'And also now …'
775 posts

'And also now …'
@BeckFamilie
«Wer meine Gebote hat und sie hält, der ist es, der mich liebt» «He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me» – Jesus Christ. | 👂› 💬











🚨A quick note and request for help: Like many accounts reporting on Israel and the Middle East, my reach has collapsed. Even my original videos, reports, and in-depth analysis only reach about 5% of you, despite consistent high-effort work. Unfortunately I'm starting to think the squeeze may not be worth the juice anymore. Before I give up though I'd like to run a quick experiment together. I'm wondering if I bypass the algorithmic changes by having a user base who turns on notifications for my posts: If you value my content, please turn on post notifications for my account (see image below). I’ll track the results over the next 7–10 days and report back honestly on whether notifications help cut through the algorithmic changes. And to respect your time and avoid bombarding you with notifications all day, I’m stopping the daily news wire. Going forward I’ll post only original reports, videos, and deeper analysis (much lower volume). Will you join the test? Reply “ON” below if you turn them on. Thanks so much and I appreciate every one of you.








Das ist Israel



It definitely didn’t start in 1948. Let’s look back at the 1834 pogroms - more than a century before the modern State of Israel; but Jews in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas were already being attacked simply for being Jews. During the 1834 Peasants’ Revolt in the Ottoman Levant (under Egyptian rule), Arab peasants and local mobs violently attacked Jewish communities: (1) In Hebron, at least 12 Jews were murdered (including 5 young girls), with widespread rape, beatings, and looting of the Jewish quarter; (2) In Jerusalem, the Jewish quarter was attacked and plundered by rioting mobs; and (3) The worst violence occurred in Safed, where the pogrom lasted 33 days — Jews were robbed, beaten, raped, and killed while synagogues were desecrated. Was this “resistance to occupation” 114 years before the modern State of Israel? Was this anger about “Jewish immigration” 50 years before the First Aliyah? There certainly were no “settlements.” And this was almost 190 years before the war in Gaza. Let’s call it what it is and what it always was: centuries-old religious hatred. Violence against Jews in the Land of Israel, quite simply, long predates every modern political grievance or excuse.





I am the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. My grandmother, Rifka, was married with four children when the Nazis murdered her husband. Alone with children to raise, her young son Avrumi, 12 years old, took her shift working so that she could prepare for Passover with her other children, sister and sister’s children. When shouts of “Yudenrein!” “Jew round up” rang through the streets, Rifka took the children to the empty space below the floor boards to hide. As she was closing the hatch, Avrumi ran into the house. “Come! Come!,” she called frantically. “I can’t,” he said. “The Germans saw me, if I don't come out, they will know there is a hiding place. I just came to say goodbye.” When the Nazis barged in, Rifka listened through the floorboards as her son told them he had run into the house in a random search for food. She would never see him again. Two more of her children as well as her sister, nieces and nephews were killed in subsequent round ups. Her brother had been killed earlier in the war. Rifka was left with one son, Shlomo. 14 years old. They worked and hid in farms, in hay stacks and behind false doors. Exposed in the fields one day, they ran together, chased like animals by the Nazi’s. Shlomo told his mother, “If you don't let go of my hand, we will both die.” He let go. Shlomo went one way, Rifka went the other. The Nazis shot him in the back. With no husband or children to live for, Rifka joined the Partisans in the woods. After the war, she lay sick in bed with no will to live. Shlomo, meanwhile, had survived the gunshot. After the war as he searched for family, he heard a woman singing a familiar song. “Where did you hear that song?” he asked her. She told him a woman who lay dying had been humming it. “Is she still alive? Please, bring me to her.” And so Shlomo was reunited with his mother. In a displaced persons camp in Germany, Rifka married a man named Zalman whom she had met in the partisans. Zalman had lost his wife and three children to the Nazis but had one surviving son, Al. Together, Rifka and Zalman had two more children. Shep, born in the DP camp and Fayge (my mother) born in Bolivia where they moved after being sponsored by cousins. Zalman fell ill and the family moved to NY for treatment. Unfortunately he died when my mother was 2.5 years old. Left alone with children to raise, Rifka bought a farm in NJ. Back then, being a single parent meant your children could be taken from you. She needed a husband fast. A man named Berche, also a survivor, whose wife and two children were murdered, remarried after the war and had a daughter. His second wife, Dubye, died on the boat to America. A widower with a daughter to raise, he needed a wife to keep his daughter from a state run orphanage. Someone introduced Berche to Rifka and they married. I was raised with their memories. Their tears and their fears. There was no Sabbath when my grandfather didn’t cry, no day my grandmother didn’t stare silently into a past I could not accompany her to. Each spoke 4- 5 languages. Each had rebuilt their lives over and over again...But despite their pain, they were full of love. Their pride in their families, their belief in goodness...I cannot imagine the depth of their loss and how much strength it took to simply continue breathing. Believing. Hoping. And loving. I grew up with a family of half, whole and step siblings. A grandfather with whom I shared no blood but with whom I shared a heart. Cousins who drove me nuts but drove hours to see me. Aunts who were crazy and who I was crazy about. Uncles who slobbered me with kisses and showered me with love. I grew up in a family that understood love and loss, the value of sacrifice and the vital importance of loyalty. I love them all for who they are and who they are to me. They are all part of the story and part of who I am. #YomHashoa



