Posted on: July 31, 2014
Avoid red bar-codes: Boycott Israel and companies collaborating with Apartheid
All the companies with red barcodes should be avoided of you’re boycotting Israel. Some are staple for me but I will find more ethical alternatives.
Download the BuyCott app to scan barcodes and know the story of what you’re buying and encouraging.
Snowden confirms: Al Baghdadi (ISIS Caliphate) was formed by Israel MOSSAD
Everyone in the “Arab” world know this fact.
And the program was planed many decades ago by the British under the code-name “Hornet Nest” and taken up by Israel and the US for their Greater Middle East dismemberment of this region.
Just to safeguard the “existence of the State of Israel”
Snowden a indiqué que les services de renseignement de trois pays, à savoir les États-Unis, la Grande-Bretagne et l’entité sioniste ont collaboré ensemble afin de créer une organisation terroriste qui soit capable d’attirer tous les extrémistes du monde vers un seul endroit, selon une stratégie baptisée « le nid de frelons ».
Les documents de l’Agence nationale de sécurité américaine évoque « la mise en place récente d’un vieux plan britannique connu sous le nom de “nid de frelons” pour protéger l’entité sioniste, et ce en créant une religion comprenant des slogans islamiques qui rejettent toute autre religion ou confession ».
Selon les documents de Snowden, « la seule solution pour la protection de “l’État juif” est de créer un ennemi près de ses frontières, mais de le dresser contre les États islamiques qui s’opposent à sa présence ».
Les fuites ont révélé qu’« Abou Bakr al-Baghdadi a suivi une formation militaire intensive durant une année entière entre les mains du Mossad, sans compter des cours en théologie et pour maîtriser l’art du discours ».
Posted on: July 31, 2014
Hot posts this week (July 18/2014)
Posted on: July 31, 2014
More Latin American States recall Israel envoys
In addition to Brazil, Bolivia, Argentine, Venezuela, Uruguay Ecuador and
The Chilean foreign ministry emphasized the more than 1,400 Palestinians killed, including women and children during Operation Protective Edge, which continued for a 22nd day on Tuesday. The statement also noted Israel’s attacks “on schools and hospitals.”
The statement condemned rocket fire by Hamas against civilians in Israel, but said that “the scale and intensity of Israeli operations in Gaza violate the principle of proportionality in the use of force, an essential requirement to justify self-defense.” The statement also called “for an immediate end of hostilities” in Gaza.
In Lima, the Peruvian foreign ministry published a similar statement condemning Israel’s operation in Gaza.
LA PAZ – Bolivia on Wednesday renounced a visa exemption agreement with Israel in protest over its offensive in Gaza, and declared it a terrorist state.
The treaty has allowed Israelis to travel freely to Bolivia without a visa since 1972.
More than two weeks of fighting in Gaza have left 1,300 dead and 7,000 wounded amid an intense Israeli air and ground campaign in response to missile attacks by the Islamist militant group Hamas.
In the latest development, 16 people were killed after two Israeli shells slammed into a United Nations school, drawing international protests. Bolivia broke off diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009 over a previous military operation in Gaza.
© Olivia Harris / Reuters
Dr. Bashir Ibrahim al-Hajjar was an Assistant Professor of Nursing at the Islamic University of Gaza.
He was killed thisJuly 29, 2014 when Israel targeted a UNRWA vehicle in northern Gaza. His brother Samir was also killed in the attack.
Dr. al-Hajjar held 3 PhD degrees.
Some of his research included “Internet addiction and psychological morbidity among nursing students in Gaza-Palestine,” “Occupational stress among hospital nurses in Gaza-Palestine,” and “Gaza Nurses After War: Are They Traumatized?”
Sources: Research Gate, Dr. Belal Adel in Gaza
Needs confirmation. Ladies and gentlemen with great sorrow I am confirming that we are looking at a complex and systematic genocide.
“Sayumi Takahashi Harb: “Not only that, they are killing doctors and medical researchers. @Belalmd12, a Palestinian doctor on Twitter, has just reported that the IDF killed Dr. Bashir al-Hajjar, who held 3 PhDs in the health sciences (nursing and mental health counseling).
I found Dr. Al-Hajjar’s CV online. Here it is:http://site.iugaza.edu.ps/bhajjar/files/2013/01/CV-Dr.-Bashir-Alhajjar.pdf
Horrible insight. I noted that cholera and typhoid that kills babies and kids follows bad sanitation.
Another noted that hospitals and power plants are being targeted.
We both realized that…disease is going to be rampant…Israel is not going to actually gas or incinerate the people now trapped in this appallingly dangerous refugee crisis but medicine and food can’t get to them…
Their water is about to run low and the wounded in their hospitals won’t have light for operations…
Waves of diseases are going to sweep through overcrowded refugee camps…they are going to die anyway en masse from disease and Israel won’t have had to pull the trigger.
I would so like to be wrong but as Brett Murphy said, otherwise why target the outlets that keep people healthy and keep water clean?
Brett S. Murphy:
” So clearly, the claims of Israel committing genocide against Palestinians are somewhat true.
They don’t dramatically round up people in gas chambers they are just slowly strangling as many as they can to death by denying them things they need to survive and not letting them escape.
The reports are all about immediate casualties but I don’t think they take into account the much greater number of people that have surely perished from dehydration, disease, and lack of medical care.
Why bomb their hospitals and power plants instead of simply sealing the tunnels or putting guards on them?
Because apartheid Israel is trying to destroy the Palestinian culture. Israel needs to be stopped.”
Social media on public perception? Gaza vs Israel
What’s the impact of social media on public perception you ask?
Recent polls show Americans ages 18-29 think Israelis aggression is unjust by a margin of 2:1.
Apartheid Israel pays people to go online and support them and even with that their voices calling for genocide are drowned out by the voices of decent human beings around the world saying enough is enough.
T#FreePalestine #GazaUnderAttack #GazaUnderFire #SupportGaza #PrayForGaza
Very late where I am.
Events in Gaza go beyond words yesterday and today. We are witnessing a holocaust and those who do not rise up to stop it are complicit.
Prose fails at the murder of innocents.
Where words fail poets have a role.
This is for the innocents dead this past two weeks in Gaza and in the region.
I have posted this “Dirge Without Music” by Edna St Vincent Millay before.
Some of us help death by inaction and hardness of heart and some are “not resigned.” May we of all backgrounds continue to join together as not being resigned.
Dirge Without Music
BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the
love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Israel moral defeat only? Couldn’t even venture 2 miles inside Gaza
The Israeli ground forces refused to advance until the air force carpet bomb the land ahead of their incursions.
Remember in 1956, 1967 and 1982 when Israeli forces entered “Arab” Capitals? This is history: Resistance is in the hand of the fighting people and not the lax governments to preserve and safeguard the dignities of their citizens against invaders and occupiers.
Humanity is still fine and getting aware of the brutalities exercised by apartheid Israel.
Demonstration in support of Gaza resistance to preemptive genocide is spreading around the world, cities and capitals.
Israel’s moral defeat will haunt us for years
And the trophy also goes to the Startup Nation, this time to the startup renowned for knowing and reporting as little as possible with as many international media and available websites as possible. “Good morning, it was a quiet night,” the Army Radio host announced cheerfully on Thursday morning.
In the day preceding the happy announcement, the Israel Defense Forces killed 80 Palestinians, 64 of whom were civilians, including 15 children and 5 women. At least 30 of them were killed during the same quiet night, from overwhelming shelling, bombing and firing from Israeli artillery, and this is without counting the number of injured or the number of houses blown up.)
If victory is measured in the number of families wiped out within two weeks – parents and children, one parent and a few children, a grandmother and daughters in law and grandchildren and son, brothers and their children, in all the variations you might choose – then we also have the upper hand.
Here, names from memory: Al-Najjar, Karaw’a, Abu-Jam’e, Ghannem, Qannan, Hamad, A-Salim, Al Astal, Al Hallaq, Sheikh Khalil, Al Kilani. In these families, the few members who survived the Israeli bombings in the past two weeks are now jealous of their dead.
And let’s not forget the laurel wreaths for our legal experts, those without whom the IDF does not make a move. Due to them, blowing up an entire house – whether empty or filled with residents – is easily justified if Israel characterizes one of the family members as an appropriate target (be he senior or junior Hamas member, military or political, brother or family guest).
“If it is legal according to international law,” a Western diplomat told me, shocked by his own state’s position in support of Israel, “it is a sign that something stinks in international law.”
And another bouquet of flowers for our advisers, the graduates of the exclusive law schools in Israel and the United States, and maybe also in England: They are certainly the ones advising the IDF why it is permissible to fire at Palestinian rescue teams and prevent them from getting to the wounded.
Seven members of medical teams on their way to rescue the injured were shot to death by the IDF during two weeks, the last two only last Friday. Another 16 have been wounded. This doesn’t include the cases is which IDF firing prevented crews from driving to the disaster scene.
You will surely recite what the army says: “Terrorists are hiding in the ambulances” – since Palestinians do not really want to save their wounded, they don’t really want to prevent them from bleeding to death under the ruins, isn’t this what you are thinking?
Does our acclaimed intelligence, which did not discover during all these years the network of tunnels, know in real time that in every ambulance that was hit directly with IDF fire, or whose trip to save an injured person was blocked, there are really armed Palestinians inside?
And why is it permissible to save a wounded soldier at the cost of shelling an entire neighborhood, but it is not allowed to save an elderly Palestinian buried under the rubble?
Why is it forbidden to save an armed man, or more correctly a Palestinian fighter, who was wounded while repulsing a foreign army that invaded his neighborhood?
If victory is measured by the success at causing lifelong trauma to 1.8 million people (and not for the first time) waiting to be executed any moment – then the victory is yours.
These victories add up to our moral implosion, the ethical defeat of a society that now engages in no self-inspection, that wallows in self pity over postponed airline flights and burnishes itself with the pride of the enlightened.
This is a society that mourns, naturally, its more than 40 soldiers who were killed, but at the same time hardens its heart and mind in the face of all the suffering and moral courage and heroism of the people we are attacking.
A society that does not understand the extent to which the balance of forces is against it.
“In all the suffering and death,” wrote a friend from Gaza, “there are so many expressions of tenderness and kindness. People are taking care of one another, comforting one another. Especially children who are searching for the best way to support their parents. I saw many children no older than 10 years old who are hugging, comforting their younger siblings, trying to distract them from the horror. So young and already the caretakers of someone else.
I did not meet a single child who did not lose someone – a parent, grandmother, friend, aunt or neighbor. And I thought: If Hamas grew out of the generation of the first intifada, when the young people who threw stones were met with bullets, who will grow out of the generation that experienced the repeated massacres of the last seven years?”
Our moral defeat will haunt us for many years to come.
Israel AGAIN kills children playing in a park! ONCE MORE! An empty park!
No Hamas or resistance rockets being fired! Just kids enjoying their first day of EID!
TEN CHILDREN KILLED! Then bombing the most densely populated hospital in Gaza, al-shifa! The Israeli pilot knew for a fact he will be murdering hundreds. But did not give a damn! Because that’s who they are.
Israeli pilots are terrorist, blood and war loving creatures. Wake up people. Everyone should be speaking up against these illegal war crimes.
12 18Objective of repeated Gaza invasions: Steal Gaza offshore gas fields resources
Five years ago, Israel invaded Gaza under “Operation Cast Lead”.
The Gazan gas fields are part of the broader Levant assessment area.
What is now unfolding is the integration of these adjoining gas fields including those belonging to Palestine into the orbit of Israel. (see map below).
It should be noted that the entire Eastern Mediterranean coastline extending from Egypt’s Sinai to Syria constitutes an area encompassing large gas as well as oil reserves.
Michel Chossudovsky, January 3, 2014
by Michel Chossudovsky
January 8, 2009
The December 2008 military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.
This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon’s Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.
The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007).
The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).
The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.
The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars.
These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine’s gas reserves could be much larger.
Map 1
Map 2
The issue of sovereignty over Gaza’s gas fields is crucial. From a legal standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine.
The death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de facto control over Gaza’s offshore gas reserves.
British Gas (BG Group) has been dealing with the Tel Aviv government.
In turn, the Hamas government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields.
The election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 was a major turning point. Palestine’s sovereignty over the offshore gas fields was challenged in the Israeli Supreme Court. Sharon stated unequivocally that “Israel would never buy gas from Palestine” intimating that Gaza’s offshore gas reserves belong to Israel.
In 2003, Ariel Sharon, vetoed an initial deal, which would allow British Gas to supply Israel with natural gas from Gaza’s offshore wells. (The Independent, August 19, 2003)
The election victory of Hamas in 2006 was conducive to the demise of the Palestinian Authority, which became confined to the West Bank, under the proxy regime of Mahmoud Abbas.
In 2006, British Gas “was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to Egypt.” (Times, May, 23, 2007).
According to reports, British Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened on behalf of Israel with a view to shunting the agreement with Egypt.
The following year, in May 2007, the Israeli Cabinet approved a proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “to buy gas from the Palestinian Authority.” The proposed contract was for $4 billion, with profits of the order of $2 billion of which one billion was to go the Palestinians.
Tel Aviv, however, had no intention on sharing the revenues with Palestine.
An Israeli team of negotiators was set up by the Israeli Cabinet to thrash out a deal with the BG Group, bypassing both the Hamas government and the Palestinian Authority:
“Israeli defence authorities want the Palestinians to be paid in goods and services and insist that no money go to the Hamas-controlled Government.” (Ibid, emphasis added)
The objective was essentially to nullify the contract signed in 1999 between the BG Group and the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.
Under the proposed 2007 agreement with BG, Palestinian gas from Gaza’s offshore wells was to be channeled by an undersea pipeline to the Israeli seaport of Ashkelon, thereby transferring control over the sale of the natural gas to Israel.
The deal fell through. The negotiations were suspended:
”Mossad Chief Meir Dagan opposed the transaction on security grounds, that the proceeds would fund terror”.
(Member of Knesset Gilad Erdan, Address to the Knesset on “The Intention of Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Purchase Gas from the Palestinians When Payment Will Serve Hamas,” March 1, 2006, quoted in Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Does the Prospective Purchase of British Gas from Gaza’s Coastal Waters Threaten Israel’s National Security? Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 2007)
Israel’s intent was to foreclose the possibility that royalties be paid to the Palestinians.
In December 2007, The BG Group withdrew from the negotiations with Israel and in January 2008 they closed their office in Israel.(BG website).
The invasion plan of the Gaza Strip under “Operation Cast Lead” was set in motion in June 2008, according to Israeli military sources:
“Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago [June or before June] , even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.”(Barak Ravid, Operation “Cast Lead”: Israeli Air Force strike followed months of planning, Haaretz, December 27, 2008)
That very same month, the Israeli authorities contacted British Gas, with a view to resuming crucial negotiations pertaining to the purchase of Gaza’s natural gas:
“Both Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler agreed to inform BG of Israel’s wish to renew the talks.
The sources added that BG has not yet officially responded to Israel’s request, but that company executives would probably come to Israel in a few weeks to hold talks with government officials.” (Globes online- Israel’s Business Arena, June 23, 2008)
The decision to speed up negotiations with British Gas (BG Group) coincided, chronologically, with the planning of the invasion of Gaza initiated in June. It would appear that Israel was anxious to reach an agreement with the BG Group prior to the invasion, which was already in an advanced planning stage.
Moreover, these negotiations with British Gas were conducted by the Ehud Olmert government with the knowledge that a military invasion was on the drawing board.
In all likelihood, a new “post war” political-territorial arrangement for the Gaza strip was also being contemplated by the Israeli government.
In fact, negotiations between British Gas and Israeli officials were ongoing in October 2008, 2-3 months prior to the commencement of the bombings on December 27th.
In November 2008, the Israeli Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Infrastructures instructed Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) to enter into negotiations with British Gas, on the purchase of natural gas from the BG’s offshore concession in Gaza. (Globes, November 13, 2008)
“Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler wrote to IEC CEO Amos Lasker recently, informing him of the government’s decision to allow negotiations to go forward, in line with the framework proposal it approved earlier this year.
The IEC board, headed by chairman Moti Friedman, approved the principles of the framework proposal a few weeks ago. The talks with BG Group will begin once the board approves the exemption from a tender.” (Globes Nov. 13, 2008)
The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law.
What can we expect in the wake of the invasion?
What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palestine’s Natural Gas reserves?
A new territorial arrangement, with the stationing of Israeli and/or “peacekeeping” troops?
The militarization of the entire Gaza coastline, which is strategic for Israel?
The outright confiscation of Palestinian gas fields and the unilateral declaration of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza’s maritime areas?
If this were to occur, the Gaza gas fields would be integrated into Israel’s offshore installations, which are contiguous to those of the Gaza Strip. (See Map 1 above).
These various offshore installations are also linked up to Israel’s energy transport corridor, extending from the port of Eilat, which is an oil pipeline terminal, on the Red Sea to the seaport – pipeline terminal at Ashkelon, and northwards to Haifa, and eventually linking up through a proposed Israeli-Turkish pipeline with the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Ceyhan is the terminal of the Baku, Tblisi Ceyhan Trans Caspian pipeline. “What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel’s Tipline.” (See Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, July 23, 2006)
Map 3
Is Israel’s Operation Protective Edge Really About Natural Gas?For more details on this issue, read Michel Chossudovsky’s article War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields. While many articles have debunked the myth that Israel is acting out of “self-defense,” very few have … 
VIDEO; Cynthia McKinney, the Israeli Navy, and $4 billion worth of natural gas off GazaFormer Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney on the Israeli Navy’s circuitous route to shore, with the Spirit of Humanity in tow, after her arrest with 21 other human rights activists while trying to deliver medical supplies, building materials and childrens’ … 
Israel Authorises Mining of Natural Gas off Gaza Shore in Defiance of Palestinian SovereigntyGlobal Research Editor’s Note This is the real reason for the maritime blockade of Gaza: Gaza’s offshore natural gas. Denying Palestine its rights over Gaza territorial waters is intent upon appropriating Gaza’s extensive reserves of natural gas. Michel Chossudovsky, … Striking similarity between Gaza and Warsaw ghetto resistance
With this exception: The imposed ghetto in Gaza by apartheid Israel, Gaza has successfully repulsed 3 times the genocidal preemptive wars of Israel in 2008, 2012 and 2014.
In the pantheon of Holocaust symbols, Anne Frank is the composite victim and the definitive killing site is Auschwitz.
Though thousands of Jewish resistance acts punctuated the genocide, only the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising achieved the status as the ultimate emblem of resistance.
Seventy years ago on April 20, Adolf Hitler was supposed to receive a special birthday present from SS chief Heinrich Himmler: confirmation of the final “liquidation” of the Warsaw ghetto, from which 300,000 Jews had already been sent to the gas chambers of Treblinka.
Himmler was unable to come through on his gift, but it was not for lack of trying.
On April 19, the day before Hitler’s 54th birthday, the dictator’s eternal boogeymen – the Jews – picked up arms to temporarily halt the annihilation of their people.
Following World War II, both Jews and Poles helped elevate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to mythic status. The Jewish uprising and its Polish-led sequel in 1944 allowed both nations to counter victimhood narratives and base reconstituted states upon self-agency, as opposed to rescue from the outside.
But even without nationalist romanticizing, the story of Warsaw Jewry would reside at the center of Holocaust memory. The world’s second largest Jewish community – and its most vibrant – left behind a wealth of primary sources.
Ghetto publications included 47 underground newspaper titles, many of them preserved in milk cans of the legendary Oneg Shabbat archive. Prominent ghetto residents wrote diaries, including renowned child advocate Janusz Korczak, who accompanied his orphans to death.
Testimony from the ghetto sometimes appears larger-than-life, even by Holocaust standards.
Take the head of Warsaw’s Jewish council, Adam Czerniakow, for example. The engineer and former Polish senator committed suicide when the SS demanded he commence deporting Warsaw’s Jews.
It was July of 1942, and 100,000 ghetto Jews had already died of starvation and disease. To quicken the pace of genocide, the Nazis demanded Czerniakow select 6,000 Jews every day for “resettlement” to Treblinka. Out of despair and “to prove to everyone what is the right thing to do,” Czerniakow swallowed cyanide he had stored for the occasion.
Between Czerniakow’s suicide and the start of armed resistance on January 18, 1943, up to 300,000 Warsaw Jews had been gassed at Treblinka. Just 60,000 of the ghetto’s original population of 450,000 remained, bracing themselves for the final liquidation.
Nazi troops entered the ghetto for what they thought would be one of the last times that January morning.
As the Germans prepared to rouse their victims from hiding places, they were suddenly assaulted by pistol and grenade-wielding Jews determined to resist deportation.
While most of the Jews hid in cellars, several dozen fighters conducted the first organized armed resistance against the Nazis in Europe. During four major street battles and a coordinated attack at the deportation platform, Jewish fighters killed several SS men.
“Thanks to the resistance, during today’s ‘Aktion’ there wasn’t a single instance of the murderers seeking people out in the cellars,” wrote one witness. “They were simply afraid to go down.”
News of the resistance spread throughout Europe, and the image of Jews marching to their deaths as “sheep to the slaughter” (similar to kids in Gaza targeted as sitting ducks)encountered a powerful alternative. In a psychological victory, Jews in Warsaw and elsewhere determined to “die with honor.”
Even the Polish underground Home Army — rife with anti-Semitism — called the struggle ‘worthy of emulation’
Even the Polish underground Home Army — rife with anti-Semitism — called the struggle “worthy of emulation.” Hitler’s troops left the Jews largely to themselves for 87 anomalous days in the condemned ghetto’s existence.
Following the January upheaval, Jewish fighters increased their ranks and prepared for the final showdown. Elaborate hide-outs were prepared for civilians and tunnels dug to connect them. Workers destroyed German machinery in factories where employment was once the only lifeline for ghetto Jews.
No one pretended that resistance would alter the ghetto’s ultimate fate, but fighters and their supporters were determined to inflict a price on the murderers of their families.
On the day before Passover – April 19 – thousands of German, Polish and Ukrainian soldiers surrounded the ghetto. Jewish fighters used homemade bombs, pistols and a single captured machine gun to attack Nazis backed by tanks, artillery and armored cars. More than 200 Nazis were wounded or killed by the end of the day.
The ghetto walls and Nazi forces were overwhelming forces and it would have taken an Exodus-style miracle to free the Jews that evening before Passover. Still, many observers called the genesis of Jewish armed resistance a marvel in itself.
After several days of pitched battles, the Nazis decided to burn the Jews out of their underground hiding places. Every building was set ablaze, burying some victims beneath the rubble and forcing others outside. The “battle of the bunkers” lasted for weeks, longer than armed resistance to the Nazis during the invasion of Poland.
Even during the uprising’s first days, participants and observers began to symbolically frame what would become the most legendary revolt against Hitler’s rule.
‘Every doorstep in the ghetto has become a stronghold and shall remain a fortress until the end’
“Every doorstep in the ghetto has become a stronghold and shall remain a fortress until the end,” fighters wrote to Poles on the fifth day of the uprising. “It is a fight for our freedom, as well as yours; for our human dignity and national honor, as well as yours. Long live the fraternity of blood and weapons in fighting Poland.”
Inspired by the uprising, the Home Army launched its own revolt against Nazi rule sixteen months later. The Nazis massacred 200,000 Poles and razed Warsaw, making the 1943 Jewish rebellion a preview of the capital’s death knell.
Intense focus on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as “proof” that Jews fought back can obscure other resistance acts. The 1943 death camp revolts at Treblinka and Sobibor yielded as many survivors and important testimony about the camps’ procedures, lay-out and personnel.
In Poland and elsewhere, Jews marked for murder carried out armed and unarmed resistance during all phases of the genocide. Before the Nazis could murder them at killing pits or in gas chambers, thousands of Jews fought back – in Bialystok, in Janowska and in Brody, and in hundreds of towns and forests across Europe.
In a twist of history, both Israeli and Polish history-shapers helped canonize the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising for their respective purposes.
The world – except for Israel – marks Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, the date Auschwitz was liberated. In 1951, Israel’s leaders chose the uprising’s Hebrew date to memorialize all Holocaust victims, officially calling it the “Day of the Holocaust and Heroism.”
In the early Israeli context, emphasizing Jewish heroism in the Warsaw Ghetto mold outranked the seeming passivity of waiting for liberation by Allied armies.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the uprising “a turning point in the fate of the Jewish people” during this month’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, claiming the warrior mindset born in the ghetto led to Jewish statehood. ( Apparently, Netanyahu has a short memory for trying again to invade Gaza)
Since 1976, televised Holocaust commemorations have taken place in Yad Vashem’s Warsaw Square, a wall of red bricks through which uprising leader Mordechai Anielewicz and his fighters erupt in a replica of Nathan Rapoport’s iconic sculpture.
Rapoport’s original Ghetto Heroes Memorial stands in a grassy square of Warsaw’s former Jewish quarter. Since the bronze monument’s installation in 1948, the uprising has been remembered as a Jewish affair detached from the experience of Nazi-occupied Poland.
Fewer than 10,000 Jews live in Poland today, compared to more than three-million before the war. The murder of Polish Jews continued even after Hitler’s defeat, albeit in isolated pogroms and not death camps. After the fall of Communist rule four decades later, anti-Semitism went out of vogue as a tool of the manipulative state.
Jewish life in Warsaw has undergone a micro-renaissance in recent years, somewhat demonstrated by this month’s unprecedented activities to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Hundreds of volunteers are handing out yellow paper daffodils for people to pin on their clothes, and a human
Meyer Barkai have written: ‘With the dead fell the ghetto walls, and in their place today stands the state of Israel.” –‘The Ghetto Fighters’
And now, with the dead of Gaza, and its resistance forces an independent Palestine will stands on the ruins of playgrounds, hospitals and schools.
Adonis Diaries 