Posted on 12/21/2004 10:08:01 AM PST by anonymoussierra
A group of settlers opposed to Israel's plan to force Jews out of the Gaza Strip have begun wearing orange stars recollecting the Holocaust. "I want to shock Israel, and if I have to don a Star of David I will do it," said Gaza settler Aharon Tzur said.
The move has touched a raw nerve in Israel, where many support the Gaza pullout and see the settlers' protest as trivialising the Nazi genocide.
Critics say the protest equates the Israeli army with Nazi forces.
"With all the empathy one feels for people being uprooted from their homes, the notion that Israel is about to send them to Auschwitz is a horrible distortion," said Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
Under Nazi rule in the 1930s and 1940s, European Jews were forced to wear yellow Stars of David before and during the genocide as an emblem of shame.
Chairman of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Avner Shalev, accused the protesters of damaging the memory of the Holocaust, that was "a unifying factor in Israeli society, not the opposite".
The Yesha council of settler leaders joined in the criticism, although it has urged followers to break the law to resist evacuation from Gaza.
Bitterness
Protesters denied that the settlers were likening the Israeli government to the Nazis.
"I am not making a comparison with the Nazis, because our star is orange, not yellow," said Moshe Freiman of the Gush Katif settlement bloc.
"I sense that I am a victim of a new expulsion of Jews and that a Shoah [Holocaust] is being visited on my home where I have lived for the last 28 years," he added.
Meanwhile, Israel's police chief has expressed concern that resistance by ideological settlers could hamper the evacuation.
"The evacuation will be hard to execute, but if it is not, this will be dangerous for Israeli democracy," Moshe Karadi said in a speech .
The government plans to compensate Jews who leave the settlements peacefully, but has threatened to impose heavy fines or imprison settlers who do not obey the law.
Bitterness among Gaza settlers was increased on Tuesday when Palestinian rockets hit a synagogue in the Netzarim settlement during morning prayers, causing damage but no injuries.
The disengagement plan entails evacuating the 8,000 settlers from Gaza and four West Bank enclaves and the troops who protect them, but keeping control of Gaza's borders, coastline and airspace.
Israeli forces have occupied the Gaza Strip and West Bank - home to nearly four million Palestinians - since 1967.
Izrael
Thank you
""I am not making a comparison with the Nazis, because our star is orange, not yellow," said Moshe Freiman of the Gush Katif settlement bloc.
"I sense that I am a victim of a new expulsion of Jews and that a Shoah [Holocaust] is being visited on my home where I have lived for the last 28 years," he added. "
Although I agree with this person for standing up for his rights, he is making a comparison to the German Holocaust with his second statement.
Thank you
BBC has a long history of anti Israelism and a long history of ignoring the history! In every history book its clear that Israel was always attacked by the Arabs and was forced to fight and occupy land to take out the threats out of Israel's population centers.
Even daring to compare IDF with the Nazis is kinda the craziest thing that I can only think about!!!!!
I even not going to explain why, because Freeps are intelligent and feel the same way (I hope).
BBC, I condemn you for being one of the largest, yet one of the most ignorant media sources in the world.
And as for the settlers- Shame on them!
Although I strongly support their struggle and think that Sharon is simply going to bring us back to the dangerous 67 lines where the Arabs would easily target our cities as back then, I think that their current behavior is disgusting, and deeply hurt the memory of the Holocaust victims and hurt the Holocaust survivers.
"BBC has a long history of anti Israelism and a long history of ignoring the history! In every history book its clear that Israel was always attacked by the Arabs and was forced to fight and occupy land to take out the threats out of Israel's population centers.
Even daring to compare IDF with the Nazis is kinda the craziest thing that I can only think about!!!!!
I even not going to explain why, because Freeps are intelligent and feel the same way (I hope).
BBC, I condemn you for being one of the largest, yet one of the most ignorant media sources in the world.
And as for the settlers- Shame on them!
Although I strongly support their struggle and think that Sharon is simply going to bring us back to the dangerous 67 lines where the Arabs would easily target our cities as back then, I think that their current behavior is disgusting, and deeply hurt the memory of the Holocaust victims and hurt the Holocaust survivers."Thank you!!!!
Thank you for your post. Both my parents were Holocaust survivors: my father in concentration camps and my mother as a hidden child. I am deeply offended by this protest by the most extreme elements of the settler movement. I have family in Alfe Menashe and Gush Etzion. None of them support this action and yet they are "settlers". This is disgraceful.
I do not for one minute believe Prime Minister Sharon will bring us back to the 1949 armistice line. Calling them the "67 borders" isn't correct; they never were internationally recognized borders. To imply they were plays into our enemies' hands.
I believe the Prime Minister is laying the groundwork for us to keep the areas where roughly 80-90% of Jews in Judea and Samaria live but to rid ourselves of most Palestinian Arab population centers. We'd keep the high ground in the Judean hills and western Samaria. I don't for a minute believe the Prime Minister or his policies will lead to us abandoning Ma'aleh Adumim or Efrat or even Ariel.
Ummmm.... OK.
I really hope that you are right!
I have a close family in Ma'ale Adumim, and my parents themselves live in east Jerusalem.
thank you
"I really hope that you are right!
I have a close family in Ma'ale Adumim, and my parents themselves live in east Jerusalem."Be strong! Thank you
The BBC, during WW 2, was a center for anti-Nazi resistance. People in Nazi occupied Europe tuned into the BBC to get the real news, and at great risk to their lives, for listening to the BBC was punishable under the Nazis by at least a session with the Gestapo and prison, if not worse. How far the BBC has fallen - now the lot of them are as red as Lenin's drawers!
As for the settlers - not being Jewish or Israeli, I don't know whether it is my place to comment much, but I will say that their wearing orange stars seems to me to cheapen the memory of the tragedy of the Holocaust. However unpleasant this removal by Sharon is, and I don't agree with it, it is nothing like the hideous evil of the Nazis, or the Soviets, for that matter.
Here is an analogy of what is happening in Israel, if it were done in America:
The equivilant in America to this action would be the ethnically cleansing of 0.2 percent of the US population based on religion (say Christianity for example). All the while the Left wing International and Domestic Press calls the ethnically cleansed Christians 'crazy' fanatics.
Then the homes and land of the ethnically cleansed US citizens would then be handed over to Al Quida terrorists, who would occupy the homes in accordence with how many US citizens they murdered.
Those terrorists that murdered the most Americans would get the best, most expensive homes, and would proceed to actually move in and live in the very homes belonging to the countrymen, families, and members of the towns and cities of the very people they murdered.
Since this is what the Palestinian terrorist organizations are planning. I hope Israel comes to its senses and the citizen soldiers refuse criminally illegal orders to ethnically cleanse their countrymen.
Food for thought.
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