International Holocaust Remembrance Day is a nice idea. If only it meant something… - by Forest Rain

...An International Day for Holocaust Remembrance in today’s world is bizarre and almost laughable. Today Jews are denied the right to live safely in our own land while the world denies that a problem even exists. “Never again” has become a commonly used slogan but there is no action behind the words. When people are being persecuted and slaughtered on the basis of their religion little to know action is taken to save them. Few give them refuge. Instead the slogan is bandied around in anti-Trump rallies, used to protest nonexistent persecution of Muslim while Christians and Yazidis are left to the tender mercies of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq or Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Forest Rain..
Inspiration from Zion..
01 February '17..

Did you know that Israel commemorates the Holocaust on a different date than the International Holocaust Remembrance Day?

The world would have preferred to forget. In 2005, Israel finally succeeded to attain UN recognition of an internationally recognized Holocaust Remembrance Day. January 27th was chosen as this was the date of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945.

Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day is determined by the Jewish calendar, not the international (Christian) calendar. The date chosen does not mark a specific occurrence- it signifies the place of the Holocaust within the framework of the Jewish experience.

Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated one week after the end of the Passover holiday which celebrates God liberating the Jewish people from slavery in ancient Egypt, the Exodus, receiving the Torah and returning as the Nation of Israel to the promised land, Israel.

One week after Holocaust Memorial Day, Israel marks the Memorial Day for IDF soldiers and victims of terrorism. The attempt to exterminate the Jewish people did not end with the Holocaust. To this day, we must fight to survive, free in our own land – not like the slaves our ancestors once were, not at the mercy of the “civilized” of the world as our grandparents were… Today we have the power to fight our own battles and sadly, fight we must. Terrorism is proof that the hate against us has not abated, only morphed in to a different form with different excuses used as justification.

(Continue to Full Post)

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At the United Nations Nothing Justifies Terrorism, Except Palestinian 'Frustration' - by Anne Bayefsky

...In late November 2015, Palestinian UN representative Riyad Mansour announced at an exhibit opening held in the public lobby of the UN: “We are so proud that in this popular uprising, the backbone of this uprising are the youth of Palestine.” On January 17 a 16-year old Palestinian stabbed to death an Israeli mother of six — a.k.a. a “settler” — in front of her children. And now the UN secretary-general expresses his empathy and understanding of this normal, to-be-expected, “youthful frustration.” We know what comes next, because that’s a straight line if there ever was one.

Anne Bayefsky..
Human Rights Voices..
03 February '16..

The United Nations played the Holocaust game last week so it could play another lethal game this week. The ruse consists of making a big deal about the gas chambers for Jews back then, while stoking the fires of anti-Semitism burning right now.

On January 31, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon penned a New York Times op-ed to say at one and the same time that “people will always resist occupation” and “nothing excuses terrorism.” That follows a statement he gave to the Security Council on January 26, in which he said “Palestinian frustration is growing” and “it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as an incubator of hate and extremism.”

Reaction to the claim that it is human nature to stab pregnant women and mothers in front of their children — as Palestinians had done the week before — has been unanimous across the Israeli political spectrum. In the words of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on January 26: “The secretary-general’s remarks give a tailwind to terrorism.”

Nevertheless, the spokesman of the secretary-general doubled down in a press briefing on January 27 with these words: “Absolutely nothing justifies terrorism. . . . At the same time, if we want to see an end to this violence . . . we must address the root causes, the underlying frustrations.”

In short, for the United Nations, nothing justifies terrorism except Palestinian frustration.

It is hardly a secret that the UN agenda is to find reasons for treating the Jewish state differently — notwithstanding the UN Charter’s promise of equality for nations large and small. The settlements bandwagon is one of many.

The Fatal Flaw of International Holocaust Memorial Day by Caroline Glick

... But as Wisse notes, like the Jews in exilic communities, the Jewish state cannot end other people’s hatred of Jews, because we didn’t cause it. Only the anti-Semites, through their own moral reckoning with their anti-Semitic past and present, can do that. In light of the Europeans’ continued refusal to undertake such a moral reckoning, far from combating anti-Semitism, International Holocaust Remembrance Day serves as a cover for it.

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
28 January '14..

On the surface, it is very moving to see half of the members of Knesset at Auschwitz marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

But in a larger sense, it is not at all clear why this is necessary.

The Jewish people have Yom HaShoah V’Hagevura, our own national day of mourning for the genocide of our people in Europe. More importantly, we carry the legacy of the Holocaust inside of us.

Every day, at some level, we experience the ulcerative loss of a third of the Jewish people in the hell of Europe, because we feel the hollow absence of the victims.
The six million murdered have become 10 million descendants who were never born. And we miss them.

We remember them too, every day, when we look at our children and thank God we can protect them.

Israel does not need this extra Holocaust memorial day. And before we send another delegation of elected officials to Auschwitz next January 27, we need to ask whether this extra day serves any positive purpose.

In November 2005, Israel was one of the co-sponsors of the UN General Assembly resolution that made January 27, the day Auschwitz was liberated, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. At the time, Israeli politicians and American Jewish leaders extolled the resolution as signaling a new era of UN relations with the Jewish state.

They also proclaimed that the educational materials that would be disseminated worldwide under the auspices of International Holocaust Remembrance Day would make a significant contribution to the combat of anti-Semitism.

But eight years later none of this has happened.

To the contrary, the UN has escalated even further its official anti-Semitism through its diplomatic, cultural and educational aggression against the Jewish state.

Consider for instance that a week before its duly mandated International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the UN ushered in 2014 as the Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The occasion was marked among other things, by the January 20 opening of a yearlong exhibit at the UN Headquarters in New York portraying Israelis as Nazis and Palestinians as Jews.

Since 2005, anti-Semitism has risen throughout Europe, as have levels of anti-Semitism among Europhilic Americans.

Jews throughout Europe feel under assault, and unprotected. The situation is so bad that Jews don’t even bother reporting most of the anti-Semitic attacks they suffer.

The more closely we consider events, the more clearly we see that ironically and obscenely, Holocaust memorializing in Europe is enabling anti-Semitism.

A Disturbing Paradox - Holocaust Remembrance Day at the UN

...Of course, it is no secret that the U.N. has failed miserably to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity in countries from Africa, to Europe and Asia. The explanation, however, does not lie with general incompetence. For the organization has managed to devote its energy, time and resources to the denunciation and delegitimization of Israel – the embodiment of Jewish self-determination.

Anne Bayefsky..
Human Rights Voices..
27 January '14..

It is Holocaust remembrance time at the United Nations. Once a year, Jews from around New York, a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, occasional celebrities, and precious few friends, file into the General Assembly Hall and grant the U.N. the privilege of appearing to care.

This year’s speakers include Steven Spielberg. When it is over, the year-round ritual censure of the Jewish state will resume.

Characteristic of “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust” is the scarcity of express emphasis on Israel, save for the remarks of the Israeli ambassador.

Modern Israel, if it had existed, would not have allowed six million Jews or one million children to perish while railway lines delivering human cargo to their final destination were left intact. And yet, the well-being of the only country dedicated to saving the Jewish people is generally peripheral.

At first, the pattern seems odd, given that the U.N.’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and associated activities of its “Holocaust Outreach Programme,” are supposed to be about ‘never again’ and a U.N. commitment to genocide prevention.

Strange also, since the U.N. member state of Iran is openly pursuing the annihilation of Israel, and a repeat of the Holocaust that it denies.

Of course, it is no secret that the U.N. has failed miserably to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity in countries from Africa, to Europe and Asia.

The explanation, however, does not lie with general incompetence. For the organization has managed to devote its energy, time and resources to the denunciation and delegitimization of Israel – the embodiment of Jewish self-determination.

The behind-the-scenes story of the 2005 General Assembly resolution creating a U.N. Holocaust remembrance day sheds light on the connection between Holocaust remembrance and Israel-bashing at the U.N.

Despite the fact that the U.N. was erected on the ashes of the Jewish people, the General Assembly has never adopted a resolution dedicated specifically to anti-semitism. Periodic mentions of the word antisemitism appear in lists. By contrast, for instance, there have been resolutions and reports focusing on Muslims, Arabs and Islamophobia.

In 2004, Israel proposed the adoption of a General Assembly resolution on antisemitism. And off-camera all hell broke loose.

For its initial backing, Germany was given to understand that such a role would jeopardize its hoped-for permanent seat on the Security Council, and its support vanished.

The State Department was content to leave the matter to the Europeans. Arab and Muslim opposition led the European Union to condition support on garnering consensus, thus handing a veto to antisemites. The idea went no further.

Why was an anti-semitism resolution so vociferously opposed?

(+Video) Saved from the Nazis by the IDF Chief of Staff’s Mother

“I had typhus, and then they threw me onto this mountain of bodies. Your mother, and I have no idea where she got the strength to do this, was the one who pulled me out from all of those bodies and carried me to the British ambulances.”

idfblog.com..
08 April '13..

Esther Friedman was 12 years old when she was deported from Hungary to Auschwitz. When Dr. Josef Mengele took her out of the selection line of prisoners arriving at the camp, her grandmother tried to stop him. “Get out of here, you stupid cow,” Mengele shouted, pushing her grandmother away. After overcoming a series of cruel and morbid medical experiments, Esther managed to escape and began working in a metal factory.

Esther Friedman

She was named by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Museum, as “one of the two thousand,” the only survivor of the 2,000 people transported from Hungary, before she was deported for a second time. This time, she was sent to the Bergen-Belsen camp, where she contracted typhus. “Some of the worst images of my life are from here. There were dead bodies everywhere, they didn’t even try removing them. You couldn’t walk anywhere without stepping on a body,” she explained to Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, who visited her as a part of the project ‘Flower for a Survivor’.

Esther with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz

To remember, but also how not to remember the Holocaust

Fresnozionism.org..
07 April '13..

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I’m troubled.

History is important, because justice today depends on a correct understanding of yesterday. If your vision of the past is distorted, then your objectives for the future and present actions can be morally wrong, pragmatically futile, or both. If you don’t believe this, think about the consequences of the false Arab and leftist narratives about Israel and ‘Palestine’.

Therefore, understanding what Hitler did to the Jewish people, what historical trends led up to it and how the world responded, is critical for all of us today. There needs to be a Holocaust remembrance Day and it ought to tell its story in detail, over and over to each generation of humanity, and not just to Jews and Europeans.

But certain ways of observing this day make me very uncomfortable.

One is what I call the ‘universal kumbaya Holocaust observance’. The message here is that there are lots of genocides, they are all similar, and we have to try to understand our fellow man in order to prevent them. I went to an event once in which it was said that the real Holocaust encompassed 11 million people — Jews, Gypsies, gays, disabled and mentally ill people, etc. I didn’t understand how they got to 11 million, nor why they stopped there: about 60 million people died as a result of WWII, probably about half of those in the European theater. Estimates range from 10 to 20 million Chinese dead in the conflict with Japan. Perhaps they should have lit 30 candles for the evil done by Hitler, and added another 30 for Imperial Japan?

The trouble with a universalized observance is that it obscures the significance of the specifically Jewish genocide, the fact that the Holocaust was the perfection, made possible by modern technology and careful planning, of the pogrom, the culmination of the hundreds of anti-Jewish murders committed over the centuries simply because the victims were Jews, as the Nazis said, a final pogrom which would, for once and for all, erase the Jews from the world.

And by hiding the meaning of this event in plain sight, as it were, among all the other horrors of war, it also absolves today’s Jews from the responsibility to find their own solution to the specifically Jewish problem of endemic Jew-hatred, which has not gone away.

Honig: Universalism’s toxic saccharine

Sarah Honig
Another Tack
29 April '11

http://www.sarahhonig.com/?p=836


If a netherworld truly exists, then its most infamous denizen, one Adolf Hitler, must be rubbing his hands in glee. During his lifetime, when he preoccupied the entire world with his war, he never ceased to proclaim hysterically that his paramount aim was annihilating all Jews. Obsessively he reiterated his resolve to cause all nations to unite in recognition of inborn Jewish villainy.

To some extent he already succeeded among his contemporaries. The Allies never sincerely cared about Jews and never fought for them. They protected their own skins. Europe’s Jews were eventually liberated via the much-belated byproduct of Germany’s defeat. The enormity of the Holocaust could have been lessened, but it was nobody’s priority.

The Allies’ indifference derived from their own Judeophobia, albeit of lower grade than the Nazi variety. Mere months before World War II’s outbreak, when the Holocaust was about to be kick-started, Britain published its notorious White Paper ruling out this country as a viable asylum for refugees from Hitler’s hell. Germany’s Jews were already shorn of citizenship and fleeing, stateless, in all directions. Hitler’s threats were well recorded, shouted in the world’s face and hardly kept secret.

The White Paper encompassed all the dubious goodwill the international community could reluctantly muster, lest “changes on the ground” occur that might rile Arabs in and around the Jewish homeland.

Yet the fault wasn’t Britain’s alone. Hitler tauntingly invited all democracies to take his Jews, if they were so fretful about them. He knew that for all their self-righteous rhetoric, these states wouldn’t accept his provocative challenge. After 1938’s Anschluss, their representatives met in Evian-les-Bains, on Lake Geneva’s French shore, to decide what to do with Nazism’s desperate victims, pounding on their gates in search of sanctuary. They never even called them Jews, lest they incur the fuehrer’s wrath.

It turned into a great Jew-rejection fest. Britain bristled at any hint of allowing refugees into Eretz Yisrael, mandated to it to administer as the Jewish National Home. Progenitors of today’s Palestinian terrorists made sure endangered Jews wouldn’t be sheltered, and His Majesty’s government appeasingly assented.

Genocide, universalism and the degradation of memory

The attempt to de-Judaize the Holocaust is quite shocking


Seth Frantzman
Opinion/JPost
20 April '10

Every Holocaust Remembrance Day and every Independence Day the public and the world Jewish community is subjected to a soft barrage of messages. The central thread in them is that the Holocaust is not a unique event, that Jews are exploiting their genocide in some way and that the Palestinian Nakba (“tragedy” of 1948) is somehow linked or equivalent to the Holocaust.

This degradation has at its core a supposedly positive message: The Holocaust was a universal event from which all humanity must learn and the Palestinians can better understand the Jews if they think their Nakba is like the Holocaust and if the Jews also accept this. Last year one of the messengers was Bradford Pilcher who titled his article in the on-line magazine Jewcy: “The Holocaust... not just for the Jews.”

Pilcher tells us that the Jews practice “one-upsmanship” by daring to think of the Holocaust as an event that affected them and did not equally affect others such as homosexuals and Roma. He writes, “We shouldn’t be drawing up borders between Jewish suffering and others’” because otherwise the Holocaust will reflect merely our “bitterness.”

This year the message began on March 23 with the revelation that Hanna Yablonka of Ben-Gurion University and head of the Education Ministry’s advisory committee on history studies had claimed “studying details of the Shoah has no educational value” and merely constitutes a “pornography of evil.” There is no use in people learning “how Jews were murdered, the stages of the final solution.”

The next day she was one-upped by an unnamed senior figure in one of the institutes for Holocaust studies who claimed “there was too much emphasis on the Jewish aspects of the Holocaust.” Haaretz writer Anshel Pfeffer followed with an editorial entitled “The Holocaust isn’t just about the Jews.” Pfeffer asked if “Jews [can] honestly demand to reserve sole usage rights of the Holocaust for political purposes?” The Holocaust “has an immense universal meaning as well.”

(Read full article)

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Symptom of craziness

The Nazi-era annals of those with only tenuous Jewish links paradoxically illustrate how unparalleled the Holocaust was.


Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
09 April '10

The latest Egyptian blockbuster movie, Cousins (Welad Ela’am), ostensibly set in Tel Aviv (actually filmed in far-off Cape Town), unabashedly demonizes Israelis as Nazis. In one scene, as drivers halt their vehicles for Holocaust Remembrance Day’s memorial siren, the Arab hero provocatively asks an old man standing at solemn attention: “And what about the Holocaust you perpetrated against the Palestinians?”

Dwarfing and distorting the Holocaust serves our enemies – from Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Ramallah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas (who earned a PhD in Moscow for a dissertation which denied the Holocaust and simultaneously blamed it on Zionists).

This is the common Arab warp of history. It goes entirely unchallenged in the Arab/Muslim milieu and is fast becoming axiomatic in Europe and among the so-called progressives who proliferate in America’s media and campuses.

Their assorted misrepresentations omit to mention that the very word genocide was coined post-Holocaust specifically to describe what was plotted against the Jewish people. Eventually the term was devalued and used in reference to any bloody combat, though Europe’s Jews were never a combatant side and instigated no aggression against Germany. Not even the remotest casus belli existed against them.

THE NAZI-ERA annals of those with only tenuous Jewish links – such as the once-great Wittgenstein clan of Austria – paradoxically illustrate how unparalleled the Holocaust was, how distinct from even the worst massacres of recent history which are fallaciously compared to it and used to diminish its terrifying uniqueness.

This is particularly odd given the fact that the Wittgensteins weren’t Jewish according to any Jewish criteria, that none perished in any of Germany’s industrialized death facilities and that some Wittgenstein scions fought with distinction in the Wehrmacht. Unlike the struggling Jewish masses, the Wittgensteins were among the wealthiest members of the prewar European upper crust. They were intellectually brilliant and exceptionally eccentric by any yardstick. They could plainly afford to be.

(Read full article)
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