Exodus Ship Survivor Making Aliyah at Age 88

British perfidy and British war crimes, still unpunished to this day. Via INN:

Exodus ship survivor France Goldberg, 88, of Pittsburgh, will be one of 210 new immigrants to arrive in Israel on Tuesday. The Nefesh B'Nefesh (NBN) flight is scheduled to arrive at approximately 7 a.m., and dignitaries and the press will welcome the olim (new immigrant) at the old Terminal One facility at Ben Gurion International Airport.

Mrs. Goldberg tried to come on aliyah in 1947 after having survived the Holocaust by fleeing from Poland to Siberia. She left a displaced persons camp in the middle of the night and boarded the Exodus for Israel.

The British army torpedoed and tear-gassed the ship, killing several passengers.

The others, including Mrs. Greenberg, were forced to return to France and then to Germany rather than arrive in Israel and increase the Jewish presence in Palestine, which it occupied under a League of Nations mandate.

The Nazis had wiped out her family. After returning to Germany, she met and married her husband Isak. She survived a nearly fatal illness, and the couple moved to Pittsburgh, where her sister lived, in 1949. They have two children, and her desire to move to Israel grew after her daughter married and moved to Israel 36 years ago. She was widowed a year ago and decided to make arrangements to be close to her daughter and grandchildren in the Jewish state.

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Robert Kennedy's 1948 Reports from Palestine

From On the 40th Anniversary of His Assassination: Robert Kennedy's 1948 Reports from Palestine by Lenny Ben-David:

In April 1948, one month before Israel declared independence, Robert Kennedy, then 22, traveled to Palestine to report on the conflict for the Boston Post. His four dispatches from the scene were published in June 1948. The newspaper closed in 1956, and for decades the reports were virtually forgotten.

"Unfortunately for [the Jews, Jerusalem's water] reservoir is situated in the mountains and it and the whole pipeline are controlled by the Arabs. The British would not let them cut the water off until after May 15th but an Arab told me they would not even do it then. First they would poison it."

The Arab responsible for the blowing up of the Jewish Agency on March 11, 1948, said "that after the explosion, upon reaching the British post which separated the Jewish section from a small neutral zone set up in the middle of Jerusalem, he was questioned by the British officers in charge. He quite freely admitted what he had done and was given immediate passage with the remark, 'Nice going.'"

"The Jews informed the British government that 600 Iraqi troops were going to cross into Palestine from Trans-Jordan by the Allenby Bridge on a certain date and requested the British to take appropriate action to prevent this passage. The troops crossed unmolested....I saw several thousand non-Palestinian Arab troops in Palestine, including many of the famed British-trained and equipped Arab legionnaires of King Abdullah [of Trans-Jordan]. There were also soldiers from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq."

"The Arabs in command believe that eventually victory must be theirs. It is against all law and nature that this Jewish state should exist. They...promise that if it does become a reality it will never have as neighbors anything but hostile countries, which will continue the fight militarily and economically until victory is achieved."

"The Jews on the other hand believe that in a few more years, if a Jewish state is formed, it will be the only stabilizing factor remaining in the Near and Middle East. The Arab world is made up of many disgruntled factions which would have been at each other's throats long ago if it had not been for the common war against Zionism."

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Today in Jewish History - Kislev 9

Sponsored by Aish.com:

In 1940, a boatload 1,600 Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler's ovens was denied entry into the port of Haifa; the British deported them to the island of Mauritius. At the time, the British had acceded to Arab demands and restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. The urgent plight of European Jewry generated an "illegal" immigration movement, but the British were vigilant in denying entry. Some ships, such as the Struma, sunk and their hundreds of passengers killed.

Books: Zionist official was first to hear of Final Solution

Via JPost:

A senior Zionist official stationed in Switzerland during World War II was likely the first person to receive information from a German source regarding the plan for the systematic extermination of Europe's Jews, according to a new book published by Yad Vashem.

Chaim Pazner, head of the Jewish Agency's Palestine Office in Geneva, immediately forwarded the information to senior British officials and to Jewish officials in British-ruled Palestine, and the report reached the top echelons of the British government, according to the book, Chaim Pazner - The Man Who Knew.

The book - written in Hebrew by Menahem Michelson, with contributions from historian Sir Martin Gilbert - describes a report from a German source in the summer of 1942 about the Final Solution and the British government's refusal to make that information public.

The Battle of the "Exodus" Against the British Army

From OU:

Sixty years ago, on the eve of Rosh Chodesh Av 5707 (1947), an immigration ship by the name of "Leaving Europe 5707" (also known as "Exodus 1947") arrived in Eretz Yisrael. This was a fairly small ship that the Hagannah had bought from US Navy surplus, and 4,500 refugees from Europe had been packed into it. As soon as the ship left France, British warships began to follow it, with a fighter plane flying overhead at all times.

Any reasonable person could see that this was not going to be a fair fight. It was clear that the "illegal immigrants" would be able to use only hand weapons, in order to avoid giving the British an excuse to use live ammunition, which might have led to a terrible slaughter. Here is how the struggle was described by Aharon David Kurtz (Adar):

"We began our preparations for a 'battle' against seven British destroyers. Our small and creaky vessel, when compared to their warships, clearly demonstrated the great par between the forces, giving us the feeling that 'we were like grasshoppers... in their eyes' [Bamidbar 13:33]. But we still did not say, 'Let us find a leader and return to Egypt ' [14:4]. We continued to fortify our positions and to prepare to fight back, in order to show that the Jews were not willing to give up like sheep being taken to slaughter... This was a battle of cans and jars against jets of salt water, tear gas, and clubs in the hands of British soldiers. We realized that this would be a demonstration and not a battle, but it was still important because it showed our position and our mission, while it was also fraught with mortal danger. Some of the immigrants paid with their lives for their part in this event."

The struggle took place Thursday night, Rosh Chodesh Av (18 July), and it lasted several hours. Before the Exodus reached the territorial waters of the land, the British attacked it several times. Each time, they attached two destroyers to the ship and squeezed it, while British soldiers pounced on the passengers. It took a very long time to take control of the ship, because the people fought with dedication and perseverance. In the end, the order was given to surrender, because the attacks of the destroyers hadcracked the hull of the Exodus, and water began to leak in and was about to sink the ship. Two passengers and one Jewish crewman were killed and about thirty were injured. All the others were transferred from the damaged ship to expulsion boats, which immediately became floating prisons. The people at least had the privilege of seeing the land from afar, as Kurtz continues to relate:

"We saw Haifa , our eyes looked at the Carmel Mountains , and we couldn't stop looking. The verses in Melachim about Eliyahu opened up before me, and I imagined seeing him there, high up, on the top of the mountain, acting zealously to protect G-d's honor... We were given a few hours in which we could see the mountain and dream about redemption... Why does Eliyahu just sit there and not come down to rescue us? Is he busy trying to bring rain in the month of Av? ... At the end of our thoughts about the verses, Eliyahu disappeared from the Carmel , to be replaced by the 'kalaniot,' the British paratroopers with their red berets."

Everybody was sure that they would be sent to Cyprus , as usual. But then it turned out that they were being sent back to France, where they arrived on the fast day of Tisha B'Av. And the worst thing was that the depressing journey ended on German soil.

The world media concentrated on the plight of the Exodus and its struggle to bring the refugees of the Holocaust to their land. The pictures of the mighty British army fighting refugees who wanted a safe haven were published all over the world. This story had a tremendous impact, leading many to identify with the cause and with
the need to establish a Jewish state which would be able to absorb the refugees.

The Hagannah, which planned and executed the entire journey of the Exodus, was able in the end to bring the expelled refugees back to settle in Eretz Yisrael.

(Source: Aharon David Kurtz (Adar), "From Ashes to Renewal" and others)

They Went to the Gallows Singing "Hatikva"

From They Went to the Gallows Singing "Hatikva":

The 12th day of the Hebrew month of Av, which falls this year on Friday July 27, marks the 60th anniversary of the execution by the British authorities in Palestine of three members of the Irgun underground - Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weiss, and Meir Nakar. This column is dedicated to their everlasting memory.

As 1947 dawned, the British governing authorities, driven by an irresistible hubris of self-interest and colonial blindness, and embracing the delusion of decaying imperialists in every age that punitive brutality will cow the rebels into giving up their resistance, began sentencing captured Irgun fighters to the most severe forms of capital punishment: flogging for relatively minor offenses, and hanging for relatively major ones. The executions were frequently carried out in the Acre fortress, a Crusader citadel restored by the Turks and considered impregnable. In May 1947, in what was probably the Irgun's most daring exploit, a wall of this great bastion was breached, allowing for a mass escape. Three of the attacking party - Haviv, Weiss, and Nakar - were captured, tried and condemned to death. The writer served on the personal staff of five Israeli prime ministers.

The Real Exodus

From The Real Exodus:

Ike Aronowitz, 83, is former captain of the illegal immigrant ship Exodus. He is known to the world as the blond, blue-eyed Paul Newman, who played Aronowitz in Otto Preminger's 1960 film Exodus, based on Leon Uris' blockbuster novel. Both film and book tell the story of the postwar illegal immigration ships bearing a human cargo of Holocaust survivors who tried to break the British blockade of Palestine in the last days of the Mandate. But it was a fairy tale. In Uris' version, the Jewish refugees, stranded on Cyprus, are saved by a sympathetic British general who convinces the British government to allow the ship to land. In real life, the British army boarded, killed three people, loaded the passengers on to prison ships and took them back to Hamburg, Germany, where they were re-incarcerated in refugee camps. It was a PR catastrophe. "Back to the Reich," one U.S. newspaper put it. "Return to the death land," said another.

The Friendly Fires of Hell

From The Friendly Fires of Hell:

On May 3, 1945 - in the worst friendly-fire incident in history - Britain's Royal Air Force killed more than 7,000 survivors of Nazi concentration camps who were crowded onto ships in Lubeck harbor, Germany - one day before the British accepted the surrender of all German forces in the region. In the closing weeks of World War II, thousands of prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, the Mittelbau-Dora camp at Nordhausen, and the Stutthof camp near Danzig were marched to the German Baltic coast. Almost 10,000 camp survivors were crowded onto three ships: Cap Arcona, Thielbeck, and Athen. Although the final surrender was imminent, British Operational Order No. 73 for May 3 was to "destroy the concentration of enemy shipping in Lubeck Bay."

At 2:30 p.m. on May 3, at least 4,500 prisoners were aboard the Cap Arcona as the first attack began. Sixty-four rockets and 15 bombs hit the liner in two separate attacks. As the British strafed the stricken ship from the air, Nazi guards on shore fired on those who made it into the water. Only 350 prisoners survived. The Thielbeck - which had been flying a white flag - was packed with 2,800 prisoners. It sank in just 20 minutes, killing all but 50 of the prisoners.

Most who were familiar with the Cap Arcona disaster believed that the Nazis intended to sink the ships at sea to kill everyone on board. In this case, however, RAF Fighter Command did their killing for them. The RAF records of the disaster are sealed until 2045.

Jenny Tonge, British MP: "I'd be a suicide bomber"

Jenny Tonge of the Liberal Democrat Party, told a House of Commons meeting the Palestinians engaged in terrorism because of the "everlasting humiliation" of Israeli occupation, the London Sun newspaper reported.

Yeah, right. Did you feel the same way about the British occupation of Palestine? Did you feel the same way about British occupation of other countries? Did you applaud when Hezbollah blew up 250 American Marines?

Jenny Tonge, I bet you wouldn't give up a single cup of tea or a single crumpet to get off your high horse if it meant you could no longer pass judgement on the Jews.

Jenny Tonge, did you know that when the Palestine Problem was created by Britain in 1917, 70% of the land was British (first Ottomon) state land, the Arabs only owned a fifth of the total land, and the majority of that fifth was by wealthy landowners?

Did you know that during the thirty years of British occupation and rule, the Jews were able to purchase only 3.5% of the land of Palestine, in spite of the encouragement of the British Government? And that much of this land was transferred to Jews by the British Government directly, and was not sold by Arab owners?

Jenny Tonge, did you know that, considering the British owned just over 70% of the land, they could give it to anyone they wanted to, it certainly wasn't stolen from the Arabs, that's for sure. It's pretty nervy of you to tell someone else what they should do with their own land. It's also incredibly ethnocentric to claim that only a certain ethnic group has rights to own land, as is the claim by the Arabs.

Jenny Tonge, did you know that when British passed the Palestine Problem to the United Nations in 1947, Zionists owned 8.6% of the total land area of Palestine?

Jenny Tonge, did you know that it is Jordan that occupies the largest landmass of what was once considered Palestine? How "interesting" that there is no concern that the Hashemite king owns most of Palestine, but the Jews' existence on a small strip is the basis for a continuous ethnic and religious war at the insistance of guess who.

Jenny Tonge, did you know that what the Arabs call "territorial expansion" before 1948 is known by the rest of the world as LEGAL PURCHASE OF LAND?

Jenny Tonge, did you know that after 1948, the land of Arabs who left the territory of Israel was assigned to an administrator of absentee lands, and under Israeli law the absentee Arabs could return and reclaim their land? Thousands of them did so (the figures I have seen are over 15,000). As to those absentee Arab land owners who refused to deal with Israel, their land was taken by eminent domain (called "compulsory purchase" in British law, or "expropriation" in European civil law), and they were paid fair market value plus interest. This is a story that for some reason has not received any publicity, an act of informational neglect that from the point of view of hasbara is positively criminal. This story should be told. Don't take my word for any of this. Check it out with your Israeli sources. I believe that the Office of Administrator of Absentee Property still exists in Israel. Check it out, you elite bitch.

Jenny Tonge, did you know that Israel remained, ever since its inception, a total stranger in the emerging world of Afro-Asia; and that Israel has been refused admission to any inter-state conference of Asian, African, Afro-Asian, or Non-Aligned States ever held?

Jenny Tonge, did you know that you should insist on some resolutions condemning China's brutal occupation of Tibet, or Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara, or Turkey's occupation of Cyprus? What's interesting is that none of these nations need the land they occupy. The same is not the case with Israel. Israel is not allowed to live on its own land, but these other countries are allowed to occupy that land because they want to. Nice.

Jenny Tonge, did you know that the overwhelming majority of Arabs left on their own two feet a) either because they were tricked into doing so by their own so-called brethren, or b) because they were encouraged to do so in order to facilitate the Arab armies creating a Judenrein Palestine? The evidence is over-whelming on this.

Jenny Tonge, did you ever question why are there still refugee camps in areas under the PA for the past, oh, 7 years? What about how the Jordanians and Egyptians kept the Palestinians in refugee camps, doesn't that matter? Of course not, it only matters if Israel can get blamed somehow, otherwise, forget it.

Furthermore, the reason why Israel keeps a tight lid on the Palestinian territories is because they, "the Palestinians" stupidly won't shut up about the fact that their ultimate goal is to destroy Israel at the first given opportunity.

Arabs want to continue to call for Israel's destruction, of course, launched from the West Bank and Gaza, yet they refuse to understand why Israel keeps a tight grasp over them.

Jenny Tonge, did you know that you should tell the Arabs to shut the f*** up about destroying Israel, and instead, usher the Jew hating Arabs to launch a successful peace campaign, end their ethnocentric boycott, stop their calls for holy war, stop misappropriating Jewish holy sites, and then talk peace. Arab nations only want Israel to be weak so they can overwhelm her with their hostile hoards and you, Jenny Tonge, you and your stink are their accomplices.