Hedy Epstein in Cairo with school supplies for Gaza (Photo: Ali Abunimah)
About two weeks ago we posted on Hedy Epstein’s challenge to Elie Wiesel to travel to Gaza. She is now in Cairo trying to get into Gaza, and has embarked on a hunger strike to pressure the Egyptian government to let the Gaza Freedom March enter the occupied territories. Epstein explains, "It is important to let the besieged Gazan people know they are not alone. I want to tell the people I meet in Gaza that I am a representative of many people in my city and in other places in the US who are outraged at what the US, Israeli and European governments are doing to the Palestinians and that our numbers are growing."
From AFP:
An 85-year-old Holocaust survivor was among a group of grandmothers who began a hunger strike in Cairo on Monday to protest against Egypt’s refusal to allow a Gaza solidarity march to proceed.
American activist Hedy Epstein and other grandmothers participating in the Gaza Freedom March began a hunger strike at 1000 GMT.
"I’ve never done this before, I don’t know how my body will react, but I’ll do whatever it takes," Epstein told AFP, sitting on a chair surrounded by hundreds of protesters outside the United Nations building in Cairo.
It’s such a shame that a Holocaust survivor has to go hungry. I mean, if she were in Israel at least they’d be giving her a can of dog food to eat.
Finally they found Egypt as an easier pick than Israel…If she is a Jew, she must confront Netanyahu not Mubarak! Poor Egypt, poor woman…
C’mon Mr. Mubarak – don’t let sweet little Hedy go hungry in your own country!! C’mon give yourself some good (and cheap) public relations coup and let them peacemaker buggers in – sure you can give the nod – all you have to do is bounce your head up and down, but more down – that’s right, just like that…
Nah – who am I kidding?!
That man would starve his own grandmother for 2bn dollars a year.
All I can say is I’m worried about the whole situation.
I can’t stand the though of Hedy not eating.
Yeah it’s depressing, isn’t it? And we all know this is happening because Netanyahu called Rahm, and Rahm called Hillary, and Hillary called Mubarak. And meanwhile even more attention is being cast on the Gaza border, where the US is ostensibly helping to build an underground “wall” at the behest of Israel.
YES – Zionazi do give can of dog food to holocaust survivors who refuse to play “useful idiots” for the Zionists – as Dr. Norman Finkelstein pointed out in his book ‘The Holocaust Industry”. Zionist establishment sucked US$93 billion from West Germany – and the 17,500 surviving holocaust Jews received US$5,600 – 17,600 out of it and the lion share of the remaining loot was used to buy more deadly arms to kill more Palestinian youth.
Hedy reminds me of another moral Jewish mother – Professor Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan (Hebrew University). She lost her 13-year-old daughter Smdari Elhanan in the 1997 Mossad False-flag bombing in Jerusalem. Nurit turned her grief into quest for justice for the native Palestinians…..
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
What about this “Mossad false flag bombing”? The Lavon affair notwithstanding, it sounds incredibly unlikely.
Why? Because Zionists militants or Israeli intelligence officials have never attacked other Jews out of political expedience? You don’t think there’s any sort of precedent?
I will agree that Rehmat’s accusation needs more substance, but I wouldn’t call it unlikely so much as unproven.
Scott, the specific 1997 false-flag bombing in Jerusalem notwithstanding, didn’t you ever read or hear about the Ostrovsky books, or know about the controversy surrounding the publication of the first book when the Israeli government sought an injunction to prevent publication which a judge signed after convening a court at 1 AM in his Fifth Avenue apartment. Ostrovsky detailed the Mossad hierarchy (it is not compartmentalized like our services) and described its false-flag operations in his books. The NY Supreme Court overturned the injunction the next day. If you read the NYT version about the injunction controversy, writer David Wise (a critic along with Benny Morris) claimed that Ostrovsky was an 18-month Mossad trainee, seeking to diminish the impact of Ostrovsky’s book. Not true; he was an active agent for four to five years. The first book was written with Canadian parliamentarian writer Claire Hoy, sort of a Canadian David Gurgen in status, who demanded verified and verifiable sources before he would touch the subject.
Excellent point, MRW. I don’t criticize Scott’s skepticism about the 1997 bombing, but there are other events in addition to the Lavon Affair that he mentions, and the Ostrovsky revelations you mention. (I think Ostrovsky’s most prominent incident is the planting of false evidence that Libya was responsible for the lethal attack on US GI’s at a Berlin disco, which directly led to Reagan’s bombing of the Qaddafi compound that killed his one year old daughter and scores of others, but not him.) Roughly contemporaneous with the Lavon Affair was the planting of bombs in the Baghdad Jewish community which scared more than 100,000 Jews into fleeing to Israel. Then there is the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, in which one of the theories as to Israel’s motive was to blame the Egyptians. The point is that while individual incidents, such as the 1997 bombing in which this girl was killed (I believe she was the granddaughter of a very prominent Israeli General turned peace activist Matti Peled), may very well have been genuine Arab terrorist attacks directed against Israeli civilians — there are certainly many such genuine incidents — it would be a mistake to assume that the Mossad would never stoop to such a level.
The usage of the term false flag operation in reference to episodes where there is no proof of any sort weakens the use of the term in circumstances when there is some proof of some sort.
Gee, WJ, kind of like accusations of anti-Semitism?
Sounds like a great story for your magazine. You can clean it up a little so you are not quite making direct accusations, but still putting the story out there.
There is a long and documented history of the use of terrorism by Zionists and Israelis, which goes far beyond the narrow scope of ‘false flag’ operations.
The Haganah, Irgun, and Stern gang all committed acts of terrorism, including the use car bombs, booby-trapped orange crates, letter bombs, targeted assassination of government officials, including those, such as Count Folke Bernadotte, who had actively assisted Jews during the Holocaust. link to amazon.com
There is also historical evidence of those groups killing other Jews who did not share their particular vision for Zionism, and evidence of acts committed to create tensions between Jews and Arabs in an attempt to segregate the populations, physically, economically and ideologically.
See also the case of the SS Patria blown up in Haifa harbor in 1940 by the Haganah killing several hundred Jewish refugees from Europe, as evidence of the willingness of Zionists to kill their own to prove a greater point.
Etc. Etc.
Here’s a recent article describing how Israel is increasingly a failed state–including btw the correct timeline for Israel’s instigated turkey shoot a year ago, and also (in the comments section) a counter argument describing Israel as at the apex of power, a virtual ever-growing Goliath astride the world:
link to commondreams.org
There is no contradiction. A mortally wounded elephant can cause great destruction in its death throes.
Unless you deal the beast a single instant and fatal blow!
I think the dying USA is going to thrash around for quite some time.
You’d be surprised at how fast that can end. Rome was.
Hedy Epstein, what a wonderful woman you are.
Sweet Hedy god bless you!
Hedy is undertaking a Quixotic effort.
And, although they are nearly all insignificant and failures in the short term, they still make some change in the world.
The direct action approach though makes change go backward, blowback, as the Yippies “created” the Nixon blowback, and generationally the Reagan “revolution”, 1990′s republican resurgance, and 2000′s GW.
The hundreds of thousands of Weiss’s and Fine’s and Witty’s didn’t create that blowback.
In Cairo, its important for the dissenters to not seek to overturn or even directly confront or even comment on the Egyptian government. That would put Phil himself at personal physical risk of being in the wrong place at the very wrong time.
Further, any attempt to would be and be understood as an entirely external imposition.
On the contrary Witty I find your attempts totally quixotic, and doubly foolish to think you can stand in the way of what is right and humane. It is as strange as your historic take in the USA, the buffoons of the past as well as the present (Obama, who does it with a smile while he says he loves whoever) are nothing but representatives of power and the status quo – where you constantly throw your hat, there is nothing different between these historic quips and your poor defense of Israel. You do not need to create the blowback, you are carried by the wind of oppression.
We will say whatever we choose about Egypt, especially the truth because it is US money which calls the tune, and it belongs to the people. The world has the complete right to condemn both Egypt and the USA as well as Israel, for their activity of barbarity and cruelty. All of your useless hot air amounts to zero.
In short Witty, neither Egypt, nor Israel, or the USA or you have once ounce of legitimacy in their persecution of the Palestinians in Gaza. Every current act is totally illegal, immoral, and any support by silence or acquiescence is complicity in the face of all the facts (especially with a knowledge of such).
You didn’t read my second paragraph.
I guess you did read what conflicts with your approach, which I guess is “direct action”.
For you, its an oppression to oppose. To me, its a conflict to reconcile.
In either case, I find “direct action” that is not entirely non-violent, extremely specific and disciplined in its goals, to be counter-productive to all dissent.
The framing of this issue comes down to whether one regards the situation as an “oppression” and/or a “conflict”, or somewhere on that continuum. Most in the US, Europe, Asia, in much of the Arab world, regard it as mostly conflict.
To solve a conflict requires relaxation of the heat to support a mediative process. To oppose an oppression may require turning up the heat or not. So, Obama regards a settlement freeze as a means to reduce the heat, an expression of sincerity on Israel’s part. He is NOT motivated to “stick it to Israel”, and certainly not motivated to expose Israel to attacks on civilians.
He is mutually sympathetic.
In all cases, vagueness in description of goal and method, harms the process of reconciliation, or of direct action.
Obama is not “mutually sympathetic” except in the hypocritical condescending way that one often finds in American liberals. He condemns Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians and empathizes with them, imagining his daughters under Palestinian rocket fire. He doesn’t condemn Israeli violence against Palestinian or Lebanese civilians and when he does mention it regarding Lebanon he says it is all the fault of Hezbollah using civilians as human shields, a lie refuted by various human rights organizations. He lectures the Palestinians against using violence, which is absurd coming from an American President under any circumstances, but worse given that he gives no such lecture to Israelis. He does condemn settlement building, but it’s all hot air and the Israelis treat his whining about them with contempt. Here’s a Jerusalem Post interview with Michael Oren. I can’t recall if someone has linked to it before.
link
op·pres·sion / əˈpreshən/
• n. prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control: a region shattered by oppression and killing.
∎ the state of being subject to such treatment or control. ∎ mental pressure or distress
n. Conflict
1. A state of open, often prolonged fighting; a battle or war.
2. A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash.
3. Psychology. A psychic struggle, often unconscious, resulting from the opposition or simultaneous functioning of mutually exclusive impulses, desires, or tendencies.
I don’t know that “Most in the US, Europe, Asia, in much of the Arab world, regard it as mostly conflict.” I do know that the USA MSM totally ignores
the oppression of the Palestinians that is the long and signature feature of the I-P
relationship.
Any sandlot or recess hour sometimes occasions a happenstance flare up between two kids–a fight or conflict erupts; not often repeated. OTH,
a sandlot or recess hour prowled by a big bully on a daily basis is very
oppressive.
Excerpt:
“Are Palestinian civilians, men, women, children, no more than rats or cockroaches that can be killed and attacked in the thousands without so much as a word of compassion or in their defense? And what about the capture of thousands of Palestinian men who have been taken off by Israeli soldiers without a trace, the destitution and homelessness of so many ordinary people trying to survive in the ruins created by Israeli bulldozers all over the West Bank, the siege that has now gone on for months and months, the cutting off of electricity and water in all Palestinian towns, the long days of total curfew, the shortage of food and medicine, the wounded who have bled to death, the systematic attacks on ambulances and aid workers that even the mild-mannered Kofi Annan has decried as outrageous? Those actions will not be pushed so easily into the memory hole. Its friends must ask Israel how its suicidal policies can possibly gain it peace, acceptance and security.
A monstrous transformation of an entire people by the most formidable and feared propaganda machine in the world into little more than “militants” and “terrorists” has allowed not just Israel’s military but its fleet of writers and defenders to efface a terrible history of suffering and abuse in order to destroy the civil existence of the Palestinian people with impunity. Gone from public memory are the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 and the creation of a dispossessed people; the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza and their military occupation since 1967; the invasion of 1982 with its 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinian dead and the Sabra and Shatila massacres; the continuous assault on Palestinian schools, refugee camps, hospitals, civil installations of every kind. What anti-terrorist purpose is served by destroying the building and then removing the records of the Ministry of Education, the Ramallah Municipality, the Central Bureau of Statistics, various institutes specializing in civil rights, health and economic development, hospitals, radio and television stations? Is it not clear that Sharon is bent not only on “breaking” the Palestinians, but on trying to eliminate them as a people with national institutions?”
One would think that the quote describes what is currently taking place with the Palestinians by the oppressive Israeli government (remove Sharon and Kofi), but it is not, it is the words of Edward Said. Essentially it has gotten much worse, so we do not have an argument taking place but a process of slow (but accelerating) genocide. There are zero serious signs of what you call “reconciliation,” however this is not what is needed – what is needed is restitution in line with 242 and the right of return, and sanctions plus punishment for unforgivable murderous, systematic atrocities. Israel needs to be removed from the charter of nations, and all activity of favor withdrawn forthwith if it refuses to cease and desist in this course of genocide. That’s right, I go much further than merely sanctions and boycott, and reprobate the farce that has already been employed in the form of “peace process” – it is my view that this is the only course, applied by the world community that will cause Israel to stop.
Link to above quote 2004 quote from Edward Said -
WHAT ISRAEL HAS DONE
Kol HaKavod to Hedy Epstein!!!! Hope she doesn’t have to fast too long
Hedy Epstein was sent to England. Not a concentration camp surviver. Merely alive during the Holocaust. She gets a lot of mileage out of that Holocaust surviver nonsense.
A fast will do her a lot of good. It doesn’t look like she misses many meals.
Julian – That was a disgusting exercise in sophistry. Would she have been a ‘Holocaust Survivor’ if she’d stayed in Poland, or France, and survived?
What exactly, is the definition of a ‘Holocaust Survivor’ ?
“Epstein was born to a Jewish family in Freiburg, Germany, and in 1939 fled Nazi persecution via the Kindertransport to England. All but two of her family were killed at Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust. ”
Maybe Julian could tell us?
Holocaust Survivor definition has changed over the years.
Initially it included people liberated from death camps, those who survived death marches and those who escaped Ghettos and missed transports to death camps. Norman Finkelstein’s parents belong to this category.
Then this category broadened to Jews who were spirited away abroad or hid for a duration of war and were never placed in the Ghettos. The Jewish children hidden in my old school convent would be in this category (rules of cloister were lifted by Pope Pius XII for that purpose)
Then the category broadened to those who got out of the way by leaving and being send away before rounding of Jews started. Hedy Epstein belongs to this category.
Julian,
It is a great blessing that she was able to escape. She is the third individual that I’ve encountered to have escaped on the kinder express.
Please be careful not to add to survivors’ guilt by careless comments.
Hopefully, she will take some council on her hunger-strike.
Richard, you said:
“Please be careful not to add to survivors’ guilt by careless comments”.
I think the barbarian way that Jewish-Israelis are treating innocent civilians in Gaza- half of them are children – is troubling Hedy Epstein much more than our writings in Mondoweiss comments.
Her survivor’s guilt will be much more exercised by the fact that Operation Cast Lead dropped 3 000 000 kilograms of explosives on Gaza Strip in 3 weeks with no kinder express trains in sight for Palestinian parents to put their children on and send to safety.
I propose that we will continue to discuss Israeli atrocities with untroubled conscience.
She likely doesn’t read Mondoweiss.
The point was to Julian, to not pour salt on wounds.
My mother-in-law is a survivor of slave labor camps, and is compassionate towards Palestinians, and also feels threatened by militancy.
The majority of survivors derived an attitude of “Never Again”, and compassion simultaneously, as odd as that may sound to you. They did not seek to harm, but definitely sought to survive.
Their children defended them, took up the mantle rock solidly. Never Again in the current generation now reaching their 60′s and 70′s. And, although there is a generation gap among Jews in the US and in Israel, both generations’ experience is honored.
There was a larger generation gap between the children of survivors and the survivors than there is currently. The survivors were honored but the passivity in not fighting more harshly was ridiculed.
That theme is IN Israeli society now.
The witness to conscience is needed, and will contribute to Israel’s maturity. The urging of permanent shame is not needed, and is rejected.
I suppose in your case Juilan it all depends on who you are describing. If it were a full blown Zionist supporter you would not have one problem, this one can deduce from your posts and previous links. I will say the same for others of your persuasion who wish to trounce on Hedy’s bona fides. Extra emphasis upon the reprobates who hide behind the Holocaust to genocide another people, the smothering blanket used to muffle the authoritative voice of the Palestinians.
“Epstein was born to a Jewish family in Freiburg, Germany, and in 1939 fled Nazi persecution via the Kindertransport to England. All but two of her family were killed at Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust. During World War II she worked in munitions factories and joined a group of left-wing German Jewish refugees who hoped to re-introduce democracy in their homeland – “the foundation of my political education which still stands me in good stead today,” she says. Some 60 years later, she was interviewed about this experience for the film Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport.”
link to en.wikipedia.org
She sounds like a Holocaust Survivor to me.
Haha, great minds ;-)
There is no strict definition to a Holocaust survivor, but usually it is used to refer to someone who was in a concentration camp.
Really? Since when? Can I see an academic citation?
The phrase “survivor” was bandied about when my grandmother was being buried, but the phrase was not used on her tombstone, despite the death of her parents and siblings and nieces and nephews, because she was not in concentration camp. This is not a matter for academic citation but usage by people who use the phrase. If you insist on an academic citation, I will refer back to an earlier phrase in my paragraph, “there is no strict definition.” Do people in your circle use the term to refer to someone who lost most family members?
You are fucking kidding me. Now the Zionists are taking the “she’s not Jewish enough” defense?
So, how strict is Israel’s definition of “Holocaust survivor” in this context, pray tell?
link to haaretz.com
Some people on this web site might be serious. Others are not. If Hedy Epstein calls herself a survivor I would not deny her the right to do so. But I would question the wisdom of using a term for oneself that could lead to misunderstanding.
So, is the Israeli government abusing the term “Holocaust survivor” to bilk Europe? You raised the original question, WJ, now you have to see it through.
People who were prisoners of the Nazis in slave labor situation are survivors. The term concentration camp was too limiting. People who were prisoners of the Nazis are/were survivors. We should keep in mind that large numbers of murdered Jews were never interned in camps, but were killed by einsatzgruppen and were machine gunned in death pits. Some people survived this experience and climbed out of the death pits without bullet wounds. Those people are also survivors, though they didn’t spend time in concentration camp.
I recommend you get an education. The majority of holocaust survivors escaped incarceration in the camps.
You didn’t answer my question. Who does the Israeli Foreign Ministry intend to distribute those one billion German Euros to?
Actually Chaos4700, even if WI chooses to eventually answer you, the slip or ignoring in his original post is telling. Apparently all who escaped certain death in the camps are worthy of the dole, but they are not worthy of any resistance for the Palestinian cause. See my above post to Julian, the same applies to WJ, he only packs a little more fluff around his animus.
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