lunes, 16 de marzo de 2015

Grecia tiene memoria del Holocausto y entiende el significado

Greek city of Thessaloniki remembers deportation of its Jews to Auschwitz
>> http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-wo…/jewish-world-news/1.647182

Greek city of Thessaloniki remembers deportating Jews to Auschwitz

Memorial marks 72 years since almost 50,000 Jews from Thessaloniki were sent to their deaths in Nazi extermination camp.

Mar. 16, 2015 | 3:38 PM
 
A Greek city remembered its nearly 50,0

Hundreds of people march to the old railway station in Thessaloniki  during a commemoration ceremony
Hundreds of people march to the old railway station in Thessaloniki during a commemoration ceremony marking the departure of the first train from the Greek city to Auschwitz, March 15, 2015. Photo by AFP

0 Jews sent to Nazi death camps during World War II.
A memorial marking the 72nd anniversary of the round up and deportation of the Jews of Thessaloniki was held Saturday.
Participants placed flowers on train tracks where the Jews were taken away in cattle cars headed for Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Associated Press reported.
In March 1943, the Nazis began sending Jews in railway convoys to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. By August, 49,000 of the city’s prewar population of 55,000 Jews had been deported. Fewer than 2,000 survived.
The Jewish community of Thessaloniki had been a vital center of Sephardic Jewry for 450 years following the expulsion from Spain. Known as the “Flower of the Balkans,” it was the center of Ladino culture in the region.
There are fewer than 2,000 Jews living in the city of about 800,000 residents today.
The first such memorial was held two years ago, on the 70th anniversary of the deportation.
A man walks past a graffiti dedicated to the Holocaust in the northern port city of Thessaloniki March 15, 2015. . Photo by Reuters 

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.647182 
 

Israel en elecciones

"The bullies riot and the other passengers remain silent, whether from fear or assent, until they become a single voice, the voice of the bully."
Read Gideon Levy's latest.
 

To see how racist Israel has become, look to the left

The new levels of Arab-hatred being displayed are shocking, and so are the Israeli public's acceptance of them.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Photo by Emil Salman

 

Israel’s “chocolate flight” — the political equivalent of the recent incident, a video of which went viral, in which Israeli passengers cursed out and threatened a flight attendant for refusing to sell them duty-free chocolate ahead of other passengers — lands on Tuesday, the cabin messier and filthier than ever. There have been dirtier and more violent election seasons here, but none so ultranationalist and racist. The curse of racism spread far beyond the far right: Note what was said (and unsaid) by the left and the center.
We must start, of course, with that great language polluter Avigdor Lieberman. His Hebrew is broken, his English a farce, his expressions repellent in any language. Even worse than his vicious excoriations, which have reached a new nadir, is Israelis’ apathy to them.
The foreign minister said “Those who are against us ... we need to pick up an ax and cut off his head,” aiming his ax at Arab Israelis. Such a remark would end the career and guarantee lifetime ostracism of any Western statesman. Only superannuated African dictators speak of axes and beheading — and the leaders of Islamic State, of course. But such is the intellectual, cultural and moral world of Israel’s foreign minister, a bully who was once convicted of physically assaulting a child. The world can’t understand how Lieberman’s remark was accepted with such equanimity in Israel, where some highly-regarded commentators still believe this cynical, repellent politician is a serious, reasonable statesman.
No less repugnant was his savaging, in a televised debate, of Joint List leader Iman Odeh, whom he called a “fifth column” and told, “you’re not wanted here,” “go to Gaza.” None of the other party heads taking part, including those of leftist and centrist slates, leader in the debate, stepped in to stop Lieberman’s tirade. (Zehava Galon of Meretz denounced it later.) Silence is tantamount to an admission of guilt. We are all Lieberman. On this flight, there is neither shaming nor a sense of shame.
The racism of the campaign season has been planted well beyond the rotten, stinking gardens of Lieberman, Naftali Bennett, Eli Yishai and Baruch Marzel. It is almost everywhere. Our cities have recently been contaminated by posters whose evil messages are nearly on a par with the slogans “Kahane was right” and “death to Arabs.”
“With BibiBennett, we’ll be stuck with the Palestinians forever,” threaten the posters plastered on every overpass and hoarding, on behalf of the Peace and Security Association of National Security Experts. It is impossible to know their level of expertise on matters of peace and security, but they are clearly experts in incitement. The message and its signatories are considered center-left, but it too spreads hate and racism.
“We’ll be stuck with the Palestinians forever”? Yes. The Palestinians aren’t going anywhere. Even if a Palestinian state is established, some of them will remain in Israel. What are the country’s Arabs supposed to feel when they see such hateful ads directed against them? And what’s so bad about being “stuck” with them? Are they infected with some disease? Being stuck with Lieberman is much worse.
Such is the state of public discourse in Israel. Yair Lapid and “the Zoabis,” in reference to Haneen Zoabi, Moshe Kahlon who says he won’t sit in a government coalition “with the Arabs,” Isaac Herzog who will conduct coalition negotiations with all the parties with the exception of the Arab ones, Tzipi Livni and her obsession with her Jewish — and also nationalistic and ugly — state. Even the dear and beloved (to me) Amos Oz, who in Haaretz (“Dreams Israel should abandon — fast,” March 13) called for a “fair divorce” from the Palestinians. He has the right not to believe in the prospects for a shared life, we must call for their liberation, but to call for a divorce without asking the Palestinians what they want rings with a rejection of them. And what about Israel’s Arab citizens? How are they supposed to feel when one of the most important intellectuals of Israel’s peace camp says he wants a divorce? Are they to remain among us as lepers?
Because that’s how it is on chocolate flights. The bullies riot and the other passengers remain silent, whether from fear or assent, until they become a single voice, the voice of the bully.
Gideon Levy tweets at @levy_haaretz

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.646914?utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social



Lieberman has abandoned all restraint and morality

Facing threat of being voted out of the Knesset, no statement is too contemptible as long as it ensures him media presence, including unbridled racist incitment.

Mar. 16, 2015 | 1:47 AM
 
 
Israel's Foreign Minister and head of Yisrael Beitenu party Avigdor Lieberman, March 15. 
 
Avigdor Lieberman’s fear for his political survival has reached an ugly climax. Clinging by his fingertips in an effort to save his corrupt Yisrael Beiteinu party from extinction, Lieberman has abandoned all restraint and morality. He is filling the political debate with violent, racist incitement.
During a marathon series of interviews with party leaders conducted by Channel 2 television on Saturday, Lieberman entered the studio immediately following the interview with Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List established by the Arab parties. Pointing at Odeh, he called him a “traitor” and a “liar.” In earlier interviews with party leaders on Channel 2, Lieberman called the Joint List chairman “a fifth column,” saying, “you’re a representative of terrorist organizations in the Knesset ... You intimidate children in the schools so they won’t do national service ... The only thing that unites you is hatred of Israel.”
That is how Israel’s foreign minister addresses the representative of 20 percent of the state’s population. Odeh was wise to refuse to respond to Lieberman’s contemptible performance.
It’s possible that Lieberman truly believes with all his heart in the racist merchandise he’s offering his voters, even though for the past few months he has zigzagged between a diplomatic agreement in the spirit of the Arab Peace Initiative, on one hand, and “transferring” Arab citizens of Israel and instituting the death penalty for terrorists on the other, depending on his electoral prospects and the progress of the criminal investigation into members of his party. Yet the fact that someone who has been a senior minister in most recent Israeli governments can’t boast of anything he has achieved or promise any hope to his electorate is shocking and regrettable.
It’s not surprising that Lieberman is acting the way he is. The foreign minister has proved throughout his political career that power and authority interest him much more than ideology, if he even has an ideology. Now, facing the threat of falling short of the electoral threshold, no statement or slogan is too contemptible as long as it ensures him a media presence, and perhaps also another few votes.
But Lieberman doesn’t represent Israel’s citizens, not even those who hold right-wing views. His attempts at intimidation, his frequent and cynical exploitation of bereavement, his unbridled anti-Arab incitement and the corruption that spreads everywhere he and his people go — all these are an insult to Israeli democracy.
Lieberman isn’t worthy of being a kingmaker, or even of playing any decisive role in the formation of any political bloc. And in a properly run state, he would have no place in the legislature at all.
Watch Lieberman's attack on Odeh on Channel 2 (Attention: Hebrew)

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.647076?utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social 
 


In Israel, a good Arab is an invisible Arab

The woman who will light a torch on Independence Day is just the type of Arab that Israel likes — an invisible one.

06:00 12.03.15
 
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.646426
 

Netanyahu: If I'm elected, there will be no Palestinian state


Netanyahu: If I'm elected, there will be no Palestinian state

In a definitive disavowal of his Bar-Ilan two-state speech, prime minister makes last-minute attempt to draw voters from Bennett's Habayit Hayeudi.

 

Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the East Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa, March 16, 2015.
Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the East Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa, March 16, 2015. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi

Mar. 16, 2015 | 5:27 PM
 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau said Monday that if he were to be reelected, a Palestinian state would not be created, in a definite disavowal of his 2009 speech, in which he had voiced support for the principle of two states for two peoples.
Netanyahu's remarks in an interview with the NRG website - which is owned by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and tied with the settler newspaper Makor Rishon - were a last-minute attempt to pull right-wing voters away from Habayit Hayehudi.
"I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel," Netanyahu said. The left has buried its head in the sand time and after time and ignores this, but we are realistic and understand."
During the interview, Netanyahu declared that if the Zionist Union were to win the elections, "it would attach itself to the international community and do they bidding," including freezing construction in West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, and cooperate with international initiatives to return Israel's borders to the 1967 lines.
During a visit to the East Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa earlier Monday, Netanyahu warned that if he were not elected, "Hamastan B." would be established in Jerusalem. “If Tzipi [Livni] and Bougie [Isaac Herzog] form a government, Hamastan B will be established here.” 
He also slammed Jewish-American businessman Danny Abraham, one of the primary financiers of the V-15 campaign to flip the Israeli government. Netanyahu did not mentioned Abraham by name, but said that the primary financier of V-15 has come to his office in the past and tried to convince him not to build in East Jerusalem.
"I said to him – have you ever been in Har Homa? He said no, and that it was a dangerous settlement. I suggested he go there and said he would make it in time, that he wouldn't be late to the meeting. They took him to the car, returned to the office, and rolled on the floor with laughter. The man was prepared to go to Sinai and couldn't believe that the car stopped after seven minutes and that he had reached his destination. These are the people telling us who needs to be in government, these are the people who think Har Home is in Sinai."

http://www.haaretz.com/.premium-1.647212