Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip have adopted Star of David badges similar to those which Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis in the 30s in protest at the Israel's plan to evacuate them from their homes.
Many of the settlers equate the prime minister Ariel Sharon's plans to evacuate the settlements next year with the Holocaust in which six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. Sharon wants to remove the settlements by the end of next year.
Jews were made to wear yellow stars by the Nazis, but the settlers plan to wear orange ones to denote the color of the Gaza Settlements Council and the campaign against disengagement.
The idea has angered many Israelis. Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem, said it was irresponsible.
"The plan to wear orange stars perverts the historical facts and damages the memory of the Shoah [Holocaust]," he said.
"It is important that the memory of the Shoah remain a unifying factor in Israeli society, not the opposite."
Despite the sensitivity of the subject, insults and comparisons relating to the Holocaust are a common part of Israeli political discourse.
Last month a Palestinian was forced to play his violin at a checkpoint, which reminded many of concentration camp treatment, and any form of government compulsion is routinely described as Nazi.
Roni Bakshi from the Gaza settlement of Neveh Dekalim, the initiator of the plan, said he hoped it would wake people up to what the government was doing.
"I will hand out the stars with a letter of explanation to the residents. My family and I will wear them.
"This is exactly what I want -- to shock. I would not dare to do this if I did not have the bad feeling that the plan here is to expel Jews," he told the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
Moshe Freiman, 56, whose mother survived the Holocaust, and is now buried in a settlement, said he would wear the star on his shirt.
"We, the second generation of Holocaust survivors, always complained to those who were there -- why did they not rise up, why did they not cry out and do something?" he said.
"Today, justifiably, this is said about us -- why are we not doing anything against this plan?"
Provocative statements about Sharon's disengagement plan in the Israeli media this week coincide with the arrival of a number of ministers from around the around the world, including Tony Blair.
Pinkhas Wallerstein, a council leader in the West Bank, said he was prepared to go to jail or die to prevent the evacuation of settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.
Moshe Karadi, head of the Israeli police, who will be responsible for evacuating the settlers, said the task would be much harder than the evacuation of settlements in the Sinai peninsula in 1982.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
‘LIMITING MYSELF’: New Zealand’s foreign minister said that the omments by Phil Goff were ‘disappointing’ and made the diplomat’s position in the UK ‘untenable’ New Zealand’s most senior envoy to the UK has lost his job over remarks he made about US President Donald Trump at an event in London this week, New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said yesterday. Phil Goff, who is New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, made the comments at an event held by international affairs think tank Chatham House in London on Tuesday. Goff asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs Elina Valtonen, in which he said he had been re-reading a famous speech by former British prime minister Winston
RSS