IS HOLOCAUST EDUCATION FAILING?

Video Of The Week -Holocaust Education: Nuremberg Laws - https://tinyurl.com/yacaaljf

 JPOST - BY MICHAEL FREUND – 29-01-2019

According to a poll of 2,000 people conducted by the UK Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, one in 20 British adults do not believe the Holocaust occurred.

Over the past 74 years, extraordinary efforts have been made worldwide to commemorate the Holocaust and preserve the memory of the six million holy Jewish souls who were murdered by the Germans and their accomplices.

Museums and memorials have been erected, annual state and communal ceremonies have been held, and countless books, articles and films have been released to ensure that the world never forgets what was done to the Jewish people in the heart of modern-day, 20th-century Europe.

But if the results of two recent surveys are any indication, something is seriously remiss and urgent efforts need to be made to expand Holocaust education.

According to a poll of 2,000 people conducted by the UK Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, one in 20 British adults do not believe the Holocaust occurred and nearly half of all those questioned said they did not know how many Jews had been murdered. Some 20% of respondents said they thought that fewer than two million Jews had been killed while another 8% asserted that the scale of the Holocaust has been exaggerated.

In its report about the findings, The Guardian noted, “The scale of ignorance about the Holocaust has shocked experts.” Olivia Marks-Woldman of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust told the paper, “I must stress that I don’t think [the poll respondents] are active Holocaust deniers – people who deliberately propagate and disseminate vile distortions – but their ignorance means they are susceptible to myths and distortions.”

Indeed, how is it possible that in Britain, the land of Winston Churchill, who once described the murder of Jews at Auschwitz as “the most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world,” so many people can be so ignorant about what the Nazis did to the Jews?

Moreover, the Holocaust is a subject that is taught in British schools. A national commemoration was held in London this past Sunday on International Holocaust Remembrance Day with senior government officials taking part and numerous events were organized throughout the country as in years past.

Yet somehow, there are still sizable portions of British society that are oblivious to the unparalleled slaughter of Jews that took place.  

No less worrisome is a survey conducted last month in France by the Ifop research group for the American Jewish Committee and two other organizations, which revealed that 10% of respondents had never heard of the Holocaust and 21% did not know when it had happened. 

This, too, is simply difficult to fathom in light of France’s own sordid involvement in the Holocaust, when the collaborationist Vichy regime passed a series of antisemitic laws known as the Statute des Juifs in October 1940 and subsequently began to deport thousands of Jews. In the Vel d’Hiv roundup on July 16-17, 1942, French police arrested 13,000 Jews in just two days. Altogether, more than 75,000 French Jews were sent to death camps, where over 96% of them were murdered, including my grandmother’s first cousin and his wife.

Three French presidents, Jacques Chirac, Francois Hollande and the incumbent Emanuel Macron, have all acknowledged to one degree or another France’s responsibility for the persecution and deportation of Jews.

Nonetheless, as in Britain, a not insignificant number of citizens appear to be clueless in regard to the worst act of genocide committed by mankind.

These studies are in line with other, similar surveys in recent years that show a mounting and worrisome trend toward Holocaust ignorance, particularly among the younger generation.

In April 2018, a poll conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany found that 22% of American millennials said they either have not heard of the Holocaust or are not sure if they did, while an astonishing two-thirds did not know what Auschwitz was.
These figures were much higher than those among older Americans, indicating the existence of a generation gap in knowledge about the Holocaust.

It is difficult to ponder these statistics, as they appear to show that Holocaust education is failing to achieve its objectives as a growing number of people are simply uninformed. And as we all know, it is ignorance of the Holocaust which opens the door to its denial.

But not all is bleak and there is a silver lining to be found in the data. In the study conducted in the UK, 83% said that it was important to know about the Holocaust and more than three-quarters of those surveyed said that more must be done to educate people.

Similarly, the April 2018 survey among Americans revealed that 93% believed that all students should learn about the Holocaust in school.
This demonstrates that people are open to learning more and grasp that the Holocaust was a major historical event worthy of study. They are not hostile to the idea of Holocaust education nor do they minimize its value but rather seek to be more knowledgeable.

Our task now is to seize upon this openness and redouble our efforts to make sure that the horrors of the past are not lost with the passage of time.

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STOP TUNNELS AND WAR

Video Of The Week - Exodus of Jews from Arab Lands-  https://tinyurl.com/y994c8ym

BY JPOST EDITORIAL - 15-01-2019

What were those Hezbollah tunnels built for? Is there any doubt that they were to be used in the next war with Israel? 

Three days ago, the IDF announced that its effort to find and destroy Hezbollah cross-border attack tunnels was coming to an end, after a sixth such underground passage had been the discovered and was being destroyed.

This was the biggest and most sophisticated of all six tunnels, one that stretched half a mile inside Lebanon and a few dozen meters into Israel, some eight football fields long in total. This was one with height and width, carved out at a depth of 55 meters (180 feet) making it the deepest of the tunnels uncovered by the IDF. Inside was a terrorist’s lair, with electricity, a railway to move equipment and garbage, exit stairs along the route, and other aspects that made it more sophisticated than the others, and likely the most valuable one to Hezbollah.

What were those Hezbollah tunnels built for? Is there any doubt that they were to be used in the next war with Israel?

“Their goal has been to penetrate our territory, to kidnap our people, including civilians, murder civilians and conquer the northern piece of the Galilee,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a briefing last month along the border after inspecting the military operation. “This is not merely an act of aggression; it is an act of war.”

If this “act” of war becomes part of a sustained activity, everyone knows what comes next: all-out war. Israel will defend itself and bomb over and under all locations engaged in that Third Lebanon War, targeting the missile launch sites that emanate alongside homes in the small Lebanese villages short kilometers north of the border.

In those villages – Hezbollah uses “every third house in southern Lebanon,” Netanyahu said – are Lebanese grandmothers playing with their grandchildren, sitting over an entranceway to a tunnel. There are hospitals, supermarkets and schools. All are being used to cover Hezbollah terrorist activity and all will be fair targets in a future war. The photographs of the casualties will be on page 1 in every newspaper in the world, and the UN Security Council will meet to condemn Israeli aggression.

Then the Security Council will meet. Not today, when the blatant evidence of these acts of war being perpetrated along Israel’s sovereign border is being ignored. Only then.

It is shameful that the United Nations, and almost every country in the world, is not speaking out against these self-evident truths: the tunnels were a new underground frontier to be used by the Shi’ite terrorist group to infiltrate fighters, as an opening salvo in a future war accompanying the launching of rockets, missiles and mortar shells. As Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said when he helicoptered to the North last month to view the IDF work, Hezbollah did not dig tunnels that breach Israeli territory in order to “go shopping.”

To its great credit, the United States is one country that has spoken out. On Monday in Beirut, after meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale condemned Hezbollah.

“While Lebanon has the right to defend itself, that is the right of the Lebanese state alone,” Hale said. “It is unacceptable to have a militia outside the control of the state, and unanswerable to all people of Lebanon, digging attack tunnels across the blue line to Israel or assembling an arsenal of over 100,000 missiles with which to threaten regional stability.”

The northern border with Lebanon has the potential to become the next theater of war. Thousands of Hezbollah guerillas were sent to Syria in 2013 to fight alongside the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Now that Assad’s forces have emerged victorious, the guerillas have returned and attention turns to the Israel-Lebanon border.

“The people of Lebanon have to understand that Hezbollah is putting them in jeopardy, and we expect Lebanon to take action against this, to protest against this, not to give in to this,” Netanyahu said. “And the fact that the Lebanese army is doing nothing means that they are either unable, or unwilling, or both.”

The IDF says it “is monitoring and is in possession of a number of sites where Hezbollah is digging underground infrastructure that has yet to cross into Israeli territory.”

The world has an opportunity to speak up and work to prevent the Third Lebanon War. We don’t understand what everyone is waiting for.

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The UK and EU build an illegal road

Video Of The Week  - EU Supports Illegal Building -   https://tinyurl.com/ybhjxoh9

By Naomi Kahn, Regavim, 7-1- 2019 https://tinyurl.com/yavv889x

                                      Photo of the signage along the route of the illegal roadway

                                                             Credit: Regavim

The Arab takeover of Israel Defense Forces’ training grounds in the southern Hebron Hills continues: The British government and the European Union are paving an illegal road through the very same training ground that was the subject of Regavim’s recent Supreme Court petition.

In recent weeks, illegal roadworks have been conducted in the heart of an IDF training area. The road is scheduled for completion in mid-February of this year, only weeks from today, and the signs along the route of this illegal roadway leave no room for doubt: “This project is funded by the U.K. through the European Union and the Municipal Development and Lending Fund.”

The illegal construction on IDF Training Ground 917 covers thousands of dunams; it includes hundreds of residential structures, schools, clinics and mosques. Illegal infrastructure corridors for access roads, internal roads, power lines, etc.—covering dozens of kilometers more—is funded by a combination of foreign bodies, among them the European Union, the United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi.

he bottom line: A new Arab city is being built in a strategically critical area, creating a swath of territory under Arab control stretching from the Arad Valley to the Hebron Hills and eastern Gush Etzion.

In the 1980s, a handful of Bedouin families lived in tents and temporary structures on the grounds of the training zone. Although it had no legal authority to do so, the Civil Administration set aside a number of “non-enforcement zones,” where they allowed these squatters to build without the construction permits, planning approval or zoning codes required by law. This past November, 

Regavim submitted maps of the area to the Supreme Court, proving that over the past several years more than 500 illegal structures were built outside of the non-enforcement zones—specifically, in the areas that connect these zones..

In a case of give-them-a-finger-and-they’ll-take-the-entire-hand, the illegal construction in recent years has focused on connecting the clusters that the Civil Administration previously decided to “overlook.” The new U.K.-E.U.. roadworks connect a number of these clusters.

In the recent Supreme Court hearing, the government’s lawyer admitted that the “arrangement” that had authorized illegal construction “reflects an historic reality, but does not reflect the current policy of the government regarding illegal construction.” The government’s representative stated that the State of Israel intends to implement planning and regulation of the illegal construction in this area, and is currently carrying out routine law-enforcement procedures there “as per established priorities.”

Regavim expressed sharp criticism of the Civil Administration.

“Apparently, statements made in court are one thing, and action in the field is another,” says Yishai Hemo, Regavim’s Field Coordinator for Judea and Samaria. “The British and the European Union are conducting illegal activities on IDF training grounds, and aren’t the least bit shy about taking full ‘credit’ for it. Apparently, they don’t believe that the Civil Administration will enforce the law at all. We call upon the Foreign Ministry to respond forcefully to this violation of Israeli law and sovereignty, and demand that the Defense Ministry stop the illegal roadwork and protect the IDF’s training zones.”

The Arab Women of Israel

Video Of The Week - Israeli Muslim Arab Lady Bus Driver - https://tinyurl.com/y78mkopn

The full article, was written by Charles Abelson, member of TBT (Truth Be Told).- https://tinyurl.com/y6u5gdo3

  

The Social Revolution of Arab Women in Israel The status of Arab women in Israel is improving significantly. Hadas Fuchs, a researcher at the Taub Institute, published a study in 2018 on the integration of Arab women in the labor market in Israel. The most striking detail of her research relates to a revolution in the education of Arab women: 15% of students in higher education in Israel are Arab women, even though the proportion of Arab women among the general population is only 10%. In fact, the number of female Arab students in higher education has doubled since the beginning of 2000. As a result, women in Arab society are much more educated than men. Female students at Arab high schools comprise 52% of students studying computer programming and sciences, 55% in electronics, 59% in mathematics, and 70% in chemistry. The employment rate of Arab women jumped from 35% to 40% in the past year alone.

Israeli-Arab captain of women’s basketball team. Shahd Abboud, who plays for the Hapoel Petah Tikvah women’s basketball team in Israel, opened the 2018/19 season as their new captain, making history as the first female Arab captain of a professional Israeli basketball team in the top league.

First Arab woman appointed Dean at Hebrew University.

Prof. Mona Khoury-Kassabri has been appointed dean of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s School of Social Work. Prof. Mona Khoury-Kassabri is the first Arab woman to be appointed dean at the Hebrew University, and may well be the only Arab woman to serve as dean at any university in Israel.

A Christian Arab, Khoury-Kassabri has made history in more ways than one. Not only is she the first female Arab dean at the university, but she was born to illiterate parents and raised in one of the poorest crime and drug-infested neighborhoods in Haifa. Not every youngster there was a juvenile delinquent, and she wasn’t, either. More than that, she was born with ambition, a factor that took her beyond high school to an academic education and career, which together with other Arab women who have succeeded in academia, albeit not quite to the same extent, makes her a role model for other young Arab women who are striving to realize their potential and are aiming for new horizons.

Bedouin woman joins Israeli police rescue unit. Rana Jaboua, a resident of the Bedouin Negev village of al-Fara’a has become the first female Bedouin in Israel to join the Israel Police Rescue team, Jaboua is part of a unit that helps hikers in the Judean Desert if they become lost or injured.

Rana Jaboua Sabrin Saadi Israeli Bedouin Policewoman Blazing Trail Recently, Israel dedicated new police stations in the Arab villages of Jisr az-Zarqa and Kafr Kanna. Four days later, a short video on Facebook showed Sabrin Saadi, a young and also the first policewoman from the Bedouin village of Basmat Tabun, making her way to the Kafr Kanna station in her uniform wearing a hijab, walking past a group of Arab demonstrators. Saadi's father, Ali Saadi, said, "We are part of this society, so we should serve it. The people attacking her are a gang of wild kids with nothing better to do with their lives. They should go find themselves and think about what, if anything, they have actually done on behalf of their community."

The first Arab national service volunteer at the President's Residence. Hanan Dabbah 19, resident of Deir al-Asad—an Arab town in the Galilee is the first female Muslim Arab in Israel to volunteer for National Service; she is the first Arab to serve in the President's Residence; "I opened the door myself. I want more people to take that step. I want them to understand that those who give—shall receive.

The state is the home of all its citizens, and as a citizen of the State of Israel I have to contribute in order to obtain all my rights," Dabbah explained. 'It was important for my parents that we see the positive sides of Israeli society.' Dabbah left home and moved to Jerusalem, where she shares an apartment with other National Service volunteers. She is the only Arab woman in the house. The girls have created a pleasant and respectful home. On Fridays I bring the Quran to the apartment because it is a sacred day for Muslims, and the girls accept that. We keep Shabbat together. During Ramadan, I break the fast with them," she elaborated. "I want to promote the representation of women in Arab local government. It's important for me to raise awareness and level of education among women. There are many Arabs who marry straight after high school. If that's their decision then okay, but mostly it isn't. I want women to have a voice" Dabbah concluded.

The first female Muslim Israeli diplomat. Muslim women in Israel are doctors, pharmacists, entrepreneurs, bus drivers, judges, IDF soldiers, etc. Now Israel gets its first Muslim, female diplomat, when Rasha Atamny from Baqa al-Gharbiya becomes first secretary at the Israeli embassy in Ankara, Turkey.

Ethiopian Jew is new Israel UN rep. Ethiopian immigrant Danielle Daseta, will represent Israel at the United Nations for environmental, developmental and economic issues. Daseta made Aliyah in 1984 during Operation Moses. She has a BA in governance and diplomacy and attended the "Israel@heart" leadership program. As part of her new position, Daseta will be promoting Israeli innovation and collaborations with other members of the international organization.

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Christian Persecution

Video Of The Week - Bethlehem's Christians ethnically cleansed by PA- https://tinyurl.com/ya4rj4r6

JPost “Opinion”– 23-12-2018

The majority of Christians in Israel will not be celebrating this week, as they are Greek Orthodox, and their Christmas falls on January 7.

But this is still a good time to take stock of religious freedom in our region.

Earlier this month, the head of the Church of England wrote in the Sunday Telegraphthat millions of Middle Eastern Christians are on the verge of “imminent extinction.”

“In the birthplace of our faith, the community faces extinction,” Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby wrote, calling it “the worst situation since the Mongol invasions of the 13th century.”

Christians face government harassment in Egypt, leading them to emigrate in record numbers.

Lebanese Christians fear Hezbollah’s growing power in their country, along with an influx of Syrian refugees. Turkish Christians are also facing oppression by their government. And in Iraq, the Christian population has been nearly wiped out, but those remaining are trying to rebuild their lives.

Closer to home, the Christian Palestinian population is in a constant downward trend.

Christians have long been fleeing Palestinian-controlled areas in light of systemic abuse. Terrorists affiliated with then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat famously raided and trashed the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002, holding monks hostage.

Last year, Christians were only 2% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, less than half their numbers a generation ago.

In 1950 in Bethlehem, Jesus’s birthplace, 86% residents were Christians. In 2017, they were only 12%.

In Gaza, there were 6,000 Christians when Hamas took control in 2006, but as of 2016, there were only 1,100. Hamas has murdered Palestinian Christians for their faith, and commandeered the Gaza Baptist Church for combat, because it’s one of the tallest buildings in Gaza City.

Despite this, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas still claims to be a defender of Christians and the Palestinian leadership on the whole thinks it ought to control Christian holy sites – all the while denying history at those sites.

Palestinians like to claim the “Jesus was a Palestinian,” even though he was Jewish. And despite the importance of the Temple in Jerusalem to the New Testament, many deny that there was any Temple at all.

These denials continue to this day, but the most famous one may be when Arafat told then-US president Bill Clinton that the Jewish connection to Jerusalem was a falsehood.

Clinton told Arafat that he’s wrong; as a Christian, he knows the Jewish Temple was there.

Meanwhile, in Israel, the Christian population has stayed mostly stable at around 2%, growing by about 5,000 in the past 20 years.
Christians are free to worship in Israel without persecution or pressure from the authorities.

The latest controversy with the churches in Jerusalem shows the stark difference between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East.

The crux of the dispute is about management of land owned by the Greek Orthodox church, on which private Israelis reside.

Jerusalem residents are concerned that when the church sells the land to third parties, their homes will be endangered, whereas the church wants to use their vast tracts for must-needed funds.

This is not a matter that limits Christian worship or that would impact or harm the vast majority of Christians in Israel – though that is not to make light of the dispute, which should be resolved.

In any case, President Reuven Rivlin intervened in favor of the churches Saturday night, so no changes are currently being made.
Religious freedom is such in Israel that there was been a growing trend of Israeli Christians enlisting in the IDF, even though they are not required to do so, out of patriotism and appreciation for Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with some of these soldiers on Sunday to wish them a happy holiday.

As Christmas approaches, we should appreciate living in a country with these freedoms, and hope, in these bleak times for Christians across the Middle East, that their situations will improve.

Turkish Christians are also facing oppression by their government. And in Iraq, the Christian population has been nearly wiped out.

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