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The pro-Trump Jews Who Ignore Immigrants While Employing Them

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Polish Jewish refugees are camped out in a smoky room where they also eat and sleep, in the American zone of Berlin, Jan. 31, 1946.Jim Pringle / AP

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Many in the Jewish community in the U.S. bury their heads in the ground when the subject of illegal immigrants is raised. Instead, they should remember their roots and rise above the tide and advocate their rights.

The room sparkles, a montage of brilliantly colored wigs, gleaming cufflinks, the Sabbath china set. The men recite the prayers with such gusto! Bravo, what a Yeshivishe accent, every ‘oy’ pronounced loud and clear, your rebbe would be proud! We serve tuna tartare and foie gras and brisket, open a bottle of Glenmorangie. Someone shares a thought on the Torah portion; a song is sung. Our children sit around the table, wearing matching outfits, listening carefully.

Every week, at the Shabbat table, we gather and talk about the dangers of open borders, the specter of socialism, the comic fragility of liberals. MAGA! The embassy! Baruch Hashem!

And in the kitchen, there is a woman.

She is cutting fruit for dessert. Scrubbing the dishes we just dined on.

This woman works in many upper class American Jewish homes, quietly, obediently.

She thinks to herself in Spanish as she chops the vegetables for matzo ball soups, wipes down the counters, mops the floors, bleaches the toilets — just as we recline on sofas in the next room, discussing a viral meme depicting Donald Trump as the iron-fisted messiah.

Here is the secret that no one wants to talk about:

The very Jews who are writing so passionately in their local publications about the irrelevance of the immigration crisis to our community, releasing statements about ‘sober’ responses to the immigration crisis, posing for photo-ops with those who have promulgated these inhumane policies — it is often these very people who rely on cheap, undocumented immigrant labor in their day-to-day lives.

Whether in Lakewood, Long Island or Livingston, many Trump-voting Jews employ undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants in their homes and businesses. Some live in, some live elsewhere and commute daily for long hours. Some are paid below minimum wage. Some are shipped down to Florida for Passover hotel programs.

Yet these same Jews stay silent when it comes to the inhumane treatment of immigrants on our border. While the ‘Torah Trumps Hate’ group is getting some attention, it is still a fringe group in the Orthodox community. After all, it is considered a social faux pas for “respectable” traditionalist leaders and thinkers to vocally defend anyone outside our community’s walls. That is something that only liberals do, in other denominations.

So instead, we talk about how “this isn’t our problem.” “Let’s stick to our community’s issues.” “It’s really quite complicated.” I have yet to see the throngs of ‘my own’ speaking up, beyond the requisite lip service from self-appointed community representatives. The Orthodox Union released a statement condemning family separations at the border only after the organization sparked an uproar for awarding Attorney General Jeff Sessions a “justice” award.

But once the cameras are off and the press releases sent, in social media threads and WhatsApp conversations, I am shocked by a certain ugliness that I now wish I never saw, in many of the conservative Jewish circles in which I often find myself.

There is a certain cognitive dissonance here — the way it is socially acceptable in our community to talk about “migrants” who are “storming the border,” and the reality with which those very immigrants live (invisibly) in the intimacy of our homes, schools and communities. Forget about the fact that we too were immigrants here not long ago, seeking asylum and often derided for it — there is a certain gall, a hypocrisy, in the way conservative Jews effusively support the demonization of these newcomers while secretly continuing to benefit from their labor.

It is these immigrants who build Jewish homes, renovate kosher kitchens, construct yeshivas and nursing homes and sprawling real estate developments. It is these domestic workers who have keys to their employers’ homes, pick up their children from school, care for their elders. We entrust them with our most prized possessions, yet apparently, we cannot bring ourselves to defend their basic rights

Have you looked in the mirror?

Have you ever wondered about the hands that serve you, that scrub your home clean? Have you ever wondered where those hands come from? Have you ever wondered what she has escaped?

And if you have — if you have the humanity to do so — how can you remain complicit? How can you continue supporting an administration that systematically dehumanizes others? That describes asylum seekers as “infestations”?

We are wealthier, and more privileged today, than ever before.

And as a child of Soviet refugees myself, I find it slightly nauseating to acknowledge this new privilege.

I was happy to see that the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Hamodia ran an editorial on June 20, with the headline, “Where have we gone wrong?”, illustrated with an image of an immigrant child. I hope this will be a moment of reckoning for us. Perhaps this community will wake up and realize that we have gone wrong by largely supporting an ideology that equates human compassion with weakness.

These days, I am haunted not so much by the photographs of immigrants on the banks of the Rio Grande, but by the distinct memory of my tenth-grade Prophets teacher, petite and short-wigged, modest. I can still hear her screaming the Isaiah verses, zealously, in Hebrew:

 

Rutgers to punish professor who blamed Jews for Armenian Genocide

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A Rutgers University professor accused of posting anti-Semitic rants on his Facebook page, including accusing Jews of masterminding the Armenian Genocide, will lose his role as a director and no longer will be allowed to teach required classes, the school announced, Fox News reports.

Michael Chikindas, a professor in the food science department, reportedly posted dozens of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel comments on his page over several months, as Fox News has reported.

One of his posts said the Armenian Genocide was orchestrated by Jews, for example. Although the professor claimed his Facebook page was hacked, he did not deny sharing some of the images, comments and cartoons considered to be anti-Semitic.

Rutgers President Robert Barchi, who previously said the professor’s posts were protected by “academic freedom,” said in a statement to the university community that Chikindas no longer will teach required courses and will be removed from his post as director of the Center for Digestive Health at the Institute for Food, Nutrition and Health.

Chikindas, a professor at Rutgers since 1998 who earned tenure in 2007, will undergo cultural sensitivity training and will be “subject to ongoing monitoring if and when he returns to the classroom,” Barchi said.

“This has been a sad and deeply troubling situation for our students and our staff, and for our faculty, who stand for much nobler values than those expressed by this particular professor,” Barchi told the university in his statement.

Related links:

Fox News. Rutgers announces punishment for professor accused of making anti-Semitic remarks

Turkey Uncensored: Jews in Turkey Under Attack Over Temple Mount Crisis

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Turkey UncensoredBy Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Dozens of Turkish nationalist-Islamists affiliated with the organization “Alperen Hearths” (Alperen Ocakları) recently attacked Istanbul’s Neve Şalom Synagogue, where Jews were exposed to three terrorist attacks at the hands of Islamic groups – in 1986 (by Abu Nidal Organization), in 1992 (by Turkish Hizballah) and in 2003 (by Al-Qaeda).

On July 20, the demonstrators threw rocks at the synagogue, whose Hebrew name means “the Oasis of Peace,” kicked its doors and tried to break in.

Kürşat Mican, the head of the Istanbul branch of the Alperen movement linked to the religious nationalist Great Union Party (BBP), delivered a speech, saying in part:

“For long years up until today, Israel has banned Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Not only has it banned them, it has placed X-rays at the entrance of our temple, thereby harassing our Palestinian brothers. Our brothers are unable to worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Mican then threatened the worshippers at the synagogue: “Just as we are here today, we could come tomorrow too and then you will not be able to enter the synagogue. Is that what you want?”

Mican went on to threaten Israel with “a sudden siege:” “The Zionist, terrorist state of Israel must know that the grandchildren of Abdülhamid Han are alive. One night we could siege all of your places of worship and no one will be able to worship there.”

Demonstrators chanted the slogans “Allahu Akbar” and “One night, all of a sudden, we could come to you.”

See the speech here.

The recent conflicts surrounding the Temple Mount started with the murder of two Israeli Druze police officers by three Muslim terrorists. As a measure of security, just like many other religious centers around the world do, Israel placed metal detectors at the entrance of the place of worship. Bassam Tawil wrote for Gatestone Institute, exposing the real agenda of those provoking attacks against Jews in Israel or elsewhere:

First, the security measures – including the placement of the metal detectors – was not an Israeli initiative, but came as a direct and necessary response to a specific terror attack. The Israeli government did not convene and take a decision to install the metal detectors in order to alter the status quo or stop Muslims from praying.

Second, it was the Palestinians who took the decision not to enter into the Temple Mount unless the metal detectors are removed. The Palestinians and the Waqf are lying to the world by telling it that Israel is denying Muslims access to their holy sites.

Source: https://philosproject.org/turkey-uncensored-jews-in-turkey-under-attack/

Turkish Writer Exposes Persecution of Jews in Turkey

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Israel to Issue Stamp in Honor of Aznavour’s Parents for Saving Jews

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Aznavour Family (Source: ArmRadio)

Aznavour Family (Source: ArmRadio)

NEW YORK (ArmRadio)—In a recent meeting held in New York with the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF), representatives Mordecai Paldiel and Zvika Kichel, Charles Aznavour confirmed the riveting story of courage in which his late parents, Knar and Mischa, as well as his sister Aida and himself, had played a key role during the dark days of the Nazi occupation in France.

With a great sense of humbleness, Aznavour told how his parents gave shelter at their own home to Jews, Armenians and others who were persecuted by the Nazis. By so doing, the Aznavours had given the gift of life to other, while risking their own.

The IRWF has resolved to set-up a special research team to further investigate the feats of the Aznavour family and at the same time, all the Board Members of the NGO have unanimously decided to pay tribute to the Aznavours.

In a personal letter signed by the Chairman of the IRWF, Eduardo Eurnekian and by its Founder, Baruch Tenembaum, Aznavour was greeted on his 92th birthday and informed about two initiatives. The first one is to commission a special commemorative stamp to be issued by the Israel Postal Authority with the semblance of Mischa and Knar Aznavour, Charles’s late parents. The second one is to award the Raoul Wallenberg Medal to both siblings, Aida and Charles Aznavour, who as young people helped their parents in their life-saving mission.

Eurnekian said “The Aznavour family is an example of humble and decent people who did not stand idly by when faced with evil. His mother, Knar, nee Baghdasarian, was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide and she understood the plight of the Jewish people and all those who were brutally persecuted by Nazism. It is our duty to recognize the heroism of the Aznavour family and instill their spirit of civic courage in the hearts and minds of the young generations.”

Dear Mr. Aznavour,

Let us start this letter by congratulating you on 92th birthday! We wish you good health and many more years of productiveness in your artistic, diplomatic and humanitarian activities!

We would like to thank you once again for having agreed to meet our Dr. Mordecai Paldiel and Mr. Zvika Kichel in New York. We watched the video of this meeting and were deeply moved by your humble approach and the courageous deeds undertaken by your dear late parents, your sister Aida and yourself, during the dark days of Holocaust. We also thank your son, Nicolas, for having arranged this gathering in such an efficient way.

As a result of this preliminary audience, we have instructed our research team to try and secure more information about the feats of your family during WWII and of course, we shall keep you duly posted.

At the same time, in a special meeting held by our Board, it has been unanimously resolved to pay tribute to your late parents, Mischa and Knar, as well as both you and Aida, as a token of recognition to your spirit of solidarity. The fact that you have given shelter and protection at your own home, to people from all faiths who were persecuted by the Nazis, is something that has to be remembered and recognized. We have therefore resolved to ask the Israeli Postal Authorities to make a special and limited stamp issue dedicated to your late parents. Should this be agreeable, our team in Israel will contact Nicolas with some administrative information (we would need some good photos of your parents as well as a written authorization from you to approach the Israel Postal Authorities).

Furthermore, it was decided to bestow upon you and your sister Aida, a special award, the Raoul Wallenberg Medal, in recognition of the role you played during the Shoah and for your staunch and consistent support of humanitarian causes.

As soon as we receive the acceptance from you and your sister, we shall coordinate with you the details and logistics of the award ceremony.

Thanking you in advance, we remain at your disposal should you require any further information on our end.”

Jordan Kutzik,: Why Jews Need To Recognize the Armenian Genocide Once and for All

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Armenian genocide recognitionBy Jordan Kutzik,

Imagine that you’re walking in Manhattan a few days before Holocaust Memorial Day and see five airplanes skywriting in massive letters that the Holocaust was a hoax.

How would you feel?

Imagine that you later find out that a full-page advertisement had run the same day in the Washington Post explaining that although some Jews were killed during World War II, the Holocaust never occurred. Imagine if that advertisement directed readers to a website that explained that these same Jews were responsible for their own deaths.

How would the American Jewish community react?

And imagine that a massive billboard with the same advertisement was erected in Times Square shortly before tens of thousands of Jews were set to gather there to commemorate Kristallnacht.

To whom would you turn? Would you still feel safe living in New York?

For New York’s Armenian community, this is unfortunately not just a hypothetical situation. On April 20, a few days before the 101st anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, five airplanes really did skywrite over the Hudson River that the Armenian Genocide is a “Geno-lie.” A full-page advertisement was really run in the Washington Post explaining that although some Armenians were killed during WWI, there was never a genocide against them, and the same advertisement directed readers to a website explaining that the Armenians were responsible for their own deaths. When tens of thousands of Armenian Americans gathered in Times Square to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the April 24, 1915 mass arrest and subsequent execution of 250 Armenian intellectuals, regarded as the first attack of the genocide, attendees really were confronted by a large billboard denying the slaughter.

Despite the attempts of groups trying to pretend otherwise, the historical veracity of the Armenian Genocide is simply not up for debate. Between 1915 and 1923, the Turkish government systematically and purposefully murdered about 1.5 million Armenians in a plethora of horrific ways. As attested to by hundreds of articles in The New York Times alone, the Turkish army raided thousands of villages, immediately slaughtering the young men and forcing the surviving Armenian women, children and elderly onto death marches in the Syrian desert. During these marches Turkish soldiers raped young Armenian women and girls by the thousands and shot random people dead. According to various contemporary diplomatic sources, the massive Euphrates River was left overflowing with tens of thousands of corpses.

In a disturbing foreshadowing of the Jewish Holocaust, thousands of Armenians were squeezed into crowded train cars that led to their deaths. Many of those who reached the Syrian desert, either by train or after having survived death marches, were imprisoned in concentration camps where they quickly died of dehydration. In other places, children were murdered with overdoses of morphine. In a few cases the Turks executed large groups of Armenian children by locking them in schools and releasing a toxic gas.

Contemporary press reports explain in remarkable detail that the massacres were not the actions of random misbehaving soldiers but the result of a clear and intentional plan by the Turkish government. As one article that ran in The New York Times on October 7, 1915 titled “800,000 Armenians Counted Destroyed” explained, Viscount Bryce, a British MP who had previously served as the U.K.’s ambassador to America, testified before Parliament that “The death of these people resulted from the deliberate and premeditated policy of the gang now in possession of the Turkish government. Orders for the massacres came in every case direct from Constantinople.”

The same article reported that nearly the entire Armenian population in large swaths of the Ottoman Empire had already been killed. Other contemporaneous articles precisely described the events as a “policy of extermination against a helpless people” and a “campaign of race extermination.” It is no surprise, therefore, that the Polish-Jewish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin had the Armenian catastrophe in mind, along with the extermination of his own family in the Holocaust, when he coined the term “genocide” in 1943.

The Armenian-American community strongly protested against the campaign by Fact Check Armenia to deny the historical veracity of the murders of their families. Unfortunately, the American Jewish community barely responded to it. One reason why is that today’s Turkish government completely denies that the founders of its country committed a crime against humanity. Because Turkey plays a key role in Middle Eastern politics, many politicians and organizations, including American Jewish ones, are afraid to offend it.

President Barack Obama is a good example. Despite the fact that 44 American states recognize the Armenian Genocide, the federal government carefully avoids using the G-word out of fear that Turkey may punish the U.S. by ceasing to cooperate with the U.S. military.

In 2007, when the U.S. Congress failed to pass a bill recognizing the Armenian Genocide, then-senator Obama criticized his colleagues for voting against the proposal. In January 2008, Obama strongly criticized the State Department’s decision to relieve American Ambassador to Armenia John Marshall Evans of his duties, allegedly for his having described Turkey’s actions during World War I as genocide. Obama promised at that time that if he were elected president he would always openly state that the Turkish government had committed genocide against its Armenian citizens. Despite his promises, however, President Obama has fastidiously avoided using the G-word in official statements.

Similarly, Abe Foxman, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, unleashed a firestorm of controversy in 2007 when he urged Congress not to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Andrew Tarsy, the director of the ADL’s New England branch, was fired after he told Foxman over the phone that he felt that the organization’s position was “morally indefensible.” (He was rehired shortly thereafter. ) The ADL then released a cowardly press release explaining that the events in Turkey during WWI were “tantamount to genocide” but that the Congressional effort to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide was a “counterproductive diversion” that would potentially endanger Turkish Jewry and Israel’s relationship to Turkey.

Seven years later, Foxman and the ADL formally recognized the Armenian Genocide. Around the same time, the American Jewish Committee also changed its position. They, together with a half dozen prominent Jewish organizations — including the Union for Reform Judaism, the Zionist Organization of America and most recently, in 2015, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs — now recognize Turkey’s persecution of the Armenians as genocide. And just last week, the ADL’s current national director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt released a statement unequivocally recognizing the WWI events as genocide and saying that the ADL will support American recognition of the genocide. This is far from sufficient, however; the vast majority of American Jewish organizations still do not have a firm policy on the issue.

The latest brazen attempts to deny history make vividly clear why the Jewish community must take a united stand in recognizing the Armenian Genocide and encouraging the American and Israeli governments to do so. We Jews, more than perhaps any other people in the world, know what it means to suffer genocide and what it feels like when people have the gall to deny that it ever occurred. Besides the fact that it is our moral imperative to do so, there is also a lot we can learn from the Armenians if we express our solidarity with them and work together to fight the denial of their genocide. Since they are a people that experienced genocide a generation before the Jews, we can learn a great deal from them about how to properly remember and commemorate such a tragedy when there are hardly any remaining survivors. It would also, of course, be of great use to have another closely allied people in the fight against Holocaust denial.

Most important, however, is the fact that remaining silent when governments deny the veracity of a genocide encourages others who would seek to commit similar atrocities. As a sign in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum notes, Adolf Hitler incited his generals just before the Nazi invasion of Poland by asking, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

This piece was published in the Yiddish Forward on May 8, 2016 . It has been translated into English by the author.

Sephardic Jews Feel Bigotry’s Sting in Turkey and a Pull Back to Spain

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ISTANBUL — For Rafi, a local newspaper’s anti-Semitic crossword puzzle was the final affront. He knew he had to leave Turkey.

“There are many reasons to leave: a lack of work opportunities, growing polarization within society and oppressive leadership. But the hatred toward our community has been the tipping point for me,” said Rafi, 25, a graphic designer based in Istanbul, who provided only his first name out of fear of harassment by Turkish nationalists. “There is no future here.”

Rafi is one of thousands of Sephardic Jews in Turkey who trace their ancestry to Spain and are now applying for Spanish citizenship in anticipation of a parliamentary bill expected to pass this month in Madrid that would grant nationality to the Jews who were expelled in 1492, during the Inquisition.

Most are seeking visa-free travel within Europe and an opportunity to escape what they see as rising anti-Semitism in Turkey. But many are taken with the idea of reversing the trek their ancestors took centuries ago as they escaped persecution in Spain and settled in the more tolerant environs of the Ottoman Empire.

Anti-Jewish sentiment is not uncommon in the Turkish news media, but the implications of the crossword puzzle sent shock waves across Turkey. It featured an image of Adolf Hitler with the slogan, “We are longing for you.”

“Jews are attacked all over the world, but last year the level of hate speech in Turkey reached an unnerving level,” Rafi said.

During the 15th century, about half a million Sephardic Jews sought the safety of the Ottoman Empire, and they prospered there under the rule of Sultan Bayezid II.

“The Jews were not just permitted to settle in the Ottoman lands, but were encouraged, assisted and sometimes even compelled,” the British-American historian Bernard Lewis wrote in his book “The Jews of Islam.”

But since the beginning of the 20th century and the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Turkey’s Jewish population has been in sharp decline. A discriminatory wealth tax in the 1940s introduced by a secularist government, along with the establishment of the state of Israel, reduced the number of Jewish residents by tens of thousands.

Those who stayed faced pressure to assimilate, and Turkish quickly replaced Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language of Sephardic Jews. Today, only a small portion of older Sephardic Jews speak the language of their forebears.

“My grandmother would sing me Ladino lullabies, but I can only remember a few words,” Rafi said. “Our generation is focusing on learning modern Spanish for Spanish citizenship.”

Over the past decade, under the government of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party, and pressured by a string of deadly terrorist attacks on synagogues and a surge in anti-Semitism, the Jewish population — the vast majority of whom are Sephardic — has shrunk to 17,000 from 19,500 in 2005, according to figures obtained from the chief rabbinate in Istanbul.

Although Jews have felt increasingly uneasy over the past two years, Selin Nasi, a columnist for Salom, a Jewish weekly, acknowledged that Turkey had taken some positive symbolic steps to improve relations with Jews.

The Turkish government spent $2.5 million on a project to restore the Great Synagogue of Edirne and participated in the United Nations’ Holocaust Day for the first time this year.

“These steps are good, but we never see a continuation,” Ms. Nasi said. “It’s always one step forward, one step back, confusing rhetoric and inconsistent implementation that causes the community to be apprehensive.”

At a rally last year, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserted that he was the first Muslim leader to denounce anti-Semitism. He has, however, engaged in heated exchanges with the Israeli leadership, primarily over Gaza. Some analysts say that those disputes, combined with his dissemination of conspiracy theories that often implicate Jews, have encouraged anti-Semitism.

Apprehension among Jews in Istanbul rose in 2013, after Mr. Erdogan accused an “interest rate lobby” of backing widespread antigovernment protests that were supposedly meant to bring down the economy and topple his government.

“In Turkey, you could say anti-Semitism is marginalized, until you turn on the TV and see the president and other politicians cursing Jews in public,” said Louis Fishman, an assistant professor at Brooklyn College who specializes in Turkish-Israeli affairs. “When you have public displays of hate speech from politicians, it changes the landscape considerably.”

According to a poll conducted in July 2013 for the Anti-Defamation League, 69 percent of Turks harbor anti-Semitic attitudes. During the war last summer between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, pro-government news outlets in Turkey began a series of anti-Semitic social media campaigns that stoked anti-Jewish sentiment.

After a Turkish singer posted “May God bless Hitler” on Twitter, Melih Gokcek, the mayor of Turkey’s capital, Ankara, who has over 2.5 million followers, responded, “I applaud you,” and he encouraged others to chime in.

Many Turks put the blame for the rise in anti-Jewish feelings on the actions of the Israeli government, particularly the killing of civilians during the Gaza war. “If the Turkish Jewish community does not put an end to Israel’s actions, very bad things happen,” Bulent Yildirim, president of the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, wrote on Twitter.

But in the eyes of most of the Jews who were interviewed, that amounts to collective punishment. “When lashing out at Israel, the government condemns Jews without making a differentiation, which incites hatred toward the community,” said Mert Levi, 26, a Sephardic Jew who left Turkey for a few months last summer because of the tensions he felt in Istanbul.

“It was so thick, you could have cut it with a knife,” he said. “It got so bad that in some circles, we had to think twice before giving our names.”

In Bursa, the northwestern province where the first Sephardic Jews arrived by sea in the 16th century, only 65 Jews remain, most of them advanced in age. Over the decades, thousands of families have moved to Istanbul and Izmir, a southern city, to seek better work and education prospects.

The Jews of Bursa have never experienced anti-Semitism. “If anything, our community has been embraced and respected,” said Leon Ennekave, 70, the president of the Bursa Jewish Foundation.

“People here know us. They remember our heyday, when this street was lined with Jewish shops and restaurants, and it was called ‘Jewish Street.’ ”

Yet even in this province, Jews are concerned that given the high symbolic value of Bursa, mounting tensions in other parts of the country could result in copycat terrorist attacks here.

Two synagogues, the only visible remnants of the Sephardim left on Jewish Street today, have been heavily fortified.

One resident, Sara, said her grandfather was more cautious than Jews who had been subjected to anti-Semitism in Istanbul. “Sometimes when people point to the gate of the synagogue and ask what is behind it, he tells people it is a church so as not to draw attention to it,” said Sara, who gave only her first name.

The headquarters of the Jewish foundation is in a nondescript white building marked by a single Turkish flag. Inside, Mr. Ennekave sat opposite a large security screen, split to show 18 camera views, and he spoke in Ladino with a friend until a Turk entered the room.

“Things have happened in the past, so we have to take precautions,” he said.

But Mr. Ennekave maintains that Bursa’s Jewish population has harmoniously coexisted with the Turks for centuries and has no reason for concern. “The only anti-Semitism we witness is what we see on television or hear from our relatives in Istanbul,“ he said.

“If you set your sails in the direction of the wind, your ship will sail smoothly and no harm will come of you,” Mr. Ennekave said. “That’s the position our community has taken to remain in this country.”

source: nytime

Jews ‘leaving Turkey due to safety concerns’

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Bahadır Özgür ISTANBUL

n_75670_1Many people from Turkey’s Jewish community are leaving the country after increased threats and attacks, a prominent businessman from the community has written in an article for the Istanbul-based Jewish newspaper Şalom. Report hurriyet daily news

“We face threats, attacks and harassment every day. Hope is fading. Is it necessary for a ‘Hrant among us’ to be shot in order for the government, the opposition, civil society, our neighbors and jurists to see this?” Mois Gabay wrote on Dec. 10, referring to the murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007.

Gabay, a professional in the tourism industry, added that increasing numbers of Turkish Jews are making plans to move abroad with their families, feeling unsafe and under pressure in the country.

“Around 37 percent of high school graduates from the Jewish community in Turkey prefer to go abroad for higher education … This number doubled this year compared to the previous years,” he wrote.

It is not only students, who have begun to think about building a life abroad for their families and children, but also young businesspeople  according to Gabay.

“Last week, when I was talking to two of my friends on separate occasions, the conversation turned to our search for another country to move to. That is to say, my generation is also thinking more about leaving this country,” he wrote.

Gabay’s column came a few days after verbal attacks on the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district, which has been attacked with explosives on three previous occasions in 1986, 1992 and 2003. A paper reading “to be demolished” was placed on the entrance of the synagogue by an unknown group two weeks ago. Later, the Alperen Ocakları, the youth group of the ultranationalist Great Union Party (BBP), attempted to march to the synagogue as a part of a protest.

In a recent interview with Radikal, Gabay also said changes in the law and the recognition of hate crimes in the Turkish penal code are not sufficient for the protection of Turkey’s Jewish community.

“The laws have changed. Hate speech is now a crime, but when is a lawsuit ever opened over hate speech against our community? I don’t blame the government alone for this. The opposition, civil society, unions and the democratic public sphere should be a shield for us. They should monitor these incidents. Are they waiting for the shooting of a Hrant among us?” he said, adding that daily threats have increased due to the widespread use of social media in Turkey.

On Nov. 21, Dursun Ali Şahin, the governor of the northwestern province of Edirne, sparked an outcry when he suggested that the Büyük Sinagog (Great Synagogue), built in 1907, should only be used as a museum, as a response to recent Israeli policies over Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Şahin later offered an “apology” to Turkey’s chief rabbi, claiming that his proposal  “had no connection” to the country’s Jewish community.

Why the Turks were able to exterminate the Armenians but not the Jews

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Harut Sassounian

Armenian Life Magazine No 1418

May 29, 2014

This second article supplements that I wrote last month, analyzing the reasons which allowed the Turks to exterminate the Armenians and prevented them from implementing arton100470-480x321a simultaneous elimination of the Jewish population of Palestine map.

May 9, 1917 Reuters broadcast information transmitted by the settler Aaron Aaronsohn “an order was given to deport all Jews from Tel Aviv, even citizens of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary), within 48 hours. During the previous week, 300 Jews were expelled from Jerusalem, Jamal Pasha who reported that their fate would be that of the Armenians. The 8,000 deportees from Tel Aviv had permission to take no stock, and after the expulsion of their house had been looted by packs Bedouin. “

Shortly after these events, Oskar Cohen, a socialist Jewish member of the German Parliament, asked the Chancellor to urge the Turkish government to “vigorously oppose repetition in Palestine,” the Jews, “atrocities” comparable to those committed against the Armenians.

June 8, Aaronsohn noted in his diary: “The cry that we pushed was effective. Turks and Germans soon realized we could not, without suffering the consequences, massacring Jews as were massacred Armenians, the financing of the war by Germany may suffer from the reaction of the Jews. They ended, therefore, any new deportation. “

Palestine, the official journal of the British Zionist movement, had described the significant differences between the capabilities of influence between the Jews and the Armenians: “The German government knows that the Jews do not compare to the Armenians on their power in the world, and the weight of the Jews in Germany is therefore different from that of the Armenians. “

Mordecai Ben-Hillel Hacohen, renowned chronicler of Jewish history in Palestine, March 30, 1917 wrote in his diary: “the reputation of the Turkish government has been tainted in the eyes of the whole country, because of the crime against the Armenians, and perhaps the government he would reconsider his plans to take similar action against the Jews. “

Moshe Smilansky, a leader in agricultural villages of Palestine, having realized the terrible massacres of Armenians, concluded: “The stories of eyewitness spread terror and panic among the Jews. Who knows what our fate would have been without Morgenthau, the U.S. representative at Constantinople, and without the fear inspired by the world press is ‘controlled’ by the Jews. “

Yair Auron recalls in his book that Meir Dizengoff, a leader of the Jewish refugees in Palestine, throughout the First World War, “had worked closely collaborating with the Zionist delegation to Constantinople, which was pro-German and pro-Turkish . According Dizengoff relations were also excellent with the German consul in Palestine … The consul, who acted as an intermediary for the transfer of funds to the Yishuv [the Jewish community] was under the orders of the German ambassador in Constantinople “. Dizengoff had also said that it was thanks to the Germans that the Yishuv had been been helped and saved. “The fact that Djemal Pasha became more sympathetic to the Jews was to the credit of Germany.” Dizengoff remembered the threats that Jamal Pasha and Enver had made against the Jews: “Be careful, Zionists! If you pitch against us, we will do what we did to the Armenians. “

When October 1917, the Turkish authorities discovered the Nili spy network, a new threat took shape on Jewish settlers in Palestine, providing another excuse to oppress the Turks. They were afraid that such anti-Turkish conducted can cause horrific reprisals as those suffered by the Armenians. The Turkish governor of Haifa Jewish leaders met village 2ichron Yaakov October 4, 1917 and threatened unless access to its applications to them what he had done to the Armenians. He told them he “killed with bare hands several Armenians, and that his soldiers had killed thousands.” Chaim Kalvarisky-Margalit, the representative of the Jewish Colonization Association in the Galilee, wrote in his diary the following note: “I learned from a reliable source that the high command [Turkish] was very angry against the Jewish colony, and was considering a possible general deportation of Jews from Palestine to the most distant provinces of the empire [Eastern Anatolia]. “ Kalvarisky recorded verbatim the words of Jamal Pasha after a heated exchange with him: “May Heaven help those whose are these spies son cursed. We gave the Armenian people a lesson for such acts, and will not hesitate to take the same measures in this case. “

Having witnessed the brutality of the Turks against the Armenians who were accused of insubordination and rebellion, Jewish settlers decided to fully submit and does not challenge the Turkish authorities. Professor Auron observed that “He had not a single attack on a Turkish soldier by a Jewish settler.” What saved at the end of the Jews was the occupation of Palestine by the British forces, preventing brutality and massacres by the Turkish authorities.

In total, 1.5 million Armenians were annihilated, while Jewish settlers in Palestine suffered only minimal losses. During the war years, the Jewish population of Palestine was reduced from 86 000 to 55 000. IN spite of the fact that the Armenians themselves as defenders in Europe and the United States, Jewish settlers benefited from the double protection of powerful countries in the two warring camps: the Western countries, including the United States, and Germany’s ally Turkey. Vahakn Dadrian, in his book, The History of the Armenian Genocide, said that Hans Wingenheim, German ambassador to Turkey, told the Ambassador Morgenthau U.S.: “I will help the Zionists … but I will not do anything for Armenians “.

While Germany saved the Jewish settlers in Palestine, she helped Young Turkish regime to exterminate the Armenian people.