This week, thirty world leaders are converging on Jerusalem to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I wrote about it in my new piece for Middle East Eye. All appearances to the contrary, this is not an official “Israeli” commemoration. Despite the fact that the country’s president is welcoming the dignitaries and Yad VaShem is serving as the host of some of the events, it is a “wholly-owned” production of the Russian Jewish oligarch, Moshe Kantor. He made his fortune stealing government companies which made fertilizer and turning them into a huge conglomerate called Acron Group. He is now worth $2.7-billion according to Forbes.
In order to protect his investment and fortune, Kantor has become a member of Putin’s mafia “crew.” In the process, he used his wealth to essentially “buy” the loyalty of a number of European Jewish communities on whom he showered gifts through his personal vehicle, the European Jewish Congress. If you’re wondering how a body that was established to be a liaison between EU officialdom and European Jewish communities was hijacked by someone who is not a citizen of a EU nation, the short answer is–bribes disguised as gifts.
Kantor has bestowed yet another “gift” on Israel by, in effect renting the country to produce an international extravaganza he’s calling World Holocaust Forum. It is, in reality, a one-man vanity project wholly to boost the vanity of Kantor’s patron, Vladimir Putin.
Yad Vashem-Hirbat al-Hamama
But what I really wanted to talk about here is the role of Yad Vashem in this ‘production.’ It is Israel’s national Holocaust museum located in the hills of west Jerusalem (see photo). It was established in the early 1950s to serve as a repository for the historical records and research concerning the greatest tragedy to befall the Jewish people. Though it would seem that Europe would have been a more appropriate site for such a center, as it was the venue in which European Jewry was exterminated, Israel has appropriated that role. Israeli Zionists wanted to preserve the Holocaust in amber, so they could perpetually point to it as the justification for the founding of the State of Israel.
One thing you will not find on Yad Vashem’s website or any of the literature or research it produces, is the history of the site on which this hallowed institution sits. Before 1948, there were several Palestinian villages in the hills adjacent to it. Among the larger ones were Ein Karem (‘Ein Kerem’ in Hebrew) and Deir Yassin, which became the site of a major Jewish terror operation resulting in the cold-blooded murder of 120 villagers under the command of Menachem Begin. The latter village later became the location of Jerusalem’s mental institution, Kfar Shaul. It is now the ultra-Orthodox community of Givat Shaul. On another nearby hill in what is now known as the Jerusalem Forest, Mohammed abu Khdeir was savagely murdered by Israeli Jewish terrorists, in an incident portrayed in the HBO series, Our Boys.
Between these two larger villages sat Hirbat (sometimes transliterated “Khirbet”) al-Hamama. Accounts say that it was the agricultural fields owned by the inhabitants of Ein Karem. It sat on the western portion of the current Yad Vashem complex. All of these settlements were liquidated in July 1948 by Palmach forces, who expelled the residents. Israel prohibited them from returning and they became refugees.
Nadav Frankovich published the account of Umar al-Ghubari on his Facebook timeline. Frankovich translated it from Arabic. This is my translation of his Hebrew version:
To the Leaders of the World Holocaust Forum:
After concluding your festival at the Israeli Yad Vashem museum–preserving the memory of the Shoah, which took place in Europe, and which was founded upon [the Palestinian village of] Hirbat al-Hamama nearby the expelled village of Ein Karem–go out on the museum’s porch which offers a northern view. Look out to the hill that stands opposite you and ask your guests what occurred there 72 years ago, a mere three years following the Shoah and Auschwitz.
Ask about Deir Yassin and its residents. Ask about the slaughter, about the village erased from the earth in a single day, during which it was attacked before sunrise by terrorists of our land . They butchered more than 120 residents of the village and expelled more than 500 others in a clear act of ethnic cleansing on that dark Friday, April 9 1948.
After the slaughter, they desecrated the victims’ bodies and drove the horror-sricken surviving women and children in a procession through the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, cheering, celebrating and waving their arms in victory. Then they dumped them at the Jaffa Gate [East Jerusalem]. Afterward they looted all their possessions, took over their homes and olive orchards and ransacked them. There has never been a return to Deir Yassin.
Then look to the southeast and ask about Ayn Karem, which was said to be the native village of the prophet Zecharia and John the Baptist. There Muslims and Christians lived in harmony for hundreds of years until racist colonialism arrived from your Europe when the colonialist forces arrived here in 1948, at the place you are now standing. That was Hirbat al-Hamama and nearby Mt. A-Shurafa, which later became Mt. Herzl. They shelled the village and expelled all its residents while under heavy fire. They were uprooted and became refugees who continue to seek to return to their homes. Even to this day.
Just like Deir Yassin and Ayn Karem. there are hundreds of such Palestinian towns and villages which suffered ethnic cleansing, and more than 7-million Palestinian refugees. Most of the [remaining ]Palestinian people live under apartheid, a racist regime of dispossession, siege and conquest. What are you doing on their behalf?
The exterminaton and expulsion of the Jews happened in your own Europe–so from our point of view you resolved it [your crime] on our lands making us pay your bill. The Jews of Europe are your victims. Today’s Israeli Jews are our opressive colonial attackers.
Your support of them is a collaboration in the attack on Palestine and its ongoing Nakba.
As these European gentlemen/ women discuss weighty subjects of genocide and ethnic cleansing in their native countries, they ought not to lose sight of Israeli Nakba and ethnic cleansing. Because as the Jewish people recovered from the suffering of the Holocaust in Eretz Yisrael, the new state founded on its ashes repeated a similar crime against the Palestinian people. To paraphrase an old saying: one crime does not deserve another.
H/t to Eitan Bronstein and Nadav Frankovich for their research and Facebook posts.
excellent background article to Yad Vashem. There is so much to write about this disgusting organisation
@ jewsagainstzionism: I’m not sure that I agree that Yad Vashem is “disgusting.” But ill-conceived and toadying to the State–for sure.
Hirbat Al Hamama, the land on which Yad Vashem is now located, “…is hardly documented…by either Israeli or Palestinian historians, an oddity considering the number of interested parties invested in producing a detailed description of every single village impacted by the 1948 war. Zochrot, a far-left Israeli organization dedicated to mapping the Nakba, or Catastrophe, the Palestinian name for the war, similarly neglects to mention the village at all, and accounts by Israeli soldiers who fought there in 1948 recall a few empty outposts and one occupied by Jordanian soldiers, not helpless civilians.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/255522/israeli-academic-supports-bds-because-yad-vashem-doesnt-commemorate-palestinian-suffering
I would hardly characterize the historically accurate figure of 120 Deir Yassin villagers as ‘coldblooded’.
The residents of Deir Yassin had stockpiled weapons and fortified the village. They violently resisted the Zionists, killing four and wounding thirty five.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-testimonies-from-the-censored-massacre-at-deir-yassin-1.5494094
Most of dead villagers were found in their homes, and many would have died as the the Zionist attackers indiscrimently shot and threw hand grenades into the homes as they fought house to house with the Arab defenders.
How many villagers died in ‘hot’ combat, and how many were murdered after they surrendered is unknown.
Rapes? Probably.
Mutilations? Possibly.
“It was terrible. I did not see any signs of defilement, mutilation, or rape.” –eyewitness, Dr. Alfred Engel.
Uri Milstein, The War of Independence: Out of Crisis Came Decision – Volume IV [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan Publishers, 1991), p. 256., pp.269-270 (interview with Alfred Engel, 7 December 1987).
@ Samantha:
Seriously? You’re quoting Liel Leibowitz from Tabloid (aka Tablet) as a Zionist historian? Based on what credentials? This guy has no more knowledge of the history of the period than Alfred E. Newman.
More utter crap from Liel. First, I approached Eitan Bronstein, founder of Zochrot and guess what–he offered me historical information about Hirbat al Hamama. It turns out that it probably was not a village. But according the British Mandate map featured here, the small “o” on the map next to the location indicates that it was an orchard within the agricultural lands of Ayn Karem. As I’ve written here to two other Hasbaroids like you–it hardly matters whether there were Palestinians inhabiting houses on the spot. The land belonged the Palestinian villager of Ayn Karem. The Palmach had no more right to steal farm land than they did to expel Palestinians from their lands.
When 150 heavily armed Zionist thugs approach your home to destroy you and it, what would you do? Hell yes, I’d resist with whatever means I had, just as Jews have resisted such similar invasions throughout their history. But the question remains does the death of four Lehi thugs warrant the slaughter of 120 Palestinian civilians, 30 times the number of deaths among the Jews? The answer is obviously No.
As for your disputing the term “coldblooded” in my account of the slaughter there. Let’s see whether even your disgusting cold-bloodedness can be muted by this account from the same source you quoted:
Defending slaughter and rape: a disgusting exercise in hasbara. You are revolting.
Having lived through the occupation in 1940-45 in the Netherlands I always feel that what is important today is to tell the truth and you do this time and time again. It is the only way to avoid national socialism, fascism and racism such as antisemitism.
The circle of dots on the map means it was ruins. not an inhabited village.
@Dani:
Prove it. And furthermore, you’re assuming the literal meaning of churva (“ruins”) in Hebrew and the Arabic Hirbat carry the exact same connotation. Not quite true. While they both mean “ruins,” many settled Palestinian villages and towns have Hirbat in their name.
And even if it was ‘merely’ the fields of Ein Karem, it was still their only means of sustaining themselves. Would it be acceptable for Hungary to exterminate its Jews, then build a national history museum on farm land or factories belonging to the very Jews it murdered? Factories and farm lands which were their sole means of sustenance? No it wouldn’t.
Thank you Richard. Looking at the photos on the BBC news last night while the impeachment hearing was going on, there was something about this that turned me off.. this gathering. They use the Holocaust, these leaders, and the Holocaust, a memory that has become an industry, less a lesson. But if a lesson also, often one that seems “off” morally. Thus the rationales, the looking for enemies elsewhere other than behavior at home. This anniversary (all of them) mines the guilt, the Christian, the European guilt, still dogs that hunt. Israel can get away with anything because of the Holocaust. Israel is a country built upon PTS. And yet there will be those that argue that the Holocaust is not the reason for Israel becoming… the right to be there being from 3000 years ago! The others don’t exist, have no right. Netanyahu did not miss his chance to point outward either, especially at Iran.Those dogs hunt for Arabs and Persians on these occasions. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the USA since Netanyahu’s pal Trump took office. But it’s been on the rise elsewhere in no small measure because of the Palestinian sore.
I feel terrible for the people still alive from the Holocaust ( their children who still suffer reverberations, second and third generation) an unimaginable indescribable horror we should never know. They carry memories burned (literally) into them.They must partake and share until their dying days.
Your article would have been censored in Germany Richard!
German public broadcaster HR: Sabine Müller said Russia and Israel used the ceremony for their own political and memorial “private party”.
[Source: DW]
You are the one who is making the claim it was a village. Can’t find the legend for the map but I’m not the one who is making the claim.
Then you make a second claim (which by the way, contradicts your first one), that the place was fields of Ein Karem. Based on what exactly? Your gut feeling?
You make a claim based on a post on Facebook with a part of a map without a legend that will explain what you are looking at, then you make another story about the place being cultivated by people from Ein Karem.
Do you call this journalism?
@ Dani:
I don’t base my reporting on gut feeling. And don’t you dare insult me again in this fashion.
Read the post again carefully. It wasn’t me making the claim it was a village. I relied on the founder of Zochrot, Israel’s leading expert on Nakba and destroyed Palestinian communities. He called it a “little locality.” Nadav Frankovich says that it consisted of the agricultural fields belonging to Ayn Karem. After I queried Eitan Bronstein a 2nd time, I decided Frankovich might be correct and I have edited the post to reflect his view. That is called journalism, contrary to what you believe.
Nor did you bother to note that I edited the post because you were too busy making your own unsupported claims based on a faulty knowledge of Arabic, that Hirbat al Hamama was a “ruins.” I’ve got news for you–farmers do not consider their lands to be empty of value or “ruins.” They are in fact not only quite valuable, they are their sole means of sustenance. And both Ayn Karem and its lands were destroyed by the Palmach in July 1948. That’s historical fact.
It would be quite easy for you to find the map in a historical archive in Israel. So prove your claim is correct. Find the map and the legend and then your claim might be considered credible. Till then, not a chance. And btw, I’ll put Eitan Bronstein and Nadav Frankovich’s knowledge on Hirbat al Hamama, Nakba in general, and maps of destroyed Palestinian villages above yours any day of the week.
I don’t give a shit what you think or what you call what I do.
This was your last comment in this thread. Do not publish again in it.
So true, the dehumanization of the Palestinians continue, they are not only brutalized but they are denied the basic human and rights bestowed upon them by their creator God almighty including their natural rights for self defense.