(Source: Wikipedia)
Table of Contents:
This Yom Hazikaron: Remembering What We Have Lost: Moshe Phillips, JNS, Apr. 23, 2020
The Yom Kippur War: An American Volunteer Remembers: Irwin H. Krasna, Jewish Action, Apr. 2020
The Egyptian ‘Angel’ Who Spied for Israel: Elazar Abrahams, Tablet, Sept. 21, 2018
The San Remo Conference 100 Years On: Prof. Efraim Karsh, BESA, April 24, 2020
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This Yom Hazikaron: Remembering What We Have Lost
Moshe Phillips
JNS, Apr. 23, 2020
Israelis and Zionists around the world will mark Yom Hazikaron this year starting on the evening of April 27. Yom Hazikaron LeHalalei Ma’arakhot Israel ul’Nifge’ei Pe’ulot HaEivah, literally: Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism is Israel’s Memorial Day, and it is not celebrated with barbecues but with tears of ultimate grief. And as so many Israelis mourn for their precious fallen fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, and friends and comrades, it is not the same for Jews outside of Israel.
We may all mourn together on Tisha B’Av and during Yizkor on Yom Kippur, but tragically, it is not the same observing Yom Hazikaron inside the Jewish state as it is anywhere else. It is our task in the Diaspora to bridge the miles and other differences, and mourn along with our fellow Jews in Israel.
One book to read that may assist you to feel the depth of the loss that so many Israelis feel on Yom Hazikaron is Letters to Talia.
Even though the words in it were penned decades ago, starting in 1971, it is a must-read human document. The Hebrew edition of the book was originally published in 2005 and became hugely popular, though somehow, it never achieved the status it so richly deserves outside of Israel.
Letters to Talia is eerily reminiscent of Self-Portrait of a Hero: From the Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu 1963–1976. Both reveal the tragic loss that Israel has suffered by sacrificing its best and brightest on the fields of battle for generations: nearly 24,000 soldiers will be remembered on Yom Hazikaron this year. Letters to Talia is a collection of correspondence between a kibbutz-born secular Israeli high school girl and a religious Israeli soldier named Dov Indig, one of Israel’s fallen heroes.
Indig fell in combat in the Yom Kippur War on Oct. 7, 1973 (11 Tishrei 5734), fighting the Syrian army on the Golan Heights. Indig was a dedicated yeshivah student and part of the Religious Zionist movement. Dov attended the hesder yeshivah program at Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh, near Ashdod, in which soldiers combine Israel’s requirement for military service with advanced yeshiva based Talmud / Torah study. Kerem B’Yavneh was the first hesder program; today, there are nearly 70 such yeshivot.
In early October 2012, a book release event was held in the Knesset for the English edition, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other notables attended. Hagi Ben-Artzi, Sara Netanyahu’s brother, edited the book and figures prominently in numerous letters from both writers.
Many of the letters center around Talia’s desire to put the Jewish religion in proper context in her life as a modern young woman and Dov’s answers to her questions, plus descriptions his army experiences.
What makes the book so moving is not just the emotion that each writer attaches to their search for truth, but the commitment they demonstrate to the Jewish People, their love of the Land of Israel, and their faith in the State of Israel.
The topics tackled encompass an entire range of issues from a then potential Israeli surrender of Sinai to women’s rights and from Israeli emigration to the Diaspora to a critique of Western culture. The lands liberated in 1967 feature prominently in the book. Deeply moving trips to these areas and are discussed. The reader is left to ponder how these young people developed such a profound closeness to these regions so quickly and will gain a better understanding of the pain these withdrawals have caused many Israelis. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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The Yom Kippur War: An American Volunteer Remembers
Irwin H. Krasna
Jewish Action, Apr. 2020
It was Yom Kippur, October 6th, 1973, when we first heard the news: Egypt and Syria had attacked Israel, unprovoked and without warning. Before we even broke our fast, we tuned in to the news on TV that night. We learned that Egypt had crossed the Suez Canal on makeshift bridges and had attacked the Bar-Lev lines. Syria had pushed into the Golan Heights with masses of tanks, and both forces were taking a fierce toll in Israeli lives. Planes had flown over the Sinai and Golan Heights and had met no resistance.
Many Israeli generals had warned that the Arabs were planning an attack, recommending that the country mobilize for war and not to permit soldiers to return home for the holidays. Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan were not convinced, saying that Cairo and Damascus “saber rattle” to aggravate Israel, and that an invasion was unlikely; and their opinion prevailed.
Accordingly, many Israeli soldiers, pilots and other essential military personnel were permitted home for Yom Tov. Only a skeleton crew was left manning the Bar-Lev line along the Suez Canal, and only a few tank crews were left on the Golan Heights. A great number of these soldiers were hesder boys — yeshivah students who volunteer to serve in the army for five years instead of three, combining army service with Talmud study. Because of their religious dedication, many had volunteered to stay “in the field” on Yom Kippur to conduct services for their comrades. When the attack occurred, this small defense force was rapidly overrun and killed.
That night all soldiers were mobilized, the hospitals were emptied of all but critically ill patients, all trucks were requisitioned and all Israelis abroad were asked to return to Israel as soon as possible to rejoin their units.
I was a practicing doctor, living in Forest Hills, New York, at the time. My decision was made quickly. I told my family and two medical partners that I would try to go to Israel to help take care of the wounded. When word came that a seat on a 707 to Israel had been reserved for me, I went to Mt. Sinai Hospital. As chief of pediatric surgery at that facility, I received permission to take surgical needs with me to Israel. I gathered a few dermatomes (for skin grafts), cantor tubes, gallons of betadine solution, scrub brushes and ointment, as well as a few boxes of cadaver skin and pigksin sent from Walter Reed Army Hospital.
The scene at JFK Airport was bedlam. Young Israeli men waving $100 bills begged for seats on the last plane to Israel, to be able to join their units. I thought, “What a difference from the scenes Americans witnessed, of people rushing to get on the last helicopter leaving Saigon, to leave a country at war. Here, our boys are begging to be allowed to return to their country at war.” Even as they clamored, deep-down everyone knew that not all those who would leave on that 707 would ever return. And yet they begged to go. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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The Egyptian ‘Angel’ Who Spied for Israel
Elazar Abrahams
Tablet, Sept. 21, 2018
Precisely one fact is known for certain about Ashraf Marwan’s once-secret life. The son-in-law to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and close aid to his successor, Anwar Sadat, spied for Israel in the lead up to 1973’s Yom Kippur War, and provided warning of the imminent Arab attack. Everything else about Marwan’s clandestine activities is unconfirmable; falsehoods at worst and rumors at best.
Zvi Zamir, the Mossad director during the Yom Kippur war, called him “the best source we have ever had.” Simultaneously, Egypt claims he was a double agent, feeding Israeli intelligence exactly what Sadat wanted them to think. After his mysterious death from a balcony fall in 2007, Marwan received a hero’s funeral from his homeland but was eulogized in Israel as well.
Marwan’s story is recounted as an epic espionage thriller in the Netflix Original film The Angel, titled after his Mossad code name. On the whole, the movie functions as an entertaining history lesson, with the opening narration explaining the preceding Six-Day War, and the lasting effects of Israel retaking the Sinai Peninsula. Director Ariel Vromen does a stellar job fleshing out both sides of the conflict and keeping things accurate. While more time is spent with the Egyptian characters, like Sadat (Sasson Gabai of The Band’s Visit) and of course Marwan (played suavely by Marwan Kenzari), the Israeli characters like Mossad agent Danny Ben Aroya (Toby Kebbell) are given ample time to gain sympathy for their struggles.
The movie only falters when exploring its lead character. Due to the ambiguous nature of Marwan’s exploits, director Ariel Vromen attempts to skirt around the little knowledge we have of the man, leading to unsatisfactory results.
Sometimes, like in all entertainment mediums, the truth can be twisted for dramatic dialogue or action sequences. Here, Vromen takes plenty of liberties, and rightfully so: Simply snatching files off a desk for two hours would put any viewer to sleep. The most memorable moment in the movie follows Marwan sabotaging a Palestinian terrorist attack on an El-Al plane by removing a piece of the missiles he provided. Something of the sort might have happened, but definitely not as portrayed cinematically. Similarly, there’s no evidence Marwan engaged in extramarital affairs, yet this is the basis for a prominent story line.
Marwan’s murky motivations are another blank space for the writers to fill with their own vision. While steering clear of the double-agent route, The Angel paints its protagonist as having purely selfish intentions at first. His powerful father-in-law does not respect him and he seeks revenge. Later we see Marwan grapple with his gambling addiction – perhaps money was the most significant factor in him contacting the Mossad? Is it his power-grabbing personality—the same trait that earns Sadat’s trust and respect?
Then, there’s a jarring shift in the final scenes, when Marwan lays bare his true feelings: He’ll do anything for peace! He just wants to avoid war and conflict at any cost. The filmmakers go so far as to connect Marwan’s exploits to the eventual 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty signed by Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin. It’s a poor storytelling decision since the film gives us no reason to believe that the philandering, gambler we’ve been watching would do anything so high minded and selfless. Truth is, we have no idea what was going through this enigma’s mind and never will, but the filmmaker’s job is to make us believe and here, ultimately, the portrayal of Marwan falters. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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The San Remo Conference 100 Years On
Prof. Efraim Karsh
BESA, April 24, 2020
From the Balfour Declaration to the Paris Peace Conference
Though relegated since Roman times to a small minority in the Land of Israel (renamed Palestine by the Romans) under a long succession of imperial occupiers, not only was Jewish presence there never eliminated but the longing for the ancestral homeland occupied a focal place in Jewish collective memory and religious ritual for millennia, with Jews returning to Palestine from the earliest days of dispersion, mostly on an individual basis but also on a wider communal scale.
In the 1880s, however, a different type of returnees began arriving: young nationalists who rejected diaspora life and sought to restore Jewish national existence in the historic homeland. In August 1897 the First Zionist Congress was held in the Swiss town of Basle, defining the goal of Zionism as “the creation of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine to be secured by public law” and establishing institutions for its realization.
This goal was achieved on November 2, 1917 when the British government issued a formal statement (in the form of a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild) pledging to “use its best endeavours to facilitate the… establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” provided that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”3
Reached after months of negotiations with the Zionist movement, several British cabinet deliberations, and consultation with US President Woodrow Wilson and prominent Anglo-Jewish leaders, this recognition of the Jewish right to national rebirth by the then 7 foremost world power was not only endorsed by Britain’s war allies but also by prominent pan-Arab nationalists including Emir Faisal ibn Hussein of the Hashemite family, the celebrated hero of the “Great Arab Revolt” against the Ottoman Empire and the effective leader of the nascent pan-Arab movement. On January 3, 1919, he signed an agreement with Chaim Weizmann, upcoming leader of the Zionist movement, which endorsed the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine in line with the Balfour Declaration and urged “all necessary measures… to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale.”4
Armed with this agreement, on February 27 the Zionists asked the postwar peace conference, which had begun its deliberations in Paris the previous month, to recognize “the historic title of the Jewish people to Palestine and the right of the Jews to reconstitute in Palestine their National Home” and to appoint Britain as “Mandatory of the League [of Nations],” tasked with creating “such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment there of the Jewish National Home and ultimately render possible the creation of an autonomous Commonwealth, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”5 … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
Why You Should Know San Remo: Dan Adler, IsraelForever, Apr. 2020 — Many people know the Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 and the U.N. Vote on the Partition Plan on Nov. 29, 1947 as the two main international political events that led to Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948.
Yom Hazikaron: Remembrance Before Celebration: David Hartman, Shalom Hartman Institute, Apr. 27, 2020 — The placing together of Yom Hazikaron – the day of remembrance – and Yom Haatzmaut – the day of our independence as a state – reveals a profound characteristic of the Israeli psyche and of its value systems.
Israeli Memorial Day Songs with English Subtitles: YouTube, Feb 15, 2017 –– Songs for Israeli Memorial Day (Yom Hazikaron), translated from Hebrew to English.
1967 | Remembering the Six-Day War: Michael Walzer, Fathom, Spring 2017 — For some weeks in 1967 I was running around the US giving speeches against the Vietnam War. I was an activist in Vietnam Summer, an effort to produce anti-war community organising in American cities.
