 400,000 Jews were
herded into the Warsaw Ghetto and those who weren’t beaten or starved to
death there, were taken to be exterminated at nearby camps.
(Yes, there is of course a political problem between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority, and one day, one hopes, the security barrier can
be removed without its removal leading to increased terrorism, but this
has nothing to do with the Warsaw Ghetto. One wonders why the Pope’s
Vatican handlers were eager to choose that spot – or are so insensitive
as to allow the Palestinian Authority to guide the Pontiff to that
spot.)
(3) The Pope represents an organization, the Vatican, which even
today, after seven decades of repeated appeals, is still refusing to
make public its wartime archives detailing the full extent of its
collaboration with the Nazis before, during and after the Holocaust.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Argentina, Bethlehem, escaped Nazis, Holocaust, Nazis, Pope Francis I, security fence, Warsaw Ghetto
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, April 19.
1) Getting it wrong
I missed the overnight development in the Boston Marathon bombing case.
In the early part of the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing the media were regularly getting things wrong and reporting them.
Daled Amos commented:
Pity the media - spoiled by Middle East reporting where
not used to having to retract inaccurate stories after report first
thing they hear.
— daledamos (@daledamos) April 17, 2013
In Principled Dupedom: On the Moral Imperative to be Stupid,
Richard Landes, focusing on two famous cases - the supposed "massacre"
in Jenin and the Al Dura case - showed what one has to believe in order
to stick to faulty news reports.
All of this brings us back to the discussion of the process
of auto-stupefaction I’ve referred to as rekaB Street. Rather than note
the clues and the anomalies and pursue them fearlessly, most prefer not
even to view the evidence, to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory, or, in
some cases, to take a couple of fearless steps and then demur from
reaching any further conclusions. Heaven forbid we call Talal a liar and
Enderlin a(n apparently willing) dupe! Better we remain stupid.
In other words, it's preferable to follow the narrative than to follow the facts.
2) Today in Egypt's history
In assessing today's planned demonstrations in Egypt, Barry Rubin writes:
This is the chaos into which Egypt is descending. In real
terms, a revolution hailed by virtually everyone in the West has turned
into a disaster. The choices seem to be either a Sharia state or a civil
war, each accompanied by suffering and explosive instability.
Might the West learn something from this story?
The editors of the Washington Post have learned something. They now
acknowledge that the Muslim Brotherhood has not interest in democracy.
In U.S. should focus on helping Egyptians protect their freedoms, they write:
The right way for the administration to regain its footing
in Egypt is neither to pivot toward backing the secular opposition nor
to seek accommodation with the government. Instead, the United States
should have a policy centered on widening and preserving the democratic
opening that followed the 2011 revolution. The administration should
speak more, including from the White House, when free speech, free
assembly or free elections are threatened; it should find ways to
continue and increase its support for Egypt’s civil society. It should
reach out more to opposition leaders, while making clear to them and to
the military that non-peaceful means for challenging Mr. Morsi’s
government are unacceptable.
I'm glad that they don't endorse seeking accommodation with the
government. Even supporting the democratic opposition cold be
problematic as it is more likely to discredit the opposition than it is
to help it in Egypt. But isn't supporting "civil society" consistent
with supporting the "secular opposition?" Though the impatience with the
Muslim Brotherhood is welcome, the argument suffers a bit from
inconsistency.
3) The Warsaw Ghetto uprising and Israel
In The Jewish Hero that History Forgot, Yale history professor, Marci Shore profiles Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Edelman, who had survived by escaping through the sewers, was the last
living commander of the uprising. After the war, in Communist Poland, he
became a cardiologist: “to outwit God,” as he once said. In the 1970s
and ’80s he re-emerged in the public sphere as an activist in the
anti-Communist opposition, working with the Committee for the Defense of
Workers and the Solidarity movement. He died in 2009, and to this day,
he is celebrated as a hero in Poland.
He is remembered with more ambivalence in Israel. “Israel has a problem
with Jews like Edelman,” the Israeli author Etgar Keret told a Polish
newspaper in 2009. “He didn’t want to live here. And he never said that
he fought in the ghetto so that the state of Israel would come into
being.” Not even Moshe Arens, a former Israeli defense minister and an
admirer of Edelman, could persuade an Israeli university to grant the
uprising hero an honorary degree.
Shore's argument is that Edelman was ignored because he was not a Zionist.
A profile of Edelman at the American Jewish Committee website, suggests another reason he may have been somewhat overlooked:
His anti-heroic account of the uprising was not accepted by other
combatants, including his closest friends. They mostly found their way
to Israel, while Edelman, true to his Bundist past, believed Zionism was
a mistake. I remember him telling us that the State of Israel was not
really Jewish. "It's an Arab state with the Jewish religion," he said.
He was also fervently anti-religious, even as he embodied the highest
moral principles that we associate with religion.
Was it the Zionism or the iconoclasm? (Though it could be argued that
his rejection of Zionism is part of what made him an outsider.)
Jeffrey Grossman questions the assumption that it was Edelman's anti-Zionism that made him "forgotten." The he writes:
I have no beef with Ms. Shore's worthy opinion piece. But I
can assure her that Edelman's decision to remain in Poland after the war
is now a non-issue in Israel. Israel is too concerned with existential
threats emanating from Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah, which has 60,000
rockets and missiles pointed south, and the crumbling Assad regime in
Syria, which still controls one of world's largest arsenals of chemical
weapons.
Jews may soon be fighting again for survival.
On the other hand, what does the Gray Lady mean when it writes "Not
everyone who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising saw a Jewish state as
the ultimate goal" so soon after Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day? Is
The Times hinting that notwithstanding a rising level of global
anti-Semitism, there is today no need for a Jewish state?
If it was true, then I don't have a problem with the writer
acknowledging that not all of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters were Zionists.
What bothers me (and I think Grossman too) is why was this the defining
quality of Edelman in the op-ed?
Labels: anti-Zionism, Boston, Boston Marathon, Egypt, Islamic terrorism, media bias, Middle East Media Sampler, Soccer Dad, Warsaw Ghetto
Amazing story of a Jew who survived the Holocaust
Read the amazing story of Leon Weinstein, who is probably the oldest surviving fighter of the Warsaw Ghetto,
here (Hat Tip:
Nrg).
She was Jewish, but to live she needed a Christian name.
She could not be Natalie Leya Weinstein, not in wartime Warsaw. Her father wrote her new name on a piece of paper.
Natalie Yazinska.
Her mother, Sima, sobbed.
"The little one must make it," Leon Weinstein told his wife. "We got no chance. But the little one, she is special. She must survive."
He fixed a metal crucifix to a necklace and hung it on their daughter. On the paper, he scrawled another fiction: "I am a war widow, and I have no way of taking care of her. I beg of you good people, please take care of her. In the name of Jesus Christ, he will take care of you for this."
A cold wind cut at the skin that December morning, so Leon Weinstein bundled Natalie, 18 months old, in heavy pants and a thick wool sweater. He headed for a nearby apartment, the home of a lawyer and his wife. The couple did not have a child. Weinstein hoped they wanted one.
He lay Natalie on their front step. Tears ran down his cheeks. You will make it, he thought. She had blond locks and blue eyes. They will think you are a Gentile, not one of us.
Walking away, he could hear her whimper, but forced himself not to look back until he crossed the street. Then he turned and saw a man step out of the apartment. The man read Weinstein's note. He puzzled over the baby.
Cradling Natalie in his arms, the man walked half a block to a police station and disappeared inside.
Weinstein was beside himself.
What if the Gestapo took her from the police?
What if they decided that she was a Jew?
Read the whole thing. Then go
here to see who is in the picture.
Labels: Holocaust survivors, Warsaw Ghetto
