holiday:remembrance day

Tlaib says she is humbled her ancestors provided ’safe haven’ for Jews after Holocaust
The Palestinian-American Democrat charged in an interview that Netanyahu could not look her grandmother in the eye and say ’you are as human as I am to you’
Allison Kaplan Sommer - May 11, 2019 11:10 PM
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Rep. Rashida Tlaib said that she “loves the fact” that her “Palestinian ancestors” were part an attempt “to create a safe haven for Jews” after the Holocaust, although the role “was forced on them” and took place “in a way that took their human dignity away.”

In an interview on the Skullduggery, Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat and the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress as well as one of the first two Muslim female lawmakers, also harshly condemned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “coming from a place of division and inequality” and refusing to acknowledge her grandmother, who lives in the West Bank, as his equal.

Having grown up in an African-American neighborhood of Detroit, Tlaib says that she viewed Netanyahu and his government through the lens of someone who understood “inequality and oppression” and that she condemns the Israeli leader’s endorsement of U.S. President Donald Trump’s border wall and his treatment of Palestinians.

“We can smell it from far away, that no - you don’t want to look at my grandmother in the eye, Netanyahu, and say ‘you are equal to me. You are as human as I am to you.’“

Tlaib referred to the recent commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day when asked about her decision to support a one-state solution, becoming the only Democratic member of Congress to buck her party’s position in favor of two states.

“There’s always kind of a calming feeling when I think of the tragedy of the Holocaust, that it was my ancestors - Palestinians - who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence, in many ways, has been wiped out … in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-Holocaust, post-tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that in many ways,” said Tlaib.

“So when I think about one state, I think: why can’t we do it in a better way? I don’t want people to do it in the name of Judaism just like I don’t want people to use Islam in that way. It has to be done in a way of values around equality, around the fact that you shouldn’t oppress others. So that you can feel free and safe. Why can’t we all be free and safe together?”

Pressed as to why she was the only Democrat who has publicly “given up” on a two-state vision, she responded: “I didn’t give it up. Netanyahu and his party gave it up - the Israeli government gave it up.”

Tlaib said that the Israeli premier has the power to push for a two-state solution, if he “gets up tomorrow morning and decides: ‘I’m going to take down the walls, I’m not going to expand settlements, enough is enough.’”

If he were to do so, she said, perhaps “people like myself and others would truly believe in that. But uprooting people all over again? When you look at the landscape and map it out, it is almost absolutely impossible with how he has proceeded to divide, dissect and segregate communities.”

In the current reality, Tlaib said it was “impossible” for her “to see a two-state solution without more people being hurt.”

Tlaib said her one-state position should not be compared to that of Hamas and others who wished Israel’s destruction because “I’m coming from a place of love, for equality and justice, I truly am. I want a safe haven for Jews: who doesn’t want to be safe? I am humbled by the fact that it was my ancestors that had to suffer for that to happen. I will not turn my back and allow others to hijack it and say it is an extremist approach.”

She added emotionally: “But how can I say to my grandmother in her face, that she doesn’t deserve human dignity, that she is less than, because she is not of Jewish faith... I keep saying to people, how is that not wrong? How is it that we aren’t saying that we going to create a place that is safe for everybody in the state of Israel and in the Palestinian occupied territories?”

Tlaib has made waves on Capitol Hill by announcing her leadership of a summer trip to the West Bank that would counter the Israel trips organized by the American Israel Education Foundation, an affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In the interview she said she did not envision the trip as involving any meetings with Palestinian or Israeli officials, but one in which both Israeli and Palestinian individuals would be heard.

“At a town hall - you want to talk to the people,” she said. “And I’m hoping this trip is a massive town hall.”

Ex-Mossad agent who helped capture Eichmann backs far-right German party with Nazi past as ’great hope’ - Israel News - Haaretz.com
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Former cabinet member and #Mossad agent Rafi Eitan has expressed support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, saying he hopes its ideology expands to the rest of #Europe.

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day last month, Eitan praised the controversial German party (known as #AfD) for coming out against anti-Semitism and supporting Jewish life in Germany. In his video message to the party, published on his Facebook page Saturday, Eitan said: “If you work wisely, powerfully and, most importantly, realistically confronting a situation and deciding to act according to given circumstances, I’m sure that instead of an alternative to Germany, you’ll become an alternative to Europe.”

#sionisme #extrême_droite

Why you should be skeptical of Israeli government’s anti-Semitism reports -

It’s important to monitor hate crimes, but the reports illustrate the difficulty of measuring incidents on social media and the findings seem to reflect interests, not reality

Ofer Aderet Jan 22, 2018

Yaakov Haguel, acting director of the World Zionist Organization, offered cabinet members Sunday a harsh and emotive assesment as he presented them what he called “an important and comprehensive survey on anti-Semitism”
That it was a report thin on methodology and data, did not stop him from declaring, according to a press release: “The Jewish people and the state of Israel will lose contact with millions of Jews around the world if something isn’t done with regard to European governments and the world.”
“Jews are afraid; they are assimilating and taking cover,” he said “Anti-Semitism is on the rise and European governments and the world is ignoring this. Israel’s government is also responsible for world Jewry.”
And then came the presentation of antother report on anti—Semitism to the Cabinet: this time presented by Naftali Bennet, speaking in his capacity as Minister for Diaspora Affairs. The report is entitled “Report on anti-Semitic Trends and Incidents for 2017.”
According to Bennett’s report, 2017 was a record year in terms of the number of anti—semitic incidents in Great Britain, with Germany also seeing a number of “serious incidents.” His ministry’s official website, which posted the report, sends readers to a more extensive write-up on the topic on the website of the Arutz Sheva (also known as Israel National News), a network associated with religious Zionism.
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The post there claimed, citing unnamed surveys, “more than 50 percent of refugees in Western Europe hold anti-Semitic views.”
There are now numerous reports of “spiking anti-Semitism in Europe”, “a record number of incidents” and “a new rise in anti-Semitism.” However, an even cursory review of the “data” on which these reports are based and their comparison to other reports in order to raise some questions or the suspicion that the two documents - which were presented ahead of Saturday’s commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day – are less scientific reports but are appear to be more public relations tools meant to justify agencies whose existence is arguably questionable – the ministry for Diaspora affairs and the World Zionist Organization.

Consider the statements attached to their pubilcation. Two of Haguel’s statements are particularly noteworthy. “Israel is responsible for world Jewry”. Is it? Shouldn’t Jews around the world be asked if they agree with this statement? He then said that “Jews are assimilating.” One only need ask if this is a result of anti-Semitism, which he warns against, or a natural corollary of life outside Israel, where the majority populations are not Jewish.
Even the most significant words of the acting director of the WZO, according to which anti-Semitism is on the rise, can be disputed. To do this one should look at another report, the one published on the last Holocaust Remembrance Day by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University. This report showed a 12 percent decline in the number of violent attacks committed in Europe with an anti-Semitic basis. The report notes that this decline reflects a continuing trend, mainly in the decline in violent incidents which were registered in key countries, in terms of the size of their Jewish populations and their international standing.
On the other hand, the Kantor Center’s report notes a “continuing rise, often dramatic, in visual and verbal expressions [of anti-Semitism], mainly on social networks and at demonstrations.” It notes that this cannot be quantified, concluding that “even though the number of incidents has declined, the prevailing sense among Jews is that things are bad, and that’s the most worrisome feature.”
Indeed, it’s hard to argue with feelings, but the professional integrity of the Kantor Center prevented it from providing the media with dramatic headlines indicating a “sharp rise” in anti-Semitism. One doesn’t need to look far in order to find contradictions in the current furor. While Haguel’s report showed one thing, Bennett’s presented the opposite. His report states that in France the government is taking determined steps to prevent expressions of anti-Semitism, including a government-sanctioned program to combat racism and anti-Semitism. This has borne fruit, with a drop last year in the number of incidents.
So what’s going on here? A drop? A rise? Are governments ignoring the phenomenon or combating it? It depends how you count an “anti-Semitic incident”, who’s counting, who is presenting it and what his interests are.
Looking again at the WZO report, the data raises the suspicion that someone was looking hard for ways to present the numbers in a manner that migtht sound alarm bells, as is worthy of a week ending in Holocaust Remembrance Day. Eighty percent of people surveyed around the world “were exposed to incitement against Jews in the media or on social networks”; 70 percent were affected by anti-Semitic events last year” and “78 percent experienced anti-Semitism in recent years.”
It’s hard to argue with such superficial, general and unscientific statements.
But it’s surprising that only 80 percent were exposed to incitement – anyone with access to Facebook could be considered someone exposed to incitement, not only of the anti-Semitic kind.
Secondly, one could ask if every anti-Semitic response by some wooly-headed ultra-nationalist is necessarily an anti-Semitic “incident” and every exposure to it an anti-Semitic “experience”. If so, then the more hours one spends in front of a computer screen, particularly reading anonymous talkbacks, the more one can be considered someone deeply affected by anti-Semitic content. How should one relate to the data indicating that 59 percent of respondents across the world thought that politicians in their countries were somewhat anti-Semitic?
This is certainly not scientific research.
“The situation is deteriorating daily, spreading to new countries,” Haguel wrote in his dramatic summarizaton of the report’s findings. “We see the WZO playing a key role in preserving Jews and their identity around the world and in helping welcome and acclimitize [immigrants] to this country.”
Herein lies the not so covert vested interest lurking behind the current round of cries bemoaning anti-Semitism. The WZO needs to show that it is still needed in 2018. Who if not this organization will work to preserve Jewish identity and settle Jews from around the world in Israel?
It’s regrettable that state agencies belittle the public’s intelligence. It’s also lamentable that they contribute to producing fake news, confusion and deceptions such as these.
The topic is too important to be left in the hands of politicians and public relations officers.
It’s certainly important to follow with concern data that is not based on telephone interviews or social media. It’s preferable to rely on police reports, public security or internal affairs departments in different countries, as well as interviews with local Jewish community leaders and people who are more connected to events on the ground.
But still, let there be no doubt. Even without these surveys there is no room for optimism. Anyone visiting Jewish communities in Europe knows that in 2018 there are places where it’s uncomfortable for Jews to wear a kippah. Traditional hatred of Jews has been joined in recent years by threats coming from extremist elements among Arab migrants, whose hatred towards Israel because of conflict in the Middle East is morphing into anti-Semitism.
One shouldn’t take an extreme stance and shut one’s eyes to these reports. But the worrisome situation requires serious analysis, thorough and based in accurately collected data. It should be done by independent researchers using scientific tools and accepted methodology.

Ofer Aderet
Haaretz Correspondent

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The Great War is often depicted as an unexpected catastrophe. But for millions who had been living under imperialist rule, terror and degradation were nothing new.

How colonial violence came home: the ugly truth of the first world war
▻https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/10/how-colonial-violence-came-home-the-ugly-truth-of-the-first-world-war?C

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With more than eight million dead and more than 21 million wounded, the war was the bloodiest in European history until that second conflagration on the continent ended in 1945. War memorials in Europe’s remotest villages, as well as the cemeteries of Verdun, the Marne, Passchendaele, and the Somme enshrine a heartbreakingly extensive experience of bereavement. In many books and films, the prewar years appear as an age of prosperity and contentment in Europe, with the summer of 1913 featuring as the last golden summer.

But today, as racism and xenophobia return to the centre of western politics, it is time to remember that the background to the first world war was decades of racist imperialism whose consequences still endure. It is something that is not remembered much, if at all, on Remembrance Day.

At the time of the first world war, all western powers upheld a racial hierarchy built around a shared project of territorial expansion. In 1917, the US president, Woodrow Wilson, baldly stated his intention, “to keep the white race strong against the yellow” and to preserve “white civilisation and its domination of the planet”. Eugenicist ideas of racial selection were everywhere in the mainstream, and the anxiety expressed in papers like the Daily Mail, which worried about white women coming into contact with “natives who are worse than brutes when their passions are aroused”, was widely shared across the west. Anti-miscegenation laws existed in most US states. In the years leading up to 1914, prohibitions on sexual relations between European women and black men (though not between European men and African women) were enforced across European colonies in Africa. The presence of the “dirty Negroes” in Europe after 1914 seemed to be violating a firm taboo.

In the Darkness of Israeli Society, a Few Rays of Light Are Shining Through - Opinion - Haaretz - Israel News Haaretz.com

▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.718865

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This week that begins with Holocaust Remembrance Day, followed by Memorial Day and capped by Independence Day, is the most Israeli week there is. It transports us from memories of the terrible Holocaust to the experience of rebirth and independence. It sums up our entire modern history — that of a persecuted and humiliated nation that shook off its past and managed to establish a state, to build a society and an economy and to maintain an army that doesn’t allow anyone to even dream about another Final Solution.

So, yes. I know that it’s possible to paint the entire reality that we have created here in the blackest of colors, to say that we’re the most immoral nation in the world and not to find even a small ray of light. I am proposing another possibility: grasping those rays of light, enhancing them and hoping that with their help, “Our hope is not yet lost,” as our anthem states.

#israel #obscurité #lumière

The Israeli Generals Who Shoot and Cry and Shoot Again

It’s nice that some of Israel’s most senior commanders are sounding the moral alarm, but what are they doing to change anything?

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, May 08, 2016 2:42 AM

▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.718435

And here they come, those new-old sensitive heroes, soldiers who shoot but cry over it, a 2016 version of the Six-Day War soldiers featured in “The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk about the Six-Day War.” In the Six-Day War, they were soldiers who shot and cried and were therefore considered moral. After the second intifada that broke out in 2000, there were the old-boy “gatekeepers,” (the former Shin Bet security service directors) who suddenly sobered up and were deemed men of conscience.
Now it’s the turn of the most senior commanders in office who are sobering up and sounding the alarm, the threesome of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan. It could have impressed and inspired respect had it not been for one tiny problem. The three aren’t doing a thing to change the situation that they are taking exception to.
These nice and principled military figures are beloved on the center-left, which has always dreamed about ethical generals who make eloquent Holocaust Remembrance Day speeches, but they are nothing more than empty salves to the conscience of the purportedly enlightened tribe.
Ya’alon, Eisenkot and Golan said some things that are correct and resounding. Ya’alon warned against the army becoming bestial. For his part, Eisenkot doesn’t want soldiers to empty their ammunition cartridges on 13-year-old girls. And last week on Holocaust Day, Golan said he saw concerning signs reminiscent of pre-Holocaust Germany in Israel.
It’s hard not to appreciate their courage, but we cannot ignore the fact that these are not three observers from the sidelines. All three bear direct and heavy responsibility for the situation that they are criticizing and have contributed for years to bringing it about.
They head the IDF, which is one of the most major agents of damage to Israeli society. They are in charge of an army most of whose operations consist of maintaining the occupation through brutal force. And anyone who heads an occupation army, who has commanded some of its worst military operations, lacks the necessary moral authority to preach morality — unless they have truly changed.
Ya’alon is warning about the army becoming bestialized? But it is he who has been in charge of it, first as IDF chief of staff and currently as defense minister. Who can change it, if not him? Eisenkot doesn’t want soldiers emptying their bullets into a girl? He can prevent that. Golan sees signs causing him concern? Some of them originated in the army in which he serves as deputy chief of staff.
So here’s a short reminder of the pasts of these new prophets of doom of Israel. Ya’alon, the former clarinetist and farmer, was IDF chief of staff during the Defensive Shield offensive in the West Bank in 2002 and for Operation Days of Penitence in Gaza in 2004, operations that sowed horrifying death and destruction. Perhaps it was then that the bestialization of the IDF began. A few days before his comments of rebuke, Ya’alon set upon the veterans group Breaking the Silence, accusing it of treason. Even if he then retracted the accusation, his comments did not counter the bestialization, but rather contributed to it.
Both Eisenkot and Golan are former commanders of the IDF’s West Bank division. They are well aware of what the occupation looks like and the harm it causes the occupied and the occupier. That same Eisenkot who now doesn’t want soldiers emptying a magazine into a girl was one of the fathers of the so-called Dahiya doctrine, through which the IDF emptied a lot more than magazines into many boys and girls in Lebanon. So why shouldn’t his troops continue to apply the doctrine in Hebron in the West Bank too?
So why shouldn’t his troops continue to apply the doctrine in Hebron in the West Bank too?

Entre le marteau et l’enclume.
Les Arabes israéliens, sommés de s’identifier au récit juif et sioniste pour devenir des citoyens à part entière. En Israël, le mois d’avril est riche en commémorations nationale : Jour de l’indépendance, Jour de la Shoah, Journée du Souvenir des soldats tombés pour la défense d’Israël.
Comment un Arabe israélien peut-il s’identifier ?
« Toutes les histoires nationales me touchent. Mais pour s’identifier véritablement aux histoires de l’Holocauste, nous devons lutter contre le racisme et la persécution des minorités. Et ce n’est pas du tout le cas en Israël. C’est douloureux », explique Ayman Odeh.

« Les juifs n’ont pas le sentiment d’être une majorité. La plupart sont forts, mais ils ont peur, et cela est terrible pour la minorité, ajoute le chef de file de la Liste arabe unie à la Knesset… Il y a quelque chose de psychologique dans la Knesset. Dans chaque coin, il y a un symbole de la nation, mais il n’y a presque aucun symbole civique. »

Israeli Arab leader strives to teach Netanyahu something about suffering - National - Israel News | Haaretz
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Between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Independence Day, Israel’s week of national holidays, Joint Arab List chief Ayman Odeh felt suffocated in the Knesset. State symbols watched him from all sides — the flag, the menorah, Theodor Herzl — and he felt excluded by them all.

“There’s something psychological here. In every corner of the Knesset there’s a symbol of the nation, but there are almost no civic symbols. There are no pictures of the country’s landscapes, nature, Arabs and Jews together,” he says.

“It seems the Jews don’t feel like a majority. Most of the Jews are strong, but they’re also afraid, and that’s awful for the minority. When there’s a majority that feels like a minority and is strong but feels weak and threatened, we pay the price.”

Odeh has started his first Knesset term heading the grouping that contains four Arab parties in an artificial marriage. The goal was to eclipse the increased 3.25-percent electoral threshold, which the party did with ease — its 13 seats make it the Knesset’s third largest party.

If Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union enters a unity government — he insists he won’t — Odeh will probably become Israel’s first-ever Arab opposition leader. He was actually supposed to enter the Knesset before the election and replace Mohammed Barakeh as head of the Arab-Jewish Hadash party, but the vote was moved up to March 17.

Alongside his 10-year plan to reduce inequality between Jews and Arabs, Odeh wants to help the poor and have the unrecognized Bedouin communities in the Negev recognized. He also wants to increase funding for Arab culture. He has already spoken with key Likud MK Zeev Elkin.

“I told him: ‘The opposition rarely manages to pass bills when you’re coalition whip, so tell me what you can accept.’ He told me Jews should learn Arabic starting in the first grade. I said: ‘Okay, I’ll propose it.’”

Before the swearing-in ceremony at the Knesset, Joint Arab List MKs had to decide whether to stand during the singing of the national anthem, which talks about “the Jewish soul.”

“There was an argument in the party,” says Odeh. He says he asked the other MKs to treat it as an official ceremony and not walk out. In the end, no agreement was reached and Odeh and the other Hadash MKs remained along with Osama Saadia of Ta’al, a component of the Arab ticket. The others left.

Odeh says that for nearly two weeks he argued with himself over whether to stay. “Sometimes I regret I stayed, sometimes not,” he says.

After the swearing-in, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech was out of touch and nationalist, as if it came out of history 3,000 years ago, Odeh says, adding that Netanyahu spoke so heatedly he was more like an actor.

A week ago Odeh took part in the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony. This time he left before the national anthem, but not because of it. “I’ve read ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ — and also it hurts me how [a Holocaust survivor] collapsed during the Eichmann trial,” he says.

“All nations’ stories touch me. But to identify in a true and deep way with the stories about the Holocaust, we must fight racism and the persecution of minorities. And that’s not what’s happening in this country. It hurts.”

Odeh says Netanyahu backs racist laws and wants to discard democracy. He says he has greater credibility talking about the Holocaust than Netanyahu because he’s fighting racism and represents a minority that seeks cooperation based on respect.

Odeh is due to meet Netanyahu soon, a meeting he says he learned about in the newspapers. Even though he considers the tête–à–tête a media exercise and the prime minister’s attempt to put out the fires he set on Election Day, Odeh asked his MKs whether he should attend — and they all said yes.

“The burden of proof is on Bibi,” Odeh adds. “He needs to convince us he wants a serious meeting.”

Odeh will also be meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the next two weeks, as well as with President Reuven Rivlin and Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms for terror activity.

Regarding the criticism that Israeli Arab leaders worry more about the Palestinians than their own voters, Odeh says he wants to lead the battle here in Israel. But he also believes that real equality will be only be possible by solving the Palestinian issue, because the country of which he’s a citizen is at war with the people he belongs to.

“We’re between the hammer and the anvil,” he says.

Odeh distinguishes between civil rights, which he thinks can be achieved now, and national rights. Issues such as employment for Arab women and public transportation “don’t need to be part of an ideological dispute. As for national rights, we can disagree.”

Israeli Arab leader strives to teach Netanyahu something about suffering
‘To identify with the stories about the Holocaust, we must fight racism and the persecution of minorities,’ Ayman Odeh says. ’And that’s not what’s happening in this country.’
By Ofra Edelman | Apr. 26, 2015 Haaretz
►http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.653396

Between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Independence Day, Israel’s week of national holidays, Joint Arab List chief Ayman Odeh felt suffocated in the Knesset. State symbols watched him from all sides — the flag, the menorah, Theodor Herzl — and he felt excluded by them all.

“There’s something psychological here. In every corner of the Knesset there’s a symbol of the nation, but there are almost no civic symbols. There are no pictures of the country’s landscapes, nature, Arabs and Jews together,” he says.

“It seems the Jews don’t feel like a majority. Most of the Jews are strong, but they’re also afraid, and that’s awful for the minority. When there’s a majority that feels like a minority and is strong but feels weak and threatened, we pay the price.”

Odeh has started his first Knesset term heading the grouping that contains four Arab parties in an artificial marriage. The goal was to eclipse the increased 3.25-percent electoral threshold, which the party did with ease — its 13 seats make it the Knesset’s third largest party.

If Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union enters a unity government — he insists he won’t — Odeh will probably become Israel’s first-ever Arab opposition leader. He was actually supposed to enter the Knesset before the election and replace Mohammed Barakeh as head of the Arab-Jewish Hadash party, but the vote was moved up to March 17.

Alongside his 10-year plan to reduce inequality between Jews and Arabs, Odeh wants to help the poor and have the unrecognized Bedouin communities in the Negev recognized. He also wants to increase funding for Arab culture. He has already spoken with key Likud MK Zeev Elkin.

“I told him: ‘The opposition rarely manages to pass bills when you’re coalition whip, so tell me what you can accept.’ He told me Jews should learn Arabic starting in the first grade. I said: ‘Okay, I’ll propose it.’”

Before the swearing-in ceremony at the Knesset, Joint Arab List MKs had to decide whether to stand during the singing of the national anthem, which talks about “the Jewish soul.”

“There was an argument in the party,” says Odeh. He says he asked the other MKs to treat it as an official ceremony and not walk out. In the end, no agreement was reached and Odeh and the other Hadash MKs remained along with Osama Saadia of Ta’al, a component of the Arab ticket. The others left.

Odeh says that for nearly two weeks he argued with himself over whether to stay. “Sometimes I regret I stayed, sometimes not,” he says.

After the swearing-in, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech was out of touch and nationalist, as if it came out of history 3,000 years ago, Odeh says, adding that Netanyahu spoke so heatedly he was more like an actor.

A week ago Odeh took part in the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony. This time he left before the national anthem, but not because of it. “I’ve read ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ — and also it hurts me how [a Holocaust survivor] collapsed during the Eichmann trial,” he says.

“All nations’ stories touch me. But to identify in a true and deep way with the stories about the Holocaust, we must fight racism and the persecution of minorities. And that’s not what’s happening in this country. It hurts.”

Odeh says Netanyahu backs racist laws and wants to discard democracy. He says he has greater credibility talking about the Holocaust than Netanyahu because he’s fighting racism and represents a minority that seeks cooperation based on respect.

Odeh is due to meet Netanyahu soon, a meeting he says he learned about in the newspapers. Even though he considers the tête–à–tête a media exercise and the prime minister’s attempt to put out the fires he set on Election Day, Odeh asked his MKs whether he should attend — and they all said yes.

“The burden of proof is on Bibi,” Odeh adds. “He needs to convince us he wants a serious meeting.”

Odeh will also be meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the next two weeks, as well as with President Reuven Rivlin and Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms for terror activity.

Regarding the criticism that Israeli Arab leaders worry more about the Palestinians than their own voters, Odeh says he wants to lead the battle here in Israel. But he also believes that real equality will be only be possible by solving the Palestinian issue, because the country of which he’s a citizen is at war with the people he belongs to.

“We’re between the hammer and the anvil,” he says.

Odeh distinguishes between civil rights, which he thinks can be achieved now, and national rights. Issues such as employment for Arab women and public transportation “don’t need to be part of an ideological dispute. As for national rights, we can disagree.”

’Cash-strapped’ Israeli army pressing #US for $3 billion military aid deal
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/cash-strapped-israeli-army-pressing-us-3-billion-military-aid-dea

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An honor guard of Israeli soldiers stands to attention at the start of Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers during a state ceremony at the Western Wall of the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem’s Old City on May 4, 2014.(Photo: AFP - Gali Tibbon)

Budget-strapped #Israel is pressing the United States to conclude a deal extending military aid beyond 2017, when Washington’s current $3 billion annual payouts to its Middle East ally expire, officials said on Friday. They said a swift agreement on future US grants would help Israel’s military draft a five-year austerity plan accommodating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative government. “It’s difficult to budget into 2018 and 2019 without knowing what funds will be available,” an Israeli military official (...)

#Palestine #Top_News

Abbas denounces murder of Jews in Holocaust as ’most heinous crime in modern era’
Haaretz
By Barak Ravid | Apr. 27, 2014 |
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.587527

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas released a special message on Sunday in Arabic and in English on the occasion of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which he decried the murder of Jews in the Holocaust as "the most heinous crime against humanity in modern history.

This is the first time a Palestinian president has ever made such a public declaration.

Haaretz reported last week that Abbas was due to release the message to the Jewish people ahead of the Israeli memorial day, which begins at sundown on Sunday.

Abbas promised to issue such a statement at a meeting last week in Ramallah with Schneier, former vice-president of the World Jewish Congress and head of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.

“I heard what was said about Abbas’ attitude toward the Holocaust, but was surprised to hear how clear he was on this issue when meeting me,” Schneier told Haaretz.

In the statement, which was published on the website of the official Palestinian news agency WAFA in both Arabic and English, Abbas offered his sympathy to the “families of the victims and the innocent people who were killed by the Nazis including the Jews and others.”

The Holocaust, he said, represents the “concept of ethnic discrimination and racism which the Palestinians strongly reject and act against.”

Abbas also called on the international community to do whatever it can to combat racism and injustice in order “to bring justice and equity to the oppressed people wherever they are.”

“The Palestinian people are suffering from injustice, oppression and denied freedom and peace, we are the first to demand to lift the injustice and racism that befell on people subjected to such crimes,” Abbas said.

“On this occasion, we call on the Israeli government to seize this current opportunity to conclude a just and comprehensive peace in the region, based on two-states vision, Israel and Palestine lives side by side in peace and security,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Abbas’ message by telling ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem that “rather than releasing declarations aimed at soothing international public opinion, he must choose between Hamas and true peace.”

Abbas has “made a covenant” with the Hamas movement which “denies the Holocaust and is attempting to create another Holocaust by destroying the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said, adding. “I hope he will escape this covenant and return to the path of real peace.”

A number of senior Israeli officials, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Strategic and Intelligence Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, have declared over the past year that Abbas is anti-Semitic and a Holocaust denier. Their claims were based on Abbas’ doctoral thesis from the University of Moscow, which asserted cooperation between elements in the Zionist Movement and Nazi Germany in the years before the Holocaust.

Abbas had since retracted these claims. In interviews he gave in recent years he maintained that he was not denying the Holocaust and that he recognizes the fact that six million Jews were killed during World War II.

Warsaw Ghetto fighter to Israeli youth: Rise up against the occupation | +972 Magazine
▻http://972mag.com/nstt_feeditem/warsaw-ghetto-fighter-to-israeli-youth-rise-up-against-the-occupation

Statements challenging the national narrative aren’t exactly common in Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day. So it was particularly refreshing to read on the Walla news portal about a different sort of speech delivered in honor of the day. According to the site [Hebrew], Havka Folman-Raban, who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, said the following words in a ceremony attended by Israeli youth at the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum in northern Israel:

Continue the uprising, but a different uprising, a modern one, against all evil. Rise up against racism, violence and hatred of the other, and the inequality. Rise up against the occupation, we mustn’t rule and humiliate another people. It is important to achieve peace and an end to the cycle of bloodshed. My generation fought for peace and I so want to be here to achieve it.

The ashes are silent
By Yitzhak Laor ; de la manipulation des commémorations du génocide des juifs

qui se souvient de la viste des leaders de l’Afrique du Sud de l’apartheid au mémorial Yad Vashem ?

Haaretz

▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-ashes-are-silent.premium-1.514104

Holocaust Remembrance Day and remembrance of the Holocaust have become part of the mechanism that mobilizes the Holocaust for every issue, from the fight against anti-Zionism abroad to the authority of going after small children in the territories to the discussions about the war against Iran. The moral corruption did not start yesterday or during Likud’s time. One of the low points of Holocaust remembrance used as a tool of symbolism was during the first Rabin government: the visit to Yad Vashem in 1976 of John Vorster, at the time prime minister of South Africa, where laws like those of Nuremberg were in force.

En Israël, la « dictature » du Jour du Souvenir...

Haredi to court : Limit Remembrance Day siren - Israel Jewish Scene, Ynetnews
▻http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4360865,00.html

In petition, ultra-Orthodox man says Remembrance Day siren ’classic characteristic of a dictatorship’

An ultra-Orthodox man recently petitioned the High Court of Justice to limit the nationwide siren on Remembrance Day so that it sounds “only at places where memorial ceremonies are held.”
 
Elhanan Ostrowitz, who filed the petition, made headlines last year when he spray-painted slogans against Zionism at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and other sites.

LGBT Global News 24/7 – 20-11-2012 « MasterAdrian’s Weblog
►http://masteradrian.com/2012/11/20/lgbt-global-news-247-20-11-2012

LGBT Global News 24/7 – 20-11-2012
November 20, 2012

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Celebrity Big Brother winner has responded to his former fiancé Chantelle Houghton’s accusation of cheating on her with prostitutes

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‘Stop the hate’ demand activists on Trans Remembrance Day

Campaigners around the world call for global action to end the ‘horrifying’ rise in transgender murders

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Lesbians in love triangle plead guilty to $1.4 million heist

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Nuns claim birth control turns men gay and women into sluts

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Anti-gay marriage Christian councilor has expulsion upheld

Christina Summers, who wished to vote against government plans for same-sex marriage, was kicked out of Brighton’s liberal Green Party

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Cross-party group gives hope for gay marriage in New South Wales

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Filipino LGBT writers discuss their work

Five Filipino LGBT writers took part in a panel discussion about their work as part of the Philippine International Literary Festival in Manila

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Billy Graham’s son believes gay marriage and Obama’s win jeopardizes US society

‘There is no way you can have a family with two females or two males’

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Kate McKinnon nails Ellen DeGeneres impersonation on Saturday Night Live

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London Mayor Boris Johnson backs national HIV testing week

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Teacher’s anti-gay badge spurs lesbian mom’s campaign

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Transgender woman attacked in Brighton

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Israeli students cheer Nazis at Holocaust Remembrance Day play
►http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2012-04/23/c_131546160.htm

Several dozens of high school students watching a play portraying the gruelling hardships of life in Vilna’s Jewish Ghetto during World War II applauded and cheered the Nazis, during Holocaust Remembrance Day last week.

During the play “Ghetto,” which was performed on Wednesday at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theater before audiences from four high schools, some students disrupted the solemn tale by shouting catcalls at the actors, and cheered a Nazi who shot dead a Jew. Others called out “hit him harder” and “way to go” during a scene where a kapo beat a Jew, Army Radio reported Monday.

At the play’s conclusion, actor Oded Leopold called from the stage for the audience to halt their applause, and sharply chastised the students’ behavior.

Apprenant cela, Nicolas Sarkozy a immédiatement téléphoné au Premier ministre israélien pour présenter les excuses de la France et condamner officiellement le détestable comportement des étudiants, euh, attends… Non, finalement, personne n’a téléphoné à personne.

Detangling the Holocaust from Israeli-Palestinian politics

►http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=31000&lan=en&sp=0

When I realised that International Holocaust Remembrance Day was approaching, my first thought was, “great – another opportunity for Israel’s leaders to make the world feel guilty and back away from their criticism of its settlements.” After reading the works of Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, who wrote in the 1960s about using the Holocaust to justify Israeli injustices, and hearing Benyamin Netanyahu’s rhetorical use of the Holocaust recently in the US Congress, I have reached a point where I hear “Holocaust” and think about trends in Israeli-Palestinian politics that I do not like.

What led me to Yad Vashem was the realisation that my thinking about Israeli-Palestinian issues has changed the way that I think about the Holocaust. I have become deeply frustrated by the political manipulation of the Holocaust to distract from Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. These crimes should not and need not be compared to Nazi crimes, but they are unjust and immoral in their own right.

[…] I will continue to fervently oppose the idea that every person who criticises Israel is anti-Semitic, and especially viewpoints that legitimise violence against non-Jews. But I do want to try to open myself up to empathising more with the very real suffering that can lead to those views.

#holocauste, #Israël, #Palestine, #Moriel_Rothman