Tag: Kurdish Jews

  • How Israel wants to restart the war in the Levant

    How Israel wants to restart the war in the Levant

    How Israel wants to restart the war in the Levant

    The Wright plan, published in September 2013, modifies the projects for the remodelling of an enlarged Middle East. As concerns Syria and Iraq, it plans for the creation of a ’Sunnistan’ and a ’Kurdistan’. The former sate was created in 2014 by the Isalmic Emirate (Daesh), while the latter still has to be realised. However, the Kurds are in the minority in Northern Syria. The Wright plan also mentions Libya, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. It seems to be in progress in the two former states, also thanks to the Islamic Emirate.
    The Wright plan, published in September 2013, modifies the projects for the remodelling of an enlarged Middle East. As concerns Syria and Iraq, it plans for the creation of a ’Sunnistan’ and a ’Kurdistan’. The former sate was created in 2014 by the Islamic Emirate (Daesh), while the latter still has to be realised. However, the Kurds are in the minority in Northern Syria. The Wright plan also mentions Libya, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. It seems to be in progress in the two former states, also thanks to the Islamic Emirate.
    In order to sabotage the agreement which should be signed by Washington and Teheran on the 30th June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has prepared a new episode of the war against Syria.After the tentatives by the United States, France and the United Kingdom to hand over power to the Muslim Brotherhood (from February 2011 to the first Geneva Conference in June 2012), the mercenary war (from the Paris Conference of the Friends of Syria in July 2012 to the second Geneva Conference in January 2014), and the attempt to create chaos by the Islamic Emirate (from June 2014 to today), Israël now proposes to launch a fourth installment of the war.

    The aim is to pursue the application of the plan elaborated by Robin Wright for the Pentagon – published in September 2013 by the New York Times – by creating an independent Kurdistan straddling Iraq and Syria [1].

    General David Petraeus (ex-head of CentCom and director of the CIA) participated in March 2015 at a seminar in Erbil. He declared that the crimes committed by the Islamic Emirate were no threat either to the United States or Israël, and called for a struggle by any means possible against Iranian influence and the proposed agreement between Washington and Teheran.
    General David Petraeus (ex-head of CentCom and director of the CIA) participated in March 2015 at a seminar in Erbil. He declared that the crimes committed by the Islamic Emirate were no threat either to the United States or Israël, and called for a struggle by any means possible against Iranian influence and the proposed agreement between Washington and Teheran.

    Who are the Kurds ?

    The Kurdish people are present in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, but no longer have a state since the failures of the Republic of Ararat (1927-30) and the Republic of Mahabad (1946-47). The Kurds are today spread out primarily across Turkey (13 to 20 million), Iran (5 to 6 million), Iraq (4 to 5 million) and finally Syria (3 million).

     After some of them participated in the genocide of the Christians and the Yezidis, the Turkish Kurds were persecuted in their turn for a century in the name of « pan-Turkism ». During the period 1984-2000, the repression of the insurrection by the PKK caused at leaast 40,000 deaths.
     The Iranian Kurds enjoy a certain autonomy, but are abandoned economically by Teheran.
     The Iraqi Kurds have been linked to NATO since the beginning of the Cold War, first of all by assisting Saddam Hussein and fighting the Khomeinist revolution, then by working against Saddam when NATO decided to get rid of him. Today they enjoy regional autonomy and maintain embassies abroad.
     The Kurds arrived in Syria when they fled the Turkish persecutions, first of all during the reign of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and then thirty years ago during the PKK insurrection. Those among them who had not yet been naturalised were awarded Syrian nationality by President Bachar el-Assad at the beginning of the war, and concluded an agreement with Damascus which provided them with weapons for the defence of their region.

    The Kurds are a diverse people with powerful internal tensions. They do not speak the same language, have different religions, even though they are principally sunnites, and ally themselves with opposing political movements. Since the Cold War, they are divided between pro-US factions (the Barzani family which today controls part of Iraq) and pro-Soviet factions (Öcallan, who was kidnapped by the Israelis in 1999 on behalf of Turkey and has been emprisoned since then).

    From left to right : Meir Amit (director of Mossad), Moshe Dayan (Israeli Minister of Defence) and their agent Molla Mustafa Barzani (father of the current President Masoud Barzani).
    From left to right : Meir Amit (director of Mossad), Moshe Dayan (Israeli Minister of Defence) and their agent Molla Mustafa Barzani (father of the current President Masoud Barzani).

    Iraqi Kurdistan : Mafia and the Mossad

    Taking into account the role of Israël in Anglo-Saxon imperialism, the Barzani family – which was originally socialist – joined Mossad in the 1960’s which set them against the Iraqi Baath party [2]. Very poorly considered by the Kurds of Turkey, Iran and Syria, the current President Massoud Barzani is probably also a member of Mossad. He has managed to establish a certain prosperity in Iraqi Kurdistan, thanks to Israeli investments, and also to install a clanish régime.

    President Barzani is holding onto his power despite the fact that his mandate ended almost two years ago – a non-democratic situation which does not seem to trouble Washington any more than that of Mahmoud Abbas (Palestine) or Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi (Yemen). His government wallows in nepotism and corruption. His clan occupies the main posts of importance, beginning with that of Prime Minister, which is reserved for his nephew Nechervan Barzani, and comprises 15 billionaires (in dollars) and thousands of millionnaires, without being able to explain the origins of their fortunes. Lawyers were the first to be repressed, with the condemnation of Me Kamal Qadir to 30 years in prison for having criticised President Barzani. Freedom of the Press has been no more than theoretical since 2010, after the kidnapping and assassination of the Kurdish journalist Sardasht Osman, guilty of having caricatured the President. The regional government is bankrupt, and has not paid many of its officials for several months.

    Son of the current President Barzani, Masrour « Jomaa » Barzani continued his studies in Iran, the United Kingdom and the United States. He returned to Iraq in 1998, under Anglo-Saxon protection, settled in the « no-fly area », and took up responsibilities in the family party, the PDK. He quickly became the connection between his family and the CIA. In October 2010, he acquired the Château Noble, a few kilometres distant from the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, for 10 million dollars. He created and directed « Bas News », the main Iraqi Kurdish newspaper, and supervised all activities of the Iraqi Kurdish secret services. It is as such that he participated in the secret meetings in Amman (May 2014) and co-organised the joint offensive of the Islamic Emirate and the Peshmergas against Baghdad.
    Son of the current President Barzani, Masrour « Jomaa » Barzani continued his studies in Iran, the United Kingdom and the United States. He returned to Iraq in 1998, under Anglo-Saxon protection, settled in the « no-fly area », and took up responsibilities in the family party, the PDK. He quickly became the connection between his family and the CIA. In October 2010, he acquired the Château Noble, a few kilometres distant from the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, for 10 million dollars. He created and directed « Bas News », the main Iraqi Kurdish newspaper, and supervised all activities of the Iraqi Kurdish secret services. It is as such that he participated in the secret meetings in Amman (May 2014) and co-organised the joint offensive of the Islamic Emirate and the Peshmergas against Baghdad.

    Iraqi Kurdistan and the project for the annexation of Northern Syria

    In 2014, the Regional Government of Kurdistan participated in the conspiracy aiming to reconfigure Iraq and Syria, as described in the Wright plan. It participated in several meetings in Amman with the Jordanian secret services, the leaders of the Islamic Emirate, the leaders of armed groups in Syria and the Iraqi Naqchbandis [3]. It was agreed that, under the authority of Washington and Tel-Aviv, the Islamic Emirat and the Regional Government of Kurdistan would launch a coordinated attack to take control of a large part of Iraq. While the international Presse denounced the exactions of the Islamic Emirate in Iraq, Barzami’s Kurds would grab the oil fields of Kirkuk and expand their territory by 40 %.

    Following that, while many states, who were secretly supporting the operation, publicly denounced the crimes against humanity and the pillages committed by the Islamic Emirate, the Regional Government of Kurdistan offered the service of the pipe-line they had just stolen to the jihadists so that they could sell the petrol they had just pillaged to the Europeans.

    All condemnations of the alliance between the Regional Government of Kurdistan and the Islamic Emirate is severely repressed. So Hayder Shesho, the Yezidi leader who had spoken against it was arrested on the 7th April, although he has a double nationality with Germany.

    In the years after 2000, the Israeli Chief of Staff was planning to neutralise the missile capacities of Egypt and Syria by placing Israel’s own missiles in South Sudan and the Iraqi Kurdistan. While the former region has achieved independence, the latter still has not. The Wright plan offers both the occasion to realise this strategic objective and to spread bloody confusion. In order to sabotage the agreement that Washington and Teheran are scheduled to sign on the 30th June, Benjamin Netanyahu has plans to force the Peshmergas (in other words, Barzani’s soldiers) into an assault on Northern Syria. And yet the Syrian Kurds are hostile to the Barzani mafia and have always been in the minority in this region.

    For several months now, a campaign of Press lies has been blaming the Pershmergas for the actions of the Turkish Kurds of the PKK against the Islamic Emirate, for example during the battle of Kobane. The Western states, with France in the lead, have been sending arms directly to Erbil without going through Baghdad, in violation of Iraqi sovereignty. These weapons are not being used, but stored for the planned attack on Northern Syria.

    In the United States Congress, Edward Royce and Eliot Engel, two representatives who traditionally channel the interests of the Israeli Likud, presented a proposition for law in November 2014 [4] which would authorise the delivery of arms directly to the Regional Government of Iraqi Kurdistan. Since the text was not adopted, these dispositions were included in the law concerning the Defence budget by the President of the Armed Forces Commission, Mac Thornberry, along with others who aim to simultaneously reinforce military aid to groups fighting against the Syrian Arab Republic. If this text were to be adopted by both houses, the proposition would deprive Baghdad of any power outside the the shiite area of Iraq, and would open the way for both the dismatling of the country and a fourth war in Syria. Most Iraqi politicians who speak publicly have warned of the dangers of such a policy. As for the chiite leader Moqtada el-Sadr (ex-commander of the Mahdi Army) he has declared that if the law was to be adopted, he would once again consider the United States as enemies of the Nation, and would make war on the 3,000 military advisors in Iraq as well as US iuterests abroad.

    President Obama and Vice-President Biden strongly indicated to President Barzani, on the 5th May at the White House, that they would not allow Israel to pursue their plans, and demanded that the Iraqi Kurds stand down. However,in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Press is pretending on the contrary that President Obama warmly welcomed the delegation, and had promised to support an independent « Kurdistan ».

    The new Israeli government, formed on the 7th May by Benjamin Netanyahu, is attempting to unify the jihadists of Northern Syria – the aim is to coordinate their withdrawal to Damascus when the Iraqi Kurds enter Syria to massacre the Kurds of the PYG (the local branch locale of the Turkish PKK, which supports the Syrian Arab Republic) and annex their territory.

    President Erdoğan considers that the creation of an independent « Kurdistan » straddling Iraq and Syria would revive the Kurdish conflict in his country, and denounced the project as a step towards the destruction of Turkey. In the event of a Kurdo-Iraqi offensive in Syria, he could instantly take sides with Damascus.

    There is no doubt that the Israeli project will be debated (together with the creation of an Arab NATO under Israeli control) during the next session of the Gulf Cooperation Council that President Obama – who is not a member – has called at Camp David.

    Thierry Meyssan

    [Translation: Pete Kimberley]

    [1] “Imagining a Remapped Middle East”, Robin Wright, The New York Times Sunday Review, September 28, 2013.

    [2] “”Kurdistan” Israeli Style”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Al-Watan (Syria), Voltaire Network, 14 July 2014.

    [3] “PKK revelations on ISIL attack and creation of “Kurdistan””, Voltaire Network, 8 July 2014.

    [4] H. R. 5747, “Bill to authorize the direct provision of defense articles, defense services, and related training to the Kurdistan Regional Government, and for other purposes”, House of Representatives, November 20, 2014.

    Thierry Meyssan

    French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

    | DAMASCUS (SYRIA) | 15 MAY 2015

  • Hiker’s family hid Israeli link during captivity

    Hiker’s family hid Israeli link during captivity

    Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal
    A German Jew and a Kurdish Jew

    By KATHY MATHESON

    ELKINS PARK, Pennsylvania — For the 26 months that Josh Fattal was held captive in Iran, his mother and brother were ever-present voices calling for his release. But his father, Jacob Fattal, never said a word.

    It’s now clear why: The family feared that their Jewish faith — and Jacob Fattal’s ties to Israel — could make Josh’s unbearable situation worse because of Iran’s hard line against Israel.

    Jacob Fattal is an Iraqi-born Jew who lived in Israel before moving to the United States and raising a family, according to reports in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the Philadelphia-based Jewish Exponent.

    In 2009, his son Josh Fattal was hiking with friends Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd in Iraq’s relatively peaceful Kurdish region when they were detained by Iranian authorities. The trio says they got lost and accidentally crossed into Iran, but authorities in Tehran charged them with spying.

    Shourd was released about a year later. Fattal and Bauer, both 29, spent more than two years in Evin prison before being freed last week under a $1 million bail deal.

    “We’re very happy; it’s the greatest gift we could have dreamed of receiving for Rosh Hashanah,” Jacob Fattal told Haaretz on Monday, a few days ahead of the Jewish New Year. “The problem was their being American, not Jewish. The Iranians used them as a political weapon for two years.”

    No one answered the door Tuesday at the Fattals’ home in Elkins Park, a heavily Jewish suburb of Philadelphia where Josh and his brother Alex grew up. A message left for Jacob Fattal at his office was not immediately returned.

    Aviva Daniel and Yael Nis, Josh Fattal’s aunts in Israel, told Israel’s Channel 2 on Tuesday that they only told a few people in Israel about Fattal’s Israeli connection — and swore them to secrecy.

    “I believe the (Israeli) media knew, and cooperated, and kept it a secret,” said Nis. “We are really thankful for that.”

    Nis asked various synagogues in Israel to include Fattal’s name in their regular prayers on behalf of people needing health and safety — without saying why.

    “We prayed and our prayers were answered,” said Nis. “It is a miracle from God.”

    Daniel said Fattal had visited Israel “a few times” over the past few years for family occasions. He speaks only a few words of Hebrew, Daniel added.

    Ian Lustick, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in Middle East politics, said it’s likely that both the Fattal family and the Iranians downplayed Fattal’s faith throughout the detention in order to leave the door open for a possible resolution.

    While the family clearly made attempts to keep his faith out of the public eye, Lustick said, the Iranians probably knew that at least one of the detained hikers was Jewish but kept it quiet. If the family had trumpeted the fact that Fattal was Jewish, he said, it would been much more difficult to resolve the standoff.

    “There was a kind of objective alliance between people in this country who didn’t talk about it publicly … and the Iranians also downplayed it,” Lustick said. “Really what happened was there was a general desire to find a way out.”

    He added, “If you didn’t have officials in Iran who had always been keeping that information out of the news, then pretending to keep the secret in the United States wouldn’t have worked.”

    Elliot Holin, rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami around the corner from the Fattals’ home, said Tuesday that the extended Jewish community in the Philadelphia area was aware of the delicate faith issue.

    Though the Fattals belonged to another synagogue, Holin said, the hikers’ names were mentioned each week in Kol Ami’s Sabbath prayers for the past two years. When news of their release came, a member of the synagogue blew the horn known as the shofar during last Friday’s services.

    Worshippers clearly felt an “incredible sense of relief and gratitude,” said Holin.

    “You could see tears in people’s eyes,” he said.

    Shourd has been living in Oakland, California, since her release. Bauer, who grew up in Onamia, Minnesota, proposed marriage to her while they were in prison.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem and Patrick Walters in Philadelphia contributed to this story.

    www.msnbc.msn.com, 27.09.2011

  • New research says that Jews and Palestinians have close genetic links

    New research says that Jews and Palestinians have close genetic links

    Judaica
    Judaica

    By John Thomas Didymus

    A researcher at the Hebrew University has published results of genetic research studies which show that Palestinians and Jews have a common ancestry in the Kurdish population of Iraq and Turkey.

    Ariella Oppenheim, Ph.D. researcher at Hebrew University, who conducted the DNA studies, said that the results show also that the Ashkenazi Jews of Central Europe are more genetically related to the Palestinians than to the Jewish population of the Middle East.

    Oppenheim’s  study also included a study of the chromosome of the Kohen priests traced by geneticists to a hypothetical “Y-chromosomal Aaron.” Oppenheim’s study showed that many Palestinians also carry the Kohen chromosome and thus may be considered of the Kohen genetic line.

    According to a documentary in which Oppenheim featured, the Palestinian city of Yatta, south of Hebron in the West Bank, which has a population of about 50,000 people, has 90% of its people with Jewish ancestry. According to a report by Mark Ellis of God Reports,

    In some of the dry and dusty Palestinian and Bedouin villages they still circumcise their boys after the seventh day. Hidden away in some Palestinian homes are Jewish mezuzahs and tefillin. Some older residents an recall lighting candles on the Sabbath.

    A report by Steve Hageman of the Turkish World Outreach, according to Mark, says,

    Many of the Palestinians know it [that they have Jewish roots], but it’s not politically correct to acknowledge this publicly among Muslims…There are two houses of Israel in the Holy Land: one aligned with the West and primarily secular or Jewish and the other aligned with the East and primarily Islam.

    A Jewish Rabbi Dov Stein explains Oppenheim’s startling revelation,

    It becomes clear that a significant part of the Arabs in the land of Israel are actually descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Islam over the centuries. There are studies which indicate that 85% of this group is of Jewish origin.

    A documentary by Jewish filmmaker Nissim Mossek captured on camera a Palestinian home where the Jewish mezuzah (a parchment of scripture placed on the doorposts by pious Jews) is kept away from sight under a shelf and the tefillin (or phylacteries) hidden in a dresser. Palestinians who recognize their Jewish ancestry practice their religious way of life in secret.

    Another line of explanation of the genetic links between Palestinians and Jews comes from Ancient History and explains that the genetic kinship between the Jews and the Kurds of Iran and Turkey may have it origins in deportation of the population of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Euphrates-Tigris region of Mesopotamia by the Assyrians in the eighth century BC

    www.goddiscussion.com, September 19, 2011

  • Armenia and the Turks in the Time of Lawrence

    Armenia and the Turks in the Time of Lawrence

    Benny Morris

    Lawrence of ArabiaWhile Colonel T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) sympathized with Armenian aspirations for sovereignty and, indeed, in a map he drew up after the Great War of a desirable Middle Eastern share-out of the Ottoman Empire he provided for an independent Armenia (in Cilicia), he was also party to the prevalent anti-Armenian prejudices of his day.

    Lawrence was a member of the British delegation to the 1919 postwar Paris peace conference. On November 3 he told Frank Polk, the American “Commissioner” in Paris, that the Armenians were prone to lend “money at exorbitant rates of interest” and took “the Turks’ land or horses in security for payment,” and this at least in part explained the Turkish atrocities against them during World War I.

    But there was another factor. “Armenians,” he told Polk, as related in Polk’s report on their conversation, “have a passion for martyrdom, which they find they can best satisfy by quarrelling with their neighbors . . . They can be relied upon to provoke trouble for themselves in the near future.”

    In general, Lawrence felt, “it would be most undesirable to attempt to establish an Armenian state.” Except in a specific territory, where they would be overwhelmingly preponderant. “The idea of an Armenian State infuriates all the other races, and it would require 5 divisions of troops (100,000 troops) to maintain it.”

    According to Lawrence, the Turks had been exhausted by the Great War and their “army is rotten with venereal disease and unnatural vice.” Hence, their birth rate was falling. He thought that if the Turks were “confined to their own territories, in thirty years’ time [Turkey] would once more be bounding with health and, incidentally, lusting for conquest.” (Perhaps Lawrence’s use of the words “vice” and “lust” were influenced by his personal experiences during the war years.)

    About his friend the Emir Faisal, the military leader of the Arab Revolt and the de facto ruler at the time in Damascus, Lawrence said that he was “cautious, moderate, usually honest but capable of treachery if it suited him.

    Surprisingly, Lawrence told Polk that “the Jews get on well with the Arabs ” and added that, contrary to prevailing opinion at the time among British officials, “the Jew is a good cultivator both in Palestine and Mesopotamia [he was speaking here of Iraqi Jews].” The problem was that “the conditions [in the Middle East] preclude enterprise in the shape of improvements and [the Jew] requires five shillings a day to live on against the Arab’s or Syrian’s sixpence [i.e., half a shilling: there were twenty shillings to the pound sterling].”

    Lawrence concluded by saying that “the Zionist movement has ‘many prophets but no politicians’ [had he lived into the 21st century he would have thought otherwise] . . . The movement has been mismanaged in the last nine months,” he thought.

    He offered Polk one general, final reflection about the Middle Eastern peoples: “No nation must expect gratitude from the East or anything but the ‘Order of the Boot’ as soon as they can manage it [meaning that the Arabs or the Turks would boot out foreign powers as soon as they could affect it, no matter how beneficial these powers had been to the locals in previous years].”

    nationalinterest.org, March 8, 2011

  • The Lost Jews of Kaifeng

    The Lost Jews of Kaifeng

    Chinese Jews
    Photo by: Zvi Hellman

    Time has made a stranger of a once-thriving Jewish community in China.

    by Zvi Hellman

    “WELCOME TO Kaifeng, and thanks for coming all the way here,” says Tzur. Charming, with a warm smile, Tzur is an experienced licensed tour guide running the Jewish China Tours Company, which, as the name implies, specializes in Jewish heritage trips through China. He is fluent in Hebrew and English, and is a walking trove of historical knowledge on China’s Jews.

    But Tzur is not a transplanted Israeli or American who came for a visit to China and happened to have stayed. Tzur is the Hebrew name he adopted nearly a decade ago in Israel; he is more commonly known by the name he was born with, Shi Lei. His surname, Shi, means “stone” in Chinese, which is why he translated it to “Tzur” in Hebrew. And not only is he a native of Kaifeng, a city of over four million in China’s Henan province, he is a scion of the family that was among the leaders of the ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng.

    When people think of historical Jewish connections to China, the cities that come to mind most often are Harbin and Shanghai. Shanghai’s Jewish community dates from the mid-19th century, when Jews from Iraq and India opened trading offices in that city. They were later joined by European Jews, especially immediately prior to and during World War II, when Shanghai was a protective haven for as many as 18,000 Jews fleeing the Holocaust, assisted by sympathetic Chinese diplomats who issued them passports. At its peak, the Jewish community in Shanghai numbered 30,000, with two synagogues, one Sephardi and the other Ashkenazi.

    Harbin, in China’s far northeast, was a major hub on the trans-Siberian railway, when Tzarist Russia occupied China’s Manchuria province in the 19th century, and a sizable community of Russian Jews seeking employment found its way there. The community there was further bolstered by a wave of Jews fleeing the Russian revolution, among them the grandparents and parents of former prime minister Ehud Olmert.

    After World War II ended, China became the communist People’s Republic of China and virtually all the Jews in the country left. Many made their way to the new State of Israel. The synagogues in Shanghai were shut down permanently, although they were recently temporarily reopened as part of the celebrations associated with the 2010 World Exposition in Shanghai.

    Long before Jews built the first synagogue in Harbin or Shanghai, however – a very long time before, in fact – there was a thriving Jewish community in Kaifeng. But it has almost completely gone lost in the pages of time.

    “THE JEWISH COMMUNITY here was founded in the 11th century by Jews from Persia, Central Asia and India, according to our communal history,” explains Shi Lei, who is in his early thirties. “The community’s founders were merchants following the Silk Road. They brought cotton cloth from India, which was considered exotic at the time in China, and sold Chinese silk in the West.”

    The Silk Road traditionally ended in Xi’an, far to the west of Kaifeng and there was a Jewish community in Xi’an associated with the Silk Road. But as any visitor to Kaifeng is told repeatedly, Kaifeng in the 11th century was the capital of China, under the Northern Song dynasty. At the time, it may have been the world’s largest metropolis, with an estimated 1.5 million inhabitants.

    Jews gravitated to the capital city. There was also a Jewish community in Hangzhou at one time, and perhaps several other cities. Only the Kaifeng community, however, lasted for centuries.

    “The community must have been quite wealthy,” says Shi Lei. “There used to be a large synagogue in the old Kaifeng downtown, in an area where land prices were very high, attesting to the wealth of the community. At its peak, in the 14th century, the community numbered well over 4,000.”

    With such a glorious history, why is Kaifeng not on the well-trod path of visitors to Jewish sites in China? For one thing, there is almost nothing left. The community once had a synagogue with a Torah study hall, a communal kitchen, complete with kosher butchering facilities, and ritual bath. But Kaifeng is situated near the Yellow River, which, until it was tamed in modern times, was notorious for flooding. There are estimated to be at least six layers of flooded-over remnants of Kaifeng underneath its contemporary, somewhat dusty streets. A flood in 1642 buried Kaifeng, devastating the Jewish community and bringing its golden age to an end.

    Although the synagogue was eventually rebuilt, it was assimilation that really put an end to the community. “My great-grandfather’s generation would still place red paint on doorposts in the spring, in place of the lamb or chicken blood that was previously used [to mark Passover],” says Shi Lei. “The community also strictly avoided eating pork products. But most Jewish traditions were gradually lost. Even our Torah scrolls were removed over time.”

    Of the 13 Torah scrolls the community once had, none remain in Kaifeng. Ten were sold to Western collectors over the years and three were lost entirely. “I did get to see a Torah case belonging to my ancestors,” notes Shi Lei, “but in Canada, in the Royal Ontario Museum.”

    By the mid-19th century, the synagogue in Kaifeng was shut down, and today all that remains of it is a well (presumably part of a mikve), hidden in one of the back rooms of a hospital that was constructed on the site where the synagogue once stood.

    There is, in fact, very little that is Jewish-related for a visitor to see in Kaifeng today. An exhibit sponsored by American and Canadian organizations of three stone steles telling the Kaifeng community’s history and dating from the 15th and 16th centuries is locked away in the attic of the local museum. The writing on the stones, in classical Chinese, is largely faded, but experts can read rubbings of it, and the steles are visually impressive. Avisitor wishing to see the exhibit, however, needs to know about its existence beforehand, ask the curators for special permission to enter, and pay 50 Chinese yuan (general admission to the museum is free) before the keys to the room are fetched.

    Similarly, the Jewish pavilion at Millennium City Park, a theme park in Kaifeng based on the famous Qing Ming scroll painted by Song Dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan, is locked away and its existence is not even revealed to visitors to the park.

    About 20 years ago, the remaining Jewish cemetery was vandalized by grave robbers. It has yet to be restored. “My grandfather’s heart was broken seeing the bones of his fathers removed from their graves,” says Shi Lei sadly.

    Despite what may appear to be an attempt on the part of local authorities to keep the Jewish history of Kaifeng out of sight, Shi Lei insists that there is no such active agenda. “There is no desire to hide [anything],” he says. “If tourists want to see any of these things, they only need to ask; tourists never have a problem getting to these things in Kaifeng when I show them around here. To China, it is not worthwhile to hiding this part of the history.”

    SHI LEI REVEALS A STUBBORN insistence not to let what remains of the Kaifeng Jewish community die away entirely.

    He grew up hearing stories about the glory of the community from his grandfather. “After China opened to the West a few decades ago, scholars started coming to Kaifeng to study the history of the community,” he recalls. “They all came to interview my grandfather, to learn as much as they could from his memories, and the rituals he still preserved. He was perhaps the only person 40 years ago who still remembered the traditions.”

    When he came of age, Shi Lei was fortunate enough to receive sponsorship for two years of Jewish study in Israel. “I was the first Kaifeng Jew ever sent to study Judaism in Israel,” he recalls proudly. “In 2001, Rabbi Marvin Tokayer, who was living in the Far East at the time, arranged for me to enroll in a one-year Jewish studies program at Bar-Ilan University. After that, I went on to study at Yeshiva Machon Meir in Jerusalem, with the generous assistance of Michael Freund of Shavei Yisrael [an organization that helps lost tribes and wandering Jews reconnect to their roots and return to Israel].”

    Shi Lei returned to China, determined to devote himself to reviving the community. He teaches Hebrew and Jewish traditions in Kaifeng as a service to the community, while supporting himself leading Jewish heritage tours.

    The effort is an uphill one, facing many odds. Judaism is not recognized as an official religion in China, nor are Jews listed among China’s 55 minority groups. Only about 500 Kaifeng residents today identify themselves as descended in some way from the Jewish community. They live in one of China’s poorest provinces and have little access to any Jewish ritual objects – not even a Torah scroll.

    The Orthodox rabbinic leadership in Israel has determined that they must undergo conversion if they officially wish to rejoin Judaism because of centuries of assimilation and the fact that the Kaifeng community implemented patrilineal descent of Judaism as opposed to the matrilineal descent of normative Judaism.

    Yet, despite all these obstacles, some 18 members of the Kaifeng community recently agreed to be converted and moved to Israel.

    “Please do help spread the word about the Kaifeng community,” Shi Lei asks The Report. “Very few in Israel have heard about it. We need to raise awareness, to give opportunities for more young people from our community to get to Israel, and to learn the traditions.”

    https://www.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/The-Lost-Jews-of-Kaifeng, 17.10.2010

  • Role of Cuban Pilots in Jewish Air Exodus to Israel Revealed

    Role of Cuban Pilots in Jewish Air Exodus to Israel Revealed

    cubaFollowing the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, a Cuban airline and a group of Cuban pilots were commissioned to transport all the Jewish people who wished to immigrate to the dawning state. Their many flights between 1951 and 1952 as part of what may be the largest air evacuation in human history had remained unknown until now.

    By: Luis Hernández Serrano

    Email: serrano@juventudrebelde.cu

    They were not diplomats or delegates going to an international convention, nor pilgrims on the search for indulgences or archaeological relics. The group of pilots that departed from Cuba in 1951 to the Holy Land had a different mission.

    The event remained unknown for almost 60 years. The Cuban pilots were to take part in the largest mass air evacuation in human history.

    Aviation historian Captain Rolando Marron told Juventud Rebelde newspaper the details of their ordeal.

    “In 1948,” he began, “the Republic of Israel was founded in a territory that had been part of Palestine and was under British control. The deficient economy of the country demanded arms to harvest the land and brains to administrate the dawning republic.”

    “In Europe, as a consequence of the recently concluded world war, there were hundreds of thousands of dispossessed Hebrews eager to move to the new homeland they were being offered. Large groups of immigrants began to arrive in Israel from all over Europe, as it was easier for them to find ways to get there.

    “As the relations between Jewish and Arabs became tenser in Arab countries, the Israeli government intervened to facilitate the evacuation of a larger number of Jewish people to their Promised Land.

    “Arab governments prohibited Jewish immigrants to travel by road, and the Egyptian blockade of the Suez Canal made it impossible for them to get to Israeli territory by sea.

    “The only option left was organizing a mass air evacuation. Negotiations began under acute time constraints. Since Israel had no diplomatic relations with Arab League member states, and planes bearing Israeli flags could not therefore be used for the exodus, they had to hire planes from a neutral country.

    “By coincidence, an important official of the Israeli mission in New York was a very good friend of Cuban businessman and civilian pilot Narciso V. Rosello Otero, who was appointed chair of the company created for the plan: Intercontinental Aerea de Cuba S.A

    “When the company had secured the required permits in Cuba, its central office opened at 464 Zulueta, in Old Havana, and a branch office was also inaugurated in Nicosia, Cyprus.

    The historian said that while the final arrangements were made to the administrative structure of the company, Cuban pilot were hired, in compliance with Cuban laws, to fly the planes.

    “The first group was made up of five pilots who were unemployed at the time because the company they worked for, Aerovias Cubanas Internacionales S.A., had gone bankrupt due to the incipient development of domestic commercial flights in Cuba.

    The Air Exodus

    Historian Marron adds that during the nearly two years that the mission lasted, more than 115,000 refugees were brought from Iraq; 25,000 from Iran, and a few hundred from India and Yemen. The Yemen refugees had to cross the border to reach the English territory of Aden to board the planes.

    “Most of the refugees from Iraq boarded at the airport of Baghdad, and the rest in Bahra, near the famed Abadan oil refinery, at the important oil harbour located only a few miles away from the Persian Gulf border.”

    The historian noted that it was in Iraq where the Jewish passengers experienced the most difficulties, given the persecutions and dangers they faced in that country, and it was necessary to evacuate them as soon as possible. The abovementioned number of Iraqi refugees was rescued over a period of approximately ten months.

    “The Iranian refugees,” continued Marron, “were picked at the Teheran airport. They were not forced to leave the country, and all of them immigrated to Israel voluntarily, with the exception of 1,000 who had escaped from Iraq and Afghanistan through the border, and could not remain in Iran due to immigration regulations.

    “The longest flights were to Bombay, in India, where a few hundred decided to immigrate. Many of them would return later to India because they were not able to adapt to the living conditions they found in their new homeland.

    “Taking off from the modern Lydda airport in Tel Aviv, the flight had a stopover in Sharjah, at the Royal British Air Force base, in the remote area of Oman Trucial off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Persian Gulf.

    “A typical Arab village by the seaside and the barracks of the English troops were the only signs of life near the airfield in the middle of the dessert. The second part of the trip was the crossing of the Indic Ocean, battered by the dangerous monsoons, and the journey concluded at the Santa Cruz airport in Bombay.

    “The hardest and more frequent routes were Lydda-Baghdad and Lydda-Teheran,” said Marron.

    A Forced Landing

    “Although the first of these routes was relatively easy in the winter,” explained Marron, “flying conditions would drastically change in the summer, when sandstorms considerably reduced visibility in Baghdad, impeding access to the airport. Sometimes pilots had to land in alternate airfields to wait for the weather conditions in their places of destination to change.

    “Furthermore, high temperatures affected the performance of plane engines. In Baghdad, it was normal to have temperatures between 45ºC and 50ºC in the shade! And not only at noon, but also in the morning and late afternoon. That is why pilots always tried to take off in the night, in order to gain time.

    “Adolfo Diaz Vazquez was the only pilot who had to make a forced landing during the evacuation program. One of the engines of the C-46 he was flying stopped on route between Baghdad and Lydda, at night! Thanks to his vast experience, all the passengers and the plane escaped unharmed. The passengers and the crew were taken to Israel in another plane. Some days later, Eugenio Ramos Escandon flew the plane to Lydda. The aircraft had been repaired by a group of Cuban mechanics under the guidance of Eduardo Segredo Salgado.

    “By the end of 1952, the wave of immigration to Israel decreased and some of the planes that had been used for these ends began flying to European cities: Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Zurich, London, Athens and Geneva.

    “In early 1953, the group of Cuban pilots returned to Cuba, after having successfully transported almost 150,000 Jewish immigrants to Israel. The crew of these flights wore an insignia with a Cuban flag on their uniforms.

    “The main base of operations of the Intercontinental Aerea de Cuba S.A. Company was always in Cuba, but its planes never flew in the national territory; they never even touched Cuban soil. Part of the money earned in this operation was probably used to bribe the Cuban president at the time, since permits were only granted following a local inspection of the aircrafts.

    Pilots who took part in the evacuation program:

    Manuel Gonzalez Linares, with more than 6,000 hours of flight.

    Eugenio Ramos Escandon, experienced C-46 capatain.

    Guillermo Verdaguer Boan, survivor of a plane crash in which one of his comrades lost his life.

    Miguel Acosta Rosellp.

    Antonio “Nico” Fernandez Martinez

    Adolfo Diaz Vazquez, also known as “Lindbergh,” an aerobatics champion. He was the sixth pilot on Narciso Rosello’s payroll.

    Eduardo Segredo Salgado, the brilliant mechanic of the team.

    The Zionist State of Israel

    When the Second World War ended in 1945, Jewish political organizations led by Theodor Herzl pushed for the creation of a state that should have its capital in Jerusalem, Palestine, which was a British protectorate at the time. The plan was to give the Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide a place to start over after the war. It is said that the area was infiltrated by terrorist groups with a view to speeding up the British withdrawal.

    Arab Palestinians, with the support of Eastern Arab states, energetically opposed the plan, which was paradoxically fascist. The wave of immigration had the support of US and British Jewish organizations, and a US-British supervising commission was created for the forced Jewish colonization.

    After the failure of the Conference of Palestine in 1947, England brought the issue to the attention of United Nations, and in November of that year, a plan was drawn up to split the Palestinian territory into two states: a Jewish state and an Arab state. On May 14, 1948, when there were only a few hours left before the British rule was to expire, the Jewish proclaimed the independence of the Hebrew state, and they called it Israel.

    Arab government representatives, who never agreed to the UN ruling, rejected this political decision, giving way to an armed conflict in which the Zionist groups, that were better trained and equipped, managed to expand their domain over a broader area, extending as far as the Jordan River. They would later gain more and more ground.

    The foundation in 1948 of the Zionist state in the heart of the Arab region was the beginning of the historic suffering of the Palestinian people, which has come to be one of the most heartbreaking contemporary conflicts in the world.

    In 1967, for example, the human cost of the conflict amounted to more than one million displaced Arab Palestinians, their homes and lands given to the Jewish settlers from Europe.

    It is a fact that the state of Israel was founded by splitting up the Palestinian territory inhabited by Arab Palestinians who had been born in those lands, with the objective of bringing justice to the Jewish people but at the cost of a new injustice.

    Israel’s subsequent history has been a history of unstoppable territorial expansionism in order to gain more land and water, and consolidate their privileged geopolitical position.

    , 21.10.2010

    [2]

    In 1951-52, Cuban dictatorship operated Jewish immigration airlift to Israel

    The Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) reported that an airlift was organized in the early 1950s by the Cuban company Intercontinental Aérea de Cuba S.A., owned by businessman Narciso V. Roselló Otero, to fly 150 000 Jewish immigrants to Israel (of which 115 000 were from Iraq and 25 000 from Iran).

    These revelations shed light on a little-known operation until now.

    In order to colonize Palestine, the Zionist movement planned to displace not only the European survivors of Nazi persecutions, but also the Jewish populations living in the Middle East.

    To compel Iraqi Jews to emigrate, the Zionist movement mounted an operation in three stages:
    An agreement was reached with pro-British Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said to force Iraqi Jews to accept a one-way ticket to Israel. On 9 March 1950, Parliament adopted a law requiring that Iraqi Jews leaving the country had to renounce their citizenship in writing and would not be allowed to return.
    From 19 March 1950 to 30 January 1951, a series of bomb attacks targeted the venues of Jewish congregation. The attacks were falsely attributed to the Golden Square officers (who had sided with Germany against the British during World War II). As it is, they had been orchestrated by Israeli intelligence under the direction of Mordechaï Ben Porat (as endorsed in 1956 by Uri Avnery’s Israeli magazine Haolam Hazeh).
    Immediately, an airlift was set up from Cuba by the dictatorial regime of General Fulgencio Batista enabling the evacuation of 115 000 Jews, terrified by the turn of events. Cuban planes and pilots took off from Baghdad stopping over in Nicosia (Cyprus). Towards the end of the operation, planes with a bigger capacity shuttled from Iraq to Israel directly so as to speed up the operation.

    Mordechaï Porat, a terrorist with close ties to David Ben-Gurion, served four times as member of parliament and once as minister without portfolio. In 2001, he was awarded the Israel Prize for the whole of his career and in particular for having pushed Iraqi Jews to emigrate.

    Narciso V. Roselló left Cuba for the United States after the attack on his home at the hands of Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries, who thus confiscated the weapons that they used to conquer Havana and overthrow General Batista.

    ==

    “Pilotos cubanos en la Tierra Santa”, by Luis Hernández Serrano, Juventud Rebelde, 16 October 2010.

    Bibliography:
    Ropes of Sand : America’s Failure in the Middle East, by Wilbur Crane Eveland, WW Norton & Co (1981, 382 p.), ISBN-13 : 978-0393013368.
    Ben Gurion’s Scandal : How the Haganah and the Mossad Eliminated Jews, by Naeim Giladi, Dandelion Books,U.S. (Seconde edition 2003, 364 p.), ISBN-13 : 978-1893302402.

    https://www.voltairenet.org/article167398.html, 24 OCTOBER 2010