Polish-born Holocaust survivor Eliahu Pietruszka, 102, has tears in his eyes as he meets the nephew he didn’t know existed for the first time on Thursday in Kfar Saba, Israel.
Pietruszka thought his entire family had died in the Holocaust but it turned out one brother had escaped and reached Siberia, where he had a son, Alexandre, 66, who flew in from a remote part of Russia to see him.
The connection was made two weeks ago using Yad Vashem’s online Holocaust Names Recovery Project, which is still being compiled. Pietruszka’s parents and other brother Zelig were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto to be killed in Nazi death camps, but it turns out his brother Volf managed to escape and reach Siberia, where the Soviets imprisoned him in a work camp. (Article below)
[Note by Tom Gross]
There is a selection of articles below. (Incidentally, I sometimes post articles on my public Facebook page straight after they are published so you can sometimes see items quicker if you “like” or follow this Facebook page.
CONTENTS
1. “The book that’s tearing Manhattan moms apart” (New York Post, Nov. 20, 2017)
2. “Swastikas and anti-Semitism rife on campus: image is now seen as a ‘casual symbol of fun’ and Holocaust denial literature is being handed out” (Daily Mail, Nov. 16, 2017)
3. “102-year-old survivor reunites with newly discovered nephew” (Associated Press, Nov. 20, 2017)
4. “My life as an ISIS sex slave – and how I escaped” (New York Post, Nov. 180, 2017)
5. “Nick Cave: BDS Is the Reason for My Trip to Israel” (Haaretz, Nov. 19, 2017)
6. “Turkey Bans All LGBT Events in the Country’s Capital” (Associated Press, Nov. 19, 2017)
7. “German justice ministry urges ban on Kuwait Airways over Israel issue” (Reuters, Nov. 17, 2017)
8. “We Can’t Trust Facebook to Regulate Itself” (New York Times, Nov. 19, 2017)
ARTICLES
P IS FOR PROPAGANDA
The book that’s tearing Manhattan moms apart
By Oli Coleman
New York Post (Page Six)
November 20, 2017
https://pagesix.com/2017/11/20/ues-moms-group-ripped-apart-by-book-drama/
A massive Facebook group for Upper East Side moms is on the verge of closing down after a vicious row about a children’s book. The UES Mommas group – whose members made headlines in August after threatening each other with libel suits – erupted so violently over the weekend after an author posted about her book, “P is for Palestine,” that its founders temporarily put the whole group on ice and claim to be meeting with Facebook about how to resolve the mayhem.
A longtime member of the group – which has about 27,000 members – said that the conversations usually tend towards complaining about Prada diaper bags and advertising for “Wii tutors” for the neighborhood’s little darlings. But open warfare broke out when author Golbarg Bashi posted about her book, which she describes as an educational alphabet book about the disputed territory. Said a member, “It immediately went ape-s–t. People were posting about it and calling each other anti-Israel and anti-Muslim.” One user posted, “I went through the book. It basically promotes hate towards those living in Israel, Jews and Christian Arabs.”
We’re told that a furious Facebooker posted a page from the book that says, “I is for Intifada, Intifada is Arabic for rising up for what is right, if you are a kid or a grownup.” “That’s when it really went ballistic [in the group],” says our spy.
We’re told that by Sunday evening, the moderators had “archived” the group, meaning that old posts were available but new ones aren’t permitted. We’re told that group are meeting with Facebook officials to discuss how to resolve the chaos, including the possibility of closing the group permanently.
In August, a lawyer for two members of the group sent cease and desist letters to other members, who called them “racists” after a conversation about the Charlottesville riots went off the rails.
(This article is from and about Britain, but campus anti-Semitism and Holocaust distortion is increasingly a phenomena on some American and Canadian university campuses too -- TG.)
“ANTI-JEWISH HATRED IS RIFE ON UK CAMPUSES AND HOLOCAUST DENIAL LITERATURE IS BEING DISTRIBUTED”
Swastikas and anti-Semitism rife on campus: MPs hear how image is now seen as a ‘casual symbol of fun’ and Holocaust denial literature is being handed out
* The swastika is seen on university campuses as being a ‘casual symbol of fun’
* Anti-Jewish hatred is rife and Holocaust denial literature is being distributed
* Police had to be called to protect Jewish students from ‘animalistic behaviour’
By Daniel Martin
The Daily Mail
November 16, 2017
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5087463/Swastikas-anti-Semitism-rife-university-campuses.html
Anti-Semitism is so entrenched in many of Britain’s universities that the swastika is now seen on campus as a ‘casual symbol of fun’, MPs heard last night.
Parliament heard a litany of ‘horrifying’ examples of anti-Jewish hatred at universities, including the distribution of Holocaust denial literature.
At one university, police had to be called to protect Jewish students from the ‘animalistic behaviour’ of anti-Israel activists.
Student officers have also used the Twitter hashtag #Jew while discussing wealth, while swastikas have been drawn on people’s cars, on the walls of student halls and even at student parties.
Liron Velleman, of the Union of Jewish Students, said the situation was now so bad that ‘we need serious conversations about what the swastika is’.
The appalling stories were recounted at a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-Semitism.
During the session shadow education secretary Angela Rayner admitted that Labour had not done enough to tackle hatred of Jews in its ranks.
And she said she would be challenging Jeremy Corbyn to explain why he had caused such ‘upset’ by attending the book launch of an anti-Semitic author last year.
‘We need to prove we are not anti-Semitic as a party,’ she said.
Saying that anti-Semitism was ‘normalised’ on many campuses, she added: ‘People think anti-Semitism has gone away but the reality is it’s absolutely there in every single community, in our campuses and our schools and across our society.’
Mr Velleman and other speakers listed a raft of examples of university anti-Semitism. They included police having to protect Jewish students at University College London after anti-Israel protesters climbed in through the windows during a talk by Israeli speaker Hen Mazzig at UCL’s Friends of Israel group in October last year.
Mr Velleman said: ‘A number of campuses have Holocaust denial literature posted on university noticeboards. We have swastikas drawn on cars – this is not something I expected in 2017.
‘We need a serious conversations about what the swastika is. It’s either being seen as a casual symbol of fun which is pretty horrifying, or people are using it as a legitimate way to attack people.’
Miss Rayner said she agreed with a speaker who suggested the ‘European Left’ had a problem with anti-Semitism, and admitted that Labour had not gone far enough to tackle anti-Semitism in its ranks.
‘I have confidence we are going in the right direction but are we where we need to be? I don’t think we’re there yet,’ she said. ‘We still have people in our party that are anti-Semitic. It’s not just what we say, it’s what we do – and I say that to everyone including my leader.’
She also expressed concern about a meeting organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission attended by Mr Corbyn in December, where an academic described as ‘extremely anti-Semitic’ launched his book. ‘If people do something that strays into being wrong or unacceptable, if that happens we have to immediately seize on it,’ she said. ‘And I will speak to Jeremy about that meeting in December and say that it has created upset, and ask him what is he going to do about it personally.’
In a hint that she wants to see more anti-Semitic members expelled rather than simply suspended, she added: ‘I’m sick of ‘jam tomorrow’, the promise that it’ll get sorted.
‘I want to see direct action. Not just warm words and rule changes, but direct action.’
Free speech is ‘under threat’ in universities – risking creating a generation of snowflake students, academics warn. They told MPs on the Commons joint human rights committee that policies banning speech seen as ‘offensive’ were having a ‘chilling effect’, with Dr Joanna Williams of Kent University saying that students are being ‘taught to see themselves as vulnerable’.
102-YEAR-OLD HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR REUNITES WITH NEWLY DISCOVERED NEPHEW
102-year-old survivor reunites with newly discovered nephew
The Associated Press
November 20, 2017
https://apnews.com/1883d7e2d9474026acde33c1e3b6ce57
KFAR SABA, Israel (AP) – Eliahu Pietruszka shuffled his 102-year-old body through the lobby of his retirement home toward a stranger he had never met and collapsed into him in a teary embrace. Then he kissed both cheeks of his visitor and in a frail, squeaky voice began blurting out greetings in Russian, a language he hadn’t spoken in decades.
Only days earlier, the Holocaust survivor who fled Poland at the beginning of World War II and thought his entire family had perished learned that a younger brother had also survived, and his brother’s son, 66-year-old Alexandre, was flying in from a remote part of Russia to see him.
The emotional meeting was made possible by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial’s comprehensive online database of Holocaust victims, a powerful genealogy tool that has reunited hundreds of long-lost relatives. But given the dwindling number of survivors and their advanced ages, Thursday’s event seemed likely to be among the last of its kind.
“It makes me so happy that at least one remnant remains from my brother, and that is his son,” said Pietruszka, tears welling in his eyes. “After so many years I have been granted the privilege to meet him.”
Pietruszka was 24 when he fled Warsaw in 1939 as World War II erupted, heading to the Soviet Union and leaving behind his parents and twin brothers Volf and Zelig, who were nine years younger. His parents and Zelig were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto and killed in a Nazi death camp, but Volf also managed to escape. The brothers briefly corresponded before Volf was sent by the Russians to a Siberian work camp, where Pietruszka assumed he had died.
“In my heart, I thought he was no longer alive,” Pietruszka said. He married in Russia and, thinking he had no family left, migrated to Israel in 1949 to start a new one.
Then two weeks ago, his grandson, Shakhar Smorodinsky, received an email from a cousin in Canada who was working on her family tree. She said she had uncovered a Yad Vashem page of testimony filled out in 2005 by Volf Pietruszka for his older brother Eliahu, who he thought had died.
Volf, it turned out, had survived and settled in Magnitogorsk, an industrial city in the Ural Mountains. Smorodinsky tracked down an address and reached out to discover that Volf, who had spent his life as a construction worker, had died in 2011 but that Alexandre, his only child, still lived there. After Smorodinsky arranged a brief Skype chat, Alexandre decided to come see the uncle he never knew he had.
Smorodinsky, a 47-year-old professor from Ben-Gurion University in southern Israel, invited The Associated Press to record Thursday evening’s reunion at his grandfather’s retirement home in central Israel.
Upon meeting, the two men clutched each other tightly and chatted in Russian as they examined each other’s similar facial features.
“You are a copy of your father,” said a shaking Pietruszka, who has a hearing aid and gets around in a rolling walker. “I haven’t slept in two nights waiting for you.”
Throughout the meeting, Alexandre swallowed hard to hold back tears, repeatedly shaking his head in disbelief.
“It’s a miracle. I never thought this would happen,” Alexandre, himself a retired construction worker, kept saying.
It did, thanks to the Yad Vashem database of pages of testimony, whose goal is to gather and commemorate the names of all of the estimated 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide. The Names Recovery Project has been Yad Vashem’s flagship mission in recent years. The memorial’s very name – Yad Vashem is Hebrew for “a memorial and a name” – alludes to its central mission of commemorating the dead as individuals, rather than mere numbers like the Nazis did.
It hasn’t been an easy task. The project began in 1954, but over the following half century, fewer than 3 million names were collected, mostly because the project was not widely known and many survivors refrained from reopening wounds, or clung to hopes that their relatives might still be alive.
The names collected are commemorated in the museum’s Hall of Names, a cone-shaped room whose walls are lined with bookshelves containing folders upon folders of testimonies. Still, until 2004, more than half of the allotted folders remained empty.
That year, the database went online and provided immediate easy access to information in English, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish and German. Thanks to a high-profile campaign, and the efforts of Yad Vashem officials who have gone door-to-door to interview elderly survivors, the number has surged to 4.7 million names.
Another rewarding byproduct has been that of tech-savvy grandchildren using it to research their families, leading to emotional reunions between various degrees of relatives from around the world.
The rate of reunions has trickled significantly in recent years as elderly survivors have passed away, making each one increasingly significant, said Alexander Avram, the director of the database.
“It is not too late to fill out pages of testimony. We need to document each and every victim of the Holocaust,” he said. “But such a reunion is a very special moment because we are not going to see a lot more of them in the future.”
Debbie Berman, a Yad Vashem official at the reunion, said it was incredibly moving to be there for “the end of an era.”
“This is one of the last opportunities that we will have to witness something like this. I feel like we are kind of touching a piece of history,” she said.
For Pietruszka, a retired microbiologist and great-grandfather of 10, it was a fulfilling coda to a long, eventful life.
“I am overjoyed,” he said. “This shows it is never too late. People can always find what they are looking for if they try hard enough. I succeeded.”
“MY LIFE AS AN ISIS SEX SLAVE – AND HOW I ESCAPED”
* Tom Gross adds: if you haven’t seen it, you may wish to watch this impassioned plea which the first female Yazidi MP, Vian Dakhil, made in 2014 to draw the world’s attention to the plight of Yazidi girls forced into sex slavery. Her calls were largely ignored. I know Vian and have spoken alongside her at various human rights conferences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Vbtei3__4
***
My life as an ISIS sex slave – and how I escaped
By Stefanie Cohen
New York Post
November 18, 2017
https://nypost.com/2017/11/18/i-was-was-an-isis-slave-and-now-im-fighting-back/
Nadia Murad grew up dreaming of owning a beauty salon. The youngest of 11 children in a Yazidi family in northwest Iraq, she took photographs of all the brides in her tiny village, studying their makeup and hair. Her favorite was of a brunette woman with curls piled high atop her head.
But after ISIS overtook her village in August 2014, that dream died. Murad was captured, enslaved, sold, raped and tortured alongside thousands of her people in an effort to decimate their religion.
ISIS didn’t entirely succeed, however. Murad, 24, managed a miraculous escape and is now a Nobel Peace Prize nominee fighting for freedom and justice for her people.
Her new book, “The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State” (Tim Duggan Books), out now, tells the story of how she and her family were living peacefully in the farming community of Kocho, near the Syrian border, when ISIS first rose to power. Her clan came from a long line of sheepherders and wheat farmers, residing in a house made of mud-brick rooms “lined up like beads on a necklace and connected by doorways with no doors.”
In the summer her family, including Murad’s mother, eight brothers and two sisters, stretched out on mattresses on the roof of their house, whispering to one another until they fell asleep under the moon.
But three years ago, on Aug. 14, after a two-week siege, ISIS ordered the entire population of Kocho to a schoolyard, where they asked the local leader if the villagers would convert to Islam. Yazidism is one of the oldest faiths in Mesopotamia, dating back 6,000 years, and has elements in common with many religions of the Middle East: Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism. Adherents don’t believe in hell or Satan and pray to a fallen angel, whom they call Tawusi Melek, who came down to Earth and challenged God, only to be forgiven and returned to heaven. This belief has given the Yazidi people a reputation among radical Muslims as devil worshipers. As a result, followers, who have no formal holy book of their own, have often been the target of genocidal impulses. (Before ISIS, outside powers, including the Ottomans and other radical Islamic sects, had tried to destroy them 73 times, Murad writes in her book.)
The local leader told the ISIS commander that they would never convert, believing his people would then be evacuated to a nearby town. Instead, the men of the village were loaded onto trucks, ordered to dig a shallow grave and executed in one afternoon. The women, still in the schoolyard, could hear the shots just a short distance away. The older women and children were separated from the younger women. Murad was ripped away from her mother, whom she would never see again.
On the way out of town, Murad, who was 21, screamed in an effort to stop one of the soldiers from grabbing her breast each time he walked by her on the bus. “Why did you scream?” a militant asked Murad. “I was scared,” she told him. “This guy . . . touched me.”
“What do you think you are here for?” asked the commander. “You are an infidel, a sabiyya [sex slave] and you belong to the Islamic State now, so get used to it.” Then he spat in her face, took out a cigarette and extinguished it on her shoulder. He lit another one and put it out on her stomach. Then he slapped her twice across the face and warned: “Never make another sound again.”
In the dark, crowded room of a home where she and the other women were being held, Murad asked what awaited her; another woman who had been there longer told her to look for the stains on the bathroom wall where others had tried to kill themselves rather than be sold as slaves.
“You can see the blood high on the walls where the cleaners don’t notice,” the woman told her. “The small reddish-brown stains high up on the tiles were all that was left of some Yazidi girls who had come before me,” writes Murad.
She had never heard of ISIS before they came to her village and had no idea that the group had been planning her fate for a long time. “Attacking Kocho and taking girls to use as sex slaves wasn’t a spontaneous decision,” she writes.
“ISIS planned it all: how they would come into our homes, what made a girl more or less valuable, which militants deserved a sabiyya as incentive and which should pay.”
She paraphrases an Islamic State pamphlet which stated that “Sabiyya can be given as gifts and sold at the whim of the owner, for they are merely property.” Murad writes: “An owner can have sex with a prepubescent slave, it says, if she is ‘fit for intercourse.’ “
Sitting in a house surrounded by men with guns, the young woman contemplated killing herself. Instead, she made a pact with her two older sisters, Dimal and Adke. “We would… take the first opportunity to escape,” she writes.
When an enormous man with calves “as thick as tree trunks” selected Murad as his slave, she screamed and tried to pull away. “His eyes were sunk deep into the flesh of his wide face… He didn’t look like a man – he looked like a monster.” When she spied a skinnier man’s calves from her place on the ground, she begged him to take her, hoping his slight size might save her. “She’s mine,” the skinny man told the larger man. And that was that.
Murad was registered as a slave – complete with a photo ID that would be dispersed among the fighters if she were to run away – and taken to the home of her new owner, a high-ranking ISIS judge named Hajji Salman.
“You’re my fourth sabiyya,” he told her. “The other three are Muslim now. I did that for them. Yazidis are infidels – that’s why we are doing this. It’s to help you.”
Hajji Salman told her to shower, put on a dress that came only to her knee – an immodest change from her normal wardrobe – and use hair-removal cream all over her body.
“I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. I knew that if I didn’t wear any makeup, I would be punished, so I looked through the pile [left for me] . . . Normally [my niece] and I would have been thrilled at the new makeup, which was a brand I recognized and could very rarely afford. We would have stood in front of the bedroom mirror, painting our eyelids different colors, surrounding our eyes with thick lines of kohl, and covering our freckles with foundation. At Hajji Salman’s, I could barely stand to look at myself in the mirror. I put on some pink lipstick and eye makeup – just enough, I hoped, to avoid being beaten.”
When he raped her, “He was loud enough for all the guards to hear – he shouted as if he wanted all of Mosul to know that he was finally raping his sabiyya – and no one interfered. His touch was exaggerated, forceful, meant to hurt me . . . I was like a child, crying out for my mother,” Murad writes.
“He hit me when he was displeased with the way I cleaned the house, when he was angry about something from work, if I cried or kept my eyes closed while he raped me,” she writes. He humiliated her, spreading honey on his toes and making her lick it off. And he always warned her: “It you try [to escape], you will regret it, I promise you. The punishment won’t be good.”
She tried anyway. She put on an abaya, the robe-like covering that devout Muslim women wear, and crawled out a window. A guard saw her. Hajji Salman was summoned, and he whipped Murad’s naked body and then let his sentry – six of them – gang-rape her until she was unconscious. The last thing she saw before blacking out was one of the guards placing his glasses on a table before he climbed into her bed.
Over the next week, she was passed to six other men who raped and beat her, before being given to one who planned on taking her to Syria. But first he needed to buy her more clothing. Left alone for the first time in two weeks, she impulsively tried the front door. It didn’t budge. But Murad gave it one last shove and “nearly fell over when it swung open.” Her captor had, for reasons unknown, left it unlocked.
She started walking and didn’t stop. Dressed in the abaya, with her face covered like other Muslim women, she wasn’t an obvious target, although she was shaking and could barely breathe she was so terrified. She walked all evening and into the night. When she arrived at the outskirts of town, the poorer section, she felt slightly calmer.
“If any Sunni in Mosul was going to help me, it was most likely to be a poor Sunni, maybe a family who had stayed only because they didn’t have the money to leave,” she reasoned. She spied a house that looked vaguely like her own back in Kocho and knocked on the door.
“I beg you, help me,” she said, not knowing if she had been saved or was about to be destroyed.
One of the men grabbed her and pulled her into the house. “It’s safer in here,” he said. “You shouldn’t talk about those kinds of things outside.”
The clan, who despised ISIS, let her stay with them for a few days while they prepared a plan: One of the sons, Nasser, would drive her out of ISIS territory; if anyone asked, he would pretend to be her husband. The plan worked. Using fake IDs and a cover story about visiting family in Kurdish-held Iraq, Murad and Nasser made it past the many checkpoints until she was reunited with two of her brothers at a refugee camp.
Murad’s struggle wasn’t over yet. As news filtered in with new arrivals to the camp, she eventually learned what had happened to her other loved ones. Her mother had been shot and buried in a shallow grave along with 85 other Yazidi women. Five of her brothers had been executed. Her nephew had been kidnapped by ISIS and would be brainwashed into fighting for them. Her two sisters were still in captivity.
Luckily, another one of her brothers was found in a hospital nearby. Murad refused to tell her three surviving brothers the details of her ordeal, knowing it would torment them to think of their wives, still in captivity, being raped. “I cried every day. When I dreamed, it was always about being returned to ISIS and having to escape again.”
At the refugee camp, Murad told a few reporters her story. When Murad Ismael, the executive director of Yazda, a Yazidi advocacy group, was looking for a refugee to tell her story to the UN Security Council, he asked Murad and she agreed.
More than a year later she was flown across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time and landed in New York, where she made a speech before the UN. Poised and calm in front of a crowd of world leaders, she stated: “You are the ones to decide whether another girl, just like me, in a different part of the world, will be able to lead a simple life or will be forced to live in suffering and bondage.”
It was a turning point. “I believe Nadia’s speech raised awareness about the tyranny of ISIS, and they are retreating now, shrinking,” Ismael told The Post. “I attribute some of the world standing up to ISIS to Nadia and people like her, who spoke bravely.”
Humanitarian lawyer Amal Clooney now represents Murad and other Yazidi survivors before the UN. In August, the Security Council passed a resolution to appoint independent investigators to collect evidence of ISIS crimes, the first step toward holding the group accountable for its mass executions. But, says Ismael, “I am not sure if it will happen. Unless there is giant effort, many will get away with their crimes.”
More than 3,000 women and children are still enslaved and 300,000 Yazidis are displaced. Murad is now living in a town near Stuttgart, Germany, through a program that took in 1,100 Yazidi refugees in 2015. In September 2016, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime appointed her a goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking. She was also nominated for a Nobel and named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in 2016. (Her two sisters were also finally liberated from ISIS; Dimal, 33, lives with Murad in Germany, while Adke, 30, is in a Kurdistan refugee camp.)
Now Murad is hoping her book will reach an even wider audience than her speech before the UN. All proceeds from the book’s sales will go toward supporting survivors and bringing ISIS to justice.
“I think there was a reason God helped me escape . . . and I don’t take my freedom for granted,” she writes. “The terrorists didn’t think that Yazidi girls would have the courage to tell the world every detail of what they did to us. We defy them by not letting their crimes go unanswered. Every time I tell my story, I feel that I am taking some power away from the terrorists.”
NICK CAVE: BDS IS THE REASON FOR MY TRIP TO ISRAEL
Nick Cave: BDS Is the Reason for My Trip to Israel
By Itay Stern
Haaretz
November 19, 2017
* The Australian rock star, currently in Israel to play shows on Sunday and Monday, speaks out against silencing artists
Australian rock star Nick Cave said on Sunday that BDS was the impetus for coming to play in Israel. The musician spoke at a press party celebrating his concerts in Tel Aviv on Sunday and Monday.
Cave explained that, a few years ago, he understood that he wouldn’t sign an “Artists for Palestine” petition, calling for artists to refrain from coming to Israel. “I didn’t want to sign the petition. I didn’t connect to it. I don’t like lists,” he said.
Cave said he realized that though he wouldn’t sign the petition, he also hadn’t performed in Israel for 20 years. Cave first visited Israel to play a concert in 1993, and has returned twice since.
“That made me feel like a coward, so as soon as I planned this tour, it was important for me to come out against this silencing of artists,” he said.
“I like Israel and Israelis, and it’s important for me to do something of substance about this.”
Cave said he had not played in Israel for the past 20 years due to a lack of popularity and to complex logistical challenges involved in organizing shows.
TURKEY BANS ALL LGBT EVENTS IN THE COUNTRY’S CAPITAL
Turkey Bans All LGBT Events in the Country’s Capital
The Associated Press
November 19, 2017
Turkish officials have banned all events by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex rights groups in the country’s capital.
The ban took effect Saturday for an “indefinite” period and applies to all LGBTI film screenings, theaters, panels and exhibitions.
The Ankara governor’s office announced Sunday that the ban was imposed to protect “public security.” It said the events may cause animosity between different groups and endanger “health and morality” as well as the rights and freedoms of others.
The governor’s office warned that some groups may be provoked by LGBTI events and take action against participants due to “certain social sensitivities.”
Although homosexuality is not banned in Turkey and numerous LGBTI associations are legally registered with the state, rights activists say LGBTI individuals face discrimination and stigma.
GERMAN JUSTICE MINISTRY URGES BAN ON KUWAIT AIRWAYS OVER ISRAEL ISSUE
German justice ministry urges ban on Kuwait Airways over Israel issue
Reuters
November 17, 2017
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-court-kuwait-airways/german-justice-ministry-urges-ban-on-kuwait-airways-over-israel-issue-idUSKBN1DH2M5
BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government should revoke landing rights for Kuwait Airways given its ban on Israeli passengers, a senior Justice Department official said on Friday, saying such discrimination was intolerable.
Christian Lange, parliamentary state secretary in the ministry, appealed to Chancellor Angela Merkel to personally advocate a ban on Kuwait Airways’ operations in Germany.
A German court ruled on Thursday that the airline had the right to refuse to carry an Israeli passenger due to his nationality, a verdict that Jewish groups said condoned anti-Semitism.
Lange told Merkel in the letter that he had received countless phone calls from members of the Jewish community and from others in Israel, expressing shock about the court ruling, made just days after Germany solemnly marked the anniversary of the Nov. 9, 1938 Nazi pogroms against the Jews.
“We cannot say ‘Never again’ at a remembrance ceremony, but then remain silent when activists in Germany call for a boycott of Israel, or, as in this case, when an airline refuses to carry Israeli citizens,” Lange said.
“Especially the German government must make clear that we reject this form of discrimination and hate, and that we stand by the side of our Israeli friends,” he told the chancellor.
The Lawfare Project, the legal group that represented the plaintiff in the case, has vowed to appeal against the ruling.
“To see a Jewish person banned from exercising his freedoms in Germany in 2017 is chilling enough. To see that discrimination whitewashed and legitimized by a German judge is grotesque,” said the group’s executive director, Brooke Goldstein.
Deputy German Foreign Minister Michael Roth also criticized the airline’s policy, telling Die Welt newspaper that he had contacted the Kuwaiti ambassador in Germany about the issue.
German Transport Minister Christian Schmidt told Bild newspaper that it was not acceptable to discriminate against airline passengers because of their nationality, and said the German government would address the matter with the Kuwaiti government.
“This requires contacts at the ministerial level,” Schmidt told the newspaper in an interview to be published on Saturday.
“We will do all we can within our legal means to prevent something like this in the future,” Schmidt told the paper.
There was no immediate response to a request for comment emailed to the airline.
“WE CAN’T TRUST FACEBOOK TO REGULATE ITSELF”
We Can’t Trust Facebook to Regulate Itself
By Sandy Parakilas
Op-Ed
New York Times
Nov. 19, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/facebook-regulation-incentive.html
I led Facebook’s efforts to fix privacy problems on its developer platform in advance of its 2012 initial public offering. What I saw from the inside was a company that prioritized data collection from its users over protecting them from abuse. As the world contemplates what to do about Facebook in the wake of its role in Russia’s election meddling, it must consider this history. Lawmakers shouldn’t allow Facebook to regulate itself. Because it won’t.
Facebook knows what you look like, your location, who your friends are, your interests, if you’re in a relationship or not, and what other pages you look at on the web. This data allows advertisers to target the more than one billion Facebook visitors a day. It’s no wonder the company has ballooned in size to a $500 billion behemoth in the five years since its I.P.O.
The more data it has on offer, the more value it creates for advertisers. That means it has no incentive to police the collection or use of that data – except when negative press or regulators are involved. Facebook is free to do almost whatever it wants with your personal information, and has no reason to put safeguards in place.
For a few years, Facebook’s developer platform hosted a thriving ecosystem of popular social games. Remember the age of Farmville and Candy Crush? The premise was simple: Users agreed to give game developers access to their data in exchange for free use of addictive games.
Unfortunately for the users of these games, there were no protections around the data they were passed through Facebook to outside developers. Once data went to the developer of a game, there was not much Facebook could do about misuse except to call the developer in question and threaten to cut off the developer’s access. As the I.P.O. approached, and the media reported on allegations of misuse of data, I, as manager of the team responsible for protecting users on the developer platform from abuse of their data, was given the task of solving the problem.
In one instance, a developer appeared to be using Facebook data to automatically generate profiles of children, without their consent. When I called the company responsible for the app, it claimed that Facebook’s policies on data use were not being violated, but we had no way to confirm whether that was true. Once data passed from the platform to a developer, Facebook had no view of the data or control over it. In other cases, developers asked for permission to get user data that their apps obviously didn’t need – such as a social game asking for all of your photos and messages. People rarely read permissions request forms carefully, so they often authorize access to sensitive information without realizing it.
At a company that was deeply concerned about protecting its users, this situation would have been met with a robust effort to cut off developers who were making questionable use of data. But when I was at Facebook, the typical reaction I recall looked like this: try to put any negative press coverage to bed as quickly as possible, with no sincere efforts to put safeguards in place or to identify and stop abusive developers. When I proposed a deeper audit of developers’ use of Facebook’s data, one executive asked me, “Do you really want to see what you’ll find?”
The message was clear: The company just wanted negative stories to stop. It didn’t really care how the data was used.
When Russians decided to target Americans during the 2016 election, they didn’t buy TV or newspaper ads, or hire a skywriter. They turned to Facebook, where their content reached at least 126 million Americans. The fact that Facebook prioritized data collection over user protection and regulatory compliance is precisely what made it so attractive. Now the company is arguing that it should be allowed to regulate itself to prevent this from happening again. My experience shows that it should not.
Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, mentioned in an October interview with Axios that one of the ways the company uncovered Russian propaganda ads was by identifying that they had been purchased in rubles. Given how easy this was, it seems clear the discovery could have come much sooner than it did – a year after the election. But apparently Facebook took the same approach to this investigation as the one I observed during my tenure: react only when the press or regulators make something an issue, and avoid any changes that would hurt the business of collecting and selling data.
This makes for a dangerous mix: a company that reaches most of the country every day and has the most detailed set of personal data ever assembled, but has no incentive to prevent abuse. Facebook needs to be regulated more tightly, or broken up so that no single entity controls all of its data. The company won’t protect us by itself, and nothing less than our democracy is at stake.
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
This ‘Proud Anti-Semite’ bumper sticker being openly displayed on a car in Long Island, is “a sign of the times” according to the ADL says, reports ABC7 TV. (Article below.)
Above: Tens of thousands of Polish extremists light flares during a rally in downtown Warsaw on Saturday night to coincide with several historical events, including the anniversary of Kristallnacht, one of the key events that led to the Holocaust. (Three million Jews were murdered in death camps on Polish territory.)
The largely young crowd shot chanted “fatherland” and carried banners that read “White Europe,” “Europe Will Be White” and “Clean Blood.” Some of the marchers flew in from Hungary, Slovakia and Spain and waved flags and symbols that those countries used during their wartime collaboration with Nazi Germany, reports the Wall Street Journal. Anti-Muslim and anti-gay slogans were also chanted.
The same Polish organizing group regularly holds events to celebrate a 1936 pogrom against Jews.
The numbers at this rally vastly outnumber the largest neo-Nazi type rally in recent times in the US, when about 220 far rightists attended a march in Charlottesville this summer.
A tiny group of about a dozen (possibly non-Jewish) counter protestors in Warsaw, heavily protected by police, held up signs on Saturday saying “We are all Jews.”
Hollywood actress Mila Kunis who tried to visit her childhood home in Ukraine with her husband Ashton Kutcher last month was refused entry by a local who shouted anti-Semitic slurs at them, she said in a new interview (Article below).
Kunis, who is Jewish, said her family left Ukraine in 1991 due to anti-Semitism there, and the other children in her class used to carve swastikas and write Jew on the back of her school chair when she was 7.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/589246/i-fled-the-ukraine-to-escape-hatred/
(In a separate interview, with Wired magazine, another prominent Ukrainian-born Jew, Jan Koum, said he also fled anti-Semitism in Ukraine aged 16. He moved to America and went on to found the highly successful communication app WhatsApp.)
(See also Haaretz’s report this weekend:
Ukraine’s Invented a ‘Jewish-Ukrainian Nationalist’ to Whitewash Its Nazi-era Past
And: Ukraine unveils statue honoring nationalist leader who killed up to 50,000 Jews
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.821871
Above, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, fresh graffiti in Bulgaria reads “Kill the kike!”
Other graffiti read “6m lies” and “Bulgaria, under 100 years of Zionist occupation” (More photos here from The Sofia Globe.)
http://sofiaglobe.com/2017/11/10/alyosha-soviet-soldier-monument-in-bulgarias-plovdiv-daubed-with-anti-semitic-anti-russian-graffitti/
An Indonesian museum that allowed visitors to take selfies with a life-size wax sculpture of Hitler against a backdrop of Auschwitz death camp has removed the exhibit following international outrage, the manager said on Saturday. It was particularly popular with schoolchildren, he said. Article below from AFP. Also more here from the (London) Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5074759/Museum-removes-waxwork-Hitler-posing-Auschwitz-gates.html
I attach a number of articles below concerning anti-Semitism and extreme nationalism. (Another dispatch concerning political developments in Saudi Arabia may follow later today or tomorrow.)
See also:
* Jewish woman, 70, attacked in London, has head smashed into a brick wall by assailant shouting ‘Jew’ in Polish
http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Jewish-woman-70-attacked-in-London-by-assailant-shouting-Jew-in-Polish-513903
* British Labour Party shortlists as a potential candidate a woman who posted online:
“It’s such a shame that the history teachers in our school never taught us this but they are the first to start brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler. What have the Jews done good in this world?”
https://order-order.com/2017/11/10/labour-candidate-good-jews-done/
-- Tom Gross
CONTENTS
1. “‘Proud Anti-Semite’ bumper sticker a sign of the times” (ABC7 NY, Nov. 12, 2017)
2. UK police disperse 50 children aged 11-15 subjecting local Jewish residents to torrent of abuse (Echo-News, Essex, England)
3. “Mila Kunis says local refused to let her see childhood home in Ukraine” (The Forward, Nov. 10, 2017)
4. “Polish Nationalist youth march draws thousands in capital: Crowd of mostly young people carries banners that read ‘Europe Will Be White’ and ‘Clean Blood’” (Wall St Journal, Nov. 11, 2017)
5. “Indonesian museum removes Nazi-themed exhibit after outrage” (AFP, Nov. 11, 2017)
ARTICLES
“FOR MOST PEOPLE, A BUMPER STICKER READING ‘PROUD ANTI-SEMITE’ WOULD BE DISTURBING”
‘Proud Anti-Semite’ bumper sticker a sign of the times, ADL says
By Stacey Sager
ABC7 News
Sunday, November 12, 2017
http://abc7ny.com/society/adl-proud-anti-semite-bumper-sticker-a-sign-of-the-times/2623647/
FARMINGDALE, Long Island (WABC) -- A shocking display of hate on Long Island is just another example of the rise in anti-Semitic incidents nationwide, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
For most people, a bumper sticker reading “Proud Anti-Semite” would be disturbing. But one driver in Farmingdale had no problem proclaiming his stance, after a woman snapped a photo while driving her children home from a Girls Scout event on Route 110.
Police say they are aware of who the driver is, but that there is often a fine line between hate speech and free speech.
The ADL reports a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic incidents this year, and New York state now leads the nation with 267 “events” in 2017. That is an increase over the 199 incidents reported all last year across the state.
Most of these “events” involve vandalism and harassment, and on Long Island, District Attorney Madeline Singas has launched an innovative new program in which suspects are counseled by Holocaust survivors.
Eyewitness News spoke with 90-year-old Werner Reich, a survivor of Auschwitz, who so far has counseled two suspects about why it is wrong to scrawl swastikas on property. Reich knows the power of hate all too well.
“I ask them, ‘Do you know the meaning of a swastika?,’“ he said. “And they look at me as if I’m an idiot. And they say no.”
Reich also goes around lecturing about his experiences to high school children and really anybody who will listen.
“It’s really eye-opening,” Singas said. “Because once they’re educated to that, they’re ashamed and embarrassed.”
Thursday marks the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, in which Jews throughout Nazi Germany were rounded up and murdered in 1938. The windows of Jewish-owned stores and synagogues were smashed, leaving the streets littered with shards of glass.
“All the different horrors he talked about, they don’t teach us the different horrors in school,” one Manhasset student said.
The anniversary makes Reich’s words that much more meaningful, and the statistics are powerful to say the least. Reich is just hoping to somehow make a difference.
UK POLICE FORCED TO ISSUE DISPERSAL ORDER AFTER CROWD OF UP TO 50 CHILDREN AGED 11-15 SUBJECT LOCAL JEWISH RESIDENTS TO TORRENT OF ABUSE
Gang of youths are accused of Jewish slurs
By Kirsty Hough
Echo-News, Essex, England
November 2, 2017
http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/15635902.Gang_of_youths_are_accused_of_Jewish_slurs/
A gang of youngsters have been accused of anti-Semitic behaviour directed at Canvey’s Jewish community over Halloween.
Police issued a dispersal order after several reports of youths in the town centre, while they also received a report of 30 to 50 teenagers gathering near the Jewish Centre in Meppell Avenue.
The young yobs, believed to be aged between 11 and 15, all wore black hoodies and masks.
One resident, Rebecca Vos, witnessed one member of the community try to disperse the teens, only to be met with a torrent of abuse.
The 36-year-old said: “It is a nightmare. I did go and apologise to the man because it was horrible. In all honesty, these children don’t even know what they are saying, they don’t understand, but they are creating a gang mentality where they feel safe to act this way.
“Their latest actions highlighted the issue, but it happens most nights on the island, and it is deeply concerning. We are developing a child gang problem in Canvey.”
A community of Chasidic Jews have been moving to the island over the past year from North London.
They chose Canvey due to the community spirit and have converted the former Castle View School into the Jewish Congregation of Canvey Island.
Despite a generally warm welcome, there have been some unpleasant anti-Semitic incidents, including a group of youths on bikes performing Nazi salutes in August.
Mrs Vos added: “Everyone has been so welcoming since they are arrived but now they are being abused and pushed away by these idiotic kids. It is a disgrace.”
Essex Police posted to Facebook: “On Canvey we have had a report of a large group congregating and intimidating local residents.
“As a result a dispersal order has been put in place for Canvey, this gives an officer in uniform the power to remove a young person to a place of safety. Children under 16 but over the age of ten will be taken home, if they return to the locality defined within the order and cause antisocial behaviour within 48 hours this will be considered a breach which is an arrestable offence.”
MILA KUNIS SAYS LOCAL REFUSED TO LET HER SEE CHILDHOOD HOME IN UKRAINE
Mila Kunis says local refused to let her see childhood home in Ukraine
The Forward / Haaretz / Times of Israel
November 10, 2017
https://www.timesofisrael.com/mila-kunis-says-local-refused-to-let-her-see-childhood-home-in-ukraine/
(JTA) – Mila Kunis and husband Ashton Kutcher tried to visit the actress’ childhood home in Ukraine with her parents, but a local who opened the door would not let them in, she said in an interview.
Kunis, who is Jewish and in 2012 recalled experiencing anti-Semitism in her native Chernivtsi, recalled her August trip there with Kutcher in an interview published this month in the Net-a-Porter online magazine about fashion. The interview prompted angry and defensive reaction from locals, a Ukrainian news site reported.
Kunis, 34, was with Kutcher in Budapest, which is 375 miles west of Chernivtsi, for the filming of “The Spy Who Dumped Me.” Kutcher suggested she visit Chernivtsi during the trip for the first time since she left Ukraine with her family for the United States in 1991.
“But I was never going to go without my parents. So my parents came to Budapest, then onto Ukraine, and Ashton and I went for one day,” Kunis said. “It was trippy. There’s a part of you that wants to feel something” toward the place, she said in the interview, but “I had nothing.”
“We went to our [old] house and I knocked on the door because we really wanted to look inside. And [the owner] was like, ‘No!’ She did not care. I said, ‘I used to live here when I was little, my parents are here.’ … She wouldn’t even open the door. The whole experience was very humbling.”
In a 2012 interview with the British Sun tabloid, Kunis, whose parents named her Milena, said that she saw anti-Semitic graffiti in her school in Chernivtsi.
“One of my friends who grew up in Russia, she was in second grade. She came home one day crying,” Kunis recalled. “Her mother asked why and she said on the back of her seat there was a swastika. This is a country that obviously does not want you.”
When the actress was 7, her parents – Mark, a mechanical engineer, and Elvira, a physics teacher – decided to move to the United States with her and her brother, Michael.
Some residents of Chernivtsi, including people who knew the Kunis family, took offense at her unemotional description of the trip and at the 2012 interview, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.
“We still have a large Jewish community, so talks of ‘anti-Semitism’ are nonsense and insulting,” one resident, Lyudmila Skidova, was quoted as saying.
Last year, the words “death to the Jews” were spray-painted on the city’s main synagogue.
BANNERS READ ‘EUROPE WILL BE WHITE’ AND ‘CLEAN BLOOD’
Polish Nationalist Youth March Draws Thousands in Capital
Crowd of mostly young people carries banners that read ‘Europe Will Be White’ and ‘Clean Blood’
By Drew Hinshaw
Wall Street Journal
Nov. 11, 2017
WARSAW – Tens of thousands of Poles marched across downtown Warsaw on Saturday, in an independence-day procession organized by a nationalist youth movement that seeks an ethnically pure Poland with fewer Jews or Muslims.
The largely young crowd shot off roman candles and many chanted “fatherland,” carrying banners that read “White Europe,” “Europe Will Be White” and “Clean Blood.” Some of the marchers flew in from Hungary, Slovakia and Spain and waved flags and symbols that those countries used during their wartime collaboration with Nazi Germany.
A number of people in the crowd said they didn’t belong to any neo-fascist or racist organization but didn’t see a problem with the overall tone of what has become Poland’s biggest independence day event.
“There are of course nationalists and fascists at this march,” said Mateusz, a 27-year-old wrapped in a Polish flag, “I’m fine with it. I’m just happy to be here.”
The march, organized by a group called the National Radical Camp, underscores the rightward politics of a growing section of Polish youth. The Radical Camp presents itself as the heir to a 1930s fascist movement of the same name, which fought to rid Poland of Jews in the years just before the Holocaust. A second group, All Polish Youth, also named after an anti-Jewish interwar movement, co-organized it.
Officials in the city government said they thought the march reflected poorly on Poland, but they said they had no choice but to approve the demonstration, as it fulfilled the legal requirements: It qualified as a celebration of Polish history. “This is not the type of event I would take my children to,” said Agnieszka Kłąb, spokesperson for the Warsaw City Council.
The Radical Camp has been holding independence-day marches since 2009. Until several years ago, it struggled to attract more than a few hundred people. In the past three years, it has become the largest independence-day occasion in Poland, and one of the largest nationalist marches of its kind anywhere in Europe. Saturday’s was expected to be the largest ever. Police estimated the crowd at 60,000.
“It’s getting more and more vicious,” said Jakub Skrzypek, 25, one of about a dozen counterprotesters standing behind a banner that read “We Are Polish Jews” and surrounded by police. “We are really in fear.”
The Radical Camp’s followers argue, on their social-media accounts and in their literature, that the influx of Syrian refugees into Europe is part of a conspiracy driven by Jewish financiers, who are working with Communists in the European Union to bring Muslims into Europe, and with them, Shariah law and homosexuality.
The group has regularly held events to mark a 1936 pogrom against Jews. Its symbols were displayed on a banner that appeared over a Warsaw bridge, reading: “Pray for Islamic Holocaust.”
People took part in a antifascist counterprotest held by an umbrella coalition for organizations and social movements that oppose nationalism in Poland.
This year, the group said it was adopting a new slogan, a quote from a July speech here by President Donald Trump : “We want God.”
“This march is just an expression of a bigger social phenomenon, which is definitely very troubling, and is the growing acceptance of extreme nationalism and xenophobia among young people in Poland,” said Rafal Pankowski, a political-science professor at private university Collegium Civitas in Warsaw. “It is a contrast: Polish parents and grandparents are paradoxically more liberal than their young.”
Richard Spencer, an American until recently banned from 26 European countries who wants to create a country just for white people in North America, was invited. The Polish government asked him to stay home, and he didn’t show up. Roberto Fiore, an Italian anti-immigration politician who describes himself as a fascist, was scheduled to appear.
Some Poles on Facebook and Twitter said they were staying away from the city center on their country’s independence day, to avoid potential violence. Three previous years’ marches devolved into tear-gas-clouded scuffles with police. Police detained at least 45 people Saturday.
The crowds drawn to Saturday’s march reflect the politics taking hold in the soccer clubs and youth hangouts where Radical Camp recruits. The group holds a staunch nativist standpoint, saying the European Union and Russia represent equal threats to Polish sovereignty. It argues that Polish people should nationalize the assets belonging to foreign corporations and distribute the profits across an ethnically homogenous state.
The nationalist parade was held under the slogan ‘We Want God,’ a quote from a July speech here by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Similar movements have taken hold – even captured seats in parliament – in Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic. Some of these countries are among Europe’s most prospering. Poland is the only country in the EU that didn’t experience a single quarter of economic contraction after the financial crisis.
Still, the fear that Poland is under siege by distant elites has captured the imagination of some here, as has the worry that hordes of immigrants could soon pour over the border. Government-controlled media broadcasts near-nightly reports on crimes committed by Muslims in Europe. On Saturday, Polish state television called the procession a “great march of patriots.
“It’s like this inner need we have,” said Lukasz, a 24-year-old protester. “We want a Poland that will be for Polish people.”
INDONESIAN MUSEUM REMOVES NAZI-THEMED EXHIBIT AFTER OUTRAGE
Indonesian museum removes Nazi-themed exhibit after outrage
Following international outrage, Indonesian museum removes Nazi exhibit after allowing visitors to take selfies with a life-size wax sculpture of Adolf Hitler.
AFP (Agence France Presse)
November 11, 2017
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5041370,00.html
An Indonesian museum that allowed visitors to take selfies with a life-size wax sculpture of Hitler against a backdrop of Auschwitz concentration camp has removed the exhibit following international outrage, the manager said Saturday.
De ARCA Statue Art Museum in the Javanese city of Jogjakarta drew swift condemnation from rights groups after details of the controversial display were published in foreign media.
The exhibit features a sure-footed Hitler standing in front of a huge photo of the gates of Auschwitz – the largest Nazi concentration camp where more than 1.1 million people were killed.
The museum’s operations manager, Jamie Misbah, said the wax sculpture had been removed after the building was alerted to criticism from Jewish organizations.
“We don’t want to attract outrage,” Misbah told AFP. “Our purpose to display the Hitler figure in the museum is to educate.”
The Hitler sculpture is one of about 80 figures, including world leaders and celebrities, at the wax and visual effects centre. The Nazi-themed exhibit was a popular attraction for visitors to take selfies, and photos circulating on social media show customers – including children – posing with Hitler and in some cases using the Nazi salute.
Misbah said he thought it was “normal’ for visitors to take photos in front of displays, but said the museum respected the exhibit had upset people from around the world.
Historians have blamed poor schooling for the lack of awareness and sensitivity about the Holocaust in Indonesia, which is home to the world’s biggest Muslim population and a small number of Jews.
In January, a controversial Nazi-themed cafe in the western Javanese city of Bandung closed. The venue, which featured swastika-bearing walls and photos of Hitler, sparked global uproar when reports about the unusual venue surfaced several years ago.
***
Tom Gross adds:
More here from the (London) Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5074759/Museum-removes-waxwork-Hitler-posing-Auschwitz-gates.html
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
WILL AT THE WALL
Tom Gross:Despite worldwide efforts by opponents of Israel to promote boycotts of the country, an increasing number of prominent people are choosing to visit Israel, and general tourism is also expected to hit record highs this year.
Above: American actor Will Smith, who is on a private visit, smiles for passersby at Jerusalem’s Western Wall this afternoon. Below, he poses with admirers in a shop in Jerusalem’s old city.
BOY GEORGE, DEFYING ABUSE
British pop star Boy George, launching his latest world tour in Tel Aviv last night, told the audience that he had chosen to wear a Star of David outfit at his concert as a way of telling BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] supporters to “F--- off”.
Boy George said he and his band faced “abuse” in Britain prior to his performance yesterday but they were determined to ignore it. “I love it here in Israel and it’s always a pleasure to be here!” he told the crowd last night.
He was joined on stage by three other original members of the band Culture Club and he also performed a duet with Israeli singer and Eurovision song contest winner Dana International. (Photo below, before his concert yesterday.)
Here is a short clip from last night’s concert.
MORRISSEY SONGS PAY HOMAGE TO ISRAEL
Another British pop star Morrissey has included songs referencing Israel on his new album, including a track called “The Girl from Tel Aviv Who Wouldn’t Kneel” and another song simply titled “Israel” in tribute to the country.
The former Smiths front man is a strong supporter of Israel and has played many concerts in Tel Aviv. He once appeared on stage in Tel Aviv draped in an Israeli flag.
Morrissey has said that the more he is abused by anti-Israel activists, the closer he feels to the country.
Morrissey’s new album will be released on November 17.
HIDDEN MOTIVES?
Here is a short TV interview with myself from earlier today in which I speculate on hidden motives leading to Priti Patel’s ousting as a British government minister last night.
Tom Gross:
“Britain is a country where it is apparently now ok for (prime minister in waiting) Jeremy Corbyn to refuse to speak to Jewish groups, while being chummy with anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and Islamists...
“There are those in the British foreign office that would hate the UK to show backing for Israel’s efforts to treat injured Syrian children, as ousted International Aid minister Priti Patel sought to do.”
“THERE WOULDN’T BE THIS KIND OF FUSS IF SHE HAD MET VARIOUS PEOPLE OF INFLUENCE IN BELGIUM”
There is concern among supporters of Israel in Britain that some prominent media including the BBC and The Guardian made it sound like Patel was trying to simply give money to the Israeli army, rather than to offer British assistance in treating injured Syrian refugees who have fled over the border to Israel.
Patel was forced to quit last night after she was humiliatingly ordered to return to the UK from an official visit to Africa, less than 24 hours after she had departed from London.
Patel, the daughter of Hindu Indian immigrants to Britain, was seen as a rising star of the Conservative party who could even potentially become its next leader. But she was detested by some in the British foreign office for her sympathies to Israel.
Patel had also been seen as a favorite of both the influential Daily Mail newspaper and of Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Times of London and the Sun. Patel was one of only two Cabinet ministers invited to Murdoch’s wedding to Jerry Hall last year.
Sir Eric Pickles, a former Cabinet minister who is sympathetic to Israel, told one British newspaper today: “I cannot imagine there would be this kind of fuss if she had met various people of influence in Belgium.”
THE BRITISH LEFT’S OBSESSION WITH ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Above is a short interview with me from last Saturday while yet another anti-Israel protest took places in London, with buses organized by the trade unions and others bringing in protestors from all around Britain.
Meanwhile there have been no protests for the 600,000 Rohingya Muslims made refugees in recent weeks by the military in Burma, which has had British arms and training and like Israel is another former British colony, and has been carrying out systematic ethnic cleansing and a scorched earth policy Meanwhile there have been no protests for the 600,000 Rohingya Muslims made refugees in recent weeks by the military in Burma, which has had British arms and training and like Israel is another former British colony, and has been carrying out systematic ethnic cleansing and a scorched earth policy against Rohingya.
Nor for the 160,000 Kurdish men, women and children forced from their homes in the last two weeks by Iranian-controlled Shia militia in Kirkuk.
For over two years now, partly using British weapons, the Saudis and other gulf Arabs have been bombing civilians in Yemen, leading to mass starvation and malaria inflicting millions of people there. There hasn’t been a single protest in London. And the list goes on...
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
Palestinians prepare to throw shoes at an effigy depicting Arthur Balfour during a staged protest in the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Bethlehem
100 YEARS AGO TODAY
[Note by Tom Gross]
Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration that helped pave the way to Israeli independence.
In recent days, there have been a large number of articles on the anniversary in the Israeli and British media but also some in the American and Arab media too.
I attach four pieces below, including one by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in The Guardian demanding Britain apologize. (The article, which I’m told was largely drafted on Abbas’ behalf by journalists at The Guardian, has many inaccuracies.)
First here is a short TV interview on the subject with me from today:
“There’s no need for Britain to apologize for the Balfour Declaration”
On the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Balfour Declaration that helped pave the way to Israeli independence, Tom Gross explores the reasons behind it and discusses demands by some that Britain apologize for it. Is it Britain’s fault that the Palestinians don’t have an independent state? Should Britain also apologize for Jordan, Iraq and other states? The Palestinians could have had a state on many occasions, and could and should still have one. If anyone needs to apologize to the Palestinians it is their own leadership.
Update
It is worth watching British PM Theresa May’s speech followed by Israeli PM Netanyahu’s speech at tonight’s Balfour dinner in London.
Netanyahu: “The real tragedy of the Balfour Declaration is that it took three decades to fulfill its promise. Too late for one third of the Jewish people who perished in the Holocaust. Had Israel been established in 1928 or 1938 and not in 1948, millions could have been saved. Some people mistakenly believe that there is an Israel because of the Holocaust. In fact, it is only because there was no Israel that the Holocaust could occur. Because there was no sovereign Jewish power to protect the Jewish people or to provide refuge for the six millions murdered by the Nazis...
“And the other true tragedy of the Balfour Declaration is that the Palestinians rejected it. They still do. They said so this morning. Incredibly the Palestinians speak of suing the British government for the Balfour Declaration… It's time for the Palestinians to end their quest to eliminate Israel. It's time for them not just to accept a Jewish national home, it's time for them to accept a Jewish state, a nation state for the Jewish people, because it they do the conflict will be over in a minute.”
“BRITAIN SHOULD SHARE SOME OF THE PRIDE IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE ISRAELI STATE”
Some British media have been very supportive of Israel.
For example, in a lead article today, The Times of London writes:
“The Middle East is a region dominated by the rule of autocrats, jealous of their powers. One country stands out as an exception: Israel, which has become a vibrant liberal democracy, an innovative economy and an ally of the West. Britain should share some of the pride in the evolution of the Israeli state since the foundations for it were laid out a century ago in the Balfour Declaration.”
The Times goes on to criticize British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn for refusing to attend the Balfour Declaration commemorative dinner this evening in London which will be attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and British Prime Minister Theresa May among others.
“Mr. Corbyn had an opportunity to transcend claims of hard-left anti-Semitism in the Labour party and publicly acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. He failed to do so,” says The Times.
By contrast there have been many critical pieces in The Guardian. Ironically, it was C.P. Scott, the editor of The Guardian for 57 years, who fought tirelessly alongside Chaim Weizmann for the creation of the state of Israel. Indeed it was Scott who introduced Weizmann to Arthur Balfour, as I noted here.
CONTENTS
1. “How the Balfour Declaration laid the roots of Israel” (By Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Sunday Times)
2. “100 Years Later, How Has The Balfour Declaration Shaped Israel’s Conflicts?” (Jerusalem Post magazine)
3. “Banksy holds Balfour ‘apology party’ for Palestinians” (Agence France-Presse)
4. “Britain must atone for the Balfour declaration – and 100 years of suffering” (By Mahmoud Abbas, The Guardian)
ARTICLES
“DR WEIZMANN,” HE CRIED OUT. “IT’S A BOY!”
How the Balfour Declaration laid the roots of Israel
The Jews battled through centuries of oppression to create a homeland. A key moment occurred 100 years ago with Britain’s Balfour Declaration – and the family of the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore was at the heart of the story
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
The Sunday Times (London)
October 15 2017
On October 31, 1917, Sir Mark Sykes MP, the playful Middle Eastern expert for the British government, bounded out of the Cabinet Office and spotted the elegant Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann sitting in the anteroom. “Dr Weizmann,” he cried out. “It’s a boy!”
Sykes had been ordered by David Lloyd George, the prime minister, and Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary, to negotiate a British declaration in favour of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and the wording of the document had just been agreed by the prime minister.
Timing is everything: Britain was exhausted by the world war – America had just joined the allies; Russia, governed by Alexander Kerensky, was scarcely holding on. America and Russia had the two largest Jewish populations in the world and the cabinet was convinced that the Jews there possessed almost mystical influence.
In Palestine the British Army under General Edmund Allenby had taken Beersheba and was advancing towards Jerusalem. Allenby was accompanied by the forces of Hussein, King of Hejaz, who with Lawrence of Arabia hoped to take possession of a vast Arab empire that would include Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Arabia. Yet these territories had also been divided between the allies – Britain, France and Russia. And there was a further complication that none of them yet knew about. In the Russian capital Petrograd, Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, was secretly ordering his men to storm the Winter Palace.
Of course, Zionism was not invented in the modern era but started with the millennia of Jewish life in the Holy Land from King David to AD70 when Titus crushed the Jewish revolt, destroying Jerusalem and its temple, and AD135 when Hadrian annihilated the Jews after the rebellion led by Simon Bar-Kochba, and renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina and Judaea as Palestina – after the Jews’ biblical enemies, the Philistines.
Few defeated, dispersed peoples ever manage to return to lost homelands but the poor Jews of Jerusalem continued to pray around the walls while powerless European Jews prayed and dreamt of Return to Zion.
During the 17th century Protestant Christians known as “Hebraists” (who included Puritans such as Oliver Cromwell who invited the Jews back to Britain) returned to biblical prophecies that cited Return to Zion as a precondition for the second coming of Christ.
In the 19th century new freedoms for Jews across the West meant that European Jews could worship freely and assimilate, thriving in the professions, arts and business.
For centuries Jews had craved the Return. At times their longing was religious, spiritual, messianic, nationalistic, but the fire never flickered. Yet since 1517 Palestine and most of the Arab world had been ruled by Ottoman sultans.
In the mid-19th century the idea was backed by Victorian evangelicals such as Lord Shaftesbury and their secular supporters such as Lord Palmerston, the prime minister, and the Anglo-Jewish millionaire Sir Moses Montefiore (my great-great-great-uncle), who first visited a desolate Jerusalem in 1827. He became an influential believer, visiting Jerusalem six times and trying to buy swathes of Palestine. In the 1860s he founded the first Jewish suburb outside the Old City – his Montefiore Windmill still stands – just as the wealthy Palestinian families started to build their own suburbs around the walls.
Yet as nationalism thrived, the bacillus of religious anti-semitism mutated into a racial strain. The Jews were blamed for all the ills of capitalist modernity even in sophisticated France and Germany. In Tsarist Russia the repression of 6m impoverished Jews became a fetish for the Romanov emperors. In 1862 Moses Hess, a German Marxist fearing this racial anti-semitism, proposed the creation of a socialist Jewish society in Palestine. Immigration started slowly.
In the spring of 1881 the assassination of Tsar Alexander II was blamed on Jews; brutal pogroms ravaged them while new laws by the rabid Jew-hater Alexander III blamed them for their own persecution.
Russian pogroms inspired modern Zionism: Leo Pinsker of Odessa wrote the pamphlet Auto-Emancipation and founded The Lovers of Zion, who created new Jewish villages in Palestine.
By 1896, of the 45,300 inhabitants of Jerusalem 28,000 were Jews, but in the rest of Palestine they were a tiny minority. The new anti-semitism thrived in Vienna, whipped up by demagogue such as the mayor Karl Lueger (who inspired the young Hitler), and in France’s Dreyfus Affair where an innocent Jewish officer was framed as a Prussian spy.
A Jewish Viennese journalist, Theodor Herzl, described as “faultlessly handsome”, bearded like an Assyrian, his “almond-shaped eyes with heavy black melancholy lashes”, was convinced that Jews could only be safe in their own country. In February 1896 Herzl published The Jewish State: “Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home . . . The Maccabeans will rise again. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil and die peacefully in our own homes.”
The idea was not new but the word Zionism was coined in 1890 and Herzl became its first modern organiser with energy and ingenuity. In August 1897 he presided over the first Zionist Congress in Basel, writing in his diary: “L’état, c’est moi . . . At Basel, I founded the Jewish state. If I said this out loud today, I would be greeted by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years and certainly in 50, everyone will know it . . .”
Herzl decided that his Jewish state should be German-speaking. The unbalanced German Kaiser Wilhelm II (the Donald Trump of his era) was planning an Oriental tour to meet Sultan Abdul Hamid II, then proceed to Jerusalem. Herzl saw an opportunity to create a Jewish state in this Ottoman province but under the kaiser’s protection.
When Wilhelm heard about Zionism, he wrote: “I’m very much in favour of the Mauschels going to Palestine, the sooner they clear off the better!”
While he often met Jewish industrialists, Wilhelm was an anti-semite who ranted against the poisonous hydra of Jewish capital “twisting and corrupting” Germany – but he hoped that a Jewish state might become a German satellite (just as Stalin later hoped Israel would be a Soviet one).
In Istanbul in October 1898 Herzl met Wilhelm. The kaiser proposed the Zionist project to Abdul Hamid, who rejected it firmly – the Islamic caliph could not promote Jewish immigration in Al-Quds, Islamic Jerusalem. When Herzl met Wilhelm again in Jerusalem, the kaiser had lost interest while Herzl, the modernist, was appalled by reeking, impoverished Jerusalem.
But the dream gained support. The intermarried Jewish banking families of London, known as the Cousinhood, who included Rothschilds, Sassoons, Samuels and Montefiores, were important because most of the Jews involved in Zionism were so poor.
At first these potentates were sceptical of Herzl’s movement. The first of them to embrace it was Sir Francis Montefiore, Moses’s nephew, who was mocked at Zionist congresses for wearing white gloves and a frock coat. But in 1903 Lord Rothschild backed the idea and introduced Herzl to Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary.
Herzl proposed a homeland in Cyprus or El Arish in Egypt. Chamberlain ruled out Cyprus but promised to consider El Arish in British-dominated but independent Egypt. Herzl hired a Welsh lawyer to draft a Charter for the Jewish Settlement: David Lloyd George, the very man whose decisions would later influence Israel more than anyone since Emperor Constantine. However, the Egyptian government rejected the idea just as pogroms again started to kill Jews across Russia.
The prime minister, Arthur Balfour, had just pushed through his Aliens Bill to diminish the immigration of Russian Jews but now he decided to offer Herzl a Jewish homeland . . . in Uganda.
Effete, cynical, clever, Balfour was the personification of the Edwardian statesman with his Old Etonian mix of Scottish mercantile wealth and English aristocracy. His mother was the sister of Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, whom he succeeded as prime minister – which is believed to be the source of the expression “Bob’s your uncle”.
Balfour, like many of the British ruling class, was sympathetic to the justice of the cause, the secular heir to Victorian evangelists and 17th-century Puritans. His philo-semitism combined sympathy for the Jewish plight and admiration for Jewish culture with a conviction that the Jews possessed mystical power.
Herzl, desperate and ailing, accepted Uganda. Most Zionists rejected “Ugandaism” and Herzl died heartbroken. But Russian pogroms in 1903-5 encouraged more Jewish immigration. Herzl was succeeded by Chaim Weizmann, who had been born in Pinsk in Belarus, escaping Russia to study science in Germany and Switzerland, settling in England in 1904.
During the 1906 election Weizmann met the former prime minister Balfour. Weizmann joked that if Moses had been offered Uganda, he would have smashed the tablets. Would Balfour exchange London for Paris?
“But Dr Weizmann, we have London,” replied Balfour.
“We had Jerusalem when London was a marsh.”
“Are there many Jews who think like you?” asked Balfour.
“I speak the mind of millions of Jews.”
“Curious, the Jews I meet are quite different,” Balfour mused.
Until 1914 the British and the Germans kept contact with their own pet Zionists – the official Zionist HQ was in Germany. But when the war started Winston Churchill, the first lord of the Admiralty, called in Weizmann to advise on the manufacture of explosives.
Weizmann’s best contact was CP Scott, editor of The Manchester Guardian, who introduced him to another minister – Lloyd George, raffish orator and Welsh Wizard, a blue-eyed Baptist schoolmaster’s son who said: “I was taught more in school about the history of the Jews than about my own land.”
Now Lloyd George listened. “When Dr Weizmann was talking of Palestine he kept bringing up place names more familiar to me than those on the western front,” he recalled. Lloyd George, by now munitions secretary, was advised on explosives by Weizmann, whom he reintroduced to Balfour.
The prime minister Herbert Asquith asked his cold, analytical postmaster-general Herbert Samuel (a Jewish banking scion related to Rothschilds and Montefiores) to report on Zionism.
Samuel was sympathetic, at which Asquith sneered snootily: “What an attractive community that would make.” But Lloyd George supported it.
Jews were blamed for all the ills of modernity, even in sophisticated France and Germany.
Meanwhile the British, who were attracted to idealised images of both Jews and Arabs, were seeking any way to break the stalemate on the western front. It is now fashionable to laugh at Britain’s plans for the Middle East, to mock old-fashioned statesmen in top hats and to exaggerate the tolerant wonders of the Ottoman empire. But the shambolic, spasmodically vicious Ottomans had reduced Jerusalem to a half-empty shell, and looted and impoverished both Palestine and Arab provinces, a state from which they have still not recovered.
Faced with Ottoman decline, no one then knew how to reorganise the provinces of this colossal empire; and neither modern Arab leaders nor western statesmen, nor the diplomats of the United Nations, have proved much better.
In 1915 Hussein, the Sherif of Mecca, a Hashemite descended from Muhammad, and Sir Henry McMahon, the dim British high commissioner in Egypt, negotiated the price of an Arab revolt against the Ottomans, who were planning to crush Arab resistance. Hussein, who commanded scarcely more than a few thousand Arabian warriors, demanded that Britain promise him today’s Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Palestine. In return he would deliver the Arab world, aided by the secret Arab nationalist societies al-Fatat and al-Ahd. None of this was true: much of Arabia was controlled by rival chieftains while the societies had just 80 members between them.
Simultaneously Hussein, through his son Faisal, was negotiating with the Ottomans against the British, asking for hereditary possession of Arabia.
In October 1915 McMahon vaguely agreed to Hussein’s demands, provided they excluded a fuzzy area west of the major Syrian cities, possibly meaning most of Syria and Palestine.
On June 5, 1916, after he realised the Ottomans had ordered his arrest, Hussein launched his Arab revolt as “King of all the Arabs”, a title that had to be downgraded to “King of Hejaz”.
He was advised by TE Lawrence, a brilliant Arabist and intelligence officer. Part fantasist, part swashbuckler, part self-promoter, Lawrence thought Hussein a corrupt old crook but almost fell in love with the slim, soulful Prince Faisal, gushing homoerotically that he was “tall, graceful, vigorous, clear skinned . . . a popular idol, an absolute ripper!”
Meanwhile, Sir Mark Sykes MP was negotiating with Russia and France to carve up the Ottoman empire. His Sykes-Picot-Sazonov treaty, signed in late 1916, promised Russia Istanbul plus swathes of modern Turkey. France got Lebanon and Syria; Britain, Palestine and Iraq; Jerusalem would be shared by Russia, Britain and France. Despite the outrage provoked by the treaty today, it was never actually implemented.
In December 1916 Lloyd George became prime minister with Balfour as foreign secretary in a new government dedicated to the pursuit of victory.
Lloyd George and Balfour had both been raised on the Bible. Apart from America, “Bible reading and Bible thinking England,” noted one of Lloyd George’s aides, “was the only country where the desire of the Jews to return to their ancient homeland” was regarded “as a natural aspiration not to be denied”.
Weizmann to his amazement realised that “Britain was a biblical nation”.
Weizmann and Balfour dined together and walked around Westminster, discussing the overlapping interests of Britain and Zion. “When the guns fall silent, you may get your Jerusalem,” Balfour said.
In the spring of 1917 America had entered the war and Russia was still fighting (if only just). Surely American and Russian Jews would keep these allies in the war?
The British also learnt that Germans and even Ottomans were toying with their own pro-Zionist declaration. “With Great Jewry against us,” Sykes said, “there’s no possibility of getting the thing [victory] through.”
It is fashionable now to laugh at Britain’s plans for the Middle East, to mock statesmen in top hats
It is often stated by anti-Zionists today that the claims of Sherif Hussein and the Arabs were agreed justly, then betrayed by Britain. But the grandiose demands of one family were hardly representative of the Arab peoples and lacked any depth of support. Both promises to Arabs and Jews would never have happened at any other time.
As Allenby marched north from Egypt, Balfour declared: “I am a Zionist.” Lloyd George and Churchill agreed with him.
There was much opposition: George Curzon, the lord president of the council, and Edwin Montagu, the India secretary (who was Jewish; a cousin of Rothschilds and Samuels), warned against the dangers of Jewish immigration threatening the rights of Arabs.
The row raged in drawing rooms and cabinet rooms. Many Rothschilds were against Zionism, as was Claude Goldsmith Montefiore and the cabinet minister Montagu. In cabinet Lloyd George and Balfour won the argument, providing any declaration contained language to protect the Arab majority (10 times the Jewish population).
“I have asked Ld Rothschild and Professor Weizmann to submit a formula,” minuted Balfour. France and America approved.
The night before publication of the Balfour Declaration, Lenin seized power. Had he done so a few days earlier, it is often claimed that the declaration would have been withdrawn. Actually, British grandees were convinced that the Bolshevik leaders were all Jewish, so that winning over the powerful Russian Jews would have been even more urgent.
On November 9, 1917 (backdated to November 2, its official date), Balfour issued this declaration addressed to Rothschild: “HM government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people . . . it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities . . .”
It should really be called the Lloyd George not the Balfour Declaration. Lloyd George was determined to seize the Holy Land, “Oh we must grab that”, ordering Allenby to capture “the most famous city in the world” as a Christmas present for the British people.
Britain received a mandate over Palestine. The Hashemites became kings of Hejaz, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, but these unrepresentative British allies ultimately lost all – except Jordan, which is to this day ruled by the Hashemite King Abdullah II.
As the number of migrants soared after the rise of the Nazis, Britain became alarmed by Arab discontent, withdrew support for Jewish immigration to Palestine in the late 1930s and did its best to foil Zionism – one reason why it is wrong to see it as the fruit of imperialism.
It took illegal Jewish immigration, the tragedy of the Second World War, an Arab then a Jewish revolt to force the British out and win a UN resolution in favour of the partition of Palestine between Jews and Arabs, and then a brutal full-scale war against all neighbouring Arab states to create the state of Israel – 30 years after the Balfour Declaration.
The declaration recognised the historical rights of Jews to return and the rights of Palestinians who lived there already and also possessed an ancient history in the same land.
There was always a danger of conflict between the two but it was not inevitable; there was always the risk that a state, even a democratic one, would become as disappointing as other states; and there was a likelihood that two peoples coarsened by 70 years of war would careen towards brutal extremes of nationalism and fundamentalism.
The tragedy is that the land could have been shared or partitioned with a degree of tolerance on both sides – and it still can be.
NAPOLEON AND THE GERMAN KAISER ALSO ADVOCATED A JEWISH HOMELAND
100 Years Later, How Has The Balfour Declaration Shaped Israel’s Conflicts?
By Gol Kalev
Jerusalem Post magazine
October 27, 2017
“Palestine for the Jews!” That was the London Times headline (November 9, 1917) that informed the world of the British government’s decision to issue a letter that became known as the Balfour Declaration.
The letter, sent by the British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild a week earlier (November 2) stated that the British government viewed with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this objective.
British prime minister David Lloyd George and Balfour were part of a British generation that was inspired by romantic notions of the Jews’ return to their ancestral homeland.
Lord Roderick Balfour, the great-grandson of Arthur’s brother Gerald William Balfour, recently spoke with The Jerusalem Post Magazine about how these statesmen wholeheartedly adopted such notions.
“They were brought up singing the songs of David, and reading the Old Testament. It was completely natural that Christians should support the return of the Jews to the Holy Land.”
Indeed, Lloyd George said he was taught far more about the history of the Jews than about that of his own people. In 1917, as British forces were advancing through Palestine, he stated that he wished to give Jerusalem as “a Christmas present for the British people.”
But Lloyd George’s great-granddaughter, the renowned historian Prof. Margaret MacMillan of Oxford University, warns not to overestimate the religious motivations.
“No doubt they were lovers of Zion, but the declaration was about geopolitical considerations.”
MacMillan, a leading expert on World War I, shared with the Magazine her insight on war dynamics. “Both sides in the war were using every weapon they could find, such as appealing to populations in enemy countries.
The Balfour Declaration was driven by British interests, not by altruism.”
Jehuda Reinharz, who has written more than 30 books on Jewish history and served as president of Brandies University, claims that the Balfour Declaration was not unique. “It was one of many declarations and promises the British made during World War I. What is important is what was done with the Declaration.”
Issuing the declaration was not only consistent with wartime promises given to various groups, it was also in line with previous attempts of world powers to facilitate the return of the Jews.
Over a century prior to the Balfour Declaration, back in 1799, a similar declaration was reportedly issued by the French. This happened as Napoleon was conquering Palestine; he referred to the Jews as the “rightful heirs of Palestine.”
Two decades prior to the declaration, in 1898, the German Kaiser became an advocate of the same idea.
After meeting Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, he agreed to ask the Turkish Sultan to grant the Jews a chartered company in Palestine under German protection.
The Sultan declined and Herzl had to resort to other avenues. He discussed with the British government the possibility of giving Jews territory right outside of Palestine, in the Sinai desert. When that was deemed unfeasible, the British offered territory in East Africa.
Herzl then hired a local British lawyer in 1903 to draft a proposal that became known as the Uganda Scheme. That lawyer was a rising politician named David Lloyd George.
MacMillan believes that her great-grandfather’s awareness of other nations’ efforts played a role in issuing the Declaration. “The British were worried that if they did not support a Jewish homeland, the Germans would.”
Reinharz takes it a step further: “There were a number of declarations in support of Zionism at the time, amongst them from Japan. But all those declarations were meaningless.” He explains that unlike previous and contemporary declarations of support, this time there was both a feasible path to its fulfillment, and motivated Jewish activists who knew how to leverage it. “[Zionist leader] Chaim Weizmann took the Balfour letter and made it into the Balfour Declaration,” Reinharz says.
“Messianic times have really come,” Weizmann wrote to his wife as events were unfolding. Four and half years after the Declaration was issued, in 1922, the League of Nations gave a mandate to Great Britain to put the Balfour Declaration into effect. In building support for the implementation of the declaration, Weizmann partnered with the Arab emir Faisal, who proclaimed in an agreement that “all necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale.”
Arab support was corroborated by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), who upon meeting with the Hashemite emir, wrote to the British Army’s director of intelligence that “the Arab attitude should be sympathetic.”
MacMillan elaborates: “There was no such thing as Arab public opinion. There were some middle class movements in Baghdad, but for the most part, this area was viewed as a small, backward part of the Ottoman Empire. The Hashemites claimed to represent the Arabs, but in my view, that claim was grossly inflated.”
In fact, the Arabs on the ground in Palestine were not represented, or taken into account.
Professor Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, specifies where Palestinian grievances lie.
“Part of the historic resentment by Palestinians is that in their view, the second clause of the Balfour Declaration – that nothing shall be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities – was not implemented.”
But Telhami warns not to look only at the Declaration’s words. “It was not just what the declaration said. Issuing it legitimized the principle of Zionism.”
Telhami, who was born into a Palestinian family in Israel, says that the focus should be on the consequences of the declaration. “Obviously, Zionism preceded the Balfour Declaration, both politically and with actual settlements on the ground, but having such British support at that time made it easier for the Zionists to establish a state. Balfour set British policy on a path which is inevitably supportive of Zionism.”
Such a path of British support was soon to be interrupted.
In the early years of British rule, even before the Mandate took effect, the British military seemed to contradict the aims of the declaration. It tended to appoint Arabs, not Jews, to government positions. It produced official documents and bulletins in Arabic and English, ignoring Hebrew, and was perceived to have applied the well-tested tactic of “divide and rule.”
Pro-British Jewish leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky stated at the time: “The British administration behaves as if the Balfour Declaration was an unfortunate slip of the tongue of the British foreign minister.”
Later on, the British limited Jewish immigration to Palestine and by the beginning of World War II, put a complete halt to it. They acted in direct contradiction to the deceleration and the mandate, seeming to use their best endeavors to block the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Reinharz underscores the consequences of British reversal.
“There is still strong anger at the British to this day for closing the gates of Palestine in 1939 to Jews who were seeking to escape from the Nazi horrors.”
But he also emphasizes the immense role the British played. “We should also keep in mind that without Britain, the groundwork for the establishment of the State of Israel would not have flourished.”
Symbolic of that recognition, the Israeli prime minister’s official residence is on Balfour Street and its former prime minister had a house facing Lloyd George Street.
On the 50th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the Israeli government invited Lloyd George’s daughter, Megan, to participate in the official celebrations.
She asked her great-niece Margaret to join. “That was the first time I heard of the Balfour Declaration” recalls MacMillan, who did not make it to Israel at that time due to the sudden death of Megan Lloyd George.
In the half-century that elapsed, MacMillan has extensively researched the British Empire. Applying her experience, she concludes that it should not be surprising that the British failed to implement the Balfour Declaration.
“The British thought that they would be there for generations to come. They were operating under a mandate, but did not think this would really lead to full independence so quickly. They thought it would just stay part of their empire. Some 30 years after the declaration was issued, the British terminated their mandate and withdrew, essentially letting the parties “fight it out.”
The Balfour Declaration had exhausted its course and was destined for the dusty shelves of history.
But 70 years later, on its centennial anniversary, the declaration has come back to life in a surprising manner.
The Palestinian Authority awakened its memory by demanding an official apology from Great Britain, announcing plans to sue the British government for issuing it and even threatening to seek criminal prosecution.
These actions were met with a strong response from British Prime Minister Theresa May. “It is one of the most important letters in history,” said May, referring to the declaration. “It demonstrates Britain’s vital role in creating a homeland for the Jewish people and it is an anniversary we will be marking with pride.”
Lord Balfour also voiced a strong response to the PA’s charges. “It is completely irrational to ask for an apology after the San Remo conference, which confirmed the Balfour Declaration, and after having the State of Israel approved by world nations. This is just crazy.”
Indeed, the foundation of the State of Israel is deeply rooted in international law, but Reinharz reminds us of a broader basis of legitimacy. “When people accuse Israel of colonialism, they forget that much of the land in Palestine was purchased by various Zionist organizations and individuals. Also, suing Britain for enabling the creation of Israel, would open the door to asking how Jordan and Iraq were created and how other Arab countries were carved by European powers.”
The PA’s awakening of the memory of Balfour raises another question – to what extent should history drive current political decisions? No doubt, there is much to be debated, such as the magnitude of the mass Arab migration to Palestine in the 19th and early 20th century and the actual size of the Jewish communities in Jerusalem during the Middle Ages. Similarly, one can discuss Italy’s historic rights to South Tyrol, France’s claims to Alsace-Lorraine, Muslim ties to Spain and much more.
But is there a risk of getting bogged down in the historical mud and focusing less on the present? Should the Palestinians remain stuck in the what-ifs of the past and sidestep the tremendous opportunities of the present?
According to some observers, the Balfour Declaration did not just influence regional political developments, it also had a tremendous impact on world progress.
Lord Balfour sees it this way: “The Balfour Declaration gave a homeland to all these brilliant people who arrived and produced an amazing contribution to the scientific and medical world of today.”
Supporters of Israel often cite such accomplishments; more particularly, that the Jewish state combats famine by turning air into water, and achieves medical breakthroughs that save millions of lives around the world. In short, the Jewish state is improving humanity.
Logically, the Palestinians could be primary beneficiaries of Israel’s wealth. There is economic cooperation, Telhami explains, “but the problem is such activities are seen as legitimatizing the ‘occupation.’ It is perceived as normalizing something that is not normal.”
This leads us to a debate over whether the Palestinians should participate in Israel’s economy, and benefit from its prosperity or boycott it. Are they missing out on access to Israeli wealth, technology and growth opportunities? Lord Roderick Balfour is clear: “I am very much on the side of the Palestinians. They can only get self-respect and avoid victimhood if the world allows them to build themselves economically.”
He points to a structural problem, but one that is solvable. “You cannot have contrasting economies right next to each other. One of the sad things in all this is that Palestinians are not stimulated in promoting their own industries.”
Lady Kinvara Balfour, Lord Roderick Balfour’s daughter, is a creative director, producer and public speaker. She has helped launch several technology start-ups. She stays away from politics, but not from self-empowerment. “I am deeply proud of my ancestors,” she says. “I am proud that they dared to question the status quo. I admire people through history that had the courage to change something.”
Should the Palestinians change course? Are they embracing a narrative of victimhood and distress that runs against their interests? Telhami is cautious about such views, but points to a somber reality.
“Palestinians are not a priority for the international community, including for Arab nations. Countries pursue their own interests. The Palestinians should devise strategies that, while not ignoring the international community, find a path that more heavily depends on themselves.”
Two hundred years ago, the Palestinian Arabs were not a significant factor in France’s plans for Palestine.
A hundred years ago, they were not a significant factor in the British plans either.
Today, is there an opportunity for Palestinians to become a factor – to use the success of Israel to foster their own creative and entrepreneurial energies and in doing so, become more dependent on themselves? “We are not going to change the past,” says Reinharz.
“We have to learn to live with history. If we were to unravel history to its origins, there would be no country in the world that could not be accused of injustices.
History as a weapon does not work. No side will be able to win all the arguments. You can not play history backwards.”
The Balfour Declaration will always have separate meanings for Palestinians and Israelis. But perhaps its centennial anniversary also serves as an optimistic reminder to both sides that if you will it, it is no dream.
BANKSY HOLDS AN “APOLOGY PARTY”
Banksy holds Balfour ‘apology party’ for Palestinians
By Shatha Yaish
Agence France-Presse
November 1, 2017
BETHLEHEM - Secretive British street artist Banksy held a special event Wednesday to apologise for the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration outside his hotel in the occupied West Bank.
The typically surreal event involved 50 children hosted by an actor dressed as Queen Elizabeth II for a British-style tea party.
Their party hats were bullet-riddled helmets with British flags on them, while tattered Union Jacks were flown.
The queen revealed a plaque carved in concrete saying “Er, Sorry,” playing on the common initials for Elizabeth Regina.
The apology was etched into Israel’s controversial separation wall, which in many areas cuts through Palestinian territory.
The children were descendants of Palestinians forced to flee their land in the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel.
Thursday marks the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, when the British government said it viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
Palestinians see the document as giving away their homeland, while Israelis see it as helping pave the way to the founding of their country at a time when Jews were facing persecution elsewhere.
“This conflict has brought so much suffering to people on all sides. It didn’t feel appropriate to ‘celebrate’ the British role in it,” Banksy said in a statement.
“The British didn’t handle things well here -- when you organise a wedding, it’s best to make sure the bride isn’t already married.”
Gemma Bell, a British woman among a group who walked part of the way from London to Jerusalem to apologise for their government’s role in Balfour, hailed the work.
“It’s what we should expect from Banksy -- brilliant, unpredictable, dramatic and really getting that message home.”
The British government has said it will mark Thursday’s anniversary “with pride”, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend a dinner in London with his British counterpart Theresa May.
Banksy opened the Walled-Off Hotel near Bethlehem in March, with all the rooms facing directly onto Israel’s separation wall.
At the time, he said it had the worst view of any hotel in the world.
Dozens of his works are found inside the hotel.
Wissam Salsaa, the hotel’s manager, told AFP they wanted to protest against the British government’s attitude to Balfour.
“This event is a protest or a commemoration of the disastrous Balfour Declaration that caused a catastrophe for the Palestinian people and a catastrophe for the Middle East,” he said.
“The British people and government, represented (here) by the Queen, should apologise to the Palestinian people.”
The wall is one of the most striking symbols of Israel’s 50-year occupation, and has become a major focus for demonstrations and art work.
Banksy closely protects his identity and was not said to be in attendance Wednesday.
“BRITAIN MUST ATONE”
Britain must atone for the Balfour declaration – and 100 years of suffering
By Mahmoud Abbas
A century ago, Arthur Balfour signed away Palestinians’ homeland and initiated decades of persecution. It is cause for humility, not celebration
The Guardian
November 1, 2017
Many British people will not know of Sir Arthur James Balfour, an early 20th century foreign secretary. For 12 million Palestinians, his name is all too familiar. On the 100th anniversary of the Balfour declaration, the British government should take the opportunity to make things right.
At his desk in London, on 2 November 1917, Balfour signed a letter promising the land of Palestine to the Zionist Federation, a recently established political movement whose goal was the creation of a Jewish state. He promised a land that was not his to promise, disregarding the political rights of those who already lived there. For the Palestinian people – my people – the events this letter triggered have been as devastating as they have been far-reaching.
This British policy, to support Jewish immigration into Palestine while negating the Arab-Palestinian right to self-determination, created severe tensions between European Jewish immigrants and the native Palestinian population. Palestine (the last item on the decolonisation agenda) and we, its people, who sought our inalienable right to self-determination, instead suffered our greatest catastrophe – in Arabic the Nakba.
In 1948 Zionist militias forcibly expelled more than 800,000 men, women and children from their homeland, perpetrating horrific massacres and destroying hundreds of villages in the process. I was 13 years old at the time of our expulsion from Safad. The occasion on which Israel celebrates its creation as a state, we Palestinians mark as the darkest day in our history.
The Balfour declaration is not something that can be forgotten. Today, Palestinians number more than 12 million, and are scattered throughout the world. Some were forced out of their homeland in 1948, with more than 6 million still living in exile to this day. Those who managed to remain in their homes number roughly 1.75 million, and live within a system of institutionalised discrimination in what is now the state of Israel.
Approximately 2.9 million live in the West Bank under a draconian military occupation-turned-colonisation, with 300,000 of that number being the native inhabitants of Jerusalem, who have so far resisted policies to force them out of their city. Two million live in the Gaza Strip, an open prison subjected to regular destruction through the full force of Israel’s military apparatus.
The Balfour declaration is not something to be celebrated – certainly not while one of the peoples affected continues to suffer such injustice. The creation of a homeland for one people resulted in the dispossession and continuing persecution of another – now a deep imbalance between occupier and occupied. The balance must be redressed, and Britain bears a great deal of responsibility in leading the way. Celebrations must wait for the day when everyone in this land has freedom, dignity and equality.
The physical act of the signing of the Balfour declaration is in the past – it is not something that can be changed. But it is something that can be made right. This will require humility and courage. It will require coming to terms with the past, recognising mistakes, and taking concrete steps to correct those mistakes.
I salute the integrity of those British people calling on their government to take such steps: the 274 MPs who voted in favour of recognising the state of Palestine; the thousands who have petitioned their government to apologise for the Balfour declaration; the NGOs and solidarity groups turning out on the streets, advocating tirelessly for our rights as Palestinians.
Despite the horrors we have endured in the past century, the Palestinian people have remained steadfast. We are a proud nation with a rich heritage of ancient civilisations, and the cradle of the Abrahamic faiths. Over the years we have adapted to the realities around us – the chain of events triggered in 1917 – and made deeply painful compromises for the sake of peace, beginning with the decision to accept a state on only 22% of our historical homeland while recognising the state of Israel, without any reciprocation thus far.
We have endorsed the two-state solution for the past 30 years, a solution that becomes increasingly impossible with every passing day. As long as the state of Israel continues to be celebrated and rewarded, rather than held accountable to universal standards for its continued violations of international law, it will have no incentive to end the occupation. This is short-sighted.
Israel, and friends of Israel, must realise that the two-state solution may well disappear, but the Palestinian people will still be here. We will continue to strive for our freedom, whether that freedom comes through the two-state solution or ultimately through equal rights for all those inhabiting historic Palestine.It is time for the British government to do its part. Concrete steps towards ending the occupation on the basis of international law and resolutions, including the most recent UN security council resolution 2334, and recognising the state of Palestine on the 1967 border, with East Jerusalem as its capital, can go some way towards fulfilling the political rights of the Palestinian people.
Only once this injustice is set right will we have the conditions for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East – for the sake of Palestinians, Israelis and the rest of the region.
• Mahmoud Abbas is the Palestinian president and chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation
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