Israel’s Shameless Treatment of the Holocaust Survivors –Half of Them Have to Choose Between Food and Heat
Despite Exploiting the Holocaust Financially and in Propaganda Israel Acknowledges No Obligation to the Survivors
German holocaust survivors – Interview with Collette Avital
A friend recently sent me yesterday a clip from a German news programme in which Colette Avital of Israel’s Center of Organisations of Holocaust Survivors, was interviewed about the plight of holocaust survivors in Israel. You might have thought, given the prominent place that the holocaust occupies in Zionist propaganda that Israel would take care to see that the basic needs of the remaining survivors were met. This is my friend’s description.
I saw a short clip on a German news programme last night about holocaust survivors still living in Israel. Apparently half of them live below the poverty line (an increase) and the reporter spoke to a charity putting together food items etc. They said that demand has greatly increased (also due to covid) but that donations have greatly decreased. The male respondent said the govt does not do anything, and the govt did not respond to the programme’s request for more information.
The journalist then spoke a woman who leads the centre for holocaust survivors and she said she had an angry discussion many years ago to Netanyahu when he was finance minister about providing holocaust survivors with proper support rather than expecting them to rely on charity. He said that Israel was not responsible for the holocaust therefore he could not see why these people should be Israel’s responsibility. It was up to Germany to care for them. It is amazing when you think of the political capital he / Israel constantly make from the holocaust.
They then said that a few years ago, due to pressure, all survivors got a pension of 1,200 Euros a month but for most this was not enough to cover rent, heating, food, medication, transport costs to the doctor etc, therefore so many remain below the poverty line.
On three days a year Israel commemorates the holocaust and on the remainder they are forgotten, treated as an embarrassment. In 2013 Ha’aretz ran an article Israel Is Waiting for Its Holocaust Survivors to Die. This is literally true. To the Zionists the holocaust survivors are a burden on Israel. Israel can afford the latest in military equipment, it can bomb its neighbours to its hearts content, it can spend the second highest percentage of its GDP in the world on War (they call it Defence in true Orwellian style) but when it comes to the holocaust survivors there is nothing in the kitty.
To understand this properly you will have to wait to read my new book, Zionism During the Holocaust! But in essence despite common misinformation, Zionism was never a movement to rescue Jews. That was never its purpose. Zionism saw as its objective the establishment of a state that would perpetuate the Jewish race.
This is not a matter of speculation or wild assertion. As David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister said, when opposing the Kindertransport scheme in which Britain rescued, in the wake of Krystallnacht 10,000 German Jewish children:
‘If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.’
You can find this quote in the official biography of Ben Gurion by Shabtai Teveth: The Burning Ground: 1886-1948. (p.855)
This was the attitude to Jewish refugees throughout the war. No one was given a Palestine Immigration Certificate if they were over 35 unless they had specific skills or were rich. Nor was Ben Gurion alone. This was the consensus view of the Zionist leadership.
Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel, held similar views. Like Ben Gurion Weizmann had seen the rise of the Nazis, not as something to be fought by all means necessary but as something to be taken advantage of for the Zionist goal of state building.
The Zionist leadership were indifferent to the plight of Europe’s Jews. Weizmann shocked James MacDonald, the Chair of the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees when he
‘expressed his contempt for German Jews as a whole, his indifference to their fate and for that matter his indifference to the fate of millions of Jews elsewhere, just so long as a saving remnant could be preserved in Palestine.’
You can find this quote in Final Solution, the last and best book of David Cesarani, a Zionist historian (pp. 132-133).
Today there are numerous holocaust related organisations such as the Holocaust Education Trust which see their primary job as defending Israel. They vigorously oppose drawing any universal lessons from the holocaust and see their primary purpose as ‘educating’ people to understand that Israel is the living representative of the Jews who died in the camps.
When Netanyahu first began campaigning to deport Black African refugees from Eritrea and the Sudan, Yad Vashem was approached for support. Ha’aretz journalist Nir Gontarz described how ‘One after the other of the senior staff there, including Mr. Avner Shalev [the director], slammed the phone down on me when I asked to speak to them…’ Ha’aretz, 24.1.18., How Do Holocaust Survivors Feel About Expelling Asylum Seekers? ‘We Haven’t Learned the Lessons of History
Zionism has fought tooth and nail against drawing any universal lessons from the holocaust such as offering sanctuary to refugees. The only lesson that they draw is that Israel must be strong.
As Israeli historian, Edith Zertal wrote ‘there hasn’t been a war involving Israel that has not been perceived, defined, and conceptualized in terms of the holocaust.’ Israel has mobilised the holocaust ‘in the service of Israeli politics.’ Idith Zertal, pp.4, 91, Israel’s Politics and the Politics of Nationhood
When Israel was in its infancy the holocaust was considered a national disgrace. The dead were seen as symbolising the cowardice and weakness of the accursed galut (diaspora). ‘Why did you go like sheep to the slaughter’ was the favourite question of Eichmann prosecutor Gideon Hausner. Why did you not fight back.
The holocaust survivors themselves were called sapon (soap) after the myth that the Nazis produced soap out of the fat from the dead bodies and treated with contempt, good only for fighting Israel’s wars.
Hanzi Brand, a Hungarian holocaust survivor, wrote of how, when she settled on Kibbutz Gvata Haim, the other members ‘talked about their war to avoid hearing about hers. They were ashamed of the holocaust.’ [Tom Segev, The Seventh Million, p. 471].Israelis listened to the survivors’ stories with a ‘forced patience’ that was soon exhausted. [Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, p. 83 citing Yisrael Gutman].
In a 220 page Israeli history textbook published in 1948, just one page was devoted to the holocaust compared to 10 pages on the Napoleonic wars. [Idith Zertal, p.94, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood]. Instead Zionism looked to the myth of the heroic zealots who sacrificed themselves at the desert fortress of Masada in the Judean Hills rather than surrender to the Romans in 73/74 AD.
In the early 1950s Israel claimed reparations from Germany on behalf of the holocaust survivors. Despite being claimed on the basis of individual need Ben Gurion was determined that ‘the major portion of the compensation will be claimed by the Jewish people as a collective body [i.e. the Israeli state] not as individuals.’ Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, accepted that Israel should apologise for having withheld funds from the holocaust survivors. See Holocaust survivors accuse State of stealing their welfare funds, YNet, 30.12.07.
The Jewish Claims Conference, which also claimed survivors’ money, was generous, at least with itself. Former President, Rabbi Israel Singer, was forced to resign in 2007.
‘For years, a gang of swindlers siphoned off money from two compensation funds by falsifying thousands of applications from presumed victims of Nazi oppression. There are six JCC staff members among the 17 defendants who stand accused of misappropriating a total of $42.5 million.’
If Switzerland was reluctant to part with the assets of murdered Jews then the same was true of Israeli banks, which hoped that the survivors might die first. It was only under pressure that Bank Leumi agreed to pay NIS 20m to the survivors. In 2004, a parliamentary inquiry found that Leumi owed NIS 300m ($71.65m) to Holocaust survivors and their families.
Israeli medical committees did their best to reduce the entitlement of holocaust survivors to benefits ‘alter(ing) their disability evaluations in a manipulative way.’ Survivors had to choose between buying medicine, food or fuel. This is the ‘Jewish’ state. Israel Is Waiting for Its Holocaust Survivors to Die, Ha’aretz, 6.2.13
People should bear this in time whenever Zionists like Margaret Hodge compare themselves to holocaust survivors as part of the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign.
Tony Greenstein
