Thursday, June 30, 2016

Threat to Israel: Hamas: Not Partners of Peace

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                           
Hamas Terrorist in uniform

As President Obama is gearing up to start another round of peace talks between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel, let me remind him that he is trying to make peace between Israel's closest threat to her, the terrorist group of Hamas who have taken over Gaza.  The problem is that Hamas has influence over Judea and Samaria's political leader, Abbas.
                                                                           
Fatah and Hamas, on and off rivals,  joined together in 2011.  Here's Hamas' leader in Gaza,
Ismail Haniyeh right in the front row.  
They had joined together to create a Palestine, remember?
                                                                         
Hamas is a designated terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.  It is an immediate, ongoing threat to Israel and its citizens.  It would be lovely if a miracle happened after these 68 years and they decided not to follow their life time swearing of never making peace.  Indications are that they are as adamant as ever in not pursuing such a peace.  Even President Rivlin has said that now is not the time.
                                                                           
More Hamas Terrorists
Since 2007, they have started 3 wars with Israel.  
This is because the group is constructing an enormous infrastructure with which to attack Israeli communities, including a broad network of terror tunnels that are rebuilt with funds diverted from international humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians.  This means that 7.6 million Israelis are now within range of about 10,000 Hamas rockets.
                                                                         
Morsi and Obama were tight.  
These terrorists founded Hamas in 1987 as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.  This is the group that had taken over Egypt temporarily with Morsi as its President who their General  Sisi finally ousted at the USA's President Obama's objections.
                                                                             
Later talks in Cairo with John Kerry.
 He was defending the Muslim Brotherhood a 2nd time, as he also showed favoritism to them when he first spoke in Cairo and wanted them in the front seats of the auditorium. At the time they were being blackballed by Egypt.  Morsi was a high-ranking Muslim Brotherhood leader. The Muslim Brotherhood is all for wiping Israel off the map and killing Jews.
                                                                         
Hamas Unit Right  on Israel's Doorstep
Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) rules the Gaza Strip and wants Israel destroyed.  Since 1987 they have murdered more than 500 Israeli civilians.  Since 2007, when the group violently overtook the Gaza Strip, it has started 3 wars with Israel.  They get money and arms from Iran, who also wants Israel destroyed; not made peace with but completely destroyed into oblivion.  There are other smaller jihadist militant organizations in Gaza.  One is the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic State called ISIS.
                                                                                 
To show their interest in peace, Hamas builds attack tunnels, so why does Obama think they will come to a peace table  and be sincere about it?  In the last war with them in 2014, Israel found and destroyed 32 Hamas tunnels which were going right into Israel from Gaza.  The Hamas terrorists' aim was to kidnap and kill Israelis.  Here they now are, 1,000 Hamas men are rebuilding the attack tunnel network, diverting materials provided by the international community to rebuild Gaza's home and civilian infrastructure for postwar progress.  The Israelis living near Gaza have reported hearing digging sounds beneath their communities.
                                                                           
Why dig tunnels?  Last year Israel prevented almost 1,000 Hamas smuggling operations to import weapons and other illicit materials into Gaza that could be used for bomb making.  The  contraband included rocket components, explosives, rocket fuel, drones and banned dual-use items.
                                                                             
 Also, scuba diving equipment was confiscated that would be used for sea attacks.  This shows that Hamas' continued investment in naval infiltration operations  are going on against Israel.

Two years ago in 2014, Hamas and Israel were at war and 4 Hamas divers attempted to perpetrate terror attacks at Israel's Zikim Beach.  Since Operation Protective Edge, Hamas has doubled the size of its naval commando force.
                                                                             
Long-range rockets hitting Israel 
Since 2001, which is only 15 years ago, terrorist groups from Gaza have fired more than 17,000 rockets into Israel.  Israel protects itself with their invention of the Iron Dome rocket defense system, but it cannot totally eliminate the threat.  Just 2 years ago, there were hundreds of rockets and mortar attacks from Gaza.  This included missiles made by using Iranian techniques and included longer-range Iranian rockets.  This forced Israel to launch another defensive operation known as OPERATION PROTECTIVE EDGE.    More rockets have been fired into Israel since the attack was officially stopped.
                                                                             
Hamas's leader is Ismail Haniyeh.  He would be the one Obama needs to convince that peace is important.  Yet Haniyeh is busy praising the recent violent attack of his men against Israel by his terrorists from Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem and called for another Intifada in Judea and Samaria.   That's how he answered the EU and Obama's desires of being able to stage another peace initiative.  With WAR!  In this way he's telling Abbas that he cannot sit down to any peace talk as there will be no peace.  
                                                                               
Chart showing Palestinian activity against Israel : Hebrew goes from right to left instead of English that goes from left to right.  
Israel and the PA of Judea and Samaria, the rulers there, uncovered Hamas cells preparing violent attacks against Israeli civilians and other actions meant to destabilize Judea and Samaria.
                                                                               
PA leader, Abbas
During the 2014 summer war, Israel's internal security service stopped a Hamas coup attempt in Judea and Samaria aimed at overthrowing Abbas and instigating a new round of violence.

Israel and the PA have broken up Hezbollah and other Iranian sponsored terrorist cells in Judea and Samaria.
                                                                         
Remember, Israel is and has been the only Democratic state in the Middle East.  Israel's survival is important to the USA's national interests.  The USA has been the only one to provide annual security assistance for its self-defense against mounting threats across the region. which now includes ISIS.  There has been a 10 year Memorandum of Understanding between these 2 allies.  They also have going between them other cooperative programs including a missile defense and tunnel detection.   Israel is the creator of defense methods both in their own airport and in other ways that they share with other nations.  Right now they might even help Turkey with airport defense due to Turkey's current attack there.  One thing Israel can't do without are resources to buy weapons for protection so they can develop systems needed to respond decisively to threats from Hamas and Hezbollah and a potential nuclear armed Iran.
                                                                         
Congress has been more understanding of this need than our President may have been.  We must insure that this continues.  Israel is the child of the USA who is about to receive their PhD in 6 months after 4 years of hard studying.  We cannot stop our assistance now when Israel is so close to receiving its degree.  One doesn't walk out on their children.  The same with the state of Israel.  The USA cannot come to a point of pulling out its much needed alliance with new senators who might  not see the forest for the trees.  Israel has been self reliant.  She is  not costing the USA with American lives, just money well spent.  Of all the money spent in attacking, here is one place it's used in defense.

 If they are concerned about a difference in numbers of lives lost, another reminder is that to Israel, lives are to be defended, but to terrorist groups such as Hamas, lives are there to be used, and have little value.  That's why numbers have been so lop-sided.  Don't blame Israel for keeping their people alive under attacks.  This is a difference in the two value systems.  Israel preaches "TO LIFE" and Hamas and ISIS preach 'TO DEATH' which will get us what we want.

Resource:  AIPAC
https://electronicintifada.net/content/after-reconciliation-agreement-hamas-and-fatah-united-press-crackdown/13463
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/fatah-and-hamas-initial-accord-officials-say/2011/04/27/AFH7pxzE_story.html


Sunday, June 26, 2016

Peace With Abbas' anti-Semitic Accusation Against Israel ?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                         
Representation of a massacre of the Jews in 1349 Antiquitates Flandriae(Royal Library of Belgium manuscript 13076/77)

The 3rd president of the USA is again trying to bring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis and will fail again.  First it was Bill Clinton who tried to force a peace in his last days in office.  Then it was Bush who tried and failed, and now it's Obama in his last days who along with his co-worker, John Kerry, thinks they are capable of making a deal that will satisfy both parties but will fail.

The problem is this:  The Palestinians belong to a terroristic group of Arabs who swore never to make a deal 68 years ago.  They were first led by Arafat who rejected every offer.  Now it's Abbas, his replacement, who does the same.  They must really not be interested in peace, for their main goal seems to be trying to wipe Israel off the map, and indeed, their maps show no Israel at all, and their schools teach this, also.
                                                                   
 
Even Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has pronounced any peace deal today as currently impossible with a situation of Israel wanting peace and have gone the mile needed for peace, but with the Palestinians now lying about Israel so pronouncedly, that it is a joke.  They are trying to show why they cannot go for peace by accusing Israel's rabbis of calling for the poisoning of Palestinian water supplies, the old accusation going back to the Middle Ages of Jews poisoning the wells.  This is so wild that it makes me choke.  How can one discuss a peace deal with people who think like this?   His people may be ignorant of Jewish history, but I certainly hope that leaders of countries realize where this comes from and the history of anti-Semitism.  Abbas is again trying to bring hatred against Jews, hatred that causes political views to be hated as well against Israel.  He figures that since the world has hated Jews in the past, they will ignore whatever is true about the Palestinians and only remember charges against the Jews, like they have poisoned water of Palestinians.  With their own people, it seems to have worked, since they are being brain-washed against Jews since they enter school, and even before with their parents.

Anti-Semitism was the outgrowth of Christian teaching of hatred for Jews to cause them to convert.  People were taught to hate Jews.  This medieval anti-Jewish prejudice was religious in nature and could generally be obviated by conversion to Christianity.  On the other hand, anti-Semitism has some affinities with the anti-Jewish prejudice in ancient Alexandria and later, against the Marranos in Spain.  Abbas is doing the very same thing, only this goal is to end Israel completely, and one can't make peace with a nation one wants dissolved and destroyed.

We have been accused of all sorts of terrible things, including using human blood in the making of our special bread, matzos.  "When the Black Death raged through Europe (1346–53), the charge was given that the Jews had poisoned the wells.  The only court of appeal that regarded itself as their appointed protector, according to historical conceptions, was the "Holy Roman Emperor."   The emperor, as legal successor to Titus (79-81) , who had acquired the Jews for his special property through the destruction of the Temple in the year 70, claimed the rights of possession and protection over all the Jews in the former Roman empire.  The king at the time of the Black Death was Charles IV, the king of Bohemia, called the German king, born May 14, 1316  in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Similar to accusations made during the Black Plague, Jews were accused of encouraging lepers to poison Christian wells in France. An estimated five thousand Jews were killed before the king, Philip the Tall, admitted the Jews were innocent. Then, Charles IV expelled all French Jews without the one-year period he had promised them, as much of Europe blamed the Black Plague on the Jews and tortured them so they would confess that they poisoned the wells. Despite the pleas of innocence of Pope Clement VI, the accusations resulted in the destruction of over 60 large and 150 small Jewish communities.

Netanyahu has condemned Abbas' incitement saying, "Abbas showed his true colors in Brussels.  Someone who refuses to meet with Israel's President Reuven Rivlin and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for direct negotiations, and someone who promotes blood libels in the European parliament is lying when he claims his hand is outstretched in peace.

Oh, I know that prejustice develops against countries from the family.  My own Swedish grandmother used to say, 'Oh, those Norwegians!."  That was it.  Her tone of voice showed displeasure towards this rivaling Scandinavian country.  But they were not being used as scapegoats of the world, as Jews have been, someone to pile all the ails of the world upon.  My hope is that everyone is smarter today and realizes that this present accusation of Abbas is showing his true colors and what Israel is up against.  Israel does not have a "normal" situation to deal with in coming to peace terms with another people, because if Abbas has is way, there won't be an Israel.  After 68 years of defending themselves and having been given the OK to be created in the first place by the world politicians, this is not going to happen.


Resource: CUFI Action Fund  garybauer@cufiactionfund.com  ; Palestinian Lies, Here We Go Again
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Middle_Ages
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-IV-Holy-Roman-emperor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death_Jewish_persecutions
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=18247

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Madagascar Finally Has a Jewish Neighborhood

Nadene Goldfoot                                                               
Hitler spoke with Arab leaders before WWII.


Islamic leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
Sherif of Jerusalem, wanted Jews out
of Palestine.  

Hitler in the 1930's blamed all the economic depression Germany was suffering from on the Jews.  Everything was their fault.  It was a rehappening of events that had been occurring for the past 2,000 years to Jews.  They had been in Germany after losing Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE, and they had even served in WWI two thousand years later in 1914-17.

Germany wanted France to get rid of their 10,000 Jews and be Judenrien, so on December 9, 1938, the French Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet, informed the German foreign Minister, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, that to do that they would have to ship them out somewhere, and where?  The Final Solution of the Germans had not yet been thought of, but were thinking along the lines of mass emigration somewhere.
                                                                     
Madagascar along the coast
Three months later  on March 5, 1938, Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of researching and creating a plan to give to the chief of the Security Police (SIPO)'s Reinhard Heydrich with a "foreign policy solution as it had been negotiated between Poland and France called the Madagascar Plan.   Then it was forgotten about and not thought of till summer 1940 after the fall of France.

A little earlier, Captain Dryfus of France  was the cause of a political scandal that from its beginning in 1894 divided France until it was finally resolved in 1906. He was accused of treason, acting for the Germans and was innocent, but suffered anyway by being found guilty. Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years. The conviction was a miscarriage of justice based upon faulty espionage and blatant antisemitism, as well as a hatred of the German Empire following its annexation of Alsace and part of Lorraine in 1871  .It caused Jews to realize that they needed their own country.  They thought of Africa, but disbanded the idea.  There was no burning desire to live there, but there was for their ancient homeland that had now been called "Palestine."  
                                                                           

Madagascar, a huge island nation off the southeast coast of Africa, is home to thousands of animal species – like lemurs – found nowhere else, plus rainforests, beaches and reefs. Near the busy capital, Antananarivo, is Ambohimanga, a hillside complex of royal palaces and burial grounds, as well as the “Avenue of the Baobabs,” a dirt road lined by massive centuries-old trees.  It is the 4th largest island in the world made up of 587,041 km2(226,658 sq mi)

The island of Madagascar had colonization possibilities he found from the French Colonial Office.  He included his evacuation plan for 4 million Jews to be shipped there over a period of 4 years.  It would be financed by a special bank that would be managing confiscated Jewish property and by contributions exacted from world Jewry, or blackmail.  He had also advocated creating a police reserve as a giant ghetto, much like the Pale of Settlement was only much worse.

The plan included compensating the 25,000 French citizens living on the island already.  The control would be transferred to Germany under a mandate.  The ports were to become German naval bases if the German navy desired.  Suitable areas of the country would be excluded from the Jewish territory and made Judenterritorium for the construction of air bases..  A German Police Governor under the administration of the Reichsfuehrer SS would be in charge of the island. Apart from this, the Jews would administer their part of the land and have their own mayors, police, postal and railroad administration.  The Jews would be jointly liable for the value of the island.  This plan was a Mandate and Jews would not get German citizenship, but those deported there lose their citizenship of European countries from the date of deportation and would be residents of the Mandate of Madagascar.
                                                                       
Tower of David in Jerusalem 
The whole idea was to prevent Jews from creating a Jewish state in Palestine.  They wanted Jerusalem to be out of the hands of the Jews and only be for the Christians and Islamic people.  American Jews would see that Jews on the island were kept alive only by the good behavior of American Jews.

Gossip caused the plan to leak out and it was published in Italy in July 1940.  by August, the 3rd Reich endorsed the plan.  The American Jewish Committee was much alarmed and they published by May 1941 a special report about this that sought to demonstrate that Jews couldn't survive the conditions on the island.

By summer 1940, the Nazis had already come up with their novel idea of a different Final Solution; their extermination program. So, by February 10, 1942, the Madagascar Plan was officially shelved and replaced with the evacuation to the East of Jews.  They expected to get all Jews out of Europe so they could control it all.  Rademacher had signed the agreement in Berlin on July 3, 1940.   Instead, they slaughtered 6 million Jews in the most despicable ways, and the utter horrid thing is that they were helped by many Europeans.
Madagascar Natives went  shopping, perhaps. 
Today, a Jewish community "was officially born in Madagascar last month when 121 men, women and children underwent Orthodox conversions on the remote Indian Ocean island nation better known for lemurs, chameleons, dense rain forests and vanilla." Of course they were not from the European Jews of WWII, as they never got the chance to live there, despite the almost impossible conditions they would have had to face.  They had a worse situation.  


These people who converted to Judaism on the island were  followers of various messianic Christian sects and had  become disillusioned with their churches and began to study Torah.  The conversions, which took place over a 10-day period, were the climax of a process that arose about five to six years ago.
Through self-study and with guidance from Jewish internet sources and correspondence with rabbis in Israel, they now pray in Sephardic-accented Hebrew and strictly observe the Sabbath and holidays.
The conversions were facilitated by Kulanu, a New York-based nonprofit that specializes in supporting isolated and emerging Jewish communities, but were initiated by the residents. 
" Rabbi Gerald Sussman of Temple Emanuel on Staten Island in New York said that   "“We are in the process of reconstituting the Jewish people, which would have been more numerous had it not been decimated by the Holocaust and had we not lost millions of Jews in Arab lands.”

Resource: http://www.israelandstuff.com/rebirth-madagascar-community-chooses-to-return-to-their-jewish-heritage
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Madagascar.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair

Saturday, June 18, 2016

German-Jewish Problems from 1348-1349: Black Death

Nadene Goldfoot                                                 
The Plague, a painting in Madrid Museum

The Black Death was an not just an epidemic, but a pandemic  outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe around 1348 that spread through Asia and Europe  that killed between one-third and two-thirds of the population in less than five years.  It killed 25 million people then over a period of 50 years.  The plague stopped during the winter years.  Spreading across Asia first, people thought it was over by 1348.  The epidemic spanned from China to England to North Africa, transmitted along the Silk Road and other trade routes.  It was an epidemic that killed much of the population of Europe.  It led to murderous attacks on many Jewish communities because they were the first thought to have caused it.  "The Black Death lingered on for centuries, particularly in cities. 

Outbreaks included the Great Plague of London (1665-66), in which one in five residents died." Jews had already been expulsed from England in 1290 and weren't allowed back until 1655.  
                                                                                  

This happened in Germany even more than other countries because the masses of people were so superstitious that this charge, originating in Savoy, was that Jews had caused the disease by poisoning the wells.   

The truth was that Jews were less exposed to the plague because of their being shunned by the German Christians and were segregated from them in their own communities.  The Jews followed their dietary and hygienic laws and this protected them but made them more suspicious to the gentiles as they were looked upon as killers of Christ and evil.  

Pope Clement VI issued a bull condemning the libel.  He ordered the Jews to be protected.  They population ignored this, and there was hardly any Jewish community that didn't suffer from Alsace eastward from attacks.

Emperor Charles IV even went along with the attacks in return for a share in the booty.   The guilds for the lower nobility and the lower patrician classes were against their Jewish supporters.  Those who owned money to Jews welcomed the opportunity to kill their creditors.

In Germany alone, attacks on Jews took place in about 350 places, while 60 large and 150 small communities were absolutely exterminated!

Many towns from then on banished the Jews for all time, although some soon changed their minds.  This was the greatest disaster that happened to Germany Jewery in the Middle Ages.  Attacks on a smaller scale took place also in Poland, Catalonia and northern Italy.  
                                                                          
Suffering from blisters of bubonic plague 

"The first well-documented pandemic was the Plague of Justinian, which began in 541 CE. Named after the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, it killed up to 10,000 people a day in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey), according to ancient historians. Modern estimates suggest half of Europe's population was wiped out before the plague disappeared in the 700s."  This means that the Middle Ages pandemic was the 2nd round of the bubonic plague.                                                                     


What caused it in the first place?  Mainly, it was rats that carried fleas that bit people.  "The animal reservoir for plague includes mice, camels, chipmunks, prairie dogs, rabbits, and squirrels, but the most dangerous for humans are rats, especially the urban sort. The disease is usually transmitted by the rat flea,Xenopsylla cheopis."  This cause wasn't found until 1859.  during a 3rd epidemic in China that started in 1855.  However, "The second way the plague was spread was through the air.   People were infected with it simply by inhaling."

"The most common reason  thought by Christians was that it was the wrath of God. The times were fanatically religious, and one of the ways God got even, so to speak, was by punishing man. This is especially confirmed in Christian mythology with the idea of the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, one of whom is pestilence. This Horseman of Pestilence was their interpretation of the plague."  They blamed the corruption of the church, or for not stopping the Muslims during the Crusades.  They finally blamed the Jews just for living there  " because they had allowed the Jews to live in their midst as Jews. This reason became widely accepted. Therefore, in many communities throughout Christian Europe the formula and prescription of saving the community from the plague lay in either converting, exiling or murdering the Jewish population.  No wonder we today are down to only 14 million Jews in the world, about 0.02% of the world population.  

How did people suffer?  "Bubonic plague, the disease's most common form, refers to telltale buboes—painfully swollen lymph nodes—that appear around the groin, armpit, or neck.

Septicemic plague, which spreads in the bloodstream, comes either via fleas or from contact with plague-infected body matter.

 Pneumonic plague, the most infectious type, is an advanced stage of bubonic plague when the disease starts being passed directly, person to person, through airborne droplets coughed from the lungs. If left untreated, bubonic plague kills about 50 percent of those it infects. The other two forms are almost invariably fatal without antibiotics."

The Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio lived through the plague as it ravaged the city of Florence in 1348. The experience inspired him to write The Decameron, a story of seven men and three women who escape the disease by fleeing to a villa outside the city. In his introduction to the fictional portion of his book, Boccaccio gives a graphic description of the effects of the epidemic on his city.

"The symptoms were not the same as in the East, where a gush of blood from the nose was the plain sign of inevitable death; but it began both in men and women with certain swellings in the groin or under the armpit. They grew to the size of a small apple or an egg, more or less, and were vulgarly called tumours. In a short space of time these tumours spread from the two parts named all over the body. Soon after this the symptoms changed and black or purple spots appeared on the arms or thighs or any other part of the body, sometimes a few large ones, sometimes many little ones. These spots were a certain sign of death, just as the original tumour had been and still remained."

Most victims of the pandemic were buried in mass graves.  Civilization up to that time with its laws of behavior was abandoned and it was every man for himself.  

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/definitions/black-death-45
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-diseases/plague-article/
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/plague.htm
http://www.jewishhistory.org/the-black-death/

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Sephardic and Hidden Jews (Marranos) of Jamaica

Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

                                                                                 
Jews  were living on the island of Jamaica in 1577 and were free to live and work there.  

The English occupied this island of Jamaica in 1655.  It wasn't until the British  took the island in 1655 that Jews were permitted to practice their religion openly and establish a Jewish community, including synagogues and cemeteries. 
                                                                           

Columbus had sailed from Spain in 1492 and bumped into islands that were close to North America.  "He  visited Jamaica on his second trip to the New World and in 1503 claimed it for Spain. The island was granted to Columbus’ descendants as a personal possession."  

 Many believe that Columbus could have been a Marrano Jew of Italy.  He wrote to his son in the Hebrew script.  This was the time that Spain had the Spanish Inquisition starting and Jews had to either leave Spain or convert to Catholicism.  Thus, when a family couldn't afford to leave the country, they hid the fact that they were Jewish;  thus the term, and a negative one it is, of Marrano.  They were hidden Jews.  They went through the pretense of being Catholic.  
                                                                             
Secret Seder in Spain during Spanish Inquisition by Marranos (Anusim) 
By 1655, some Portuguese Marrano were probably already residents on the island.  Many Sephardim of Marrano origin established themselves shortly after 1655, and in the course of the 18th century, when the island's economy was doing very well, the Jewish settlement developed which benefited from the immigration of both the Portuguese Marranos and of the present Jews of that day.   Sephardi as well as Ashkenazi Jews who came from Europe, mainly from England had come here to settle.

"In 1577, Jews were free to live and work on the island, but it wasn't until the British conquered Jamaica in 1655 that Jews were permitted to practice their religion openly and establish a  Jewish community, including synagogues and cemeteries.

Even on this distant island, the Jews were subjected to many restrictions until 1831, and had played an important part in the life of Jamaica.  They filled every public office.

With the decline in the island's prosperity in the 19th century, the Jewish community diminished, and contributed some of the outstanding families in Jewish life in England, like the Henriques.

 The Henriques family that fled Portugal during the Spanish Inquisition in the 17th century are all descended or related to the patriarch of the family, Henriques Dias Milao-Caceres  (1528-1609).   He was a wealthy businessman from Lisbon, who was arrested by the Spanish Inquisition during the Iberian Union on charges of not having paid taxes, having dealings with the Jews, and for having attempted to flee the country before trial.  Most of his family and entourage who had not managed to leave the country on time, had also been arrested and interrogated by the Inquisition. At the age of 82, Henriques Dias Milao-Caceres was sentenced to death, along with his man servant who was believed to have converted to Judaism in secret, and a female member of the family. They were burned at the stake on the 5th of April, 1609. The rest of the family members, whom had had their lives spared, were forced to witness the execution. Those witnesses took on the surname Henriques, in memory of Henriques Dias Milao-Caceres, thus beginning of the Henriques family as we know it today. Those who adopted the surname include Henriques Dias Milao-Caceres' son, Paulo (Moses) de Milao, his daughter Beatriz (married to Alvaro Dinis Yachia Eanes), and his grandson, Reuben Eanes (son of Beatriz).
                                                                                   
There were formerly communities in Spanish Town, Falmouth, and Montego Bay, but the only one remaining is that of Kingston where the majority of the island's 300 Jews lived in 1990, and 200 today.  There is little choice for them but to intermarry today.  They have been one of the world's oldest Jewish community, so they will either leave or assimilate.  The island is about 90% Black.  If someone says they had a white great grandfather, he most likely was Jewish.
                                                             
Richard "Dick" Bogle
I was interested in Jamaica when a Black friend of mine from high school, Richard Bogle,  told me about his family's history.  His ggrandfather, Richard Bogle,  had been born on the island to a native woman and a sea captain.  I had started to be very interested in genealogy and soon found a sea captain by the surname of Bogle.  In doing searches, I found many Jewish names.  I believe his ancestor left the island at age 12 and by that time, Blacks were freed, which was way before this happened in the United States.  England at that time was progressive.  His ancestor stowed away on a ship and reached Missouri, hopped on a famous wagon train and got out to California, panned for gold and struck it rich, opened a bank and loaned money.  Dick, my friend, became a policeman, then detective, and wound up as a TV news personality in our town which led to becoming an important member of the city council.  His family genealogy.  was so interesting that I wanted to see it made into a movie.

Resource: http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Jews-of-Jamaica.html?s=mm
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.timesofisrael.com/jamaican-jews-see-intermarriage-conversion-as-their-future/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henriques_family
http://www.heymannfamily.com/Heyman%20Family/Ancestors%20Web%20Pages/The%20Family%20de%20Milao.htm  on Henrique.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/02/dick_bogle_pioneering_african.html

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Anti-Semitic European Statistics in Today's End of Times Days

Nadene Goldfoot                                                      
75 years ago, The Sherif of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini met
with Hitler in Germany  to discuss getting rid of Jews.  Nazism has
been captivating anti-Semites of all countries to this day..  
        
In the past 136 years, from when Russian Jews were escaping constant pogroms and taking the initiative to brave the waters and get to Palestine, their original home of Judah, to day, we see we are heading right for the anti-Semitism found in the 1930's for the same old reasons plus one new one.

Europe is not winning any battle against this upheaval of anti-Semitism.  Their situation has changed with an abundance of Muslim refugees entering their lands of Sweden, France, Germany, England, etc.  I'm afraid they've brought no only their children but their attitude towards Jews and Israel.
                                                                         
At the end of 2013, Europe's European Union's Fundamental Right's Agency did a sweeping survey of Jews living in Europe.
                                                                 
1. 66 2/3%  Jews found anti-Semitism affecting them.
2. 75% of Jews said anti-Semitism had worsened since 2008. This was an increase in the past 5 years.
3. 50%of all European Jews fear being victims of anti-Semitic rhetoric.
4. 50% of all European Jews fear being the victim of physical assaults.
5. 25%  of all European Jews avoid Jewish sites because of fear of attacks.
6. 60 % of all European Jews heard or saw someone anti-Semitic claiming the Holocaust was either an exaggeration or was a downright myth.
7. 66 2/3% of all European Jews violently assaulted were too afraid to report the crime to local police.
8. 84% more French anti-Semitic attacks on Jews since the murder of 4 Jews in the kosher supermarket in Paris, reported by Service de Protection de la Communaute Juive (SPC). 

                                                             NEWSPAPERS

1. The Guardian newspaper reported that anti-Semitic attacks in UK are at the highest level ever recorded.
2. The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported of anti-Semitic attacks in France climbed 84%E AFTER the Kosher shop killings.
3. The Business Insider reported about Hungary's anti-Semitic Jobbik Party spreading across Eastern Europe.
4. The Atlantic asked in print, "Is it time for the Jews to leave Europe?  The answer would have to be, to where? and that would of course be Israel, for it's very hard for Jews to get into other places.  The Syrians are first in line and not exactly welcome anywhere, either.
                                                                                     
Anti-Semitic act in Jewish cemetery in France, 2010. 

                                                              A Few of the ACTS OF VIOLENCE
1. Malma, Sweden:  has been the site of many acts of violence against it's Jewish population who came there looking for refuge from WWII. Many of  the 3rd generation of Jews have fled to Israel after much anti-Semitic acts.  I've been writing about this situation in several articles.

2.  Paris, France:  A 13 year old Jewish boy just outside of his school was viciously beaten and taunted by a group of nasty thugs calling out, "Take that, dirty Jew."
                                                                               
 4 young men killed in Paris Supermarket 
3. Paris France:  The kosher supermarket where anti-Semitic killings took place after the terrorist attack at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper.  They killed 4 Jews before the police killed the gunman.

4. Brussels, Belgium, where so much trouble has been brewing lately, the Parliament received a letter accusing Jews of being "thieves, murderers, liars and degenerates."

5. Amsterdam, Netherlands:  where Sephardic Jews left to live in New Amsterdam, America, which became New York: Elderly Holocaust survivors, Diana and Shmuel Blog,  were attacked verbally and beaten by 2 men who said to them, "Dirty Jews, you don't need your jewelry anymore.  You've been wearing it for too long.  Now it's all ours."

6 Copenhagen, Denmark: During a bat mitzvah (girl) celebration at the Jewish Community Center near the Great Synagogue, the security guard, Dan Uzan age 37, was shot and killed by an Islamic jihadist.  Evidently this was not a robbery but about murdering a Jew to cause fear.

7. Manchester, England,  major city in the northwest of England, where writer Victor Sharpe has told of seeing  growing anti-Semitism every time he visited his mother,  4 teen-aged  Jewish lads were attacked by 4 anti-Semites which left the 17 year old in hospital with a brain hemorrhage.  A hate attack.  London's new mayor is Muslim.  "Sadiq Khan is excusing Muslim terrorism as some punishment from G-d Almighty on a non-Muslim population, as if people, (Jews)  deserve it.  You just cannot excuse such terrorism.  He's getting away with it.  Now he's in a seat of power as a Mayor. Is he going to stop anti-Semitism in London? Time will tell.  

8.  St. Polten, Austria:  A Jew  outside a mall wearing a Star of David was violently assaulted by thugs who called him a F***ing Jew.  A hate attack.

9.  Zurich, Switzerland; land of people who haven't mixed into wars, has a neo- Nazi rock group.   Amok, one of their members, spat in the face of a Jewish man who was leaving a synagogue.  Amok shouted, "Heil Hitler!"  Is this "freedom of speech"  or is it hate speech.  I'd say hate speech that will undoubedly lead to other actions.  

10. Warsaw, Poland:  where thousands of Jews were slaughtered in WWII, Poland passed a ban on kosher meat, and has said it is now illegal to kill or sell such.  So now vandals desecrated the fence outside the Jewish cemetery.  Good thing there was a fence or they would have tipped or and broken the headstones as well, as other places have found.  Why the ban on kosher meat?  It's a way of killing cows that is the most humane with the least amount of pain if any.  Poles marked their anniversary of the decision from their Constitutional Tribunal with this announcement. They're not trying to spread Vegetarianism or even Veganism.  They're just against Jews living in Poland.  The records show that there were more than enough Poles helping the Nazis during WWII in rounding up Jews and other matters.

11. Grassina, Tuscan, Italy, where Jews who could went to escape the Holocaust and perhaps board a ship for Palestine, anti-Semitic vandals spray-painted "Jews to the gas," and painted swastikas on the Jewish Community Center.  Younger Italian Jews in 2015 were planning to most likely leave. The old cannot, and will stay.  This is the situation.  Older people have the hardest time picking up and leaving a country.  They become victims.  Jews in Italy have lived there since Biblical times.

12. Bilbao, Spain in the north,:  A Jewish teenager was attacked by a gang of neo-Nazis who carved swastikas into his arm. The attackers kicked and punched the teen after carving a swastika and the number 88 into his arm with a razor blade."

We may be only 0.02% of the world population, with 6 million living in Israel and about 6 million in the USA, but the rest are spread over European countries and South Africa and different islands and South America.  There are good people in over 100 countries on 6 continents who are not anti-Semites, but Europe is just not doing the job, and most  the remaining 2 million Jews live in Europe since we have about  only 14 million in the world.   This anti-Semitism is reaching a boiling point which makes the present time the most dangerous for Jews living there since WWII.  Complacency leads to disaster, and I don't see many making a move to correct this situation in Europe.
                                                                             
The EU (European Union) has a Parliament President, Martin Schults.  They have a European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker.  They have a European Council President, Donald Tusk.  They must do everything possible to prevent more anti-Semitism in Europe.  What's odd is that the Arabs have not wanted Jews back home in what was being called "Palestine."  However, it's now with their help that European Jews are fleeing to Israel from persecution once more, like they were being treated by the Nazis and by the Russian pogromists.  It's the story of our history.  We do indeed need our one and only state of Israel.

 Resource: World Jewish Congress, American Section, New York, NY, USA
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/05/malmo-sweden-and-anti-semitism-goes.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/07/ongoing-hatred-in-malmo-sweden-for.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/05/viciousanti-semitism-in-malmo-sweden.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/03/anti-semitism-in-sweden-tennis-davis.html
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/02/timeline-anti-semitism-in-europe.html
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/01/europes-anti-semitism-lying-fallow-has.html
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/04/attack-of-orthodox-jewish-man-on-new.html In New York
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2016/05/how-londons-first-muslim-mayor-uses.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11345643/Paris-shootings-anti-Semitism-Its-OK-to-blame-Jews-again.html
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/17/opinions/europe-anti-semitism-thriving-oren/, by Michael Oren.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Europe
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/200402, Manchester, England attack 9/7/2015
http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Neo-Nazis-gang-carves-attacks-Spanish-teen-cares-swastika-into-arm-415478

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