Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


Not true at all. We meet arabs everywhere in stores, workplaces, restaurants, hospitals and other areas of everyday life. I could go out in the street right now and count at least 10 arabs within a few minutes. As far as Palestinians from the territories, we see less of them on an everyday basis since the Intifada, but every israeli still has some contact with them, particularly in Jerusalem.

You say that Israelis aren't allow to go into the occupied territories except soldiers. This is also not true. The areas that are still under Israeli control are accessible to Israelis and palestinians. The places under palestinian control are closed to Jews (talk about apartheid!) More than 90% of palestinians live in those areas but they move in and out of Israeli controlled areas so there is daily contact. For example Israelis who live in settlements shop in the same stores and buy petrol in the same stations as the palestinians.

I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your intentions are good. So I'll just say that nearly everything you say about israel is based on lack of knowledge and assumptions that have no connection with reality. You can oppose Israel all you want, but at least you should know the truth about what Israel really is before you form your opinion. Not everything you learn growing up in Iran is true.

Genealogy / Looking for a Polish Jew "Nina" saved in the war [10]

Has the family in Poland been in contact with her? Why are you nervous? In these matters it's not a good idea to wait to long. People don't live forever.

Does she speak English? I can translate from Hebrew to English if there is a need.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


This is ludicrous! I accept that Israelis are not perfect and that it's legitimate to criticize us for things we did that you don't agree with. But you are backing the Persian traveller for an accusation that has no basis at all. None of you can bring a case of an Israeli soldier raping a palestinian girl and yet you think I'm unrealistic because it's obvious to you that soldiers rape. Maybe in your countries they do, but not in mine. Listen to your argument:

Soldiers rape. Israelis are soldiers. Therefore they rape palestinian girls.
Even if this ridiculous logic made sense you wouldn't be saying anything more than "Israelis are no worse than anyone else." But the logic is faulty. Because the first part is false. Not all soldiers rape. Israelis don't.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]

You're a strange fellow and somehow I doubt you are what you say you are, but that's beside the point.
I stand by my statement that Israeli soldiers never raped an Arab woman. You can say whatever you want, but that is a fact. (This was actually studied by an anti-zionist professor in Israel who said that this is an example of Israeli racism, since it proves that israelis find Arab women not worth raping. This is the absurdity that some people reach in demonizing israel.)


That might be obvious to someone brought up in the enlightened country of Iran, but in Israel an accusation of rape by an israeli soldier would be in every newspaper and it would cause a public outcry and certainly be investigated. Your impression of Israel and its people is so distorted you have no idea.


There was no agreement with the arab nations. They rejected the UN partition. Look it up. The borders from 1948 to 1967 were ceasefire lines, and they were not violated by Israel till the attack by Egypt and Jordan in 1967.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


Yes, by immigration. From Europe, Arab countries, Iran, Russia and elsewhere. Your assumption that all Jews coming from outside the mideast are not really jews is a racist approach that has no historical basis. Iranian Jews probably have some non-Jewish blood and so do Russian Jews. We don't test people for racial purity. Who we accept in our country is not your affair. My son-in-law's family is from Mashad. My daughter-in-law's family was from Hungary. But we are all one family and one people.

True, there are some Russians who are clearly non-Jews who exploited the chance to get Israeli citizenship in order to leave Russia. Since the entire Russian immigration amounts to about 1 million people, the non-Jewish portion is no more than 500,000. So where are your "millions of European Jews and Troops deployed all over the Middle East"? You probably got that from the same source where you found Israeli soldiers raping palestinian girls. It simply has not happened. Name one case.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


I can tell you about Israel's space program, world class universities and nobel prize recipients and you still won't gave a good word to say about us. That just proves that your agenda isn't an objective analysis of why some nations succeed and others don't but you're more interested in nursing your prejudices.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


So the hatred is finally coming out. I thought only the Muslims were brainwashed.
I got news for you Darius, we're not deployed. We live here (in Israel). We're not all over the middle east but only in Israel, and we never had an argument with Iran. We're not European, we're Jews – some of who came from Europe and others came from the middle east. Our roots here are as deep as yours if not deeper.

And if you don't mind, send me some factual data on Israelis raping women or else shutup.

Genealogy / Bachor surname (from around Zapalow) / Nieckarz [9]


You're almost right. There are two words, both in hebrew. One is BACHUR, which means a young man. The other is BECHOR, which means firstborn son. The root letters of the two words are different and they are not related. Both words were borrowed by Yiddish.

Genealogy / Looking for a Polish Jew "Nina" saved in the war [10]

You found Nina?

History / "Poland's Concentration Camp" ?? [570]


I just looked at the Haaretz article and in the the Talkback section there are plenty of comments (nearly all of them) protesting the ignorant nonsense that the writer said about Poles operating Auschwitz. I stopped counting after 20 comments. So don't imply that Haaretz is suppressing your opinion.

My only consolation from this idiot's article is that he denounces the Israel army for killing civilians. If a person is so wrong about Poland, you can be sure he's wrong about Israel too.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


It's also used by Rastafarians and the San Diego police. What does that have to do with Zionism?

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


Who is NWO? What are you talking about?

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


There is no one "official zionist page". There are many zionist groups and organizations, with a variety of opinions ranging from socialist to nationalist, from pro-compromise to anti-compromise, anti-religious and very religious. You can do your own research. But if you want to find what I think you're looking for, try the Stormfront. That's your speed.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


Here's a full disclosure of the real Zionist agenda: To be a free nation in our own land.
Sorry if it sounds too simple and too short, but that's it.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


Hey, those coins fell out of my pocket when I was in Krakow three years ago!

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]

What you're telling me is that there were objective reasons for anti-Jewish laws and not just blind hatred; that there were reasons that Polish nationalists had a problem with Jews; that an unassimilated minority is a threat to the majority. I know all that and I won't argue otherwise. It's that realization that gave a push to Zionism in Poland. We realized that to live as Jews, without having to be at the mercy of a majority, no matter how tolerant they might be, we have to be a majority in our own country. Which is why I'm writing you from Israel and not a shtetl in Poland.

But no matter how logical the reasons, the result was that Jews felt unwanted by Poland. If not for the war, as Ironside suggests, things might have worked out. The outcome probably would have been increased emigration to the West and to Israel until the remaining Jewish community would have been small enough and assimilated enough to make the friction manageable.

But instead the Germans came and the entire world of Jewish Poland was wiped out. In the trauma, it was hard for survivors to distinguish between the run-of-the-mill anti-minority feelings of 1930s poland, the religious anti-Jewishness of the church, and the insane, murderous hatred of the germans. In the Jewish mind it sometimes gets lumped together, and all the hurts of the past few hundred years come to the surface – "the churches preached against us, the Poles hated us, then the germans came and killed us and the Poles watched as it happened and then there were pogroms after the war, so we left, and good riddance."

That narrative seems totally unjust to you, and it's certainly simplistic. But what happened happened and these feelings were the result. The only way to heal the bad feelings is to be nice to each other now. There is no reason in the world why Jews and Poles in 2010 can't get along. As countries, Poland and Israel are friendly and they should be.

I have more to say but this is long enough.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


That article refers only to government actions. It's not as if they came out of a vacuum. There were strong currents of anti-jewish feeling among all classes of people in Europe for many hundreds of years and Poland was no exception. Since there were more Jews in Poland than anywhere else, these currents found expression there more than most places. In any event, the last decade left a bitter taste. When you eat a bag of pistachio nuts and the last one you put in your mouth is rotten, that's the taste that stays with you.

Again, I'm not saying that Poland is unfriendly to Jews today. Today, Jews are foreign visitors who leave after a week or two (except for the tiny local community), and not a large minority living within the country so the issue is not relevant anymore and only has historical significance.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


You're ignoring too much history. Look at this link and tell me which part isn't true:
worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Total/Polish%20Antisemitism.htm

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


You say I'm wrong, but you haven't contradicted anything I said. You say that it wasn't very warm or welcome for anyone else either, but it was home for better or for worse. I agree. You pointed out the reasons why polish nationalism took on an anti-jewish feeling. Your analysis is mainly correct (although you left out the anti-jewish influence of the church). So then you agree with me that Poland was not a friendly place for Jews between the wars as Kith would like to believe. Of course there were objective reasons for this – but the facts are there for anyone to see. And the bad memories that Jews have of Poland are the result.

Make no mistake – this was not just a Polish phenomenon. Jews in Iraq, for example, went through the same issues in the 1940s. (I happen to be reading a book about that now). There too the nation achieved independence from foreign rule and nationalism took an anti-Jewish tone. There too some Jews were assimilationists (into Arab culture), some were communists, some were Zionists and some were traditional religious people who wished the Ottomans never left. There were arrests, hangings and pogroms and then there was a mass flight of Jews to other countries, mostly Israel.

All these experiences support the Zionist point of view, which is that Jews who want to be Jews should live in their own country.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


I think they are detached from their history.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


I gotta drive home. I'll have coffee.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


I can't understand it either. Its a strange world.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]



Compare that to 300,000 Israelis that traveled to Turkey. I don't think that means we have a big affinity to Turkish culture. Ok, it's closer and cheaper. But 25,000 is no big deal.

True, there are Jews from Russia who prefer Germany to Israel. That's because their Jewish identity is pretty flimsy. And there are Israelis who live in Germany, but since they're in Germany and not here, they have no influence on local attitudes. And they aren't looked at here as people to emulate.


You're dreaming. Those who lived through Poland's "warm and welcoming" period died more than 300 years ago. Poland's kings welcomed the Jews in the middle ages because of commercial reasons. That has nothing to do with the attitudes of the regular people (no one asked them either) in that period or later. And when Poland gained independence after WWI, anti-Jewish feeling hit an all-time high. I don't see how anyone can deny this. With all due respect to today's Poland, it was not warm and welcoming to Jews since about the 17th century.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]

The survey is a bit suspicious since it probably had an agenda it was trying to promote. So I don't know how accurate it is.

But assuming it is accurate, I can think of two reasons the younger generation might be less friendly to Germany:
1. The older generation was more European in its orientation and felt more affinity to German culture. That awareness of the pre-Nazi german culture makes them aware that there is more than one side to Germany. The younger generation has no cultural connection to Germany.

2. The older generation has more of a diaspora mentality, so they might feel a need to accept and be accepted by the European world and therefore are more receptive to German "repentance". The younger generation couldn't care less whether Germans have changed or not. Who talks about the germans? The only relevance of Germany to them is their historical role.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


On the other hand, someone who's in charge of security for a big group of school kids, many of who were never out of Israel and have no experience in the subtleties of Jewish-Polish history, and who have a more blunt way of talking than the average european, is probably right in trying to try and keep them from talking with people in the street – to keep them out of trouble. But it would be a lot better if there were organized opportunities to talk to Poles. I heard of a program where local polish high school kids work together with israeli kids in cleaning up abandoned jewish cemeteries. This is a really good idea. I once spoke to a man who leads Israeli groups to Poland and urged him to more of this, but the problem is that they usually have only one week to cover an entire country and there isn't time for this kind of in-depth contact.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


But that's not what I said. I wasn't comparing who was more evil. I was pointing out that each of the two were evil in a different way and that the difference should be recognized in order to educate against them effectively.

If you use the terminology of anti-Nazism (intolerance, prejudice, racism etc) against Communism you end up with a weak argument, because Communism was about enslaving the population (and murdering) regardless of race, color or creed.

Similarly, if you use the terminology of anti-communism (totalitarianism, lack of freedoms etc) against Nazism you end up with a weak argument, because, as you said, the Germans didn't suffer under Nazism. Nazism was about hatred of the enemy, especially Jews, brought to such a pitch that it justified the most horrible crimes.

Therefore a museum about the holocaust is no place to talk about the crimes of the Communists, and a museum about Communist crimes (when someone decides to build one) is no place to talk about prejudice and intolerance.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


It doesn't have any effect on that, for 2 reasons:
1. There aren't more than 2 or 3 Jews in the world who see this site, and I'm one of them.
2. Jews don't hate Poles.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


Sounds familiar. In Israel, the leftist parties tend to demonize the right wing parties, like Likud, by hinting that they are fascist... and we all know how that ended. What nonsense! There's no reason why a party can't be nationalist without being xenophobic and fascist, just like there can be a leftist party that's not stalinist. In the US, the republicans are saying that Obama is a socialist because he nationalized the failing banks and he wants to setup national healthcare. All these accusations, left and right, are simplistic and typical of demagogues.

About educating on the crimes of Communism. You say that


But I think that approach is inaccurate. That's what Nazism was about, but Communism was an evil of its own nature and it should be recognized for what it really was – a utopian scheme gone mad, because it was hijacked by vicious, power-hungry people and blood-thirsty tyrants. People should be educated to be very careful of movements that claim to want to liberate the common man, because they can end up enslaving the common man. Communists enslaved their own people just as much as other nations, so it's not about prejudice and tolerance. Communism and Nazism were two different diseases and it's important to diagnose each one accurately. A wrong diagnosis can fail to prevent an outbreak.

History / Have Poles blood on their hands? :) [496]


He slurred Mel Gibson. Is he Polish?


As a foreigner I'm just guessing, but could that be because there were many Poles in the Polish communist party and they still have influence on how history is taught? Won't a public airing of that period make a lot of people in Poland uncomfortable?

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


Excuse me? That comment was a bit of an exaggeration! No one here has any hateful agenda against Poles. There's an overall assumption in Israel that the European-Christian world has prejudices against us and that in Poland it's part of the culture. That might be incorrect but it doesn't follow from that we have any hate against Europe or Poland. It's just a grudging acceptance of the fact that we're not always well-liked. If blacks in Alabama say that whites don't like them it doesn't mean the blacks have a Ku Klux Klan mentality.


I guess you mean the 1940s. In the '30s, before the german invasion, Poland had a generally anti-semitic environment – certainly in the political sphere. You might say that was not typical of most Poles, but that was the impression that stuck. I don't think there's any reason for Jewish-Polish hostility today and I don't think there really is any.

I would agree that groups of Israeli school kids who travel to Poland should be given a more accurate impression of current Polish attitudes. More contact between Polish and Israeli youth would be a good way of doing that.