Using Holocaust Memorials to Bash Israel in Germany

Aug. 14 2015

In Munich, a controversy has broken out over installing cobblestone-sized brass plaques on the streets, each commemorating a victim of the Nazis who lived nearby. These memorials, known as Stolpersteine (“stumbling stones”), have become a feature of many German cities. Inevitably, writes Benjamin Weinthal, the controversy also involves feelings about Israel:

In late July, the Munich city council voted to ban the “stumbling-stone” memorials. Charlotte Knobloch, the former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and current head of the Munich Jewish community, has long opposed the Stolpersteine and has called them an insult to the victims. Knobloch, herself a Holocaust survivor, said it is “intolerable” for passersby to step on the names of Jews that were murdered in the tragedy. . . .

[Meanwhile], a co-founder of the “stumbling-stones” memorial in the city of Kassel . . . declared at an anti-Semitic demonstration in 2014 that “death is a master today from Israel” and that he wished that there would be “stumbling stones” for the murdered Palestinians, . . . an allusion to the famous Holocaust poem by the Jewish poet Paul Celan . . . who wrote about Nazism: “death is a master from Germany.” [Similar] anti-Zionist sentiments [have been expressed by] the co-founders of the Munich Stolpersteine initiative.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Anti-Semitism, German Jewry, Holocaust, Holocaust remembrance, Israel & Zionism

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula