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LITHUANIAN JEWS MARK 75 YEARS SINCE VILNIUS GHETTO DESTRUCTION BY HAGAY HACOHEN
Pope Francis prays at memorial for victims of Vilnius Ghetto. (photo credit: REUTERS)
Pope Francis and WJC President Ronald S. Lauder attended the ceremony.
Pope Francis, head of the World Jewish Congress Ronald S. Lauder, head of the Lithuanian Jewish community Faina Kukliansky and dignitaries attended the ceremony marking 75 years to the destruction of the Vilnius Ghetto on Sunday.
Tens of thousands of Jews were killed or deported, ending one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in Europe.
“From the ashes of the Holocaust, the broken community is slowly rebuilding itself,” said Lauder who added, “It was not by chance that the World Jewish Congress chose to build our international Yiddish center in Vilnius.”
Lauder did not turn a blind eye to the complex historical realities of the Second World War, in which many Lithuanians aided the Germans hoping to win an ally against the USSR, and how, as he said, “streets are still being named after Lithuanians complicit in the murder of Jews.”
When Pope Francis arrived in Kaunas on Sunday morning he spoke to a crowd of roughly 100,000 people and said that society should be vigilant for “any whiff” of resurgent anti-Semitism and called for new generations to be taught the horrors of the Holocaust.
In the homily of the Mass, Francis referred to those who collaborated with the Nazis in World War Two or with Communist authorities in the period between 1944 and 1991 when Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union.
“Earlier generations still bear the scars of the period of the occupation, anguish at those who were deported, uncertainty about those who never returned, shame for those who were informers and traitors,” he said.
In Vilnius, the Pope stopped to pray at a simple stone monument commemorating the 200,000 Lithuanian Jews killed either in the country or in Nazi concentration camps in Europe.
Minutes later, he paid an emotional visit to the nearby Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, a former KGB basement jail where Lithuanians who were considered enemies of the Soviet Union were either executed or tortured before being sent to labor camps in Siberia.
“We, Lithuanian Jews,” said Kukliansky during the ceremony, “are carrying a perpetual obligation – to safeguard the historical truth and to never give up our efforts in ensuring the wholesome future of our children.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Lithuania in August and thanked it for its support in various EU forums, where he said the Jewish state is badly misunderstood.
Netanyahu also thanked the Lithuanian government for its strong stance against antisemitism, and for standing up for the truth, a constant effort, constantly nurtured.
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OUR SITES אתרי מבט
Argentina Rabbi Recovers After Antisemitic Attack
Rabbi Shlomo Tawil, co-director of the Chabad House in Rosario, Argentina. Photo: Facebook.
JNS.org – Rabbi Shlomo Tawil, director of Chabad-Lubavitch in Rosario, Argentina, was recovering at home after being assaulted by three youths on Sunday night during the holiday of Shavuot.
According to neighbors who came to the rabbi’s aid, the attackers shouted antisemitic insults at the rabbi, and began hitting him in the head and abdomen, reported Chabad.org.They then threw him to the floor, kicked him and trampled his hat before fleeing.
Thousands of Palestinians Riot on Border, Amid Heightened Gaza Tensions
A Palestinian man inspects the site of an Israeli air strike in the southern Gaza Strip, June 14, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Ibraheem Abu Mustafa.
Thousands of Palestinians rioted on the Israel-Gaza Strip border on Friday, hurling rocks, firebombs and explosive devices at IDF troops.
Also on Friday, numerous blazes were ignited in southern Israel by incendiary balloons sent over the border from Hamas-ruled Gaza.
Early Friday morning, the Israeli Air Force struck several Hamas targets in Gaza, in response to a rocket attack the previous night in which a religious school in Sderot was damaged.
WHERE BDS AND TERRORISTS CONVERGE by Caroline Glick
On May 31, the cry went out from Times Square, New York City, to annihilate Israel and extend the terror war against the Jewish state to America.
As they did in Beirut, Berlin, London, Tehran, and Dearborn, Michigan, Israel-haters gathered at Times Square to call for Israel’s dissolution on the day the Iranian regime has determined to be “Al Quds Day,” that is, Jerusalem Day.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) posted a video of the event. In it, a series of speakers called over and over again for Israel’s annihilation, voiced support for terrorists and terrorism and called for the war against Israel to come to New York.
Nate Chase from the World Workers’ Party led the crowd in chanting, “We don’t want not two state! We want ’48!”
LEFTIST COMEDY IS LITERALLY HITLER by Daniel Greenfield
Leftists have never been as humorless, unfunny and touchy as they are now. And they’ve never poured as much time and money into late night comedy, Netflix comedy specials and assorted people angrily shouting things about Trump and their confused sexual identities into a microphone, as they are now.
Comedy, as supported by billion-dollar media corporations based in blue states that would legalize killing babies and heroin before they would permit gun ownership, has returned to its roots in Greek political life. Except the ancient Greeks thought that people insulting each other’s politics was funny and the modern Proggies think that the insults should be one-sided and delivered in an echo chamber.
UCLA DAILY BRUIN CENSORS FACTS ABOUT STUDENT LINKS TO TERRORISTS by David Horowitz and Sara Dogan
The UCLA Daily Bruin and its editorial staff have made a mockery of the concept of a free press, opening their pages to terrorist political organizations and closing them to the opponents of terrorist propaganda and Jew hatred. The Bruin’s allegiance to the destroy-Israel left and failure to observe the core principles of journalism in a democracy was glaringly obvious in its coverage of a recent student government ruling.
The resolution passed on Tuesday, May 21, by the UCLA Undergraduate Students Association asserted that—contrary to all evidence and a long history of spreading the genocidal lies of Hamas terrorists, and harassing Jewish students and their invited speakers— the group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is not anti-Semitic.
New Column!
Soeren Kern : Britain’s Back-Door Blasphemy Law
The long-running dispute revolves — most recently — around an effort by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims, a cross-party formation of around two-dozen MPs in the British Parliament, to institutionalize the definition of Islamophobia in racial rather than religious terms.
The proposed definition has been opposed by many Britons, including British Muslims, who warn that it would effectively shield Islam from scrutiny and valid criticism.
Carrie Sheffield : NY Times Claims Trump Does Not Care About Re-Election Campaign
The New York Times claimed that President Donald Trump does not care about his re-election campaign or about the policies he would seek to enact during a second term.
“In a recent overarching state-of-the-race briefing in Florida with Brad Parscale, his campaign manager, Mr. Trump was consistently distracted and wanted to discuss other things,
Jonathan S. Tobin : Fake News? David Friedman Didn’t Endorse Annexation
The New York Times got quite a scoop when, in an interview with its Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said that he favored Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. That was the lede of Halbfinger’s article, as well as in the headline. And that was also the way the story was played in virtually every one of the many publications that picked up on the story.
Daniel Greenfield : A Movement of Professional Victims and Conspiracy Theories
Every movement has a mission statement. “Make America Great Again” is the conservative one. (It’s the “Again” part that makes it conservative.) The enemies of making America great have one too.
If the radicals had red hats, they would say, “They’re Out To Get You.”
TOTGY has been the leftist motto since before Marx learned to shave and then decided to stop doing it. The arc of history may bend toward many places, but the black rainbow serviced by a snarling leprechaun with a PhD and a cocaine problem always begins and ends in the same paranoid place.
Ben-Dror Yemini : Israelis Should Not Celebrate U.S. Ambassador’s Talk of West Bank Annexation
In certain circumstances, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said last week, Washington would recognize the annexation of Palestinian territories by Israel.
As expected, Friedman’s comments led to fierce criticism. The Palestinians already call him the “settler spokesman.”
But in fact, instead of blaming the settlers, the Palestinians can only blame themselves. And given that we are in the era of “narratives,” namely, lies that pretend to be history, we should pay attention to the facts.