15 May 2012

Holocaust survivor finds haven as Muslim in Israel





A sad and moving story of how a holocaust survivor, born in Auschwitz (itself highly unusual since pregnant women were automatically selected for death on arrival), who came to Israel in 1948, eloped with a Palestinian man and began living in Umm-el-Fahm, the largest Arab town in Israel apart from Nazareth.

Although the Holocaust has become a foundational myth for Israel, with the reality divorced from the message (‘you can’t trust a non-Jew’) holocaust survivors are nonetheless treated abysmally as the reparations intended for them have to a large extent been spent on Zionist ‘educational’ projects and the resulting corruption of the Jewish Claims conference.

It also gives the lie to the Zionist fable that Arab opposition to Zionism and Israel is motivated by anti-Semitism as opposed to a refusal to accept their dispossession by European settlers.

In all, a heart-warming tale of someone who committed what used to be the ultimate crime – marrying out - to someone who is not Jewish – and in Israel the double crime of marrying an Arab!  But whereas this has involved rejection by Israel Leila Jabarin found refuge in an Arab town.

Tony Greenstein

Holocaust survivor finds haven as Muslim in Israel

By Majeda El Batsh (AFP) – Apr 18, 2012

UMM EL-FAHM, Israel — For more than five decades, Leila Jabarin hid her secret from her Muslim children and grandchildren -- that she was a Jewish Holocaust survivor born in Auschwitz concentration camp.

Although her family knew she was a Jewish convert, none of them knew of her brutal past.

It was only in the past week that Jabarin, who was born Helen Brashatsky, finally sat down and told them the story of how she was born inside Auschwitz, the most notorious symbol of Nazi Germany's wartime campaign of genocide against Europe's Jews.

In an interview with AFP to mark Holocaust Memorial Day which begins at sundown on Wednesday, Jabarin, now 70, chuckles as she talks about what to call her.

Her Muslim name is Leila, but in this Arab town in northern Israel where she has lived for the past 52 years, most people call her Umm Raja, Arabic for "Raja's mother" after her first-born son.

Like most Jewish children, she also has a Hebrew name -- Leah -- but she just likes to be called Helen.

She was six when she came to live in Mandate Palestine with her parents, just months before the State of Israel was declared in May 1948.

They arrived in a ship carrying Jewish immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, which was forced to anchor off the coast of Haifa for a week due to a heavy British bombardment of the northern port city, she says.

Despite the war which broke out as soon as the British pulled out, it was a far cry from the savage reality the family had witnessed inside Auschwitz, says Jabarin who is dressed in a hijab and long robes, but whose pale skin and blue eyes belie her Eastern European parentage.

Her mother, who was from Hungary, and her father, who was of Russian descent, were living in Yugoslavia when they were sent to the Auschwitz with their two young sons in 1941.

"When they took them to Auschwitz, she was pregnant with me, and when she gave birth, the Christian doctor at Auschwitz hid me in bath towels," she says, explaining how the doctor hid the family for three years under the floor of his house inside the camp.

Her mother worked as a maid at the doctor's home, while her father was the gardener.

"They used to come back at night and sleep under the floor and my mother used to tell us how the Nazis were killing children, but that this doctor saved us," she says, recalling how her mother used to feed them on dry bread soaked in hot water with salt.

"I still remember the black and white striped pyjamas and remember terrible beatings in the camp. If I was healthy enough, I would have gone back to see it but I have already had four heart attacks.

"It is scary and very, very difficult to remember that place where so many people suffered,"
she admits, speaking in a mix of Hebrew and accented Arabic.

She also speaks Hungarian, a little Yiddish and some Russian.

The family were finally freed when the camp was liberated in 1945 and left for Mandate Palestine three years later.

At first, the new immigrants were put in camps at Atlit, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Haifa, but two years later, they moved further south to Holon and then to Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv.

Ten years later, when she was 17, Helen Brashatsky eloped with a young Arab man called Ahmed Jabarin, and they moved to live in Umm al-Fahm, which caused a huge split with her family.

"She ran away with me and she was 17 when we got married," her husband says. "The Israeli authorities used to come to Umm al-Fahm and take her back to her family in Ramat Gan, then she would come straight back here."

Initially, her family did not speak to her for two years, but later they were reconciled.

In the end, it was her mother who suggested she convert to Islam when her eldest son turned 18 and was asked to do his compulsory military service.

"My mother advised me not to send my son to do military service because if he did, my daughter would also have to do it.

"She said I should convert to Islam to save my daughter from serving in the army because Muslims would not let a girl live away from home on an army camp."

So she converted.

But she never told her family the full extent of her history.

"I hid my pain for 52 years and the truth about my past from my eight children and my 31 grandchildren. I hid the fact that I was born in Auschwitz and what that painful past means.





"I was just waiting for the right moment to tell them."
The moment came several days ago when a man turned up from the Israeli social services and got talking to her about her past, just days before the annual ceremonies remembering the Holocaust.

"Whenever it is Holocaust Memorial Day, I cry alone. There are no words to describe the pain that I feel. How can children eat dry bread soaked in water? If this happened to my children, I don't know what would become of me."
For her family, the revelation was a huge shock -- but it answered a lot of questions, admits her 33-year-old son Nader Jabarin.

"Mum used to cry on Holocaust Memorial Day watching all the ceremonies on Israeli television. We never understood why. We all used to get out of the way and leave her alone in the house," he told AFP.

But by telling her long-kept secret, it had brought release to both her and her family, he said.

"We understand her a bit more now."

13 comments:

  1. The doctor saved her life.

    In the same way, Zionism saved the lives of 200,000 European Jews in the 1930s by providing a haven. If those 200,000 had remained in Europe, the majority of them definitely would have been murdered.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Without Zionism far more Jews would have been saved and most of those who went to Palestine could have gone elsewhere in time like the USA before immigration controls were imposed. Ha'vara benefited richer jews. Meanwhile Zionist collaboration sealed the fate of 1/2 million Hungarian Jews as part of Kastner's deal with eichmann.

    And a trading agreement between the Zionist organisation and the Nazi government helped condemn not save Jews.

    And of course thousands of Palestinians have died and been massacred by the Zionists - but I guess they don't count.

    Zionism was a movement of collaboration. it always sought to utilise anti-Semitism and its attitude to the Nazis was no different.

    So stop fooling yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Without Zionism far more Jews would have been saved"

    I don't see how, as only the Jewish national home was willing to take in Jews in large numbers.



    "most of those who went to Palestine could have gone elsewhere in time like the USA before immigration controls were imposed."

    The U.S. imposed strict immigration controls in the 1920s, specifically to keep out people from Southern and Eastern Eruope, especially Jews. In the 1930s, Palestine took in TWICE as many Jews as the U.S.



    "Zionist collaboration sealed the fate of 1/2 million Hungarian Jews as part of Kastner's deal with eichmann."

    Sorry, but the Nazis did not use "Zionist collaboration" as their motive for murdering Jews. Kastner, a Zionist, may have failed to warn Hungarian Jewry, but he was also ostracized (and eventually assassinated) by Zionists.



    "And a trading agreement between the Zionist organisation and the Nazi government helped condemn not save Jews."

    The agreement allowed many German Jews to escape to Palestine, thereby saving their lives.

    Zionism saved the lives of 200,000 Jews in the 1930s, which is more than the number taken in by America and Britain COMBINED.



    "And of course thousands of Palestinians have died and been massacred by the Zionists - but I guess they don't count."

    Of course they do. That is why I favor a peaceful resolution to the conflict: Israel withdraws from most of the West Bank to allow the creation of a Palestinian state, and in exchange, the Palestinians agree to live in permanent peace with the Jewish state. That is the only solution, and it's time for supporters of the Palestinians to urge the Palestinians to accept it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mars,

    I can only suggest that you read Shabtai Beit-Zvi's 'Zionism in the Crucible of the Holocaust' and Lenni Brenner's Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.

    Actually it's not true that only Palestine was willing to take in Jewish refugees. Leave aside the principle of selectivity, that Palestine wasn't just an open door and immigration certificates were for young Zionists primarily or the rich.

    Out of the failure of Evian there was the bright spot of Santo Domingo, whose ruler offered 100,000 places. According to Beit Zvi and a no. of other Zionist authors, the Zionists spared no effort to PREVENT this taking off. The argument was quite simple: If other countries could take in Jewish refugees what was the point of having a Jewish national home? And from the Zionist point of view there was some truth to this.

    Not only Santo domingo - Australia and the Freiland Project, Brazil, Britain in 1942 (see letter from Dr Solomon Schonfield in the Times of 6.6.61 when he said:

    See also the letters from Marcus Retter (5.2.93) and Geoffrey Alderman of 26.2.93. Schonfield wrote that:
    '"My experience in 1942-43 was wholly in favor of British readiness to help, openly, constructively and totally, and that this readiness met with opposition from Zionist leaders who insisted on rescue to Palestine as the only acceptable form of help.
    "In December of 1942... we in London formed a Council for Rescue from the Nazi Terror which, in turn, initiated a Parliamentary Rescue Committee under the chairmanship of Professor A .V. Hill, M.P., supported by leading members of both Houses. At the time I was executive director of the Chief Rabbi's Religious Emergency Council and applied myself to this task. A motion was placed on the Order Paper in the following terms:
    "... this House asks H.M. Government... to declare its readiness to find temporary refuge in its own territories or in territories under its control for endangered persons who are able to leave those countries... and to invite the other Allied governments to consider similar action.
    "... this motion achieved within two weeks a total of 277 Parliamentary signatures of all parties. This purely humanitarian proposal met with sympathy from government circles, and I should add that H.M. Government did, in fact, issue some hundreds of Mauritius and other immigration permits indeed, in favor of any threatened Jewish family whom we could name. Already while the Parliamentary motion was gathering momentum, voices of dissent were heard from Zionist quarters: "Why not Palestine?" ....
    "At the Parliamentary meeting held on January 27, 1943, when the next steps were being energetically pursued by over 100 M.P.s and Lords, a spokesman for the Zionists announced that the Jews would oppose the motion on the grounds of its omitting to refer to Palestine. Some voices were raised in support of the Zionist view, there was considerable debate, and thereafter the motion was dead. Even the promoters exclaimed in desperation: If the Jews cannot agree among themselves, how can we help?
    "It was useless to argue with a then current Zionist argument: 'Every nation has had its dead in the fight for its homeland the sufferers under Hitler are our dead in our fight'. But it would be unjust now to permit the miswriting of history so as to cast blame upon Britain. By all means let Eichmann be tried on his murderous merits. Let the nations who participated in the holocaust of this still Dark Age be judged alongside. Even let the opportunity be taken to point an accusing finger at the neutral bystanders, nations and individuals. But Britain was at her best."

    Marcus Retter provides further information, as a close aide to Rabbi Schonfield, that Stephen Wise, the acknowledged leader of Zionism in the US, specifically wrote to (Lord) Josiah Wedgewood, Schonfield's collaborator, asking him to withdraw his support from the motion.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes Palestine took in twice as many Jews as the USA. But how many would the US and Britain taken in if a powerful section WITHIN the Jewish community, the Zionists, hadn't opposed Jewish immigration?

    I didn't say that the Nazis needed Zionist collaboration to murder 1/2 million Jews. My point is more subtle. Collaboration prevented resistance and, in the case of Hungary (by no means the only example - Netherlands is another) they handed over the lists of jews and even helped with the roundup of Jews. In Hungary most jews were assmiliated, didn't live together in ghettos and there were less than 300 SS men and the Hungarian gendarmes. there is little doubt that but for Kasztner and the Jewish Agency 'Rescue Committee' possibly 2/3 of Hungarian Jews would have survived.

    You are also being economical with the truth when you say Kasztner failed to warn the Hungarian Jews. He actively suppressed Vrba & Wexler's Auschwitz Protocols which spelt out in unprecedented detail what was going to happen to those deported. Kasztner took a decision to suppress the Protocols, as he admitted at his libel trial. And he did it with the full blessing of the JA.

    Ha'vara in fact probably saved very few Jews and condemned thousands more. It was aimed at the rich, those with large numbers of Reichmarks as you are undoubtedly aware. They were people who could have gone elsewhere. In 1933 the Zionist movement didn't suspect what would take place later. Their only interest was in using the wealth of German Jewry to build Jewish Palestine and they were successful - 60% of capital investment in the Yishuv between 1933 and 1939 came from Nazi Germany! Literally Hitler built the State of Israel.

    Kastzner was defended by the Zionist state, in the person of Attorney General Haim Cohen. He was cleared by the Supreme Court, which overturned the verdict of the Jerusalem District Court by 4-1.

    Cohen made his position crystal clear:

    '“He [Kasztner] was entitled to make a deal with the Nazis for the saving of a few hundreds and entitled not to warn the millions…. that was his duty…. It has always been our Zionist tradition to select the few out of the many in arranging the immigration to Palestine [the Weizmann Blueprint]. Are we therefore to be called traitors?” (Perfidy p.195)

    The simple answer is, of course, yes. Kasztner was assasinated by Zionists but that wasn't why they killed him. He was an embarrassment and those who killed him were linked to Israel's secret services.

    It is neither possible nor desirable to have a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Zionism will brook no such solution. It is an expansionist phenomenon, as the settlements evidence. Zionism set out to colonise the whole of Eretz Yisrael (Land of israel) - that has been a constant - from Moshe Dayan to Netanyahu. A Palestinian state is just a concession to racism - the idea that Jews and non-Jews cannot live together in the same space.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I will locate Beit-Zvi's book. Until then, I have a number of comments. First, while the Dominican Republic can be praised for offering to take in Jews, its motives were cynical. The leader, Trujillo, had massacred thousands of Haitians and wanted to improve his image. Also, he wanted "white" Jews from Europe to "lighten" the population of his country. About 5000 visas were issued starting in 1940, but due to the war only about 600 Jews made it to the Dominican Republic.

    As for the claim that "Britain was at her best", it should never be forgotten that it was Britain that gave in to Arab rioting in 1939 and issued the White Paper, cutting off Palestine to Jewish emigration. If that had not been done, thousands more lives could have been saved.

    All anti-Zionists should ask themselves this question regarding the 200,000 Jews who escaped to Palestine in the 1930s: Should those Jews have taken the Zionist path and gone to Palestine, or should they have remained in Europe, where they would have been murdered?

    You ask, "How many would the US and Britain taken in if a powerful section WITHIN the Jewish community, the Zionists, hadn't opposed Jewish immigration?" It was not alleged Zionist opposition to immigration to America that made America reluctant to take in Jews. It was the 1920s immigration laws, plus a desire on the part of American Jews not to rock the boat. Unfortunately, most American Jews were afraid that speaking out would trigger a wave of anti-Semitism in America.

    You write "there is little doubt that but for Kasztner and the Jewish Agency 'Rescue Committee' possibly 2/3 of Hungarian Jews would have survived." I do not see that. You would have to say more in order to prove that to me.

    You write "It was aimed at the rich, those with large numbers of Reichmarks as you are undoubtedly aware. They were people who could have gone elsewhere." The problem is that nobody other than the Jewish national home was willing to take them in. Furthermore, Palestine took in not just German Jews in the 1930s but also Jews from Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere. I am sure not all of them were "rich".

    You write "It is neither possible nor desirable to have a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Zionism will brook no such solution. It is an expansionist phenomenon." If that were true, Israel would never have withdrawn from Sinai or Gaza. Nor would it have allowed the PLO to set up shop on the West Bank. If Palestinians said en masse, "We will live in permanent peace with the Jewish state if we get a state on the West Bank", Israelis would snap up the offer.

    You write "Zionism set out to colonise the whole of Eretz Yisrael (Land of israel) - that has been a constant - from Moshe Dayan to Netanyahu." The term Eretz Yisrael has varied depending on the speaker. The Zionists accepted the 1947 partition plan. If the Arabs had also, the Palestinian state would now be celebrating its 64th birthday.

    You conclude "A Palestinian state is just a concession to racism - the idea that Jews and non-Jews cannot live together in the same space." It is not racism that leads one to conclude that there needs to be a Jewish state in the world. It is, instead, the fact that the Jews were unsafe in a world in which they had no country and no army. If Israel let in all Palestinians en masse, they would vote to end the Jewish state, and the Jews would again be unsafe in the world, with no country and no army. Worse, many Palestinian are hostile to Jews, and would launch pogroms again, as they did in the past (even prior to the beginning of Zionism).

    ReplyDelete
  7. Trujillo's motives were irrelevant. Yes was a dictator although not a fascist. He supported the Republicans in Spain. Yes he wanted to whiten the population. Certainly that was racist but the purpose of immigration to Palestine was to Judaify it. What's the difference?

    The Brookings Institute at Zionist instigation brought out a report which sank the project but the Zionists made no secret of their determination to sink this and any other 'refugeeist' solution. I could cite you many quotations but Ben Gurion's 1938 memo to the Zionist Executive summed it up best (it's in Brenner's book).

    The Zionists were not in favour of unlimited immigration and people like Ruppin, the father of land settlement, implemented selectivity. But what do you mean the British 'gave in' to Arab rioting. Palestine was Arab. Britain had no right there and was there by force of arms - as a colonial power. Britain gave way to the wishes of the majority population.

    The claim that Britain was at her best isn't mine, its Solomon Schonfield's. My own view is that British immigration policy was anti-Semitic but that the Zionists gave the anti-Semites the ideal excuse. Likewise in America where anti-Semites in the State Department under Breckenbridge Long blocked Jewish immigration. They were supported by Zionists throughout and Wise in particular.

    Your question is a false one because clearly the 200,000 Jews who went to Palestine could have gone elsewhere but on an individual basis one supports refugees going anywhere. The problem was that Zionism insisted they ONLY go to Palestine.

    In fact Zionism was an obstacle to rescue in any event and was only a 'solution' given it blocked any other solution. The Soviet Union, despite the degeneration of the revolution under Stalin saved between 3/4 and 1.5 million Jews. And that despite the Nazi-Soviet pact. Without the USSR there would have been a holocaust of 8 million Jews.

    We were talking about German Jews because only German Jews left because of Ha'avara. The other Jews who left were mainly Zionist activists. The Bund stayed put and did more with its little finger to fight Hitlerism than the Zionist movement as a whole. Without the Bund there would have been no Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a fact that Zionists usually forget.

    In fact Jews could and did go to places like Shanghai and Jews with a £1,000 then, who could avoid the immigration certificate system in Palestine could obviously have gone elsewhere. Money always eases access.

    I'm aware of the situation in the USA with Father Coughlin but I repeat that having a powerful section WITHIN Jewry opposed to raising the immigration barriers made it impossible.

    To give but a few examples. On January 15 1940 Stephen Wise wrote to Chaim Weizmann urging him to join the President’s Council for Refugees. Not in order that the Zionist movement could make its own suggestions for schemes aimed at getting Jews out of Europe and away from the Nazi danger, but in order that ‘you may represent the case of Palestine... in view of the ceaseless persistence of J.D.C. people.... in urging such fata morgana as Santo Domingo, British Guiana and Mindanao, it would be exceedingly important for these people at first hand to hear the story of Palestine from you.’

    Dr Joseph Tenenbaum, a senior official in the AJC and ZOA wrote, was that ‘the absolute minimum that we Jews must do is not to interfere with Britain’s war needs, even if this comes at the expense of victims in Poland or elsewhere.’

    ReplyDelete
  8. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, President of the ZOA said:
    'I am happy that our movement has finally veered around to the point where we are all, or nearly all, talking about a Jewish State... But I ask, are we again, in moments of distraction going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism which is likely to defeat Zionism... Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is not a product of the second World War, nor of the first. Were there no displaced Jews in Europe... Zionism would still be an imperative necessity.'

    49th Annual Convention of Zionist Organisation of America, New York Times, 27. 10. 1946. (quote should be “moments of desperation”. Eliezer Livneh declared during a symposium organised by ‘Maariv’ in 1966 “that for the Zionist leadership, the rescue of Jews was not an aim in itself, but only a means.” (Information Bulletin, Communist Party of Israel, 1969, pl97).

    I can only estimate, no one can be certain of anything other than that far more Hungarian Jews would have survived. It was the survivors who brought the Kasztner trial in Israel. It was they who said that their families would have survived if Kasztner and friends had not tricked them into voluntarily going.

    The SS had less than 300 men, Russia was fast approaching, the war was all but lost, Horthy was looking for a way out and meanwhile all news of the holocaust was sat upon by the Jewish Agency and its representative until the Vatican of all places and others sent copies of the Auchwitz Protocols to Switzerland where they were published and then rebroadcast on the BBC and Roosevelt's War Refugee Board (which the American Zionists had opposed) brought pressure to bear, including heavy bombing of Budapest on 1st July 1944.

    One thing that Netanyahu is not about is relinquishing West bank settlements. In Sinai there was the small town of Yamit. In the Gaza there were a few settlements of some 8,000. Sharon pulled out of the latter to reinforce colonisation of the West Bank. Likewise Begin had his arm twisted by the US to pull out of Sinai, along with large bribes.

    The Palestinians have said many times they want to live in peace. If you refuse to hear then no amount of shouting can overcome that. But what you are saying is that the Palestinians should accept defeat gracefully. In fact they have but Israel doesn't give concessions to those they defeat, especially when they are the indigenous population.

    Please read Ben Gurion's biography by Shabtai Teveth 'The Burning Ground' or better still Michael bar Zohar's 'Ben Gurion'. BG accepted the 1947 Partition plan as a tactical device. They never accepted it in practice. That is why Golda Meir went to Abdullah to carve up the West Bank and prevent a Palestinian state. No settlement beyond the 1947 lines was ever withdrawn voluntarily.

    I think you will find there were very few pogroms prior to the beginning of Zionism in Palestine. It was Zionism which triggered the 1929 riots and likewise it was Israel's expulsion of the Palestinians which led to the emigration, with Israel's active complicity in the case of Iraq and other states, of Arab Jews.

    If Palestinians are hostile to Jews it's not because of anti-Semitism but because they are bombed and terrorised by those who do it in the name of the Jews.

    ReplyDelete
  9. “What do you mean the British 'gave in' to Arab rioting. Palestine was Arab. Britain had no right there and was there by force of arms.”

    Palestine was specifically set up as the Jewish national home. Both Jews and Arabs fought on the British side in WWI and so both are entitled to a share of the spoils. Furthermore, Feisal, the leader of the Arab delegation to the post-WWI Paris peace conference, made very clear that Zionist settlement is perfectly compatible with Arab nationalism. The League of Nations understood that Zionist settlement is also compatible with international law, and assigned the British the task of facilitating it. When the British issued the White Paper in 1939, the League of Nations pointed out that the British were violating the terms of the Mandate (at the worst possible time).



    “Your question is a false one because clearly the 200,000 Jews who went to Palestine could have gone elsewhere.”

    Nobody else was willing to take them in. America had its 1920s anti-immigration laws, and most other countries were also not interested. The most dramatic illustration of this is the story of the ship the St. Louis. It carried Jewish refugees in 1939, and went from port to port, unsuccessfully. Eventually, the ship had to return to Europe, where many of the Jews were eventually murdered.

    (A footnote in history, but I story I love, is of 66 Vietnamese refugees, who travelled on a leaky, overcrowded boat in the South China Sea in 1977. The boat peoples’ appeals for help were ignored by ships from three countries. Sound familiar? Eventually, an Israeli freighter encountered the ship, and the captain decided to take the refugees aboard. The freighter then went from port to port trying to find someone who would take them in. Sound familiar? Finally, in his first act as Prime Minister, Menachem Begin announced that Israel would take in the 66, as it could not ignore their plight, so similar to the plight of Jewish refugees before and after WWII.)

    I sympathize with the Palestinian refugees. They should have a country, too. But not if it means the destruction of the Jewish state.



    “The problem was that Zionism insisted they ONLY go to Palestine.”

    Anti-Zionists love to repeat Ben-Gurion’s quote about saving only half the Jewish children of Germany, rather than letting them all go to England. But on many other occasions, he expressed the opposite view:

    As early as April 1936 Ben-Gurion, describing the worsening plight of Poland’s Jews, had told the high commissioner for Palestine, Sir Arthur Wauchope: "Our weightiest concern is the no-exit situation of our people…The Jewish situation that was never good has now become desperate…Had there been the possibility of bringing Poland’s Jews to the United States or Argentina, we would have done so regardless of our Zionist beliefs. But the world was closed to us. And had there not been room for us in Palestine, our people would have had only one way out: to commit suicide."

    Ben-Gurion directed that “emphasis must be put especially on children’s rescue.” Nor did he mean their rescue only in Palestine. In his direct appeal to Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, from the National Assembly in Jerusalem on November 30, 1942, he said: “Bring out first of all and most of all the Jewish children, and take them to neutral countries, to your countries!"

    In January 1943, he also said:
    “We have also appealed to neutral countries to let Jews pass through and afford them temporary asylum. We have demanded that the Polish Government in Exile guarantee the neutral countries that all Polish Jews given such asylum will be returned to Poland [after the war]. We have demanded that [neutral] Turkey, Sweden, Portugal, and Switzerland temporarily receive the refugees. For the time being, our demands have been met only minimally. After all the shock, the blood of millions crying out, the screams of butchered children—we have been given only a few thousand [immigration certificates].”

    ReplyDelete
  10. “The Bund stayed put and did more with its little finger to fight Hitlerism than the Zionist movement as a whole.”

    More than 30,000 Jews from Palestine fought in WWII in the British Army and in the Jewish Brigade, which the British finally allowed to form toward the end of the war.



    “Without the Bund there would have been no Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a fact that Zionists usually forget.”

    I, for one, do not forget. Jews of every political persuasion, from communist to revisionist Zionist, fought as partisans in WWII. It is the left that forgets that Zionist partisan groups also fought in the Warsaw Ghetto and elsewhere in Europe.



    “In fact Jews could and did go to places like Shanghai”

    Wonderful, and even the brutal Japanese militarists provided a haven for Jews. But which place was geographically easier to reach from Europe, Palestine or China?



    “One thing that Netanyahu is not about is relinquishing West bank settlements. In Sinai there was the small town of Yamit. In the Gaza there were a few settlements of some 8,000.”

    I never said Israel is going to relinquish ALL the West Bank settlements. Some will remain, and the Palestinians should be compensated with land from Israel proper, or with money.



    “I think you will find there were very few pogroms prior to the beginning of Zionism in Palestine.”

    The following are on the record:
    Hebron 1517
    Safed 1517
    Hebron 1775
    Safed 1799
    Safed 1834
    Hebron 1834
    Safed 1838
    Jerusalem 1847
    Jerusalem 1870
    Jaffa 1876
    Jerusalem 1895



    “The Palestinians have said many times they want to live in peace.”

    Ask yourself how many times they have said they want to live in PERMANENT peace with the JEWISH STATE. I think the majority would choke on the very words “Jewish state.” And why should we be surprised? Many of their supporters, such as you, would accuse them of selling out if they agreed to the two-state solution. Why would they make peace with Israel if they are under pressure not to?

    ReplyDelete
  11. I think you will find your 'pogroms' were pretty minor affairs but I haven't the time to go into each one now. In the middle ages and feudalism accross Europe there were savage pogroms taking thousands of lives (Chmielniki) which were the product of the Jews role as the agents of money, which manifested itself in sectarian outrages.

    there were very few such occurances in the Middle East until the arrival of the imperialist powers. What you cannot explain then is why the Old Yishuv, to cite Weizmann's Trial and Error, opposed the Zionist settlers and preferred to live in peace with their neighbours who, as was shown in North Africa, protected them a damn sight better than Europeans.

    I never said that Zionists didn't participate in the Warsaw Ghetto and a number also collaborated with the Nazi regime. But they didn't do it as Zionists but inspite of that fact.

    Mordechai Aneilwicz of Hashomer Hatzair, who was the first commander of the Jewish Fighting Organisationi, ZOB, expressed his regret over the “wasted time” undergoing Zionist educational work. (Gutmann p.143, Jews of Wardaw 1939-43) citing Yitzhak Zuckerman and Counci1 of Kibbutz Hi Meuhad 4/1945.

    He went on to say that “had the fate of the Jews in 1942 lain in the hands only of the political parties (Zionist - TG), the revolt would never have taken place.” Gutmann, p. 441 fn. 23.

    As Dawidowicz is forced to admit: “except for the left labour Zionist movement in Warsaw and Czestochowa....... no substantial Zionist underground existed.” Israel Gutman, 'Youth Movements in the Underground and Ghetto' Revolts Jewish Resistance ' p.260-84 cited in Dawidowicz p.323

    Indeed there large number of Zionists who collaborated in the Warsaw Ghetto, Abraham Gancawajch of Hashomer Hatzair or Alfred Nossig.

    Yes the Palestinians have said many times they want to live in peace with Israel, but as Jewish State - a state which accords Jews privileges and sees itself as the West's armed watchdog that isn't possible. If peace were possible with Zionism intact it would have happened.

    As for swapping territory what you are advocating is the ethnic purification of israel by removing most of its Arabs to preserve a Jewish majority. That is what lies behind so-called 2 Statism and it is a racist solution and incidentally that was what Tsipi Livni was pushing for in the negotiations as will be seen in the Palestine Papers that were leaked (see Clayton Swisher).

    ReplyDelete
  12. I forgot to say that the Jewish Brigade was irrelevant. More to the point was that the Zionists not only made no attempt to contact the Warsaw Ghetto but, as Chaim Kaplan says in Scroll of Agony abandoned the Jews to their fate. Zygelboim of the Bund, one of 2 Jewish representatives in the Polish government in exile, who committed suicide to protest the indifference to the holocaust, went back and of course Jan Karski did likewise. No such attempt was made by the Zionists.

    In fact the Zionistsm, Yitzhak Greenbaum, Chair of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee, denied there had been a liquidation for months after and peddled the Nazi like that 50 new Jewish ghettos had been set up in Poland. For that you can see S Beit Zvi's Post Ugandan Zionism on Trial

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi!its really very nice blog,very useful information.Thank you so much.Islam in romania



    Thank


    Afshana

    ReplyDelete

Please submit your comments below