News Digest — 4/17/23
Israel Set To Observe Holocaust Remembrance Day; Nearly 150,000 Survivors Live In The Jewish State
The number of Holocaust survivors living in Israel stands at nearly 150,000 according to statistics published on Sunday (16th) by the Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Israel is set to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day beginning on Monday evening (17th).
The official state opening will take place at 8 pm in Warsaw Ghetto Square at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem.
The 147,199 Holocaust survivors residing in the Jewish state include 521 new immigrants from war-torn Ukraine who last year were recognized as survivors of the Nazi genocide.
Holocaust Remembrance Day, an annual event in Israel commemorating the six-millions Jew murdered by the Germans and their collaborators, and those who fought back and took part in rescue efforts, takes place this year from Monday evening (17th) until the following evening. The somber day features a two-minute siren at 10 a.am Tuesday morning (18th) local time when the country comes to a standstill.
One of the central themes of this year’s commemoration is Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, as the world marks 80 years since the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
According to the data, 462 Holocaust survivors celebrated their 100th birthdays this year. Around 31,000 are more than 90 years old. The average age of survivors is 85 and the youngest is 76.
Haifa is home to the largest population of Shoah survivors in Israel, followed by Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Sixty-three percent of Holocaust survivors in Israel were born in Europe. Significant numbers of Holocaust survivors came from outside Europe, including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Iraq.
(jns.org; worldisraelnews.com)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu To Bereaved Dee Family: ‘The Pain Never Goes Away’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday (16th) arrived at the home of the Dee family in Efrat to pay a condolence visit following the murders of Lucy Dee and her daughters Maia and Rina in a terrorist shooting attack in the Jordan Valley over the Passover holiday.
The Prime Minister heard from the husband and father of the victims, Rabbi Leo Dee, the story of their aliyah to Israel from Britain. Rabbi Dee said that he knows that if he could ask his wife whether she regretted moving to Israel, given her murder, she would say that she would have still made aliyah.
“The Land of Israel was acquired through suffering,” Netanyahu told the grieving family. “Now your wife and daughters will live inside you.”
Tally Dee, the youngest daughter of the Dee family, asked Netanyahu how he coped with the death of his older brother Yoni in 1976. The Prime Minister replied that at first he thought life was over, and when he was told during the seven days of shiva that there is life after such a loss, he could not believe it, but in the end those who told him that were right. Netanyahu added that the pain the family now feels will be with them for the rest of their lives, but it will not always be as acute as it is now.
Netanyahu was accompanied in his visit by Cabinet Secretaries Tzachi Braverman and Yossi Fox, and by Military Secretary Avi Gill.
(isnn.com)
Son Of Iranian Shah Announces Visit To Israel; Arriving Monday
Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Mohammad Reza Shah of Iran and Empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran, announced his intention to visit Israel on Monday (17th).
His father, Shah Reza Pahlavi was removed from power during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
He added, “I want the people of Israel to know that the Islamic Republic does not represent the Iranian people. The ancient bond between our people can be rekindled to the benefit of both nations. I’m going to Israel to play my role in building toward that brighter future,” he added.
Pahlavi stated that he intends to meet with government officials, visit Israel’s famous monuments like the Western Wall, the Baha’i Gardens and other Baha’i holy places. Pahlavi also intends to pay his respects to victims of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Intelligence Minister Gila Gamaliel has confirmed she will be hosting the prince. She announced that “we are taking the first step today to rebuild the ties between the nations.”
On Twitter, Pahlavi said he will deliver a speech detailing the importance of establishing a democracy in Iran where religious diversity and freedom of speech are safeguarded, alongside other human rights.
Pahlavi will also speak on the importance of investing Iran’s wealth of natural resources into Iran and its people, as opposed to investing in foreign terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
More recently Iran has sought to bring its conflict with Israel to the Jewish state’s borders. Its backing of Hezbollah and Hamas was key to that strategy over the decades. For instance, Tehran supplies Hamas with financial support and also helped it develop longer-range rockets and a larger arsenal. Whereas Hamas rockets could once only travel a few kilometers, now they can reach most parts of Israel.
In First: Iran’s President Addresses Palestinians in Gaza, Urges Continued Attacks On Israel
Iran’s President on Friday (14th) delivered an unprecedented speech to an annual pro-Palestinian rally in the Gaza Strip – a display of Iran’s importance to the Hamas militant group that rules the territory.
In a virtual address to hundreds of supporters of Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group gathered at a soccer field, Ebrahim Raisi urged Palestinians to press on with their struggle against Israel.
“The initiative to self-determination is today in the hands of the Palestinian fighters,” Raisi said, dismissing Hamas’ domestic political rival, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, which has long sought to win Palestinian statehood through negotiations with Israel. The Palestinian Authority administers autonomous enclaves in West Bank areas.
Raisi’s speech was seen as part of efforts to mend a rift between Hamas and its long-time patron, Iran, over the devastating civil war in Syria.
Raisi addressed the crowd on the occasion of “Jerusalem Day,” or al-Quds day after the city’s Arabic name, which falls on the final Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Jerusalem is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. The mosque sits atop the Temple Mount that was the site of the biblical Jewish Temples and is revered as the most sacred site in Judaism.
The Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, in his speech Friday (14th), praised the rocket fire into Israel from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria last week, saying “the rockets came like a simple electric shock.”
For the past four decades, al-Quds Day parades have drawn thousands to the streets around the Middle East. The event is most dramatic in Iran, where crowds burn Israeli flags and chant pledges to liberate Jerusalem.
Israel, under threat from five surrounding Arab countries, captured eastern Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War.
The US State Department reports that Iran provides some $100 million a year to Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The civil war in Syria strained Hamas’ relationship with Iran. In 2012, Hamas closed its Damascus office and left Syria following President Bashar Assad’s brutal crackdown on a popular uprising – including on the Muslim Brotherhood, a political Islamist movement with which Hamas is aligned.
But the Hamas military wing has been drifting closer to Iran, a main backer of Assad. Recent steps toward reconciliation between Hamas and Assad late last year have pointed toward Iran’s growing influence on Gaza rulers.
8 Terror Attacks Thwarted By Forces In Jerusalem
Eight terrorist attacks were thwarted by police and security forces in Jerusalem recently, the Jerusalem Municipality and Israel Police announced Monday morning (17th).
Jerusalem District Commander Doron Turgeman noted that some of the attacks were thwarted by vigilant police officers who spotted the attackers.
“We are nearing the end of a significant and complex month. All the commanders who sit around the table and the cooperating elements lead the strenuous and continuous work in a value-oriented manner and with great dedication,” said Turgeman.
“We are here both morning and night out of great faith and a great mission, in order to allow everyone in the city of Jerusalem to enjoy the freedom of worship and the illumination of all holidays.”
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion expressed his gratitude to the police officers during a visit to the police headquarters next to the Western Wall on Sunday night (16th), saying “You work around the clock and take care of the security of the residents of Jerusalem, even when the month of Ramadan happens together with Passover and Easter and tens of thousands of tourists from all over the State of Israel and the world come here.”
“I know that most of you were not home on Seder night and that should not be taken for granted – you are the ones that allowed us to continue with a normal routine,” added Lion. “I walked around the city during the holiday and everyone was happy. I don’t think there is such a place in the State of Israel where everyone works together as one hand as here, so we can get through events safely.”
Thessaloniki Marks 80th Anniversary Of Auschwitz Trains
Greece’s second-largest city, Thessaloniki commemorated on Sunday (16th) the 80th anniversary of the departure of the first train convoy for the Auschwitz camp.
Officials led by President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, marched from Eleftherias (Freedom) Square, where members of the city’s Jewish community were rounded up by the German occupying forces, to the city’s Old Train Station, where they laid red carnations on the tracks. Some marchers held a banner reading “Thessaloniki Auschwitz 80 Years: Never Again” and white balloons carrying the same message were released into the air.
The first train carrying Jewish people departed from the station, which is now a freight terminal, on March 15, 1943; and the last one on August 7 that year. Most Jews, more than 48,000 of them, were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau sub-camp, where almost all were immediately gassed. Another 4,000 were sent to Treblinka and a similar number to Bergen-Belsen. About 90% of a once-thriving community, most of them descendants of Sephardic Jews who fled Spain after 1492, perished in the Holocaust.
“Thessaloniki has acknowledged its part of the responsibility” in the fate of the Jewish community, Sakellaropoulou said. Thessaloniki, once part of the Ottoman Empire, was captured by Greece in 1912, and relations between the Greek and Jewish communities were often uneasy. The tension was exacerbated by the arrival, after 1922, of ethnic Greeks fleeing Asia Minor following Greece’s defeat in a three-year war with Turkey. The new impoverished refugees saw Thessaloniki’s Jews, many of them successful professionals, as remnants of the hated Ottoman Empire.
David Saltiel, head of Greece’s Central Jewish Council and vice president of the World Jewish Congress, expressed his satisfaction that a long-planned Holocaust museum in Thessaloniki will soon be ready.
The Israeli government was represented by Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis , who mentioned that his paternal grandparents left Thessaloniki in 1944, the year the city was liberated from the Germans. Akunis was one of the featured speakers at the ceremony along with Yaakov Hagoel, chairman of the World Zionist Organization.
Among the attendees was 75-year-old Shlomo Sevy, both of whose parents were among the rare Auschwitz survivors. He said his father had told him “Don’t ask how we stayed alive,” he told the Associated Press.
There are now only about 1,200 Jews living in Thessaloniki, once home to Europe’s largest Jewish community called the “Jerusalem of the Balkans.” Smaller Jewish populations in other Greek cities were also heavily affected by the Holocaust, but not to the same extent. In Athens, especially, many Jews passed themselves off as Christians with the assistance of the local population.
(israelhayom.com; ap.com)
