Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip have adopted Star of David badges similar to those which Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis in the 30s in protest at the Israel's plan to evacuate them from their homes.
Many of the settlers equate the prime minister Ariel Sharon's plans to evacuate the settlements next year with the Holocaust in which six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. Sharon wants to remove the settlements by the end of next year.
Jews were made to wear yellow stars by the Nazis, but the settlers plan to wear orange ones to denote the color of the Gaza Settlements Council and the campaign against disengagement.
The idea has angered many Israelis. Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem, said it was irresponsible.
"The plan to wear orange stars perverts the historical facts and damages the memory of the Shoah [Holocaust]," he said.
"It is important that the memory of the Shoah remain a unifying factor in Israeli society, not the opposite."
Despite the sensitivity of the subject, insults and comparisons relating to the Holocaust are a common part of Israeli political discourse.
Last month a Palestinian was forced to play his violin at a checkpoint, which reminded many of concentration camp treatment, and any form of government compulsion is routinely described as Nazi.
Roni Bakshi from the Gaza settlement of Neveh Dekalim, the initiator of the plan, said he hoped it would wake people up to what the government was doing.
"I will hand out the stars with a letter of explanation to the residents. My family and I will wear them.
"This is exactly what I want -- to shock. I would not dare to do this if I did not have the bad feeling that the plan here is to expel Jews," he told the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
Moshe Freiman, 56, whose mother survived the Holocaust, and is now buried in a settlement, said he would wear the star on his shirt.
"We, the second generation of Holocaust survivors, always complained to those who were there -- why did they not rise up, why did they not cry out and do something?" he said.
"Today, justifiably, this is said about us -- why are we not doing anything against this plan?"
Provocative statements about Sharon's disengagement plan in the Israeli media this week coincide with the arrival of a number of ministers from around the around the world, including Tony Blair.
Pinkhas Wallerstein, a council leader in the West Bank, said he was prepared to go to jail or die to prevent the evacuation of settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.
Moshe Karadi, head of the Israeli police, who will be responsible for evacuating the settlers, said the task would be much harder than the evacuation of settlements in the Sinai peninsula in 1982.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
RSS