RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.timesofisrael.com/unsung-jewish-heroes-who-helped-uk-to-victory-in-

 When British novelist Alan Fenton told a business acquaintance that his two much older brothers had died in World War II, he encountered a surprised response.

After what Fenton recalled as an “embarrassed pause,” his lunchtime companion said: “I didn’t think Jews fought in the war.”

As Fenton later wrote, “Those words were like a blow to the stomach.”

The twins, Basil and Gerald Felsenstein (as the family were then called), volunteered to join the Royal Air Force as aircrew at the war’s outbreak in September 1939. Their horrified father tried to talk them out of it and persuade them to opt for potentially less dangerous options, such as joining the army or RAF ground crew. But the teenagers were adamant and, as Jews, determined to get into the thick of the fight to defeat the Nazis as soon as they could.

Neither young man survived the war. Gerald — whose role was to lie flat in Halifax bombers and direct the pilot until its explosive cargo was released on enemy targets — died in a raid over Germany in March 1943. Just under two years later, Basil died in a patrol over Japanese-occupied Burma.

Basil Felsenstein. (Courtesy RAF Museum)

“They fought for a cause they believed passionately in. And they died for it. I am enormously proud of them,” said Fenton, who was born seven years after Basil’s death.

Their stories are among those being collected by London’s RAF Museum as part of its new Jewish “Hidden Heroes” project. As the UK prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of the “Battle of Britain” this summer — when the country’s air force successfully repelled a planned German invasion — the program aims to raise awareness about the role played by Jewish personnel in the RAF during WWII.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/pogrom-started-palestinian-arab-israeli-conflict-joseph-puder/

Exactly one hundred years ago, in April, 1920, marked the opening shot of the Arab Israeli conflict. It was a pogrom against Jews in Jerusalem and its surrounding areas. The pogrom, also called by some the Nebi Musa riots, took place between Sunday, April 4, and Wednesday, April 7, 1920. It cost the lives of five Jews, and 200 others were injured. The violence was instigated by the British occupation administration and led by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who later became Hitler’s ally. The Jaffa riots a year later (May 1-7, 1921) killed 47Jews and wounded 146. Much like these days, the Arab-Palestinian terrorists used knifes to kill vulnerable Jews, such as women, children, and the elderly. A British investigative commission called the pogrom “cowardly, and treacherous.” 

The pogrom was not a mere criminal affair, it was motivated by religious and nationalist sentiments that denied Jewish rights to sovereignty anywhere in the region. The Arab (the term Palestinians didn’t exist at the time, and Jews were actually called Palestinians) attackers carried such slogans as “Death to the Jews”(Atbach al-Yahud), “Palestine is our land, and the Jews are our dogs.” The Jaffa riot was proceeded by the August, 1929 riot, which wiped out the ancient Jewish community in Hebron, and killed 133 Jews. Known as the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, it was led once again by Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. This time the death toll was much greater, estimated by historian Benny Morris to be about 300 Jewish dead.

The pogrom of April 1920 occurred at a confluence of several historical and political events. In Syria, the Hashemite Emir Feisal, son of Hussein the Sharif of Mecca, was ensconced in Damascus, awaiting with his Arab tribesmen army for the fulfillment of British promises. Under the Mc Mahon-Hussein Correspondence, an Arab state in the Levant, including the native Arabia, was promised by the British to Hussein. At the same time, Britain and France, in 1916, concluded the Sykes-Picot Agreement which divided the former Ottoman Empire between them. The British government had also come out with the Balfour (at the time British Foreign secretary) Declaration in 1917, that promised a National Home for the Jewish people in their ancestral home – Palestine. The Balfour Declaration promises were confirmed at the San Remo conference in April, 1920.