Amos Oz's book on fanaticism added to Swedish school curriculum

Sweden is planning to distribute to students aged 17-18 Amos Oz’s book How to cure a fanatic to help them understand the complexities of the Israeli-Arab conflict other than through media reporting, usually heavily biased against Israel. The book will be included the school curriculum and the Government hopes that the initiative will be extended to other European Union member states. Y Net reports:

“The Swedish educational system has decided to distribute a book by Israeli author Amos Oz to 115,000 eleventh graders throughout the country. The purpose is to instil tolerance, to stamp out radicalism and to introduce Swedish youth to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a different angle.

The booklet, How to cure a fanatic (which was not published in Hebrew, but publicized within the framework of Oz's articles) was translated into Swedish by the Bonnier publishing house, the largest publisher in Scandinavia and the publisher of Amos Oz's books in Swedish.
…
The Swedish government has contacted the European Union and proposed distributing the booklet throughout EU member states as well.

Amos Oz told Yedioth Ahronoth on Tuesday evening that the project came as a surprise, "because no one discussed it with me in advance, I think it is important that young kids at high schools read about fanaticism. It will help them better understand our conflict."”

Amos Oz was awarded the 2007 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature.

Photo by Mariusz Kubik

First-ever desecration of Lisbon's Jewish cemetery

On 25 September, the small Jewish cemetery in Lisbon was vandalised by two neo-Nazi youths. 17 tombstones were desecrated and swastikas painted.

“This is an act inspired by a demon who lies in the heart of Europe”, said Father Peter Stilwell, who represented the Lisbon Patriarchate at the Taharat Kevurot ceremony held at the cemetery on 30 September.

One of the perpetrators had attacked an immigrant and kept images of black children marked “don’t feed the animals”.

Pope Benedict XVI criticises Iranian leader

Ruth Gledhill in the Times reports that Pope Benedict XVI pledged to help fight resurgent anti-semitism in Europe. The Pontiff also criticised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who questions the Holocaust and wants Israel wiped off the map:

“The Pope hit out at Iran as he pledged to help world Jewish leaders in their fight against anti-Semitism.

Pope Benedict XVI told leaders of the World Jewish Congress that Iran was “an issue of big concern” to him.

At a meeting at the Vatican, the Pope spoke of his concern about rising anti-Semitism and described how he wanted to use educational tools to counter the hatred of the Iranian leadership towards the Jewish people and Israel.

Maram Stern, secretary general of the World Jewish Congress, said after the audience: “We thanked the Holy Father for everything he did for the Jewish people, and more importantly what he will do.”

Speaking to journalists in Rome, he said the Pope had “recognised the question of Iran as an issue of big concern for him.”

Members of the congress discussed the critical problem of “resurgent anti-Semitism” in Europe. Britain itself has seen a marked rise in anti-Semitism, linked to increasing anti-Zionism and to events in the Middle East.

In a statement after the audience, the congress said members of the delegation “called on the Pontiff to take action against those in the Church who wanted to do damage to the close and positive relationship between Christians and Jews”."

This trend is also confirmed by Gérard Israël, who heads the Commission for Catholic-Jewish relations in France. In an interview, he stated: “I have no hesitation in saying that today the Catholic Church is Israel’s best friend, and almost an ally.”

"J’accuse...!", by Émile Zola (1898)

Emile Zola wrote one of the most powerful and passionate texts against judeophobia, "the dirty Jew obsession", which he rightly considered to be "the scourge of our time":

"These, Sir, are the facts that explain how this miscarriage of justice came about. The evidence of Dreyfus's character, his affluence, the lack of motive and his continued affirmation of innocence combine to show that he is the victim of the lurid imagination of Major du Paty de Clam, the religious circles surrounding him, and the 'dirty Jew' obsession that is the scourge of our time."

"We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honour of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked: A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay."

"We are horrified by the terrible light the Dreyfus affair has cast upon it all, this human sacrifice of an unfortunate man, a 'dirty Jew'. Ah, what a cesspool of folly and foolishness, what preposterous fantasies, what corrupt police tactics, what inquisitorial, tyrannical practices! What petty whims of a few higher-ups trampling the nation under their boots, ramming back down their throats the people's cries for truth and justice, with the travesty of state security as a pretext!"

"As for the people I am accusing, I do not know them, I have never seen them, and I bear them neither ill will nor hatred. To me they are mere entities, agents of harm to society. The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice."

"I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight! I am waiting."
"J’accuse...!", by Émile Zola, in L’Aurore (Jan. 13, 1898)

English translation in Chameleon Translations

Photo of Captain Alfred Dreyfus

Otto Weidt, Righteous Among the Nations

Otto Weidt was born in 1882 in northern Germany. He learnt the job of wallpapering and upholstery following his father career. At the beginning of the First World War he was a convinced pacifist. Due to a sight illness he was not recruited until the end of the war, when he was required to the sanitary service. Because his sight problem was getting worse he had to quit his job as upholsterer. Since the beginning of the forties, he was the owner of a brush factory in one of Berlin poor towns. The factory was considered "important for the war", because part of its production was destined to the German Army. In his factory, Otto Weidt employed between 1941 and 1943 approximately 30 blind and deaf Jews and other 8 illegal Jews. During a long time he could protect his workers against deportation by bribing the officials of the unemployment office and the Gestapo. With the help of other collaborators, he got false documents and work permits for some refugees. To be able to buy more food he sold many of his brushes in the black market.

By bribing the Gestapo, in 1942 Weidt managed to free his workers, who had been taken to a camp for their deportation. He brought them back and he achieved to keep them living underground. For Alice Licht, who lived illegally and with whom he kept a tight relationship, he rented an atrium to live with her parents. He housed the four people of the Horn family in his factory behind a camouflaged wall. When a confident reported the family hideout, the four of them were deported to Auschwitz on October 14th, 1943: the blind man Chaim Horn, his wife Machla and their two sons. Probably at the same time Licht's hideout was discovered and they were deported to Theresienstadt and from there to Auschwitz. To save Alice Licht, Otto Weidt went to Auschwitz, to Christianstadt to be precise, a secondary camp of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp. Through one of the civilian workers he contacted her and made her runaway and return to Berlin possible.

Otto Weidt died in 1947 in Berlin.

A survivor thanks to Otto Weidt's help is the author Inge Deutschkron. With her book They remained in the shadows she made a literary monument to Otto Weidt and others who supported Jewish refugees. With her help the museum Blindes Vertrauen (blind trust) was installed at the old brush factory.

Sources:

The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (text)
Museum Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind (photos)

"Holocust" "under constraction", Iranian scholarship

http://www.holocaust.ir/
"Holocust" cartoon exhibition – Teheran Aug. 14-Sept. 13, 2006
Spanish newspaper ABC, had an article Contest of Horrors (El concurso de los horrores):
"We are holding the Holocaust contest because we believe in freedom of speech. It is not our intention to insult anyone. This is a contest for caricatures in good taste, amusing and intelligent. I want to find out whether they are going to be published in the West”, said Mohammed Reza Zaherí, the ideologue behind the contest."

In Iran, there was widespread opposition to the infamous contest. "Major Iranian cartoonists did not participate and will not even visit the exhibition. "I am not interested in the least. Furthermore, if I went my visit could be interpreted, among artists, as an endorsement of this campaign. For that reason. I do not even wish to talk about the theme. To counter to something terrible with something even more terrible is pure folly. From what I have heard, most drawings are vulgar and insulting", indicated Hadi Heidari, a cartoonist who works for the reformist daily Etemad-e-Mel-li (National Confidence) and of the artists in the Islamic Republic who has been awarded most prizes."

Entry by Brussels cartoonist Ben Heine: "Welcome home". Luckily, only a handful of European cartoonists participated in the contest.

Operation Solomon - from Ethiopia to Israel, 1991

"Ben-Gurion airport at 20:45 on 24 May 1991. It was a Friday night. An El Al jumbo jet landed on the tarmac and taxied to a halt in front of a throng of soldiers, officials and journalists. The plane was marked with large letters spelling CARGO.

Moments later, the doors opened to reveal the precious shipment: hundreds of shy, bewildered and bedraggled Ethiopian Jews. A boy waved effusively. Old men in white robes shuffled down the steps clinging to the rail. A blind woman was led down by a child. Many were barefoot. It was a scene drawn from the biblical Exodus, except that these Jews did not walk through the Red Sea but were carried aloft over it, a feat that for many of the immigrants was almost as miraculous.

They had no possessions except for some who clutched plastic bags. Israeli soldiers rushed up the steps to help the frail. Many still had stickers on their foreheads, placed there by Israeli officials trying to identify family groups to be airlifted out of Addis Ababa. The reception committee lost all dignity and swamped the new arrivals. In the crush of people, I felt something touch my hand. It was a little Ethiopian boy grasping my fingers and grinning. “Shalom”, he said.

The scene was played out just a few months after Israel had been powerless as Irak rained Scud missiles on its cities during the Gulf War. Here, finally, was something to cheer about. It was a moment of wonder for all Israeli Jews; Zionism was proving its role as a refuge. For the first time in history, declared the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, black people were being transported not to slavery, but to freedom.

… Israel ransomed the Ethiopian Jews at the cost of about $2,000 each.

Some two dozen aircraft - El Al airliners, military transporters and even an Ethiopian Airlines plane - ferried about 15,000 Beta Israel in a continuous air bridge lasting just over a day under the code-name of ‘Operation Solomon’. Addis Ababa’s airport was turned for that time into an extension of sovereign Israel. No visas were required to leave; all you needed was approval from Israeli officials on the ground who had the power to decide who was a Jew and who was not. The logistics experts calculated that by stripping the aircraft t the bare minimum (some planes had only a carpet of mattresses to accommodate the passengers) and by estimating that the average underfed Ethiopian weighed much less than Israelis, they would be able to carry an unprecedented number of passengers. The jumbo I saw carried 1,068 passengers, a record for the aviation books."

In Holy Land, Unholy War, Israelis and Palestinians, by Anton La Guardia (2001), John Murray Paperbacks, pp. 253-254

Poster by BlueStarPR, The Jewish Ink Tank

Remember Operation Solomon, 36 hours in May 1991
"Israel rescued 14,325 Jews whose lives were endangered by rebel fighters in Ethiopia. To fit as many people as possible, Israel removed the airplanes’ seats. The new Israeli citizens joined the 2 million Israeli Jews indigenous to the Middle East and Africa. The majority of Israeli Jews do not come from Europe."