Jewish state ready to warmly embrace the return of its tourists
By Jonathan Feldstein
A hopeful and dominant topic of conversation at this week’s National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention in Nashville has been the re-opening of tourism to Israel for all, vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. Two years ago, at the same event and location, the early impact of the COVID virus started to be felt with early reports of Israel’s national airline laying off the first 1000 employees. Ultimately, nearly all tourism would be shut down leading to millions of cancelations, tens of thousands of Israelis in tourism and tourism related industries losing their jobs, and deep economic hardships, the ripple effects of which are still being felt.
Two years later, the sense of returned opportunities to visit Israel and restored tourism are breeding hope and optimism.
Restarting Tourism. After two years of closures and devastating losses, tourism is back in business.(photo credit: MICHAEL DIMENSTEIN)
Eyal Carlin, Israel’s Tourism Commissioner for North America, amplified the hope.
“We are already seeing tourists coming back, and bookings for peek seasons in the fall are near pre-pandemic levels. One of the important reasons to be at the NRB convention this week is because while Israel opened for all tourists as of March 1, many people do not know that yet. We want to get the word out that Israel is open for tourism again, so people can plan their trips that have been delayed because of the pandemic, or just the dream trip that people have been looking forward to.”
The sense of optimism was echoed by Robert Vander Maten, President of Noseworthy Travel which specializes in Christian tourism to Israel. The past two years have been devastating for many specializing in Christian tourism to Israel. Noseworthy has deferred dozens of groups tours, rescheduling some groups repeatedly, while waiting for tourism to reopen.
Tourists visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, on November 1, 2021, as Israel reopens to tourists vaccinated against Covid-19. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)
Vander Maten spoke very personally, noting that bringing Christians to Israel is more than a business, but a passion. He described his first trip to Israel in 1986 as “life changing”, and has been bringing Christians to Israel ever since. “Before I got to visit Israel that first time, I prayed to be able to do so for ten years. Then in 1986, God gave me the opportunity to go.” He gave voice to what many Christians feel about Israel, that despite the frustrations of not being able to come visit, there is only one Israel and there is always the desire for Christians to visit.
Open Season. Happy travelers arriving at Ben-Gurion International Airport. Photo by Flash90.
Joel James, another specialist in Christian tourism to Israel, vice president of Inspiration Cruises and Tours, shared optimism while noting how much potential was lost. “We are thrilled to have groups going back to Israel. Right now, we have 300 travelers from the US finishing a tour with pastor and author Max Lucado, and in two weeks we will have 650 Join Dr. David Jeremiah for his tour. It’s very encouraging to be able to bring people back to Israel. These numbers seem like a lot after two years of virtually no tourists entering the country, but the truth is that both of these would be double their size had it not been for the previous rules and mandates. Unfortunately, several other tours canceled due to uncertainty. Nevertheless, we are blessed to know that the mandates have been lifted and things will be easier for people to come to Israel in the future.”
At the NRB’s Israel Breakfast (about which there will be a parallel report), a related topic and new initiative was discussed regarding the phenomena of churches giving their pastors a trip to Israel, often on their retirement. Many have realized that such a gift should be made as an investment when a pastor is young, not retiring. Carlin and others mentioned that it’s a trend that people are discussing how to change, because a trip to Israel is such a life changing spiritual experience.
Food for Thought. At a breakfast honoring Israel at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville 2022, there was intense discussion on the value of initiating new programmes to facilitate group visits to the Holy Land. (photo credit: All Israel News Staff)
Speaking of all possible tourists, Carlin said:
“Now that tourism is back, people should plan to make that trip soon, not pushing it off as a bucket list item, but to change their lives forever.”
Looking ahead, Carlin believes that by 2024 at the latest, Israel’s tourism will fully return to the pre-pandemic record level. Asked if they worried that another variant of the virus might set things back and shut tourism down again, Vander Maten observed that we’re now seeing a two-year pent-up demand being able to be realized. “I really don’t see Israel shutting down again.”
Western Wall. As from March 1, Israel is welcoming all tourists, vaccinated and unvaccinated of all ages.
Carlin agreed. Israel has turned a corner. He joked that he’s not a prophet, but if something unforeseen were to happen again, it wouldn’t be just in and about Israel and that the problem would be much greater.
Israel Is Open Again!
About the writer:
Jonathan Feldstein - President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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Images from Ukraine that are universal and eternal
By David E. Kaplan
Standing Ovation. A defiant President Zelenskyy appeals directly to President Biden and the US Congress.
There are ‘events’ captured on camera – sometimes fleeting – that are destined to stick in the collective memory and emerge universally iconic. Such was the resonance for this writer, uplifted by a uniquely brave public gesture, a melodious melody on a piano and a heart-felt Churchillian appeal that exemplified the human spirit’s will to prevail.
Personal recollections of the Purim following Stalin’s welcome demise
By Dr. Yosef Begun and Larry Pfeffer
Stalin’s Show Trials. The purges through the courts came to an end with Stalin’s demise following Purim 1953.
From the ancient Israelites escaping destruction celebrated last week in the festival of Purim, to the carnage inflicted today on the people of Ukraine, the writers revisit Putin’s no less evil predecessor Stalin, whose antisemitic purges was brought to an end by the dictator’s sudden but welcome passing before Purim in 1953.
Based on the Keynote address delivered at the 30th Annual Educators’ Conference on the Holocaust at Arizona State University on February 28, 2022.
By Grant Gochin
Complicity Confirmed. Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika (centre) his granddaughter Silvia Foti and the writer.
The facts are that Lithuania had the highest murder rate percentage of Jews in all of Europe and that Lithuanians began murdering Jews before the arrival of the Nazis. Facts however are inconvenient for Lithuania, whose government engages in state-sponsored Holocaust distortion. Addressing the 30th Annual Educators’ Conference on the Holocaust, the writer exposes complicity – then and now!
LOTL Co-founders David E. Kaplan (Editor), Rolene Marks and Yair Chelouche
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While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
The Israel Brief – 14 March 2022 – Israel to impose sanctions. Amnesty International director says Israel should not exist as Jewish state. Israel and UAE sign education agreement. First direct flight from Morocco to Israel.
The Israel Brief – 15 March 2022 –Field hospital named for Golda. US House Representatives issue harsh statement against Amnesty Int. Director. Israeli gov sites hacked. White Purim?
The Israel Brief – 16 March 2022 –Pres. Zelensky to address Knesset Sunday. Hamas “concerned” about warming of ties between Turkey and Israel. Israel announces new direct flights to Egypt. Celebrating Purim!
The Israel Brief – 17 March 2022 – Operation Shining Star underway. IRGC off the terror list? IDF arrest 3 infiltrators. Sierra Club reverse decision to stop trips to Israel.
Rolene Marksspeaks to Rob Schilling on WINA Charlottesville, Virginia, about Israeli mediation and humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
Rolene Marksspeaks to CCFM based in Cape Town about Israel’s mediation and humanitarian efforts in Ukraine on behalf of WIZO SA
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Images from Ukraine that are universal and eternal
By David E. Kaplan
Away from the mass reportage in the written media and television, there are those brief ‘events’ – whether in word or deed – that encapsulates the enormity of the tragedy playing out in Ukraine but also reveals that spark in the human spirit to prevail.
Such was that bravery of the Russian woman who went on live state TV news with a sign protesting the invasion of Ukraine. Marina Ovsyannikova is a name to remember. For those few brief seconds, Marina defied the might of Putin and his aspiring re-run of a Russian empire and achieved more than a fighter plane or tank. An editor on the Russian TV channel Pervyi Kanal (Channel One), this mother of two, boldly ran behind the newsreader and held up a sign during the main evening show, Vremya, that said:
“Stop the war! Don’t believe propaganda! They’re lying to you here! Russians against war”
It was Homeric heroism at its best! Lesser defiance in Russia’s Soviet past would have been met with a bullet in the back of the head in a dark underground room in Lubyanka or be exiled to a gulag in Siberia. In present Putin’s Russia, there is talk that Marina could be facing 15 years in prison! All for less than 5 seconds of telling the truth, a commodity being denied to her people.
Marina knew the risks but she also knew the need and the urgency. To surprisingly address her duped nation separated from reality, she was prepared to expose herself and her family to the wrath of Putin.
“Maybe, just maybe,” she must have thought, it could awaken her people to “stop the carnage.”
Will she be sacrificed like Joan of Arc by her own people or will she inspire that people to challenge their oppressor – Putin?
Russia. First channel. Marina Ovsyannikova. No war! (2022) News of Ukraine
THE PIANO PLAYER
The second image was in the midst of the carnage, another mother of two, Irina Maniukina playing her grand piano for one final time before leaving her bomb stricken home in Bila Tserkva near Kyiv. Before Irana sets about playing Chopin’s Étude Op. 25, No. 1, she dusts off the debris caused by Russian shelling scattered over her Steinway & Sons Essex piano. It may be the last time she will ever see, never mind play, this piano.
The beauty and grace of the music contrasts with the discord and disfigurement of her home captured in the video filmed by the pianist’s daughter, Karina. Melody juxtaposes over mess, as we see a living room no longer for the living!
To the sounds of Chopin, we gaze in horror at the debris, shattered glass and rubble. The bomb, that landed 30 feet from the home, blew all the windows out and left a huge crater in the ground.
It blew a larger crater in their lives!
It was poignant to discover that the Chopin piece Irina played is also known as “The Shepherd Boy” following a tale that the composer advised a pupil to picture a shepherd boy taking refuge in a grotto to avoid a storm playing the melody on his flute.
To escape this Russian ‘storm’, where will this Ukrainian mother and daughter now take refuge?
The image of music rising from a home reduced to a ‘wasteland’ was reminiscent to this writer of a plant sprouting in an arid desert – the human spirit survives and will thrive again.
VLADIMIR vs VOLODYMYR
The third image is of a president, who has not only risen to the proverbial occasion but quite literally, rises daily from under the rubble. Like Spartacus, the Thracian gladiatorial slave who defied the might of Rome and is revered today more than the generals who opposed him, so to this young Jewish leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, defying the brutality and imperial arrogance of wannabee Tzar Vladimir Putin. Drawing his line in the proverbial sand in his capital Kyiv, this former actor and comedian – now wartime leader – is an inspiration to his people and the world. Whatever befalls the body of the man, the image of this man is secure for all time.
Unlike the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani who only seven months ago fled his country as the Taliban approached his capital Kabul, Zelenskyy’s response to the offer of leaving Ukraine and to set up a government in exile, was markedly different. While Russian troops were storming towards Ukraine’s capital, this president urged his people to “stand firm”. To the surprise of many around the world, he declined help to evacuate, saying on a street to the cellphone camera in what has become one of the most cited lines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Spartacus could hardly have said it better to inspire his army of slaves over 2000 years ago!
With such Churchillian leadership, no world leader today could get away treating Ukraine the way British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain treated Czechoslovakia in 1938 referring to its existential plight with Nazi Germany as a “quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing”.
On the contrary, Ukraine is country of whom the world today knows everything about – every horrific detail. As Zelenskyy reminded the American Congress in his video address that the people of Ukraine were experiencing a Pearl Harbour and a 9/11 “every day”.
‘Plane’ Truth. With his hand to his chest appealing for either a no-fly zone or planes to protect their skies, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses members of Congress from Kyiv.
Zoning in on the two most iconic attacks on American soil, Zelenskyy’s words and warnings could not fail to resonate on the American soul!
There is a message from the placard holder, the pianist and the President to the people of Russia about its leadership:
If you don’t remove the rubbish, it just piles up.
At some stage, they will be engulfed by the stench.
As I wrote in my last article and needs to be repeated:
Putin will not stop; he needs to be stopped.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s full speech to Congress
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
As Israel celebrates this week the joyous holiday of Purim which tells of the near-destruction of the Jewish people as plotted by ‘Haman’, the conniving evil adviser to the Persian King Ahasuerus, and as salvation today is sought from the ongoing mass slaughter in Ukraine at the hands of the evil Putin, it is illuminating to return to the Purim of 1953 as told by Dr. Yosef Begun and Larry Pfeffer. Their incisive perspectives first appeared in The Jerusalem Post in 2014. It was a time when after 1948 – the year of Israel’s independence – that the USSR under Joseph Stalin was getting increasingly antisemitic, when it became clear that Israel would not be turning “red”.
Purim 1953
By Dr. Yosef Begun and Larry Pfeffer
Yosef Begun’smemories from Moscow
Two years after the end of World War II in 1945, I was 15 and started my studies in a technical high-school of the aviation industry. I was lucky since a year later, in 1948, “the years of late Stalinism” began with all kind of discrimination and persecution of Jews. Jewish students were not accepted at our school. 1948 began tragically. I remember well a cold day in January. I was coming home late frozen, looking forward to a hot supper. Right away I see that Mamma is very upset: she is silent with her hands resting in her lap.
“What has happened?” I ask.
“Mikhoels is dead. It was an automobile accident.” she replied.
I must confess that at that time I didn’t feel anything special. People were perishing every day. During that period I didn’t know who was this famous Yiddish actor and director of the State Jewish Theater and the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which was very helpful in the fight against Hitler. In my youth there was no place either for the Yiddish theater or for its great actor Solomon Mikhoels. I was very assimilated, like many others of my generation whom the Soviet regime deprived of Jewish education and Jewish identity. Mamma and some relatives went for the last farewell to the great Jewish actor and director of Yiddish Theater. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, Mamma had a “classical” Jewish girl’s education in the cheder of her shtetl and respected everything Jewish. I was brought up as a Soviet citizen who studied to be an aviation engineer and literally did not know the “difference between Mordechai and Haman”. As a 15-year boy, I had something “more important” to do that day… Till now I feel ashamed for this.
Portrait of a Monster. To the great relief of many, Joseph Stalin died of a massive heart attack on March 5, 1953. Revered as the man who helped save his nation from Nazi domination, he is no less remembered as the mass murderer of the century, having overseen the deaths of between 8 million and 20 million of his own people.
At the time, we still could not imagine what difficult times were only beginning for us. Soon rumors began to circulate, each more terrifying than the one before. For example, at the great automobile factory Zavod imeni Stalina (Plant of Stalin’s name). in Moscow, they said that “a group of saboteurs” was uncovered, consisting of top engineers, all of whom were Jews. The newspapers wrote about “cosmopolitans” who did not love the Soviet homeland and Russian people and were “kowtowing” before the West. Almost all of the names of such people were Jewish. There were rumors about closing down the Yiddish Theater… At that time we knew nothing about the arrests, torture, trials and execution of Jewish cultural and public figures. There were hints, rumors and much uncertainty which contributed to our sense of fear of what was to come.
Then came January 1953, when there were announcements about the “murderers in white coats”. Once again the Jews. Antisemitic articles appeared in the central newspapers Pravda, Izvestiya, Komsomolskaya Pravda. Therewere caricatures in Krokodil, with exaggerated Jewish noses and sinister faces… The newspapers printed letters from workers demanding that the “Zionist agents” should be rooted out and punished. No one knew who these “Zionist agents” were, but the papers explained that American Jewish organizations were recruiting Soviet Jews in order to harm Soviet people. Every Jew was, therefore, suspect… Many Jewish specialists were fired and rumors also circulated about the imminent deportation of Jews from Moscow. It was said that Jews themselves asked to be sent to distant regions to be saved from the “people’s anger”. Like many others, I thought that the newspapers could not lie… I hated those “Zionists” who were planning to harm our country. Because of them it would be bad for all Jews… Only one hope remained. Our great leader, Comrade Stalin, wouldn’t allow this! He saved us from the fascists and he knows that we love this country. He would determine who were the enemies and saboteurs. And our enemies, not just the Jewish ones, always got what they deserved.
Power of Purim. Bottom left shows Stalin on the bedroom floor of his dacha outside Moscow following his collapse. Beria, secret police chief, is not hiding his joy. The tombstone (bottom right) reveals the Jewish victims of Stalin era state led antisemitism. The gate over the rail tracks is taken from the Vorkuta Gulag camp entrance in the 1930s and says: “Labor in the USSR is a matter of Honor and Glory”. The physicians in front of the Communist hammer and sickle icon are the accused in the infamous Soviet “Doctors’ Plot”. The men with the rifles depict the execution of leading Jewish cultural and political figures in the USSR and Czechoslovakia. The train, the nearby crowd and skull allude to Stalin’s rumored plans to deport Soviet Jewry and the likelihood of large number of potential victims if Stalin had not collapsed on Purim 1953.
Fear was a constant companion of every Jewish family in the Soviet Union. The mass propaganda affected everyone. In January 1953, I was on holiday at a small rest home near Moscow. Those who relaxed there were mostly simple, uneducated, hard workers, who spent their time playing dominoes. However, everyone showed up at a lecture on “the international situation of the USSR.” In fact the hall was full and people were turned away. After the lecturer from the city committee of the Party sounded off about the machinations of “western world reactionaries” and the Soviet struggle for peace, he was peppered with questions about the main topic at the time: “What will we do with those doctors – the murderers in white coats?” Waiving his right arm, the lecturer stated with pathos: “The criminals have confessed. There will be a trial!”
Four days after Purim, when Stalin’s death was announced on March 5, I was already 20 but was terrified. I thought that now, finally, “they” would come after us; there was no longer anyone to protect us… One of the closest men to Stalin and fellow Georgian, Lavrentiy Beria, became Minister of Internal Affairs and on April 4 it was announced that the “case against the doctors” had been fabricated by members of the State Security service, including its Deputy Minister Mikhael Ryumin. All of them had been arrested and quickly executed. Beria himself was arrested, secretly tried and shot.
The Soviet “Haman” and a Pharaoh of our time, who had planned soon after the Holocaust another major program against Jews, collapsed on March 1, 1953. In a symbolic and miraculous way that day coincided with a joyous Jewish holiday and entered Jewish history as “Purim 1953”. 3,000,000 Jews of the Soviet Union and its colonies were saved from the great disaster. One can only surmise what would have happened if Stalin didn’t die just then. The possibilities included mass deportation of the Jews – following the model of Stalin’s murderous wartime deportations of the Chechens and Crimean Tatars. Disagreements among historians about what Stalin had planned continue to this day.
The truth about antisemitic Soviet actions was hidden from the public for many years until the Soviet regime collapsed at the beginning of the 1990-s. Only then did Soviet citizens, including I, become aware of the following.
In 1948 and 1949, a group of Russian Jewish writers were arrested, among them the most prominent were Peretz Markish, David Hofstein, David Bergelson, Itzik Fefer, Leib Kvitko. Famous actor Benjamin Zuskin, who played leading roles in Mikhoels’ theater, was also arrested. All of them and some other Jewish cultural figures were members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) during the war. Together with them, some prominent public figures were arrested: Solomon Lozovsky, the former Deputy Foreign Minister, Boris Shimeliovich, the chief doctor of the big Moscow clinic, academic Lina Stern, a specialist of physiology. Altogether there were 14 Jews, defendants in the “JAC trial”. All the accusations were invented – as for example that the leaders of JAC were going to give up the Crimean peninsula to America. The real “crime” of Jewish writers was their activity in Jewish culture.
Savage Stalin. Jewish cultural icons executed – David Bergelson (left), Peretz Markish (centre left), Izi Kharik (centre right – Yiddish poet killed in 1937 during The Great Purge), and Solomon Mikhoels (right).
By preserving Yiddishkeit , even at a very low intensity, they were an obstacle to Stalin’s plan to accomplish the Soviet “final solution of Jewish question” by total assimilation of Jews. After three years of interrogations and tortures, all the Jewish defenders – with the exception of academic Lina Stern then 73 – were sentenced to death. On August 12, 1952, they were shot in the Lubyanka KGB dungeon. Many other Jews, mostly Jewish cultural and leading public figures, were arrested and sent for long terms to forced labor camps. Some of these people died under interrogation. In 1949 famous Yiddish writer, Der Nister, was arrested and died in the Gulag in 1950. Yitzhak Nusinov died in prison. Shmuel Persov and Miriam Zheleznov were shot. Solomon Bregman, the deputy minister died in prison in January 1953.
“The Night of the Murdered Poets” – Aug 12 1952. The flower of Yiddish literary culture in the Soviet Union, Stalin’s victims- David Bergelson, Peretz Markish, Leib Kvitko, and Solomon Lozovsky. Joel Sprayregen, a Chicago attorney and activist, later wrote. “Stalin believed he could crush the Jews of Russia with one stroke of mass murder by destroying their culture and language in the darkness of one Moscow night.
Larry Pfeffer’s memories from Budapest
I was ten-years-old in Budapest when Stalin collapsed and died. I only recall the pervasive sense of mourning in the city. Black flags and black drapes were hanging from the buildings. The newspapers’ front page had a picture of Stalin within a thick black frame. As far as I recall on the eve of Purim 1953, I acted in a Purimshpiel in the Orthodox community complex auditorium. Sundays and afternoons, I attended cheder in that complex since age six. Probably this was one of the few operating cheders left in the Communist empire. Periodically, I saw the principal, Shlomo Grossberg – in fact, like others students, attended his wedding in the Orthodox complex courtyard where the chupah was. Suddenly there were rumors in the “Kazincy” central Orthodox synagogue that Shlomo was arrested by the Hungarian secret police. Grownups didn’t discuss such matters with children. Perhaps they also didn’t know what really happened. I recall Shlomo returning to his position maybe eight to ten months later and his face showed that he went through very difficult times. I recently met him in Israel and learned that he was arrested on Purim 1953 for a “Zionist” show trial. I didn’t want to ask him how he was treated, because I didn’t want to bring back painful memories.
Even as a child I often heard typical Communist propaganda about “Titoist traitors”, the “imperialists and their lackeys”, and “capitalist warmongers” – especially during the Korean war. In Hungary I was not aware of the scale of the Stalin’s terror against Jews and that it was not limited to the USSR: anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist trials were organized also in the Kremlin’s colonies. Only long after I escaped from Hungary in late 1956, did I become aware of the following events.
State Murder. It was among the most notorious show trials of the 20th century, the prosecution and sentencing to death of the Jew Rudolf Slánský, Czechoslovakia’s leading communist, who had been arrested in a brutal purge ordered by Stalin and said to have been tortured into a confession. (Photograph: BBC)
On November 20, 1952, Rudolf Slánský, the second most powerful in Czechoslovakia, and thirteen other leading Czechoslovak communists, were arrested and tortured. Two received life sentence and the rest, including Slánský, were shot. Slánský and ten more of the arrested were Jews. The trumped up accusation was being “Titoists” and “spying” for the “Western capitalists and imperialists” – typical of Moscow directed show trials of that time.
Raoul Wallenberg, who did so much for humanity, fell into the hands of the Russians on January 17, 1945 – a day before the Russians drove out the Germans and occupied the Pest side of the city. Wallenberg disappeared into the Russian dungeons and the Gulag. His fate is still unknown. Reliable and highly respected investigators, such as Professor Irwin Cotler (former Canadian Minister of Justice), clearly stated that Wallenberg was probably alive for decades after his abduction.
In 1952/53 a Moscow directed “Wallenberg” and “Zionist” show trial was in preparation in Budapest. Leaders of Hungary’s Jewry: Lajos Stöckler, Miklós Domonkos and Dr. László Benedek were arrested – along with two non-Jews who worked with Wallenberg: Pál Szalai and Károly Szabó. They were tortured to force them to “confess” the “crimes” invented by the “script”, according to which in 1945 they “murdered” Wallenberg in Budapest. (Szalai and Szabó rescued many Jews during the Holocaust. At Wallenberg’s request, Szalai met with German general August Schmidthuber and prevented the murder of Budapest ghetto’s 70,000 inhabitants.) Other Jewish leaders were arrested and accused of “Zionist crimes” and “spying for the “capitalists and imperialists.”
Stalin’s Show Trials. The purges through the courts came to an end with Stalin’s demise following Purim 1953.
The antisemitic “Doctors’ Plot” and Budapest show trials stopped and the danger to Jews in the Soviet Union and its colonies was prevented by Stalin’s sudden – possibly assisted – collapse on March 1, 1953, which was Purim, and his subsequent death a few days later.
The accused doctors, the accused in Budapest, and probably large number of Jews and others living in Soviet Union and its empire were saved when Stalin collapsed on Purim 1953.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Based on the Keynote address delivered at the 30th Annual Educators’ Conference on the Holocaust at Arizona State University on February 28, 2022.
By Grant Gochin
Three of my grandparents were born in the Baltics. Their families were slaughtered. They spent their lives searching for anyone that could have survived. There were none. Those three grandparents were Brocha Leya Novosedz of Birzai, Lithuania. Samuel Gochin of Papile Lithuania, and Dora Rummel of Janjelgava, Latvia.
World War II began in 1939. Nazis created ghettos in Poland and elsewhere but the “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem” and the mass slaughter of Jews was not decided until the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942.
What changed between the launch of Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, and the Wannsee Conference in 1942? What changed was the slaughter of Jews in Eastern Europe, in the “Holocaust by Bullets”. This genocide, perpetrated by locals, showed Nazis how easily a population could be co-opted to murder their neighbours. It showed the Nazis a path to the possibilities of total annihilation of Jews throughout Europe.
The slaughter of Jews in Lithuania began prior to the arrival of the Nazis.
In a country of 2,500,000 people, there were fewer than 1,000 Nazi’s in the whole of Lithuania during the Holocaust. With so few Nazi’s, they alone could not have forced Jews into ghettos, plunder their assets even before they are murdered, torture them, commit mass rape, and then murder about 220,000 Jews. This was done mostly by Lithuanians, in, what is now known as – the “Holocaust by Bullets”.
915 Lithuanians or 0.04% of the Lithuanian population were found by Yad Vashem to have rescued Jews. This leaves 99.96% of Lithuanians either perpetrators, bystanders or have insufficient proof of their unsubstantiated claims. It is rather ironic that almost every Lithuanian I have met in the past 30 years has told me that their family was within the 0.04% of rescuers – unsubstantiated claims to be sure. These misstatements reflect the widespread revisionism within Lithuanian society and the dishonest official teachings of the Holocaust by the government of Lithuania. Included within the 99.96% of Lithuanians, are those responsible for the “Holocaust by Bullets”, and the annihilation of 96.4% of Lithuanian Jews. My family included!
According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance:
– “Holocaust denial seeks to erase the history of the Holocaust. In doing so, it seeks to legitimize Nazism and antisemitism.”
– “Holocaust distortion acknowledges aspects of the Holocaust as factual. It nevertheless excuses, minimizes, or misrepresents the Holocaust in a variety of ways and through various media”.
Lithuanians began murdering Jews prior to the arrival of Nazi’s. Often at murder sites, no Germans were even present. There are multiple cases where Nazi’s complained about the savagery and cruelty of Lithuanians. Lithuanians traveled to neighbouring countries to murder Jews. Lithuania had the highest murder rate percentage of Jews in all of Europe. Some Lithuanians were disturbed by the blood lust displayed by their countrymen. National leadership asked that Jews not be murdered so publicly to reduce angst suffered by spectators. Nonetheless, the slaughter of Jews was often perpetrated in public festivals with parties held after to celebrate the slaughter of their neighbours and the sharing of the plunder.
The Real Killers. Crowd views the aftermath of a massacre at Lietukis Garage, where pro-German Lithuanian nationalists killed more than 50 Jewish men. The victims were beaten, hosed, and then murdered with iron bars. Kovno, Lithuania, June 27, 1941.
Facts are inconvenient for Lithuania. Who wants to be known as a country of such savagery? There was no possibility of Lithuania denying the Holocaust, it is the most documented genocide in history. The government of Lithuania therefore decided to implement a state sponsored programme of Holocaust distortion. Here are four examples:
Example one: Kazys Skirpa was supposed to be the Prime Minister of Lithuania, but he was detained in Berlin. Brazaitis became Prime Minister instead. Skirpa represented Lithuania to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Government. Skirpa called for the elimination of Jews from Lithuania and likely proposed this idea to Nazis. He was the founder of the Lithuanian Activist Front who was responsible for murdering Jews publicly, and who broadcast Nazi talking points into Lithuania inciting the murders. The government of Lithuania called this merely an “incident of antisemitism” and claimed that by calling for the elimination of Jews, he didn’t mean to actually hurt them! Lithuania has absolved Skirpa of any crimes and officially hail him as their national hero. This is Holocaust revisionism.
Example two: Juozas Ambrazevičius Brazaitis became the Lithuanian Prime Minster. He called for Jews not to be murdered so publicly. He established the first concentration camp for Jews in Lithuania.
After the Holocaust, both Skirpa and Brazaitis were given visas to immigrate to the USA. Brazaitis’s crimes were investigated by US Congress, but Congress screwed up. They investigated an incorrect name, with incorrect data. The investigation therefore was invalid from the start. Leading the investigation was the US Immigration Service. Brazaitis died prior to the end of the investigation which meant there was no possibility of concluding the investigation as there was no longer a living body to deport. The investigation was therefore terminated for lack of a legal subject.
The Government of Lithuania falsely stated that US Congress closed the investigation not for lack of probative value, but rather that Congress “completely exonerated and rehabilitated Brazaitis”. This is an absurd falsification. Four different US lawyers wrote lengthy legal analyses on the reasons the Lithuanian government interpretations of “rehabilitation and exoneration” were just plain ridiculous. The Lithuanian Government ignored these American legal analyses of Congressional statements.
US Congress took note of the official Lithuanian governmental reinterpretation of Congressional documents. In 2019, Congressman Brad Sherman wrote to the Lithuanian Prime Minister explaining US Law, and that the Lithuanian government’s finding of facts were misrepresentations and misstatements. They were legally impossible and needed to be revoked. The Government of Lithuania ignored Congressman Sherman.
I filed a legal action against the government of Lithuania in their own courts for their Holocaust deceptions. The Lithuanian Government responded that they know more about US law and operation of Congress than Congress, and specialist US lawyers. They called Congressman Sherman “just a politician” and to date, Lithuania continues their fraud. This constitutes Holocaust fraud. The Lithuanian Government freely reinterprets official Congressional documents for Holocaust deceptions and they insult our legislators.
Example three: Antanas Baltusis. Majdanek Concentration Camp was public. The fences were barbed wire. The citizens of Lublin could see the prisoners. They complained about the smell of death. Nobody in the surroundings were unaware of the daily slaughter taking place in this death camp.
The leader of the guards at this concentration camp was a Lithuanian named Antanas Baltusis. The government of Lithuania declared Baltusis innocent of any crimes on the grounds he served on the outside of the camp and did not know what he was guarding on the inside of the Camp. Apparently, he could not see through the wire, he did not smell what the general public could smell from many miles away; he did not see the Jews going in and ash coming out. His colleagues who were committing murders every single day did not tell him what they were doing. Supposedly he never asked what he was guarding, never saw anything, never heard anything, and never knew anything. This is Holocaust deception.
Example four: Jonas Noreika. This monster murdered my own family in Lithuania. He was just one regional leader that the Lithuanian Government continues to glorify. Many years ago, I was standing over a death pit containing the twisted bodies of my own relatives. I asked, who did the actual murdering? It was Jonas Noreika. This information was first exposed in Germany in 1984. This was six years before Lithuania regained independence. In 1995, President Brazauskas of Lithuania stood in front of the Israeli Parliament and offered his apology for the actions of Lithuanians. That’s what he said outside Lithuania. But when he returned to Lithuania, he promptly declared many Holocaust perpetrators innocent of the crimes they committed and made them into national heroes, Noreika included.
Truth Revealed. Left to right: Grant Gochin (Courtesy); Accused Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika (Courtesy); and granddaughter Silvia Foti (Ina Budryte/via JTA)
Hitler wrote the book “Mein Kampf” where he outlined his plans for the Jews of Europe. Noreika wrote the Mein Kampf of Lithuania. He was a rabid Jew-hater. He was one of the most powerful leaders in Lithuania and was a mass murderer. We do not know if he murdered with his own hand; however, we do know that he ordered the murders and signed many documents persecuting Jews. Noreika was responsible for the slaughter of anywhere between 8,000 – 15,000 Lithuanian Jews. Men, women, children, babies, elderly, sick and disabled.
I have been addressing the issue of Noreika with the Lithuanian government for almost a decade. They have threatened me with criminal and Constitutional charges for exposing their fraud and for insulting their heroes. These threats remain ongoing.
Over the past many years, I have filed at least 20 legal actions against the government of Lithuania, all rejected by their Courts and government. Every branch of the Lithuanian government involved has contributed to the deception, this includes the current President of Lithuania.
What Lithuania never contemplated is that a witness would step forward. Noreika’s own granddaughter, Silvia Foti. Foti wrote a memoir about her own shocking discovery of her grandfather’s crimes – his murder of anywhere between 8,000 – 15,000 Lithuanian Jews. The Lithuanian Government’s only response to her discoveries are to attack her credibility and her family. To enforce their ideology, they then further rewrote history to absurdly declare that Noreika was a secret rescuer of Jews. Silvia Foti has become a leading international voice speaking against government sponsored Holocaust revisionism.
Ponary Massacre. Lithuanian collaborators guard Jews before their execution at Ponary, Lithuania , June–July, 1941. Some 70,000 Jews were murdered at Ponary, most of them from nearby Vilna.
Lithuania’s then Ambassador to Germany – Ambassador Semaska, also the grandson of a Holocaust perpetrator, (whose grandfather was similarly rewritten into a rescuer of Jews), made the public case that Noreika had not murdered a single Jew. Adolf Hitler did not murder a single Jew by his own hand either! Vladimir Putin has not murdered a single Ukrainian by his own hand. This is how far the Lithuanian government has stretched itself to protect their murderers.
The government of Lithuania stated that Noreika MUST be considered “completely innocent” as he had not been placed on trial and convicted during his lifetime. Neither was Hitler or Stalin.
Shortly after denying Noreika’s crimes and claiming he could not be prosecuted after his death, the government of Lithuania declared that a poet named Cvirka was an enemy of Lithuanians and removed his statue. This duplicity displays Lithuania’s standards of historical accuracy and guilt depend exclusively on the victim’s Jewishness or lack thereof.
The Lithuanian military have honoured both Skirpa and Noreika on the covers of their military magazine as the State honors them as heroes. This is Holocaust revisionism. The current Lithuanian Minister of Defense was the head of a programme to investigate Holocaust Survivors for possible war crimes. This is Holocaust inversion. He also contributed to Lithuania’s Holocaust deception.
Twenty legal cases, vast amounts of international publicity and affirmation by multiple governments and NGO’s have shown there is no path for truth inside Lithuania. My legal case is currently in front of the United Nations. It will only be a foreign body that imposes truth upon Lithuania.
These are just four examples of Holocaust denial, distortion, revision, deception, fraud and inversion in Lithuania, and there are many more. While, in my opinion, Lithuania is the worst of the Holocaust revisionists, they are by no means the only ones.
Both the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the US State Department have since identified and declared Lithuania as Holocaust revisionists. One has to ask the question – “That Lithuania continues to commit such blatant fraud about events from 80 years ago – is there anything about which they will not lie?”
The truth about the murder of approximately 220,000 Lithuanian citizens is dependent only upon their Jewish ethnicity.
Since regaining independence in 1990, Lithuania has not punished a single murderer of a Jew. Or is it that it “will not”? Lithuania did all they could NOT to prosecute Holocaust perpetrators and waited until they died so they could not be prosecuted. This is Holocaust revisionism.
The declarations by the Lithuanian Government that murderers were actually rescuers and that the guilty cannot be determined is finding its way into Lithuanian academia. These frauds have now become primary source facts published by a European Union member government, who is also an ally of America. It is only a matter of time before these falsifications find their way into American textbooks and destroy decades of combined and cumulative work towards factual Holocaust education. The biggest threat against Holocaust education in the world today is the Lithuanian governments’ Holocaust frauds.
Complicit in Killing. What Lithuania today prefers to hide – a Lithuanian militia in 1941 leads a group of Jews to the site of their execution, at Ponary, near present-day Vilnius,
Not only does this lead to a corruption of education, but it also has a wider and worrisome impact. When such a clearly documented genocide can be so easily rewritten – it gives license to future perpetrators to escape culpability. After all, if a European government can commit Holocaust fraud so openly, why would we think genocide fraud could not be so easily replicated in Africa, or Central America, or even in Ukraine? Allowing the rewriting of the Holocaust facilitates the next genocide. Perpetrators knowing they can rewrite history allows them to start wars with impunity, because, as we know, it has been the victor that has written the history books. Truth must prevail for the course of history to veer towards peace and justice.
Lithuania is currently impervious to truth, but we cannot allow this to impact our educational systems in America. We are working to implement new policies that will require the State Department to provide annual updates in their Human Rights Reports and flag any government that engages in Holocaust and other genocide denial and distortion. This will lay the foundation to track and report on government-sponsored genocide, denial and distortion, ensuring that crimes against humanity will not be whitewashed and rewritten by future governments.
For a country such as Lithuania to find a path out of this morass, it will need fresh leadership. For future generations to not be tarred with the taint of Holocaust deception, falsified history must be repudiated, and truth told. For Lithuania to show sincerity, national leadership responsible for Holocaust denial must be charged under their own national Holocaust denial laws. This problem did not begin recently and it will take time to correct. It is the task of international academia to ensure that history is reported accurately. We do have real allies inside Lithuania who would like to see their country break with their past. We need to encourage them.
One thinks of the people of Ukraine. May they not be the victim of the world’s next genocide and may history accurately record what is happening.
About the writer:
Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo, and as Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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What’s happening in Israel today? Watch from every Monday – Thursday LotL’s “The Israel Brief” broadcasts and on our Facebook page and YouTubeby seasoned TV & radio broadcaster, Rolene Marks familiar to Chai FM listeners in South Africa and millions of American listeners to the News/Talk/Sports radio station WINA, broadcasting out of Charlottesville, Virginia.
Israel sends 100 tons of humanitarian aid to Ukraine
Workers load at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport humanitarian aid for Ukraine donated by the Israeli government.
Lay of the Land applauds the Israeli government in facilitating the ongoing transfer of humanitarian aid to Ukraine and to bordering nations according to their needs. The people of Israel welcome the over 7000 Ukrainian citizens who have arrived in Israel since the start of the war.
Articles
(1)
Time is Running Out
Russian invasion testing the boundaries of infamy on a daily basis, the world at a crossroad
By David E. Kaplan
European Bloodbath. A protester holds a sign pleading “Who Will Stop Putin” in front of Brandenburg gate in Berlin, Germany.
Russia has brought the world to another low point in human history, where talk of Armageddon is now not the stuff of far-fetched Hollywood movies but everyday political parlance. Who will stop the Moscow menace?
Ukrainian suffering and the Palestinians cannot be compared
By Rolene Marks
Israel Responds. From trying to mediate an end to hostilities to sending aid to Ukraine, Israel is in the vanguard of support.
Jealous of the global attention, support and solidarity towards the brave Ukrainians, anti-Israel activists have taken to social media to hijack the struggle by falsely equating the horrendous suffering of the Ukrainians with the political stalemate position of the Palestinians. The writer exposes this Machiavellian perversion!
Spelling it Out. South African court finds remarks by trade union official to be hate speech against Jewish community.
It took a long time coming but in the end, justice prevailed when remarks made in public in 2009 at a university by a trade union official that was offensive and threatening to the Jewish community, was finally in 2022, construed by a South African court as “HATE SPEECH”. The writer applauds but also laments “until next time”!
Nothing Left. A man and child flee from the town of Irpin near Kyiv following heavy shelling by the Russians.
“It’s not a matter of whether Russia waging war on the Ukraine is politically motivated. It is simply a matter of good versus evil.…” asserts the writer, who channels her anguish, frustration and questioning of the unfolding human tragedy on European soil through poetry.
LOTL Co-founders David E. Kaplan (Editor), Rolene Marks and Yair Chelouche
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While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
With Russia’s invasion testing the boundaries of infamy on a daily basis, humanity cannot depend on anachronistic acronyms
By David E. Kaplan
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from EXTINCTION,” said former US President, Ronald Reagan. His warning resonates more than ever today.
“We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream,” he explained, and then cautioned, “It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same.”
If the world until very recently was troubled about democracy under threat and the loss of “freedom”, today it is not only our ‘freedom’ in peril but – if we listen to the warnings of western leaders – our very existence!
Russia has brought us – the world – to another low point in human history, where talk of “EXTINCTION” is now not the stuff of far-fetched movies but everyday political parlance. Listening to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby awkwardly squirm at the podium in his unenviable job of trying to furnish credible answers to tough but predictable questions, confirms our worst fears – that one miscalculation could lead to WWIII – to a nuclear war, or simply stated in one word – ARMEGEDDON!
Neither Plan nor Plane takes off! Closing the door on a proposal to provide Ukraine with fighter jets, Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby explains that the transfer would risk escalating the war and the focus should be on supplying more useful weapons to fend off Russian forces.
Over the last two agonising weeks, the world has shifted from the 20th century paranoia of a “Brave New World” to the 21st century of a very “Scared New World”.
Irresistibly glued to our TVs, we are paralyzed in disbelief – and now fear – as corona abruptly overnight gave way to Ukraine as the daily horror show. Grappling for the right words to describe this uncomfortable phenomena, I feel I’m immersed in the irresistible observance of a ritual of mass human sacrifice and unable to stop it. Yes, we take some comfort – and pride – where individual people, governments and NGOs do what they can by rescuing refugees, providing humanitarian aid, providing some ‘defensive’ – heaven forbid ‘offensive’ weaponry – but cannot stop the exorable grind of continuous carnage.
There is a ‘red line’ we are told we cannot cross because any meaningful action will amount to being construed by Mr. Putin as “ESCALOTORY” – the new catchword of the millennium.
I don’t think I have ever used that word once in all my 70 years, and now I hear it all day by world leaders from Biden to Johnson to Macron and others.
Churchill, who understood the danger of appeasement, must be turning in his grave, which is precisely where the brave Jewish Ukrainian president, VolodymyrZelensky, will be re-located shortly, if this human tragedy continues to play out on the world stage.
All the once perceived mighty mechanisms conceived to prevent this tragic trajectory – the UN and NATO – are little more than anachronistic acronyms in stopping this daily carnage.
BREAKING NEWS
Horrific was the juxtaposition of two items of Breaking News last night – 9 March.
Like millions of others, I was battling to process a report of Russian forces having bombed a maternity and children’s hospital in the beleaguered port of Mariupol in southern Ukraine with pictures of a bleeding pregnant mother been rescued on a stretcher with the shelled hospital in the background.
Scorched Earth. Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman following the Russian bombing of a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol.
How do you listen without tearing up when you hear the appeal from President Zelensky in his bunker calling for NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine with these words:
“Children are under the wreckage. This is an atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice by ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity,”
All in vain. Maybe more effective might be the “No-Fry Zone” imposed by MacDonalds that are closing all its outlets in Russia.
Plane Speaking. Ukraine’s Zelensky desperately appeals to US for fighter jets.
POLES APART
With a world finding no traction to President Zelensky’s appeal for declaring a ‘no fly zone’ over Ukraine – not even a partial one for humanitarian purposes – the next item of Breaking News was the US dismissal of a Polish plan to provide fighter jets to be sent to Ukraine. The reasoning was, “Okay, if we can’t actively participate ourselves, we can at least send planes to the Ukrainians for them to defend themselves. We are already sending some defensive armaments, why not include planes?”
Oh no!
As reported in The Guardian,:
“Pentagon says plan for Poles to give Soviet-era jets to US ‘not tenable’”
Unable to effectively defend themselves, the Ukrainian people are now expected to die in slow motion before the eyes of the world, because to support them would be perceived by Mr. Putin as “ESCALOTORY”.
A woman walks outside the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. A Russian attack has severely damaged a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials say. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Its amazing how words – even a single word – can kill!
The man in Moscow is holding the gun to the world’s head; except this proverbial gun is a nuclear button!
Now that we understand the price we are forced to pay, including our own moral degradation when leaders with evil intent have nuclear weapons, can the world seriously continue with the dangerously absurd JCPOA and STOP Iran’s nuclear programme? Having imposed the severest of sanctions on Russia, is the world so crazy as to lift sanctions on a potentially nuclear Iran that strives for the destruction of the state of Israel!
Will the Jewish state of tomorrow, be like the Ukraine of today – EXPENDABLE?
The Putins and mad mullahs of the world cannot be appeased. They will not stop; they need to be stopped.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
The Israel Brief – 07 March 2022 –PM Bennett’s shuttle diplomacy. Will there be an uptick in violence with Palestinians? Ben &Jerry’s Israel sues Unilever. Is the situation in Ukraine comparable with the Palestinians?
The Israel Brief – 08 March 2022 – Ukraine’s FM apologizes to El Al. Terror attacks. IDF show footage of Iranian drones. International Women’s Day.
The Israel Brief – 09 March 2022 – Israel to accept 25 000 refugees. President Herzog in Turkey. UAE/Israel sign big agreement. Mozambique army uses Israeli anti-drone tech.
The Israel Brief – 10 March 2022 –Zelensky request to address Knesset. Iron Dome funding approved. President Herzog successful trip. IDF Chief in Bahrain.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Ukrainian suffering and the Palestinians cannot be compared
By Rolene Marks
For nearly two weeks, the world has watched with horror as Putin’s troops have invaded Ukraine, decimating and laying siege to cities and creating a grave humanitarian crisis. The United Nations estimate that the number of Ukrainian refugees is roughly 1.45 million; and growing by the day.
The world has also been inspired by the incredible courage of the Ukrainian people, men and women taking up arms against the invading Russians, led from the front by their President Volodymir Zelensky (who is Jewish and has compared his country’s fight against Russia to Israel saying “we should become like the Israelis defending our territory”) and have taken to the streets, social media platforms and philanthropy to show their support. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter et al is awash with the blue and white colours of the Ukrainian flags and passionate cries of “Slava Ukraini” (for the Glory of Ukraine). In a world that has become so polarized along so many different lines, solidarity behind the Ukraine and her people has been unifying.
The Power of One. Inspiring his nation and the world, Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, addresses his people by video from an undisclosed location in what has become his customary morning address.
With attention rightly squared on the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, the anti-Israel folk have ramped up their efforts in chastising the media and the west, to lament that the focus of the world is on Ukraine and not the Palestinians and that the situation for both peoples is the same.
The lack of concern about the plight of Ukrainian refugees and Russia’s merciless bombing of civilians, including humanitarian corridors is staggering. The “whataboutism” is astounding – and more than a little obscene. There can be no comparison between the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign state and the situation for Palestinians, whose leadership have refused every offer of a state and have engaged in steady incitement for decades.
Anti-Israel activist, Iqbal Jasset, tweets on response to Rolene Marks.
Unlike the Palestinians, egged on by decades of incitement of hate against Israel and the Jewish people, the Ukrainian people have not fired thousands of rockets into Russia, have not dug tunnels to kidnap Russian civilians, thrown Molotov cocktails into fields and cars, stoned Russian drivers or shot and stabbed civilians in malls and on streets. President Zelensky, like a modern day Maccabee, is leading his people from the front. Nobody can forget his famous refusal of President Biden’s offer to airlift him to safety when he responded with “I need ammunition, not a ride”. This is unlike the leadership of Hamas who enjoys 5-star hotel and private jet hospitality in Qatar or Hezbollah’s Nasrallah who is hunkered down in his bunker, while doling out his threats against Israel.
Perverted Competition. In twisted form of obscene jealously, pro-Palestinian supporters are upset with images such as this horrendous damage to residential building at Koshytsa Street in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on February 25, 2022 as it diverts focus from their story. (GENYA SAVILOV / AFP)
More than 1 million children have fled Ukraine in the less than two weeks since Russia first invaded the country, says UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, calling it “a dark historical first.”
This means that children represent around half of the more than 2 million people that have fled the war, an exodus that the UN refugee agency has called the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
Comparing the situation in Ukraine is astoundingly disingenuous and shows a spectacular lack of self-awareness. Not content to appropriate the South African narrative and suffering during the Apartheid years, the grave, lived experience of the Ukrainian people and the many civilians from other countries who are trying to flee the military onslaught is up for grabs. Heaven forbid they get any news coverage!
They put the blame squarely on the west and render the media complicit. Palestinians have dominated the headlines for several decades and there is a disproportionate focus on the nearly 80-year-conflict between Israel and her neighbours. A conflict that the world is growing weary of. In the last two years, several Arab countries have normalized ties with Israel with others poised to do the same. The Kuwaiti editor-in-Chief of the Arab Times Ahmed al-Jarallah stated in a recent op-ed that “When [the Palestinians] are happy, they curse the Gulf leaders and people. When they are angry, they use all of the defamatory and abusive words in their dictionary against us.” The editor-in-chief continued:
“We, the Gulf nationals, overlook all that by sending them aid.”
In an editorial, titled “Normalize, let insulters fend for themselves,” al-Jarallah pointed to the Palestinians support for Saddam Hussein, Jamal Abdul Nasser, former Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi and IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, saying that this was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
Strong words indeed.
The world is focused on assisting Ukraine while isolating Russia through aggressive sanctions and other means. Failure to do so could lead to a war that threatens to engulf Europe and there is no doubt that China and Iran are watching with bated breath, looking to see how the West reacts and if they can flex their military muscles on China and Israel respectively.
Striving for Peace.Tying to mediate an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett arrives for a cabinet meeting at the PM’s Office in Jerusalem on Sunday, on the heels of his talks in Moscow and Berlin. (photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)
At the time of this writing, Israel’s Prime Minister has embarked on a shuttle diplomatic mission to Moscow and has spoken several times to Putin in an attempt mediate, at the behest of President Zelensky. This serves to emphasise the increasing role Israel is playing on the world stage and the regard that the Jewish state is afforded. Israel has also sent an extraordinary amount of humanitarian aid, including 100 tonnes and three plane loads of medicines, supplies, tents, blankets and more. In addition, Israel’s Ministry of Health is building a field hospital that will be manned by 50 medical personnel from Sheba Medical Centre on the Ukrainian side of the border, while United Hatzalah and IsraAid are already manning field hospitals in neighbouring Moldova.
Israel Field Hospital for Embattled Ukraine. The emergency room tent that is part of the field hospital going to Ukraine. (Photo courtesy of Sheba Medical Center)
Diplomats from Romania, Poland and Slovakia are stationed on the border helping to evacuate not just Israeli citizens but have helped many from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, Gaza and others. Israel’s Interior Ministry announced that in addition to absorbing 100,000 Jewish Ukrainians as citizens, Israel will host 25,000 other Ukrainians until the danger subsides in their country.
Israel Responds. From trying to mediate an end to the hostility to sending aid to Ukraine, Israel is in the vanguard of support.
Israel will likely be the country offering safe refuge to the most amount of people from Ukraine from a non-bordering country. Jewish organisations like Chabad whose Rabbi’s will never abandon the communities they are sent to serve, are also giving shelter and help to many, including this Palestinian doctor and his family:
It is a pity that the anti-Israel contingent aim their focus, much like the Soviet era propaganda that gave impetus to the narrative they peddle, in scuppering peace and not building bridges. It is astounding that they are disgruntled that they are not dominating the headlines like they are used to doing. This is what separates the true social justice warriors from the imposters.
This is a great pity – but not as staggeringly disingenuous as trying to appropriate the suffering of Ukrainians. As the kids would say, READ THE ROOM.
A team from United Hatzalah, Arabs and Jews welcome 120 Ukrainian refugees to Israel
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
