ISRAEL AT ITS BEST Rabbi Dow Marmur
I’d like to mail these reflections as soon as possible. For many of my pieces tend to be critical. This time I’m writing to express my admiration for the maturity of the Israeli public, even its politicians. Sharon’s illness has shown up the country at its best. Judging by global media attention, it has also reminded us how significant Israel has become in the world, not only when there’s a war.
Except for some fringe groups, the population is showing great empathy for the family of Ariel Sharon. Though a good many members of the public react like the British do when royalty is in trouble and rush with flowers and letters to the hospital and to his farm, the reaction by public figures has been responsible and measured. People show great respect for Sharon’s leadership skills without necessarily recanting their opposition to his actions, past and present.
Many see him as a kind of incarnation of Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister. Others speak of him as Israel’s De Gaulle, the man who changed his views dramatically because he deemed it to be in the best interest of his country.
The country remains very stable. The stability is reflected in the polls. They don’t suggest major shifts in anticipated voting patterns. Sharon’s Kadima party, even under Olmert, is holding its own.
But things may change in the weeks to come. It may emerge that Sharon’s disappearance from the political arena (which is now taken for granted) will benefit Netanyahu. He, too, has so far behaved in an exemplary fashion by keeping a low profile and not making any critical statements. He even reversed his decision and let the Likud ministers stay in the government as a manifestation of responsibility and solidarity.
The party that could have made great gains is Labour – had it elected Peres as its leader instead of defeating him with a narrow majority in favour of Peretz. Olmert, on behalf of Kadima, is wooing Peres, for he’s worth many votes, and he seems to be responding positively. Labour has probably lost its chances as far as Peres is concerned. But all such speculations are muted at present.
Other muted speculations concern the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations. A view that makes sense to me is that very little will change, irrespective of who is Prime Minister, because (a) no leader of Israel will be able to resist Israeli public opinion – which remains largely in favour of a peace settlement – and (b) United States pressure, which has a great interest in bringing the conflict to some kind of resolution, irrespective of who succeeds George W. Bush as President of the United States.
The real changes need to take place in the realm of social policy, but that’s not likely to happen, unless Labour does well enough to become a strong coalition partner in the next government. So far, market forces are stronger than socialist passions.
Ultimately – despite all the talk about Sharon’s charisma – most people here believe that political issues are not determined by individuals. General consensus will win the day. It’s currently reflected in (1) empathy with Sharon and his family, (2) a determination not to squander opportunities for peace, (3) pursuit of current policies in all fields, especially in the realm of security.
This very bad time for the country has also shown up Israel at its best. Even when I’m critical, I feel hugely privileged to be here. How much more so now!
Jerusalem 8.1.06 Dow Marmur
[Dr Philip Bliss
ProjeNews]
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
The General: History Interrupted.
The General: History Interrupted
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/weekinreview/08bennet.html?pagewanted=print
January 8, 2006
The GeneralHistory Interrupted
By JAMES BENNET
"LOOK, the Jews are not easy people," Ariel Sharon, one of the least easy of people, said late one evening in 2004 on his farm in southern Israel. "Maybe that's the reason they managed to exist, I would say, for thousands of years." He chuckled."You cannot defeat Jews," Israel's prime minister went on. "You can maneuver them. You maneuver them, they maneuver you. I would say it's endless maneuvers."It is hard to imagine Mr. Sharon's own gambits at an end. Having outmaneuvered Jew and gentile, enemy and ally alike, Mr. Sharon at 77 was losing ground at this writing to the invincible opponent he had also cheated more than once. It should have surprised no one - though it did - that he was caught, in this struggle, in mid-maneuver. Having torn up the Jewish settlements he founded in the Gaza Strip, he had been on his way to tearing apart the right-wing party he founded, Likud, in favor of a new, centrist party that was going to do - well, it may be that only Mr. Sharon knew exactly what, and some wondered if even he did.He almost certainly planned to pull some Israeli settlers out of parts of the West Bank, but how soon, and from which areas? Did he envision signing a peace agreement with the Palestinians from behind the West Bank barrier he mapped out? One that would provide them sovereignty in a viable state? Or did he want to cage the Palestinians in barricaded enclaves like Gaza? Its ends still unknown, its ultimate achievements still uncertain, one of the most audacious exercises of leadership in Israel's history came to an abrupt close at a moment of resounding ambiguity."We will never know the real answer," said Tzaly Reshef, a founder of the left-wing Israeli group Peace Now. He said that his own feelings about Mr. Sharon were mixed. "Some good friends who share my views remember only the last two years," he said. "I remember the whole history of Sharon.""He didn't have a lot of limitations, moral or otherwise," Mr. Reshef said. Yet - partly because of those qualities - Mr. Reshef did not have mixed emotions about the loss of Mr. Sharon as a leader. "I think it is a big tragedy that we lose him now," he said. The same "power and personality," he said, that caused Mr. Sharon to command the bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982 "could maybe have made him the savior of Israel in the next four years."Maybe Mr. Sharon had confided all in his deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert. Maybe, in a locked chest on the farm, he had squirreled away a map of his planned disposition of territory. But, Mr. Sharon being Mr. Sharon, no one could rule out another feint. Besides, the interplay of Israeli and Palestinian blows and posturing has proved resistant to fixed road maps of any one's devising; prospects for changing the pattern had come to rest more on the creative leadership of the brutal, cunning figure who just exited, stage center.What Mr. Sharon might have done is a question of more than academic interest. Lacking his credentials, politicians who follow will compete for his legacy and so contest its interpretation. "Everybody's going to fight for the mantle of Ariel Sharon," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I think partly because he covered such a wide swath of the middle of Israeli politics there are going to be innumerable theories of what he might have done."Israel has never fought a war without Ariel Sharon in the front lines or in command, or both. Even Israelis who held him responsible for the massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila during the Lebanon War or the deaths of Arab civilians during his commando raids of the 1950's trusted him to concede territory because they believed that, as he often said, he would never take a risk with their security.As a leader, Mr. Sharon - his first name means "Lion of God" - was everything he seemed, and its opposite. He was blunt in speech and subtle in aim, sloppy in appearance and meticulous in preparation, grandfatherly in demeanor and ruthless in reality. In their 1973 study, "The Israeli Army," Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz concluded that he "concealed one of the finest tactical minds in the Army behind the carefully cultivated image of a simple fighting soldier."It is the effort to conceal that is telling. His nickname, "the Bulldozer," reflected only his most obvious features - the fists, not the brain. He was underestimated even when he ran for prime minister five years ago, when potential opponents, including Benjamin Netanyahu, stood aside in the expectation that Mr. Sharon would keep the seat warm, quickly fall from power, and make a successor look good by comparison.Those entangled by his tactics often came away revolted. "The biggest liar this side of the Mediterranean," the American diplomat Philip Habib, who on behalf of Ronald Reagan tried to end Israel's 1982 Lebanon invasion, said of Mr. Sharon, who was then defense minister. Mr. Sharon was a man of fixed ends - Israel's security, as he saw it, and its inextricable adjuncts, his own military and political success - and infinitely flexible means. That was the bitter lesson learned by Israeli settlers who moved into Gaza on his encouragement and out of it on his orders.Mr. Sharon called his new party Kadima, or Forward, without ever saying just where it was headed. Both the indefatigable dove, Shimon Peres, and hawks like Shaul Mofaz, the defense minister, flocked to him. A poll released just before Mr. Sharon was stricken Wednesday showed Kadima crushing the established Likud and Labor Parties. Mr. Sharon had not even prepared a parliamentary list for elections, ranking his party leaders in order of importance. They must now sort it all out on their own.Mr. Sharon was no mere blur, of course. He used ambiguity to hold the political center but he held that political center in order to shape it. He reversed the logic for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was adopted by his predecessors Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak: While those prime ministers sought security through peace agreements, Mr. Sharon insisted, as he put it, that only security could bring peace. The Palestinians would have to lay down arms before negotiations could begin.As a result, Israelis endorsed Mr. Sharon's conviction that the Palestinian leadership, unable or unwilling to crack down on militants, could not now be a peace partner. And so they overwhelmingly backed his approach of unilaterally setting Israel's boundaries, withdrawing from Gaza in what he assured voters was their own interest.Palestinians and Mr. Sharon's left-wing critics said his approach was calculatedly self-fulfilling. In their eyes, his refusal to talk undermined Palestinian pragmatists, who needed negotiated achievements to build domestic support. To them, Israeli incursions and blockades crippled the very security forces that were supposed to act against terrorists. Mr. Sharon's unilateralism, they said, empowered militants, who pointed to it in arguing that the violence of the second intifada had achieved something that 10 years of negotiations never did - the evacuation of Israeli settlements.Mr. Sharon was fairly clear about whether he saw this unilateralism leading to a peace agreement. He wanted an agreement, he said, provided the Palestinians could meet his demands for his security. His senior aides used to joke that, to do so, the Palestinians would have to become Swedes. For years, Mr. Sharon said he wanted a long-term interim agreement, a sort of standstill arrangement that would end the fighting, reduce the friction between the two peoples and help them, somehow, become comfortable with each other. Only after many years, he argued, would there be enough trust for real peace. In any final deal, he wanted to hold all of Jerusalem and Israel's biggest West Bank settlements.Mr. Sharon liked to quote advice his mother gave him in the early 1980's, when he was negotiating with the Egyptians: "Do not trust them! You cannot trust a piece of paper!"In that conversation at his farm, in the summer of 2004, Mr. Sharon cautioned, "Here, in this region here, declarations, speeches, words, are worthless." It was, he said, "an empire of lies." Yet even Mr. Reshef said Mr. Sharon would ultimately have been open to negotiating peace with the Palestinians, if they pulled themselves together.Rather than words, Mr. Sharon believed in action, in land, and in history as he saw it, and he saw it all around him. That evening at his farm, he described riding through the terraced West Bank hills near the city of Ramallah. He would narrow his eyes, he said, to block out the electrical lines and imagine warriors of the ancient Israeli tribe of Benjamin "with spears, running there on those terraces."Arabs, he added, did not build the terraces. "Those terraces are old Jewish terraces," he said.Mr. Sharon has earned his own place in that glorious, sad story, and in the debate that may never die.Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HonestReporting.com
13/1/06 (Update on Sharon)
A MEDIA U-TURN OR GROSS HYPOCRISY?
While the late conversion of some media outlets to a more balanced and fairer treatment of Sharon is welcome, HonestReporting notes how the media's attitude throughout Sharon's career has been infected with opinion and prejudice that has significantly contributed to the campaign of demonization against Israel. As illustrated by some of the examples in this communique, this trend still exists in many quarters.
The sudden u-turn of many of Sharon's detractors demonstrates the fickleness of a media that has promoted its own opinion of the truth with utter disregard for the consequences. This power to shape perceptions and mould public opinion reinforces the need to hold the media accountable for its work.
The thoughts of HonestReporting are with Ariel Sharon and his family and we urge readers to remain vigilant and to respond to further media distortions of his history. (See the Jewish Virtual Library for a detailed biography.)
Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle against media bias.
HonestReporting
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/weekinreview/08bennet.html?pagewanted=print
January 8, 2006
The GeneralHistory Interrupted
By JAMES BENNET
"LOOK, the Jews are not easy people," Ariel Sharon, one of the least easy of people, said late one evening in 2004 on his farm in southern Israel. "Maybe that's the reason they managed to exist, I would say, for thousands of years." He chuckled."You cannot defeat Jews," Israel's prime minister went on. "You can maneuver them. You maneuver them, they maneuver you. I would say it's endless maneuvers."It is hard to imagine Mr. Sharon's own gambits at an end. Having outmaneuvered Jew and gentile, enemy and ally alike, Mr. Sharon at 77 was losing ground at this writing to the invincible opponent he had also cheated more than once. It should have surprised no one - though it did - that he was caught, in this struggle, in mid-maneuver. Having torn up the Jewish settlements he founded in the Gaza Strip, he had been on his way to tearing apart the right-wing party he founded, Likud, in favor of a new, centrist party that was going to do - well, it may be that only Mr. Sharon knew exactly what, and some wondered if even he did.He almost certainly planned to pull some Israeli settlers out of parts of the West Bank, but how soon, and from which areas? Did he envision signing a peace agreement with the Palestinians from behind the West Bank barrier he mapped out? One that would provide them sovereignty in a viable state? Or did he want to cage the Palestinians in barricaded enclaves like Gaza? Its ends still unknown, its ultimate achievements still uncertain, one of the most audacious exercises of leadership in Israel's history came to an abrupt close at a moment of resounding ambiguity."We will never know the real answer," said Tzaly Reshef, a founder of the left-wing Israeli group Peace Now. He said that his own feelings about Mr. Sharon were mixed. "Some good friends who share my views remember only the last two years," he said. "I remember the whole history of Sharon.""He didn't have a lot of limitations, moral or otherwise," Mr. Reshef said. Yet - partly because of those qualities - Mr. Reshef did not have mixed emotions about the loss of Mr. Sharon as a leader. "I think it is a big tragedy that we lose him now," he said. The same "power and personality," he said, that caused Mr. Sharon to command the bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982 "could maybe have made him the savior of Israel in the next four years."Maybe Mr. Sharon had confided all in his deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert. Maybe, in a locked chest on the farm, he had squirreled away a map of his planned disposition of territory. But, Mr. Sharon being Mr. Sharon, no one could rule out another feint. Besides, the interplay of Israeli and Palestinian blows and posturing has proved resistant to fixed road maps of any one's devising; prospects for changing the pattern had come to rest more on the creative leadership of the brutal, cunning figure who just exited, stage center.What Mr. Sharon might have done is a question of more than academic interest. Lacking his credentials, politicians who follow will compete for his legacy and so contest its interpretation. "Everybody's going to fight for the mantle of Ariel Sharon," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I think partly because he covered such a wide swath of the middle of Israeli politics there are going to be innumerable theories of what he might have done."Israel has never fought a war without Ariel Sharon in the front lines or in command, or both. Even Israelis who held him responsible for the massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila during the Lebanon War or the deaths of Arab civilians during his commando raids of the 1950's trusted him to concede territory because they believed that, as he often said, he would never take a risk with their security.As a leader, Mr. Sharon - his first name means "Lion of God" - was everything he seemed, and its opposite. He was blunt in speech and subtle in aim, sloppy in appearance and meticulous in preparation, grandfatherly in demeanor and ruthless in reality. In their 1973 study, "The Israeli Army," Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz concluded that he "concealed one of the finest tactical minds in the Army behind the carefully cultivated image of a simple fighting soldier."It is the effort to conceal that is telling. His nickname, "the Bulldozer," reflected only his most obvious features - the fists, not the brain. He was underestimated even when he ran for prime minister five years ago, when potential opponents, including Benjamin Netanyahu, stood aside in the expectation that Mr. Sharon would keep the seat warm, quickly fall from power, and make a successor look good by comparison.Those entangled by his tactics often came away revolted. "The biggest liar this side of the Mediterranean," the American diplomat Philip Habib, who on behalf of Ronald Reagan tried to end Israel's 1982 Lebanon invasion, said of Mr. Sharon, who was then defense minister. Mr. Sharon was a man of fixed ends - Israel's security, as he saw it, and its inextricable adjuncts, his own military and political success - and infinitely flexible means. That was the bitter lesson learned by Israeli settlers who moved into Gaza on his encouragement and out of it on his orders.Mr. Sharon called his new party Kadima, or Forward, without ever saying just where it was headed. Both the indefatigable dove, Shimon Peres, and hawks like Shaul Mofaz, the defense minister, flocked to him. A poll released just before Mr. Sharon was stricken Wednesday showed Kadima crushing the established Likud and Labor Parties. Mr. Sharon had not even prepared a parliamentary list for elections, ranking his party leaders in order of importance. They must now sort it all out on their own.Mr. Sharon was no mere blur, of course. He used ambiguity to hold the political center but he held that political center in order to shape it. He reversed the logic for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was adopted by his predecessors Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak: While those prime ministers sought security through peace agreements, Mr. Sharon insisted, as he put it, that only security could bring peace. The Palestinians would have to lay down arms before negotiations could begin.As a result, Israelis endorsed Mr. Sharon's conviction that the Palestinian leadership, unable or unwilling to crack down on militants, could not now be a peace partner. And so they overwhelmingly backed his approach of unilaterally setting Israel's boundaries, withdrawing from Gaza in what he assured voters was their own interest.Palestinians and Mr. Sharon's left-wing critics said his approach was calculatedly self-fulfilling. In their eyes, his refusal to talk undermined Palestinian pragmatists, who needed negotiated achievements to build domestic support. To them, Israeli incursions and blockades crippled the very security forces that were supposed to act against terrorists. Mr. Sharon's unilateralism, they said, empowered militants, who pointed to it in arguing that the violence of the second intifada had achieved something that 10 years of negotiations never did - the evacuation of Israeli settlements.Mr. Sharon was fairly clear about whether he saw this unilateralism leading to a peace agreement. He wanted an agreement, he said, provided the Palestinians could meet his demands for his security. His senior aides used to joke that, to do so, the Palestinians would have to become Swedes. For years, Mr. Sharon said he wanted a long-term interim agreement, a sort of standstill arrangement that would end the fighting, reduce the friction between the two peoples and help them, somehow, become comfortable with each other. Only after many years, he argued, would there be enough trust for real peace. In any final deal, he wanted to hold all of Jerusalem and Israel's biggest West Bank settlements.Mr. Sharon liked to quote advice his mother gave him in the early 1980's, when he was negotiating with the Egyptians: "Do not trust them! You cannot trust a piece of paper!"In that conversation at his farm, in the summer of 2004, Mr. Sharon cautioned, "Here, in this region here, declarations, speeches, words, are worthless." It was, he said, "an empire of lies." Yet even Mr. Reshef said Mr. Sharon would ultimately have been open to negotiating peace with the Palestinians, if they pulled themselves together.Rather than words, Mr. Sharon believed in action, in land, and in history as he saw it, and he saw it all around him. That evening at his farm, he described riding through the terraced West Bank hills near the city of Ramallah. He would narrow his eyes, he said, to block out the electrical lines and imagine warriors of the ancient Israeli tribe of Benjamin "with spears, running there on those terraces."Arabs, he added, did not build the terraces. "Those terraces are old Jewish terraces," he said.Mr. Sharon has earned his own place in that glorious, sad story, and in the debate that may never die.Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HonestReporting.com
13/1/06 (Update on Sharon)
A MEDIA U-TURN OR GROSS HYPOCRISY?
While the late conversion of some media outlets to a more balanced and fairer treatment of Sharon is welcome, HonestReporting notes how the media's attitude throughout Sharon's career has been infected with opinion and prejudice that has significantly contributed to the campaign of demonization against Israel. As illustrated by some of the examples in this communique, this trend still exists in many quarters.
The sudden u-turn of many of Sharon's detractors demonstrates the fickleness of a media that has promoted its own opinion of the truth with utter disregard for the consequences. This power to shape perceptions and mould public opinion reinforces the need to hold the media accountable for its work.
The thoughts of HonestReporting are with Ariel Sharon and his family and we urge readers to remain vigilant and to respond to further media distortions of his history. (See the Jewish Virtual Library for a detailed biography.)
Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle against media bias.
HonestReporting
Bukovina (now Ukraine)- Romania's Holocaust.(2.)
(Contnd. Ciudin pogrom- and eyewitness account.)
THEY HAD GATHERED TOGETHER ALL THE JEWS
So we stayed there, and lay there with 'gehacte vinden', the same way an invalid does, until about sometime in the afternoon when we realized nobody was around. So I got up, and shook off all the branches, and I looked over and Bubi was lying there looking like he was dead.
I shouted to him "Bubi, what's with you?" And he didn't say a thing because he couldn't talk anymore.
So I started shaking him a bit, and telling him that when night would fall we'd get out of there. Thank G-d it got dark again...Oh yes, wait: when, on that Shabbos, Sabbath we had begun to cover ourselves, that was the time that they were shooting everyone in our town.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Shabbos they had gathered together all the Jews, and they had herded them into the rear of the courthouse where there was a jail. And they took all the Jews there.
I knew about where that jail was because there was a guy there called Laba, whose son was a tutor, and my father, (since unfortunately there was no school) had said that for education he was a very rich man. For a while we studied at a Mrs. Weshler's, and another time at Moishe Schachter's, and one time at this Laba's, because his son was a tutor who gave me lessons. They lived right where the jail was because his father was the jail-master.
He had showed me where the kitchen was for the criminals, and there was a long corridor with iron doors to the left and to the right, and in each door was a small peep-hole, where one could look in at the prisoners. He always showed me this stuff, and from one side of this jail you could look right into our garden. We were the third house from the courthouse, and from those top-floor windows you could see right into our place. There were times that I looked up there and could see them looking out from behind the bars in the tiny windows.
This is where they took these poor people on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Shabbos, and when we were getting up from our hiding in those "graves”, we heard such a tremendously loud echo that the whole woods trembled. That's when they shot all our people. First we heard a terrible yelling and screaming. We weren't far; about six or seven kilometers away. We thought they were shooting men, but not women and children like that.
JIDANE
We knew that the Romanians were thieves and I knew who we were dealing with. When we went to school, I knew they were all anti-semites, the teachers were all anti-semites. The principal was one called Niagu, who instead of teaching us would take us out onto the fields to hoe his fields with crude sticks.
One time when I was doing this, he came over to me and grabbed this stick and gave me such a smash...if it was today they'd kill him. I was even ashamed to tell on him at home. If I didn't know something at school, he'd take me by the "payes", the sidelocks, and say "Moishe, Itsik, Chaim, numela personale".. That is to say tell me people's names, but he'd make fun of the Jewish ones.
And the other Gentiles would also say "Mai Jidane Paduchios", "You lousy Jews should go to Palestine" and things like that. We didn't get along well with them, but we were strong, and we took a few boys, and we beat the hell out of them, and they were afraid of us.
So Sunday morning we're going, not walking, but crawling on our bellies. As we crawled, Bubi couldn't talk anymore, and we crawled and crawled on our bellies.
After a few hundred meters, we came to the first little hut, and as we came close, I saw Georgie who had worked in our store. We had owned a store that sold grains like corn, wheat, maise, all sorts of flour and he had worked for us. Wagons had come, and he had worked there. When I saw him I was overjoyed, and stood up on my knees and motioned for him to come over. So he comes running from his hut, which was surrounded by a fenced-in garden that kept in the animals.
He comes running and I says "Georgie, what's happening at our place?" So he says, "Come in, come into my house". We got up and I helped Bubi get up because he was so weak he couldn't get up anymore, and in we got to his house.
As we come in I could hardly talk, and there was his wife or his daughter. And as we sit down I motioned like this: to give us something to drink. So she brought us a clay pitcher with milk, and some sort of a saucer, and I pour some milk for myself, and I give some to Bubi. I drank the milk, and she had brought us a piece of bread, but we couldn't eat it. When I finished that milk I started to talk a little.
I said "Georgie, what' s happening in our town?". So he says, "You stay here and I'll go and come right back". So we're sitting there looking like corpses out of the earth, starved, torn clothes from these branches, and so on.
It didn't take long, maybe a half hour or so, and he comes back ... listen: with a whole patrol of civilians, not military, but with rifles.
"Oh!" says one, "You were in the woods. We knew you were hiding. You shot at our army"
"We shot at their army?! " I said "We didn't shoot at anybody!", and "What are you going to do with us?"
He says "We have orders to take all Jews that we catch to town", So I thought to myself, "Very good, they're leading us to town; it's not far, and then I'll be able to go home"
Meanwhile someone took my jacket, and I had a watch on my hand, which was also taken, and ...what else did I have? I think I had a little ring.. also taken. No... the ring was hidden and they didn't find it. They lead us out on the road, and as we got to the road I thought, "It can't be far to town, about two kilometers or so, and we'll be in our stetl."
I see a Romanian patrol approaching, and I start to shake. We hadn't seen them for over a year, those Romanians, because the Russians had been there, not the Romanians. And as they came over these Romanians asked "Who are these guys?"
The others replied "Jidane”, "Jews”. “We caught them in the woods and they shot at our soldiers."
I said "That's not true...its not true". So one came over and gave me a slap and for the first time ever I saw fire in my eyes.
A LITTLE FURTHER
He said "O.K., you go back to where you were going", to these civilians, and "We'll take care of getting them back to Ciudin".
They asked me in Romanian ,"Have you done military service?"
"Yes".
"Where did you do military service?"
"In the cavalry."
He says "Attention!" So I stood at attention.
"Directia Ciudin!" That means we should go in the direction of Ciudin.
I felt very encouraged because we started to march to Ciudin.
Not long after we started out they started to push us with the butts of their rifles, and they started to hit us right here. They threw us into a ditch, you know, and we start walking across a field.
And they lead us and lead us, and I hear them whispering about something "Over there, just a little further..." He was saying that at the top of the next hill was where they would shoot us, you understand.
I heard them conferring in this way, and I started to cry, and to beg, "We're not far from our home...and G-d will help you. This is a war, and when you return to your homes it will be good for you" and so on.
One of them came closer, and I had another little watch and a ring hidden, and I gave them away.
So one came over and opened a rucksack, you know the kind that soldiers use to carry bread, and so on. So he opens this rucksack and takes out a bottle of about 3/4 of a litre of liquor, real 100% proof liquor. He says "You should know that you are being led to be shot, and you won't live long. But since you gave us these things, drink this...if you want drink it all, and between the two of you, you won't feel a thing".
LIKE AN ANGEL
So, go drink whiskey before your death! I started to moan and beg, and fell to their feet and kissed them...and so on. So one says " Do you have enough strength to go on to Ciudin?"
So I said "Yes, certainly I can go!"
"And he won't speak?" So they beat Bubi because he couldn't speak. Poor Bubi couldn't manage to speak. So one says "Are you sure you can go on?"
I said "Yes!!"
So he says "Run over to that tree!" And he shows me a tree about twenty-five metres away that he wanted me to run to. So if I could run it would be good, and if not...not. I don't know from anything and I start running.
And just as I start to run I hear "TRRRRRRRRRRRRR " A machine gun!
Out of terror I fell to the ground, and stopped running, and at this point crawled back on my belly. I crawled back right back to them, and poor Bubi was lying there. And I start crying and begging, and kissing their feet.
One of them was like an angel. He says "Lets take them back to Ciudin. To hell with them! Let's take them back to Ciudin."
And they ordered us to get up, and they led us back across the ditch onto the road, and they led us back to town.
WHERE IS THIS STETL
When we got to town, we saw that the desecration of the Holy Temple was nothing compared to what had happened there.
Every house that we knew all those years… if you looked through the front, you could see through to the back. The windows were gone! The doors were gone! The bricks were missing. And you couldn't see a dog , or a cat. No people! Nothing!
I asked myself "Where is this Stetl? Where are the people?"
They led us to the centre of town. At the centre of town was a large building and near that building was our house. And they led us to this building, and which had belonged to a man called Schachter, who had owned a store that was attached to his house.
In front of the place was an officer , and I knew him from before. He searched us, and found one last watch that I had hidden in a secret pocket. When he took it, I asked him "What's happening here?"
He says "You'll hear all about it. You'll be told."
We were led into this empty store, where everything had been robbed, and it was totally empty, and there's my teacher Guttman. The Hebrew teacher from my Stetl. He had been a very good teacher, and I had liked him very much. I had received good grades for my studies, and he liked me. I find him there with Lezer Guttman, his son, and Ruchale, his daughter.
I find them there, and they start to cry, so I ask them "Why are you crying? Where are the other people?"
They said "Don't ask about anybody".
"What do you mean!?"
They tell me not far from there had lived a farmer who had been very rich. When the Russians came in they had sent all the rich Gentiles to Siberia... Jews too; those who had been rich were given a passport of some kind and they were all taken away from their homes. Just over there was a home that had been taken away from this gentile, they had taken away the whole family, and it was empty.
Guttman and his family had gone up to the loft of his barn and hidden themselves there. From that hiding place they had been able to look down into the jail where they had seen Jews being led, and had known something was going on.
WHY DID THEY TOLL THE BELLS?
This had started Thursday, and on Friday she had said...this Mrs. Guttman, that she would go down to hear what what going on in the stetl.
So she went down, and Moishe Schachter had been there with his family too, so Mrs. Schachter went down with Mrs. Guttman to find out what was going on, and said they'd soon be back to the loft.
After they left, these people waited and waited, all day Friday, soon it was evening, Shabbos, and they're not coming back. They too had been captured and taken away.
Guttman told how on Saturday at 4:00 p.m., in looking down at everything that was going on, they saw how everybody had been gathered together, how people were been led, and more and more people were being brought, and they had pushed all of these people into those cells that I have told you about in that jail, and at 4:00 in the afternoon, the bells of the churches started to toll very loudly.
Why did they toll the bells? So you couldn't hear the cries of anguish of these people.
And that's when they pushed machine guns through those little windows in the doors, and they started to shoot. The Guttmans could see what what was going on from there!
Now, imagine for yourself...not everyone...had the luck...to get a bullet in the heart or in the head. My father...and my brothers and sister had to watch their own children dying...
And the children had to watch how their parents died...
And after a few hours the Guttmans watched as they started to throw from this balcony, how they started throwing down the people, throwing and throwing.
A few hours before they had watched them digging...graves. They could see from up there in that loft this digging and wondering if they were digging fortifications. But that wasn't it. They were working on the mass graves. It wasn't far from the jail where they dug these...five ... mass graves, and that's where they threw in these people.
And later when they saw them replacing the earth...they could see ... the earth moving... they weren't all dead. That's how they were buried.
So... when we came down that Sunday, this is what they told us. I started to cry terribly... and so...
A List of the Martyrs of Ciudin, including Hedy Schachter, my mother's sister, who ran out to look for my grandfather and never returned is on the Jewish Gen site. My uncle survived Transnistria and later died in Israel).
Written with the help of my friend Eli Rozenblatt from Ciudin.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This material is made available by JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project for the purpose of fulfilling our mission of disseminating information about the Holocaust and destroyed Jewish communities.
THEY HAD GATHERED TOGETHER ALL THE JEWS
So we stayed there, and lay there with 'gehacte vinden', the same way an invalid does, until about sometime in the afternoon when we realized nobody was around. So I got up, and shook off all the branches, and I looked over and Bubi was lying there looking like he was dead.
I shouted to him "Bubi, what's with you?" And he didn't say a thing because he couldn't talk anymore.
So I started shaking him a bit, and telling him that when night would fall we'd get out of there. Thank G-d it got dark again...Oh yes, wait: when, on that Shabbos, Sabbath we had begun to cover ourselves, that was the time that they were shooting everyone in our town.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Shabbos they had gathered together all the Jews, and they had herded them into the rear of the courthouse where there was a jail. And they took all the Jews there.
I knew about where that jail was because there was a guy there called Laba, whose son was a tutor, and my father, (since unfortunately there was no school) had said that for education he was a very rich man. For a while we studied at a Mrs. Weshler's, and another time at Moishe Schachter's, and one time at this Laba's, because his son was a tutor who gave me lessons. They lived right where the jail was because his father was the jail-master.
He had showed me where the kitchen was for the criminals, and there was a long corridor with iron doors to the left and to the right, and in each door was a small peep-hole, where one could look in at the prisoners. He always showed me this stuff, and from one side of this jail you could look right into our garden. We were the third house from the courthouse, and from those top-floor windows you could see right into our place. There were times that I looked up there and could see them looking out from behind the bars in the tiny windows.
This is where they took these poor people on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Shabbos, and when we were getting up from our hiding in those "graves”, we heard such a tremendously loud echo that the whole woods trembled. That's when they shot all our people. First we heard a terrible yelling and screaming. We weren't far; about six or seven kilometers away. We thought they were shooting men, but not women and children like that.
JIDANE
We knew that the Romanians were thieves and I knew who we were dealing with. When we went to school, I knew they were all anti-semites, the teachers were all anti-semites. The principal was one called Niagu, who instead of teaching us would take us out onto the fields to hoe his fields with crude sticks.
One time when I was doing this, he came over to me and grabbed this stick and gave me such a smash...if it was today they'd kill him. I was even ashamed to tell on him at home. If I didn't know something at school, he'd take me by the "payes", the sidelocks, and say "Moishe, Itsik, Chaim, numela personale".. That is to say tell me people's names, but he'd make fun of the Jewish ones.
And the other Gentiles would also say "Mai Jidane Paduchios", "You lousy Jews should go to Palestine" and things like that. We didn't get along well with them, but we were strong, and we took a few boys, and we beat the hell out of them, and they were afraid of us.
So Sunday morning we're going, not walking, but crawling on our bellies. As we crawled, Bubi couldn't talk anymore, and we crawled and crawled on our bellies.
After a few hundred meters, we came to the first little hut, and as we came close, I saw Georgie who had worked in our store. We had owned a store that sold grains like corn, wheat, maise, all sorts of flour and he had worked for us. Wagons had come, and he had worked there. When I saw him I was overjoyed, and stood up on my knees and motioned for him to come over. So he comes running from his hut, which was surrounded by a fenced-in garden that kept in the animals.
He comes running and I says "Georgie, what's happening at our place?" So he says, "Come in, come into my house". We got up and I helped Bubi get up because he was so weak he couldn't get up anymore, and in we got to his house.
As we come in I could hardly talk, and there was his wife or his daughter. And as we sit down I motioned like this: to give us something to drink. So she brought us a clay pitcher with milk, and some sort of a saucer, and I pour some milk for myself, and I give some to Bubi. I drank the milk, and she had brought us a piece of bread, but we couldn't eat it. When I finished that milk I started to talk a little.
I said "Georgie, what' s happening in our town?". So he says, "You stay here and I'll go and come right back". So we're sitting there looking like corpses out of the earth, starved, torn clothes from these branches, and so on.
It didn't take long, maybe a half hour or so, and he comes back ... listen: with a whole patrol of civilians, not military, but with rifles.
"Oh!" says one, "You were in the woods. We knew you were hiding. You shot at our army"
"We shot at their army?! " I said "We didn't shoot at anybody!", and "What are you going to do with us?"
He says "We have orders to take all Jews that we catch to town", So I thought to myself, "Very good, they're leading us to town; it's not far, and then I'll be able to go home"
Meanwhile someone took my jacket, and I had a watch on my hand, which was also taken, and ...what else did I have? I think I had a little ring.. also taken. No... the ring was hidden and they didn't find it. They lead us out on the road, and as we got to the road I thought, "It can't be far to town, about two kilometers or so, and we'll be in our stetl."
I see a Romanian patrol approaching, and I start to shake. We hadn't seen them for over a year, those Romanians, because the Russians had been there, not the Romanians. And as they came over these Romanians asked "Who are these guys?"
The others replied "Jidane”, "Jews”. “We caught them in the woods and they shot at our soldiers."
I said "That's not true...its not true". So one came over and gave me a slap and for the first time ever I saw fire in my eyes.
A LITTLE FURTHER
He said "O.K., you go back to where you were going", to these civilians, and "We'll take care of getting them back to Ciudin".
They asked me in Romanian ,"Have you done military service?"
"Yes".
"Where did you do military service?"
"In the cavalry."
He says "Attention!" So I stood at attention.
"Directia Ciudin!" That means we should go in the direction of Ciudin.
I felt very encouraged because we started to march to Ciudin.
Not long after we started out they started to push us with the butts of their rifles, and they started to hit us right here. They threw us into a ditch, you know, and we start walking across a field.
And they lead us and lead us, and I hear them whispering about something "Over there, just a little further..." He was saying that at the top of the next hill was where they would shoot us, you understand.
I heard them conferring in this way, and I started to cry, and to beg, "We're not far from our home...and G-d will help you. This is a war, and when you return to your homes it will be good for you" and so on.
One of them came closer, and I had another little watch and a ring hidden, and I gave them away.
So one came over and opened a rucksack, you know the kind that soldiers use to carry bread, and so on. So he opens this rucksack and takes out a bottle of about 3/4 of a litre of liquor, real 100% proof liquor. He says "You should know that you are being led to be shot, and you won't live long. But since you gave us these things, drink this...if you want drink it all, and between the two of you, you won't feel a thing".
LIKE AN ANGEL
So, go drink whiskey before your death! I started to moan and beg, and fell to their feet and kissed them...and so on. So one says " Do you have enough strength to go on to Ciudin?"
So I said "Yes, certainly I can go!"
"And he won't speak?" So they beat Bubi because he couldn't speak. Poor Bubi couldn't manage to speak. So one says "Are you sure you can go on?"
I said "Yes!!"
So he says "Run over to that tree!" And he shows me a tree about twenty-five metres away that he wanted me to run to. So if I could run it would be good, and if not...not. I don't know from anything and I start running.
And just as I start to run I hear "TRRRRRRRRRRRRR " A machine gun!
Out of terror I fell to the ground, and stopped running, and at this point crawled back on my belly. I crawled back right back to them, and poor Bubi was lying there. And I start crying and begging, and kissing their feet.
One of them was like an angel. He says "Lets take them back to Ciudin. To hell with them! Let's take them back to Ciudin."
And they ordered us to get up, and they led us back across the ditch onto the road, and they led us back to town.
WHERE IS THIS STETL
When we got to town, we saw that the desecration of the Holy Temple was nothing compared to what had happened there.
Every house that we knew all those years… if you looked through the front, you could see through to the back. The windows were gone! The doors were gone! The bricks were missing. And you couldn't see a dog , or a cat. No people! Nothing!
I asked myself "Where is this Stetl? Where are the people?"
They led us to the centre of town. At the centre of town was a large building and near that building was our house. And they led us to this building, and which had belonged to a man called Schachter, who had owned a store that was attached to his house.
In front of the place was an officer , and I knew him from before. He searched us, and found one last watch that I had hidden in a secret pocket. When he took it, I asked him "What's happening here?"
He says "You'll hear all about it. You'll be told."
We were led into this empty store, where everything had been robbed, and it was totally empty, and there's my teacher Guttman. The Hebrew teacher from my Stetl. He had been a very good teacher, and I had liked him very much. I had received good grades for my studies, and he liked me. I find him there with Lezer Guttman, his son, and Ruchale, his daughter.
I find them there, and they start to cry, so I ask them "Why are you crying? Where are the other people?"
They said "Don't ask about anybody".
"What do you mean!?"
They tell me not far from there had lived a farmer who had been very rich. When the Russians came in they had sent all the rich Gentiles to Siberia... Jews too; those who had been rich were given a passport of some kind and they were all taken away from their homes. Just over there was a home that had been taken away from this gentile, they had taken away the whole family, and it was empty.
Guttman and his family had gone up to the loft of his barn and hidden themselves there. From that hiding place they had been able to look down into the jail where they had seen Jews being led, and had known something was going on.
WHY DID THEY TOLL THE BELLS?
This had started Thursday, and on Friday she had said...this Mrs. Guttman, that she would go down to hear what what going on in the stetl.
So she went down, and Moishe Schachter had been there with his family too, so Mrs. Schachter went down with Mrs. Guttman to find out what was going on, and said they'd soon be back to the loft.
After they left, these people waited and waited, all day Friday, soon it was evening, Shabbos, and they're not coming back. They too had been captured and taken away.
Guttman told how on Saturday at 4:00 p.m., in looking down at everything that was going on, they saw how everybody had been gathered together, how people were been led, and more and more people were being brought, and they had pushed all of these people into those cells that I have told you about in that jail, and at 4:00 in the afternoon, the bells of the churches started to toll very loudly.
Why did they toll the bells? So you couldn't hear the cries of anguish of these people.
And that's when they pushed machine guns through those little windows in the doors, and they started to shoot. The Guttmans could see what what was going on from there!
Now, imagine for yourself...not everyone...had the luck...to get a bullet in the heart or in the head. My father...and my brothers and sister had to watch their own children dying...
And the children had to watch how their parents died...
And after a few hours the Guttmans watched as they started to throw from this balcony, how they started throwing down the people, throwing and throwing.
A few hours before they had watched them digging...graves. They could see from up there in that loft this digging and wondering if they were digging fortifications. But that wasn't it. They were working on the mass graves. It wasn't far from the jail where they dug these...five ... mass graves, and that's where they threw in these people.
And later when they saw them replacing the earth...they could see ... the earth moving... they weren't all dead. That's how they were buried.
So... when we came down that Sunday, this is what they told us. I started to cry terribly... and so...
A List of the Martyrs of Ciudin, including Hedy Schachter, my mother's sister, who ran out to look for my grandfather and never returned is on the Jewish Gen site. My uncle survived Transnistria and later died in Israel).
Written with the help of my friend Eli Rozenblatt from Ciudin.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This material is made available by JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project for the purpose of fulfilling our mission of disseminating information about the Holocaust and destroyed Jewish communities.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Bukovina (now Ukraine)- Romania's Holocaust.(1)
Ciudin/Ciudei, Bukovina, Romania (formerly Austria, before WW1) my mother's birth-place suffered its pogrom at the beginning of WW2. Hereunder is the first part of an eye-witness account of the events which led to the murder of my grandfather and my mother's only sister.
More info. re Bukovina and Czernowitz, its regional capital, see:
czernowitz.ehpes.com/History of Czernowitz Jewish Community
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Ciudin:A PARTY
Before the war broke out, we had large dances for all the young people.
Sheleachs would visit from Israel to promote Zionism, one of whom was the
Wiznitzer Rebbe's son. He said "Kinder, kids, we need to have a land. Its better
to wear a torn coat that belongs to you then a beauty that belongs to someone
else. We must have a country!" They started to talk about Israel, Israel,
Israel. They provided literature as well.
One asked "Asiu, would you be willing to go to Krasna to solicit funds?" and I
said "Sure!" One got as much as one could, two dollars, a dollar, five dollars.
We went all around; to all the districts: "This is for Erez Yisroel, the Land of
Israel", for the Keren Kayemet, to gather as many donations as possible. We
started to hear ... a person came along to tell the story of Dreifus, we heard
what was transpiring in the world. We knew about Hitler.
Near us there was a Dr. Nestman, a lawyer, a German, and there our neighbours
would have Hitlerist meetings. We could hear them singing their songs. Once I
bought one of these guys a beer and asked him what he thought of Jews. He
replied "We have no problem with those that are worthy!" We could feel that
things weren't right.
The Poles had retreated after the war started, and there was a smell in the air
that things were not right.
On a Saturday night we had a party for all the young men and women at Bergman's
salon. He had a restaurant, and we drank and ate, and carried on and danced. At
about four in the morning we made our way home; it was Sunday morning. I got
home, unlocked the door and laid down to sleep. And as I started to fall asleep,
I heard some stirring in the house. I thought it was my father up to say his
Tehillim, as was his early-morning custom.
All of a sudden he was at my bedside, saying "Siniku, my darling son wake up. We
are at war." I got myself up and we got a radio to hear what was going on.
Germany had made a friendship pact with Russia, and through this agreement North
Bukovina was to belong to Russia, including our village of Ciudin. On the other
side where Netty lived would belong to the others.
TUMULT
But as soon as the war broke out...oh my goodness; Germany had invaded Poland
without declaring war. The Poles started to run , and many came through Ciudin.
We asked many who were coming through and were told that in Poland the Jewish
ritual way of slaughtering animals to be kosher had been declared unlawful by
the Germans. Many trucks came through, and people were in a panic, selling
things off for a pittance because they were in such a panic.
What was going on you cannot imagine; it was a real tumult. As we were going
home from that dance, I saw the Russians riding their horses at great speed, and
airplanes overhead, and we believed it to be a maneuver. As soon as my father
woke me from my sleep, we saw how things were not the way they should be.
Prior to that the Russians had started to take young people to train them to
shoot and so on. Until the very end they had not called me up; many had already
been sent to the front. Bertha's relatives, my in-law, had already been on
maneuvers for three weeks, and was due to come home. As the war broke out more
and more were drafted for military duty.
As the soldiers came through to go to the front, my father stood with a cistern
of water, and gave drinks to those who wished. There were many Jews among these
troops, on their way to the front, to the border. After a few days of this
continual movement, as I told you, the late Osias advised that it would be best
to flee. Others said that to stay was the answer. Well, we ended up staying.
You know I had a horse there, hidden, for us all to flee. Tatte asked "What if
they torch the house?"
"Tatte", I said, "they will burn it. The Russians are burning everything behind
them."
So he told us to prepare water. We had cisterns of rainwater filled to the brim.
I pleaded "Tatte, it's no good. Let us pack up and go." I thought we could go to
Czernovitz, because what could be done to forty-thousand Jews, could be done to
us too. We were so close to the border, and the late Osias said that as soon as
they invaded, we would be the first to be killed. And that's how it happened. He
was a very smart man this Osias, very smart...
TRAIASCA ROMANIA!
On the fifth of July, 1941, the Russians retreated. We were about 12 kilometers
from the border of north and south Bukovina. North Bukovina was occupied by the
Russians, and we were in Ciudin about 16 to 18 kilometers from that border.
My brother Osias had said, "It's not good for Jewish people to stay here,
because the Roumanians and the German army are coming in. They'll be
blood-thirsty and we are the first Jewish people here."
Osias hired a wagoner, and paid him some money, and boarded a wagon with a
little horse, and drove away to Strojinetz. Strojinetz was 16 kilometers from
us.
Why did he run away?
He said "I don't want to be here because I'm afraid that we are the first Jews
on the border". So he drove away with his wife Pepi and his four year old
daughter Ruthie, and everyone laughed at him, asking, "Why is he running away?
The Roumanian officers love money. They'll be bought off, so everything will be
O.K. and we'll stay at home."
Osias drove away, and we stayed in Ciudin. We stayed, and on the eight day of
Tammus, the third of July, they came in.
As soon as they came into Ciudin, my friend Bubi's mother and father, who had
some fields near town, said "It would be better if you went away to a man named
Gherman." He had been an invalid from the First War, and had lost his left hand.
Bubi's mother went to ask if it would be alright if we could come up to his
place to hide out and he said we could come "with pleasure". So Bubi and I went
up there, and we stayed overnight at his place. That was a Monday.
Tuesday night the Roumanians and the Germans came in. We could here a great
tumult "Hurray, Hurray, Hurray! Traiasca Romania! Long live the Roumanians" And
so on.
And as we walked to this Ghermans' house, we saw many young people, Gentiles,
running with pitchforks (to stick others), sticks to hit with, and sacks on
their shoulders to rob, and when they saw us going in the opposite direction,
they said "You're running away, we'll find you there too." We didn't say
anything.
We sat at Gherman's, and we asked him if he would go down to town to see what
was going on. So he went down, and he replied: "Everything is O.K. The Jews came
to greet the Roumanian military with Sefer Torahs, Holy Scrolls, and it's quiet
in town."
That was Wednesday night, and Bubi's mother came to see us and told us that
everything was fine and that she would come and see us the next morning.
Fine...good.
So we went to sleep, and I said tomorrow is Thursday, and we'll fast tomorrow,
so G-d will help us to get through this. So we ate something that night and we
agreed to fast the next day.
So we slept at this Gherman's, and on Thursday at about 5 A.M. Bubi's mother
came running and she said "Asiu, Bubi you stay here, the military came in and in
the meantime all is still. At about 10 o'clock I'll come again."
It didn't take long, maybe twenty minutes to go from our town up to this
Gherman's.
KINDER ZIS NISHT GIT
So we stayed there, this was Thursday, and at about 10 o'clock comes running
Bubi's mother all out of breath and sweaty. It had been a very nice day.
She said "Kinder zis nisht git" "Children it's not good!"
"What's going on?"
"They're robbing and killing and beating and it's not good!"
"So what should we do now?"
She said "You stay here, or if you want come home and I'll hide you in the
hayloft".
I said "No, its' better that we stay here. So Mrs. Risenberg said she'd go now
and return in the evening.
At about 12 o'clock in comes this Mr. Gherman and says in Roumanian "Get out of
my house".
We asked "Mr. Gherman, where shall we go?". And he says "Get out because we're
not allowed to hide Jews, they'll shoot us along with you! Get out!".
I took my windbreaker, and Bubi also took what he had and we left the house, and
we hid in the field near his house. The corn was about a foot high, and we lay
down. We were lying about twenty yards away from a walkway that led from the
outskirts back to town, and we heard people running and yelling "From the time
the Roumanians came in, it has been a big holiday".
People were carrying flowers, and milk for the soldiers, and one was coming from
town and already carrying stolen things.
One was carrying a huge mirror. Someone asked him "Why did you take such a large
mirror? What for? It does not even fit in your house."
And he replied "It's better broken than to leave it with the Jews."
One asked "Did you hear? They took Shuler who owns the mill, and they put chains
on his feet, and they cut off his ears and his nose, and he was led into town
like that."
"Did you hear that they shot Dudel Schachter?"
"Isser Sumer, a poor teacher was shot, and his wife had to lay him on a
wheelbarrow to take him away to be buried in the holy place". Our cemetery was
about 400 meters from town on a hill.
And I hear all these stories they are telling each other, and I'm lying with
this Bubi under the hot sun, and praying that it would already get dark.
THE BEGINNING
The day seemed to last a year.
In the afternoon it started to rain a bit, and thank G-d when night finally fell
and it got dark we went back to this Gherman's, not to his house, but into his
barn. When he came in to milk his cows, I said "Mr. Gherman, what's happening in
town?"
He said "The Roumanian military has come into town, and they're very mad at the
Jews."
"Why?"
"Because the Jews are Communists, and they sabotaged the bridge." Of course the
Russians had blown up the bridge on their way south.
So I asked "Mr. Gherman, what will you do with us?" So he said "What can I do
with you? Go up in the hayloft, but if anyone comes, don't say I told you to go
up there, because they can kill me along with you. You will have to say that you
hid up there on your own."
So we said "O.K., but maybe it would be better if you made a hole right here in
the barn that we could crawl into?". He said that it would be better in the
loft.
I asked him if he could give us something to eat, because we had been fasting,
so he said "O.K., I'll bring you something."
So we stayed there, and as he went into the house, along comes the son of Shmuel
Katz (he was a smith, he fixed locks and keys, and fashioned hooves for horses),
a little boy. He must have been about eight years old, with another little guy
about ten years old. And as they were running by, I yelled his name "Chaiml!"
(that was his name). "Where are you running?"
They said "Oh! It's great we found you. We are coming from the heights of town."
They had been in their home, along with their mother and father and three
sisters. "They came in and took out our three sisters... probably to rape them,
and shot our mother and father, so we ran away." And these kids were shaking
violently.
So I said to them "Go down right here to Moishe Chaim Laiser and there you'll
find my father and my sisters."
This Moishe Chaim was a transporter, a poor man who owned only one horse, and he
hauled this and that. Maybe to take something to a mill, like to take 500 kilos
of maize to the mill, to take it and to bring it and that was his livelihood.
So I said to them "You go down there. Our house has been locked up." And my
father said that we should all be down at this Moishe Chaim's, out of town, not
in the middle of town where we lived.
"There you'll find my father, and tell him where we are, that we are here, and
tell him that Bubi's mother, Mrs. Risenburg was supposed to come this morning
but we haven't seen her again."
The older one was such a smart little boy, and he said "Asiu, are you saying we
should go?"
So I said "Sure, you're kids what are they going to do to you?" So they left,
and if maybe they had stayed with us...
This was the beginning.
WHEREVER YOU GO
That night when it got dark, he brought us a bit of milk, and we went up in the
hayloft, and it started to rain. As it rained, and just as we were getting up in
the loft, I heard Jews going by ...Yes!
Even when we had been lying in that field as I told you, as we lay there I heard
Janiu Adlersberg, a dentist, who had been going by with his wife and two
children, and the children were crying hard.
He was saying "What can we do? What can we do?" He had run into other Jews that
were already coming back, and saying to someone, I'm not even sure who he was
talking to, "Don't go, because wherever you go they won't let you in. They won't
let in any Jews"
We heard him say "Let's go in to this Gherman's, and maybe he'll give us a
little water for the kids to drink". This is what we heard from this Janiu
Adlersberg.
So we were sitting up in this loft that night, and at about 9:00 or 9:30 at
night we heard some Yiddish being spoken.
I said to Bubi "I hear Yiddish being spoken. I'll run down." You know Bubi had a
lung disease, and he often panted heavily. I said "You wait here, I"ll run down
and see who these people are."
I come down and it's Betti, Herman's wife [Editor's note: Herman was Eisig's
brother] with Marcel, a little boy aged six years, and the child is crying...
and she says "Asiu, [Editor's note: Asiu was Eisig's nickname] what should I do?
I'll go home, and whatever G-d will give, that what will be. Wherever I go, they
won't let us in."
I asked "Where is Herman?" She said that they had come in and started viciously
beating, and people began to run here and there; in the middle of all these
beatings we got split up." And she doesn't know where my brother Herman is...
We stayed where we were, and she went away, and it got dark and it rained and
rained.
I said to Bubi, "I don't want to stay at this Gherman's anymore. I don't believe
him anymore. I don't believe him. Don't you remember the way he pushed us out of
his house..."
I said "We can't stay!"
So he said "What shall we do?"
I said that we would go further. I knew that in the year that the Russians had
been with us, people had worked in the woods, and I had helped in a bakery
there. I had distributed bread. Everything was Communist then, and I had been
paid for food for my horse and for coming and going and bringing this bread
there. And I had been very familiar with the forest.
So I said "I know a place there where it's really narrow, where nobody can see
you. We'll go down there, and stay there a day or two, and whatever G-d gives
after that will be."
He said "Alright", and we get down, and as we get down to the door we find that
it has been locked. And even the door where the hay is thrown out, was locked.
But there was a hole, where they throw out the animal dung, and I said "Bubi,
this is where we'll crawl out of here. We can't stay at this Gherman's any
longer." And we crawled out .
SITTING IN THE WOODS
As we get out onto the fields, wherever there are houses we couldn't go, because
dogs will bark, you understand. On the road we obviously couldn't go, because
someone might have run into us there.
So we went far from the houses, and not on the road. And then on the road came
two fellows, and they were going to town, also to rob, with sacks, you know, and
sticks. One had something like a shovel, to kill with. They run into us and ask
us where we're going.
So I said "We have to go somewhere."
They said "You're going to hide. We'll find you." I was strong, from home, and I
could have taken one to beat the other, you know, so they didn't confront us.
They continued up to town, and we went on.
Poor Bubi was asthmatic, and was panting while he was going like this "Hhhhhhh.
Hhhhhhhhh". I said Bubi, you're going to bring us doom, be quiet!"
He replied "What do you want from my life. Come back and my Mother will hide us
in the loft in the hay. I can't go on any longer. I can't..."
I said, "We're not far now. Soon enough we'll be in the woods."
So we went on like that and G-d helped us to go the whole night like that, and
on Friday morning we arrived at those woods, and that's where we stopped.
We're sitting in these woods all day, and I said to Bubi "Tonight this can't go
on." I had become very hoarse, and he could barely speak. I said "Tonight we
have to leave the woods."
With G-d's help it became Friday night, and we were moving to the edge of the
woods, and I heard talking outside. I heard soldiers saying that tomorrow
morning the recruits would be called. They were not to go into the woods because
there were Russian partisans and Jews hidden there who could be firing on them,
and it was forbidden to go into the woods until tomorrow's recruits arrived to
comb the woods.
So G-d helped us to sit there the whole night, but we didn't sleep. We had gone
to the other side, but we also heard talking there, and every where we went
there were voices and we knew that we shouldn't go out, and we'd have to stay
there.
When Sabbath morning came, I told Bubi that we'd have to hide ourselves well,
because they would soon be coming. So we searched for trees that you see
sometimes, ones that are open. However, just at that moment we couldn't find any
kind of tree to hide in and not be seen.
We couldn't find such a tree, so we agreed to get into a kind of ditch, close
together. I gathered various kinds of branches and sticks, and put them on top
of us. He lay down next to me, and we started to cover our feet, like this and
like that , and completely covering our faces. And that's how we lay there.
It got to be around 10:00 or 10:30 in the morning , and we were lying there,
maybe it was more like 11:00 or 11:30, and I heard some talking behind us. What
we hadn't realized is that not too far from us was a path, and all of a sudden
we heard something like footsteps, and we lay there trembling terribly.
Through the branches I could see civilians wearing the clothes that had been
designated for the civil defense, a white shirt and pants. I also saw soldiers,
and as they went by us we shook terribly. Thank G-d they went by, but as they
did I could hear one of them saying, "No one is here".
Table of ContentsNext Page »
This material is made available by JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project
for the purpose of fulfilling our mission of disseminating information about the
Holocaust and destroyed Jewish communities. This material may not be copied,
sold or bartered without JewishGen, Inc.'s permission. Rights may be reserved by
the copyright holder.
JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of the
translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material for
verification.
Mezhirech'ye, Ukraine Yizkor Book Project JewishGen Home Page
Yizkor Book Project, Yizkor Help Line
Yizkor Book Project Manager, Joyce Field
This web page created by Lance Ackerfeld
Copyright © 1999-2005 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 12 June 2004 by LA
More info. re Bukovina and Czernowitz, its regional capital, see:
czernowitz.ehpes.com/History of Czernowitz Jewish Community
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ciudin:A PARTY
Before the war broke out, we had large dances for all the young people.
Sheleachs would visit from Israel to promote Zionism, one of whom was the
Wiznitzer Rebbe's son. He said "Kinder, kids, we need to have a land. Its better
to wear a torn coat that belongs to you then a beauty that belongs to someone
else. We must have a country!" They started to talk about Israel, Israel,
Israel. They provided literature as well.
One asked "Asiu, would you be willing to go to Krasna to solicit funds?" and I
said "Sure!" One got as much as one could, two dollars, a dollar, five dollars.
We went all around; to all the districts: "This is for Erez Yisroel, the Land of
Israel", for the Keren Kayemet, to gather as many donations as possible. We
started to hear ... a person came along to tell the story of Dreifus, we heard
what was transpiring in the world. We knew about Hitler.
Near us there was a Dr. Nestman, a lawyer, a German, and there our neighbours
would have Hitlerist meetings. We could hear them singing their songs. Once I
bought one of these guys a beer and asked him what he thought of Jews. He
replied "We have no problem with those that are worthy!" We could feel that
things weren't right.
The Poles had retreated after the war started, and there was a smell in the air
that things were not right.
On a Saturday night we had a party for all the young men and women at Bergman's
salon. He had a restaurant, and we drank and ate, and carried on and danced. At
about four in the morning we made our way home; it was Sunday morning. I got
home, unlocked the door and laid down to sleep. And as I started to fall asleep,
I heard some stirring in the house. I thought it was my father up to say his
Tehillim, as was his early-morning custom.
All of a sudden he was at my bedside, saying "Siniku, my darling son wake up. We
are at war." I got myself up and we got a radio to hear what was going on.
Germany had made a friendship pact with Russia, and through this agreement North
Bukovina was to belong to Russia, including our village of Ciudin. On the other
side where Netty lived would belong to the others.
TUMULT
But as soon as the war broke out...oh my goodness; Germany had invaded Poland
without declaring war. The Poles started to run , and many came through Ciudin.
We asked many who were coming through and were told that in Poland the Jewish
ritual way of slaughtering animals to be kosher had been declared unlawful by
the Germans. Many trucks came through, and people were in a panic, selling
things off for a pittance because they were in such a panic.
What was going on you cannot imagine; it was a real tumult. As we were going
home from that dance, I saw the Russians riding their horses at great speed, and
airplanes overhead, and we believed it to be a maneuver. As soon as my father
woke me from my sleep, we saw how things were not the way they should be.
Prior to that the Russians had started to take young people to train them to
shoot and so on. Until the very end they had not called me up; many had already
been sent to the front. Bertha's relatives, my in-law, had already been on
maneuvers for three weeks, and was due to come home. As the war broke out more
and more were drafted for military duty.
As the soldiers came through to go to the front, my father stood with a cistern
of water, and gave drinks to those who wished. There were many Jews among these
troops, on their way to the front, to the border. After a few days of this
continual movement, as I told you, the late Osias advised that it would be best
to flee. Others said that to stay was the answer. Well, we ended up staying.
You know I had a horse there, hidden, for us all to flee. Tatte asked "What if
they torch the house?"
"Tatte", I said, "they will burn it. The Russians are burning everything behind
them."
So he told us to prepare water. We had cisterns of rainwater filled to the brim.
I pleaded "Tatte, it's no good. Let us pack up and go." I thought we could go to
Czernovitz, because what could be done to forty-thousand Jews, could be done to
us too. We were so close to the border, and the late Osias said that as soon as
they invaded, we would be the first to be killed. And that's how it happened. He
was a very smart man this Osias, very smart...
TRAIASCA ROMANIA!
On the fifth of July, 1941, the Russians retreated. We were about 12 kilometers
from the border of north and south Bukovina. North Bukovina was occupied by the
Russians, and we were in Ciudin about 16 to 18 kilometers from that border.
My brother Osias had said, "It's not good for Jewish people to stay here,
because the Roumanians and the German army are coming in. They'll be
blood-thirsty and we are the first Jewish people here."
Osias hired a wagoner, and paid him some money, and boarded a wagon with a
little horse, and drove away to Strojinetz. Strojinetz was 16 kilometers from
us.
Why did he run away?
He said "I don't want to be here because I'm afraid that we are the first Jews
on the border". So he drove away with his wife Pepi and his four year old
daughter Ruthie, and everyone laughed at him, asking, "Why is he running away?
The Roumanian officers love money. They'll be bought off, so everything will be
O.K. and we'll stay at home."
Osias drove away, and we stayed in Ciudin. We stayed, and on the eight day of
Tammus, the third of July, they came in.
As soon as they came into Ciudin, my friend Bubi's mother and father, who had
some fields near town, said "It would be better if you went away to a man named
Gherman." He had been an invalid from the First War, and had lost his left hand.
Bubi's mother went to ask if it would be alright if we could come up to his
place to hide out and he said we could come "with pleasure". So Bubi and I went
up there, and we stayed overnight at his place. That was a Monday.
Tuesday night the Roumanians and the Germans came in. We could here a great
tumult "Hurray, Hurray, Hurray! Traiasca Romania! Long live the Roumanians" And
so on.
And as we walked to this Ghermans' house, we saw many young people, Gentiles,
running with pitchforks (to stick others), sticks to hit with, and sacks on
their shoulders to rob, and when they saw us going in the opposite direction,
they said "You're running away, we'll find you there too." We didn't say
anything.
We sat at Gherman's, and we asked him if he would go down to town to see what
was going on. So he went down, and he replied: "Everything is O.K. The Jews came
to greet the Roumanian military with Sefer Torahs, Holy Scrolls, and it's quiet
in town."
That was Wednesday night, and Bubi's mother came to see us and told us that
everything was fine and that she would come and see us the next morning.
Fine...good.
So we went to sleep, and I said tomorrow is Thursday, and we'll fast tomorrow,
so G-d will help us to get through this. So we ate something that night and we
agreed to fast the next day.
So we slept at this Gherman's, and on Thursday at about 5 A.M. Bubi's mother
came running and she said "Asiu, Bubi you stay here, the military came in and in
the meantime all is still. At about 10 o'clock I'll come again."
It didn't take long, maybe twenty minutes to go from our town up to this
Gherman's.
KINDER ZIS NISHT GIT
So we stayed there, this was Thursday, and at about 10 o'clock comes running
Bubi's mother all out of breath and sweaty. It had been a very nice day.
She said "Kinder zis nisht git" "Children it's not good!"
"What's going on?"
"They're robbing and killing and beating and it's not good!"
"So what should we do now?"
She said "You stay here, or if you want come home and I'll hide you in the
hayloft".
I said "No, its' better that we stay here. So Mrs. Risenberg said she'd go now
and return in the evening.
At about 12 o'clock in comes this Mr. Gherman and says in Roumanian "Get out of
my house".
We asked "Mr. Gherman, where shall we go?". And he says "Get out because we're
not allowed to hide Jews, they'll shoot us along with you! Get out!".
I took my windbreaker, and Bubi also took what he had and we left the house, and
we hid in the field near his house. The corn was about a foot high, and we lay
down. We were lying about twenty yards away from a walkway that led from the
outskirts back to town, and we heard people running and yelling "From the time
the Roumanians came in, it has been a big holiday".
People were carrying flowers, and milk for the soldiers, and one was coming from
town and already carrying stolen things.
One was carrying a huge mirror. Someone asked him "Why did you take such a large
mirror? What for? It does not even fit in your house."
And he replied "It's better broken than to leave it with the Jews."
One asked "Did you hear? They took Shuler who owns the mill, and they put chains
on his feet, and they cut off his ears and his nose, and he was led into town
like that."
"Did you hear that they shot Dudel Schachter?"
"Isser Sumer, a poor teacher was shot, and his wife had to lay him on a
wheelbarrow to take him away to be buried in the holy place". Our cemetery was
about 400 meters from town on a hill.
And I hear all these stories they are telling each other, and I'm lying with
this Bubi under the hot sun, and praying that it would already get dark.
THE BEGINNING
The day seemed to last a year.
In the afternoon it started to rain a bit, and thank G-d when night finally fell
and it got dark we went back to this Gherman's, not to his house, but into his
barn. When he came in to milk his cows, I said "Mr. Gherman, what's happening in
town?"
He said "The Roumanian military has come into town, and they're very mad at the
Jews."
"Why?"
"Because the Jews are Communists, and they sabotaged the bridge." Of course the
Russians had blown up the bridge on their way south.
So I asked "Mr. Gherman, what will you do with us?" So he said "What can I do
with you? Go up in the hayloft, but if anyone comes, don't say I told you to go
up there, because they can kill me along with you. You will have to say that you
hid up there on your own."
So we said "O.K., but maybe it would be better if you made a hole right here in
the barn that we could crawl into?". He said that it would be better in the
loft.
I asked him if he could give us something to eat, because we had been fasting,
so he said "O.K., I'll bring you something."
So we stayed there, and as he went into the house, along comes the son of Shmuel
Katz (he was a smith, he fixed locks and keys, and fashioned hooves for horses),
a little boy. He must have been about eight years old, with another little guy
about ten years old. And as they were running by, I yelled his name "Chaiml!"
(that was his name). "Where are you running?"
They said "Oh! It's great we found you. We are coming from the heights of town."
They had been in their home, along with their mother and father and three
sisters. "They came in and took out our three sisters... probably to rape them,
and shot our mother and father, so we ran away." And these kids were shaking
violently.
So I said to them "Go down right here to Moishe Chaim Laiser and there you'll
find my father and my sisters."
This Moishe Chaim was a transporter, a poor man who owned only one horse, and he
hauled this and that. Maybe to take something to a mill, like to take 500 kilos
of maize to the mill, to take it and to bring it and that was his livelihood.
So I said to them "You go down there. Our house has been locked up." And my
father said that we should all be down at this Moishe Chaim's, out of town, not
in the middle of town where we lived.
"There you'll find my father, and tell him where we are, that we are here, and
tell him that Bubi's mother, Mrs. Risenburg was supposed to come this morning
but we haven't seen her again."
The older one was such a smart little boy, and he said "Asiu, are you saying we
should go?"
So I said "Sure, you're kids what are they going to do to you?" So they left,
and if maybe they had stayed with us...
This was the beginning.
WHEREVER YOU GO
That night when it got dark, he brought us a bit of milk, and we went up in the
hayloft, and it started to rain. As it rained, and just as we were getting up in
the loft, I heard Jews going by ...Yes!
Even when we had been lying in that field as I told you, as we lay there I heard
Janiu Adlersberg, a dentist, who had been going by with his wife and two
children, and the children were crying hard.
He was saying "What can we do? What can we do?" He had run into other Jews that
were already coming back, and saying to someone, I'm not even sure who he was
talking to, "Don't go, because wherever you go they won't let you in. They won't
let in any Jews"
We heard him say "Let's go in to this Gherman's, and maybe he'll give us a
little water for the kids to drink". This is what we heard from this Janiu
Adlersberg.
So we were sitting up in this loft that night, and at about 9:00 or 9:30 at
night we heard some Yiddish being spoken.
I said to Bubi "I hear Yiddish being spoken. I'll run down." You know Bubi had a
lung disease, and he often panted heavily. I said "You wait here, I"ll run down
and see who these people are."
I come down and it's Betti, Herman's wife [Editor's note: Herman was Eisig's
brother] with Marcel, a little boy aged six years, and the child is crying...
and she says "Asiu, [Editor's note: Asiu was Eisig's nickname] what should I do?
I'll go home, and whatever G-d will give, that what will be. Wherever I go, they
won't let us in."
I asked "Where is Herman?" She said that they had come in and started viciously
beating, and people began to run here and there; in the middle of all these
beatings we got split up." And she doesn't know where my brother Herman is...
We stayed where we were, and she went away, and it got dark and it rained and
rained.
I said to Bubi, "I don't want to stay at this Gherman's anymore. I don't believe
him anymore. I don't believe him. Don't you remember the way he pushed us out of
his house..."
I said "We can't stay!"
So he said "What shall we do?"
I said that we would go further. I knew that in the year that the Russians had
been with us, people had worked in the woods, and I had helped in a bakery
there. I had distributed bread. Everything was Communist then, and I had been
paid for food for my horse and for coming and going and bringing this bread
there. And I had been very familiar with the forest.
So I said "I know a place there where it's really narrow, where nobody can see
you. We'll go down there, and stay there a day or two, and whatever G-d gives
after that will be."
He said "Alright", and we get down, and as we get down to the door we find that
it has been locked. And even the door where the hay is thrown out, was locked.
But there was a hole, where they throw out the animal dung, and I said "Bubi,
this is where we'll crawl out of here. We can't stay at this Gherman's any
longer." And we crawled out .
SITTING IN THE WOODS
As we get out onto the fields, wherever there are houses we couldn't go, because
dogs will bark, you understand. On the road we obviously couldn't go, because
someone might have run into us there.
So we went far from the houses, and not on the road. And then on the road came
two fellows, and they were going to town, also to rob, with sacks, you know, and
sticks. One had something like a shovel, to kill with. They run into us and ask
us where we're going.
So I said "We have to go somewhere."
They said "You're going to hide. We'll find you." I was strong, from home, and I
could have taken one to beat the other, you know, so they didn't confront us.
They continued up to town, and we went on.
Poor Bubi was asthmatic, and was panting while he was going like this "Hhhhhhh.
Hhhhhhhhh". I said Bubi, you're going to bring us doom, be quiet!"
He replied "What do you want from my life. Come back and my Mother will hide us
in the loft in the hay. I can't go on any longer. I can't..."
I said, "We're not far now. Soon enough we'll be in the woods."
So we went on like that and G-d helped us to go the whole night like that, and
on Friday morning we arrived at those woods, and that's where we stopped.
We're sitting in these woods all day, and I said to Bubi "Tonight this can't go
on." I had become very hoarse, and he could barely speak. I said "Tonight we
have to leave the woods."
With G-d's help it became Friday night, and we were moving to the edge of the
woods, and I heard talking outside. I heard soldiers saying that tomorrow
morning the recruits would be called. They were not to go into the woods because
there were Russian partisans and Jews hidden there who could be firing on them,
and it was forbidden to go into the woods until tomorrow's recruits arrived to
comb the woods.
So G-d helped us to sit there the whole night, but we didn't sleep. We had gone
to the other side, but we also heard talking there, and every where we went
there were voices and we knew that we shouldn't go out, and we'd have to stay
there.
When Sabbath morning came, I told Bubi that we'd have to hide ourselves well,
because they would soon be coming. So we searched for trees that you see
sometimes, ones that are open. However, just at that moment we couldn't find any
kind of tree to hide in and not be seen.
We couldn't find such a tree, so we agreed to get into a kind of ditch, close
together. I gathered various kinds of branches and sticks, and put them on top
of us. He lay down next to me, and we started to cover our feet, like this and
like that , and completely covering our faces. And that's how we lay there.
It got to be around 10:00 or 10:30 in the morning , and we were lying there,
maybe it was more like 11:00 or 11:30, and I heard some talking behind us. What
we hadn't realized is that not too far from us was a path, and all of a sudden
we heard something like footsteps, and we lay there trembling terribly.
Through the branches I could see civilians wearing the clothes that had been
designated for the civil defense, a white shirt and pants. I also saw soldiers,
and as they went by us we shook terribly. Thank G-d they went by, but as they
did I could hear one of them saying, "No one is here".
Table of ContentsNext Page »
This material is made available by JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project
for the purpose of fulfilling our mission of disseminating information about the
Holocaust and destroyed Jewish communities. This material may not be copied,
sold or bartered without JewishGen, Inc.'s permission. Rights may be reserved by
the copyright holder.
JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of the
translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material for
verification.
Mezhirech'ye, Ukraine Yizkor Book Project JewishGen Home Page
Yizkor Book Project, Yizkor Help Line
Yizkor Book Project Manager, Joyce Field
This web page created by Lance Ackerfeld
Copyright © 1999-2005 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 12 June 2004 by LA
Friday, January 06, 2006
NEW: Secessionists in the West Bank?
Fanatical zealots, the Kahanists, will stop at nothing it seems. M.M.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To view this item online, visit
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48206
Friday, January 6, 2006
FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU
Jewish groups urge: Secede from Israel.
New effort seeks 'biblical heartland' to break away for own sovereignty
Posted: January 6, 20061:00 a.m. Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com-->© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
JERUSALEM – A new movement is set to be presented next week by residents of Judea and Samaria calling for Jews there to secede from Israel and create their own autonomous Jewish entity in part to head off the possibility of further unilateral Israeli withdrawals from the area, WND has learned.
The Judea Initiative, led by northern Samaria resident Yekutel Ben Yaacov, is seeking to gather signatures from Judea and Samaria's nearly 200,000 Jews for a manifesto declaring the creation of a sovereign Jewish authority that would govern itself independently according to Jewish law and would provide its own security.
Judea and Samaria are referred to by some as the West Bank, the name coined for the area after Jordan annexed it in 1948.
The initiative aims to create the new Jewish authority in any part of Judea and Samaria, even a small settlement, in hopes of eventually ruling the entire territory, Ben Yaacov said, explaining his initiative was prompted by talks of possible Israeli withdrawals from the area.
"We can't sit around and wait until Israel sends the bulldozers to take down Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria before attempting to counter the next Israeli withdrawal. We are acting now so we can retain our rightful biblical heritage," Ben Yaacov told WND.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew Israel's Jewish communities from the Gaza Strip last summer in spite of fierce opposition from members of his own Likud party. He recently announced he was leaving Likud to start his own "centrist" party, Kadima, prompting new elections currently scheduled for March. Since then, multiple Kadima members have told reporters the new party is looking to change Israel's borders with possible withdrawals from Judea and Samaria. There have been talks of disengagements from parts of Jerusalem as well.
It's unclear as yet how Sharon's massive stroke this week and his inability to govern will affect the future politics of Israel.
Currently, Judea and Samaria, inhabited by about 2.4 million Palestinians, is considered landlocked territory not officially recognized as part of any country. Israel calls the land "disputed." The United Nations claims Judea and Samaria is "occupied" by Israel, which maintains overall control of most of the area while the Palestinian Authority has jurisdiction in about 40 percent.
Judea and Samaria remained under Jordanian rule from 1948 until Israel captured the territory in 1967 after Jordan's King Hussein ignored Israeli pleas for his country to stay out of the Six Day War. Most countries rejected Jordan's initial claim on the area, which it formally renounced in 1988.
Ben Yaacov says his Judea Initiative takes advantage of Judea and Samaria's murky legal status to argue for independent Jewish sovereignty.
"Legally it's a no-man's land. The Palestinians used that status to create their own authority, so there is absolutely no reason the Jews can't do the same thing."
Ben Yaacov's group, Mishalot Israel, is holding a conference next week in Jerusalem's Old City to present the Judea Initiative. It will then begin petitioning both private citizens and entire communities to join.
He says already he has garnered interest from local residents and some town leaders.
"The plan hasn't even been announced or presented and already I am getting a lot of phone calls from people and at least one town that wants to sign on. They are hearing about it by word of mouth," Ben Yaacov said. "The area is the site of a lot of the Bible and has had a Jewish population for centuries. We will not allow the Israeli government to kick us out."
Many villages in the Judea and Samaria area, which Israelis commonly reefer to as the "biblical heartland," are mentioned throughout the Old Testament.
The Book of Genesis says Abraham entered Israel at Shechem (Nablus) and received God's promise of land for his offspring.
Jacob dreamed of angels on a stairway leading to heaven
The nearby town of Beit El, anciently called Bethel meaning "house of God," is where Scripture says patriarch Jacob slept on a stone pillow and dreamed of angels ascending and descending a stairway to heaven. In that dream, God spoke directly to Jacob and reaffirmed the promise of territory.
And in Exodus, the holy tabernacle rested in Shilo, which is believed to be the first area the ancient Israelites settled after fleeing Egypt.
Ben Yaacov said his new Jewish authority would be "governed by Jewish law. Non-Jews, including Palestinians, are more than welcome to live there as long as they accept Jewish sovereign and agree to abide by the Seven Noahide laws, the most basic of biblical dictates."
He said the annexed territory would provide for its own security.
"A large contingent of Judea and Samaria residents served in the Israeli army. They currently defend their own settlements to a large extent. We would base ours on the same concept as Israeli security. Immediately after Israel was founded, it was attacked on all sides and it won every war because of the help of God and because of the same people we have with us."
The initiative states there are three primary reasons to form a Jewish authority in Judea and Samaria:
"The new Jewish authority will protect Israel from terror and enhance Israeli security. It is more advantageous to have Jewish autonomy in Judea and Samaria in place of complete Palestinian autonomy, which will give the Palestinian terrorist groups more land from which to fire Qassams and launch attacks. The Jews who remain in the area will be accepting a certain level of self-sacrifice by putting themselves in harms way."
"The creation of a Jewish authority will relieve tension and prevent bloodshed between Jew and fellow Jew by halting an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in the area, some of whom may use violent resistance in the face of any withdrawal. It will also alleviate some of the tension and rifts that would be created in Israeli society by any withdrawal."
"The new Jewish authority will offer appropriate self-determination to fulfil the national aspirations of many religious Jews in Israel. The area will be ruled by Torah law as opposed to the current anti-religious government."
Ben Yaacov's Judea Initiative is not the first major push for Jews to secede from Israel. In 1989, the late author and Knesset member Rabbi Meir Kahane, a mentor of Ben Yaacov, attempted to found the State of Judea, a Jewish state in Judea and Samaria. That effort eventually fell through.
"Ours is different in that we are starting small," explained Ben Yaacov. "We are not talking about our own state, just an entity or authority, however small or large it will be."
Reacting to the news of calls for Jews to create their own authority, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told WorldNetDaily, "This is the chaos and lawlessness [the Palestinian Authority] has warned about. If the Israeli government does not get its act together concerning the settlers, who by the way are armed to the teeth and acting like a parallel authority, the price will be paid in Palestinian blood."
Israeli government spokesmen Raanan Gissin and David Baker refused to comment on the issue.
Said Ben Yaacov, "There may be resistance at first, but eventually people will come to understand a lot of Jews in Judea and Samaria will not go along with any further withdrawals. Now those Jews will have a solution."
Related offer:
Definitive work on Mideast – available only here!
Aaron Klein is WorldNetDaily's Jerusalem bureau chief, whose past interview subjects have included Yasser Arafat, Ehud Barak, Mahmoud al-Zahar and leaders of the Taliban.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To view this item online, visit
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48206
Friday, January 6, 2006
FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU
Jewish groups urge: Secede from Israel.
New effort seeks 'biblical heartland' to break away for own sovereignty
Posted: January 6, 20061:00 a.m. Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com-->© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
JERUSALEM – A new movement is set to be presented next week by residents of Judea and Samaria calling for Jews there to secede from Israel and create their own autonomous Jewish entity in part to head off the possibility of further unilateral Israeli withdrawals from the area, WND has learned.
The Judea Initiative, led by northern Samaria resident Yekutel Ben Yaacov, is seeking to gather signatures from Judea and Samaria's nearly 200,000 Jews for a manifesto declaring the creation of a sovereign Jewish authority that would govern itself independently according to Jewish law and would provide its own security.
Judea and Samaria are referred to by some as the West Bank, the name coined for the area after Jordan annexed it in 1948.
The initiative aims to create the new Jewish authority in any part of Judea and Samaria, even a small settlement, in hopes of eventually ruling the entire territory, Ben Yaacov said, explaining his initiative was prompted by talks of possible Israeli withdrawals from the area.
"We can't sit around and wait until Israel sends the bulldozers to take down Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria before attempting to counter the next Israeli withdrawal. We are acting now so we can retain our rightful biblical heritage," Ben Yaacov told WND.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew Israel's Jewish communities from the Gaza Strip last summer in spite of fierce opposition from members of his own Likud party. He recently announced he was leaving Likud to start his own "centrist" party, Kadima, prompting new elections currently scheduled for March. Since then, multiple Kadima members have told reporters the new party is looking to change Israel's borders with possible withdrawals from Judea and Samaria. There have been talks of disengagements from parts of Jerusalem as well.
It's unclear as yet how Sharon's massive stroke this week and his inability to govern will affect the future politics of Israel.
Currently, Judea and Samaria, inhabited by about 2.4 million Palestinians, is considered landlocked territory not officially recognized as part of any country. Israel calls the land "disputed." The United Nations claims Judea and Samaria is "occupied" by Israel, which maintains overall control of most of the area while the Palestinian Authority has jurisdiction in about 40 percent.
Judea and Samaria remained under Jordanian rule from 1948 until Israel captured the territory in 1967 after Jordan's King Hussein ignored Israeli pleas for his country to stay out of the Six Day War. Most countries rejected Jordan's initial claim on the area, which it formally renounced in 1988.
Ben Yaacov says his Judea Initiative takes advantage of Judea and Samaria's murky legal status to argue for independent Jewish sovereignty.
"Legally it's a no-man's land. The Palestinians used that status to create their own authority, so there is absolutely no reason the Jews can't do the same thing."
Ben Yaacov's group, Mishalot Israel, is holding a conference next week in Jerusalem's Old City to present the Judea Initiative. It will then begin petitioning both private citizens and entire communities to join.
He says already he has garnered interest from local residents and some town leaders.
"The plan hasn't even been announced or presented and already I am getting a lot of phone calls from people and at least one town that wants to sign on. They are hearing about it by word of mouth," Ben Yaacov said. "The area is the site of a lot of the Bible and has had a Jewish population for centuries. We will not allow the Israeli government to kick us out."
Many villages in the Judea and Samaria area, which Israelis commonly reefer to as the "biblical heartland," are mentioned throughout the Old Testament.
The Book of Genesis says Abraham entered Israel at Shechem (Nablus) and received God's promise of land for his offspring.
Jacob dreamed of angels on a stairway leading to heaven
The nearby town of Beit El, anciently called Bethel meaning "house of God," is where Scripture says patriarch Jacob slept on a stone pillow and dreamed of angels ascending and descending a stairway to heaven. In that dream, God spoke directly to Jacob and reaffirmed the promise of territory.
And in Exodus, the holy tabernacle rested in Shilo, which is believed to be the first area the ancient Israelites settled after fleeing Egypt.
Ben Yaacov said his new Jewish authority would be "governed by Jewish law. Non-Jews, including Palestinians, are more than welcome to live there as long as they accept Jewish sovereign and agree to abide by the Seven Noahide laws, the most basic of biblical dictates."
He said the annexed territory would provide for its own security.
"A large contingent of Judea and Samaria residents served in the Israeli army. They currently defend their own settlements to a large extent. We would base ours on the same concept as Israeli security. Immediately after Israel was founded, it was attacked on all sides and it won every war because of the help of God and because of the same people we have with us."
The initiative states there are three primary reasons to form a Jewish authority in Judea and Samaria:
"The new Jewish authority will protect Israel from terror and enhance Israeli security. It is more advantageous to have Jewish autonomy in Judea and Samaria in place of complete Palestinian autonomy, which will give the Palestinian terrorist groups more land from which to fire Qassams and launch attacks. The Jews who remain in the area will be accepting a certain level of self-sacrifice by putting themselves in harms way."
"The creation of a Jewish authority will relieve tension and prevent bloodshed between Jew and fellow Jew by halting an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in the area, some of whom may use violent resistance in the face of any withdrawal. It will also alleviate some of the tension and rifts that would be created in Israeli society by any withdrawal."
"The new Jewish authority will offer appropriate self-determination to fulfil the national aspirations of many religious Jews in Israel. The area will be ruled by Torah law as opposed to the current anti-religious government."
Ben Yaacov's Judea Initiative is not the first major push for Jews to secede from Israel. In 1989, the late author and Knesset member Rabbi Meir Kahane, a mentor of Ben Yaacov, attempted to found the State of Judea, a Jewish state in Judea and Samaria. That effort eventually fell through.
"Ours is different in that we are starting small," explained Ben Yaacov. "We are not talking about our own state, just an entity or authority, however small or large it will be."
Reacting to the news of calls for Jews to create their own authority, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told WorldNetDaily, "This is the chaos and lawlessness [the Palestinian Authority] has warned about. If the Israeli government does not get its act together concerning the settlers, who by the way are armed to the teeth and acting like a parallel authority, the price will be paid in Palestinian blood."
Israeli government spokesmen Raanan Gissin and David Baker refused to comment on the issue.
Said Ben Yaacov, "There may be resistance at first, but eventually people will come to understand a lot of Jews in Judea and Samaria will not go along with any further withdrawals. Now those Jews will have a solution."
Related offer:
Definitive work on Mideast – available only here!
Aaron Klein is WorldNetDaily's Jerusalem bureau chief, whose past interview subjects have included Yasser Arafat, Ehud Barak, Mahmoud al-Zahar and leaders of the Taliban.
Tribute to PM Sharon by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, Pres. Union of Progr. Judaism
A Tribute to Prime Minister Sharon
by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President,
Union for Reform Judaism
"http://capwiz.com/rac/utr/1/DCHGFIVKUT/BCNGFIVKYM/576693351"
Reform Jews of North America join with Jews throughout the world in
praying for the swift and complete recovery of Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon from his current illness.
Mr. Sharon occupies a unique place in the hearts of the Jewish people
and in the history of the Jewish state. Throughout his life, he has
been a strong and determined leader of Israel and a valiant fighter for
Jewish interests everywhere. As a soldier on the battlefield, he
demonstrated remarkable courage in each of Israel’s wars; later, as a
politician, he demonstrated equal courage in the political arena,
overcoming voices of extremism with a message of reason and moderation.
As Prime Minister since 2001, Mr. Sharon has been a man from whom we
have come to expect the unexpected. A one-time champion of settlement
building, he made the daring decision to dismantle settlements in the
Gaza Strip and end the occupation of Gaza’s 1.3 million Arab
residents. A man of the right, he abandoned the rightwing party that he
helped found to create a centrist one, and to give Israel’s centrist
majority a political home. A long-time opponent of a Palestinian state,
he embraced the idea of such a state as part of President Bush’s Road
Map.
The changes that Mr. Sharon has wrought are of historic proportions,
enhancing Israel’s standing in the world and keeping alive Israel’s
hope for peace. Deeply committed to keeping Israel strong, military and
diplomatically, he has also maintained excellent relations with
President Bush and the United States and has responded forcefully
whenever Israel’s citizens have come under attack. A master politician
who is acutely attuned to the pulse of his people, Mr. Sharon has
dominated Israeli politics like no Prime Minister since David Ben
Gurion. No other Israeli leader possesses his daring, political skills,
and credibility.
Israel is a strong and vibrant democracy, and its fate is not dependent
on any one person; it will survive this transfer of power, as it has
all others. Nonetheless, the Prime Minister’s illness and his likely
withdrawal, at least temporarily, from public affairs, are a great blow
to Israel’s political life. We offer our support to the people of
Israel during this period of transition and uncertainty.
---
by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President,
Union for Reform Judaism
"http://capwiz.com/rac/utr/1/DCHGFIVKUT/BCNGFIVKYM/576693351"
Reform Jews of North America join with Jews throughout the world in
praying for the swift and complete recovery of Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon from his current illness.
Mr. Sharon occupies a unique place in the hearts of the Jewish people
and in the history of the Jewish state. Throughout his life, he has
been a strong and determined leader of Israel and a valiant fighter for
Jewish interests everywhere. As a soldier on the battlefield, he
demonstrated remarkable courage in each of Israel’s wars; later, as a
politician, he demonstrated equal courage in the political arena,
overcoming voices of extremism with a message of reason and moderation.
As Prime Minister since 2001, Mr. Sharon has been a man from whom we
have come to expect the unexpected. A one-time champion of settlement
building, he made the daring decision to dismantle settlements in the
Gaza Strip and end the occupation of Gaza’s 1.3 million Arab
residents. A man of the right, he abandoned the rightwing party that he
helped found to create a centrist one, and to give Israel’s centrist
majority a political home. A long-time opponent of a Palestinian state,
he embraced the idea of such a state as part of President Bush’s Road
Map.
The changes that Mr. Sharon has wrought are of historic proportions,
enhancing Israel’s standing in the world and keeping alive Israel’s
hope for peace. Deeply committed to keeping Israel strong, military and
diplomatically, he has also maintained excellent relations with
President Bush and the United States and has responded forcefully
whenever Israel’s citizens have come under attack. A master politician
who is acutely attuned to the pulse of his people, Mr. Sharon has
dominated Israeli politics like no Prime Minister since David Ben
Gurion. No other Israeli leader possesses his daring, political skills,
and credibility.
Israel is a strong and vibrant democracy, and its fate is not dependent
on any one person; it will survive this transfer of power, as it has
all others. Nonetheless, the Prime Minister’s illness and his likely
withdrawal, at least temporarily, from public affairs, are a great blow
to Israel’s political life. We offer our support to the people of
Israel during this period of transition and uncertainty.
---
Thursday, January 05, 2006
On the Loss of Ariel Sharon as PM
It's too soon to write the "old warhorse" off,- we hope and pray that he will not only survive, but also resume his leadership role! Halevaj!
MM
Tikkun Community Newsletter
News Release: On the Loss of Ariel Sharon.
Please reprint and circulate widely.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine: A bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society, and national chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, issued the following statement upon hearing of the near-death hospitalizaiton of Ariel Sharon:
The Loss of Ariel Sharon
by Rabbi Michael Lerner
Many of us in the peace movement will be praying for Ariel Sharon’s recovery even though we still see him as an obstacle to peace in the long run. While we would never wish for the death of anyone, even our enemies, we might have hoped that people like the PResident of Iran, or Syrian dictator Asad, or even President Bush would be peacefully removed from office quickly. Yet the developments of recent months have made many peaceniks hope that Sharon would stay in office at least through the completion of the next half year.
The reason is that Ariel Sharon has done what no one on the Left was able to do: split the Right, marginalize the extremists who believe that holding on to the biblical vision of the Land of Israel is a divine mandate, and acknowledge that a smaller Israel with defensible borders is preferable to a large Israel that requires domination of three million Palestinians.
Sharon was not just a talker, he was a doer. Once he really understood that Israel could not hope to retain support of even its most enthusiastic allies if it continued the 39 year old occupation, he dramatically withdrew several thousand settlers from Gaza and withdrew troops to the 67 borders.
When his own political party, the Likud, repudiated his decisive actions, he quit and began to create a center-right party, Kadima, that was, according to the most recent polls, likely to win 1/3 of the delegates in the new Knesset, and to ally with the center/left Labor party headed by a social justice crusader Amir Peretz in forming a new government.
The potential government that might have emerged would have likely been more sensitive to the social justice needs of Israelis and might have pushed Sharon to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinian people rather than continue to impose one along borders that he had unilaterally decided (as he unilaterally decided to leave Gaza without making arrangements that could have given the Palestinian Authority the power to effectively challenge the Hamas and other extremist groups that are currently wreaking havoc).
Precisely because of his past as a ruthless militarist who cared little for the humanity of the Palestinian people, Sharon managed to bring with him in the steps toward creating a Palestinian state sections of the Israeli population who are not committed to holding on to the West Bank for religious reasons, but who worry greatly about their own physical security from Palesitnian terror and trusted that Sharon was an expert in that sphere. It is hard to imagine anyone having the same credibility with those voters and the same ability to gather their support for a Palestinian state. For that reason, Sharon’s absence from politics is a grave setback for those who hoped to build peace step by step.
Few of us in the peace movements had any illusions, though, that Sharon ever intended to negotiate a Palestinian state with borders that would have been acceptable (roughly those agreed upon between Palestinians and former Minister of Justice Yossi Beilin in the Geneva Accord). In fact, Sharon’s closest advisors tried to explain to Likud rejectionists that Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawals were precisely aimed at stopping the Geneva Accord and other such plans from getting majority support in Israel and among Israel’s allies abroad. It was also intended to derail the Road Map issued by President Bush.
Sharon’s plan was to finish completion of a Wall that he has built through the West Bank that incorporates the bulk of the settlers, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and to declare that the new boundary of Israel, then forcibly remove the 1/6 of settlers who were not inside that Wall and allow Palestinians to have approximately half of the West Bank for a Palestinian state, cris-crossed by Israeli roads in which the Israeli military would continue to militarily police the Jordan Valley. The Wall is already nearing completion, and if Sharon had the political mandate, that would become the expanded boundary of Israel.
Sharon has systematically ignored the humanity of the Palestinian people, violated their basic human rights, escalated torture and massive military assaults against civilian targets, escalated the use of targeted assassinations of “suspected” militants, and refused to negotiate with the mild-mannered Palestinian prime minister Abbas. He has not been a man of peace.
Yet the loss of Sharon will be mourned by many of us in the peace movement because his current moves, insensitive as they were to the needs of Palestinians, seemed to be the one viable way to build an Israeli majority for concessions that might eventually create the conditions for a more respectful and mutual reconciliation with the Palestinians, thereby bringing peace to Israel.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society and author of The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right (HarperSanFrancisco, Feb, 2006). www.Tikkun.org RabbiLerner@tikkun.org
MM
Tikkun Community Newsletter
News Release: On the Loss of Ariel Sharon.
Please reprint and circulate widely.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine: A bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society, and national chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, issued the following statement upon hearing of the near-death hospitalizaiton of Ariel Sharon:
The Loss of Ariel Sharon
by Rabbi Michael Lerner
Many of us in the peace movement will be praying for Ariel Sharon’s recovery even though we still see him as an obstacle to peace in the long run. While we would never wish for the death of anyone, even our enemies, we might have hoped that people like the PResident of Iran, or Syrian dictator Asad, or even President Bush would be peacefully removed from office quickly. Yet the developments of recent months have made many peaceniks hope that Sharon would stay in office at least through the completion of the next half year.
The reason is that Ariel Sharon has done what no one on the Left was able to do: split the Right, marginalize the extremists who believe that holding on to the biblical vision of the Land of Israel is a divine mandate, and acknowledge that a smaller Israel with defensible borders is preferable to a large Israel that requires domination of three million Palestinians.
Sharon was not just a talker, he was a doer. Once he really understood that Israel could not hope to retain support of even its most enthusiastic allies if it continued the 39 year old occupation, he dramatically withdrew several thousand settlers from Gaza and withdrew troops to the 67 borders.
When his own political party, the Likud, repudiated his decisive actions, he quit and began to create a center-right party, Kadima, that was, according to the most recent polls, likely to win 1/3 of the delegates in the new Knesset, and to ally with the center/left Labor party headed by a social justice crusader Amir Peretz in forming a new government.
The potential government that might have emerged would have likely been more sensitive to the social justice needs of Israelis and might have pushed Sharon to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinian people rather than continue to impose one along borders that he had unilaterally decided (as he unilaterally decided to leave Gaza without making arrangements that could have given the Palestinian Authority the power to effectively challenge the Hamas and other extremist groups that are currently wreaking havoc).
Precisely because of his past as a ruthless militarist who cared little for the humanity of the Palestinian people, Sharon managed to bring with him in the steps toward creating a Palestinian state sections of the Israeli population who are not committed to holding on to the West Bank for religious reasons, but who worry greatly about their own physical security from Palesitnian terror and trusted that Sharon was an expert in that sphere. It is hard to imagine anyone having the same credibility with those voters and the same ability to gather their support for a Palestinian state. For that reason, Sharon’s absence from politics is a grave setback for those who hoped to build peace step by step.
Few of us in the peace movements had any illusions, though, that Sharon ever intended to negotiate a Palestinian state with borders that would have been acceptable (roughly those agreed upon between Palestinians and former Minister of Justice Yossi Beilin in the Geneva Accord). In fact, Sharon’s closest advisors tried to explain to Likud rejectionists that Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawals were precisely aimed at stopping the Geneva Accord and other such plans from getting majority support in Israel and among Israel’s allies abroad. It was also intended to derail the Road Map issued by President Bush.
Sharon’s plan was to finish completion of a Wall that he has built through the West Bank that incorporates the bulk of the settlers, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and to declare that the new boundary of Israel, then forcibly remove the 1/6 of settlers who were not inside that Wall and allow Palestinians to have approximately half of the West Bank for a Palestinian state, cris-crossed by Israeli roads in which the Israeli military would continue to militarily police the Jordan Valley. The Wall is already nearing completion, and if Sharon had the political mandate, that would become the expanded boundary of Israel.
Sharon has systematically ignored the humanity of the Palestinian people, violated their basic human rights, escalated torture and massive military assaults against civilian targets, escalated the use of targeted assassinations of “suspected” militants, and refused to negotiate with the mild-mannered Palestinian prime minister Abbas. He has not been a man of peace.
Yet the loss of Sharon will be mourned by many of us in the peace movement because his current moves, insensitive as they were to the needs of Palestinians, seemed to be the one viable way to build an Israeli majority for concessions that might eventually create the conditions for a more respectful and mutual reconciliation with the Palestinians, thereby bringing peace to Israel.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society and author of The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right (HarperSanFrancisco, Feb, 2006). www.Tikkun.org RabbiLerner@tikkun.org
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