#on the holocaust on the thousands of years of persecutions and expulsions on the many forms of antisemitism

[kelluinox]

Why does my family cling to Israel and Israel's continued existence? Simple. You see, when we were being persecuted and killed by the Nazis, and my family was chased out and was stripped of their citizenship, they tried to go to America. Only America turned them away. They had nowhere else to go. No one would accept them. No one wanted them. You know the only place that did? Israel

[spacelazarwolf]

saw a post that gave me an eye twitch so i’m gonna break it down and analyze it bc i feel like it exemplifies a lot of what’s wrong with gentile discourse on i/p rn.

1. yeah, it is awful that zionist institutions and leadership use jewish trauma to justify why diaspora jews should unquestioningly support the current state of israel, regardless of the atrocities it commits against palestinians.

2. "israel is not your bube who survived the shoah" i don't know how to explain to you how fucking callous this sentence is.

3. for better or worse, israel did save jewish people. nearly a million jews from the swana region and 24,000 from ethiopia fled there after experiencing extreme violence and discrimination. you really think america or europe would have taken in a million black and brown jews? have you seen the current state of immigration?

4. "how do you argue with someone when their idea of israel is so rooted in their family trauma?" you don't. you validate their fears, make them feel heard, and then you offer them alternatives. the vast majority of diaspora support for israel is based in fear of persecution and eradication. if you offer real, legitimate solutions for the safety of diaspora jews, i guarantee you will be a thousand times more successful than just screaming at them and telling them "who fucking cares about your holocaust survivor bubbe????"

5. "how do you possibly tell them that the holocaust isn't relevant?" you don't, because it is. nearly 500,000 holocaust survivors moved to or were sent to israel after the shoah. some did not have a choice of where they were sent, some tried to go back to where they were living before but had no money and gentiles had taken their houses and belongings so they had nowhere to go, many faced violence upon trying to return to their hometowns in the form of pogroms, several countries turned them away. you cannot say the holocaust is not relevant to the current israeli population because gentiles in the diaspora are the reason they're there.

6. "i'm so tired of centering jewish identity in discussions over a nation state." are you stupid? genuinely, are you stupid? do you really not see how jewish identity and the history of the jewish people factor into a state with a fucking star of david on the flag that was founded after a genocide of 6 million jews that the rest of the world didn't want to deal with? seriously? no, jews in the diaspora are not responsible for the actions of the israeli government. we aren't more loyal to israel than we are to wherever we're living. but to say that israel has nothing to do with the jewish people is frankly laughable.

7. "how do you say that without sounding invalidating? like that just sounds horrible and antisemitic." that's because it is. you are being horrible and antisemitic.

edited to add: NUCLEAR SUPERPOWER?????????????????????????????? HELLO??????????????????????????

so please for the love of fuck educate yourself on the history of the jewish people and the history of the state of israel before making stupid ass posts like this. israel didn't manifest out of nowhere, it didn't come from "jewish supremacy" it came from hundreds of thousands of jews who were at their wit's fucking end with antisemitism in the diaspora, and from britain's colonization and imperialism paired with it's complete and total disregard for anyone who wasn't racially and culturally white. the monster that is modern day political zionism is a creation of the world's own making. people have been posting a lot about hamas being a response to 70+ years of israeli occupation, violence, and apartheid, but don't seem to understand that israel is a response to 3000+ years of persecution, expulsion, and genocide. the massacres and terror committed by hamas don't take into account the wellbeing of palestinians, and the oppression and violence perpetuated by the israeli government don't take into account the wellbeing of jews in israel or in the diaspora.

nothing will change if gentiles in the diaspora do not take responsibility for the rest of the world's role in the creation of israel. research your country, learn about how they treated their jews (not just during the holocaust but from the moment there were jews in your country), talk to your local jewish population, ask how you and organizations you are part of can help keep the diaspora safe for jews. because as an american jew, i don't want to move to israel. the government is borderline fascist, non ashki non orthodox jews are often seen as second class citizens, i don't speak the language, and my life is here. a lot of diaspora jews feel this way. but every time i see another group of nazis at a rally or get another bomb threat at my synagogue and look to see which country would be safest to move to as a trans person and as a jew, the only answer is israel, which is exactly what zionist institutions and leadership are counting on. if you want that to change, you and your community have to change it.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

I cannot actually believe I have to say this but older events are not irrelevant to modern issues when those events caused widespread damage to countless people and left permanent impacts on the populations targeted. Historical context, especially in the case of violent persecution and its lasting impact caused by bigtory and hate that are deeply ingrained in society, IS important and needs to be talked about.

The Trail of Tears took place in the mid-19th century, almost 200 years ago. The 13th amendment to end slavery was ratified in 1865, more than 150 years ago. Are those events suddenly irrelevant to current society because they happened so long ago? Is the expulsion of indigenous people from our lands no longer important? Are we supposed to forget slavery? What about things like European colonization that happened hundreds of years ago? Is that too old to care about?

Of course not, because we know the reality is that even if those events are "over" and have been for a long time, their impacts are likely to going to be felt forever and the bigotry that led to them happening in the first place is built into our societies and cultures and actively still hurting the groups affected. But it doesn't escape my notice that the "it happened so long ago, just move on" is being weaponized against Jewish people specifically, especially by leftists who would never even dream of saying that to any other marginalized ethnic and racial groups (and many other groups who AREN'T affected by generational trauma).

The Holocaust is still relevant. The global expulsions of Jews from countries all over the world are still relevant. The pogroms that devastated Jewish communities all over the world for hundreds and even thousands of years are still relevant. Acknowledging that doesn't mean approving of or justifying the Israeli government's actions, just like acknowledging other historical events doesn't mean accepting or justifying the bigotry and violence of other marginalized groups. It's not about justification, it's about understanding and remembering so that we can move forward without repeating that violence.

I'm just absolutely blown away by the callousness and cruelty I've seen from people and their absolute refusal to acknowledge the fact that antisemitism is a real and very active danger. If you think that people just talking about ongoing antisemitic violence is propaganda, then you have some serious and deeply-held bigoted ideals that you need to be acknowledging and working on.

[thebrightestwitchofherage]

A brief History of Mizrahi Jews in Arabic countries and Their expulsion

A\N: While I am an Ashkenazi Jew, I have done A LOT of research, and have both Iraqi friends and relatives to corroborate this with. Also, I'm petty - an Iraqi user who comments regularly on my posts seems to forget about his own country's Jewish history... Well, I hope he forgot instead of the more likely reality: It seems like Arabic people nowadays aren't aware of Jewish history in their countries since they either killed to expelled them all. Thus is born the constant argument that all Jews originated in Europe and are merely settlers in the Middle East.

I realized that what may be obvious to me won't be obvious to others since I'm a history nerd who grew up in Israel with plenty of rich archeological evidence and resources surrounding me. I'm happy to make these posts in hopes of educating others and contributing my part to ending antisemitism and prejudice. ___________________

You might have seen the following picture in one of my previous posts:

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Unfortunately, in this case, it concludes hundreds of years of discrimination, violence, and exile for Mizrahi Jews. * It is important to note that numbers are slightly varied between sources, but the meaning is clear.

In a nutshell- all throughout history, the fate of Jewish people in countries where they weren't the religious majority was the same:

Discriminatory laws, blood libels, being blamed for disasters > violence & murder > Pogroms * > and eventually- exile or mass murder AKA ethnic cleansing \ genocide.

Pogrom-  the term refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries.

Every Jewish community has its own Pogrom. While my side of the family might immediately think of the Kristallnacht or persecution & pogroms in Hungary, it is different for Jews from different backgrounds. You can read about a few cases of forced conversion to Islam here.

A brief History of the land of Israel

The land of Israel has always been considered a strategic passageway, and so many empires throughout history have conquered it:

* I simply cannot accurately write 3000+ years of Jewish history in the land of Israel. I found that this video summarizes it perfectly.

Exile from the land of Israel

Jews were exiled from the land of Israel numerous times since the Assyrian empire conquered Israel in 732 BCE, to what we call "the diaspora" גולה. It was not by choice and we were persecuted everywhere we went.

Jews were not allowed to legally return to Israel until 1948 when the British mandate over the land of Israel ended and Israel was formed. Yes, even during the Holocaust.

The Jewish answer to exile - Aliyah עליה There have been 5 waves of illegal immigration from all over the world to the land of Israel before 1948, recorded in modern times.

Chart taken from Wikipedia (their chart was the best I could find in English)

Forced Conversion

Whether in conquered Israel or in exile, Jews were often forced to convert to either Christianity or Islam. The choice was between conversion or death.

*You can read more about some of the forced conversion of Jews during history here and here.

First Case study- The last jew of Peki'in, Margalit Zinati

Peki'in is an ancient village in the upper Galilee, Northern Israel. Nowadays, its population is mostly Druze.

Peki'in has had a Jewish presence since the Second Temple period, until Arab riots in the 1930s*. Meet the remaining member of the Zinatis, the only family who returned. (aish.com)

*Read more on the Arab riots of the 1930s here and here. Margalit is currently the last Jew living in the village of Peki'in . She is the last direct descendent of the Zinati Cohen family. The Zinati family's origins are dated back to the Second Temple era. The former Jewish community of Peki'in maintained a presence there since the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). That is when the polytheistic Persian Empire conquered the land of Israel. For reference- that was approximately 500 years before Jesus was even born! "During which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and ended with the First Jewish–Roman War and the Roman siege of Jerusalem." (Wikipedia)

As an adult, Margalit chose to not marry so she could stay in Peki'in and continue her family's Jewish legacy in Peki'in. She later became in charge of the ancient synagogue in the village and turned her basement into a visiting center \ museum of Jewish history in Peki'in- "House of Zinati". in 2018, she lit up a torch as part of Israel's 70th Independence Day Torch lighting ceremony (which is considered an honor given to influential and trailblazing people).

-Margalit Zinati pictured in the Peki'in Synagogue yard, 2016 Picture taken from Wikipedia, uploaded by Deror Avi.

Second Case study - Iraqi Jews (Babylonian Jews \ יְהוּדִים בָּבְלִים)

Iraqi Jews are one of the oldest documented Jewish communities living in the Middle East. It is estimated that they originated around 600 BC.ת

The Farhud الفرهود הפרהוד

Unfortunately, Iraqi Jewish history ended in the same pattern I've described earlier. The Farhud was the violent mass dispossession against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq between 1-2 June 1941. was the pogrom or the "violent dispossession" that was carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq, on 1–2 June 1941, It immediately followed the British victory in the Anglo-Iraqi War.

Background for the Farhud:

WW2- At the time, many Arabic countries in the Middle East agreed with Nazi ideology.

History of violence towards Jews.

The Anglo-Iraqi War (2–31 May 1941) - caused rising tension, and as usual, it was turned on the Jews.

personal family ties to the Farhud My relative was born in 1939 in Iraq, to a big upper-class Jewish family. Unfortunately, the mass exile of Jews in the 1950s didn't skip her family: she was stripped of her belongings and exiled to Israel along with her family. In the 1950s there were approximately 140,000 Iraqi Jews. As of 2021, there are only 4 left.

----------------- Please feel free to add anything I missed in the notes. And as usual - remember I am a human being. If you cuss or harass me, I will block and report you.

______________

Online Sources: * https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/865383 - Hebrew article, Title means "Sad ending to a magnificent history: Only 4 Jews left in Iraq".

What was the Farhud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhud

History of the Jewish community in Baghdad https://cojs.org/the_jewish_community_in_baghdad_in_the_eighteenth_century-_zvi_yehuda-_nehardea-_babylonian_jewry_heritage_center-_2003/

What are Pogroms?https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms?gclid=Cj0KCQiAkeSsBhDUARIsAK3tiedM7DuwIaSQX-kRxvXTgCDxN6-zqeo_DNNFgyanSYGyGOhwu_0vfrkaAg6REALw_wcB

The last Jew of Peki'in, Margalit Zinati https://aish.com/the-last-jew-of-pekiin/

Arab riots of 1930s- https://www.gov.il/en/Departments/General/ben_zvi_30 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-1936-arab-riots

Israel's history from ancient times & timeline : https://www.travelingisrael.com/timeline-land-israel/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=iiUIWnU-Ofk

Second Temple era - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple_period

Forced conversion of Jews across history- https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18mvnct.7?seq=4

https://academic.oup.com/book/32113/chapter-abstract/268043723?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Nicke Baum

As history shows us, the Jewish people are a minority who are often persecuted in whichever society they reside in, regardless of their perceived social and economic status. Europe undoubtedly had a thriving Jewish population on the eve of the Holocaust, just as medieval England had before their expulsion in 1290, just as Al-Andalus had before their expulsion in 1492, and just as the laundry list of empire after empire that the Jews had been massacred in or expelled from. If history is our guide, there is overwhelming precedent that suggests Jews will not be safe without a state for their own protection. To disagree is to delegitimize the fear and anxiety that many Jews on campus, let alone around the world, currently face.

These are all reasons why Jewish students often feel endangered by language and violence targeting Zionism. Zionism reflects nothing more than the right for Jews to continue existing in their ancestral homeland as they have for thousands of years, and the need to escape persecution that has been around for equally as long. While the belief in an Israeli state coexists with the belief in Palestinians’ right to self-determination, that hasn’t stopped Jews from being targeted and harassed for simply being Zionists. As someone whose Jewish seminary has seen heightened security, who no longer feels safe to wear a kippah, go to Shabbat services, wear a Star of David necklace, celebrate the Jewish state, or raise awareness about our hostages, the narrative around Zionism on campus must change. Students and faculty alike must put an end to the targeted language and violence against Zionists, and differentiate between support of Israel’s actions in the ongoing conflict and support for its right, and need, to exist. Instead, Columbia must recognize that the safety of its Jewish students starts with believing that they should be allowed to have a place to call home.

[mariacallous]

It must have been three or four days after October 7 when the Hamas leader visited his hostages in one of the many tunnels under the Gaza Strip. “Hello, I’m Yahya Sinwar,” he said, introducing himself in fluent Hebrew. “Nothing will happen to you.”

Eighty-five-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz was one of the Israeli prisoners present for the meeting with Sinwar. She would be released at the end of October. According to the Israeli media, she asked Sinwar whether he wasn’t ashamed to be doing such a thing to the very people who had supported peace all these years. Together with her husband, she told Sinwar, she had personally helped bring Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Israeli hospitals.

She says Sinwar didn’t answer.

The visit to the hostages must have been a great moment in the life of this man, who has spent more than 20 years in Israeli prisons. Some describe him as a butcher and others as a psychopath, but for many, he is seen as a heroic resistance fighter.

The October 7 massacre is the bloody climax of Sinwar’s terrorist career. His men simply overran Israel’s ultra-modern border facilities surrounding the Gaza Strip simply overrun. They took the vaunted Israeli army, which took several hours to respond, completely by surprise and sent the whole of Israel into a state of shock after an attack the likes of which the Jewish state had never seen before: at least 1,200 dead in one day, shot, burned, beheaded – in addition to taking around 240 hostages, many women and children. And Hamas filmed the horror live and broadcast it to the world on social media.

The Palestinian Question Returns To Center Stage

The attack is a turning point in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians; a turning point after which little will be the same again – not only for the Israelis, but also the Palestinians. The massacre and Israel’s military response to it have created new traumas and reopened old ones. For the Israelis, the atrocities committed on October 7 are reminiscent of the bloody pogroms and the Holocaust. For the Palestinians, the Israeli response has evoked memories of the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe, which the Palestinians use to describe their flight and expulsion following the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

Since the attack, the Palestinian question has once again been at the center of global attention, while Israel has had to abandon the illusion that it can "manage” the conflict with the Palestinians. Talks on normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are on hold. Russia and China sense an opportunity to assert their influence in the region. The European Union is struggling with its future role in the conflict. And the United States government faces both headwinds and isolation stemming from its pro-Israeli stance.

And as brutal and repulsive as the attack was, the Palestinians, says Israeli pollster Dahlia Scheindlin, now view Hamas as "number one” in the fight against Israel. The secular Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, has faded into insignificance, she says.

It can be assumed that this is exactly what the Hamas fighters wanted to achieve, in addition to the very specific goal of taking as many hostages as possible in order to leverage the release of prisoners held by the Israelis.

But Sinwar likely had another goal in mind: That of shaking the Israelis’ sense of security and their trust in the state and the army. And of hitting them at their weakest point – the deep-seated fear of annihilation held by a people who have been persecuted for thousands of years.

The Israeli army began calling up reservists on October 7. And since then, the military has been waging a war against Hamas that has also had a far-reaching impact on the Gaza Strip’s civilian population. Thus far, Israel’s army has killed around 18,000 Palestinians, a figure that comes from Hamas sources, but is nevertheless considered realistic by international organizations. More than 100 Israeli soldiers have also been killed in the Gaza Strip. The north of the region, in particularly, has largely been destroyed. The Israeli army reports that 7,000 terrorists have been killed so far, including half of all Hamas commanders.

How was it possible for the terrorists to launch such an attack? Were the atrocities part of the plan from the start? Why did Hamas risk its control over the Gaza Strip, indeed its very existence? And can this war destroy the organization as the Israeli government is hoping, or will Hamas perhaps emerge even stronger than before?

In the search for answers to these questions, it’s impossible to ignore Yahya Sinwar. His story is deeply interwoven with the rise of Hamas, with its many transformations – and with the horrific October 7 massacre, the planning of which he was deeply involved in.

[the-library-alcove]

So a while back, a fairly left-wing friend of mine was shocked at the thought of Left-Wing Holocaust Denial, asking how it could even be possible, how can the Left even deny the Holocaust given everything (quote: "why would the LEFT be in denial? After you read Elie Wiesel, you can't deny any of it. Same with Maus, Frieda Appleman-Jurman's memoirs, and all that. Also, Lois Lowry won a Newberry medal for Number the Stars"). So I've been chewing on this for a while now.

First, Right-Wing Holocaust Denial is straight up "denial that the Holocaust happened"--often with an undertone of "But we wish that it had and it was a great idea". They deny the number of deaths, or excuse the Nazis, or say that the Jews had it coming, or say that it didn't happen at all, that sort of thing. It's a very blunt, straightforward form of denial.

Comparatively, Left-Wing Holocaust Denial takes a different, more sophisticated form that functions on multiple levels--with an undertone of its own along the lines of "the Jews are exaggerating to try to portray themselves as victims"--and to talk about this form of denial, I have to explain what the Holocaust was.

So this gets a bit long, because what is being denied is long, but I will ask you to bear with me.

But, TL:DR:

Right Wing Holocaust Denial denies the body count and the atrocities...

Left Wing Holocaust Denial denies everything that built up to it, the centuries of Othering and murders, and the aftereffects.

The Holocaust, 1939-1945, was the culmination of literally centuries of anti-Jewish hatred from Christian Europeans, dating back well over a thousand years.

For one example, there were anti-Jewish riots in France in the 1020s in misplaced vengeance for the Islamic destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 1009 CE. Decades later, the Crusaders butchered 99% of the Jewish population of northern Europe, beginning in 1096 and continuing for centuries, such that a population of nearly 100,000 in 1050 CE was reduced down to less than a thousand in 1350 CE, as genetic studies show.

Jews were vilified as "Enemies of Christ", and various forms of attack to whip up mobs against Jews became common enough to get names of their own: Blood Libel (the accusation of Jews stealing children and murdering them to use their blood) and Host Desecration (the accusation that Jews were stealing consecrated Hosts and "torturing" them in order to attack Jesus), among others. These resulted in thousands of Jews being attacked, harmed, killed, and expelled.

Pogroms, massacres, and expulsions were just part of the pattern; Jews were effectively second class citizens at best, confined to marginal parts of cities (the original ghettos), subject to ritual humiliation (there was a part of Carnival in Rome that featured "The Running Of The Jews" where the Jewish population of the city had to race and be beaten by the Christians and there are designed-to-be-humiliating carvings of Jews on churches), and so forth. Jews were the scapegoats of choice--a powerless minority made to do the dirty work (such as tax collection) by the powerful and then liquidated when the lower classes got upset, as a distraction (King: "It's not my fault you're hungry!" *motions to table laden with food* "It's the fault of those greedy Jews who I force to work as tax collectors! Go kill them instead of me!"). And that cycle further entrenched the hatred.

Martin Luther took this to new heights during the Reformation; initially, he was "nice", saying that the Christians should treat the Jews gently to get us to convert... and when we didn't, he got nasty, writing a book titled "On The Jews And Their Lies" where he outlined a "how to persecute Jews and make their lives utter hell so they'll convert" prescription of behavior.

And this all became deeply baked into the culture of Europe, in plays, architecture, pop culture, stories, and conspiracy theories over the centuries. Even after the ghetto walls were torn down in the early 1800s by Napoleon and Jews were allowed to integrate into mainstream society, that hatred did not go away. If anything, the resentment grew, culminating in outbursts like the Dreyfus Affair, where a French-Jewish artillery officer was made into the fall guy for another spy, because he was Jewish.

There was a "Jewish Question" in the countries of Europe. A political National Question that went, "What shall we do with these Jews who live in our lands who we do not want?" And many of the Jews desperately wanted to prove that they were Good Model Citizens, but it didn't matter. Some of us, seeing the writing on the wall, and that the Europeans would never accept us, started agitating for political separation and independence--Zionism.

During this time, the old religious-based hatreds were being ostensibly phased out, and it was the era of "scientific racism", so a new word was coined--"antisemitism", to replace the old "Judenhass", to sound more "scientific". More anti-Jewish accusations were created, such as the "Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion", which is a Russian-made forgery that is supposedly the record of a meeting of Jewish elders in their master plan to control the world; it was written to distract hatred away from the Czar and onto a scapegoat. (Essentially just an updated version of the kings' tactic of scapegoating the Jews from centuries earlier)

So the hatreds stayed, regardless of what new clothes they wore. After World War One, when the Nazis said that the blame for the loss and subsequent humiliation and economic collapse of the Weimar Republic was because of the "Jews stabbing us in the back", there was a massive population of people who were already primed to hate and resent Jews and just needed that excuse to focus that hatred. They passed laws that specifically stripped citizenship from the Jews on racial grounds, instituted blood purity laws--again, on racial grounds--and built up to the Holocaust, where the Jews were not seen as human, but as vermin, out to contaminate their pure race.

In the process, they killed nine out of ten Jews who lived in Europe. Their hatred to the point that they diverted efforts to fight the Allies just so that they could kill Jews. Local people hated Jews so much that they collaborated with their own conquerors, just so they could kill Jews. Because they hated us so much, had hated us for centuries. Their "Final Solution" to "The Jewish Question." This part is what the Right Wing denies.

And then, in the aftermath, nobody wanted the remaining victims. Literally, the British said, "We'll carve off part of our Empire to give to them rather than let them come here."

So, after centuries of hatred and marginalization, Europeans gave into their hatreds that they had been raised with and murdered us in our millions, and we were traumatized.

And some of us went to the USA--the few that the US was willing to take in--and many more, not having any other place to go, went to British Mandate Palestine with the hope of self-governance in the future Jewish territory... having learned that they could not trust non-Jews.

That is the Holocaust and what led up to it, and some of the aftermath of it.

Left Wing Holocaust Denial erases all of that, except for the Holocaust itself, which is taken out of context as a moral lesson.

The Left Wing Unofficial Narrative Of The Holocaust is that the Nazis arbitrarily picked several groups of fellow European Whites, the Jews being just one of them, agitated against them in order to make an Enemy, and then killed them in order to cement power. Thus, in this narrative, the Holocaust was thus an aberration brought about by demagoguery and propaganda. Thus, it is imperative to remember "Never Again", because it can happen to anyone.

According to this narrative, "Jews" are just White Europeans who practice a different Abrahamic Religion, and who played the aftermath of the genocide for undeserved sympathy points to get a colony of their own where they could become oppressors in turn, and that they are getting special treatment that ignores the other victims of the Holocaust.

In doing so, the Left needs to ignore...

...the racial aspects of the Holocaust and the decades and centuries before it--the blood purity laws, the specific "racial science" that Othered Jews, and so forth--in favor of a "Jews are White" narrative.

...that the Jews were specifically targeted by the Nazis for extermination, to the point of irrational, self-defeating fixation, whereas only the Roma were as targeted for complete eradication alongside the Jews--in favor of a "But what about the other victims too?" narrative.

...the Nazi obsession with hating Jews (which has not gone away) as a fundamental part of their ideology, and pretending that the Nazi hatred of Jews is no different than the eugenics and political oppression that other groups were victims of--again, in favor of a "Other people were victims of the Nazis too!" narrative.

...the centuries of hatred and victimization that preceded the Holocaust and culminated in it--in favor of a "Jews are just European White People" narrative.

...the trauma that happened when you've lost your homes, your families, your way of life, and your society, and nobody made any efforts to help you, and how it becomes apparent, after trying to fit in and integrate for decades, that you can be Perfect Citizens and the Christians will still hate you so we need to defend ourselves for our own sakes--in favor of a "Jews are oppressors and didn't learn the right lessons from the Holocaust" narrative.

So, TL;DR:

Right Wing Holocaust Denial denies the body count and the atrocities...

Left Wing Holocaust Denial denies everything that built up to it, the centuries of Othering and murders, and the aftereffects.

[girlactionfigure]

I got told to go back to Europe. I’m not from Europe. But the Twitter warrior didn’t care, and just ranted on about the Jews leaving “Palestine” alone, and going back to wherever they came from. 

So let’s talk about this. Where are the Jews from?

Take my family for example. I’ll start at an easy point: My grandparents on my dad’s side are from Iraq. We don’t have any family left there, because they were all either chased out, or murdered for being Jewish. Family records show that despite on and off persecution, they had lived there since the Babylonian expulsion, over 2,000 years ago. 

My mom grew up in Argentina, where her parents were born. Most of their parents trace back to Ukraine, which they had fled during the 1918 pogroms that killed tens of thousands of Jews. It’s likely that many of them were previously from Spain, but had fled the Spanish Inquisition. One of my mom’s grandparents was not from Ukraine - he had fled Morocco, also due to pogroms targeting the Jews. Argentina was a relative safe-haven, despite antisemitism and discriminatory laws against them. 

Now for my husband’s side, his grandparents are mostly Holocaust survivors, or escapees. On his mom’s side, his grandmother grew up in Vienna. At nine years old, she escaped to England with her sister on the kinder-transport. Her parents were murdered by the Nazis. She kept a family tree, tracing her ancestry back to the Maharal of Prague, a direct descendant of King David. 

My husband’s father’s mother was also from Vienna. Her family managed to escape to France, where for four years of her childhood, she hid with her family in an attic, and then alone with her sister in a nunnery. When the war was over, she met a young man who had escaped Latvia, and asked her to join him with his family in South Africa. His last name was Yefuneh, since his family were descendants of the biblical Calev ben Yefuneh, but immigration officials in South Africa didn’t appreciate that, and anglicized it to Efune. 

So here’s the thing, antisemites. You know where we’re from. You always did, and that’s why you always chased us out of wherever we tried to find peace. 

We never forgot it either. For millennia, all my ancestors, all around the world, prayed the same prayer every day. No matter where they were, they faced Jerusalem as they prayed to be able to return in safety one day, soon. 

Because we’re from Israel. Jews are indigenous to Israel. We belong in Israel. 

The Romans may have burned down our Temple, renamed our land, slaughtered our people, and exiled most of the survivors into the diaspora, but the fire never stopped burning in our heart; we always painfully remembered where we belong.

And now we’re here. And I can assure you, we’re here to stay.

Bruria Efune

[eretzyisrael]

I got told to go back to Europe. I’m not from Europe. But the Twitter warrior didn’t care, and just ranted on about the Jews leaving “Palestine” alone, and going back to wherever they came from. 

So let’s talk about this. Where are the Jews from?

Take my family for example. I’ll start at an easy point: My grandparents on my dad’s side are from Iraq. We don’t have any family left there, because they were all either chased out, or murdered for being Jewish. Family records show that despite on and off persecution, they had lived there since the Babylonian expulsion, over 2,000 years ago. 

My mom grew up in Argentina, where her parents were born. Most of their parents trace back to Ukraine, which they had fled during the 1918 pogroms that killed tens of thousands of Jews. It’s likely that many of them were previously from Spain, but had fled the Spanish Inquisition. One of my mom’s grandparents was not from Ukraine - he had fled Morocco, also due to pogroms targeting the Jews. Argentina was a relative safe-haven, despite antisemitism and discriminatory laws against them. 

Now for my husband’s side, his grandparents are mostly Holocaust survivors, or escapees. On his mom’s side, his grandmother grew up in Vienna. At nine years old, she escaped to England with her sister on the kinder-transport. Her parents were murdered by the Nazis. She kept a family tree, tracing her ancestry back to the Maharal of Prague, a direct descendant of King David. 

My husband’s father’s mother was also from Vienna. Her family managed to escape to France, where for four years of her childhood, she hid with her family in an attic, and then alone with her sister in a nunnery. When the war was over, she met a young man who had escaped Latvia, and asked her to join him with his family in South Africa. His last name was Yefuneh, since his family were descendants of the biblical Calev ben Yefuneh, but immigration officials in South Africa didn’t appreciate that, and anglicized it to Efune. 

So here’s the thing, antisemites. You know where we’re from. You always did, and that’s why you always chased us out of wherever we tried to find peace. 

We never forgot it either. For millennia, all my ancestors, all around the world, prayed the same prayer every day. No matter where they were, they faced Jerusalem as they prayed to be able to return in safety one day, soon. 

Because we’re from Israel. Jews are indigenous to Israel. We belong in Israel. 

The Romans may have burned down our Temple, renamed our land, slaughtered our people, and exiled most of the survivors into the diaspora, but the fire never stopped burning in our heart; we always painfully remembered where we belong.And now we’re here. 

And I can assure you, we’re here to stay.

by Bruria Efune

[96thdayofrage]

WAR DAY 7️⃣1️⃣8️⃣1️⃣ 🍬 "That the lie of Israel continues to be embraced by the ruling elites—there is no daylight between statements in defense of Israeli war crimes by Nancy Pelosi and Ted Cruz—and used as a foundation for any discussion of Israel is a testament to the corrupting power of money, in this case that of the Israel lobby, and the bankruptcy of a political system of legalized bribery that has surrendered its autonomy and its principles to its major donors. It is also a stunning example of how colonial settler projects, and this is true in the United States, always carry out cultural genocide so they can exist in a suspended state of myth and historical amnesia to legitimize themselves.

"The Israel lobby has shamelessly used its immense political clout to demand that Americans take de facto loyalty oaths to Israel. The passage by 35 state legislatures of Israel lobby-backed legislation requiring their workers and contractors, under threat of dismissal, to sign a pro-Israel oath and promise not to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is a mockery of our Constitutional right of free speech. Israel has lobbied the U.S. State Department to redefine anti-Semitism under a three-point test known as the Three Ds: the making of statements that 'demonize' Israel; statements that apply 'double standards' for Israel; statements that 'delegitimize' the state of Israel. This definition of anti-Semitism is being pushed by the Israel lobby in state legislatures and on college campuses.

"The Israel lobby spies in the United States, often at the direction of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, on those who speak up for the rights of Palestinians. It wages public smear campaigns and blacklists defenders of Palestinian rights–including the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein; former U.N. Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, Richard Falk, also Jewish; and university students, many of them Jewish, in organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine.

"The Israel lobby has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to manipulate U.S. elections, far beyond anything alleged to have been carried out by Russia, China or any other country. The heavy-handed interference by Israel in the American political system, which includes operatives and donors bundling together hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in every U.S. congressional district to bankroll compliant candidates, is documented in the Al-Jazeera four-part series 'The Lobby.' Israel managed to block 'The Lobby' from being broadcast.

"In the film, a pirated copy of which is available on the website Electronic Intifada, the leaders of the Israel lobby are repeatedly captured on a reporter’s hidden camera explaining how they, backed by the intelligence services within Israel, attack and silence American critics and use massive cash donations to buy politicians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured the unconstitutional invitation by then-House Speaker John Boehner to address Congress in 2015 to denounce President Barack Obama’s Iranian nuclear agreement.

"Netanyahu’s open defiance of Obama and alliance with the Republican Party, however, did not stop Obama in 2014 from authorizing a 10-year $38 billion military aid package to Israel, a sad commentary on how captive American politics is to Israeli interests."

—Shift to the Far-Right

"The investment by Israel and is backers is worth it, especially when you consider that the U.S. has also spent over $6 trillion during the last 20 years fighting futile wars that Israel and its lobby pushed for in the Middle East. These wars are the greatest strategic debacle in American history, accelerating the decline of the American empire, bankrupting the nation at a time of economic stagnation and mounting poverty, and turning huge parts of the globe against us. They serve Israel’s interests, not ours.

"The longer the mendacious Israeli narrative is embraced, the more empowered become the racists, bigots, conspiracy theorists and far-right hate groups inside and outside Israel. This steady shift to the far right in Israel has fostered an alliance between Israel and the Christian right, many of whom are anti-Semites. The more Israel and the Israel lobby level the charge of anti-Semitism against those who speak up for Palestinian rights, as they did against British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, the more they embolden the real anti-Semites.

"Racism, including anti-Semitism, is dangerous. It is not only bad for the Jews. It is bad for everyone. It empowers the dark forces of ethnic and religious hatred on the extremes. Netanyahu’s racist government has built alliances with far-right leaders in Hungary, India, and Brazil, and was closely allied with Donald Trump. Racists and ethnic chauvinists, as I saw in the wars in the former Yugoslavia, feed off of each other. They divide societies into polarized, antagonistic camps that only speak in the language of violence. The radical jihadists need Israel to justify their violence, just as Israel needs the radical jihadists to justify its violence. These extremists are ideological twins.

"This polarization fosters a fearful, militarized society. It permits the ruling elites in Israel, as in the United States, to dismantle civil liberties in the name of national security. Israel runs training programs for militarized police, including from the United States. It is a global player in the multibillion-dollar drone industry, competing against China and the United States.

"It oversees hundreds of cyber-surveillance startups whose espionage innovations, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, have been utilized abroad 'to locate and detain human rights activists, persecute members of the LGBT community, silence citizens critical of their governments, and even fabricate cases of blasphemy against Islam in Muslim countries that don’t maintain formal relations with Israel.'

"Israel, like the United States, has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war. One million Israelis, many of them among the most enlightened and educated, have left the country. Its most courageous human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists—Israeli and Palestinian—endure constant government surveillance, arbitrary arrests and vicious government-run smear campaigns. Mobs and vigilantes, including thugs from right-wing youth groups such as Im Tirtzu, physically assault dissidents, Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and African immigrants in the slums of Tel Aviv. These Jewish extremists have targeted Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, demanding their expulsion.

"They are supported by an array of anti-Arab groups including the Otzma Yehudit Party, the ideological descendant of the outlawed Kach party, the Lehava movement, which calls for all Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories to be expelled to surrounding Arab states, and La Familia, far-right soccer hooligans. Lehava in Hebrew means 'flame' and is the acronym for 'Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land.' Mobs of these Jewish fanatics parade through Palestinian neighborhoods, including in occupied East Jerusalem, protected by Israeli police, shouting to the Palestinians who live there 'Death to the Arabs,' which is also a popular chant at Israeli soccer matches.

"Israel has pushed through a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews that echo the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law, for example, permits 'small, exclusively Jewish towns planted across Israel’s Galilee region to formally reject applicants for residency on the grounds of “suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook.”' Israel’s educational system, starting in primary school, uses the Holocaust to portray Jews as eternal victims. This victimhood is an indoctrination machine used to justify racism, Islamophobia, religious chauvinism and the deification of the Israeli military.

"There are many parallels between the deformities that grip Israel and the deformities that grip the United States. The two countries are moving at warp speed towards a 21st century fascism, cloaked in religious language, which will revoke what remains of our civil liberties and snuff out our anemic democracies. The failure of the United States to stand up for the rule of law, to demand that the Palestinians, powerless and friendless, even in the Arab world, be granted basic human rights mirrors the abandonment of the vulnerable within our own society."

_____

🍬 Chris Hedges: Israel, the Big Lie. Israel is not exercising “the right to defend itself” in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is carrying out mass murder, aided and abetted by the U.S. Original to ScheerPost, republished in Consortium News, May 14, 2021.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/05/14/chris-hedges-israel-the-big-lie/

[the-necessary-unnecessary]

hey, can you tell us a bit about racism in Spain? I'm incredibly uneducated about it, and I don't know much about Spanish history especially racism wise so it would be really nice to get an insight from you about it.

this is a big question, since Spain’s relationship with xenophobia dates back centuries and I’m neither the most qualified person to take you through it nor someone who has suffered from Spanish society’s racist tendencies. However I’ll try to piece a bit of something together and maybe other people can add on if there’s other stuff to include. Also, this is mainly Spanish history from a racism perspective, there are many other positive things in other areas that I haven’t included (patriota pero no mucho)

So basically, up until the 15th century, Spain (in its then form) was a relatively harmonious melting pot of different cultures. With the Roman invasion, settlements and a Visigoth takeover (Germanic population) thereafter, Christianity was pretty firmly established in the country/iberian peninsula by the 2nd Century AD. In 711 AD the Moors, who had control over Islamic Africa, invaded the peninsula and established a Caliphate named Al-Andalus which had a particular stronghold in the south: in Andalusia and their Córdoban capital. Rule was stronger or weaker depending on the region but largely Islamic rule was established and Jewish and Catholic people were treated as second class citizens. Córdoba became the wealthiest, largest and most sophisticated city in Europe by the end of the tenth century, with trade and rich intellectual North African traditions forming a unique culture in the region.

There is a strong historical basis that during a lot of this period there was pockets of ‘La Convivencia’ ie. the co-existence of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Like for example, around Toledo where in universities the three backgrounds contributed to tremendous amounts of sharing of knowledge etc.

However, from about the 9th century onwards the Catholics who still held strong points right in the north, begun ‘la Reconquista’, the “reconquest,” where they began chipping away at the Caliphate’s dominance. By the early 11th century they had gained more land than was held by the Muslims and 1492 is where we set our next scene.

This is probably one of the biggest and most path changing years in Spanish history. Most known for being the year when Columbus landed in America, this enabled the start of Spanish imperlism which would extend to almost 5 centuries afterwards, conquering territories in South America, Africa and Asia and subjecting them to imperialistic rule and policies of white totalitarian dominance.

The second important happening in this year was the fall of Granada, the last remaining territory the Caliphate had in Spain, signifying the end of Muslim rule in the country. They were, as expected, thrown out of the country in their droves and many others were forced into hiding being subject to situations that would only get worse with the Inquisition in full swing.

The third, and last, big event in this year was outlined in the Alhambra Decree where the expulsion of all practicing Jews was announced. Now this had already followed the forced conversion tens of thousands of Jews had been subjected to in 1391 and 1415 (ie. crusades and masacres against them). As a result of the Alhambra decree and the prior persecution, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and around 160,000 were expelled.

This ended religious diversity in Spain, the Inquisition sealed this fate. If you’ve heard of one thing about all of this I’m sure it’s the spanish inquisition. Primarily set up to identify heretics among those who converted from Judaism and Islam to Catholicism and ensure the establishment of the Catholic monarchy, it became a method of torture, fear and murder for those who were perceived to cause any threat to the Spanish catholic order. The effects of the Inquisition are widely debated, with some saying the death toll and magnitude has been blown up by the Protestants in other European countries at the time and does not show the full picture of the hundreds of thousands of converted jews and muslims who remained and overtime became integrated into Catholic society. Whilst others remaining firm to the devastating measure of these actions and the ‘pure blood’ mentality it created. What’s for certain though, is that by the end of the Inquisition in 1834 very little religious nor ethnic diversity remained in Spain.

Jump forward about 100 years and the Spanish Empire is no more after the 1898 crisis, there’s a weird back and forth period with Republics and Monarchies and dictatorships until the Civil War broke out in 1936. It lasted until 1939 when the Nationalists, led by Franco, took total control of the country and submitted it to a dictatorship that would last until his death in 1975. I don’t even know where to begin with a period that many people see as rosy and many others ignore completely whilst Historians have now gone so far as to call the 1940s and 50s the ‘Spanish Holocaust’. However I’ll break it down to one or two main things that have predominantly spurred on today’s racist attitudes.

During the Civil Rights movements of the 50s and 60s Spain was largely immune to the winds of changes due to their isolationist policies and dictatorial power holds. We didn’t take part in any of the dialogue nor go through any racial reconciliation, at least to much a lesser extent than most other countries. It’s quite a common thing to say that what much of europe did in 70 years we’ve only had time to do in 45, and there’s much of a grain of truth in this.

A famous conservative spanish politician called David Aznar defended these views and can be extrapolated into the sentiment that existed to facilitate the transition to democracy and still remain today: "In the democratic transition there were implicit and explicit agreements. One was that we Spaniards don't want to look to the past. Let's not disturb the graves and hurl bones at one another.” As a society, we hate to think about the past, it’s just not widely done. There’s ONE museum solely dedicated to the Civil War, the Historical Memory Law passed in 2007 to try and increase the rights of victims and their families was met by so much opposition and is devastatingly underfunded etc etc. This still translates to spaniards’ views on racism, saying it just doesn’t exist here and moving on. There’s a refusal to confront this and microagressions are ingrained in the culture.

As I’ve kind of mentioned before, issues of race extend much further than towards just black people which is why the US BLM movement cannot simply be traced onto Spain. People who are originally from Latin America face extreme stereotypes and varying forms of discrimination against them as do Arab populations and other people who have immigrated from MENA countries plus the large Roma communities. 

The refugee crisis has further perpetuated the stigma around African immigrants in the past years, whilst the social effects of the 2008 Financial Crisis and beyond also continue to contribute to a xenophobic and nativist perspective where true spaniards should be prioritised with jobs, opportunities etc. For example, the alt-right wing party Vox that’s blatantly racist, anti-immigrants etc posted something with the slogan ‘Spanish Lives Matter’ the other day. They are purposefully incendiary.  

Anyways, hope this was a suitable start for you, you can’t summarise millennia worths of history into a few paragraphs but I tried my best. Also there are obviously many who stand for none of these values, politicians who have tried to right these wrongs, activists who keep fighting the fight, people who have broken down barriers and areas where there’s complete coexistance. However the fact remains that these views and ideas are ingrained in people’s minds, theres blatant job discrimination and a lack of equal opportunities despite laws that may have been put in place.

I’m going to point anyone who has got this far to a couple of articles about racism from an Anglo-Saxon perspective below, racist football culture is almost always mentioned. Being a black traveller in Spain; Same Spanish Holocaust link as before but an extremely important book review read; Irish perspective on the Enigma of Spanish Racism; Racism? What Racism? Asks Spain; Opinion: Racism Is Alive and kicking in Spain

[blessedarticles-blog]

The Curse of Moses

But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that ALL THESE CURSES SHALL COME upon thee, and overtake thee:

Deuteronomy 28:15

I will camp against you encircling you, and I will set siegeworks against you, and I will raise up battle towers against you.

Isaiah 29:3 (NASB)

Unlike the curse of Adam and the curse on Eve that were brief, heavyweight statements, the curse of Moses was delivered in great detail. It is interesting to see how these detailed curses have played out in the life of the nation of Israel. Let’s look at the details of the curse. The curses of Moses were directed at the Jews. These curses were to come upon them because of their disobedience.

What Picture Has the Curse of Moses Created?

A curse creates a picture!

Every curse creates an unmistakable picture!

To recognize a curse you must know the picture it creates!

The curse on man creates the unmistakeable picture of toil and sweat that yields little fruit.

The curse on women creates the unmistakeable picture of sorrow, disappointment and struggles with husbands and children.

The curse on Jews creates the unmistakeable picture of worldwide inexplicable hatred, scattering and persecution.

The curse on Jew haters creates the picture of inexplicable ultimate defeat and humiliation.

The curse on black people creates the inexplicable picture of servanthood, poor leadership, poverty and insignificance.

A trained medical doctor will notice certain symptoms and signs because he is trained to recognize the picture of a disease. It is an unmistakeable picture to him because he is trained to see it. In the same way, you will now recognize the picture of the curse when you see it. Your trained eyes will pick out the unmistakeable picture that shows that a curse is working.

The Details of the Curse

1. The curse on everything you do:

The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, IN ALL THAT THOU SETTEST THINE HAND UNTO for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me. The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it.

Deuteronomy 28:20-21

2. The curse of strange diseases that wipe out the population:

The Lord shall make THE PESTILENCE CLEAVE UNTO THEE, UNTIL HE HAVE CONSUMED THEE from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it. The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.

Deuteronomy 28:21-22

A pestilence is an epidemic that sweeps through the population and affects many people. The Ebola virus, the HIV virus and the bird flu virus are well known to have produced modern epidemics (pestilence).

Epidemics wiped out thousands of Jews during the Second World War. The Germans established more than 400 ghettos for the purpose of isolating and controlling Jews. These ghettos were overcrowded unhealthy quarters in which as many as one thousand Jews could be found living in one building. This led to the outbreak of epidemics of cholera and typhus among the Jews. Two thousand Jews died every month in the Warsaw ghetto from epidemics of cholera and typhus.

In one ghetto, sanitary stations were established to bathe and disinfect the Jews to contain the epidemic. Jews were refused permission to leave the ghetto unless they were certified as disinfected and clean. The penalty for leaving the ghetto, where these epidemics were raging, was being shot on sight! Indeed, the curse of the pestilence was happening practically.

3. The curse of being driven into every nation of the world:

The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and SHALT BE REMOVED INTO ALL THE KINGDOMS OF THE EARTH.

Deuteronomy 28:25

Indeed, the curse of being driven into every nation of the world has happened practically to the people of Israel. Jews have mysteriously been driven from place to place. This repeated persecution, recurring expulsion and migration has never happened to any other group of people on earth.

In AD 70 Jerusalem was burnt down and the Jews were scattered all over the world.

Again, in AD 629 the entire Jewish population of GALILEE was massacred or expelled from Judea.

Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries the Jews living in FRANCE were expelled.

In 1290 King Edward I of England issued a decree to expel Jews from ENGLAND. This remained in force for 365 years.

In the fourteenth century, Jews were expelled from EUROPE because of the Plague.

Jews were expelled from SPAIN in 1492, from SICILY IN 1493 and from ITALY in 1554.

Between 1648 and 1654, Jews were not allowed in RUSSIA and UKRAINE.

The Jews were expelled from the MIDDLE EAST and NORTH AFRICA between 1947 and 1972.

From the 1960s till 1989, thousands of Jews were forced by the authorities to leave POLAND.

In the 1970s, tens of thousands of Soviet Jews were forced out of the SOVIET UNION. Some migrated to Israel whilst others went to the United States.

4. The curse of bodies lying outside and being eaten by birds:

And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.

Deuteronomy 28:26

This curse of dead bodies lying in the open and without being buried was fulfilled practically in AD 70.

In the year AD 66 the Jews of Judea rebelled against their Roman masters. In response, the Emperor Nero dispatched an army under the generalship of Vespasian to restore order. Vespasian landed in Antioch and took command. Vespasian’s son, Titus, marched up from Egypt, and after linking up with his father, the Romans now moved inland into the region of Galilee. Battles were fought on both land and on the lake of Galilee.

During the battle, the hill on which the Temple stood was covered in flames. The blood that poured from those who were slain was so much that the ground was no more visible. The streets were covered with corpses ; with soldiers pursuing fugitives over the piles of dead bodies.

5. The curse of your wife being taken away from you:

Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof.

Deuteronomy 28:30

The curse of wives being taken away from their husbands was fulfilled practically during the Second World War. Males and females were always separated at the concentration camps.

Many parents chose to hide their children, claiming that they were non-Jewish orphans of war.

Families began to be forced apart from each other and many families vowed to find each other after the war.

Some families’ desire to remain together often left them with the only option of going into hiding. During the war, it was extremely difficult to hide from the Germans. Indeed, some Jewish families were forced to live cut off from the world for long periods of time, sometimes years.

6. The curse of being robbed openly and violently – the curse of having your wealth stolen:

The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall A NATION WHICH THOU KNOWEST NOT EAT UP; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway.

Deuteronomy 28:33

Thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof: THINE ASS SHALL BE VIOLENTLY TAKEN AWAY FROM BEFORE THY FACE, AND SHALL NOT BE RESTORED TO THEE: thy sheep shall be given unto thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue them.

Deuteronomy 28:31

And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee.

Deuteronomy 28:51

The curse of being robbed openly has happened practically to the Jews on many occasions.

The Jews in Europe were robbed of so much wealth by the Germans that their money financed thirty percent of the German war effort.

Nazi German officials also plundered more than £12 billion by looting and by enacting special confiscation laws. German tax authorities “actively worked to destroy Jews financially”. Tax laws discriminated against Jews from 1934, while some who managed to leave Germany before the Holocaust had much of their wealth confiscated through an “exit tax”.

German officials would seize and sell the property of Jews who left or were sent to extermination camps, both in Germany and in the nations conquered during the Second World War.

7. The curse of your children being taken away from you:

THY SONS AND THY DAUGHTERS SHALL BE GIVEN UNTO ANOTHER people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long: and there shall be no might in thine hand.

Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy them; for they shall go into captivity. All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume.

Deuteronomy 28:32, 41-42

The curse of your children being taken away from you has also been fulfilled many times in the life of the people of Israel.

Many Jewish children were taken away from their parents during the Second World War. One of my mother’s friends was such a Jewish child who was separated from her parents during the Second World War. She was a toddler when her parents put her on a train and sent her away to safety. She never saw her parents again. Her parents probably died on a concentration camp.

In the fulfilment of this curse, the children of Jews suffered various things during the Second World War. Some children were killed immediately on arrival at the German concentration camps and killing centres.

Other Jewish children were slaughtered by the Germans shortly after birth. (For example, 870 infants born in the Ravensbrück concentration camp between 1943 and 1945, largely to Jewish and Gypsy women, were slaughtered).

Yet others, usually above the age of 10, were imprisoned or used as labourers. Finally, some children were used as subjects for German medical experiments.

Indeed, Jewish children, separated from their parents, were hidden for their own safety. In France, almost everyone in Le Chambon-sur- Lignon, hid Jewish children in the town from 1942 to 1944. In Italy and Belgium, many Jewish children survived only by being sent into hiding. Truly, the words of Moses were being carried out to the letter! There is a need to have a proper respect for curses spoken by authority figures.

8. The curse of becoming a wonder and an amazing story of persecution and hatred in the world:

Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee: and they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever.

Deuteronomy 28:45-46

The curse of Moses that the nation of Israel would be a sign and a wonder has come to pass literally. For centuries, the Jews had to survive as a nation without a country. Wherever they went they were hated, treated as an inferior race and made to live in ghettoes.

At different times over several centuries, the exiled Jews have been persecuted, massacred, or forced to flee for their lives from one country to another.

Thousands of Jews have been forced to flee from their homes, from England, from Spain, from Russia and from Germany. It is as though a special hand was driving them from place to place like flocks of birds with no resting place.

For example, in England, in 1190 there was a fearful wave of massacres spreading from city to city, wiping out Jewish men, women and children.

Then again in 1290, the king of England (Edward I) expelled all the Jews from Britain.

Later on in 1492 all the Jews were expelled from Spain. In other countries their treatment was even worse.

In the 1880s Jews had to flee for their lives from Russia.

In the 1930s the Jews had to flee from Germany.

9. The curse of great weakness and great destruction before the enemy:

Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and HE SHALL PUT A YOKE OF IRON UPON THY NECK, UNTIL HE HAVE DESTROYED THEE.

Deuteronomy 28:48

During the Second World War, the Jews were very weak before their German enemies. The German enemies placed a yoke of iron on their necks with the intention of destroying them. A yoke of destruction called “Final Solution” was placed on the neck of Israel.

In December 1941, the Germans began the “Final Solution”. The “Final Solution” was the Nazi policy of wiping out all Jews. The policy resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews in concentration camps between 1941 and 1945. Adolf Hitler, Himmler and Eichmann were the key implementers of this yoke. Indeed, the Jews did not have the strength to resist this onslaught of mass murder.

Throughout the war, Jews were kept in concentration camps where long-term survival was rare. Most of those selected to work died of exhaustion and disease. The conditions were so extreme that even the fittest people rarely survived more than a few months in the camps.

10. The curse of warring nations besieging and capturing Israel.

And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, IN THE SIEGE, AND IN THE STRAITNESS, WHEREWITH THINE ENEMIES SHALL DISTRESS THEE.

Deuteronomy 28:53

The curse of Moses that they would be besieged has occurred an astonishing twenty-three times. How many cities in the world have been besieged twenty-three times and still exist? Jerusalem has been captured and re-captured forty-four times by different people.

In the history of Jerusalem, it has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times.

11. The curse of women eating their own children in the siege.

The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, and toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for SHE SHALL EAT THEM for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.

Deuteronomy 28:56-57

This amazing curse also came to pass practically. In AD 70, Josephus, a famous historian described the horrors he witnessed in the siege of AD 70. This is what he said:

“Throughout the city people were dying of hunger in large numbers, and enduring unspeakable sufferings. In every house the merest hint of food sparked violence, and close relatives fell to blows, snatching from one another the pitiful supports of life. Need drove the starving to gnaw at anything.

Rubbish which even animals would reject, was collected and turned into food. In the end they were eating belts and shoes, and the leather stripped off their shields. Tufts of withered grass were devoured, and sold in little bundles for four drachmas.

Among the residents of the region beyond Jordan was a woman called Mary, daughter of Eleazar, of the village of Bethezuba (the name means “House of Hyssop”). She was well off, and of good family, and had fled to Jerusalem with her relatives, where she became involved with the siege. Most of her belongings which she had packed up and brought from Peraea had been plundered as well as the rest of her treasure, together with such foods.

In her bitter resentment this poor woman cursed the extortioners and this angered them. However, no one put her to death. She grew weary of trying to find food for her kinsfolk. So, driven by anger and want, she seized her child, an infant at the breast, and cried,

“My poor baby, why should I keep you alive in this world of war and famine? Even if we live till the Romans come, they will make slaves of us; and anyway, hunger will get us before slavery does; and the rebels are crueler than both. Come, be food for me, and an avenging fury to the rebels, and a tale of cold horror to the world to complete the monstrous agony of the Jews.”

With these words she killed her son, roasted the body, swallowed half of it, and stored the rest in a safe place. But the rebels were on her at once, smelling roasted meat, and threatening to kill her instantly if she did not produce it. She assured them she had saved them a share, and revealed the remains of her child. Seized with horror and stupefaction, they stood paralyzed at the sight. But she said, “This is my own child, and my own handiwork. Eat, for I have eaten already. Do not show yourselves weaker than a woman, or more pitiful than a mother. But if you have pious scruples, and shrink away from human sacrifice, then what I have eaten can count as your share, and I will eat what is left as well.”

At that they slunk away, trembling, not daring to eat, although they were reluctant to yield even this food to the mother. The whole city soon heard of this abomination. When people heard of it, they shuddered, as though they had done it themselves.

12. The curse of a shrunken population:

Then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance. Moreover he will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee. Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will the Lord bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed. And YE SHALL BE LEFT FEW IN NUMBER, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because thou wouldest not obey the voice of the Lord thy God.

Deuteronomy 28:59-62

The curse of a shrinking population happened practically to the Jews during the Second World War. Most populations increase every year. But according to the words of Moses, Jews were left fewer in number.

In 1933 the world’s Jewish population was 15.3 million.

In 1939, the world population of Jews was 17 million.

By 1945 the Jewish population in the world had shrunk to 11 million.

By 2014, the Jewish population was 14.2 million making up only 0.2 percent of the world population.

13. The curse of being scattered throughout the whole world:

And the Lord shall SCATTER THEE AMONG ALL PEOPLE, FROM THE ONE END OF THE EARTH EVEN UNTO THE OTHER; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind:

Deuteronomy 28:64-65

The curse of being scattered throughout the world has come to pass with astonishing accuracy. The Jews have been dispersed into the world on three major occasions.

The first dispersion of Jews occurred when the Assyrians conquered Israel in 722 BC. Then, the Jews were scattered all over the Middle East.

The second dispersion of Jews occurred when Nebuchadnezzar conquered and deported Jews in 597 and 586 BC and allowed them to remain in a unified community in Babylon.

The third major dispersion came about after 70 AD when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and annexed Judaea as a Roman province.

The Israelites, as had been foretold in the Old Testament, became wandering Jews, to be found in practically every country of the world, despised, reviled and hounded by persecution from city to city and nation to nation.

Note the statistics of returning Jews according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics: Between 1948 and 2013, the following numbers of Jews returned to Israel from the respective countries of the world to which they had been scattered:

CountryNo. of Jews Returning to Jerusalem

Russia/Ukraine (former USSR) 1,231,003

Morocco, Algeria & Tunisia 354,852

Romania 276,586

Poland 173,591

Iraq 131,138

United States of America 101,592

Ethiopia 92,730

France 81,885

Iran 76,934

Argentina 66,916

Turkey 62,837

Yemen 50,731

Bulgaria 44,372

Egypt and Sudan 37,763

Libya 35,844

United Kingdom 35,164

Hungary 32,022

India 28,702

Czechoslovakia (former) 24,468

South Africa 20,038

Germany 19,905

Yugoslavia (former) 10,768

Syria 9,547

14. The curse of being forced to change their religion:

And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and THERE THOU SHALT SERVE OTHER GODS, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone.

Deuteronomy 28:64

On several occasions, Jews have been forced to convert from their faith to other religions or be killed.

For example, at the end of the 11th century, Ashkenazi Jews in Germany were forced to convert from Judaism.

In the fifteenth century there were mass forced conversions of Sephardi Jews in Spain and Portugal.

During the Spanish Inquisition, tens of thousands of Jews were forcibly converted to Christianity on the threat of death. The chief rabbi, Simon Maimi, was one of those who refused to convert. He was kept buried in earth up to his neck for seven days until he died.

by Dag Heward-Mills

[zeroviraluniverse-blog]

Cash or custody: Israel kicks off deportation of African migrants

Visit Now - https://zeroviral.com/cash-or-custody-israel-kicks-off-deportation-of-african-migrants/

Cash or custody: Israel kicks off deportation of African migrants

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel has started handing out notices to 20,000 male African migrants giving them two months to leave the country or risk being thrown in jail.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is offering the migrants, most of whom are from Sudan and Eritrea, $3,500 and a plane ticket to what it says is a safe destination in another country in sub-Saharan Africa.

The fate of some 37,000 Africans in Israel is posing a moral dilemma for a state founded as haven for Jews from persecution and a national home. The right-wing government is under pressure from its nationalist voter base to expel the migrants, while others are calling for them to be taken in.

The government says the migrants are “infiltrators” looking for work rather than asylum, but there is a growing liberal backlash against the plan, including from rabbis, a small group of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and ordinary people who say Israel should show greater compassion to the migrants.

The first eviction notices were handed out on Sunday and job advertisements for immigration inspectors to implement the deportation plan have been posted on government websites.

Rights groups advocating on behalf of the migrants say many fled abuse and war and their expulsion, even to a different country in Africa, would endanger them further.

“I don’t know what to do. Rwanda, Uganda are not my countries, what will a third country help me?” said Eritrean Berihu Ainom, after receiving an eviction notice on Sunday.

The deportation notices do not name the country migrants will be flown to but Netanyahu has said it will be a safe destination. Rights groups have named Uganda and Rwanda as possible host countries.

In a poor neighborhood in the south of Tel Aviv that has attracted thousands of African migrants, shops are dotted with signs in Tigrinya and other African languages while abandoned warehouses have been converted into churches.

“I came to Israel to save my life,” said Eritrean Afoworki Kidane, sitting on a street bench.

He said he would rather go to jail than take the cash and plane ticket on offer to leave the country that has been his home for nine years.

BACKLASH BUILDING

Interior Minister Aryeh Deri said Israel’s first obligation was to its own citizens, rather than the migrants.

“They are not numbers, they are people, they are human and I am full of compassion and mercy,” Deri told Army Radio. “But the small state of Israel cannot contain such a vast number of illegal infiltrators.”

But opposition to the plan has been building and some Israelis are now offering to take migrants at risk of expulsion into their homes.

On Thursday, a group of 36 Holocaust survivors sent a letter to Netanyahu asking him not to deport the migrants. The U.S.-based Anti Defamation League has also urged Israel to reconsider the plan, citing “Jewish values and refugee heritage”.

African migrants wait in line for the opening of the Population and Immigration Authority office in Bnei Brak, Israel February 4, 2018. Picture taken February 4, 2018. REUTERS/Nir Elias

Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and a Holocaust survivor, said in a statement the issue required “as much compassion, empathy and mercy that can possibly be marshalled. The experiences of the Jewish people over the ages underscore this commitment.”

Rabbi Susan Silverman has launched a campaign called Miklat Israel (Israel Shelter) for Israelis to take migrants into their homes.

“It’s unconscionable for the Jewish state to deport people to harrowing vulnerability,” she said.

Miklat Israel’s Rabbi Tamara Schagas said 600 Israeli families had already signed up and the organization would begin to connect migrants with potential hosts this week.

MORAL COMPASS

The Supreme Court ruled in August that Israeli authorities can hold illegal migrants for up to 60 days in custody.

Immigration officials have said women, children and men with families in Israel were allowed to stay for now, as was anyone with outstanding asylum requests.

Out of 6,800 requests reviewed so far, Israel has granted refugee status to 11 migrants. It has at least 8,000 more requests to process.

Israeli authorities have said Israeli officials will keep in touch with migrants accepted in a third country to oversee their progress. Rwanda has said it will only accept migrants who have left Israel of their own free will.

Nonetheless, the U.N.’s refugee agency has urged Israel to reconsider, saying migrants who have relocated to sub-Saharan Africa in the past few years were unsafe and ended up on the perilous migrant trail to Europe, some suffering abuse, torture and even perishing on the way.

Rights groups in Israel say the government is simply ridding itself of people it should be recognizing as refugees in Israel and that there was no real guarantee for their safety.

A fence Israel has built over the past few years along its border with Egypt has all but stopped African migrants from entering the country illegally. Beginning in the previous decade, when the border was porous, a total of 64,000 Africans made it to Israel though thousands have since left.

Emmanuel Asfaha from Eritrea crossed into Israel in 2011 with his wife and baby son. His second child was born in Israel.

A narrow grocery store stockroom stacked with bags of flour leads to their two-room apartment in Tel Aviv, a poster of Jesus hanging on the cracked walls above his son’s bed. Asfaha is concerned Israel will eventually deport families too.

“I am worried about the situation,” he said while cooking Shiro, a traditional stew. “Tomorrow it will be for me also.”

A few kilometers away, in a hip, upscale part of Tel Aviv, Ben Yefet, a 39-year-old stockbroker, said he had signed up with Miklat Israel to house two or three migrants in his two-room apartment.

“As Israelis and Jews we are obligated. We have a moral compass, we just have to do it,” he said.

Writing by Maayan Lubell; editing by Jeffrey Heller and David Clarke

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.