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Israel’s Only Crematorium Located Once Again

Israel’s only crematorium was supposed to be kept a secret. That was not the case for long. It was located In Chibat Tzion, and mysteriously burned to the ground at the end of August – after ZAKA publicized its location in a Charedi newspaper. Just three weeks ago, the crematorium vowed to reopen, and its location would remain secret – as we reported HERE on YW. Not for long. Yeshivaworld has learned that ZAKA has once again located the location of the new “Aley Shalechet” crematorium – and is reported to be in Eretz Yisroel’s Sharon region (Moshav Choglah, near Chadera). ZAKA Chairman Yehuda Meshi Zahav stated that ZAKA will continue on its campaign to chase them out of the country. He added that the Arab citizens of Israel have joined this campaign as well. Nine months ago, Meshi Zahav filed a complaint with Israel Police claiming that they carried out activities that are in violation of Israeli law and operated without a necessary permit from the Health Ministry. It is interesting to note that upon hearing that the crematorium would reopen three weeks ago, Meshi Zahav had stated that he hoped the new crematorium would “fulfill its purpose, and burn down…….like the previous one.” Time will tell its fate…..

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Israel’s Only Crematorium to Re-Open After Being Deliberately Burned Down

According to the Jerusalem Post, the owners of Israel’s only crematorium, whose premises near Chadera were burned down by arsonists in late August – as reported HERE on YW, expect to complete the construction of a new site this week and resume operation. The new location will remain a secret. At the time his business was attacked, Aley Shalechet CEO Alon Nativ said he was very satisfied with his cremation business and quoted a 2002 survey that found 10% of Jewish Israelis would be interested in cremation if they had the choice. ZAKA Chairman Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who reportedly played a key role in discovering and publicizing the location of the first site said that he hoped the new crematorium would “fulfill its purpose, and burn down…….like the previous one.” The ZAKA head said that the crematorium violated Israel law, and further alleged that the owners had set fire to their own facility to profit from insurance. The owner called Meshi-Zahav’s claims “ridiculous” and “not worthy of a response.”

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First Israeli Crematorium Delibratly Set On Fire

According to Israeli media sources, a fire broke out on Wednesday evening at Israel’s first crematorium. The crematorium was opened just a few months ago (as was reported HERE on YW), and is located in the community of Chibat Tzion. It’s location had remained a secret – until yesterday; when a Frum newspaper printed its location. Firefighters arriving on the scene reported heavy flames – which were extinguished – and no injuries were reported. According to Ynet, there were signs of forced entry, and it is believed that the fire was not accidental. Haaretz is reporting that the building sustained major damage. Six months ago, ZAKA Chairman Yehuda Meshi Zahav, filed a complaint with Israel Police claiming that they carried out activities that are in violation of Israeli law and operated without a necessary permit from the Health Ministry. After hearing of the fire, Meshi Zahav, who visited the crematorium on Tuesday, told Ynet that he “blesses the person who (set the crematorium on fire)”, adding that ZAKA has been fighting against the cremation of Jewish people’s bodies all over the world and that it was “inconceivable that this custom exists in Israel”. Meshi Zahav also told Haaretz “We saw the desecration there. The structure is located between two chicken coops. There were sheets soaked in blood and the ashes thrown in the garbage bin. The place was destined to burn, and it was burned.”

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Trump’s Israel Ambassador Pick Huckabee Signals Support for Annexation of Yehuda and Shomron

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has hinted that annexation of the West Bank, which he refers to as “Judea and Samaria,” could be a possibility during Trump’s upcoming term. In an interview with Army Radio, Huckabee underscored his support for Israel’s sovereignty over the territory, rejecting the term “West Bank” in favor of its Biblical name. “There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee stated. “I have been a frequent visitor to Judea and Samaria and believe it is part of sovereign Israel,” he added, reiterating his long-standing belief that the area belongs to Israel. When pressed on whether annexation could take place under Trump’s leadership, Huckabee responded, “Well, of course.” He stressed, however, that he is not the one to set policy: “I won’t make the policy; I will carry out the policy of the president.” Huckabee pointed to Trump’s record from his first term as evidence of his strong commitment to Israel, highlighting the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem, recognition of the Golan Heights, and acknowledgment of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “There’s never been an American president more supportive of Israel’s sovereignty,” he remarked. Huckabee has long rejected a Palestinian state in territory previously seized by Israel and has repeatedly signaled his staunch support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Huckabee, a former TV host and Baptist preacher, frequently visits Israel and once said he wanted to buy a holiday home there. He has maintained throughout the years that the West Bank belongs to Israel, and recently said “the title deed was given by God to Abraham and to his heirs.” His argument for a so-called “one-state solution” contradicts longstanding official U.S. support for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state. He has described the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas as “horrific” and ” beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime” and argued that the U.S. needs to stand firmly behind Israel. Here are some things Huckabee has said over the years about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is decisively against a two-state solution Huckabee has never supported a two-state compromise even when Netanyahu endorsed the idea in 2009. Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians want those territories for a future state and view them as parts of a single country now under military occupation. The U.S., along with most of the international community, has supported the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines as the cornerstone of a peace agreement. Even Netanyahu once endorsed a two-state solution while rejecting a return to Israel’s pre-1967 lines. Netanyahu now rejects the creation of a Palestinian state. Huckabee has never supported any solution that would require Israeli yishuvim to be uprooted. In an interview with The Associated Press in 2015, Huckabee, then running for the GOP presidential nomination, said recognizing the West Bank as Israeli would be the “formal position” of his administration. He criticized Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and described settlers evacuated by Israeli forces as having been “marched at gunpoint.” “I feel that we have a responsibility to respect that this is land that has historically belonged to the Jews,” he said. He once compared the Iran nuclear deal to

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Israel May Send Medical Aid To India Where Patients Are Dying On The Streets

India’s surge in coronavirus infections, growing at the fastest pace in the world, has left families and patients pleading for oxygen outside hospitals, the relatives weeping in the street as their loved ones die while waiting for treatment. Delhi has been cremating so many bodies of COVID-19 victims that authorities are getting requests to start cutting down trees in city parks for kindling, as a record surge of illness is collapsing India’s tattered health care system. Outside graveyards in cities like Delhi, which currently has the highest daily cases, ambulance after ambulance waits in line to cremate the dead. Burial grounds are running out of space in many cities as glowing funeral pyres blaze through the night. The nation of nearly 1.4 billion people set a global record of new daily infections for a fifth straight day Monday. The 350,179 new cases pushed India’s total past 17 million, behind only the United States. Deaths rose by 2,812 in the past 24 hours, bringing total fatalities to 195,123, the Health Ministry said, though the number is believed to be a vast undercount. Israel’s coronavirus czar Prof. Nachman Ash said on Monday that Israel is considering sending medical aid to India. An unofficial request for medical assistance, including oxygen supplies, medical equipment, and drugs was submitted to the Israeli embassy in India. “When you see the high infection rates abroad you understand that the pandemic has not ended yet,” Ash said. The director of Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and former coronavirus czar Prof. Ronni Gamzu is seeking approval from the health and foreign ministries to swiftly send a medical delegation and equipment and supplies to India. “In my opinion, this is the correct and moral thing to do at this time,” Gamzu said. “We can’t celebrate life [due to the end of the pandemic in Israel], while corpses are being cremated on the other side of the world.” A stark symbol of the crisis in India are the overwhelmed graveyards and crematoriums, stacked to the brim with the dead. In the central city of Bhopal, crematoriums have added pyres. One has been forced to skip the exhaustive rituals Hindus believe release the soul from the cycle of rebirth. Overwhelmed crematoriums reflect the collapse of India’s already fragile health care system. Hospitals are unbearably full, with two or three patients to a bed in some cases. Officials are racing to add beds, ventilators and more oxygen to help the sick breathe. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem & AP)

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New Israeli Exhibit Highlights Power Of Photos In Holocaust

Staring at grainy video footage of Jewish children marching to their freedom though the barbed-wire fences of the Auschwitz death camp, 79-year-old Vera Kriegel Grossman excitedly points a finger at the screen upon identifying a dark-haired girl in a dirty striped uniform as her 6-year-old self. “I can’t believe that happened to me,” she said Wednesday. “I wasn’t a child there. I was all grown up … it was like I was 100 years old.” Archival footage shot by Auschwitz’s Soviet liberators is part of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial’s latest exhibition, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday, exploring the power of photography during World War II. The 1,500 photographs and 13 films displayed come from various perspectives, victims and perpetrators alike, and look to offer today’s media-saturated visitors a new angle of looking at the horrors of the Holocaust. Photography, perhaps more than anything else, has come to shape our memory of the Holocaust. The “Flashes of Memory” exhibit also offers a glimpse behind the lens — showing the actual cameras used, the photographers who took the pictures and their various motivations. “The exhibit is aimed at the brain, not the heart,” said Daniel Uziel, its historical adviser. “We are asking the visitor to look beyond the image and examine the wider historical perspective.” It includes Nazi-produced material that was part of their vast propaganda machine aimed at both enhancing their powerful image — such as Leni Riefenstahl’s famous films — and portraying the Jew as a decrepit, disease-infested yet sinister creature that was worthy of extermination. Also featured are the vivid photographs of American troops who freed the camps — depicting emaciated survivors, ash-filed crematoria, piles of corpses and the German civilians they forced to bury them so they couldn’t plead ignorance later. Besides serving as vital future evidence to try Nazi criminals, these were also aimed at re-educating the postwar German population and for domestic American consumption to legitimize the huge cost and sacrifice of joining the war. Perhaps most insightful are the everyday photos taken by the Jewish victims themselves in various ghettos, some in the service of the Nazis and some in stealth in a desperate attempt to document the atrocities against them to serve as future proof. For example, Zvi Kadushin, an underground photographer in the Kovno ghetto, did so at great personal risk and produced essential documentation as a result. “They used those images in order to present to the Germans their usefulness, their effectiveness,” said Uziel. “On the other hand, the Jews also seek, without permission, to document the crimes done by the Germans.” Six million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust, wiping out a third of world Jewry. Israel’s main Holocaust memorial day is in the spring — marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising — while the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in 1945. That’s the day Grossman considers her second birthday, since she was delivered from the horrors of the camp to freedom. “God opened the skies and sent us angels and rescued us,” she recalled, upon seeing the Soviet troops who later filmed her and the number tattooed on her arm. “I am

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Address by President Shimon Peres at the German Bundestag

Following is a translation of the address delivered before the German Bundestag by President Shimon Peres on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2010. The address was delivered in Hebrew. I stand here before you, as the President of the State of Israel, the home of the Jewish people. While my heart is breaking at the memory of the atrocious past – my eyes envision a common future for a world that is young, a world free of all hatred. A world in which the words “war” and “anti-Semitism” will be dead words. Distinguished gathering, In the Jewish tradition that accompanies us for thousands of years, there exists a prayer in Aramaic recited when mourning the dead, in memory of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. The mothers, whose infants were torn from their arms, and the fathers, who watched in horror as their children were pushed into the gas chambers and their children go up in the smoke of the crematoriums, did not have the time to recite nor to listen to this ancient prayer. On this occasion, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to recite this prayer, here and now, in the name of the Jewish people, in memory of, and in honor of, the six million Jews who turned to ashes: (Recites Kaddish) And the prayer ends with the words which became a symbol in the State of Israel, a dream in the Jewish world: “He, who makes peace in His Heights, may He, in his compassion, make peace upon us, and upon all Israel. And they responded: Amen.” My friends, the leaders of the German people and its representatives, In the State of Israel, and across the world, survivors of the Holocaust are gradually departing from the world of the living. Their numbers are daily diminishing. And at the same time, men and women, who took part in the most odious activity on earth – that of genocide – still live on German and European soil, and in other parts of the world. My request of you is: Please do everything to bring them to justice. This is not revenge in our eyes. This is an educational lesson. This is an hour of grace for the young generation, wherever they may be. That they may remember, and never forget, that they should know what took place, and that they never, absolutely never, have the slightest doubt in their minds that there is another option, other than peace, reconciliation and love. Today, the International Remembrance Day for the victims of the Holocaust is the day on which the sun shone for the first time 65 years ago, after six evil years, its rays revealing the full extent of the destruction of my people. On that same day, the smoke still rose above the bombed incinerators, and the blood-stains and ashes still heavily lay on the soil of the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The train-station platform was silent. And the “selection ramp” was empty of people. On the monstrous field of slaughter settled a deceptive atmosphere of tranquility. The ear caught only the quiet, yet from the depth of the frozen ground emanated a scream that broke human hearts, and ascended to the passive and silent heavens. On January 27th, 1945, the world awoke to the fact, somewhat too late,

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