Yom ha-Atzmaut

Israeli flag hanging from my mirpeset (porch)

On Wednesday night, as I wrote in my last post, I was visiting friends in Tzur Hadassah and spent the end of Yom ha-Zikaron with them.

Yom ha-Atzmaut officially begins with a special national ceremony at 8:00 pm - the lighting of 12 torches at Har Herzl in Jerusalem. I watched part of the ceremony with my friends, something I hadn't done before during my previous visits to Israel. It was interesting. Apparently, every year there is a different theme and the organizers choose people connected to that theme to light the torches. The theme this year was water, so people from organizations that have something to do with water (like Mekorot, the national water carrier) or activists from groups that work for clean water (like the Society for the Protection of Nature) were chosen. Each person was introduced, then stepped forward, said a few words ending with "to the splendor of the state of Israel" (לתפארת מדינת ישראל), and then lit the torch.

After watching the torch-lighting, we went to the center of Tzur Hadassah and encountered the popular celebration of the day - complete with children spraying each other with shaving cream (fortunately not aiming mostly at adults), people wearing blinking glasses, headdresses, and even earrings, and holding enormous plastic hammers. (I remember, many years ago on Yom ha-Atzmaut going out to the center of town in Jerusalem and buying little plastic hammers that made a boink sound when you hit someone with them - they are apparently now passé, I didn't see any in Tzur Hadassah). There was entertainment - music and dance - and lots of people milling around. After a while the dance performances stopped, and there was another torch-lighting ceremony, this time by local people in education. And immediately afterward, fireworks!

 Little birds in the garden of my apartment building.

The next morning I got up relatively late and lazed around and took some photos of my garden.

Some of the beautiful roses in the garden.

Around 11 am I went to see other friends to have brunch with them on their porch. One of the great Israeli traditions on Yom ha-Atzmaut is to go out into the country and have a barbecue (or a mangal), but we didn't do that - we had bagels & lox.

Another traditional activity is a flyby by Israeli Air Force planes - we saw some big helicopters flying over the President's house (where there was a ceremony honoring the 100 best soldiers in the army), a formation of five planes together, and then some time later, a formation of four planes with exhaust trails making big circles in the sky (I didn't get any photos of them).

Three military helicopters flying over the President's Residence at the time of a ceremony honoring outstanding Israeli soldiers.

Five Israeli Air Force planes flying in formation over the skies of Jerusalem.

Then, later in the afternoon, we went out for our own visit to the countryside, for a hike and not a mangal. We went to a place called Hirbet Madras, which has several archaeological sites from the Second Temple period - first century BCE and CE, and into the early 2nd century. Below are photos of this beautiful area of the country and some of the archaeological sites.

Foothills of the Judean Hills, near Givat Yeshayahu, in the Adullam Park.

Looking across the Green Line, towards a large Jewish town/settlement, I don't know which one. The Green Line refers to the border between Israeli-held and Jordanian held areas of Palestine at the end of the 1948 War. Jordan named the area they occupied the West Bank (since Jordan was mostly on the east bank of the Jordan River, this was a way to integrate it into Jordan). In 1967 Israel conquered the West Bank.

Fig tree growing at the bottom of the entrance to caves where Jews hid from the Romans during the Bar Kochba revolt in the second century CE.

"Pyramid" over a Jewish burial cave, probably from the first century BC or CE

Cutting hay in the fields near Tzafririm.

The moshav of Zafririm.

Grasses drying in the late spring heat.

Looking towards fields from the Adullam Park.

Inside Jewish tomb from the end of the first century CE - on the right is an ossuary and its cover. An ossuary is a stone box where the bones were put a year after the burial in the cave, after the flesh had fallen off the bones.

Entrance of the Jewish burial cave - notice the round stone, which was rolled in front of the cave after burial. It was destroyed by vandals 15 years ago and recently restored.

Yom ha-Zikaron - Day of Remembrance

The day before Independence Day is Yom ha-Zikaron (יום הזיכרון) - Israel's day of remembrance for those who died in wars or terrorist attacks. It's a very somber day, in what felt like a more personal way than Yom ha-Shoah, which happened the previous week on Thursday. Beginning a few days beforehand, Israeli radio and television stations started to broadcast stories about fallen soldiers and those who died in terrorist attacks. On the day itself, that is all that was broadcast. I usually listen to Reshet Bet, which is the news station of Israel Radio (something like NPR in the US but more closely tied to the government), and from Tuesday afternoon onwards and throughout Wednesday they broadcast a series of stories about individuals and groups who had died, and interviewed survivors of various battles from the War of Independence onward, as well as families who had a relative who had died in battle or in a terrorist attack, and survivors of terrorist attacks. Sometimes I had to turn off the radio because it was simply too sad.

Yom ha-Zikaron began on Tuesday evening with a siren at 8:00 p.m., lasting for one minute. Immediately afterwards the official remembrance ceremony began at the Kotel (Western Wall). President Peres spoke, and I think Netanyahu did also. The El Malei Rahamim (God, full of compassion) prayer, with its mournful tune, was sung, as it always is during the remembrance of the dead.

The next morning when I got up I listened to more stories and then went out to do some shopping. As I was standing on Emek Refaim St. the morning siren went off at 11:00 a.m. Everything stopped - the cars in the street, pedestrians, people on bicycles. The cars stopped and the drivers got out and stood next to them. Pedestrians stopped in their tracks and from what I could see most people were bowing their heads. Oddly enough, two people continued - one a pedestrian, who was walking on the side of the street opposite from me. Then a motorbike appeared and kept weaving around all of the stopped cars as well as a bus and a big truck, and then disappearing north up the street. It's very unusual for that to happen, as far as I know, at least among most Israeli Jews - Arabs generally don't stop for the siren, nor do anti-Zionist haredi Jews, who don't respect the official celebration or commemorative days of the state, since they don't recognize its legitimacy. Nonetheless, it was very eerie to see all the people just stopped, without the usual traffic sounds, and the loud siren in our ears.

In the afternoon I went with a friend to Tzur Hadassah, which is a small community in the Judean hills not far from Jerusalem. I spent the evening with them, first celebrating their son's sixth birthday, and then going to a special service for the end of Yom ha-Zikaron. It was held at the house of Rabbi Levi Cooper, who is the rabbi of the small Orthodox synagogue Ha-Tzur ve-ha-Tzohar (the link is to an article in Hebrew on Ynet). The service is based on one written for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel for Yom Ha-Atzmaut, but it had definitely had some non-traditional aspects. We began by singing sad songs, which was followed by a brief video interview of the widow of a soldier who had died in the second Lebanon War in 2006 - he threw himself on a grenade to save the lives of his men. The songs then became happier as we approached Yom ha-Atzmaut. This part of the service ended with the recital of several psalms. For the first one, each congregant, first the men and then the women, recited the verses in turn. (Since this is an Orthodox shul, I hadn't expected the women to be asked!). Then the rabbi blew the shofar, and began the evening service (Ma'ariv). Prayers were sung with tunes from celebratory Israeli songs. It was a very moving service. I hadn't known what to expect at all, since I've never been to one of these services.

Life in Israel

I just got home from having a very nice dinner with a friend, turned on the radio to listen to a news-talk program, and then at 9:30 there was a brief interruption - "Color Red alarm in Sderot, Color Red alarm in Sderot." "Color Red" (צבע אדום) is the name for the warning system that sounds when a rocket is launched towards one of the southern communities from Gaza. I haven't heard anything more, if there was a rocket or not. (Sderot is very close to the border with Gaza).

More on British POWs at Auschwitz, including the father of Shimon Peres

The Jewish Chronicle has another article about the British soldiers held near Auschwitz:

As many as 1,400 British prisoners arrived at Auschwitz towards the end of 1943 and hundreds were forced to work at the IG Farben chemical factory....

In mid-1944, the POW camp was moved directly adjacent to the plant and was therefore in direct view of Auschwitz III (Buna-Monowitz). British prisoners therefore witnessed the routine brutality meted out to the Jewish slave labourers including those hanged from the gates of the camp as an example to others. At times the "kriegies", as the POWs were known, and the "stripies", as they called the Jewish prisoners, worked together, formed friendships and exchanged information. Thus it was that the British soldiers discovered the source of the sickly-sweet burning smell that hung over the camp. 

Another amazing piece of information revealed by the JC:

Yitzhak Persky, the father of Israeli President Shimon Peres, was held at Camp E715, as the British camp at Auschwitz was known. 

From another article at the JC:

Mr Persky joined the British army on the outbreak of war as a combat engineer or "sapper". He was first captured in Greece, but escaped and spent a year alone hiding in monasteries. The Greek underground later led him to other escaped British prisoners, reported to include Sergeant-Major Charlie Coward, an escape specialist whose exploits were later celebrated in the film The Password is Courage. A failed attempt to reach the Turkish coast led to a further capture and after serving time in a series of POW war camps, Mr Persky found himself in E715.

Another article tells more about the British POWs - 

The British prisoners of war (POWs) who were housed in the E715 prisoner of war camp at Auschwitz between September 1943 and January 1945 were forced to work at the I.G. Farben construction site. According to the Geneva Convention, it was not acceptable to have them produce war materiel. When that led some to protest their use in gasoline production, the I.G. Farben camp manager in charge, Gerhard Ritter, made it clear to them with his pistol that it was he who decided how the Geneva Convention was interpreted in Auschwitz.

The British POWs had to work about 12 hours a day, and days off work were few in number. They were deployed in a wide variety of work detachments, in some cases also as skilled workers. Many British POWs sabotaged the German war efforts as they worked. For example, they improperly laid cables or pipelines for the power plant of I.G. Auschwitz, and they damaged freight cars when working in the freight depot. The extent to which the British sabotage actions succeeded in delaying the building of the plant is unclear, however....

In general, the British POWs received better treatment than all the other groups of forced laborers of I.G. Auschwitz. Since the Germans treated Allied servicemen in accordance with the Geneva Convention, the British POWs had a right to receive food parcels from the Red Cross, correspond with their family members, and have visits from Red Cross representatives. Thanks to the food parcels, the British POWs had a relatively good diet. Thus they could forego the soup they received in I.G. Auschwitz and give it to individual concentration camp inmates.

Another longer article gives more information - The British Connection to Auschwitz.

British prisoners of war were imprisoned at Auschwitz and were visited by the Red Cross

Martin Bright, of the Jewish Chronicle (UK), has written an article about British POWs imprisoned at Auschwitz during WWII. The POW camp was called E715 and housed about 1,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers. They were not treated like the Jews - they received Red Cross food packages and were protected by the Geneva Conventions. (Soldiers from Western armies were generally treated this way by the Germans when they were captured - Soviet POWs on the other hand were starved to death and worked as slave laborers, and more than 3 million of them died at the hands of the Nazis). Another POW camp was at Teschen, about fifty miles away from Auschwitz. (For more on the British POWs, see a January 14, 2010 article in the JC by Simon Round - "Revealed: The British Troops Imprisoned at Auschwitz").

The most amazing fact in this article, in my opinion, is this:

The Red Cross visited Auschwitz in the summer of 1944 and in September reported the concerns of Sergeant-Major Lowe, the British camp leader - or "Man of Confidence" - at Teschen.

"Spontaneously, the principal Man of Confidence at Teschen asked us if we were well-informed about the 'shower room'. Indeed the rumour runs that in [Auschwitz] a very modern shower room exists where the detainees will be gassed in series... This was impossible to prove. The detainees themselves did not talk about it."

The Red Cross visited Auschwitz in the summer of 1944?! I presume he means they visited the E715 POW camp, not the extermination camp itself. Nonetheless, they were quite close to the extermination camp, as is apparent from Bright's article. Bright writes about the British POWs:

They knew about the summary executions, they could hear the sounds of mistreatment and see the physical condition of the "stripeys", as the Jewish inmates were known to them. They could also smell the burning flesh from the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau and those who did manage to speak to Jewish prisoners heard about the "showers".

And if the POWs could hear the sounds and see the physical conditions of the Jewish inmates, and smell the burningn flesh, so could the Red Cross visitors. Did they make this information known publicly? Did they press the Nazis to visit the extermination camp itself? Their record is otherwise not very good, as is shown by the evidence of the Red Cross visit to Theresienstadt also in the summer of 1944.

The Danish Red Cross and the International Red Cross sent 3 delegates to Theresienstadt to examine the camp on June 23, 1944. They were allowed in at the insistence of the Danish government, which wanted the Red Cross to gather information about Danish Jewish prisoners in the camp (they had been sent there in October 1943). The Nazis prepared the camp before they arrived and created an elaborate Potemkin village, presenting it as a model village where a soccer game was being played and the children's opera Brundibar was presented. The International Red Cross inspectors were taken in and did not report anything untoward at the camp. (Information from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website - Theresienstadt: Red Cross Visit).

When I visited Theresienstadt in the summer of 2005, I was taken aback to see that at the Small Fortress, which was used by the Gestapo for political prisoners as well as Jews, that the slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" had been painted at the entrance of the prison. Did the Red Cross not see this part of the camp? If they did go there, did they wonder about the strange slogan?

New Review of the Jewish Annotated New Testament

How Jewish Is the New Testament?

Review is by James D. G. Gunn, who is an Emeritus professor at Durham in England.

A tale of two protests on Israel Independence Day, 2012

Can someone tell me why one of these protests was allowed to happen while the other was suppressed by the police? The violent one was not suppressed, while the peaceful one was prevented by the police, who kept the activists from leaving their office, and arrested three of them.

Neturei Karta 

Neturei Karta hold anti-Israel protest on Independence Day

Members of radical anti-Zionist sect take to streets in Bnei Brak, torch Israeli flags while country celebrates 64th Independence Day

Kobi Nahshoni

While the State of Israel celebrated 64 years of independence, a group of Neturei Karta demonstrators burned Israeli flags in Bnei Brak.

An eyewitness told Ynet that several members of the anti-Zionist Jewish sect rioted in front of the Lithuanian Yeshiva and set Israeli flags on fire, while calling out slogans against Israel. According to the eyewitness, dozens of Bnei Brak residents gathered around the demonstrators and protested against their anti-Israel behavior.

Neturei Karta demonstrators burn Israeli flags (Photo: Yisrael Cohen)

Several of the Yeshiva students confronted the protesters until they eventually left the premises.

One radical haredi activist told Ynet that he and his friends have been trying to expand their protest outside of Jerusalem. He expressed his satisfaction with the groups' protest in Bnei Brak.

"We will continue to express our anti-Zionist and anti-Israel views. It is our truth," he said.

Zochrot

Israeli left-wing activists held indoors by police during Independence Day event 

Jack Khoury

Members of the leftist organization Zochrot were attempting to distribute flyers containing the names of Palestinian villages that were evacuated or destroyed in 1948, when they were held indoors by Tel Aviv police for almost four hours.
Israel Police prohibited members of a left-wing NGO from exiting a Tel Aviv building on the eve of Israel's Independence Day, activists said, claiming that the lockdown was meant to prevent them from distributing postcards concerning the displacement of Palestinians during the War of Independence in 1948.

According to the report, members of Zochrot – an NGO working to inform the Israeli public of what the Palestinians call the Nakba, or, the Palestinian disaster in 1948 – police officers surrounded the group's offices, and barred the doors for four hours on Wednesday.

The activists planned to hand out postcards in Hebrew, Arabic, and English during Independence Day celebrations in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, which cite the names of villages from which Palestinians were uprooted and which were destroyed in 1948.

Liat Rosenberg, the NGO's director general, said that "as we were about to step out of the offices, at around 10:30 P.M., we discovered, to our dismay, that the police were already surrounding the building and had closed all the exits."

"The senior police staff at the scene made it clear that they were determined not to allow us to 'disrupt public order,' and so did not permit us to leave the premises," Rosenberg added.

According to the head of Zochrot, the 15 activists were trapped inside the buildings for close to four hours, with police officials indicating that they would allow them to leave if they agreed to hand over the materials, presented their identification, and agree to being questioned and searched.

"At the corner of Ibn Gabirol and Mane streets tonight, silencing entered a whole new realm, with a bitter taste of dark regimes," Rosenberg said.

An attorney present at the scene told the police officers that they had no cause to ask the activists to identify themselves, and warned that she could file a complaint for false imprisonment.

During a verbal exchange between activists and police, three NGO members were arrested, including Yuval Halprin, who wasn't inside the building, but who chose to read out the names of Palestinian villages in central Israel from outside the offices.

Eitan Bornstein, Zochrot's spokesman, told Haaretz that the incident represented a severe aggravation of the police's and the establishment in general, saying: "What we sought to do was to hand out postcards, not anything violent. There were people threatening to beat us, and they weren’t arrested."

Zochrot announced that the NGO would file a suit against the police for false imprisoning on Sunday.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) called the incident political persecution with the aid of the police, adding that, "needless to say, the police's activities had no legal grounds."

"Freedom of speech isn't suspected for Independence Day," ACRI spokesman Hagai Elad said.

Tel Aviv District police responded, calling the events an “illegal protest that was not authorized by the police.” Police representatives stated: “The police did not allow the protesters to reach the central event, display signs and create provocation, but did allow them to protest in an area far away from the central Independence Day event. Three protesters that caused a disturbance were arrested on suspicion for disrupting the peace.”