Showing posts with label Holocaust Memorial Day. Show all posts

Monday, January 30, 2017

The Battle for the Heart and Soul of the IDF - Tsvi Sadan ISRAEL TODAY

The Battle for the Heart and Soul of the IDF

Monday, January 30, 2017 | Tsvi Sadan ISRAEL TODAY

Topics:

The IDF has been at the center of passionate public debate since last year's speech by Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan, at the time the army's deputy chief of staff, on the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day.

His remarks on Israeli society kicked up a firestorm that refuses to subside. According to Golan, Israel today reminds him of the "horrific processes which developed in Europe – particularly in Germany – 70, 80, and 90 years ago, and finding remnants of that here among us in the year 2016."

The general's harsh statement was perceived as left-wing ideology the type of which has been firmly entrenched within the IDF's upper echelons, resulting in questionable moral codes that severely hinder the army's very purpose to protect Israel.

Particularly annoyed by this is the religious community, which sees the liberal values of gender equality and LGBT rights as especially aggravating since those directly contradict Jewish religious laws. One of the harshest critics of the IDF is Rabbi Zvi Tau, head of Har Hamor Yeshiva. Among the national religious yeshivas, the prestigious Har Hamor is branded as "national-Orthodox," a relative newcomer among the Zionist religious movements that are typically lenient.

R. Tau, who previously insisted that the IDF leadership had no mandate to alter Jewish culture, spoke recently with the heads of religious pre-military academies (mechinot) to discuss whether or not it was permitted for their graduates to serve in the Israeli army.

The discourse, published by the religious portal Kipa, reveals the depth of the crisis between the religious community and the IDF.

To clarify, R. Tau is adamant that young religious Jews should not be give the option to refuse military service. "If for a moment we'll be left without an army, we will have no country … on account of some who have fallen flat on their faces should we not do what is right?" he questioned.

Tau's remedy is to strengthen religious education so that the students would find the inner strength to resist the army's insistence on doing what is wrong. "Is there any other place in the world where, as a matter of abiding principle, men and women are bedded in the same place … are these human norms?" he wondered. "This is how one loses sanity, the basic norms of God's image in human beings."

Tau, therefore, is calling on religious soldiers to pay the price for being forced into unlawful norms. "The people of Israel have stood firm for two millennia of exile," he said, "and here is someone holding on to the new demon of post modernism, he will try to make us leave our religion? We are willing to take part in whatever is asked, but not in this madness, not in this beastly behavior."

This battle over the army's spirit is far from over and shows at least one thing - that unlike in the past, attempts to fundamentally alter the army's culture can no longer go unnoticed, nor can the army afford to ignore the challenges it faces from devout Jews.

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Heroes of the Holocaust - Charles Gardner ISRAEL TODAY

Heroes of the Holocaust

Monday, January 30, 2017 | Charles Gardner ISRAEL TODAY

Topics:

Anti-Semitism

Seventy-two years after the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army on January 27 1945, Britain and other nations are acknowledged Holocaust Memorial Day at a time when anti-Semitism is once more on the rise.

Israel itself, which has since risen from the ashes of that dreadful scourge that wiped out six million European Jews, is under dire threat from enemies on all sides while attacks on synagogues and other Jewish centres are still being carried out in the ‘civilised’ West. Only this last weekend in north-west London, a swastika-daubed brick was hurled through a Jewish family’s window while others were pelted with eggs.[1]

The fragile borders to which the United Nations expect Israel to agree (just nine miles wide in places) have for good reason been described by politicians as ‘Auschwitz lines’ because they leave the Jewish state highly vulnerable to attack from neighbouring states who have repeatedly threatened to wipe them off the map.

It was also in January 1945 that one of the most heroic accounts of the war took place. But the incredible story has only just surfaced because the hero concerned never spoke about it.

The truth was finally unearthed by his granddaughter when asked to focus on a family member as part of a college assignment. Her widowed grandmother gave her the diary kept by her husband during his time in a prisoner-of-war camp which revealed the astonishing fact that, by standing up to the German commandant, Master Sgt Roddie Edmonds, of Knoxville, Tennessee, had saved the lives of 200 American Jews.

As the highest-ranking officer there, Edmonds was made responsible for the camp’s 1,292 American GIs, 200 of whom were Jewish. Then one day the Germans ordered all Jewish POWs to report outside their barracks the following morning. Knowing what awaited them – being moved to a slave labour camp at the very least – he decided to resist the directive, ordering all his men to fall out the following morning.

The commandant, Major Siegmann, duly ordered Edmonds to identify the Jewish soldiers, to which the sergeant responded: “We are all Jews here.”

Holding his pistol to Edmonds’ head, the commandant repeated the order. But the sergeant – a devout Christian – refused.

“According to the Geneva Convention, we only have to give our name, rank and serial number. If you shoot me, you will have to shoot all of us, and after the war you will be tried for war crimes,” Edmonds had said, according to one of the men saved that day.

Edmonds’ pastor son Chris regards all of them as heroes as they could easily have identified the Jews among them to save their skin. But they all stood together. Late last year Roddie Edmonds was posthumously awarded the Yehi Or (Let there be light) Award by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. He has also been honoured by Jerusalem’s Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.[2]

But as Jews were herded into cattle trucks for transporting to death camps, there weren’t many Roddies about who dared to speak up and stand up on their behalf.

These days, where controversial issues are concerned, leaders still prefer to keep their heads below the proverbial parapet while remaining ‘impartial’. But there is a time when we must take sides. We must choose between life and death, between God and evil. If we claim to be Christian, we have no option.

“Neutrality is only an illusion,” writes Robert Stearns. “Those who are not for God are against Him. (Matthew 12.30a) “The German public’s unfortunate legacy during World War II lies not in what they did in response to their despotic leader and his horrendous practices, but in what they did not do.”[3]

This did not apply, however, to Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, young Christians who led the White Rose leaflet campaign of resistance for which they paid with their lives. Prophetically, they asked the question: “Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes… reach the light of day?”[4]

Stearns also points out that, when the Nazis invaded European nations, many monarchs vacated their thrones and fled. But King Christian X stayed in Denmark as he defied the bullies. And thanks to his example, most Danish Jews survived the war.[5]

Princess Alice, the Queen’s mother-in-law, has also been recognized by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum as ‘righteous among the nations’ for saving a Jewish family during the war, and is buried on the Mount of Olives.

As Princess of Greece, she hid Jewish widow Rachel Cohen and two of her five children in her home. Rachel’s husband had in 1913 helped King George I of Greece, in return for which the king offered him any service he could perform, should he ever need it. When the Nazi threat emerged, his son recalled this promise and appealed to the Princess, who duly honoured her father’s pledge. Prince Charles last year fulfilled a longstanding wish to visit his grandmother’s grave.[6]

It’s interesting in this respect that Prince Charles has compared the dangers facing minority faith groups across the world today with the “dark days of the 1930s”.[7]

The Queen herself is a wonderful example of someone who is prepared to make an uncompromising stand for faith and truth, declaring in her latest Christmas message to the nation: “Jesus Christ lived in obscurity for much of his life and was maligned and rejected by many, though he had done no wrong. Millions now follow his teaching and find in him the guiding light of their lives. I am one of them…”

Are we, like the Queen, courageous enough to tell the entire world that we are followers of Jesus and, as such, will do all we can to stand up to the evil that lurks in every dark corner of our land?

Roddie Edmonds was prepared to die for 200 Jewish men. Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. But the greatest sacrifice of all was when Yeshua (Hebrew for Jesus), “though he had done no wrong”, laid down his life for both Jews and Gentiles on a stake outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City after being “led like a lamb to the slaughter” during the Passover feast (Isaiah 53.7). He bought our pardon; he paid the price.

Jerusalem News Network, January 24 2017, quoting Algemeiner ↩
Gateway News (South Africa), December 1 2016, originally published by The Times of Israel ↩
The Cry of Mordecai by Robert Stearns (Destiny Image) ↩
Ibid ↩
Ibid ↩
Torch magazine, Christians United for Israel – UK, Dec 2016-Feb 2017 ↩
Saltshakers December 24 2016, quoting Premier Online ↩

Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon, and Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com

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Thursday, January 7, 2016

UK Christians Rally Behind Israel - | Charles Gardner ISRAEL TODAY

UK Christians Rally Behind Israel

Thursday, January 07, 2016 | Charles Gardner ISRAEL TODAY

Topics:

Christians

When the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was celebrated this time last year, few could have imagined that anti-Semitism would get even worse. But it has.

The past year has seen two shocking terrorist attacks on Paris, with Jews specifically targeted on both occasions, along with the wave of stabbings and shootings in Israel itself. One incident occurred on Christmas Eve at Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem, just yards from Christ Church, where they were celebrating the birth of the Messiah who came to bring peace to a troubled world and where, ironically, they steadfastly work towards reconciling Arab and Jew through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.

But even as the UK marks Holocaust Memorial Day later this month, we too are witnessing an ongoing rise in anti-Semitic incidents necessitating armed guards having to be deployed to schools in London’s Jewish community. But is the Church as a whole rallying to the support of those who are once more threatened with genocide, as they were under the Nazis? Do they even care?

British publishing magnate Lord Weidenfeld did indeed benefit from caring Christians who took him in after he was rescued from Czechoslovakia through the so-called Kindertransport project of 1938, and has launched a campaign to rescue Christians from Syria out of gratitude for the compassion he was shown. He believes that the Islamic State terrorists are worse even than Hitler’s henchmen. The latter were cold and calculated as they killed on an industrial scale, but the Muslim fanatics seem to enjoy what they are doing.

Here is the stark reality of what is facing the Jewish people at the dawn of 2016: Iran is fast developing nuclear weapons with which to “wipe out” Israel (in the words of the Ayatollahs and Iranian presidents). And the current spat between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia only adds to the tension in the region. Meanwhile Lebanon-based Hezbollah has once again started firing rockets into the Jewish state, ISIS are believed to be stalking the Golan Heights near Galilee, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority continue to incite their people to murder and some Westerners are engaged in a boycott of Israeli goods on the pretext that they are oppressive occupiers of land not their own. But the truth is that most Jewish victims of persecution are attacked simply because they are Jews, not for political or economic reasons.

With all this in mind, UK Christians who can see what is happening are trying to draw the attention of a generally uncaring public to the plight of Jews everywhere. One such event will be held on January 24 at a Sheffield church and will involve other Holocaust escapees brought to England via the Kindertransport. One of them, John Fieldsend, whose parents perished at Auschwitz, was also taken in by a kind Christian couple. He became a follower of Jesus and a full-time preacher, but it could all have been so different. On a visit to the Children’s Memorial at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, he recalls: “As we listened to the names of the children being read out on an endlessly looping tape – which took several days to go round – I realized that had my journey from Czechoslovakia been delayed by only about five weeks, my name would have been on that tape! It was a very dramatic experience…”

Among the organizers of the Sheffield event – at the Bush Fire Church, 427 Halifax Road, Grenoside S35 8PB from 3 to 5pm – are Ginnie White, whose mother Stella was roughed up by Oswald Mosley’s fascists as a child growing up in London’s East End where she was also once jeered at as a “dirty Jew”. The afternoon will also involve the signing of the ‘Shalom Declaration’ promising support for the Jewish people.

And under the banner of Christians United for Israel, a petition is being sent to the UK Government expressing condemnation of anti-Semitism and acknowledging the huge contribution of its Judeo-Christian heritage in shaping British values.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s account of his own family history, shared in a United Nations speech, perfectly illustrates the necessity for such memorial days. After being beaten senseless by a group of anti-Semitic hoodlums at a railway station in the heart of Europe, his grandfather Nathan promised himself that, if he lived, he would take his family to the Jewish homeland and help build a future for the Jewish people.

Six million Jews perished in the gas chambers, but the nightmares of the survivors live on while new generations face fresh threats. When will it stop? We have so much for which to thank them – they gave us the Bible, on the foundations of which we have built a great civilization. And they gave us Jesus, Saviour of both Jews and Gentiles who put their trust in Him, who said: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25.40)

PHOTO: Jaffa Gate, site of a fatal incident also involving a serious wounding on Christmas Eve, and only a stone’s throw from Christ Church, a haven of reconciliation. (Charles Gardner)

Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon, and Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com

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Monday, January 30, 2017