When Norman Finkelstein wrote his Holocaust Industry, it was savaged by the Zionist ideologues for its argument that the Zionist movement had conducted a war of extortion against Swiss Banks for monies that it intended to ensure never went to the Holocaust survivors. It must be a source of great satisfaction to Norman that his predictions and analysis have come true and been shown to be true by subsequent developments.
Last year Rabbi Israel Singer, the corrupt Executive Director of the Jewish Claims Conference, the main organisation involved in obtaining reparations from the German and other conferences, was forced to resign after having been found out trousering some $2million ‘expenses’. In fact the whole of the Jewish Claims Conference/Reparations/Holocaust Industry is a disgusting mixture of corruption and Zionist racism.
But there’s one group that has not benefitted – the Holocaust survivors themselves. They have been left living in dire poverty in Israel, some 80% denied all benefits or medical care, whilst Zionist functionaries wine and dine themselves on the reparations which were meant to keep them in a decent standard of living in their old age. No less than 2/3 are living in poverty in Israel, a state whose main claim to legitimacy is the Holocaust.
Of course Israeli Ministers regularly lament the situation of the Holocaust survivors, but in a State without any ideology other than anti-Arab racism and slavish pro-Americanism, then crocodile tears over the Holocaust survivors is just that.
The latest instalment of this appalling story is described in an Editorial of 31st July 2008 in Ha’aretz, ‘Survivors: Block Yad Vashem’.
The cabinet decision two days ago to postpone the implementation of the Dorner Commission recommendations – which determined that an additional allowance should be paid immediately to 43,000 Holocaust survivors – causes unforgivable harm to the first group of survivors to arrive in the country immediately after the war: those who paid the highest price with their bodies and their souls, and were forced by the government to give up individual compensation from Germany as part of the reparations agreement.
The waiving of personal compensation from Germany by these survivors was supposed to transfer the burden of caring for them to the state, But surprisingly, this group actually received the worst treatment of all the survivors, while those who didn’t immigrate to Israel received far higher compensation.
The Dorner Commission deliberately reduced the sum of compensation to a minimum so that it could be paid out immediately, although the cumulative monetary loss for each survivor is between NIS 1.3 million and NIS 2.2 million. The decision to postpone this NIS 800 per month payment as well, and to renew discussion of the subject only in 2009, when the average age of those in question is now 84, means that thousands of those entitled to an additional allowance will not receive it.
According to the data of the Prime Minister’s Office, 87 percent of the poorest elderly living in Israel are Holocaust survivors. A law initiated by the government was passed in April to pay a monthly stipend of NIS 1,000 to elderly survivors of the camps and ghettoes who immigrated to Israel after 1953. This stipend, which will certainly help many people, primarily immigrants from the former Soviet Union, does not apply to the 43,000 survivors who immigrated to Israel before 1953 and who were the subject of the Dorner Commission discussions. These survivors have fallen between all the cracks. They were discriminated against from the start compared with other survivors, and the discriminatory treatment continues.
A few months ago, Ehud Olmert told the Holocaust survivors “we have sinned” against you, but this sin, which may have been forgivable during the early years of the state, is not forgivable now. Some NIS 260 million was needed in order to implement the recommendations of the Dorner Commission this year, and to enable a certain degree of wellbeing to survivors in their final years. Considering that their heirs will not receive these benefits, the tightfisted treatment of the survivors is especially infuriating.
The egregious waste by the government in establishing a ministry-without-portfolio for Ami Ayalon, in appointing Ruhama Avraham and Eli Aflalo as ministers at the last moment before the end of the government’s term, and the ostentatious ceremonies honoring the survivors in the context of the endless 60th anniversary celebrations – all these are evidence of a lack of sensitivity toward the Holocaust survivors, most of whom are living in poverty, and whose lives could have been improved with this money.
The ministers who decided to postpone the Dorner recommendations refused to be interviewed yesterday, perhaps out of embarrassment.
It was said in their name that an addition of NIS 800 per month will not make much difference in the situation of the poorest survivors, whereas those who are less poor will manage without it too. The survivors should react to such an attitude by blocking the entrance to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in order to emphasize that Israel has lost its moral right to speak in their name, and is not permitted to ask the world for special treatment as the country of the Jewish survivors.
See also Third of Holocaust survivors poor and Shoah survivors forced back to Germany due to Israel’s lack of restitution laws and Social affairs minister laments situation of Holocaust survivors, all from the on-line version of Israel’s Yediot Aharanot.
Tony Greenstein
Posted in Blog
