Grapevine, May 8, 2024, The significance of giving testimony

When asked to explain rape and why the stories of the rape of hostages in Gaza are not believed, Orit Sulitzeanu, the executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, said that it was complicated because there was no DNA testing and no rape kits. The only evidence was the word of the victims – and not all the victims are willing to talk. Her own mother, who was a survivor of Auschwitz, had witnessed rape in the camp but never spoke of it for 65 years. It was only when she gave testimony shortly before her death that she mentioned it.

Sulitzeanu made it clear that the sexual violence that occurred on October 7 “is not part of the #MeToo phenomenon.” What happened on October 7 was the enemy raping Israeli women, who, unlike those in the #MeToo context, don’t want to talk about it.

Sulitzeanu was sharing a stage with released and rescued hostages who were addressing journalists and diplomats at the Government Press Office.

Even though the GPO has held frequent gatherings of this nature for the past six months, there are always journalists and diplomats who have yet to meet face-to-face with a former hostage or a close relative of a current hostage. It’s a totally different experience when you hear them on radio or see them on television. That’s why these gatherings at the GPO are always full-house affairs.

In addition, the GPO is documenting testimonies and photographic evidence to transfer to the National Archives.

GPO Executive Director Nitzan Chen said that while nothing is comparable to the Holocaust, what can be compared is the significance of giving testimony, just as survivors of the Holocaust have given testimony, to let the world and future generations know about Hamas atrocities and the same cruel, barbaric, and systematic murders as were carried out by the Nazis.

Among the group of former hostages was Chen Goldstein-Almog, whose husband, Nadav, and daughter Yam were murdered by Hamas. Yam was shot in the face.

Goldstein-Almog and Merav Tal, another former hostage, told of their harrowing experiences in Gaza. Tal, who is 54, suffered a lot of sexual harassment but wasn’t actually raped, because she kept saying she was old and gained some respect for her age.

Both women were smartly dressed, their nails were lacquered, and each wore jewelry, which in Tal’s case included a large silver hamsa.

Asked how long it took them to get back to normal after their ordeal in Gaza, Tal said that when she returned she thought it would take a few days – a week at most, but she now realizes that things will never be normal again. There are flashbacks, terrible dreams, talks with psychologists and psychiatrists. “Everyone tries to help, but nothing is normal anymore.”

Asked about public pressure and support, Tal said that opposing sides is not a good thing. There must be a united front in efforts to bring home the hostages. “Now is not the time to get rid of the government. There’s time for that afterwards. All those who were responsible for what happened on October 7 must be punished, and they will be punished – but first we have to secure the release of the hostages.”

Interview with Krakow-born Holocaust survivor on KAN Reshet Bet

■ EVEN THE most avid reader in the world could not possibly absorb all that has been written in books, magazines, and newspapers about Holocaust atrocities, life in the ghettos and the camps, resistance groups, the stories of individuals, families, and communities, victims and rescuers, partisans, and even postwar avengers.

In the latter category KAN Reshet Bet’s Yoav Krakovsky and Yair Weinreb interviewed Krakow-born Holocaust survivor and partisan 104-year-old Yehuda Friedman, who is the last of Abba Kovner’s partisan group of avengers.

The group continued its activities after the war in executing Nazi war criminals who had evaded the law. What members of the group did may be regarded as inhuman and unethical, but in their eyes this was the only way to achieve some form of justice for the murder of innocent Jews.

After coming to live in Israel, members of the group made a pact never to speak of their activities for fear of arrest and public contempt. Their vow of silence was broken in the 1980s, and to their surprise they were treated like heroes.

Regarding non-Jewish rescuers who are recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, it seems that they are never too old to receive that honor.

Haaretz published the story of Ane-Lise Bylov Jespersen, a 103-year-old Danish nun who hid two very young Jewish babies and cared for them in the convent until after the war, when they were reclaimed by their parents.

The infants, who were less than three months old, were too young to be taken to Sweden in the heroic wartime rescue mission by Danish fishermen who, in September-October 1943, ferried 7,220 Danish Jews to safety in Sweden.

David Akov, Israel’s ambassador to Denmark, officially thanked Bylov Jespersen on behalf of the State of Israel, and in the presence of the two babies, Max Solove and Birte Sabov, who are now in their early 80s. Akov, acting on behalf of Yad Vashem, presented Bylov Jespersen with a medal of recognition and her citation as a Righteous Among the Nations.

Among the participants in the March of the Living in Poland this week was a Kindertransport delegation that included 100-year-old Walter Bingham, a journalist, who writes occasionally for The Jerusalem Post and The Jerusalem Report.

The survival into a triple-digit age of these and many others is a triumph in resilience, but an even greater triumph is that most of them have produced families of second-, third-, fourth-, and even fifth-generation survivors, thereby ensuring Jewish continuity regardless of all the efforts throughout the centuries to eliminate the Jewish people.

Now there are new chapters in the Holocaust saga – those involving survivors whose soldier grandchildren and great-grandchildren were either massacred on October 7 or taken as hostages, or fell as soldiers in the defense of Israel.

Photographs of October 7 

■ SO MUCH has been written about the horrific events of October 7 and what has occurred since that some people no longer have the strength or patience to read. But they still look at photographs, many of which are compelling.

International prizewinning photographer Ziv Koren has been photographing his October 7 project since that date to the present time, and selected what he considers to be the best in conveying the illustrated story for his October 7 exhibition, which opened last week at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation.

Obviously, many of the people he photographed were present, but so were scores of others who had read or heard about the exhibition.

Also, because so many people see October 7 as a continuum of the Holocaust, and since the opening was just three days ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day, a large number of people whose families have specific Holocaust connections thought it was important to attend.

In addition, people who were saved during the Entebbe rescue mission in 1976, which was led by the prime minister’s brother Yoni Netanyahu, who was killed in action, were present. There was a heartfelt meeting between former Entebbe hostages and those who were released during Operation Swords of Iron. The meeting between recently freed hostage Luis Har and former MK Shai Hermesh, whose son was murdered, was emotionally charged and tearful.

Peres Center Executive Director Efrat Duvdevani emphasized the importance of bringing the exhibition to the attention of an ever-wider global public “so that the whole world will understand what happened.”

Meanwhile, on Monday of this week, which was Holocaust Remembrance Day, a citywide day of rage for Gaza took place in New York, which has the largest Diaspora community in the world. The message was ‘From the encampments to the street,” and the central meeting point was at Hunter College, a large number of whose alumni live in Israel. A notice that urged people to organize rallies and make use of all social media platforms promised that Gaza will be free “within our lifetime.”

New documentary on political strategist Arthur Finkelstein takes Jerusalem theater

■ ALTHOUGH HE preferred to work behind the scenes, the late political strategist Arthur Finkelstein was a legend in his lifetime. A longtime consultant to members of the Republican Party, He also helped Benjamin Netanyahu in his first prime ministerial campaign, and can be credited with spinning the top that made Netanyahu rise in power.

One of the reasons that Finkelstein preferred to work in the background was that he was gay at a time when homosexuality was not as accepted as it is today, and he did not want his sexual orientation to cast a blight on his professionalism.

The documentary The Consultant – Arthur Finkelstein, directed by Eado Zuckerman and produced by Assaf Peretz, will be screened on Wednesday, May 8, at 7:30 p.m., at the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. Following the screening, Zuckerman and Peretz will converse with the audience.

Miri Regev's divergence from traditions 

■ IT WOULD be understandable if the education minister or the culture minister would be in charge of the Independence Day opening event, but why the transportation minister? That would be understandable if the event were open to everyone, with free round-trip public transport from all over the country.

It’s even understandable why the event would be moved from Jerusalem to Sderot, or even to one of the kibbutzim that was targeted by Hamas on October 7. But to deny the Israeli public the morale booster of the traditional Independence Day ceremony is unforgivable. After all the misery that has plagued the country over the past six months, something that would bring pride, if not joy, is essential at this time – and if it’s in Sderot, perhaps some, if not all, of the hostages would hear it, and special messages for the hostages could be delivered via powerful sound systems.

This is not Transportation Minister Miri Regev’s first attempt to diverge from tradition.

Back in 2018, Regev, as culture minister and head of the Ministerial Committee for Symbols and Ceremonies, was in charge of organizing the central Independence Day celebrations, which traditionally were hosted by the Knesset speaker, who at that time was Yuli Edelstein.

When Regev told Edelstein that Netanyahu would be one of the speakers, Edelstein declared that the Knesset would boycott the ceremony.

Eventually, he was persuaded to agree to Netanyahu being a torch-lighter and making a brief speech about the Declaration of Independence. But Netanyahu did not stick to the agreement and spoke for three times the length of the time he had been allotted.

Edelstein subsequently attacked both Netanyahu and Regev in a television interview, saying that they had ruined the event.

After having insulted Edelstein, Regev has done so again with current Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, whose role at the ceremony she has cut short. Curiously, both Edelstein and Ohana are members of her own Likud Party.

MK Mickey Levy, who was Knesset speaker under the previous government, said in a recent radio interview that Independence Day belongs to the people. When Naftali Bennett, who was then prime minister, was told that, traditionally, the prime minister is not part of the program, Levy recalled, he understood and instantly decided not to be one of the speakers.

Incidentally, Bennett is doing a great job in public diplomacy.

A political message at Yad Vashem

■ AS FOR Netanyahu, one suspects that at Yad Vashem’s Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony he again broke the rules, in not only the length of his address but also the content, which to a large extent was political.

Later, Netanyahu shook hands with all the VIPs, including former president Reuven Rivlin, whom he also patted on the arm. Rivlin and Netanyahu used to be good friends a long time ago, but they’ve been at daggers drawn for some years now, and Rivlin has been publicly critical of Netanyahu, so the apparent goodwill on Netanyahu’s part was unexpected.

Netanyahu also patted the shoulders of some of the soldiers who formed the honor guard at Yad Vashem.

June Zero muse will celebrate 99th birthday

■ NO NEWSPAPER or magazine article or even a biography tells the whole story. There are two main reasons – the first being lack of space, and the second the concentration span of the reader.

Hannah Brown, the Post’s entertainment reporter, who writes mostly about movies and television, wrote a long and interesting article about the film June Zero which was published last Friday.

What she omitted when presenting one of the three stories in the film about a young Holocaust survivor, a boy named Misha, is that the character is based on a boy whose name is Michael, and who will celebrate his 99th birthday in July.

As a boy in the Przemysl Ghetto, Michael Goldman-Gilad, who was also an Auschwitz survivor, was severely whipped and given 81 lashes. Witnesses thought he had died after such a whipping. But he survived, came to Israel, joined the police force, and was the senior investigating officer in the Eichmann trial.

The only university where Jews can feel safe

■ ONE OF the few universities in America where Jewish students can feel safe from physical violence and verbal insults is Yeshiva University, New York, whose president, Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, was in Israel last week en route to Poland to participate in the March of the Living.

While in Jerusalem, Berman met with Netanyahu, with whom he discussed ways in which to fight the wave of antisemitism sweeping across America.

Netanyahu complimented Berman on his initiative in asking heads of universities to join him in participating in the March of the Living in the context of the struggle against antisemitism.

YU, which opened its doors more than 140 years ago, is expanding, and part of that expansion is due to antisemitism.

Because of the ongoing harassment and antisemitic activities on college campuses, YU has invited Jewish undergraduates to transfer from unsafe college environments to YU.

Many students – including those who are not Orthodox – are now opting for YU over other elite institutions, and this trend is likely to continue until a way is found to prevent any form of religious and racial discrimination on campuses.

In addition to students, Jewish faculty members of institutions of higher learning are also turning to YU.

In an open letter, Berman expressed YU’s readiness to lend a helping hand in supporting efforts of all universities to protect their students from threats to their safety.

While taking all students into account, Berman wrote: “At the same time we cannot ignore the profound distress we have been witnessing. No Jewish student should have to face the threats and intimidation that have sadly been taking place.”

Even though enrollments for the coming year are already full, he added, “We will not turn our backs on these students.”

David Broza performs Thursday night

■ JERUSALEM FANS of David Broza will be able to hear him on their local turf on Thursday night, May 9. Broza is scheduled to give a special performance at the Gilbert de Botton Auditorium in Mishkenot Sha’ananim, where he will also engage in conversation with Maya Kosover about the various stations in his life in Israel and abroad and his close friendship with Yehonatan Geffen, with whom he also worked on translations of songs.

Broza is the grandson of peace activist Wellesley Aron, who founded the Habonim Zionist youth group based on the values of the Boy Scouts, of which he had been a member in his youth in London. Aron was also a co-founder of Neveh Shalom, the peace village in which Arabs and Jews live side by side in friendship and harmony.

With regard to Broza, the apple has not fallen far from the tree.

French immigrant debuts art exhibition

■ A LITTLE encouragement and support never go astray. A case in point is French immigrant artist Ulysse Berdat, who after his recent release from the army prepared his first exhibition of paintings.

Supermodel Galit Gutman, actresses Limor Goldstein and Sandra Sade, along with PR consultant Irina Shalmor, were among those who came to view the art.

Berdat’s work caught the eye of international skin care and antiaging queen Ronit Raphael, who took him under her wing and specially flew in from Geneva for the opening of the exhibition at Beit Ronit Raphael in Tel Aviv. She did even better than that. She purchased several paintings, ensuring that the artist will not starve over the coming months.

Berdat is essentially a designer of visuals who creates eye-catching images to enhance the logos of companies. He also plays around with fashion design and has dressed people for television appearances.

His major passion and area of expertise is in graphic design.

Israeli chefs open new restaurant in West Hollywood

■ NOTWITHSTANDING THE often violent anti-Israel demonstrations across America, including Hollywood, four Israeli expats – chef Asaf Maoz, nightlife and festival producer Liron Hazan, former music manager Ronnie Benarie, and chef Yoav Schverd – last week launched the Carmel restaurant in West Hollywood.

In addition to being business partners, the four are longtime friends who wanted to recreate the atmosphere of Tel Aviv’s Carmel market and the ambience of its eateries.

The designer of the new dining facility is Nofar Mantin, another Israeli expat who is also a singer, songwriter, and fashion designer, and a graduate of Reichman University when it was still IDC Herzliya.

A ceremony rescheduled

■ IN LAST Sunday’s Post, there was a photograph of the Holy Fire ceremony of the Eastern Churches in Jerusalem, but even before that there was an impressive ceremony in the Catholic Church as published by the Catholic News Agency.

May 1, once widely known as May Day, means different things to different people. In most of Europe it is an ancient religious festival marking the beginning of summer, but to socialists it is International Workers’ Day.

To Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Catholic patriarch of Jerusalem, it is a very significant personal day in that it was the date on which he finally took possession of his assigned titular church in Rome, after having postponed the ceremony due to the war in the Holy Land.

Part of the process of becoming a cardinal is being assigned a titular church in Rome known as his “title” or “deaconry,” in accordance with his role in assisting the pope, the bishop of Rome.

The ceremony at St. Onuphrius, the titular church of the papal order of the Holy Sepulchre, was scheduled for April 15 when the conflict in the Middle East was exacerbated by the Iranian attack on Israel.

The patriarch, who had planned to travel to Rome, had to cancel the trip at the last minute and reschedule the ceremony.

Pizzaballa was made a cardinal by Pope Francis at the September 30, 2023, consistory along with 21 other cardinals.

In his May 1 homily, which he gave at St. Onuphrius Church in Rome, the Italian cardinal noted that the Church of Jerusalem is “the mother Church” in which “the roots of the universal Church” are found.

“Being a cardinal is not only a title or an honor; it is also a responsibility,” said Pizzaballa, who also mentioned that the people in the Holy Land are going through the most difficult moments in recent history.

It may be remembered that on October 16, 2023, Pizzaballa, in an online press conference, offered himself in exchange for Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas. However, the terrorist organization made no attempt to take him up on his offer.

A home for secular Jews?

■ WILL JERUSALEM continue to be home for secular Jews? According to a report in Haaretz by Nir Hasson, secular Jews already constitute a minority in Jerusalem; and in the not too distant future, there will be less of them rather than more.

One of the reasons is the result of the last municipal elections, in which the haredi parties won a majority on the 31-member municipal council.

Hasson started out by citing a report from the no-longer existing tabloid Hadashot, which related to legendary mayor Teddy Kollek, who, one Friday night in 1987, decided to go to the hitchhikers’ stand at the entrance to the city to see for himself the extent of the exodus to Tel Aviv by young people looking for a night’s entertainment.

Kollek counted 600 cars that stopped to pick up people thumbing a ride. In effect, that meant more than 3,000 people leaving Jerusalem because restaurants, coffee shops and bars were closed, as were theaters and cinemas. And, of course, there were no concerts.

Hasson surmised that most of the people whom Kollek saw that night are now no longer residents of Jerusalem.

Hasson last month attended a conference at the Van Leer Institute in which researcher Dr. Marik Shtern, addressing a packed auditorium of secular Jews, painted a very gloomy picture of them becoming a small minority in a city ruled by an ultra-Orthodox majority. Moreover, it’s unlikely to be a case of live and let live. The minority will find itself subject to the dictates of the majority.

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