Solarity

Jobless Recovery or Solar Power II

2009-12-17T18:03:00.000-08:00

Much of what was to follow when I interrupted what became Part I will be omitted to make way for some discussion of fast moving developments, most of which are pertinent to the Copenhagen summit on climate change. Advertised intensely earlier, expectations for real success had to be lowered. Carol Browner, Pres. Obama's “energy czar” had told Congress more than a month ago that the conference could not achieve its aim in the face of US congressional resistance to cap and trade legislation. With the giant meeting, termed COP15, about to start, many confrontations emerged, the most serious of which seemed to be that between rich developed and poor developing countries.

The announcement of the troop surge to Afghanistan at this moment could have been interpreted as a ploy to ensure that the shaky summit will not get the main media coverage. It now looks more likely that the timing had to do with the ambitious Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (mazal tov). Evidently related to COP15 was his trip to China, the other big fosssil burner; 20% of world total each; while the other 190 attending countries burn a total of 60%.

For the biggest negative impact, it became known that e-mails and other documents hacked from the University of East Anglia records indicate that global temperature data used for the UN's Inter-governmental Panel (IPCC) raising the alarm on Climate Change had been handled illegitimately, so as to affirm the conclusions on imminent calamitous global warming dangers; and that papers at odds with those conclusions had been suppressed.

Not all these problems which could harm prospects for a fruitful summit will be discussed here, but if enough of them were to lead to yet another year on a weak, toothless interim deal, honest failure would be preferable, to clear the deck for something real; effective action.

On the eve of the COP 15 opening, the German Der Spiegel had a report on strong pressures on the new “center-right” German coalition government to drastically cut the price paid to people for feeding solar (PV) electricity to the grid. After the feed-in law had made the country the foremost generator of direct solar power (at least by PV) and major job creator, Spain and others adopted a similar one, albeit at a less generous rate and more limited success. Barack Obama is informed on that and does not want continued German (or other) superior standing in a technology first used in the US. In spite of the substantial German lead, beating it should be easy. That does not mean that it cannot fail, if what got the US to its inferior status is to continue, without more honest information, bold thinking and, if need be, readiness to stand up to the status quo crowd.

Apart from some work on multi-stage solar desalination in the 1960s, my serious professional involvement with energy sources took place in the 1970s. That did not end my interest, but my access to the pertinent literature became very limited. Surreptitious steps had already been taken before to isolate us. At the time, the conseqences seemed minor, possibly even in the period since, but readers ought to be aware of it.

While it is surely advisable to learn from earlier successes of others, it would not be a good idea to imitate the German experience on direct solar energy too closely. I have great respect for Hermann Scheer, the head of Eurosolar and Bundestag (Parliament) member mainly responsible for the German success. His book (The Solar Manifesto) was the best I had found on the several (non-technological) aspects of solar power, by far. That opinion did not change after some conversations with him at a Eurosolar conference (on solar finaning) in Bonn in the 1990s that he had asked me to attend. But their success relative to the US is based less on their (real) achievements than on the miserable record of the US program; that looks designed by outfits of the polluting competition, especially the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); which indeed it was and continued under its successors, first ERDA then the new Energy Department.

As long as the aim of these AEC generated outfits was (is?) to prevent utilization of the solar sources of power, it is easy to understand why the US lost in a utilization race, noted by Pres. Obama. They did not pioneer, so others could follow. On a wider scale, the suddenly large solar funding, when it became part of the nuclear power and bomb domain, may have intimidated others from starting a “race”. And there was worse; like abuses of the patenting process and worse than that.

In the 1970s I (along with at least one colleague) probably knew more on how to get low cost solar power than anyone else. It may still hold true today, so when Barack Obama started with his emphasis on clean energy, I thought I ought to make one more effort in spite of my age-related problems. The wait for real action has lasted longer than expected. Our project still looks better than any I see in the open literature, so I'm still at it, can't tell for how long.

The same week as his talk at MIT, Obama went to Florida to visit the largest photovoltaic (PV) Installation in the country. The largest is not the same as the best. Florida Light and Power (fpl) which owns the thing, uses the same flat plate PV as the Germans. In the best areas of the US (not necessarily Florida), it is easy to focus the sunlight, e.g. with inexpensive (Fresnel-like) lenses, to get much more power, say 10-20x, from the same amount of expensive PV strips. They were to be used preferably in decentralized installations of moderate size at/near the point of need. There should be little, if any, economies of scale beyond a minimal size to detract from the big power gain. Our main emphasis was on solar thermal power, using the concentrated sunlight to provide heat for power by conventional turbine generators.

Our motivation was not fear of climate change, which was barely audible at the time, nor anything new and alarming. We also did not do it for jobs, but there were plenty of other problems that could be tackled in addition to the effects of the first oil shock and embargo; and we were not the only ones busy with it. Later it turned out that additional things could get solved, including climate and job problems.

The way it came across at MIT, Obama wants to win the race by exporting things like solar panels or wind turbines. That must have been involved in the German successes. But what's wrong with the huge internal market that China gets exhorted to produce for. Satisfying US energy needs can provide non outsourceable assembly jobs for a very long time at an acceptable price, largely competitive already with polluting power. It is a very flexible design, but it can, and should, not be expected to apply everywhere. Nor should any other solar design.

Since this again has taken too long, and Cop 15 is approaching its end, the main thing that will not be left for a post to follow (where the advantages and drawbacks by comparison with other energy will be cited) is the superior job creation potential of our design (for details on which the September 16 posting is adequate). Simplified, some job creation beyond that from other direct solar designs derives from the greater amount of assembly work when the concentrating panels are assembled on site from simple components; but the main reason for more jobs is the much lower price of the installation, which should lead to natural proliferation, mostly by private capital.

Let me restate that I am continuing, as was the norm, to use the term solar energy for all the sources that provide energy ultimately derived from earth's continuing income from the sun, including i.a. wind, hydro, wave and biomass. Only the latter may have to be renewed by someone.

Jobless Recovery or Serious Solar Power (I)

2009-11-13T19:13:00.000-08:00

The US economy was reported to have grown 3.5% in the last quarter, an indication that the recession may be over; if only it also grows in the next quarter (or two). At the same time, unemployment continues to be close to 10% (officially) and is probably getting worse. (It indeed rose to 10.2% since I began this post). If low unemployment were still regarded as an important positive feature of a healthy economy, it would mean that growth, as defined, may not be as good an indicator of prosperity as it is made out to be.

Barack Obama was elected (a year ago) after a campaign that promised bold action leading to change, real change you can believe in. Before the impressive growth announcement, it seemed to many early supporters that it really required faith to believe claims of progress in diverse areas, rather than informed judgement.

It is true that Bush-Cheney left him a country with a broken economy, which continued to deteriorate fast before he took office this February, as well as an odious international reputation. The new president maintained that if Recovery Act legislatipon to approve his stimulus spending were approved promptly, as it then was, the economy would take off, even though there may be some further decline first. The most consistent promise was that millions of new jobs would be created.

Topping his domestic agenda were health care reform and a serious commitment to clean energy; initially also education, especially in science and technology. At least with respect to job creation, that seemed confined to retrofitting windows with superior energy features, thus classifiable under energy. Hiring many more teachers, for smaller class size, could itself accomodate millioms of new jobs, though hardly any by the private sector; which is preferred. That could also apply to jobs resulting from the health care reform, if it comes with a public health insurance option. Yet most clean solar energy is intrinsically job intensive rather than requiring the huge initial capital and continuing fuel expenses of the current polluting energy industry. And the bulk of it is to come from the private sector.

Throughout this period, the President has said very little on his energy policy, while his exceptional eloquence and his personal charisma were utilized liberally on other parts of his agenda. It has also been difficult to find out what, if anything, has actually been done. Does that show a lack of real interest in, or rather inadequate understanding of, energy (or what?). The latter looks less serious and more likely to me. He admitted ignorance of details on what was involved in the financial breakdown last year, later showed that he learned fast, enough to comment confidently. Couldn't that be the case here? To different extents, we have all been dis-and-mis-informed. There may not be anything with so much powerfully administered disinformation as on US energy practices. Can he cut adequately through the resulting confusion? Let's hope he can.

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Energy comments by both the President and other major officials have just been published, at least under the heading of climate change, evidently in anticipation of the December Copenhagen summit on that. Barack Obama spoke at MIT, and the New York Times had a transcript.To try to summarize briefly a long speech covering many energy technologies, not always consistently, I'll borrow from Helene Cooper and John M. Broder, the Times reporters who got paid for it (and a related article).

Obama wants legislators to help the push toward greater use of renewable energy. Since rising energy use imperils the planet, nations everywhere are racing to develop new ways to produce and use energy. The nation that wins the race will lead the global economy, and that has to be the US. “It's that simple. (Applause.)”.

I can't join in that applause. Has there really been a need to turn this into another peaceful war against others; who also are concerned about the future of the planet and their energy supply. What has been needed is determined defense of the public good and democratic norms from corruptive assault of lobbies for excessively profitable outfits. I know from rich personal experience some of what their networks in the federal civil service could accomplish in the 1970s. Can they now?

Especially with respect to direct solar power, a less captive US government could have been way ahead of others simply based on its superior resources; most probably still could be, if the extra-constitutional overreach of the status quo forces could be curtailed. Those need not be identical with the organizations President Obama now “chides” for opposing new legislation that includes “cap and trade” provisions to help finance clean energy at the expense of fossil energy, while limiting emissions now ; an apparent reference (the Times people believe) to the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.

That the ultimate aim is supposed to be a transition to the clean “renewable” energy sources is affirmed by explicit references to it; like “debate as to how we transition from fossil fuels to renewable fuels” or ”legislation that will finally make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy in America”. That does not fit well with the details of the spending of $80 billions in the January stimulus bill: “developing new battery technologies for hybrid vehicles; modernizing the electric grid; making our homes and businesses more energy efficient; doubling our capacity to generate renewable electricity”. If it is not even 1% of total generation now, one might think (2x0=0) that that's no change at all. It really isn't "change I can believe in". Nor is it just this pitiful number that is worrisome.

If that was to be the (first term) achievement of “the largest investment in clean energy in history”, made just after assuming office, it was disappointing, but understandable for a brand new team in a rush to stem the fast economic breakdown inherited. Could the added stimulus from a new Senate bill he was advocating (by Senators Kerry and Boxer) be the answer? It is about “ making the best use of resources we have in abundance, everything from figuring out how to use the fossil fuels that inevitably we are going to be using for several decades,.... as cleanly and efficiently as possible; creating safe nuclear power; ...... sustainably grown biofuels and then” (i.e. not before or at the same time) “the energy that we can harness from wind and the waves and the sun”. If the solar energy sources, the most abundant by far, clean and safe without having to await new developments that may make practical sense (like “clean coal”), if they have to come last, then their earlier emphasis can't be taken seriously. I'm not ready for that conclusion.

Pending further discussion, let us note that one positive effect of climate change has been that the President and top aides finally began to at least talk about action on energy.

Qum (and Tehran) sequel. Israel:

2009-10-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

The Jewish shops at the Tehran bazaar seemed to be doing well, as did the Armenian ones. I had no problem at the airport taking my Tehran to Tel Aviv flight, although there would have been a problem, if it had to land while flying over Iraq. I remember nothing from that flight that would be of interest in deciding whether an Israeli air force return from attacking targets in Iran would proceed smoothly; an attack that began to look likely when I began writing the first part, but that didn't look like a good idea anyway. By now, at the start of the sequel two weeks later, it looks like a remote possibility.

In Tel Aviv, I happened to arrive for the 70^th birthday of my uncle, the father of the three Yaari brothers in different Kibbutzim, all of whom had come to Tel Aviv for the celebration, so I managed to see all three cousins (with part of their families). We had grown up quite close together in Germany, so my sudden arrival without notice (no telephones in Israel then, unless urgent need for business) was welcome all around, especially for my uncle who by a conspiratorial “white” lie was made to believe that I had come specifically for his birthday. Without having been aware of it, I had bought him a carved ivory chess set in Hong Kong (he had originaly taught me as a child to play it); which made the “lie” more credible.

When I decided to try to stop for a day in (divided) Berlin on the way to Copenhagen (slightly to the West), my brother said he can see to it. The answer was that no, I was not to stop in Berlin, and as an Israeli citizen at the time I had to pay 15% of the price of the round-the-world trip, according to some alleged regulation. I told them I wouldn't object if they got the money from Dow Chemical which had bought / paid for the ticket. For all I know, it may just have been that clerk showing his “power”. Neither I nor Dow had to pay. But having had no problem with the Israeli passport in Iran and crossing Iraq, it was in Israel where it became a problem, so I had to waste part of both my two days there in government offices.

The first visit to Copenhagen also turned out to be my most eventful, far better than seems to be expected for the climate change conference scheduled there in December. On today's BBC World, there was speculation on whether Barack Obama will lend his prestige toward some sort of success by attending, while noting that his popularity has suddenly dropped quite a bit. Maybe Netanyahu's attendance should be given a higher priority, in recognition of his apparent higher prestige in the US.

That was demonstrated convincingly after he had let Obama know his rejection of the call for a stop to illegal construction for the West Bank squatters (“settlers”), so as to enable scheduling peace negotiations with a photo op at the Washington meeting with Palestinian Mahmud Abbas. In spite of the rejection, the latter had to let himself be photographed shaking “Bibi's” hand, with Obama behind them, in what is being compared to the Rabin-Arafat handshaking photo for the Oslo accord. Abbas may well be more committed to peace than Arafat, but certainly not Bibi than Rabin. But when he tried to shake murdered Rabin's widow Leah's hand at the funeral, she could, and did, refuse; since she viewed him as responsible for much of the hatred of her husband generated by enemies of peace negotiations. Poor Abbas has since seen a need for a public change of course. Maybe Obama sees a way of retrieving peace hopes, too.

I was in Qum (and Tehran)

2009-10-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

There were other major news items last week, like the first summit meeting of the G-20, that included countries like India and Brazil, to confront climate change; and the first handshake of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with Benjamin Netanyahu. But the most explosive revelation was the discovery of a second Iranian uranium enrichment plant being built outside Qum. Not many non-Iranians here know where or what that is. I knew, and had actually gone to, that holy Shiite city.

At the time, I was working for The Dow Chemical Company's James River (fibers) Division at Williamsburg, Virginia, and was sent to Japan for exchange of research information with the scientists at the labs of Asahi Chemical Company (with which Dow had started a joint company), mainly one at Numazu, with a clear view of Mount Fuji. Among the extra treats was being wined (sake) and dined (and entertained) at a Geisha House, hosted by the Asahi president.

When it was over, after 7 weeks, I decided to exchange my first class ticket back for a normal (“tourist”) ticket forward, for what is still my only trip around the world; having got a week's (+) vacation by phone. Dow even got some money back from the exchange. In principle, I could have gone way south to Australia, then way north to Siberia etc, as long as each new destination was west of the preceding. But I was moderate; stopping first in Hong Kong, then Bangkok, Delhi, Tehran, Tel Aviv and Copenhagen to Virginia.

The Asahi-Dow office in Tokyo had made all the travel arrangements, including a hotel reservation at the Tehran Hilton; which became famous when it turned out that Lt. Col. Ollie North and Reagan's National Security Advisor McFarlane had stayed there during their secret hostage mission. The Asahi-Dow people couldn't know that; nor did they know that my one day there would be on the holiest Shia holiday, commemorating the assassination of Ali, the Prophet's son in law and candidate for the succession. I was told that everything would be closed that day. But a Dutch businessman who spent much time there suggested that I go with him to nearby Qum; also that the Jewish and Armenian artisans in the big Bazaar stay open. So it was.

My main recollection of Qum is of our being on top of the mausoleum for the father of Reza Shah Pahlevi. It overlooked the courtyard of the main mosque almost directly below, and there was threatening shaking of fists from there in the direction of us tourists (most evidently Iranians). My Dutch buddy claimed there was srong anti-Israel feeling around, and I was still an Israeli citizen, but saw no reason to worry, having been admitted with my Israeli passport. I still don't adequately understand the complex Iranian history preceding the Islamic revolution emanating largely from the Qum Mullahs 1-2 decades after my visit in January 1961. It was not that long after the 1953 British inspired (BP, then still the Anglo Iranian Oil Co) CIA coup that overthrew the popular prime minister Mossadegh, an aristocrat and democrat, a kind of Warren Buffett for Middle Eastern circumstances. His support is supposed to have extended all the way from the Shia clergy to the Tudeh party, regarded as way left. So what I witnessed may still have been part of resentment over the restoration of the Pahlevis by the coup, even though turning (part of?) the clergy is alleged to have been an important achievement for Kermit Roosevelt, who was in charge of the coup.

(This will have to be continued later, possibly as a separate posting. It has already been interrupted unposted for close to a week.)

Clean Energy and Jobs Now?

2009-09-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

Two firefighters were killed in the Los Angeles area conflagration, apparently under control now, that had been competing for media attention with the red hot Health Care “debate”. Some others, including residents, were badly injured.

The flames were unusually fierce and early this time, fed by brush desiccated by another year of drought. But record high temperatures and drought had become a regular weather feature, increasingly worldwide in scope. In Europe, even earlier this year, the Athens area in Greece had been hit hard; in August 1943, 50 people in Paris were reported to have succumbed in 4 days; other times, the heat and drought news comes from Uruguay, then Australia, Israel, and Africa of course. Even proverbially wet coastal British Columbia is no longer immune.

Very few now would absolve climate change, global warming, of responsibility, even though other factors, such as El Niňo and long term natural climate variations, may play a part. Replacing the polluting with any of the clean solar energy sources, wind, direct sunlight, biomass et al, would tend to counter global warming. Moreover, there are ways to build solar installations which in addition would help toward adaptation to climate changes that will have taken place already. We had worked out such a design in our (government) research center in 1973-4.

It featured major advantages (beyond the adaptability) compared to the solar options the public was allowed to be informed of, mainly “flat plate” thermal collectors for domestic water and swimming pool heating, a little “passive” solar architecture and much hype about flat plate photovoltaic (PV) power. That was the least competitive technology, thus the most effective for providing the (formerly AEC) agency picked to fund energy research grants ( DOE precursor ERDA) with the evidently welcome research conclusion that “solar power is technically feasible , but far too expensive in practice”. We had our own research budget and could assert confidently that solar power could be close to cost effectiveness in many places almost immediately, and competitive with the polluting sources in the most favorable locations; which were abundant in our California lab's pertinent states (~west of the Mississippi).

There are quite a few analogies to our recent / current situation. The US superpower had also just been revealed as vulnerable by a price shock and boycott imposed by oil exporting countries, leading to long lines at gas stations that did have some for sale, where people began to talk about energy from the sun. Energy was indeed declared as being at the top of our agricultural research priorities, along with food production.

Such formal declarations did not mean that “powerful” vested interests which determine government practice really decided to let the national needs trump a more profitable status quo. As, e.g., in the current Health Care dispute, it means at most that some more of their excess profits have to be invested in corrupting key people and confusing the general public.

This is not the proper place to describe the wrongdoing needed to prevent a serious solar transition starting in the 1970s and sparing us much of our calamities since. It began with much of our approved research budget being withdrawn retroactively (unprecedented); allegedly not to prevent our work, the feasibility and legitimacy of which was never questioned. The energy priority remained in place. A paper we wrote on the design was not welcomed, but allowed to be presented almost “as is” at a Disneyland meeting of the polluting energy people. The published Proceedings are thus available, but almost only in their libraries. Anything wrong with the UCLA meeting of the Solar Energy Society just a month later? But the vile illegalities that followed my whistleblowing two years later, first to the Carter White House, overshadow these early assaults on just our professional rights / responsibilities and are more akin to outrages of these past few years.

From all I can now find out, our design (especially with some easy updating) still looks superior in most respects to published proposals, notably for sunny and semi-arid regions. It was never meant as exclusive model (as no solar model should be), although it can be flexible enough to include many others. Use of more than one technology for substantial decentralized installations has been a central feature, so as to minimize the need for expensive energy storage (our having included only wind and biologically stored solar energy in the diagram of a “sun village” was not meant to exclude less widely available ones; even limited fossil burning in the early, 1970s stages).

Focusing direct sunlight, so as to concentrate it at least about 10x before absorption by thermal or PV targets is central for the main power yield, at least in the preferred areas. The very thin focusing lenses we worked on, shown to be easily mass produced inexpensively (for 1-2 % of the sale price of comparable devices) can probably be complemented with relatively inexpensive mirror troughs (e.g. for use where the diffuse sunlight is not needed below) when they, like the lenses are deployed under transparent roofs.

Glass roofs shield components from wind loads, rain, uv degradation etc, at the expense of 8-10% of sunlight. It allows wide material choice and tracking the sun with only minor expense of the power gained (compared to weather exposed collector fields). The light harvesting system for thermal power thus can be inexpensive enough to let some of the light (especially in the red) pass through the spectrally selective absorber (that heats the fluid which carries the energy to turbine or non-electric use); since that from the (unfocused) diffuse light is likely to be inadequate for many of the crops to be grown below. The precious water for crop irrigation that can be collected from the transparent roof is utilized for the modern, more sparing, greenhouse requirements. Such crops are obviously less threatened by global warming. Pending more detailed future treatment here, also for concentrated PV, fairly detailed early summaries (chapter 3 and chapters 4-6) of the design will have to make do (The first link is a footnote to a 1977 memo to the Carter White House; the following ones are from an enclosure to a 1980 memo to the UN Human Rights Commission.)

Environmental advantages, beyond the intrinsic virtue of clean energy without anthropogenic radioactivity or CO2, include the non exclusive land use for energy harvesting collectors and the reduced need for transmission of reasonably decentralized energy harvested at / near consumption site. It also makes possible utilization of what has to be “waste heat” in highly centralized installations in a remote desert, and which amounts to most of the energy collected. That contributed further toward making this the most energy conserving and the cheapest sunpower. It is far easier to get financing for a reasonably sized plant. It is highly job, rather than fuel or capital, intensive. With enough lens mass production in place (no problem), it can proliferate very fast, obviating the need for any new dirty competition at least in the more favorable locations. Those also include much of the underdeveloped countries that need it most, especially right now; if we aspire to a more peaceful, just, world.

The situation now looks surprisingly similar to that in the 1970s, at least at first glance. The clean solar sources are still deemed desirable, but they are almost always referred to as “renewable” energy, a major semantic achiement for the dirty competition. The term makes sense when crops have to be grown for burning as biofuel. But the sun keeps radiating, the winds keep blowing, ocean waves churning, and rivers for hydropower just keep rolling along; without requiring renewal by us.

It was not President Obama who ended SERI, the Solar Energy Research Institute, and replaced it with NREL, where the N stands for National, the "patriotic" adjective conferred on the AEC (to DOE) labs designed for “peaceful” and bomb making nuclear work. It was a predecessor who got rid of the “solar” in the SERI founded by Jimmy Carter in the 70s. The concentration first on some health care reform need not mean that Barack Obama is less pro solar than Carter. My guess is that he is unaware of the possibility of something more than a “twofer” of some energy and jobs; like a “multifer” of much more energy and jobs, at less expense, very fast, with added “xtras”, not all of which have been discussed here.

When Jay Leno, in one of his last NBC night shows, asked him why nobody was being prosecuted for the rip-offs associated with the Wall Street bailout, Obama said that (most of) that didn't have to be Illegal. But those thought responsible for the LA fires are sought for murder. That makes some sense, and no less would prosecution for the deliberate, powerful prevention of methods which could have prevented the starvation of many millions since, for oil wars, 0ne of which featured the biggest fire on record (set in disputed oil fields) and many casualties burned alive when their vehicles were hit (also Amertcans). Even if confined to what happened in our /my case, the illegalities would have richly deserved criminal prosecution; which I'd rather avoid. It should not be off the table, if they now use their corruptive clout to scuttle “energy reform” more powerfully than the health reform opponents' lobbies used theirs.

Clean energy, as job creator, appeared to be second to none on Obama's agenda initially, and solar proponents expected much. Lacking, however, was a most important feature present at Jimmy Carter's 1977 call for the moral equivalent of war for energy; namely a grassroots movement organizing for Sun Day (Wednesday May 3, 1978). That may not be enough, given the reach of those opposed, also into “movement”-like NGOs, but it may well be essential. It is hard to believe that a “Renewability Day” could generate the sort of genuine grassroots enthusiasm prevailing in the Sun Day movement.

Steven Chu is a far more impressive Secretary of the Energy Department than Carter's, but that may not be enough to bring about the changes needed there. He is probably bound to also represent at least his “Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory”, the beneficiary of two Applied Semantics face lifts since I came to know it as the Lawrence Radiation Lab. What has been approved up to now doesn't look ideal; nor bad, given that any solar project is more likely to be beneficial than harmful. I haven't abandoned hope of better to follow soon. I was in my 40s when this work was started and I expected to be involved for a few months before returning to my normal, more scientific, research; in which I had gained significant international recognition, but insignificant in societal importance next to the solar development. I am now in my mid 80s, so have to keep up hope for Barack Obama and team, since I can't expect a better president in the time I may have left.

(After posting other things, also kept in suspense for many months, there should be more on this. There should then be a link to it here.)

A beautiful summer day at English Bay

2008-11-06T22:20:00.000-08:00

This is my second panorama. It is made up of about a dozen pictures stitched together with a program called Autostitch™ autostitch.net made by Matthew Brown a UBC Computer Science student.

Juan

From sunsets

Incan Messenger

2008-11-06T21:39:00.000-08:00

There should be a more detailed description forthcoming about this wooden sculpture showing a messenger with a message from the Inca, the divine head of the Incan empire. It could inform also the new leader of the United States, of the Free World, about the existence of a mighty, clean, ubiquitous,unending source of energy that will never have to be replaced.

From Solarity

Can We Really?

2008-11-04T20:01:00.000-08:00

It depends.

"We can now declare Barack Obama the winner" according to CNN's Wolf Blitzer at almost exactly 8pm West Coast time, as polls in California were closing. We cannot claim that my vote was decisive, (not yet). YES WE CAN congratulate the United States for having taken a giant step in recovery from one of its two paramount historical "sins".

Senator John McCain is conceding immediately, now. I'll sign off to listen.

Political Change and Personal Lives

2008-10-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

I sent in my vote for the US elections today. Yesterday, I went to vote in a British Columbia by-election for the provincial legislature. 70 years before yesterday, October 29, 1938, we had been woken up by loud banging on our door at 5 a.m. A group of brownshirts (SA) came in, commanded by a non-uniformed man (Gestapo?). We were made to dress and taken away. It was the last time I saw the Dortmund house where I had been born 13 years earlier. It was destroyed by bombs during the war they started 10 months later.

The day before that had been pretty normal, starting with school at the Ludendorff Schule, formerly Oberrealschule, then playing football (soccer) and such. The day after, we woke up on the ground opposite the railroad station of Zbaszyn, a Polish border town, among dozens of other Jewish families from all over Germany. We were not allowed to leave the small town for the Polish interior for many months, some until just before the war started. There had been no political changes we knew of that could have been responsible for the abrupt change in our personal fortunes. The takeover of Austria ("Anschluss") had happened half a year earlier and hadn't affected our lives. But there had been things happening that we weren't aware of; and much more to come.

(Continued November 3.)

The US presidential elections tomorrow are to lead to major real change affecting people's life regardless of which of the two candidates allowed in practice wins; if you believe their campaign speeches. If you know how little those tend to mean after the election is over, you discount them now, even though both probably meant it honestly, at least in part and in principle. Most polls predict an Obama victory, which would mean I voted for the winners in all three elections this month.

Even if he ends up with a majority in both houses of Congress, I doubt that he will be permitted to advance substantially toward the only real solution to recurring energy crises and climate change: reliance on our continuous energy income from the sun, the wind it powers, the water cycle it drives, etc, last not least its direct radiant energy. The anti-solar interests made so much money from the oil bubble while most others lost that their corruptive powers may be greater than ever. To John McCain's credit, he was unusual for a major politician in using the word corruption for such corruption. It would be interesting if he could be put in charge of countering it; e.g. as Attorney General. But don't bet on it.

On foreign policy. prospects seem similar; some improvement, but limited in relation to need. If that is all that will happen in the Israeli- Arab/Palestinian conflict the net result could be catastrophic; with effects on many personal lives comparable to those with which this posting got started.

The Plumber Vote

2008-10-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

The search for co-sponsors of a resolution to make John McCain an extraordinary member of the plumbers union, suggested in my twitter posting, can be deferred pending on the job training.

On Carbon Taxes

2008-10-16T20:10:00.000-07:00

Stephen Harper's Conservative Party has won enough seats in the elections for the
Canadian Parliament to form another minority government with increased representation. The substantially reduced representation of Stephane Dion's Liberal Party is widely attributed to his "green shift" platform, interpreted as a new carbon tax by opponents. While I think that in principle a carbon tax can advance sound energy practice, it did not seem like a good way to proceed in North America; at least at this stage. Following pe0ple's reception of the British Columbia provincial carbon tax, e.g. as shown by earlier comments here on David Suzuki's article defending it, I had posted the comment that follows the link to the original article.

http://www.straight.com/article-151948/lets-clear-air-carbon-taxes

Judging by the preceding commments, carbon taxes are unlikely to endear environmental concerns to an average voter not hooked on granola munching. It could be argued that the taxes were needed nonetheless, if an imminent climate catastrophe was to be averted or mitigated.

David Suzuki's article had, in fact, already conceded that “no one likes taxes”. For someone long involved in alerting people to the latest reports that the warming trends look more dire than in earlier alerts, he evidently wants to be reasonable; conceding that we can't be 100% sure and citing 90% certainty as the consensus of the pertinent scientific experts, the maximum supposed to be expected in science.

He does not include himself among those experts, so Dionysius' comment making that point wasn't needed. Most of the negative comments seem to already have some answer in the article. On Antonio's (through Lord Moncton's) argument that since “perhaps” there is no crisis imminent, the correct attitude is “courage to do nothing”, Suzuki had suggested viewing it like insurance of a home; to refuse to get which is not necessarily an act of courage.

As to whether carbon taxes are the best way to proceed, he doesn't look all that persuasive. Apart from a confirmatory study commissioned by the foundation bearing his name, such taxes are reported to have done well in Sweden. They are supposed to provide economic benefits by helping green technologies. How? The first answer was “that the tax may help us move away from continued reliance on increasingly scarce and costly fossil fuels”; i.e. toward the clean “renewable” sources emphasized in his earlier article on nuclear revival. That could look attractive to both those who need, or want, to generate and use more clean energy as well as those lazy, or wise, enough to need less. But later there is a second answer with a whole paragraph appealing only to those who preach the virtues of maximizing energy thrift, sometimes act accordingly, and claim credit for cuts in energy waste that really were more a reaction to spiralling oil costs. There clearly is no solution hidden in that, in practice just more huge coal fired power plants every month in China and elsewhere; soon even bigger nuclear ones in the environmentally “advanced” countries; or provided by them in places like India (,North Korea?).

There are real solutions.
“As we rethink our energy future in light of the dangers of further increasing greenhouse gases, we have an enormous opportunity. I believe that rather than putting all of our faith in big technology (big dams, coal plants, nuclear), investing in a decentralized grid of diverse, small-scale renewable energy sources would be far more resilient and reliable.We should all get behind renewable energy...”.

I agree with that thoroughly and know there are no scientific or basic economic reasons preventing it. It is quoted from David Suzuki's June 3 article on A nuclear reaction . If he no longer believes in that in July, I am ready to defend it effectively; also using information that he may not have. Since he is more likely to still subscribe to his June position, he really should have a new ball game. It would call for action to utilize those decentralized clean technologies, without any need for more (endless) arguments about the likelihood (or percentage certainty) of anthropogenic (man made) climate change. Even if we played no role at all in global warming, society would benefit also economically by going ahead speedily with the transition toward such an inexhaustible clean energy system. Efficiency and conservation should improve naturally, if more end use energy has to be generated locally for any wasted.

So Dr. Suzuki ought to consider whether he indeed wants to encourage leadership for such action, in which the amount of clean energy used does not require permission from above; or whether he will be stuck with more argumentation and exhortation. Any evidence of our contribution to potentially catastrophic climate change just increases the urgency, not the benefits. Like him, I accepted the likelihood that we contributed, although probably below his 90% level, but my scientific work background also is not too pertinent to that. Conversely, I have had good reasons to be convinced that effective action could, and should, have been taken long ago, before pre-Olympic China constructed many of the pollution spewing monsters that could mar the Beijing games. The motto cited by Tenebrae about thinking globally but acting locally may be outdated.

If he does adhere clearly to his June position, he might even win the support of Peter, the most irate (hostile?) of his critics; but who is ready to make do with solar battery power for his truck. If he can get that, he might reciprocate by disregarding permission to Suzuki for a number of Latte cows for him and his fellow millionaire intellectuals, in spite of the really bad greenhouse gases they emit (the cows).

If the general BC reception to the taxes is as negative as here, other governments may want to try as an alternative to shift subsidies now enjoyed by the polluting energy technologies to environmentally sound ones. That would entail serious confrontation with those wielding real power, able to corrupt more than ever following their bloated recent profits. But if democracy is already too weak for that now, they can probably prevent any solution. If so, it ought to be known.

So-lar En-er-gy For-ev-er
http://members.shaw.ca/illas/pictures/Solar_Power_small.jpg

Submitted by sunnergy on Thu, 2008-07-24 00:50.

From sunsets

Inuksuk (plural inuksuit)

2008-09-25T20:30:00.000-07:00

From inuksuk (plural inuksuit)

Sun setting over Georgia Straight. Vancouver, September 5, 2008

2008-09-11T20:26:00.001-07:00

Sun setting over Georgia Straight. Vancouver, September 5, 2008

Carter on Palestine

2008-06-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

One of the problems of people who trust nobody's judgment more than their own, based on their own knowledge and thought, is that it becomes difficult to fully agree with serious conclusions of kindred peers. The benefits derived from such an attitude easily outweigh the drawbacks, if you have the courage to be honest with yourself as to the reliability of your own competence on the matter at hand compared to that of the other(s), and can learn from your mistakes. If I transferred my trust to someone else, because I couldn't trust myself, how could I expect to have picked the right “else”.

Former US president Jimmy Carter has recently had quite a bit to say, and do, about the Arab / Israeli, specifically Israeli / Palestinian conflict. Given my current eyesight, I avoid reading books, including his ( Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid , Simon & Schuster, 2006 ),
but have enough of an idea about his arguments that have created a furor, for an opinion to emerge. The word Apartheid in the title had already become de rigueur in anti-Israeli propaganda to describe intercommunity relation in Israel, too, and attacked without qualification in the Lobby propaganda. In the occupied territories, there obviously are Apartheid like features, like roads from which Palestinians are barred; and that is what I understand Carter to suggest; with a view to provoke soul searching discussion. I can respect Shulamit Aloni's (pro Israeli) opinion that it holds within the state, too; also those who claim things that are worse than in South Africa, but prefer Carter's. If and when the occupation is over, Uri Avneri's attitude, that it was a unique case of its own, may well prevail.

(Resumed June 21: That agreement did not mean that I had to agree with Carter when he advocated engagement with Hamas, as did Avnery; although their stand must have contributed to my keeping an open mind in spite of principled opposition to those who would impose their religious strictures on others who don't feel bound by them. But while the secular majority of Israeli Jews, as well as Palestinians, are subject to the whims of the politico-religious squatters (“settlers”) in the occupied territories, it is harder to insist on the other half of that principle. And I had seen much stranger positions from Israeli governments than their refusal to recognize and deal with an elected group that refuses to recognize and deal with (elected) them. But if Carter's meeting with Hamas leaders contributed to the cease fire now agreed on, it was probably a good idea, at least if it ends the Gaza siege.

______________________________________

From sunsets

To Celebrate Or Not to Celebrate?

2008-05-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

There are other anniversaries that could be / have been discussed. In April, it was 75 years since the boycott of Jewish stores shortly after Hitler was made head of the German government. There were SA brownshirts in front of my father's shoe store, “persuading” people not to buy there; and in the evening some came to pick up my dad; who wasn't there, apparently having been warned by someone.

But many would find it odd, if I didn't say anything on the occasion of sixty years since the State of Israel was proclaimed in May of 1948. All the media seem to be fascinated by it. The mainstream ones celebrate wth mainly Israeli Right wing stuff, now highlighted by the big show starring US president George W. Bush and (meanwhile unindited) Israeli PM Ehud Olmert; with a supporting cast of heads of governments/ states that once used to view themselves as major powers themelves (France, Germany et al) . The alternative dissident media (with e-mail notices) exhibit a similar near monopoly of anti-Israeli propaganda by the StopPeace Left: don't celebrate! It is 60 years of occupation since the Nakba.

I could really make do with just recounting that in a letter sent to the Israeli consulate in San Francisco the (1977) day the first prime minister of the Zionist ultraright (Begin) took office, I wrote a Yizkor for the State of Israel; something that is done for the deceased. This has long no longer been the state I participated in founding. When I refer to their affinity for the fascist movements/regimes of the 1930-40s, I do not have to rely, like most others, on literature, which might reflect phoney propaganda; I still heard them bragging about it in person. In day to day practice, like sending mail there, I could not, of course, pretend that there is no state by that name. But I did not request my campaign medals for the War of Independence when I wrote for the WWII ones; and do not feel duty bound to pay attention to those “former” terrorists.

In Vancouver, the “Organized Jewish Community” got the fancy Queen Elizabeth Theater for its show. Outside, before the start, were pickets by something I hadn't heard of, possibly because of failure to exist: the Vancouver Anarchist Jewish Youth. Although the picketing had been “endorsed by Jews for a Just Peace”, there were only three pickets, possibly including total membership. They handed out a small leaflet, headed “No Time to Celebrate” and “Jews Remember the Nakba”. A few steps on, a burly character (security guard?) took it away saying he'll recycle it, but let me take it away again. The text seems to be copied from a standardized version of what is becoming sold as “the Palestinian narrative”, but with the number of Palestinian villages destroyed (over 500) and refugees created (over 800,000) somewhat higher than the highest I had seen. If the “Community” has to be worried about their people reading such a leaflet, they can't have much faith in their own propaganda.

In San Francisco, twenty Jewish protestors were arrested when they disrupted the celebration of the “Community” at the Jewish Community Center; where in the 1970s a meeting of Breira, the (thoroughly infiltrated) first US Jewish peace outfit held its irst local meeting, and their entrance was obstructed by two characters later identified as Revisionists (but at least one of them also of the JDL). From that report, it would seem that the flip-flopping toward a StopPeace Left that I deplored here earlier is not confined to Vancouver or Canada; and that again a would be ultraleft is not all that different from the ultraright.

From sunsets

Paris: May 1968 + 40

2008-05-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

Il est interdit a interdire !... Achtung! Verbieten ist Verboten !

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are other anniversaries to recall. Especially in view of the French award to Marek Edelman, rapellons Mai 1968! This is the 40th anniversary of the student takeover of the Sorbonne in Paris

To view a larger, more detailed version of this image click on it. If you are using Internet Explorer, click then on the icon at the lower right of the resulting image.

HOW TO VIEW SUCH STEREOSCOPIC IMAGES (click here)

http://3dexpo.com/how.htm

This slide had already been posted; without mentioning what will be obvious to most. It is one of the Maoist groups in front of the statue of Pasteur. There will be other stereo slides I took, mainly in the Sorbonne courtyard , when this gets organized properly. Meanwhile other things, too.

"Servir le Peuple", another Maoist group (or groupuscule as such began to be called by the Right). Taken from the second floor on the other side of the courtyard.

Danton on his pedestal is not directing one way traffic on Boulevard St. Germain, but pointing in. the direction to take to the Sorbonne, cradle of the (potential) 1968 revolution .

Notice in front of the stock exchange for an "anti-communist" meeting at the Mutualite. The Communist party (PCF) at that time was opposed to the student revolt (started at the Nanterre campus)

Fruit stands next to the Mutualite and not far from the Sorbonne.

That wasn't meant to be a smile. It's a grin. She had waited long enough so as not to obscure my photo of the scene behind, while I pretended to still be preparing for the shot. After she finally had enough, she clearly wanted to show that she was wise to my tricks.

Here there were two groupuscules, one Trotzkyist. The other ?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

French students were not the only ones to challenge the status quo. A few slides from 1960s Berkeley, California, from which I had just arrived and where I returned home about a month later.

National Guard troops on Telegraph Avenue

On University of California (UC) Berkeley campus; activity against Dow Chemical Company recruiters while Dow was producing much of the Napalm used in Vietnam

Oakland's finest called in to help Berkeley's for California's Governor Ronald Reagan's attendance at UC Regents meeting

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Students at the University of Mexico negotiatiating with University administrators about the buses (in background) they had taken to the campus in solidarity with striking bus drivers; (1965 +/- 1)

WWII Campaign Medals

2008-05-09T20:49:00.000-07:00

65 years ago, Nazi Germany surrendered. We won, believe it or not. Even if believing it is getting to be difficult at times.

At the beginning of the April 30 posting here, I had written: “I am ending a kind of ritual I have observed for the past two decades. Every year, I wore my WWII campaign medals from April 19, the start of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, to May 9-10, when Germany surrendered in 1945. (Except for two special occasions,) I wore them on the inside of my outer garment. They were meant for myself, not for show.” It is then explained, part of which is shown below in small print. I had only written to get them about two decades ago, partly an indication of the indifference to awards in the youth outfits who had organized the Warsaw ghetto uprising; to one of which I had belonged when we “retreated” successfully at the start of the Blitzkrieg in 1939.

(“In our USDA laboratory, we had found ways for utilizing solar energy cost effectively, especially in agriculture, which could have contributed not only to alleviating the US “energy crisis” during the 1970s' first oil shock and boycott, but also the threatened imminent widespread starvation of millions in sunny (semi)arid poorer regions of the world. When the (allegedly encouraged) work was first obstructed surreptitiously, and when the hints were not taken, a regime of terror was unleashed, it occurred to me that, while it was nice to have such a pleasant, well paying job, I am still the same person who had not had to submit to the Nazi terror prostrate.

Being the only bachelor of the team, also having been the initiator of the project, I found a strong way to stand up to the obstacles, then the personal harassment unleashed, by pretending to myself that I was carrying out a task assigned by Mordekhai Anielewicz (who had also been to the same Vilna kibbutz while I was there during the !939-40 winter). It must have made easier taking some of the tough decisions, like going on a hunger strike at the lab. (In the S.F. Chronicle's article on that , my boss was quoted as saying something like “putting one's job on the line sometimes helps”). So it was tied to an undertaking (in writing) never to accept any award, as for having done things “beyond the call of duty”; except my campaign medals, which I then requested, and got.”).

From Solarity

Photo taken in The Hague, Netherlands, on this day 15 years ago, the 50^th anniversary of victory over the fascist Axis of evil. The Delft tile (seen behind the window of the Bonistraat apartment where I lived at the time) had been made to commemorate the occasion.

From now on, as I ended the April 30 post, "if I wear the medals, it will be on the outside, for all to see".

It then occurred to me that this is as good an occasion as any to start. Done.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Vancouver Leapday sunset; February 29, 2008

From Solarity

Sun Day + 30

2008-05-02T00:41:00.000-07:00

Thirty years ago, on Wednesday May 3, 1978, Sun Day was celebrated throughout the United States; and beyond (years later I saw a mural for it in Kosice, Slovakia). Sun Day was meant to "usher in the solar age" according to its organizers, Senator Gaylord Nelson and Denis Hayes; who earlier had organized the first Earth Day. A strong grassroots movement had been developing; beginning even before the first oil shock and boycott. President Jimmy Carter had issued a proclamation in support, and a memo by the Secretary of Agriculture urging researchers to participate in local Sun Day events was supposed to be sent to each of us. At least mine arrived weeks after I had participated without the urging, both in Berkeley and in Ukiah, Mendocino County seat; near which I had bought land where I intended to utilize the methods developed in our federal lab. Below are some stereo slides, not all directly from Sun Day, but at least related.

I expect to reorganize this post with decent captions (et al) and further text. Here only that Sun Day represented the peak of the grassroots movement; but also its end. It may have been too successful. Had it been allowed to continue, we needn't have faced today's energy crisis. I was shown how to commit suicide in Ukiah a few hours after generating the first (very small amount of) solar thermal electricity on a $50 toy generator and a Fresnel lens from the Hallmark Company; by a man who bragged about having been to a Sun Day party of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E).

From SUN DAY + 30 ...

Sun Day Fair in Berkeley; May 3, 1978

From SUN DAY + 30 ...

Vive Marek Edelman! Vive la France!

2008-05-01T19:04:00.000-07:00

This is real support for my insistence that the anniversary of the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto is not the proper occasion (really the worst possible) for observing a "Holocaust Day"; as it is in the State of Israel and the USA. The government of France evidently recognizes that it is the proper time to commemorate the fight of Jews against the Nazi extermination machine. They chose it to award the title of Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur on Marek Edelman, the last living leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Marek Edelman, the last living leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

File photo shows Marek Edelman, the last living leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in front of the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes. Ceremonies commemorating the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis takes place in the Polish city every year

Source: AFP - Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

http://www.breitbart.com/image.php?id=iafp080414054318.rcqdwnaip0&show_article=1&catnum=0&ch=BNImagesAll&image=large

Below is newspaper coverage of the event from Lodz, Edelman's home town:

Marek Edelman receives
Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur

Marek Edelman otrzymuje

Order Legii Honorowej

Marek Edelman jest
Honorowym Obywatelem Łodzi.
Kawalerem Orderu Orła Białego.
Urodził się w 1921 roku w Homlu.
W czasie wojny był jednym z organizatorów
Żydowskiej Organizacji Bojowej
w warszawskim getcie.
Po śmierci Mordechaja Anielewicza
został dowódcą powstania w getcie.
Półtora roku później walczył
na barykadach powstania warszawskiego.
Zawsze uważał, że powstanie Żydów było
fragmentem walki Polaków z hitlerowskim najeźdźcą.
Po wojnie zamieszkał w Łodzi.
Ukończył medycynę i został lekarzem.
Nigdy nie zaakceptował komunizmu,
ale nie wyjechał z Polski,
nawet po marcu 1968 roku.
Nie zrezygnował też z aktywności politycznej.
Pomagał prześladowanym,
podpisywał protesty przeciwko bezprawiu.
Był współpracownikiem
Komitetu Obrony Robotników
i jednym z liderów "Solidarności".
Internowany 13 grudnia 1981.

Prof. Jan Karski, kurier
polskiego państwa podziemnego,
powiedział o nim kiedyś:
"Marek Edelman jest najszlachetniejszym
z najszlachetniejszych.
Jest szlachetny i mądry.
A to rzadka kombinacja".
Edelman jest moralnym głosem
w dzisiejszym świecie.
Zabiera głos w ważnych sprawach dotyczących
nie tylko Polski, ale też innych narodów.
I słuchają go najważniejsi.

[Joanna Podolska - Gazeta Wyborcza Łódź]

Marek Edelman is a
Honorary Citizen of Łódź,
awarded with the Order of the White Eagle.
He was born in 1921 in Homl.
During wartime, he was one of
the organisers of Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa
(Jewish Combat Organization)
in the Warsaw ghetto.
After Mordechaj Anielewicz's death,
he became the leader of
the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
A year and a half later
he fought on the front of the Warsaw uprising.
He has always thought that
the Jewish uprising was a fragment
of the Polish fight against the Nazi agressors.
After the war he moved to Łódź.
He finished medicine studies
and became a doctor.
He never accepted communism,
but did not leave Poland, even after March 1968.
Nor did he give up political activity.
He helped the persecuted and signed protests
against lawlessness.
He was an associate of KOR
(Workers' Defence Comittee)
and one of the leaders of Solidarity.
He was Interned on 13th December 1981.

Professor Jan Karski, a messanger of
the Polish Underground State,
once said about him: "Marek Edelman
is the noblest of the noble.
He is noble and wise.
And that is a rare combination".

Edelman is a moral voice in the today's world.
He speaks in cases important not only
for Poland, but for other nations as well.
And he is listened to by the most eminent.

[Joanna Podolska - Gazeta Wyborcza Łódź]

Read about Marek

Przeczytaj o Marku

MakoLab
Mirek Sopek

http://www.makolab.pl/honours/edelman.htm

What follows is the address of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner at the Warsaw award ceremony.

Allocution de M. Bernard Kouchner lors de la cérémonie de remise des insignes de Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur à M. Marek Edelman (Varsovie, 15 avril 2008)

Monsieur l’Ambassadeur,

Messieurs les Ambassadeurs,

Il y a des mots qui apaisent les douleurs et les solitudes, le mot amour et le mot fraternité. Il y a des mots qui claquent comme des oriflammes, le mot combat et le mot camarade. Ajoutons-y Edelman, Marek Edelman. Pour certains d’entre nous, ce mot signifie, à lui tout seul, engagement, fraternité, obstination, liberté et combat. Pour certains d’entre nous, beaucoup qui sont ici, Marek Edelman est notre modèle, notre héros, notre résistant, notre obstiné. Pour nous, pour notre génération, Marek Edelman signifie aussi un regard sur l’Histoire, sur l’Histoire de cette guerre, la dernière Guerre mondiale, sur l’Histoire de l’après guerre, sur l’Histoire du communisme, sur l’Histoire de l’engagement perpétuel au coté des Polonais. Et puis, il y a aussi l’histoire des juifs, l’histoire de la résistance juive.

Il y a près de 65 ans, presque jour pour jour, en avril 1943, avec ses compagnons, - dont un est ici encore et que je salue -, Marek prenait la direction de l’Organisation juive de combat et entreprenait l’impensable, l’impossible, l’inachevé, la résistance des juifs et le soulèvement du Ghetto de Varsovie dont nous allons tout à l’heure célébrer la mémoire avec les survivants et avec ce souvenir, qui restera éternellement quand nous-mêmes serons morts, d’un homme qui n’a rien accepté de ce que l’on prêtait aux juifs, d’un homme qui, contre tous et sans doute aussi contre lui-même, lui, l’homme de paix, lui qui sera l’un des plus grands médecins de ce pays, lui qui a entamé le combat, lui qui disait, "nous tirons pour que de l’autre coté du mur on nous entende, nous tirons pour vivre, pour exister, nous tirons parce que nous sommes vivants."

Ils étaient cinq et on dit qu’ils n’avaient pas 100 ans à eux cinq. On dit qu’ils étaient une bande de jeunes juifs dépenaillés. On dit qu’il portait un pull-over rouge. Il y avait eu 400.000 déportés à Treblinka, dans les mois précédents, venus du Ghetto de Varsovie. On dira dans les rapports qu’ils étaient 220 pour cette suprême insurrection, la mère de toutes les insurrections.

Je ne vais pas vous raconter l’Histoire, c’est Marek qui devrait la raconter et puis, parce que la traduction bride un peu le lyrisme, je vais essayer de résumer mon amour pour lui, ma passion pour lui, mon admiration pour lui.

Il a créé des organisations qui ont compté dans l’histoire des juifs. Il était membre du Bund, le refus éternel, c’est-à-dire le refus d’Israël. Il a le droit après tout, et les autres ont le droit de construire Israël. Ils se rencontrent souvent et le Bund, dans l’histoire du mouvement ouvrier des pays de l’Est, c’est capital, c’est central. Il y a eu l’organisation juive de combat, il y a eu le Bund, il y a eu le commandement de l’insurrection du ghetto et puis la mort d’Anielewicz. Marek Edelman est le dernier survivant du commandement du ghetto de Varsovie.

Ensuite, il a participé à tous les combats du mouvement ouvrier et des mouvements démocratiques polonais. Lorsque certains d’entre vous l’ont rencontré ici, c’était au moment de Solidarnosc, le mouvement qui nous a tous marqués dans notre histoire nationale, et le retour à l’opposition polonaise en 1975. Mais ce n’était pas le dernier épisode, il y en a eu bien d’autres, à Sarajevo et à propos de l’Irak.

Et puis, il a été emprisonné, et puis il a été député, et puis il a continué à militer. Le mot, aussi, qui caractérise Marek, c’est "militant". C’est un éternel militant, c’est un militant sans concession.

Parallèlement et en même temps, il était médecin, un grand médecin. Il était cardiologue et chef de service ; et cela aussi nous l’a fait admirer. Il possède à la fois cette humanité profonde, des mains qui touchent le malade, cette technique et une vision politique permanente. Cette vision politique, cette démarche humaine et ces techniques chirurgicales, il les a proposées à ces malades.

Je pense qu’ici, pour ce que Marek a créé avec Jacek Kuron, avec Adam Michnik - qui est là -, je voudrais rappeler cet épisode précis de la lutte politique en Pologne.

Je voudrais parler, aussi, d’Alina, sa femme, qui fut membre de Médecins du monde, avec qui nous avons travaillé et milité à Paris et qui nous a quittés il y a quelques jours. Je n’ai pas pu être là puisque j’étais en Angleterre à ce moment là pour une visite officielle que Marek sans doute me reprochera.

Je pense à Ania qui est là, sa fille, je pense à Alexandre, son fils, qui est à Paris et je ne sépare pas de Marek les membres de sa famille dans son combat permanent, ses enfants et sa femme qui l’ont accompagné.

Beaucoup d’entre nous ici sont ses héritiers. C’est très prétentieux de se dire héritier de Marek Edelman, mais pour Médecins sans frontières et Médecins du monde qui sont venus ici, c’était un rêve de lui ressembler et nous avons essayé d’être digne de ses conseils, de ses critiques, de ses colères.

Pour moi, Marek est un juif d’épopée, un juif de ténacité, un militant - je l’ai dit -infatigable, un dissident perpétuel, un homme qui n’accepte aucune discipline en dehors de ses convictions, un révolutionnaire fidèle, un social démocrate d’esprit. Au fond, je n’ai jamais rencontré d’homme plus important et je donnerai de lui cette définition qui me vient de mes lectures d’adolescents : Marek Edelman, c’est un "homme véritable". Je sais que beaucoup ici pensent comme moi. Ils auraient voulu lui ressembler. En tout cas, moi, j’aurais voulu lui ressembler.

Il me dira que j’ai été trop long. Il me dira que j’ai été prétentieux. Moi, je lui dirai merci. La première fois que je suis revenu ici, j’étais ministre, il m’a dit : "pour un ministre tu n’es pas mal, mais quand même tu es ministre et ça c’est difficile." J’étais avec Jacques Lebas et André Glucksmann et on aimait bien se faire engueuler par Marek. Alors, cela me fait plaisir de lui faire une dernière surprise et une provocation de ma part, mais aussi de la part de la France. Rien, dans ma petite carrière politique - qui n’est pas une carrière - n’est plus important que le geste que je vais faire. Mon admiration et ma fidélité pour lui n’ont jamais été plus grandes, pour personne.

Alors, au nom du président de la République française et en vertu des pouvoirs qui me sont conférés, je fais de cet éternel combattant, ce juif suprême, ce rebelle de légende, cet exemple pour le monde, je le fais Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur.

http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/article-imprim.php3?id_article=61721

Wouldn't it be nice if Jews in North America could also remember that?

This post is best viewed at the golB http://www.sunnergy.ca/golb/

Good News about Holocaust Day

2008-04-30T00:34:00.000-07:00

I am ending a kind of ritual I have observed for the past two decades. Every year, I wore my WWII campaign medals from April 19, the start of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, to May 9-10, when Germany surrendered in 1945. (Except for two special occasions,) I wore them on the inside of my outer garment. They were meant for myself, not for show. I was never into things like wearing medals, possibly as a result of having belonged to that youth movement so prominent in Warsaw`s ZOB and resistance in other ghettos.

We didn`t even applaud after one of us performed or sang for the kibbutz; nor expect it when we did. Even decades later, at an international scientific conference (in Aachen, Germany), I felt embarassed by (unexpected) applause as I was introduced, didn`t know how to react, then gave an army salute; hardly appropriate. I had not even written for the medals after discharge, but that was also as part of an organized protest against the detention (in Cyprus) of Jewish survivors caught while being brought to Palestine. My political Zionist commitment had ended years earlier, but I certainly expected my (and others`) few surviving European relatives who wanted to come to be welcome.

By the time I did write to the British Defence Ministry to get them, in the late 1980, that had long ceased to be an issue, and other things were. In our US Department of Agriculture laboratory, we had found ways for utilizing solar energy cost effectively, especially in agriculture, which could have contributed not only to alleviating the US “energy crisis” during the 1970s' first oil shock and boycott, but also the threatened imminent widespread starvation of millions in sunny poorer regions of the world. When the (allegedly top priority) work was obstructed surreptitiously, and, when the hints were not taken, a regime of terror was instituted, it occurred to me that, while it was nice to have such a pleasant, well paying job, I am still the same person who had not had to submit to the Nazi terror prostrate.

Being the only bachelor of the team, also having been the initiator of the project, I found a strong way to stand up to the obstacles, then the personal harassment unleashed, by pretending to myself that I was carrying out a task assigned by Mordekhai Anielewicz (who had also been to the same Vilna kibbutz while I was there during the !939-40 winter). It must have made easier taking some of the tough decisions, like going on a hunger strike at the lab. (In the San Francisco Chronicle's article on that , my boss was quoted as saying something like “putting one's job on the line sometimes helps”). So it was tied to an undertaking (in writing) that if a solar transition were achieved, never to accept any award, as for having done things “beyond the call of duty”; but that I did now want my campaign medals, which I then requested, and got.

To the best of my knowledge, it was a general feature of all ZOB organizations, not just those dreaming of a Zionist kibbutz life, to have little interest in achieving the status of a military hero. They knew the Nazi military machine would crush the uprising; while they were showing that it could not crush the human spirit. It may have been different for the ultraright “New Zionist” Revisionists of the Betar, whose dream was of military heroism while conquering by “blood and fire” an inflated Judea on both East and West Bank of the Jordan river. They set up their private “military" organization (ZZW) when it turned out that they would not be in charge on the basis of their militarism. I do not feel well informed about the details of their activities. In Antek's (disputed) account of those, they don't look very glorious, but he seems to be prejudiced on that. So am I and was already then, based on what I had seen in Vilna (where they did join the common Jewish resistance later).

Having walked from one end of Poland to the other, getting used to noisy bombs and cannon fire almost every day, some very close by, I had seen no blood spilled except for that inflicted by ill-fitting shoes on the feet of a kibbutz comrade left behind in Lublin (where we experienced one of the worst bombardments). But 3-4 months later, at our kibbutz in peaceful, newly Lithuanian Vilna (Vilnius), I saw the violently spilled blood on the faces of some of our people who had prevented Betar
tough guys from breaking up a meeting. Their grins made clear that they had not been the losers. Since I hadn't been along, I can't assure you of Betar having been responsible. But that I can have no doubt, based on much experience since, as to whom to believe on what happened in Warsaw, is no longer a matter of prejudice.

There seems to be no doubt that they put up a fight for a day or two; that there was a non Jewish, non fascist Polish nationalist unit with them who helped to then escape to the “Aryan” side (but they may have been betrayed subsequently and eliminated). They had fixed two flags, the blue and white and the red and white Polish one, on top of their tall concrete building. Since those could be seen easily from outside the ghetto, that seems like an important contribution to raising the spirit of many Poles, then others elsewhere in occupied Europe.

While military hero creation was not a serious factor in itself for the ZOB, it is evident, e.g. from Mordekhai Anielewicz's happiness about the Swit broadcast, that they did want the outside world, and posterity, to know that they, peace loving people, did fight back. The Bund representative in the Polish government in London exile took his life demonstratively, when he could not get serious attention paid to what was happening. Abba Kovner the Vilna commander (after the first, Wittenberg, was handed to the Gestapo), had emphasized a need to demonstrate that Jews do not go like sheep to the slaughter more easily than anyone.

But that does not agree with the intentions of some who are termed leaders among Jews. They want “diaspora” Jews to forget about what they did to defeat their mortal fascist enemies; e.g. in the Canadian, U.S., Soviet, British and other allied armies, but especially those who resisted under Nazi occupation. The aim seems to be to end reference to that war and substitute the term Holocaust written with capital H. And that no longer refers just to what happened in murder camps like Treblinka, where most of the pre-uprising Warsaw Jews were burned wholly. It can now be applied to people having had to remain in a building of the Swedish embassy in Budapest for weeks or months; and to people like Antek or Vladka; who may have survived because they fought back.

And then it becomes useful to some “leaders” to have the whole world observe a Holocaust Day. When? Can you think of a more preposterous day than the anniversary of the April day when the Jews received the SS and assorted quislings who had come to resume taking their quota of Jews to Treblinka, with Molotov cocktails and grenades, and chased them out? If you can, you may be eligible for appointment to a prestigious, well paying Jewish leadership position. If it had to be about Warsaw, the one day it couldn't be would have been July 22, when the big Aktion that ended the lives of hundreds of thousands got started.

Not that those in charge aren't aware of this. I for one, have written about it repeatedly. And there is no censorship in the US or Canada. There are more advanced methods of information control. I ought to bring up a recent example.

Meanwhile, if I wear the medals, it will be on the outside, for all to see. And that won't be the only change for whatever short time I have left now at almost 83. But my main concern cannot be to slow the sale of Jewish community remainders. I know how to lower the price of oil (gasoline) and food and make adequate food available for billions who lack it; and other such goodies, all on the way to a more beautiful world. But first here some beautiful news just emerging from Warsaw. An award for Marek Edelman, Antek's buddy. I like it. Occasion for a separate post.

Warsaw, April 23-May, 1943

2008-04-23T23:36:00.000-07:00

While the top leadership of the main Polish underground, the AK (for Armia Krajowa), tied to the exile government in London, made do with expressions of solidarity, the much less well armed AL (Armia Ludowa), tied to the Communists, was ready to really help when it became evident that there was serious fighting going on in the ghetto; as seen from the outside e.g. by the German ambulances coming out with their wounded. Specifically, they had offered 28 rifles, which with the ammunition would have more than doubled the effective firing power of the ZOB, and may have been almost all they had themselves. But since the ghetto was completely sealed off now, Yitzkhak Zuckerman's main concern became how to get them fast to the fighters inside, since it was expected that they couldn't last more than a couple of days.

There was telephone contact at night between Franya and Tosia Altman, who was in the ghetto, although her normal assignment was also on the outside. She belonged to the HaShomer HaTza'ir, like Mordekhai Anielewicz, the ZOB commander (and me; I believe she had even been in our Czestochowa kibbutz earlier, where I was at the war's beginning and with whom I then marched through Poland). Using mutually understood code words, Tosia was the main source of information about the course of the fighting at first (and vice versa). It also made possible establishing a direct meeting channel through a passage between the general Polish and the Jewish cemeteries; after it could be confirmed that ghetto corpses were still being buried there, even though it was no longer part of the ghetto. Antek recalled that he knew of that passage ”because, when I was in the ghetto, we would hold meetings with comrades from the Aryan side at the grave of Y.L. Peretz” (the classic Yiddish writer after whom Vancouver's Peretz Centre is named).

That is how the April 23 letter from Anielewicz to Antek was transmitted. The original of the excerpts here was in Hebrew.

Dear Yitzkhak,

I don't know what to write to you. Let's dispense with personal details this time. I have only one expression to describe my feelings and the feelings of my comrades: things have surpassed our boldest dreams: The Germans ran away from the ghetto twice. One of our units held out for forty minutes and the other for more than six hours.The mine planted in the Brushmakers area exploded....

Yesterday, when we got information that....the radio station Swit broadcast a wonderful bulletin about our self-defense, I had a feeling of fulfilment.....From this evening we are switching to a system of guerilla action. At night, three of our units go out on two missions; an armed reconnaissance patrol and the acquisition of weapons. Know that the pistol has no value, we practically don't use it. We need grenades, rifles, machine guns and explosives.

I can't describe to you the conditions in which the Jews are living. Only a few individuals will hold out. All the rest will be killed sooner or later......In all the bunkers...you can't light a candle at night for lack of oxygen.........Of all the units in the ghetto, only one man is missing, Yehiel. Ihat, too, is a victory........ There are many fires in the ghetto. Yesterday, the hospital burned. Blocks of buildings are in flames... . Be well, my friend. Perhaps we shall meet again. The main thing is........ I've lived to see a Jewish defense in the ghetto in all its greatness and glory.

Mordekhai

They did not meet again. Without going into details widely published, some guerilla action went on until about May 16. Mordekhai, his girl friend Mira Fuchrer, and most of the remaining Hashomer Hatza'ir fighters died May 8, when the command bunker at Mila 18 was discovered and gas grenades lobbed into it. Some of the ZOB eventually made it to the outside world, mostly through the sewer system, including Zivia Lubetkin, Yitzkhak's girl, later wife, and also of the ZOB Command. Tosia also made it out, but was subsequently discovered and tortured to death. She was in her mid twenties, as was Mordekhai. Franya took her own life in May. Another courier recalled by Antek, Vladka, of the Bund, may be alive in North America. The only survivor of the ZOB Command, also of the Bund, is Lodz cardiologist Marek Edelman.

About a quarter of a million people died during the 1944 Warsaw city uprising; in which Antek and Marek led the ZOB fighters (and other Jews) who had survived.

The Nazis lost the war. We won.

Warsaw, April 19, 1943

2008-04-19T23:48:00.001-07:00

“I can't say if I heard or dreamt it, but early in the morning, I woke up drenched in sweat from the thunder of cannons. When I opened my eyes, I saw the sunshine and didn't hear a thing. Everything was quiet. Did I hear cannons or was I dreaming? I don't know.” That is how Yitzkhak Zuckerman recalled the beginning of the day, Passover eve, which happened to fall on April 19 that year, just as in this Jewish leap year, when a whole extra month of Adar is added. But it was 1943, exactly 65 years ago, and Yitzkhak was on the “Aryan” side of the wall that had been built to separate the Jewish ghetto from the rest of Warsaw, the occupied capital of Poland.

"I washed and dressed and waited for Franya Beatus to come back to know if she had arranged my passage. She did come back to my room but, instead of talking, she began weeping: 'They shelled the ghetto. The ghetto is surrounded, she said. Early in the morning, she heard that the army entered the ghetto; the cannons hadn't yet been placed at the ghetto walls, but she heard the Poles saying that you couldn't get into the ghetto, because it was completely surrounded .......”.

Franya was supposed to arrange with the Polish resistance to have Zuckerman, whom they knew as "Antek" smuggled into the ghetto. He wanted to meet, and celebrate Passover with, his comrades of the ZOB (Polish initials for Jewish Fighting Organization), of which he was deputy commander at this stage; since nothing unusual had been expected to occur. She was his courier, my age (about 17 at the time).

He had only come to the “Aryan” side a few days earlier on his assignment to maintain contact with the Polish underground (thus also the outside world) and try to obtain some effective arms (like rifles). Franya, who had found a room for him to stay was waiting near the ghetto gate when he was smuggled out. As he recalled later, “About 100 to 150 meters from the gate, I saw Franya Beatus, the courier who always made me smile. She was a member of Dror .....,blonde, pretty. As I recall, she came from Konin, where there was once a branch of He-Halutz Ha-tza'ir” (i.e. Antek's organization, which had merged with Dror just before the war and corresponds to the “Habonim” in Western Europe and America).

“I didn't know her before the war, when she was probably 13 years old. When the Jews were expelled from Konin, she went to Ostrowiec; where she joined the branch of Dror...” and was later recruited for the ZOB. I don't know where Konin is, but I recall that we passed near Ostrowiec on our march through Poland at the war's beginning 3-1/2 years earlier; and one of the two who couldn't continue and had to be left behind there was Erika, on whom I had an adolescent crush. I found out later that she died at the hospital there. She was 15 or 16.

The Nazis had established the ghetto, into which Jews not only from Warsaw were forced, soon after they occupied the city. Many of the 500 000 or so people in the overcrowded area died from hunger and epidemics before July 1942, but in some respects a very active community life was still possible, taken ample advantage of by the prewar youth organizations. when a big Aktion was started on July 22 in which Jews were taken away, an "anti-fascist" committee, comprising most of the youth outfits , failed to take action , because most preferred to believe the German assurances passed through the Judenrat that people were being resettled in labour camps; although emissaries from Vilna had already warned that the "inconceivable" aim was total extermination of all Jews.

When it was confirmed with the help of Polish railway workers that trains entered the Treblinka camp full with people, but nobody ever left on the empty trains, the Jewish combat organization (ZOB) was formed and tried to train and obtain some arms. By September,when the big Aktion ended, about 300 000 people had been taken. When the Nazis resumed a new wave of deportations in January 1943, they first encountered resistance and interrupted the Aktion. The resistance now effectively took control of the ghetto from the Judenrat.

On April 19, a day before Hitler's birthday, the SS and quisling forces entered in force to liquidate the ghetto, but were driven out after suffering real losses. That is what Antek had heard and Franya reported on. After being driven out a second day, SS Oberfuehrer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg , who had been in charge, was replaced. That was more of a success than the relatively unarmed ghetto fighters could have hoped for.

Ilan Pappe. A Cardboard Tiger?

2008-04-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

As foretold by Aruri, and discussed earlier here, Dr. Ilan Pappe, until recently one of the Israeli "New Historians" and senior lecturer at Haifa University, has come to Vancouver and given a talk at the Public Library (VPL). He is now head of the History Department at the University of Exeter (UK). It was of no great surprise that like the other speakers here on the “Israeli – Palestinian Conflict”, he is opposed to a peace agreement that would establish a Palestinian state living at peace with the existing Israeli one. My earlier complaint that all the public here is allowed to hear on this is the far right voice of the CanWest press and what I called the “library left” reflected my ignorance as to how such library space is obtained: by the organizers paying for it. So I owe an apology to any of the librarians who view themselves as of the left. The StopPeace left is more descriptive, anyway.

Having referred to Pappe as the heavyweight among the opponents of two states (“the global consensus”), specifically in relation to Prof. Aruri, I would not have called him that on the basis of his talk here. I had read the transcript of the public debate he had with Uri Avnery in Tel Aviv before writing that, and he was much better there. But I doubt that he got anywhere near the applause and standing ovation that he got here. A new hero born for a new season.

When I arrived, ahead of the scheduled start, there were people prevented from getting in. The large hall was full. I had already experienced worse, when I tried to get a ticket for the “My Name is Rachel Corrie” play and was told at the Havana Theater that ticket sales would start half an hour before the play. I arrived a quarter of an hour before that and was told it was sold out, but if I waited (¾ hour), maybe....; but I was too angry to wait, in part because I knew that this had been arranged intentionally. Groups had been organized to fill the small theatre, to one of which my participation had been solicited (ostensibly it was a play for the general public). For the Pappe talk, at least a dozen or two of us were then allowed in (but apparently expected to donate more). I even had a seat, in the back row.

As a professor of History, Pappe promised a history lesson, and he is clearly qualified for that. I had already followed earier (on line) an unfriendly exchange with fellow “new historian” Benny Morris resulting from a negative Pappe book review by Morris in the New Republic. Pappe views Morris as not a historian, but just a chronologist, collecting and publishing facts, rather than also interpreting them. Pappe may view the latter as the main function of a historian, possibly even with a view to changing the course of history. If I understand him correctly, it would seem like an extrapolation of what Marx thought of the task of a philosopher. And he may have a litttle too cavalier an attitude about the importance of facts, data. At least in science (“natural philosophy”) theories ought to be in harmony with the empirical.

In the later stages, the history lesson acquired more of the character of a speech to inspire the masses, with opportunities for applauding audience participation. The proper terms ought to be used. The creation of what became Israel was just another colonialist undertaking. Even though it may not have been done by an East India or Hudson's Bay Company taking profits to the Mother country, moshavot in Hebrew are such colonies but also rural villages established in Palestine, Israel. Utopian colonies of the 19^th century in North America probably are closer to moshavim or kibbutzim. So what? The word conflict is not the right term for what's been going on between Israel and Arabs or Palestinians; in view of the great disparity in power. Nakba is not the right term for what will have 60^th anniversary observances organized next month, because a Nakba can be a natural catastrophe, too (Pappe deservedly emphasizes that he has been the Israeli historian with good enough knowledge of Arabic to have real access to Arabic sources).

The proper term is supposed to be “Ethnic Cleansing”. That is the title of his new book; and was the occasion of the most prolonged applause and everyone within sight upright in a standing ovation. Since I remained seated, I can't tell whether everyone in the hall stood up or whether the last few rows were one of those organized groups. I have no serious doubts by now that there was quite a bit of what is now called ethnic cleansing; even less that the claims of close to 800 000 people having been driven out of the country by force are not a worthwhile “Palestinian narrative” they ought to fool themselves with.

Nor could I recommend it as a narrative for Jews in North America (and elsewhere) who have had ENOUGH with 40 years of occupation of the West Bank”and Gaza and would like to see some peace and justice there. I am ending my membership in Vancouver's “Jews for a Just Peace”; not because those who call the shots favour what is being called a “one state solution”, but because of their consistent propaganda against an agreement by which a Palestinian state is established now to live at peace next to the Israeli one; while dishonestly pretending to be inclusive for all Jews who reject the occupation. Apart from a general dislike of deliberate dishonesty, I don't like to be manipulated, especially not by people clearly far less informed.

As to Pappe, who is well informed, I don't know enough about him to understand how he got to this point. After completing his studies, he directed research at Givat Haviva, to which I contributed $100 at about that time (for which the receipt is shown).

From Various

It became evident right then that those running that event in San Francisco were not people like kHaviva Reik, the young woman parachuted into Nazi occupied Slovakia during their uprising, but it must have been better at the institute named after her.

kHaviva Reik

Did he also come from the HaShomer HaTza'ir and what, if any, relation to Simha Flapan. Does he seriously expect to prevail? My guess is that his current celebration as hero of the StopPeace left will be as transitory as that of his predecessors. Maybe it already started that evening; when signatures were solicited for Mordecai Briemberg, who had chaired the meeting, and for whom a special committee is being formed, including Pappe. I had already there signed the statement to CanWest, although I'd rather have Pappe a little longer as the local hero; for reasons I hope to have the time to clarify.

Last pre-Super-Tuesday call for Mike Gravel

2008-02-04T23:41:00.000-08:00

I'll defer to a later posting discussion of the problems that could be mitigated or solved by allowing the long competitive clean solar sources of energy to proliferate freely, making the burning of oil and other dirty sources, including so-called clean coal and notably nuclear fission, obsolete. You can probably come up with some easily yourself. Instead, this will be about what I learned in the process of writing this.

John Gofman died last year. I am not especially surprised that this was so un(der)reported that I was unaware of that until now. He was an outstanding example of what made young people decide to prefer a life in science to more lucrative and easier professions; when young people still were eager for that without requiring inducement by pro-nuclear commentators like Thomas Friedman. Like nobody else I can think of, he was concerned with the way nuclear power was rammed down Californian's throat. I had been for solar power without being concerned about dangers from nuclear, until the ugly, dangerous reaction to Proposition 15 and especially to Prof. Gofman; described in my 1977 memo to President Carter, under the heading of “The Spirit of Lysenko” (Note 3).

Eventually it was shown to me more clearly by the censorship of my congressional testimony

http://members.shaw.ca/ElSol/One_Life/Document__3.html

on PG&E's Diablo Canyon plant from the Congressional Record. To me the dangers to what is left of democracy still loom largest. For the dangers from radioactivity, I have relied mainly on what Gofman had to say, e.g. on the large number of fatal cancers from the Chernobyl accident; of which most people can still be kept unaware, while that energy source is being hailed as clean. Not by Senator Mike Gravel. So unlike B&B (Barack and Billary) he didn't get a lot of nuclear money; or mention from their media. For details from the Washington Post, see

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/18/for_both_clinton_and_obama_nuc.html .

There is some detail on John Gofman in the CNR (Committee for Nuclear Responsibility) website: JOHN GOFMAN: The chairman of CNR (including XaHP) is John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California at Berkeley. His doctorate is in nuclear/physical chemistry. His work as a graduate student was part of the Manhattan (atomic-bomb) Project. He shares patents on the fissionability of uranium-233 and on early processes for separating plutonium from fission products. After the war, he finished his medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco.

Starting in 1948, at the Donner Laboratory at U.C. Berkeley, Dr. Gofman led the team which discovered and characterized the diverse lipoproteins in the bloodstream and showed that many of these molecules are very important in the causation of coronary heart disease. His pioneering research in atherogenesis has stood the test of time, and is widely honored

n 1963, at the request of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Gofman established and directed the Biomedical Research Division for the Livermore National Laboratory. There, he began his laboratory research into the connection between chromosomal abnormalities and cancer

In 1969, epidemiologic analyses by Dr. Gofman and Dr. Arthur R. Tamplin revealed that ionizing radiation is far more carcinogenic than acknowledged by the Atomic Energy Commission. Gofman and Tamplin decided to tell the public about their findings, and to advocate a 5-year pause in licensing additional nuclear power plants. As a consequence, they lost their research grants and left the Livermore Lab by 1974. By 1990, government-funded reports agreed with most of the biological findings which Gofman and Tamplin had announced in 1970.

After leaving the Livermore Lab, Dr. Gofman independently continued his research into the health effects of ionizing radiation. He has produced major new findings, published in his six scholarly books and monographs (1981, 1985, 1990, 1994, 1995/96, 1999). In 1992, he shared the Right Livelihood Award ("the alternate Nobel Prize") for "his pioneeing work in exposing the health effects of low-level radiation." Dr. Gofman has donated his services to CNR since its inception, in 1971. Note also:

EGAN O'CONNOR: The executive director of CNR (including XaHP) is Egan O'Connor. She previously (1969-1974) worked as a consultant on nuclear and solar energy for U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska. Before that (1963-1968), she did research for documentary films on a wide variety of subjects.

It is hardly a coincidence that two of the people with whom Gravel had close connection got the “Alternative Nobel Prize”. The other one, Daniel Ellsberg, whose Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel made public by reading them into the Congressional Record, is also noted for real courage (for which I managed to shake his hand before he got that award). I should also hail their moral integrity as Noam Chomsky did for Senator Gravel himself (as cited on the campaign website http://www.gravel2008.us/content/noam-chomsky-applauds-senator-gravels-past-and-present-accomplishments

Noam Chomsky applauds Senator Gravel's past and present accomplishments

January 7th, 2008 by April

Alone among members of Congress, Senator Mike Gravel had the courage to take a stand that not only helped bring the atrocious Indochina wars to an end, but also made a great contribution to breaking the wall of secrecy that governments erect to protect themselves from their own citizens. I am of course referring to his release of the Pentagon Papers, properly called "the Gravel edition," which provided the public with a unique opportunity to become educated about affairs of state.

In the years since, Gravel has continued to show the same moral integrity and courage, particularly with regard to war and aggression, the severe threat of nuclear war, the destructive impact of the military-industrial complex on American democracy, and the programs of aggressive militarism that have led even Europeans to rank the US as the greatest threat to world peace, far above Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, or other states assigned this role in the US doctrinal system. It may be that these consistent and honorable commitments are responsible for his being largely excluded from the media, even from presidential debates. And the same integrity and courage should be an inspiration for people who care about their country, the fate of its people, and its role in the world.

Noam Chomsky

My Democratic Primary Vote: For Change; Real Change

2008-01-31T03:53:00.000-08:00

I sent in my vote on January 20, two weeks before the California Democratic primary election on February 5 (“Super-Tuesday”). With several earlier primaries having induced others to withdraw, there are 2-4 candidates left; the front runners, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, with well oiled money raising staff, and former Senators John Edwards and Mike Gravel, with less. Apart from the matters discussed in the “debates” or leaked by the campaign staffs, including Bill Clinton, about distortions by, and lobbyist influence on, other campaigns, there is only an occasional mention of long standing “issues”.

But wouldn't it be nice, if real concern were shown for the serious and ongoing decline in one after another aspect of the politics and economy of the country and its standing worldwide.. The Iraq quagmire, with its continuing loss of life, limb and treasure, which only recently seemed destined to dominate the 2008 elections, lost significance first with the sabre rattling for a new war against Iran, which was then sidelined by the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the “volatility” of “energy” (i.e. oil) prices up to about $100 per barrel and the recession, or depression (if you pardon the expression). A need for action against fossil fuel burning contributions to global warming got just enough attention to allow nuclear power to raise its radioactive head, unpolluted by CO2, just "clean" ionizing radiation.

Well, everyone is going to be happy now, because we'll each get about $600 stimulus money to spend. Maybe it wasn't really so when the experts on the economy were attributing its woes to chronic overspending, e.g. on gasoline, leading to an ever worsening international trade balance. Anyway, with the $ exchange value dropping almost as fast as American prestige, new money from oil exporters and from China can come in and buy more of the US at a bargain rate, providing the funds for future stimulus money; and maybe the crash can wait.

I know how to alleviate many of the most serious problems the country faces and to really solve some of the most debilitating. I know specifically how to confront the problems associated with dependance on the Dirty, Obsolete Energy (DOE) sources. You may ask why, then, don't I seek the US presidency myself. There are good reasons for that, but they do not include a feeling that my knowledge and experiences are inferior to those of others seeking the office.

They are superior to those of most in at least one significant respect: I am not a lawyer. There is no serious shortage of lawyers among top Washington officeholders; or lobbyists. I have degrees, including a doctorate, in science, and long, successful experience in research. You don't find complaints about difficulties the country has turning out enough lawyers for government and the military industrial complex economy; as you can read constantly for scientists. Others, no doubt, also have their specific relative strong points. But I should also have greater sensitivity toward dangers to democracy based on life experience, not just literature or speeches. And at the present state of affairs that is important not just for candidates for office, but also to those who want to vote for, and recommend to others, a candidate honestly committed to change for stronger democracy and the common good.

While engaged in research at a major federal agricultural research center in (Albany) California, I initiated a team that worked out ways for inexpensive agricultural utilization of solar power, mainly by direct solar energy concentrated by easily mass producible thin lenses (but aided by some indirect solar such as wind and biomass), in conjunction with intensive food production in greenhouses. It could have been widely competitive almost immediately, after the first (1970s) oil shock, without the need for major prior research.

What follows in the next two paragraphs was first posted on the internet in 1999: “A colleague showed me a [then current] paper in Chemical Technology (May 1974) while I was spending most of three weeks sanding and buffing sawed prism surfaces for a lens model, because the project looked so urgent that I did not want to wait until it could be done by our shop. The article, headed Solar Energy - How Soon? by Egan O'Connor, a freelance consultant to (then) Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska, expressed that urgency in the wake of the "oil shock" and boycott in a more general way. Why delay starting solar energy implementation until a conventional R&D and demonstration process has optimized the technology, when much can be done with known technology that could soon be competitive with nuclear and fossil sources. Along with wind power she actually mentioned "solar heat-concentrating devices", and she could not have known of our design, which could have been widely competitive immediately. Even without first demonstrating that the model lens will work, it was sure to work unless one of the two most basic laws of geometric optics (Snell's law) suddenly broke down. The extrusion-embossing process for mass production was also clearly indicated, which was the reason why we, and our patent attorney, had decided not even to try for a patent. Other aspects of our design contributing to competitiveness were obvious by common sense, e.g. that in decentralized thermal power generation, the "waste" heat can be utilized for on-site heat needs, rather than wasted (with concomitant thermal pollution or water waste). On the whole, O'Connor seemed better informed than most people actually working on a particular solar project, and her questions were well chosen. We decided to inform quickly in response, through a paper Solar Power Now, submitted to the same journal......

O'Connor also already mentioned "solar power enemies". I may have missed that, but in any case did not expect serious hostility at that time of sense of national emergency; nor that something as simple as having such lenses available could possibly be prevented. So we provided a pre-publication copy to ERDA [*see below here], still in the process of formation. Not long after the enthusiastic response from people at the Oakland ERDA office, it emerged that there indeed are serious enemies of solar power. That general availability of such "Fresnel" lenses could be prevented to this day still seems amazing“.

[*ERDA, for Energy Research and Development Administration, had resulted from the breakup of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) into it and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and later became the central component of the new department, which was not overtly charged to prolong dependance on the dirty, obsolete energy sources.]

The surreptitious determination with which our easy route to competitive solar proliferation (that addressed our lab's two foremost research priorities) was prevented made very clear that this can no longer be viewed as a government with serious democratic content. It is thoroughly corrupt, at least where the dirty energy and probably the related military industries are involved. Senator Gravel seems to be aware of what they are capable of.

When I googled Egan O'Connor last year, it turned out that she had been collaborating with John Gofman, Professor of Medical Physics at UC Berkeley, who had resigned as associate director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory to call attention to the suppression of information on the dangers of (even low levels of) ionizing radiation. Gofman was the lone panelist in favor of California Proposition 15 for nuclear safeguards mentioned in my 1977 memo to the Carter White House; where I warned abour the dangers of corruption of the scientific community. At an unusual meeting of the American Chemical Society, he was pitted against two opposing panelists, both of whom were allowed much more time. In reponse to protest (e.g. by me), he was given just 5 additional minutes.

He evidently was at the receiving end of intense harassment (maybe O'Connor got some, too; and I sure did). The only thing I ever saw on that in the “maintream media” was a 1994 CNN program (without followup, which was called for) on people who had been “punished” by the nuclear power industry, some of whom were close to tears (or crying). Of Gofman I recall the comment that “they” always hit you below the belt. He seemed to have an opinion similar to mine on the Department of (Dirty Obsolete) Energy (DoDOE). One of the items I encountered googling was a joint publication by him and O'Connor, to which Sen. Gravel had written the foreword.

From what I can tell about his current position on energy, Gravel still is not ready to surrender to the nuclear power gang, as the other candidates are without wanting to talk a lot about it. He favors a carbon tax as one way to confront global warming. He is unlikely to be aware of what can be done with concentrated direct solar energy, but is likely to have an open mind toward a clean competitive version and he emphasizes the importance of windpower; with which he foresees liquid hydrogen generation, as an indirect solar fuel.

I am unlikely to agree with all his policies, but want to bring out one important other where I do. He seems to honestly support those who are fighting for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Following some vicious attacks on Sen. Obama by the character assassins in the Israeli lobby, this Change candidate has been assuring them that plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose, so maybe he'll get some money from them. I don't know how much positive change can result from the Gravel campaign. I don't expect him to become president, but even the way he is kept out of formal election functions, he may yet make more of a difference than that between the two other candidates left now (Edwards having quit during this writing). I don't think I would have bothered to vote otherwise. There must be change, real change.

There should be a sequel to this.

A Peace Agreement?

2008-01-30T23:53:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Posted earlier on the golB:

There is quite a bit of evidence of increasingly determined support by people / outfits that may count for an Israeli – Arab / Palestinian peace agreement that would put a prompt end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by formation of a new Palestinian state there. Whatever could be done to the Left to have some of it oppose such an agreement, it is very unlikely to work as smoothly as (in Canada or at least) in Vancouver, where suddenly no public voice can be heard in its favor; not through the Library Left and surely not the CanWest Right. Could the latter be a reaction to that determined support? Or vice versa?

Among the people and groups standing up for real action to end the occupation now were new Jewish groups forming for the purpose in various countries of Europe and elsewhere and both Jewish and other prominent artists, writers, scholars etc worldwide, not least Israeli ones. The right wing defamation machine's attacks against progressive Jewish critics of Israeli ocupation policies and practices seemed to lose effectiveness. The attacks against Lobby critical professors Walt and Mearsheimer as antisemites backfired; as had the earlier similar attacks on former president Jimmy Carter for his book calling for the right choice between peace and apartheid-like conditions in the occupied territories. Unlike some of the Stop Peace Left, he had been careful not to label Israel itself as an apartheid state.

As significant a role as any in advancing imminent peace prospects has been played by Henry Siegman. He spoke up with straightforward courage himself in the London Review of Books, and has now been instrumental in publication of the October 10 letter to George Bush amd Condoleezza Rice ; signed by pretty influential "mainstream" people like former Democratic and Republican National Security advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, by Lee Hamilton, co-chair of the commission to evaluate the Iraq war , et al.

The Annapolis "Conference", at least in part a result of these efforts, did not overachieve its limited expectations. But there seems to be some hope left for the mechanisms set up for intensive negotiations to get an agreement within a year. Whether that is so or not, and whether that can lead to gradual reconciliation adequate for peaceful changes toward federation or unification will not be seriously influenced by action on my part. In what is as likely as not to be the last year or two I have left now, I ought to be more involved again with the no less important (and not really unrelated) matters that preoccupied me for the past decades , where I may still be able to make a real contribution.

Joel Kovel

2007-11-08T18:22:00.000-08:00

The next local event on the Israeli – Palestinian / Arab conflict featured Joel Kovel. He is opposed to peace now based on establishment of a Palestinian state next to the Israeli one; as you could expect from the headings of the two preceding postings, mainly concerning Dr. Aruri's June talk. There I criticized that, instead of stating a 2-state peace honestly in the announcement, it was pretended that there would be discussion of “peace prospects” with an end to “40 years of occupation” i.e. of the lands taken in the June 1967 war, in line with the "2-state solution". The hope that these “global consensus" peace efforts will fail so that, after decades of more mayhem and suffering, the whole original State of Israel, formed in 1948, might be labelled occupied territory and finally be eliminated, was evidently known not to be acceptable to ordinary people (yet?).

The Kovel event was held at Simon Fraser University's downtown Vancouver centre, possibly because the librarians were on strike, but the same, and related, people seemed to be in control.The hype about the stature of the speaker was also comparable, largely from earlier appearances elsewhere on the tour to advertise his latest book, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine.

The local topic was announced as "Zionism and its Discontents". "Dr. Joel Kovel is a medical doctor, psychoanalyst, and social science professor, and has [earlier] written books on ecology, nuclear terror, psychoanalysis, Nicaragua, white racism in the US, and McCarthyism. He ran for Senator in New York state for the Green Party". [The new book is referred to simply as “Overcoming Zionism" rather than by the full name.]

“ Amidst all the reports that fill our media on the conflict involving Israel, the political philosophy of Zionism rarely is discussed. Yet it is central to understanding daily events in the Middle East”. So I wondered what could possibly be meant by such philosophy. Having listened to the talk now, I can't think of anything Kovel said about that. There wasn't even a definition of “Zionism” to start with.

Come to think of it, I had heard all he said of the substance of his talk before, mostly more than once, and some a little too often, so that more repetition is beginning to bother me. There is the one about Golda Meir claiming that there are no Palestinians or there is no Palestinian people, neither of which would qualify as Zionist wisdom; but she surely didn't mean that the persons who had begun to call themselves Palestinians (rather than just Arabs) did not exist. And then there was the one about “a land without people for a people without land”, evidently really said by some early Zionist leader. I first began hearing about that a couple of decades ago from anti-Zionists, never during my years as committed Zionist in the 1930s to early 40s and subsequent non-Zionist decades; and surely had not immigrated joyfully (“Aliyah”, i.e. as Zionist) just to fill some empty space.

There was nothing I can recall as factually wrong or deliberately deceptive. In response to several questions at the end, his answer was that that's discussed in his book, which seemed unusual; but he was on a book tour. This was before the book became unavailable for a while following pressure on the University of Michigan Press (distributor for Pluto Press, the British publisher). While that tends to be a good indication that the book has something significant to say, the byzantine manipulations, with infiltrations and front organizations practiced in this propaganda war, make that somewhat less reliable an indicator. The ease with which that censorship was licked may also be significant.

Unlike the case with Aruri, who had announced a forthcoming visit of anti-consensus heavyweight Ilan Pappe, who had just held a well publicised public dialogue with 2-state champion Uri Avneri, I was not about to ask a question about Kovel's opinion of Avnery; but someone else did. After a very brief response from Kovel, the moderator (Greenberg) intervened. When he claimed in a paternalistic / dismissive tone that Uri Avnery doesn't really know about Palestinians, I interjected: He knows more than you (without waiting to be recognized).

On the way out, I was asked, maybe by the questioner, if I knew Avnery personally. The answer to that is negative, but I know quite a lot about him. In addition to reading what he writes for some time now, in which he reveals a lot about himself, I can evaluate the authenticity better than most; having been born about two years and 30 miles apart from him in Germany. And we had some other fairly close encounters. He just wrote of the 1948 generation of which he was part; as was I. There have also been differences; which may still be worth discussing some day. But in the absence of an organization like his Gush Shalom here, I have better things to do than becoming the last, lone advocate of the global “consensus” (and Avnery) in the Canadian West.

My rather indifferent impression of Kovel's talk, and failure to get his book, need not mean that it wouldn't be informative reading for anyone else. In a glowing review by Raymond Deane, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6885.shtml he calls it an “invaluable book”. His only (minor) reservation is that it deals only fleetingly with the proposed new state.

Amy Goodman's interview was largely about the temporary censorship. But she also explores his pertinent background. He is likely to have been a “red diaper baby”, and his views may reflect the mostly hostile relations between Zionists and Jewish communists / sympathizers. I had touched on that hostility briefly (postings of November 23 and 30, 2004) when I described witnessing the entry in 1939 of the Red Army into the town of Kovel, where Joel's ancestors clearly no longer lived when they acquired the Kovel family name; but probably ought to elaborate, since it is likely to still explain the attitudes of many on both sides of that conflict (there is some elaboration in the golB version, where it can be found near the end in the right column of the last but one 2007 entry).

At least as significant would be a discussion of what Joel Kovel has to say about solar energy; in the context of his interest in Marxism and in environmental matters. Those evidently are closer to his main interests, as also emerges from the Wikipedia article about him. On solar energy he writes like a clone of Exxon, dismissing sunshine as too diffuse, thus expensive; but he keeps a tenuous revolutionary escape clause that may be worth discussing. On (non-solar) environmental matters he has interesting, sane evaluations and attitudes in his (modified Marxist) Ecosocialist Manifesto http://www.iefd.org/manifestos/ecosocialist_manifesto.php (Michael Lowy coauthor); apparently written to mark one and a half centuries since Marx and Engels did theirs..

Pasteur, Marx, Engels et al in student occupied Sorbonne courtyard, May 1968.

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Is the Left being Flip-Flopped (II) ?

2007-07-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

(Continued from preceding post, of July 11, which should be read first, especially if you are not very familiar with the Israel-Palestine conflict):

Is what used to be opposed by the Left in the past now going to be pronounced as the Left position more generally? If so, who calls the shots in the background? From what can still be seen on Working TV's video of the panel at the press conference for Prof. Aruri, people directly involved still had ENOUGH with 40 years of occupation. At the library monologue, you could pick up a copy of the primer (The Wall Must Fall), meant not only for union members, by BC CUPE.; whose president for many years, Ken Davidson, was on the panel. There is explicit support for the "international peace consensus", which has been urged especially by Left outfits. The role of Gush Shalom comes up repeatedly. Its now unmentionable (co)founder, "the veteran Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery" is quoted directly in the Foreword by Carl Rosenberg , who was also on the morning press conference panel. In his capacity as editor of OUTLOOK, a high quality magazine of the Jewish Canadian Left, several of Avnery's weekly articles have been re-published for some time now. From various other sources (e.g. at least readers' comments in the TYEE), it is obvious that Avnery is much better appreciated even in North America, probably even in Massachusetts, than their own renowned intellectual. The still widely respected I.F. Stone's early (strong) praise for him should further make any background flip-flopper's task to erase his name an unenviable one.

Aruri's point on (about) 60 years does not mean that his one state would be on the agenda after another two decades of status quo misery. What is meant is that he views all of Israel, proclaimed about 60 years ago, as occupied Palestinian territory; so whatever time (and blood and tears) it takes, it will be worth the wait. And he does want peace at the end, just like the CanWesterners or the people at the other internet-advertised June 6 event in Vancouver; the Washington state one just across the Columbia river from Portland, OR. There they had Israeli Knesset members celebrating with right wing Christian fundamentalists of "Americans for a Safe Israel", i.e. one opposed to Oslo and to the return of any territory occupied in 1967. They all want peace , just not the one that may be achievable in a foreseeable future.

I am hardly the ideal person for arguing against one state utopias, since, unlike Uri Avnery (I believe), one state has always looked preferable to me, even when I was still a Zionist (until 1941-2) and belonged to the HaShomer HaTzair; which worked for a bi-national state. It did not look likely, or easy, even then; before all the killing and maiming wars and occupation and suicide bombing and dependencies (increasingly including the dependence of an Israeli coolies and billionaires economy on soft and hardware for military, surveillance, indirect censorship, spying, fence-wall architecture and profits emanating from export of other expertise in confrontations; as detailed in a really scary Naomi Klein article in the Georgia Straight).

A unitary state at internal peace without even an intervening mutual independence stage thus does not look like a serious option now.

But Prof. Aruri assures us that Palestinian and Israeli "intellectuals" will be getting together to take care of things; in fact the process has already started (somewhere). With a theater whiz on the press conference panel, he could already have begun discussing a scenario. But will the Royal Canadian Air Farce approve of it?

It is true that Aruri does not mean peace in our time. He emphasizes that it will take time. He is familiar with the ongoing suffering and knows there will be shells and rockets flying, crimes committed which, if violence gets bad enough so that the word war can be used, can then be applied for war crimes propaganda. Bombs will be exploded in civilian locations, but all the mayhem will be over there. Prof. Aruri's base could continue to be near Martha's Vineyard, an appropriate place for retired and emeritus intellectuals to get together and ensure a happy future ever after. Am I invited?

I have spent most of my professional life at scientific research, with about twenty peer reviewed publications , having been one of the first students to earn a doctorate (under a renowned professor) following graduation (with high distinction, ~ magna cum laude) from the very institution of which Aruri is now Chancellor Professor Emeritus. It is called the University of Massachusetts (at) Dartmouth (of which I was unaware until now); following several name changes and a move from Fall River and New Bedford to the little town half way between those.

I had come to Fall River in 1950 to learn the ancient art (and modern science) of dyeing, a skill needed by the just emerging (pre-military) Israeli industry, and I expected to return with a B.S. in "Chemistry and Dyeing". But the head of the Chemistry Department (Dr. Watters) tricked me into going on. I had to go elsewhere, since you couldn't get a doctorate there then, and I doubt that Aruri could have had a doctoral program now.

That does not mean that it is not a worthy institution. I was happy with it. There were problems but not fundamental ones. I was still a good left socialist, which would not be the appropriate description now. Our professor for Economics and Economic History (Lavaux) was a Taft Conservative (we had to know the Taft-Hartley Act inside out) and he was real mad about "the planners and schemers in Washington". When he blamed those planners for the current (moderate) unemployment, I couldn't keep my big mouth shut and asked if that couldn't be due to inadequate or lack of planning. At which he invited me to come forward, if I want to give socialist speeches. Even though it was Joe McCarthy's USA, I don't think it was meant to intimidate me. And I don't think Prof. Aruri has anything to fear now, if he decided to come forward and speak out for the long held stand of the Left in favor of the global consensus solution.

If my doctorate and research in polymer (macromolecular) science are inadequate for the intellectual appellation, which I never desired before, how can I qualify, so I can also participate in the powwow? I also learned some things in non-academic "universities"; e.g. while wearing a (n optional) "Palestine" ribbon on the shoulder strap of my uniform while serving in the war against the fascist axis when I was of normal student age. Such army service was the proper Left thing to do at the time, but there were some leftists opposed; at least the Trotzkyists. Since I knew a couple of them, one was a close personal friend, I can assure you that they had got themselves to honestly believe it was just another imperialist war.

In line with that, I do not mean to say that Aruri does not really believe that a settlement now with formation of a Palestinian state in the areas occupied by Israel in the last 40 years is a bad idea; just that he has not been forthright in presenting his rejection; and that his inability to even mention Avnery while pushing for Pappe, right following the recent public debate between the two, is not what one expects from an academic intellectual. Although I had raised my hand to ask him whether he had heard of Avnery, the unusual way audience participation was handled made it possible to prevent the question (not Aruri's fault).

(I should add something about the Paris and Jerusalem 1968 stereo slides below)

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Is the Left being Flip-Flopped

2007-07-11T00:24:00.000-07:00

to Oppose a Palestinian State Next to the State of Israel ?

What is generally called "the 2-state solution", the formation of a Palestinian state next to Israel, has long been referred to as the ("international" or) "global consensus" for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Later, it was also to be the main basis for peace with the Arab world as a whole, following a Saudi initiative repeated at a recent Riyadh summit, and to which the Syrian government also subscribed (at least in principle). The Israeli government appeared to be the only serious holdout, but then made noises indicating a more open attitude. Could it be that 40 years of occupation will have been ENOUGH ? Are there real prospects for peace in the Near East?

I had not heard previously of Dr. Naseer Aruri, emeritus professor at the University of Massachusetts, and described in notices as a renowned Palestinian intellectual. His talk on June 6 at the Vancouver Public library could be expected to provide significant information even to those of us pretty familiar with the problems. The title was clear cut:

40 Years of Occupation and the Prospects for Peace. The 3/4 hour talk can be summarized briefly with respect to that title: The proper time frame is about 60 years of occupation, not 40. And let's not hold our breath in expectation of peace now. Better later!

He did start out with 40 years, but of futile "peacemaking", without trying to make sense of that. Peace following the 1967 war was clearly rejected, and at that time not by the Israeli government (as far as known). But the Khartoum Conference of the defeated Arab governments said no, no, no. When a separate Palestinian voice began to be heard, it was no less negative. And it didn't take very long before the "Greater Israel" crowd got heard from. The first sign I became aware of of movement within the PLO toward peace based on a 2-state solution came in the seventies, not long before Begin came in , with Sharon and their "Peace for Galilee" war in Lebanon; then the first intifada. When the news about negotiations in Oslo were revealed they sure looked good.

Dr. Aruri presented arguments to show that the US government has not really been acting as an honest broker between Israeli and Palestinian representatives. There is more on that in his book Dishonest Broker. Other things, too, seemed pretty obvious, but some in the audience may not have been aware of them. He made a point of no longer referring to the occupation as political "genocide", but rather as "politicide", a term he attributes to a just deceased Israeli sociologist (Kimmerling): which would have been really fitting, if in 1967 Israel had occupied a functioning, independent Palestinian polity.

The most significant in Aruri's talk was his rejection of the two state global consensus; which had been advanced most fiirmly by the Left, of which the sponsors of this event clearly view themselves as part; thus presumably Prof. Aruri, too. His fleeting attempt to present this rejection as a position he is only now in the process of reaching/confirming should be taken with a generous measure of salt. While knocking Oslo, initiated without US brokerage, he views the accord as a "crippling blow" to the 2-state solution by the US and Israel . But those of us who welcomed it at the time were not educated by him about his reasoning for that. He may possibly just mean that it was subject to valid criticism.

Many of us have been aware of Israeli factors contributing to preventing Oslo from leading to an early, reasonably just settlement that could lead to reconciliation; most notably the murder of Rabin. There was also the principled rejection of the accord by Sharon. But corresponding Palestinian efforts from people associated with Aruri's rejectionist position should also be considered. And then there were suicide bombing "resistance" and "settlers".

Like many Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, who, unlike him, remain committed to peace now based on the two state consensus, Aruri complains about the premature convening of the Clinton-Arafat-Barak summit at Camp David, the "generous" Barak offer and the Clinton treatment of Arafat later. He also reveals that a (religious) Jewish member (named Miller) of the US delegatiion expressed criticism of the US role. But according to Aruri, Miller "admitted", implying that Miller had to be pressured to admit rather than having at own initiative honestly wanted to do his job for better US political action in pursuit of its stated goal of peace; something Aruri's fellow American citizens who are Jews really are expected to do; both by ancient Jewish tradition and modern American law.

Would it be proper to say that Dr Aruri admits that Palestinian President Abu Mazen, the close political companion of Yasir Arafat, is no good; e.g. that he cooperated with the US and Israel to deprive his Islamist enemies of its election victory. Or is Aruri rather eager to degrade him, the one leader in that triangle with the US and Israel who seems to have fought seriously for peace now with two states. It would be nice , if we could believe that such "admission" results from passionate commitment to democratic practice rather than to rejection of the peace consensus.

Since Aruri does not subscribe to the one possible (if not very likely) way for peace now, it may not be in search of an answer that he asked why Israel is afraid of peace. His own answer amounts to what Uri Avnery called the demographic demon in Israeli brains, but the man seems determined not to mention the name of this consistent fighter for two states at peace. The demon really is not satisfied with only Israeli brains. It must have been around when, before the UN was ever brought in and voted for two states, an Anglo-American commission could not get agreement from the Arab leadership to admit just 100,000 survivors of the Nazi camp system; a number not comparable to the millions the demon now disturbs Israeli brains with.

Uri Avnery played an important role toward recognition by Israelis that the PLO can no longer be dismissed as just a senseless terrorist outfit. Along with his "Peace Bloc" (Gush Shalom), he has acted now for engaging with Hamas, too. An intellectual might be expected (naively?) to be eager to engage in a dialogue with someone like him; as Avnery himself showed by organizing a major public debate in Tel Aviv with 2-state opponent Ilan Pappe; still formally a professor at Haifa University, although clearly without support to speak of in Israel, unlike Avnery. Pappe was not just honored by being mentioned. Aruri promised us a Pappe visit to Vancouver. Does that mean that the Vancouver Public Library has been made to agree to another anti-consensus monologue? Does all that Vancouverites are to be exposed to have to be 1-state propaganda by a "Librarian Left" lecture monopoly and and the right wing ("New Zionist") Revisionist Asper CanWest newspaper monopoly?

Are 40 Years of Occupation ENOUGH ?

2007-06-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

(or does it have to be 60?)
In 6 days of June 1967, Tzahal (the Hebrew abbreviation for the Israeli armed forces) defeated the Egyptian military on the first day; then, less spectacularly, the Jordanian and Syrian armies.The latter resulted in occupation of the Golan Heights from which the Syrians had a commanding view for shelling the kibbutzim and other villages in the Huleh Valley below, which they didn't mind doing. Those western parts of the heights are still occupied, and apparently will be at least as long as US government policy toward Syria remains unchanged. The Egyptian army, which President Gamal Abd el Nasser had just sent into the Sinai up to the Israeli border as part of a series of threatening moves, was driven out of the whole Sinai; as well as from the Gaza Strip they had taken over in 1948; and which has been under Israeli occupation since (if Sharon's "disengagement" ploy is discounted). Evidently under pressure to show solidarity with the Egytian army, King Hussein of Jordan, which included the West Bank as well as Transjordan since ~1948, had his Arab Legion attack Israeli West Jerusalem with furious shelling, at which Tzahal could counterattack and easily conquer the whole West Bank. The idiotic Israeli occupation has now lasted 40 years.

There had been a barrage of notices, articles and e-mails as the anniversary approached, of activities planned to mark the occasion; in the US, in Israel, in Canada and many places the world over. The main message / slogan was simple: ENOUGH !!

To me the analogy to the 40 year ordeal in the desert of the Sons ("children") of Israel before they reached their goal according to the biblical account in Exodus had looked significant, and it evidently also occurred to others, who published it.

Given that I am also still a US citizen, I had decided to make a contribution amounting to at least membership dues to several US Jewish anti-occupation outfits, without formally joining any, at least at this time. Each was also to be asked to provide an adequate (but preferably not too long) account of their message about the 40 year anniversary for inclusion in this blog.

I have not been ready to abandon my now quarter century long state of ex-Communication from "The Organized Jewish Community" (TOJC), to which the once fairly real community had been converted. I spent several years since in The Hague, where the formally excommunicated Spinoza spent the last years of his life, and where I often went to visit the courtyard of the "New Church" where he was buried 330 years ago (marked by a slab from "amkha"; "your people" in Hebrew; also denotes the common people in Yiddish). Like Spinoza's, my last work also involved novel lenses; but unlike his, mine didn't result in early death, just severe harassment.

The current action does amount to another tentative step toward participation in at least virtual (digital?) community that could be viewed as dissident, even though it may turn out to be the closest to representing the majority, if the terrorist intimidation and information control were removed. I would also consider joining one or two of the organizations, if that still makes sense in my octogenarian stage. I had already taken such a step when I joined the Canadian ACJC, which seems to manage to reasonably live up to its inclusive anti-occupation principles only by vigilance of some members.

Since most of the 40 years occasion activities couldn't amount to the expected, the organizations' statements to be included here could be on whatever each choses. My preference now would be on what feature(s) they view as especially distinguishing them compared to the others (who need not be demeaned) e.g. as far as I can tell, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom believes it can appeal to the widest constituency. Among the evident distractions from the activities was the fighting in Gaza and the armed suppression of Fatah there by Hamas forces. Comment on the resulting situation could be another alternative that may be easiest to provide.

Here in Vancouver several events were advertised. Most seemed almost routine; which tended to lend emphasis to the central event called by Canpalnet Dr. Naseer Aruri: 40 years of Occupation and the Prospects for Peace; June 6 at the Vancouver Public Library. I went and later watched the Community TV coverage also of the news conference earlier that day. Considering all the attention, I later had to wonder: Was I the only one to notice that Aruri is not among those of us who have had ENOUGH and want an end to 40 years of occupation now. He can wait apparently and try to end 60 years of occupation later. Since something else then came up, this warrants closer examination in the next posting.

Naomi

2007-04-30T23:46:00.000-07:00

Naomi died last Tuesday. She had been born in occupied Holland. When her parents were about to be detained, first just in Westerbork, she was left with her paternal grandparents. Later, as the train deporting them was leaving, her grandfather, cantor of the main synagogue of Groningen, handed her out of the train window to a Christian Dutch woman who had come along; and who arranged for Naomi's first temporary home in hiding. She was Naneke now.

I first met her when, in the summer of 1945, I came from Capua, in Italy, where my (British Army) unit was stationed at the time, to see my relatives who had survived the genocide. I brought a heavy kit bag full of canned food which my brother had "organized" from the company kitchen. The Netherlands suffered more and longer from severe food shortage than adjacent Belgium, or France, and it was even worse for the few who returned alive from the camps, most of whom found others now living where they had been.

In spite of an accepting, or tolerant, attitude toward Jews by most Dutch people, a smaller percentage survived than in most (any?) other occupied countries. The Jewish community organizations had kept thorough records and were now made to supply the Nazis with lists for deportation before they could know at first that it would be for industrialized murder {added May 4 : I just saw that Lucy Davidowicz in her The War against the Jews wrote that the Nazis created a Joodsche Raad (Jewish Council) to which all Jewish organizations were subordinated and which in turn was under the Zentralstelle fuer Juedische Auswanderung of the SS officer in charge of the deportations; and that all Jews had to register. She is a serious historian, so to the extent that this differs rather than just provide more detail than the information I had, it ought to carry more weight}. The family of my aunt Leah, my mother's closest sister born almost exactly a year earlier, had just arrived without visa from Cologne after experiencing the Kristallnacht there. So they were among the earliest on the lists. That may have been the strange reason why all but my aunt survived; while, e.g., Anne Frank, who went to the same (Montessori) school in Amsterdam as my youngest cousin Ruth Ellen, but who had arrived years earlier from Frankfurt, had only her father survive.

I found Ruth Ellen along with my uncle Albert (who had been detained in Westerbork even before the war) in a huge hall (a gym?). It had been divided by makeshift drapes into "private" units for families of DPs (displaced persons, probably not all from death camps). My two older cousins were away (with soldiers of the Jewish Brigade who later became their husbands), but there was a woman, Rosi, who had lost all her family except her little daughter; whom she had just found and recovered a couple of weeks earlier. Naneke, the only name she knew, seemed completely disoriented in those strange surroundings away from "her family". But I finally got her to smile; apparently largely by having picked up the pail filled with water (their substitute for a water tap) and swinging it around overhead without the water having flown out; a cheap magic trick which she remembered the rest of her life.

When my uncle asked what I thought of the possibility that he would marry Rosi, I first said that he doesn't need family approval; but when he wanted my opinion anyway, I thought she seemed like a fine woman (but that I wouldn't call her Tante [aunt]; she was much younger than my aunt Leah). So Naomi became an extra cousin, part compensation for others lost.

(ctd May 1)
When I left for Italy, it was understood that they would all come to Palestine; as they did, in various ways, legally and otherwise. Even though I was no longer a Zionist and refused to take orders from the Haganah, which tried to have them obeyed in the Palestinian units, I did participate in their activity for illegal immigration of survivors (already before the Holland trip). After release from the army in 1946, I (and my brother) next saw our two younger (original) cousins across the fence of the British detention camp for illegal immigrants at Atlit, south of Haifa; but Naneke turned Naomi only after having returned from study in Nottingham in 1948 to serve in the Israeli army. She must have been 5 years oold by then; but later, she couldn't differentiate between those two encounters. She remembered being really scared of my rifle and thought that was at the same time as the water magic, but I didn't have a rifle along in Amsterdam.

My uncle, who had been anti-Zionist in Cologne, later returned with Rosi and Naomi to Amsterdam; where I saw them about once in a decade when I came to Europe from the US. Naomi had married but got divorced after the kids had grown up: daughter Tamar, now mother herself and son Gideon , who isn't; but his Masha has been expecting, still managing to provide some more nakhes for Naomi. She now shared a house with Martin, evidently a great friend with three married sons, and both generations of both families had become friends and provided support after she was stricken with leukemia. She still sounded upbeat when I phoned a week before the end. I was taking photos of flowers now shooting up all over Vancouver (or at least where I live) to send to her; just before getting the news.

We had met more often after the harassment I was subjected to following my solar sin against the ruling dirty energy interests made it advisable for me to stay away from the US as much as feasible. After 1988, I began to spend half a year in Vancouver and most of the rest in Europe, mainly the Netherlands; first in Delft, later in Den Haag (The Hague). Naomi had egun learning to sculpture at the Academy there and she tried to be helpful, e.g. in finding an apartment.She became so accomplished a sculptor in a short time that I couldn't tell the difference in artistic merit between her work and that of the Rodin types (though I sure ain't no expert). But then in the short time she had left, she gained real recognition, including commissions for public sculptures; for the unveiling of at least one of which the mayor of Amsterdam came.

Gideon phoned on April 18 leaving a message that his mother had died the day before. It was on April 18, 1943 that the SS and their Quisling type collaborators had been driven out of the Warsaw ghetto by the Jewish Fighting Organization when they came to collect more people for the Umschlagplatz for transport to the gas chambers. That started the weeks long uprising that showed that the human spirit cannot be broken no matter the depth of degradation imposed. A proper occasion for marking Resistance Day, not a good day for "Holocaust Remembrance" day. Naomi's grandpa Elburg's action as the train was leaving was an act of resistance not inferior to that of those who carried weapons. And it turned into a victory. The Nazis wanted to kill Naomi. Little babies had no chance to survive those camps, and by his daring action, he prevented them from achieving that goal. So it's also a good occasion to remember a hero like that. And the people who hid her.

No Breira

2007-03-08T18:56:00.000-08:00

It could be argued that Breira's prompt demise following the dressing down of its board members at the Israeli embassy is a good indication that it didn't amount to much anyway. But compared to what? I know of no organization before Breira where (at least Jewish) American audiences could hear what Israeli "dissidents" from occupation policy had to say. And they wanted to be heard.

There were other initiatives in the ~3 decades since, but only now, especially in the past few months, does it seem possible that enough Jews with backbone will stand up, and be seen to be standing up through media with some guts, to form organizations capable of letting Israeli government representatives and their assets/agents know their rights and responsibilities. We should know pretty soon if enough of the lessons of the past have been learned. A very encouraging feature of the new neck stiffness is that it is popping up all over, rather than being confined to the US. The unwritten law that Jews elsewhere in "exile" have to recognize the authority of the American "Community" may be getting lost. High time!

I had avoided joining anything political after (in effect) leaving Mapam when I was told , just before leaving Israel for the US in 1950 to continue my war-interrupted studies, that they wanted me to infiltrate the American CP and report to Benni (see end of September 12, 2006 posting). Apparently I was one of the first members of Amnesty International on the West Coast, but didn't regard that as really political. When I got a letter from the (East Coast) organizer of Breira that Natan Yellin Mor had suggested that he ask me to start a Breira chapter in the Bay Area, I didn't.

My attitude toward the latter was not clear cut anyway. I had been reluctant to meet him, since, like others of my background, I had always regarded his Stern group/gang as more "fascist" and terrorist than Begin's outfit. But unlike Begin (or Shamir, who was not "the head" of his group after Stern was killed, as spun nowadays), Yellin Mor was very impressive as a person. I also knew that he was now on the editorial board of Simha Flapan's New Outlook magazine, thus committed to Israeli Arab peace (which he insisted to always have been). And I agreed to show him around Berkeley the next day.

When a public event of the just organized Breira chapter at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center was announced, I went without intent to join, but did. The featured speaker, editor of an "Israel/Palestine" publication who bore a strong resemblance to my brother, went through his persuasive talk in spite of seeming to be in real pain (as he then told me he was, badly). Probably more decisive for my joining were the two pickets with signs standing one on each side inside the community center's entrance in such a way as to create a bottleneck so the crowds trying to enter had to converge to single file. I didn't, and when the character holding the sign about "Munich" (i.e. peace=appeasement) saw that he would not come out ahead in a collision, he retreated against the wall. They were then identified as known Revisionists in the introductory remarks; and the one I had "persuaded" to move, I saw much later draped in an Israeli flag as part of a small group of (according to the SF Chronicle) "Jewish Defense League" members opposite a pro Iranian demo in front of the Israeli consulate; calling for Death to Israel, Death to Iraq and to the US (for friendliness to the late Iraqi dictator).

Also speaking at that Breira meeting was Asher, the rabbi of Temple Emanuel, who later turned out to be a phoney; not the only one. In the East Bay, Breira met separately. Even then, there was a variety of evidence of people tied to Raab , of the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council, who later made clear his preference for the Likud, with its worse occupation policy, in Commentary, already turned into a character assassinating smut sheet by neocon Podhoretz. So it was encouraging when still later Tikkun Magazine was started by Michael Lerner.

After the New Jewish Agenda started in the 80s, I joined it for a short period. It was more wide ranging along lines of "The Movement", of which I hadn't viewed myself as part. Neither looked serious to me, but that may have been my problem. There was at least one of the same agents/assets (raabs?) as at Breira, the major reason for leaving it soon. Regardless of whether that is to be accepted nowadays, or whether they really believe in what they are doing, I find them contemptible and don't like my feeling contempt for people.

After coffee (and bullshit) at Telegraph Avenue's Mediterraneum Caffe, Natan Yellin Mor had asked me which of the people at our table was the spy. Probably due to my underestimate of the student movement, I didn't think there were any at the joint, which made him laugh, and insist that I guess. My guess amused him even more, but if that started to irritate a little, I had to assume that he must have developed a more sensitive nose for that sort of stuff; some of which I inevitably aquired later when our solar research attracted the attention of powerful anti-solar interests; which counted (especially right wing) Israelis among their eager assets. What was done by one old Revisionist terrorist, e.g. in an arrogant exhibition of indifference (at least) to generating antisemitic reaction at our lab, did at least as much as Raab and the lesser raabs all over, to make me avoid any involvement with the "Organized Community" that had replaced any real Jewish community.

As to direct Israeli government involvement, I had been shown that clearly enough, too; e.g. when, while showing an Israeli visitor around, I was dumbfounded when at the Berkeley Hillel house there was an item on the bulletin board attacking a Jewish American woman (who had given an earlier talk to Breira at Hillel) in a really shamefuk, personal manner. The person in charge, when asked how something that hateful fits in a house named after Hillel (known most widely for his emphasis on neighborly love), he said that anything from the Israeli consulate gets posted automatically. Bnai Brith runs the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Hillel and likes to be referred to as a human rights organization. Believe it or not.

When in 1980, in Europe, I submitted a memorandum requesting an inquiry (and if that can't be done, to make a formal complaint) to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations, I held the US government responsible also for actions of lesser governments used, specifically including the (Begin) Israeli one. In Tours (France), I had been offered an invitation to a Bnai Brith meeting, on whether French (and presumably other ) Jews owe him/it l'inconditionalite. Having that Berkeley Hillel message printed (typed?) that explicitly may have been for my personal benefit or for antisemitism generation. Other things were more obviously for my benefit, like the appearance of two men from Lebanese Major Haddad's outfit, the forerunner of the once famous Israeli-run Southern Lebanese Army, at the café frequented by, and next to the store of, my two late cousins; the premature death of one of whom I had good reason to attribute to Israeli terrorist assets in what I referred to as the lowest depth of depravity in this harassment.

It may be worth recalling here that this took place shortly after Shamir was made foreign minister by Begin, the first Revisionist prime minister, who had started the disastrous 1982 Lebanon war, that led to Hizbollah, thus to the preposterous one last summer. For the first, successful war, in 1948, I, a non Zionist, Arab-respecting Jew, had been one of three Palestinians ( as we were called in Nottingham) to respond to the (unenforceable) call to interrupt studies and return for army service in the War of Independence. There joining a unit that had faced the real Lebanese army. Later we were part of the force that drove Kawukji's army from Galilee back to Lebanon. While Blau, the only Revisionist (allegedly super Zionists) among the eleven of us, stayed in Nottingham. Also, that Yellin Mor told me, and later published (unlike Shamir) that they had approached the German Foreign service during WW II with an offer of cooperation; while I had volunteered to serve on the Allied side.

That could serve as another reminder of something gone badly wrong in Israel. And that "exile" Jews who served (or whose family members served) only in the Allied armies need not have moral qualms against standing tall in the face of intimidation from those "former" terrorists and their raabs.

Points of View: Israel and North America

2007-01-17T17:13:00.000-08:00

The most common justification given for denying rights to persons belonging to an undesired group, like being allowed residency, is "security". That practice certainly is not confined to Israeli authorities in the occupied territories. Another excuse is what has been called (e.g. by me) the "demographic threat", the prospect that a group you don't belong to will contribute an ever larger percentage of the population of the country, in the end possibly a majority. Uri Avnery has now referred to a "demographic demon" afflicting Israeli brains. The demon's "emissaries scour the world for Jews, real or imagined. They have discovered (and brought to Israel!) Indians who claim to be descended from the tribe of Manasseh, one of the ten tribes that were exiled by the Assyrians - according to the Bible - from Palestine some 2720 years ago" [to India??].

Others include New Mexicans alleged to be descendants of Jews forced to convert to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition; as well as many Ethiopians (Falashmura) who converted more recently; and loads of Russians, the Jewish identity of a major part of whom was based on a desire to find a way out of the Soviet Union. All these get immediate Israeli citizenship with ("absorption") subsidies, while a Jenin wife of an Israeli cannot even obtain an entry permit.

It's not hard to understand Avnery's, and his Israeli friends', special concern with that. In the Gush Shalom e-mail version of that December 30 article, another heading reads "How can a democratic state not belong to all its citizens"? Good question. But for people, including Jews, outside Israel, it is at least as important to ask: How can a democratic state claim to speak and act in the name of citizens of other democratic countries, i.e. in the name of these non-Israeli Jews; and the governments of their own democratic countries to accept such usurpation? There is, indeed, an organization of Jews calling itself NION (Not In Our Name), but it seems to be just one of many disconnected local (Chicago?) organizations which refuse to tow the allegedly unanimous "Jewish" line.

That demon may not mind getting other non-Arabs, but he surely still wants especially Jews, regardless of what they want. The general Zionist "narrative", that the Jewish people is returning to its home after 2000 years of "exile", may no longer be doctrinal for all, but it certainly hasn't been abandoned by all. Nor is that only motivated by that demographic demon; "rejection of the exile" has itself had high priority in most Zionist ideologies.

That rejection ("Shlilat ha-Golah" שלילת הגולה) resulted in a conflicted attitude toward antisemitism. At least before the reality of the genocide it led to during WWII had really sunk in, and that took some time, an accepted cliche in Israel was that "a little antisemitism is not a bad thing"; which others were supposed to acknowledge with a knowing smile (that it helps Jews decide to leave home for "Aliyah" to Israel). But even most good Zionists didn't really like any antisemitism. I wish I could say that about the recent Israeli "elites" eager to play Realpolitik.

As to the "leaders" of the "Organized Jewish Community", i.e. the offiicials placed in charge of organizations with access to the democratic institutions of their countries, their main task is to play the "good friends of Israel" game rather than to act for an honestly informed membership thus enabled to chose leaders with their own differing attitudes toward Israeli policies and practices.

Other organizations are marginalized. The first substantial attempt in North America was Breira (Alternative); which started almost 40 years ago. It was eliminated within less than a decade. Breira board members had been summoned to the Israeli embassy in Washington and given to understand they had no right to be heard, since they had not served in the Israeli armed forces. I know of no protest or other action by the U.S. government; which never formally transferred jurisdiction over its Jewish citizens to another government.

What Nation? What Kind of Nation State?

2006-12-31T22:46:00.000-08:00

Since I discussed the variety of meanings attached to terms like nation and nationalist or Zionist (in the September 16 insert to the September 12, 2006 posting here), it seems to have become the subject of wider discussion. In Canada's Liberal Party's leadership contest, it may have started earlier, when front runner Michael Ignatieff (having been accused earlier by Ukrainian Canadian constituents of published slights against Ukrainian nationhood) made positive noises about Quebec nationhood. That trend was reinforced by Conservative minority prime minister Stephen Harper suggesting that the Quebecois, but not Quebec, be considered a nation; with approval from all parties in parliament.

Stephane Dion, the Quebecois who came from fourth place to win the Liberal leadership has been opposed to anything that could detract from the unity of Canada/Canadians including Quebec/Quebecois. He had initially been recruited into politics (from academic life) by former Liberal PM Chrétien right after the narrow defeat of a referendum for Quebec sovereignty, because of his determined stand against independence. He has since been under some pressure to end his dual citizenship by relinquishing the French one (I ought to say something about that; not now).

In yesterday's (December 30) column, Uri Avnery discusses nationhood in relation to Israel. The specific context is the Israeli refusal to allow an Arab Israeli (Sami) from Acre to live with his wife Lola from Jenin; which is in the occupied West Bank. Apart from security concerns, routinely alleged for discriminatory measures against Arabs, others have been used, most recently that Israel is a nation state; meaning what?

I doubt that most readers in North America and other modern democracies found it easy to understand Avnery's train of thought here; as indeed I hadn't, making me refer also to the Hebrew version. He asks: "What is the nation in question? A world-wide Jewish nation? An Israeli-Jewish nation? Or just an Israeli nation?" In the end, what he believes an Israeli nation state has to be, amounts about to what people in modern Western democracies tend to believe; but apparently not quite.

Avnery mentions effects of "political slang" in Israel. I had been amused early on when on U.S. TV weather forecasts, they talked of the weather in "the nation's midsection". Storms reported there would have conjured up in the minds of people used to ethnic nationalism terms, like most Israelis, an epidemic of badly upset American stomachs; rather than stormy weather in the centrally located U.S. prairie states. One way to bypass most of the confusion about words may be to cite the practical issue of the Israeli identity card, which some Israelis now are trying to change, including Avnery: "Israeli identity cards record the holder's 'nation'. Cards belonging to Jews say: 'Nation: Jewish'." That was already true when I received my ID card while serving in Tzahal (now "IDF" for easier ID in the US ) during the War of Independence; when Avnery was already badly wounded (I think). He now wants the card to say Nation: Israeli.

But does he mean that he wants an Israeli nation state; or any nation states at all. He seems to regard these as obsolete. Two posssibilities are presented: (a) "A citizen's state, in which all the citizens are equal, irrespective of ethnic origin, nation, religion, language and gender................"; (b) "A national state, in which a Jewish-Israeli majority exists side by side with a Palestinian-Israeli minority. In such a state, the majority has its national institutions, but the minority, too, is recognized as a national entity, with clearly defined national rights". Jabotinsky, his early right wing Zionist mentor, is supposed to have favored the latter. Labor's Pinhas Lavon, in Israel's first weeks, "suggested a choice between an 'autonomist' approach which would allow the minority to form its own autonomous institutions in a state dominated by the majority belonging to another nation, and a 'state-values' state, in which all citizens would be treated according to universal and egalitarian standards. Lavon preferred the second alternative (a state belonging to all its citizens), and so do I".

I don't know if I am the only one who finds it hard to see how the latter can be harmonized with the paragraph shortly thereafter: "I AM an Israeli. I certainly want to live in a State of Israel where the majority speaks Hebrew and the Hebrew identity, the Hebrew culture and the Hebrew tradition can be developed. That does not restrain me at all from striving for a situation in which the Palestinian citizens of the state are free to develop their own national identity, culture and tradition". The problem is not in the translation. (The only thing different in the Hebrew version is the addition of "there is nothing new under the sun" following the Jabotinsky and Lavon quotations).

At the end Avnery predicts the end of the nation state as it has existed since the transition from small feudal dynastic states (as I had described for Germany, but he also includes England, France, having incorporated Scotland, Corsica). While the formal structure may remain, they will turn into "multicultural, open and liberal" states. And "if the State of Israel does not want to explode from within, it must sooner or later become such a state - an Israeli state in which Sammy from Acre can live in dignity, together with his wife Lola from Jenin".

Entry Denied

2006-12-27T00:37:00.000-08:00

An e-mail from Gush Shalom included an appeal from an Israel Committee for the Right of Residency (ICRR) concerning entry denials to the occupied territories with strong resemblances to what happened to Jewish citizens of Poland living in, and expelled from, Nazi Germany in October 1938. The event is now remembered almost only for leading indirectly to the Kristallnacht pogrom a week later, after Herschel Grynszpan, whose family, like mine, was among those expelled, fatally shot vom Rath of the German embassy in Paris. My posting of January 6, 2006 has a brief description of what actually happened to us in Dortmund: being woken up by brownshirted stormtroopers (SA) banging on our door, exhibited with all others on the central city square, then put on a special train to the Polish border; where the Polish government refused to admit the Jews who had been born in what had since become Polish territory. Some pertinent background not included in that posting is given in the next two paragraphs before the ICCR appeal.

That "Polenaktion", the first Nazi "Aktion" in which children were also targeted, was not just a German atrocity. Most of our parents' generation had been born in what became the second Polish Republic after World War I, but had really been born in, and come to Germany from, one of the three empires that had kept partitioning Poland among themselves, predominantly from the Habsburg one. Getting German citizenship had been almost impossible, even for those of us who had been born in Germany. But when the Polish state was revived, its government had undertaken to provide citizenship to people born in the areas now to be part of Poland. Passports were renewed periodically, without problems.Then, near the end of October 1938 the increasingly authoritarian and antisemitic Polish government made clear that it would no longer renew passports, or recognize still valid ones (at least for Jews), beyond the end of the month.

That the Nazis were taken by surprise and had to decide fast, if they were not to have a lot of stateless Jews, is shown by the lack of preparation and the poor organization of the expulsions. In turn, the Polish authorities were not prepared for the way the Nazis reacted and had to improvise their own reaction. There were stories of people being chased back and forth by rifle fire from both the German and the Polish side of the border; even of many thus killed. Apparently none were, and it now appears likely that from the Polish side there was shooting with only one group, and that was above their heads. As to Polish policy, there is ample documentation now of demographic considerations and steps taken to decrease the percentage of Jews in Poland. So they decided : Entry denied; to the Grynszpans, to us and thousands of others.

The following excerpts from the appeal of the Israel Committee for the Right of Residency, ICRR, start at the beginning.:
"In March 2006, the Israeli government initiated a policy of visa denial to individuals of Palestinian descent having foreign passports, many of whom Israel has arbitrarily denied residency rights to in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Many of these persons have lived in the OPT for years without succeeding to obtain residency rights ……… These people have managed to stay in the Occupied Palestinian Territory by means of tourist visas issued by the Israeli government. Such visas are valid for three months. Their holders are obliged to go abroad to renew them ……..[but] have no assurance that they will be allowed to return, and in recent years the number of people denied reentry has increased significantly ……… And only today, December 5, 2006, we learn from the Palestinian campaign for entry rights, of an escalation in Israeli policy. The Ministry of Interior now refuses to process visa extensions at all. .. As a result of this 'entry-denied' policy, families are torn apart, schooling for the children is disrupted, and economic disasters follow."

[Although there are differences, most notably in that their foreign passports entitle them to go to the issuing country, this part is very close to what was happening to us at the (German-) Polish border and is clearly also motivated by the "demographic threat", albeit this time from non Jews. The latter probably also figures in the following]:

" Among the entry-denied individuals are professionals from foreign countries who are not necessarily Palestinian. This group includes physicians, teachers ….. and professionals in a variety of fields filling critically important positions in hospitals, schools, universities, and social institutions……[They] leave a vacuum in institutions unable to find replacements. This is devastating for all concerned, and has life-threatening implications particularly in the field of medical care"
" A group of concerned Israeli citizens has organized to protest this injustice which stands in gross contradiction to Israel's self-declared image as a democratic state supportive of human rights and aspiring to a peaceful resolution of its conflict with the Palestinian people. ….. We have been meeting with staffs of foreign embassies in Israel and have called upon them to use their good offices……However, embassies do not make policy."

" We therefore call upon you, people of conscience living abroad, to organize campaigns to inform your officials in your countries about Israel's policy of 'entry-denied. …… write letters of protest to the Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, and for those of you who are academics or are in the medical profession to additionally write to the Minister of Education and Minister of Health."

The ICRR asked to have this distributed widely. I tried to have it disseminated by what seemed a suitable Canadian outfit; no success, so I have to hope this achieves something. The full appeal, with addresses to write to, is at http://www.flwi.ugent.be/cie/Palestina/palestina312.htm

Tom Hayden's Recovery

2006-10-30T23:58:00.000-08:00

An article by Tom Hayden in the Huffington Post during the July-August Lebanon war this year caught my attention. I had first encountered him in Berkeley in the late 1960s when my daily walk along Telegraph Avenue (I lived one block west on Dwight) led to an impromptu meeting at the UC Student Union related to an SDS action at Sproul Hall; I believe a sit-in. Having sat down on the floor near the entrance, Tom came in soon after and sat down next to me. It may be worth describing (elsewhere) how that meeting ended.

During the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, Mother Jones had organized a panel discussion in which Hayden, newly elected as member of the California State Assembly, was one of the featured panelists. I had gone mainly to hear what he had to say about solar energy, since Governor Jerry Brown had appointed him head of Solarcal. He had nothing to say on that. There was a lot about the importance of computer technology.

At the entrance to the hall, some Israeli students were passing out leaflets criticising him and Jane Fonda, his wife at the time, for their support, of which I had not been aware, of the 1982 Israeli invasioin of Lebanon. It was that 1982 "victory" in Operation "Peace for Galilee" that led to a long series of calamities; including the shame of Sabra and Shatila, a lengthy occupation of Southern Lebanon with much loss of lives, the creation of Hizbollah and thus directly to this summer's next Lebanon war.

In the Huffington Post piece, former Assemblyman and State Senator Tom Hayden describes the process that led to what he now calls "the mistake of [his] political life". It starts when he was about to run for the Democratic nomination for Assemblyman from the Los Angeles Westside. "Twenty-five years ago I stared into the eyes of Michael Berman, chief operative for his congressman-brother, Howard Berman.

'I represent the Israeli defense forces,' Michael said. I thought he was joking. He wasn't. Michael seemed to imagine himself the gatekeeper protecting Los Angeles' Westside for Israel's political interests, and those of the famous Berman-Waxman machine". It soon may become more famous. Waxman is scheduled to chair one of the more important committes if, as looks likely now, the Democrats win a majority in next week's Congressional elections.
Hayden " had traveled to Israel in a generally supportive capacity, meeting officials from all parties, studying energy projects", presumably for Solarcal. His attitude then on the Near East conflict is given as close to that of Israeli "Peace Now" and Amos Oz, but also Edward Said "and those Palestinian nationalists and human rights activists who accepted Israel's pre-1967 borders as a reality to accommodate".

Obtaining "hekhsher" as "friend of Israel" was deemed important especially "since Jews represented one-third of the Democratic district's primary voters". While such certification would normally come from "elites" in the "organized Jewish community", he mentions AIPAC, with Israeli officials involved only "when necessary", Tom got his directly from "the ultimate source", Israeli Consul General Navon; termed "an old school labor / social democrat" (was he?). His friendship, while still thought "genuine enough" , may have been strengthened by a desire "to pull me and my then-wife, Jane Fonda, into a pro-Israel stance". Among the most significant parts of the article is the way such Israeli certification was communicated. Later that summer, Navon wanted them "to be supportive" during Sharon's invasion of Lebanon.

"Ever curious, and aware of my district's politics, I decided we should go to the Middle East--but only as long as the Israeli "incursion," as it was delicately called, was limited to the 10-kilometer space near the Lebanese border, as a cushion against rocket fire……..There followed a descent into moral ambiguity and realpolitick that still haunts me today. When we arrived at the Israeli-Lebanon border, the game plan promised by Benny Navon had changed utterly. Instead of a localized border conflict, Israel was invading and occupying all of Lebanon--with us in tow".

Nonetheless, in spite of private misgivings, he spent weeks "defending Israel's 'right' to self-defense on its border"; until a close friend and advisor made him stop. He seems happy about that and tried to avoid involvement with Israeli-Palestinian matters during the bulk of his time in office, getting reelected repeatedly. The new Lebanon war made him speak up to warn others against repeating his mistakes (surely also to get it off his chest publicly). It certainly looks pertinent to the contestants for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, who were accused of anti-Israel bias by Conservative Prime Minister Harper for critical remarks made during this year's Lebanon war, not just front runner Michael Ignatieff; who accepted an invitation for a trip to Israel, which the inviting "friends of Israel" then postponed (bukra?).

Toward the end, there are some remarks about the occupied Palestinian territories, e.g. against house demolitions and other collective punishment he observed. The last sentence here is especially important to remember, not just for goyim. "What I know is that I will not make the same mistake again. I hope that my story deepens the resolve of all those whose feelings are torn, conflicted or confused in the present. It is not being a "friend of Israel" to turn a blind eye to its never-ending occupation".

The Big Picture with Avi Lewis: Online Discussion: CAN WE SAVE PLANET EARTH?

2006-10-02T01:03:00.000-07:00

This program had one clear advantage over the "Global Warming; The Biggest Show on Earth" event last Monday in Vancouver, sponsored by Vancity to mark its 60th anniversary: There was real (give and take) discussion following presentation of the topic on the CBC.

The Vancouver program's talk by William Rees, UBC professor introduced the problem skilfully and "writer and consultant" Guy Dauncey also suggested solutions in a kind of speed reading exercise. Several people could ask a question after each talk, which was then responded to. Pretty normal these days, but I learned little (if anything substantial) new, since I was long informed on the problem. Noneless I learned quite a lot from the discussion following the Attenborough film in Avi Lewis' CBC program. Serious argument clearly was encouraged there. That may not be that easy to arrange locally, so this should be viewed more as special praise for the CBC program, than criticism of the Vancouver one; which was good, too.

But at the Vancouver event, I had inquired of a man manning a table at the back of the hall about an earlier event I had attended of his outfit, BCSEA (for BC Sustainable Energy Assn.); and the devices he used to avoid discussing it (while others stood nearby) were resourceful and determined. But maybe not surprising. They had had three speakers, the last of whom spoke of his company's intent to start to produce photovoltaic (PV) modules in which the sunlight incident on the PV cells is concentrated by (I believe line) focussing lenses. The same area of (expensive) PV cell could thus immediately provide several times as much electricity as in "flat plate" (one sun) mode, rather than having to wait years for marginal efficiency improvements. No attention was then paid to that speaker, just the other two.

I could only recall the one who spoke about "Sustainable Fossil Fuels", and this high office holder of the association just wanted me (and others) to join right there, with no questions to be asked. Needless to say that I did not join. That sort of avoiding discussion should not be associated with an organization like Vancity, which I had been happy to join and continue to be a happy member of.

Concentrated Sun Energy.

2006-09-30T01:27:00.000-07:00

The Solution in Search of More Problems:
Climate Change

(I didn't like the way this posting developed and intend to change it. Meanwhile this will have to make do.)

There is increasing concern about unusually abrupt climate change, specifically global warming, based on a variety of observations worldwide. After long being called controversial, it is generally accepted now: even that it results (mainly) from growing releases of greenhouse gases which obstruct the dissipation into space of solar energy absorbed and converted to higher wavelength heat energy. The warming trend correlates with the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since coal, then oil, was first burned on a large scale. Remaining "skepticism" about this human contribution should wane when the nuclear interests, tied to, often identical with, the oil companies are satisfied that solar competition cannot raise its (pretty) head.

The current sense of serious imminent danger need never have been reached. The solar radiation reaching earth continuously can provide all the energy needed by mankind; forever, easily. Solar power is popular. People (like roses) love sunshine. They do not like ozone in smog, cancer from radioactivity, climate changes or soot and other suspended particles in the air.

Solar power has also had enemies , as pointed out long ago, e.g. by Amory Lovins (in the scan immediately preceding the passage linked to here). These saw reasons to be concerned about the popularity of solar energy. And they are powerful; very powerful. They succeeded in aborting the birth of a solar age in the U.S. in the 1970s.

To bring about the transition to an economy based on the solar sources of energy, a strong grassroots movement arose, initiated by the (earlier) Earth Day organizers. The 1970s provided a really unusual opportunity, because of the crises, price shocks, boycott, gas station lines, that suddenly showed people the vulnerability of the oil based economy. It peaked on SUN Day (May 3, 1978) and was promptly dissipated thereafter. Without the possibility of a real grassroots movement standing up for the common good, there evidently will not be a solar age (if any).

Solar energy can be utilized in a great variety of ways, and classified according to no less. I do not really like any of the reviews describing/explaining them briefly on the web, including my own, but here are two link / link . There is a lesser, but still substantial number of ways of generating electricity. Some of these are suitable for what is termed utility scale, not necessarily the gigascale kind.

At least in the early stages, direct solar power is most easily cost competitve when generated at, or near, the point of consumption. Especially in conjunction with indirect solar sources, notably biomass derived alcohols, solar thermal power is likely to be the most easily competitive worldwide. Windpower looks like the early workhorse for many northern countries, that can also more readily afford the capital expenditure (besides, less hostility from the giant private utility companies). But others will be favored, especially based on specific local features.

Solar Power in the 70s

In case these statements surprise you, let me note that they are based on over 3 decades of experience; first as an active participant. By my job description as a senior researcher at the main Western laboratory of the US Department of Agriculture in Albany (adjacent to Berkeley), California, I was to pick my research topics (and discuss them with my boss). These had been remote from solar energy (and mainly scientific rather than developmental). But in the early 70s I was adding a (partial) 2nd floor to my Berkeley home and, when the first oil shock and boycott came down, considered ways to minimize heating oil and power needs. It led first to designing a greenhouse roof garden, then a likely way to concentrate sunlight. That looked too important to confine to my house, so I discussed it with colleagues at the lab, where energy and food production were now at the top of research priorities.

We came up with ways that should have made possible solar power generation for rural communities competitively with conventional utility power in many locations, in conjunction with intensive food production; without requiring major prior research, thus in the mid 1970s.

That sounded far out at the time, even for well informed people, but we were in an unusual position with respect to location (et al). Working as we did for the people as whole (we thought), we could discuss the difficulties honestly with a view to finding solutions. Among the main difficulties generally cited against wide solar feasibility was that large areas had to be covered with collectors and that these had to be heavy and tough to withstand the weather. But we were going to have them very light in food producing greenhouses, suspended over the crops and allow the part of the light spectrum required for photosynthesis (especially the red) to pass through the collection system. To the objection of solar radiation being too diffuse (low energy density), the answer was to concentrate (focus) the light onto a narrow tube through which a fluid is passed to carry the heat energy converted there to a heat exchanger for steam, then power generation by conventional turbines; or without the latter for thermal use.

The big problem then was supposed to be that focussing devices were very expensive, parabolic mirror troughs $200- $500 per square meter, (Fresnel) lenses even more. But that is where our expertise with polymeric material provided a decisive basic innovation; that very thin, light lenses would be inexpensive to produce by extrusion and embossing as they emerge from the extrusion die:

For pertinent text go here.

Why Don't We Have Solar Power Now?

The anti-solar interests evidently were taken by surprise, and they had to clamp down so fast and decisively that they didn't conceal their misdeeds. When we didn't take the hints and "stayed the course" (rather than cut and run) they began collective punishment, first against our whole research group, including those with no involvement in the solar project, and it didn't stop there. I won't go into details here (but many are available, e.g. in parts linked to). The diagrams above are from a solar summary attached to a 1980 request for an inquiry by the Human Rights Commission of the UN in Geneva (where the same people called the shots. The owners of the US government were "influential" abroad, too; still are). The diagrams had not yet been drawn that neatly (and no motion).

[ To view a larger, more detailed version of this image click on it. If you are using Internet Explorer, click then on the icon at the lower right of the resulting image. ]

The box above about the lenses is from the USDA's Agricultural Research of February 1978, It is a good feature of an article already meant as distortion, and appeared after the group had been told their jobs would be abolished, in an illegal manner. That issue of the journal was not available, as it usually was, at the visitors' entrance room to the lab. It had a photo of colleague Glen Bailey on the cover, behind a Fresnel lens we had "developed" in the few hours of commercial extrusion time allowed; and misinformed on in Lovins' Soft Energy Notes. Other parts of that solar summary can be found starting here .

The most widely heard complaint against almost all solar sources, including direct sun energy (sunnergy?), is that they are intermittent, thus require expensive storage. In our version, storage is cheaper than for "flat plate" and can be minimized, or eliminated, by wider use of the biomass (alcohol) which otherwise just serves for superheating steam.

The last time I wrote to compare different solar technologies , I evaluated the fuel cell as the important new thing. That seems to have been based in part on the hype then around it. But I still wouldn't discard it to the extent now prevalent. With it, other ways, such as windpower and photovoltaics (PV), would also turn into non intermittent technologies. Even without, PV with lens-focused light would probably have been able to compete widely for a long time by now, if not prevented by the dirty competition.

Vancity and Necessary Voices

Although I have been a member (and depositor) of Vancity, I found out about the Global Warming event through an e-mail from "Necessary Voices" which earlier had co-sponsored other interesting events. I had joined Vancity as soon as I found out about it; before becoming a Canadian citizen, first mainly because the cooperative aspect appeared strong, then because the people were so pleasant to deal with. I had been committed to cooperatives always as long as they were around, had met the love affair of my life (two decades) at a singles occasion of the Berkeley Co-op, which really was alive in the sixties. I considered trying to (co-)organize a solar inventors co-op against friendly advice. Necessary Voices had sponsored an event about co-ops and co-op education in Bologna (where my company in the British army had been among the earliest Allied troops toward the end of WWII. I tried to make contact with BC Cooperative HQ (just west of Granville Island). No sign of life, and I didn't broach it with my Vancity branch; maybe should have.

I had been asked by a colleague (Dr. Bob Lundin), whose wife was Co-op president (or candidate [I stand corrected; she won]) to write to the editor at the time of the California ballot initiative on nuclear safeguards. Other colleagues wanted to co-sign (with modification of details).

One of the Necessary Voices occasions was on/by BCSEA. I had vented some resentment about semantic tactics operated through the US Departmenrt of (Dirty, Obsolete) Energy (DoDOE) designed to make people forget solar. Thus the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), for which Glen Bailey had been invited to give the first seminar (on our work), was renamed Renewable (NREL) even though the sun is not renewable, nor needs to be; or the wind. If the few non solar (nor exhaustible) energies (like tidal) are to be included by the name, sustainable energy seemed preferable. Surprise: BCSEA turned out to stand not for Solar, but for Sustainable Energy Association. And I went with the likelihood that I would join. I didn't.

At the Italian Cultural Centre, where the two Global Warming talks were to be delivered, everything was well organized. A major challenge is that you get so used to all the Vancity people being friendly that you have to remind yourself to keep appreciating it. The speakers were good. William Rees, UBC professor applied system analysis to the human (and other) species, which didn't make us , or them, look very fit in any Darwinian sense. He was very persuasive in presenting evidence for global warming. Guy Dauncey, identified as writer and consultant, also presented his solutions and action required. It was a little too much, too fast, but while I still listened closely, I had only two marginal reservations.

More Motives, Same Solutions

Although I didn't need special persuasion on it, global warming certainly was a suitable topic to pick for the occasion. But if the solutions are indeed based on the clean, mainly solar, sources there are quite a few other problems served by the same solutions. I don't recall when the likelihood of global warming began to enter significantly into our considerations. Our main motives in the early 1970s was (1) the effects of dependence on an exhaustible energy source, the price and availability of which could be manipulated; and (2) especially for my insisting on "staying the course" in the face of the terror unleashed, was the imminent starvation of many millions , impressed upon me by Turner Alfrey (long before the first CNN Ethiopia show).

Other motives were obvious, still are, usually more so. The Exxon Valdez oil spill, with many to follow, now in front of the beautiful coast of Lebanon; the advisability of solar absorption cooling to prevent ozone layer depletion (before the Montreal conference and the Chinese crash program); the dangers from more nuclear fission reactors, not just in Iran, from which I feared especially the loss of democracy associated with them; or what I emphasized in the 80s, the flight of "3^rd World" peasants first to megalopolis slums, then to try to scale the fences/walls barring access to the "first"; with the likely increase in overt racial prejudice. That no longer has to be predicted. And the list could go on.

Let's end with the summarizing statement repeated often since the early 80s:

"What I know most surely, and am most clearly qualified to state categorically, is that solar energy could have been shown by existing (i.e. functioning) examples to be the best, immediately viable primary energy source for most of the U.S., for most people on earth, if it had not been obstructed deliberately and with powerful determination."

Uri Avnery, I.F. Stone, Yaari

2006-09-12T19:59:00.000-07:00

I believe, and sure hope, that Uri Avnery is overdoing it when (in the passage quoted in the last paragraph of the preceding posting) he refers to the United States as the greatest enemy of the Moslem and Arab worlds. It's not really in the interest of Israelis to be its servants even if that's not all that accurate. In fact, US-Arab relations are probably better now than they will be next year.

Although we were both born in the same province of (1920s) Germany, we had come from very different early ideological backgrounds. But Avnery had moved from the "New Zionist" ultraright that wanted to conquer the land on both banks of the Jordan river by military force toward what is now The Left; while I moved from what was the mainstream Zionist far left that advocated a peaceful socialist bi-national state toward what I had begun to describe here in some detail. Lately that has amounted to a view of the Israeli-Palestinian problems pretty close to Avnery's stand. After a non-activist phase (that remains to be discussed) of more than half a century on those matters, I have now taken some actions. Thus I signed a petition for a boycott of products (et al) from the settlements in the occupied territories (which were designed to prevent an equitable peace with the Palestinians), but not a resolution for a boycott of Israel itself, which also included a really preposterous feature.

My abandonment of political activism (in disgust) barely preceded my first arrival in North America in 1950 to continue my interrupted studies. I still viewed myself as a left socialist and was known as such, one of few not to hide that during Joe McCarthy's heyday. It took no special heroism, since I had no intention of staying in the US after completing my studies; by which time it turned out that Joe McCarthy was finished; later also my determination to leave. I was completely preoccupied with my research, and the US system really seemed to work in the late fifties with labor unions achieving a lot for working people (and "the economy"). Most people still viewed me as Left, but I did not feel as part of what was called "The Movement" in Berkeley, though many of my friends were. Whether I learned the proper lessons from the savage reaction of the power "elite" to the easy way to solar power we came up with in our lab remains to be seen.

Not all that is termed left nowadays necessarily looks left to those familiar with earlier versions of the left. I don't know whether Uri Avnery is a socialist now, without which you would hardly have counted as really left, at least not in Europe or Israel about 1950. If I had to name someone of the left in the US then, I.F. Stone might be the first I would pick. I certainly felt close to his positions at the time. I am likely to have been somewhat more skeptical already about the Soviet Union (and associated parties) still deserving to be viewed as left. But on practical points, such as opposition to the anti-Soviet war cries, or McCarthyism, I tended to agree with him, probably in part influenced by his writing. Also, we had some causes in common during my activist past. And Stone liked Uri Avnery's attitude on the Arab Israeli conflict, at least at the time of the (1967) six day war.

Avnery and I.F. Stone
Inserted September 16, 2006:

Recently I came across a review ("Holy War") I.F.Stone wrote of the special issue of Les Temps Modernes about "The Israeli-Arab Conflict" , which Jean Paul Sartre happened to publish right about the time of the June 1967 "Six Day War" between Israel and three Arab states (written just before, published just after). I had the issue in my home library in Berkeley, but was still so unaware of Avnery's role that I don't recall reading his contribution. There was an article by Eliezer (Bauer) Beeri, our first guide (madrikh מדריך) in Hazorea, which was probably the reason I decided to buy it. In early 1941, he had been relieved of trying to educate me (and Yossel and the other two dozen or so) so he could devote himself full time to Arabic language, culture and understanding.

There were five contributions by Arabs from different countries and five by Jews, all but one Israelis, without interaction between the two sides. All were of their respective left or moderates, thus not in positions of power. In his review, I.F. Stone clearly views Avnery's attitude as the most likely to lead to peace. After describing Arab fears (e.g. as brought forth in M. Laroui's article) that Zionist aspirations to get all Jews to Israel would lead to expansionist pressures at the expense of the Palestinian(s) Arabs, he writes: "The suggestion that Israel abandon its supra-nationalist dream finds its only echo on the other side of this collection of essays in Israel's No. 1 maverick and champion of Arab rights, Uri Avnery".

There is a brief sketch of Avnery's record up to that time from which I still learned and most of which is quoted here. Having started on "the far nationalist right, as a member of the Irgun terrorist group..... he has since swung over to the far left of Israeli opinion, to the point where he is considered anti-nationalist.......in 1959 he formed an Israeli committee to aid the Algerian rebels. At one time he organized a movement which asserted that the Israelis were no longer Jews but "Canaanites" and therefore one with the Arabs, forcibly converted remnants of the same indigenous stock. When this far-out conception attracted few Jews and even fewer Canaanites, he formed a "Semitic Action" movement which has now become "the Movement of New Forces." This polled 1.2 percent of the vote in the 1965 elections and by virtue of proportional representation put Avnery into Parliament. Avnery has been more successful as a publisher. He has made his weekly Haolam Hazeh ("This World") the largest in Israel". I believe it continued publication until the 1990s.

"Avnery writes in Les Temps Modernes that he would turn Israel into a secular, pluralist, and multi-national state. He would abolish the Law of Return which gives every Jew the right to enter Israel and automatically become a citizen". But then toward the end: "Yet Avnery, who asks Israel to give up its Zionist essence, turns out to be a Jewish nationalist, too." This is not being cited because I agree with Stone on that, but to point to a difficulty that even he doesn't avoid; the different, often diametrically opposed, meanings that different people or groups attach to terms such as nationalism and Zionism.

In an Irish context, nationalists tended to be those who rejected division of the island based on majority religious heritage. More generally for countries that had been divided into many feudal fiefdoms, such as Germany, Italy, it had originally meant those favoring national unification; in countries that "belonged" to an imperial overlord, it meant those who sought liberation, while it stood for a supporter of fascist-like authoritarianism to regimes like that in the Germany Avnery left in 1933, we later. But Albert Einstein, a determined opponent of such regimes, also used the term in that sense. He emphasized that a major reason why he could support the Jewish upbuilding (Aufbau) project in (British Mandatory) Palestine was because the "nationalist" influence was so insignificant. That, of course, was long ago, even before Uri Avnery joined those "nationalists". Having read quite a bit of what he wrote lately, I don't believe he views himself as a nationalist now, surely not in that latter sense.

The word Zionism has been aquiring even more diverse, usually ideologically loaded, meanings. Avnery probably is now non-Zionist, like me (or possibly he considers himself anti-). When I was a Zionist I/we meant by it that we go/had gone "up" to the (pre-state) "Land of Israel" (Aliyah), as a vanguard of all Jews, without waiting for a Messiah to arrange it for us at the end of days; that we would rebuild the land from its desolation and be ourselves rebuild by it. Jews were now to be an enlightened nation rather than a religious community. Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism in the 1890s wanted a "Judenstaat", i.e. state of the Jews, not necessarily where the State of Israel is now, under the tutelage of an imperial power and governed like what educated turn of the (19-20th) century liberal Europeans aspired to. Some now, also on the left, think being a Zionist means to be an overmilitarized bully who likes to destroy Palestinian or Lebanese buildings or villages with their people, as played on television again recently.

By the latest official Israeli version I am aware of, a Zionist is a Jew who accepts "the centrality" of the State of Israel; and it is to be understood that this center includes everything, and that really all Jews are also Zionists. Shortly after the first Revisionist "New Zionist" terrorist became prime minister (Begin), I had to laugh when I was was "invited" in France to a meeting about Jews owing him ("Israel") l'inconditionalité. A Frenchman would not have to be prejudiced against Jews to find that outrageous. The corresponding term in the US is "100% for Israel", and its enforcers are not confined to that Zionist ultraright.

After Stone quotes Avnery writing that Herzl doesn't even mention Arabs in his Judenstaat book, he points to Akhad Ha-Am (whose "practical" or "spiritual" love of Zion preceded Herzl's idea) and his concern about the existing Arab population. "But as little attention was paid to him as was later accorded his successors in 'spiritual Zionism,' men like Buber and Judah Magnes who tried to preach Ichud 'unity,' i.e. with the Arabs".

Avnery, Stone and Meir Yaari
inserted up to September 21, 2006

Stone's judgment of the controversy over the origin of the Palestinian refugee problem looks very sound to me. Since he wrote, two more generations were born, the number of the
refugee population multiplied, and his complaint about Israeli indifference has to be understood with a view to the much smaller number of refugees then. "Even Meir Yaari, the head of Mapam, the leader of the 'Marxist' Zionists of Hashomer Hatzair, who long preached bi-nationalism, says Israel can only accept a minority of the Arab refugees because the essential reason for the creation of Israel was to 'welcome the mass of immigrant Jews returning to their historic fatherland!' If there is not room enough for both, the Jews must have precedence. This is what leads Gabran Majdalany, a Baath Socialist, to write that Israel is 'a racist state founded from its start on discrimination between Jew and non-Jew'."

He is more severe on Meir Yaari than I would have expected, even though I may have worse to criticise on other matters (not having been aware of this one). But Uri Avnery just published something related since I started this posting. Under the heading of Left, but...., initially about people who say they are of the left, but at the outset of the second Lebanon war in July found reason to support it (notably prominent Israeli writers, specifically "the trio" Amos Oz, A.B.Yehoshua and David Grossman), he first takes on the Israeli labor movement in general. He recalls that the Histadrut accepted no Arab members in pre-independence days and insisted on "Hebrew labor" in the Jewish enterprises. Underlying it is that "From the beginning of the Jewish Labor Movement in the country, the Left has suffered from an internal contradiction: it was both socialist and nationalist. Of the two components, nationalism was by far the more important".

Avnery sounds right, but.... What is he after? Why isn't he happy about these writers having come around to opposing the war which he had done from the outset. I am confident that I was ahead of Uri Avnery when as a member of the Histadrut in the early 40s I stood for acceptance of Arabs, but I see no reason why I shouldn't welcome his coming around to it. There are times when polarization, e.g. among those who prefer peace, is called for, but... why is this it?

He goes on first with the Kibbutzim in general: "That is true also for the most glorious of socialist creations: the kibbutz. No Arab was ever allowed to become a member. That was no accident: the kibbutzim saw themselves not only as a realization of a socialist dream, but also as fortresses in the Jewish struggle for the country". Then,

"The most leftist part of the kibbutz movement, Hashomer Hatsa'ir (the basis of the late Mapam party, now Meretz) had an official slogan: 'For Zionism, Socialism and the Brotherhood of Peoples'. The order was not accidental, either: it expressed the real priorities. Hashomer Hatsa'ir did indeed adore Stalin, 'the sun of the peoples', until his death, but its main creations were the settlements". Why this utter bullshit about the adoration of that sun?

Isn't he aware of the danger that if he (mis)informs people of something so completely devoid of reality, maybe they'll soon disbelieve all else he says. I am already beginning to doubt that he really was born in Westphalia, even that there is a place called Beckum there. During my four years of "Volksschule" in Dortmund, the largest metropolis in all the erstwhile kingdom, we had a big map of Westphalia next to the blackboard, and I recall no evidence of something called Beckum; nor ever heard of it. And surely, if the Dortmunders had to seek superior wisdom, they might send to Cologne, or Worms, Amsterdam; but Beckum?

Anyway, the family is supposed to have left Westphalia for Hanover. Take a look at the table below of the football (soccer) Bundesliga {I am deleting most of that months later. It was too elaborate a practical joke even when set down, and is meaningless now when Hanover had risen to about the middle of the league.
Platz Mannschaft ges G U V Tore Diff.Punkte
1 FC Nürnberg 3 2 1 0 4:0 +4 7
18 Hannover 96 3 0 0 3 2:11 -9 0

That's where Uri learned to play ball. Of course every football team may at some point be at the bottom of the heap, but with more than 5 times the number of goals lost than gained, and the same for weeks on end! Could that represent the fate of the peace movement, if Avnery becomes its sole leader; if that is the point of knocking all the "Left, But..."s. Let's hope, meanwhile assume, that some of his September writing has been a fleeting aberration.

As to the adoration of the Stalinesque "sun of the peoples" , let me recount that after several years as an independent non-Zionist socialist, I joined Mapam in early 1948. It had just been founded "on the basis of" not just the Hashomer Hatza'ir, but also of Akhdut Avodah (or B Faction of Mapai) and the much smaller, but prestigious Po'aley Zion Left (plus, e.g., the "Socialist League", a sort of City Auxiliary of the Hashomer Hatza'ir ; which thus could remain purely a youth- and Kibbutz- organization). At a meeting of the First Seminar of Mapam "Young Brigade" Activists in Tel Aviv, the chairman asked if anyone knew Preminger (later Peri}, one of the three Communist members of the first Knesset, just constituted.

I was the only one who knew him, originally from the short period in 1942 when I had thought of joining, but more from his coming to meet a co-worker (Oskar, an old Vienna friend of his, also party member). The story was that he and his faction in the party was thinking of quitting and possibly joining Mapam; and that they were meeting nearby right then to discuss it. Will I go and try to pull them in. A group of them had been in Yugoslavia on some solidarity work project when overnight Tito was turned from major hero to utter villain and his party thrown out of the Cominform, the successor of the Communist (3rd) International. I agreed, and a character called Benni said he'll come along. I did what I could to make them join. After a few days they did.
So I could claim (assuming that my spiel had been what done it) to have won one Knesset member for my cause, just like Uri Avneri. But that brought the total Mapam representation to 20, more than he (or Mapam) will ever get in the future (I dare predict). What is significant here, however, is that welcoming such Tito lovers excludes the possibility of Avneri's bull about adoration of Tito's mortal enemy (as do other things like the torture of Oren in Stalin's Prague).

A short time later, as I prepared to leave for study in the US, Benni came up to me on the street to say that Mapam wants me to infiltrate the CP in the US. That is what made me abandon political activism for decades. 1 1/2 years earlier, one of my first assignments when I got to my (11th) batallion was to go through a card file, where I discovered that Eli Simon had been killed in action at Nebi Yusha. People who had been with the batallion during that time told me how he died, the clearest case I am aware of of the popular conception of a heroic soldier. There is a sense of solidarity with anyone I had a fighting association with, and that seems to be the norm. But he had also stopped me years earlier, when I was 16-17, on Haifa's Masada street and we had a long friendly conversation, although he was by several years my senior, and he knew I had decided not to join the PKP, of which he was a highly respected member. That was the decisive reason for disregarding the Benni assignment Also, part of what repelled me in the Communist practice was that they engaged in stuff like that; and I didn't think Mapam did.

Years later, it occurred to me that Benni most likely didn't act forMapam. They sure had more appropriate people to try to persuade me. So what did he really represent?

For What did the Bell Toll

2006-09-01T03:17:00.000-07:00

Many in Israel now believe that the US government's role has not been to moderate Israeli militaristic tendencies, and that it may really have been interested, possibly directly involved, in fostering them. There is not only apprehension of some about the possible loss of American confidencc and largesse following the Lebanon failures, but also the misgivings of those who resent that this is what the vaunted hard won independence has come to.

The New york Times' Steven Erlanger reported on August 13 that "Itamar Rabinovich, a former ambassador to Washington, said bluntly: Two notions have died. First, unilateralism, and second, separation by the fence. Missiles dwarf the fence. Israelis also fear there has been damage done to their relationship with the United States, where some may complain that the Israelis were given time to clobber Hezbollah and did not get the job done. Mr. Rabinovich is more sanguine. Part of the reckoning will be our reputation as a strategic partner, when we tell the Americans, Give us the tools and we’ll do the job,’ he said".

Doron Rosenblum asserts in Haaretz: "Israel is not Sparta, and this is a good thing. It was not established in order to be a spearhead against global Islam, or in order to serve as an alert squad for the Western world. It was established in order to live in it" (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/751959.html) .

The converse, also in Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749293.html: "For decades, Israel has enjoyed an extremely close relationship with the United States. These ties have grown even stronger during George W. Bush's presidency. Israeli leaders should not, however, take American support for granted. There is, of course, a tremendous reservoir of good will and genuine affection for Israel among Americans; but sentiment and habit alone are not a sufficient basis for an enduring U.S.-Israel alliance. The hard truth is that Israel must appear to be, and be, a winner in order to remain a valuable strategic partner for the United States". The authors of that are apparently not Israeli, but what in current parlance are called "friends of Israel", in Washington, DC. But Israeli examples, not much less brutally stated, to this effect also abound.
Comment #10 to that article came from Langley (probably the one outside Vancouver): "Title: puppet army? Name: Duncan City: Langley State: Canada: "Israel has to win, to remain uncle sam`s favourite puppet? Most nations would be deeply offended by this article. Imagine your sons and daughters are dying to maintain Israel`s fielty to its overlord in Washington. If Israel made peace with its neighbours, it could do without Washington`s blood money".

Many believe that the liberation of the two soldiers abducted by Hezbullah was not the reason, but rather the pretext, for Israeli operations planned well (though badly) in advance and for the benefit largely of American military strategists, possibly with them. That could have been to show that a regular army can defeat a guerrilla one, contrary to predominant thinking / experience; and that an aerial bombing campaign can be militarily decisive by itself. That would also help explain why an air force officer (Halutz) had been picked as Tzahal's Chief of Staff for the first time ever.

Following a very difficult operation with most casualties (33 killed), started after passage of the UN cease fire resolution (1701), there was griping "when the soldiers heard the words of several senior officers. 'This was a Battle of Awareness against the Hizbullah' an unnamed senior officer told Yediot Aharonot two days ago [August 14]. 'We have proven that this legend, as if a regular army cannot fight guerillas, is not true'."

American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh does not hide that Hizbullah's largely Iranian armaments presented a real danger, but he also writes ( http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060821fa_fact ) in the New Yorker: "despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until "the conditions are conducive." The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground".

Uri Avnery asks ( http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1156064172 ): "What made the trio Olmert-Peretz-Halutz decide to start a war only a few hours after the capture of the two soldiers? - Was it agreed with the Americans in advance to go to war the moment a credible pretext presented itself? - Did the Americans push Israel into the war, and, later on, demand that it go on and on as far as possible? - Was it Condoleezza Rice who decided in fact when to start and when to stop? - Did the US want to get us entangled with Syria? - Did the US use us for its campaign against Iran?"
Elsewhere ( http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1156640109 ) he calls for serious consideration of Syrian president Assad's statement that "Every new Arab generation hates Israel more than the previous one." ....(later on, Avnery again) ....The Second Lebanon War is considered by many as a "War by Proxy". That's to say: Hizbullah is the Dobermann of Iran, we are the Rottweiler of America. Hizbullah gets money, rockets and support from the Islamic Republic, we get money, cluster bombs and support from the United States of America" (which he concedes to be an exaggeration).
"What interest do we have to get involved in this struggle? What interest do we have in being regarded - accurately - as the servants of the greatest enemy of the Muslim world in general and the Arab world in particular? We want to live here in 100 years, in 500 years. Our most basic national interests demand that we extend our hands to the Arab nations that accept us, and act together with them for the rehabilitation of this region. That was true 59 years ago, and that will be true 59 years hence".

Then They Ceased Fire

2006-08-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

The cease fire in Lebanon seems to be effective, at least for now. That's the good news.

Not all details of the UN cease fire resolution (1701) are still alive; e.g. disarming of Hizbullah seems to be off the agenda. France is reluctant to assume the leading role in the multinational force intended earlier, at least not until clearer rules of engagement are in place.

Meanwhile the regular army of Lebanon has been moving beyond the Litani river up to the international border, as the Israeli army (Tzahal) withdrew beyond. Let me correct here a general impression that the Lebanese army never invaded the State of Israel. The 11th batallion of the Oded brigade, in which I served (three months later), suffered substantial casualties when that army suddenly attacked at Malkiah (south of where Kiryat Shmonah is now) just a few days after the Israeli independence proclamation. They were dislodged with more heavy casualties of units of the Palmakh. Besides that, the Lebanese army did not fight the Israeli one (as far as I know).

In Israel the battle of interpretation is heating up. Who is to take the blame for what is generally considered to have been a failure. There is still a residual attempt to proclaim victory, especially at the supra-Israeli (George W. Bush) level, and steps to make it appear so should be expected to follow. Not only have none of the original objectives been achieved, notably the release of the abducted soldiers; what is viewed as far worse is the loss of Israel's overwhelming military deterrance power. That could encourage hostile armies like the Syrian (if they also miscalculate) to try for their own victory. Again far worse in many Israeli eyes is the loss of utility value to U.S. strategists.

Hizbullah will be viewed as the victor in the Muslim world and, at least in the short run, within Lebanon and elsewhere, including Israel. Many returning Israeli soldiers have expressed respect for their fighting spirit. They are now already busy handing out generous cash payments to people whose homes have been destroyed; which should help prevent later accusations that their provocation caused the Israeli response and destruction of their homes. Surely to the dismay of (at least) leaders of other Lebanese factions, Hassan Nasrollah, Hizbullah's leader, is widely hailed as the new Nasser, even the new Salah ad Din; with his image everywhere in the otherwise pretty strictly monotheistic Moslem world.

Since I wrote the above about the effectiveness of the cease fire, the first violation by an Israeli commando operation near Baalbek was condemned by the UN's Kofi Annan, and called justified by the Israeli government. If you hoped that the negotiations for the exchange of prisoners may provide an opportunity for a start of wider real peace talks, all the Israeli talk of how it has to be done better next time is not good news. There evidently are also more voices of wisdom (courage) calling for an end to ever more useless and ruinous military victories and some victory for peaceful resolution. But any changes in political leadership and direction are likely to be toward the more militarist ultraright. Netanyahu already reemerged during the fighting. The best hope may be that George W. Bush will decide on a change of course in this, and he likes to stay it.

Uri Avneri has condemned what I had termed "the stupid slaughter" between adoption of UN Resolution 1707 and effectiveness (end of preceding posting) in more severe terms: "a cynical - not to say vile - exercise". This old early pioneer in standing up to the abandonment (or betrayal) of what the Hebrew state was supposed to be about is no longer a lone prominent voice crying in a wilderness; but it clearly still requires courage.

Kharra b-Lebanon II

2006-08-11T23:50:00.000-07:00

Maybe it finally hit the fan.
There may be no point now going into such detail on my experience in all the other places that many heard of for the first time during the current Lebanon mess as I did for Haifa in the last posting. I was still surprised at the lack of basic geographic and historical knowledge of even people reporting the news on television, although I could understand much of it in retrospect. It first struck me early on in the fighting when an evidently intelligent woman at a news network reported on "a town called Tyre", as though that might be some recently incorporated town. As, indeed, is Nahariya, properly identified as a resort town, hit by Hizbollah rockets. Then, maybe the same day, Haifa was identified as a resort town; rather than an important port (and) industrial city. Some of my amusement at that was obviously a result of my specific familiarity with those places, but an unusual degrees of historical ignorance by native born Americans was evident even before many had removed History from their required school curricula.

I have had no involvement with any of the previous invasions / incursions into Lebanon except outrage, especially at the 1982 one by Sharon. Yet I was one of the first Jewish soldiers coming from Palestine to enter Lebanon (Moshe Dayan was earlier and lost his eye there). We were sent there to help in ensuring the new independence of a Lebanese state (especially to help ensure an Allied victory over the fascist axis). Yossel and I took the train from Haifa north. There may have been a stop in Nahariya with its few thousand inhabitants then. We certainly knew of it because that's where members of Kibbutz Hazorea used to spend their vacations with fellow Yeckes. Some time after the border station (Ras en Nakurah), came a substantial station; Sour (I believe) the signs said. Recalling my gymnasium French (who had controlled Lebanon between the two world wars) and other things I had learned, I knew this was Tzur, the (Ashkenaz) Hebrew version of Tyre, one of the most ancient, and long one of the most important, cities in the world. Along with Sidon (Saida) and (then) lesser Phoenician cities (e.g. Berytos - Beirut), it controlled shipping throughout the Mediterranean 3000 years ago, establishing colonies, like Carthage; and, judging by the book of Kings, apparently helping greatly in the building of the Jerusalem Temple; due to the friendly relation between Solomon, King of Israel, and kHiram of Tyre.

A few years later I did get to Nahariya. That was in another army and another war; fought ostensibly to carry out a U.N. resolution for the partition of Palestine into two independent states. You may want to take that as evidence that the State of Israel, the only one actually proclaimed then, was never really a Zionist one, since I was far from the only non-Zionist to participate in its founding; while the ultraright "New Zionist" terrorist outfits opposed the U.N. resolution along with the Palestinian Arab leadership. But that would upset both its enemies, who like to refer to it as the "Zionist entity"; as well as its current leaders who find it useful to pretend that their version represents the spirit of the founders who were clearly led by the (Old) Zionists.

We had just succeeded with "Operation kHiram" during which the "Arab Liberation Army" of Fawzi al Kawukji, apparently a Syrian, who had spent the World War years in Berlin, was routed from the Upper Galilee and fled to Lebanon in one of the last actions of the war. I was in the 9th ("Oded") Brigade, and had been one of the first dozen or so soldiers into Tarshiha; where I witnessed some unpleasant things I thought Jews don't do (but nothing even approaching the sort of things that have become public since; e.g. in Eli Wiesel's autobiography). When it was all over, a truck with as many of us as could fit in took off for Nahariya to celebrate.

Among other places I have been to and mentioned now are Kfar Gileadi, "a town called Tiberias" and Afula, but as I add this to the posting, the time has come for the cease fire ordered by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 to become effective. In the (tentative) hope that it will be heeded better than the earlier decision mentioned, and that the stupid slaughter since its passage, designed almost overtly to help cover some general's ass, will really end, I shall end this, so I can watch the news.

Kharra b-Lebanon I

2006-07-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

The topic that was crowding out all others when I finished the previous posting was sustainability. So I was determined to finally get to write something substantial about our work on solar energy, the one clearly sustainable primary energy source (which includes the indirect: wind and hydro power, biomass et al); even though I also wanted to get back to describe at least in outline how I got from just invaded and conquered 1939 Poland to still serve in the British army in 1944 Beirut just liberated from Vichy French rule (see post of March 11, 2005). Then all hell suddenly broke loose around the Israeli Lebanese border, so my varied experience in several of the locations many encountered for the first time in the news should be more pertinent.

Let's begin with Haifa and the railway depot that was hit in the first Hizbollah missile attack that reached that far, and which killed several workers. While it was not thus identified in the news reports, that must have been kHiram near the north end (then) of downtown Haifa; where I performed guard duty in 1942. A few months earlier, while a member of Hazorea youth group A (kHevrat noar aleph), I had decided to become a (dissident) member of the formally still illegal PKP (Palestine Communist Party; after candidacy when I became old enough). One of the less glorious principles of the Hashomer Hatzair was called ideological collectivism (collectiviut raayonit); so if you moved toward any other political affiliation, even another Zionist, thus less disreputable one than "The Fraktzia" (derogatory term), you had to leave a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz. That may have been a factor helping to maintain what probably amounted to the most successful utopian undertaking in history, lasting 4-5 generations by now. There are enough other stresses when families' lives are as closely interwoven as in such a commune to not welcome political dissension, too. But the other major kibbutz movement (M'ukhad, to which the Warsaw ghetto commander Antek strove) seems to have done about equally well without such definite ideological restraints.

So I went to live in Haifa at age 16, at first working at British army camps. After about half a year, at 17, I could not join the army yet, but could carry a rifle as a "ghaffir", guarding railroad facilities. My intention to join the Communists hadn't survived reality for more than a few months (weeks?). It had started in the basically artificial new kibbutz environment on mainly theoretical grounds and grew as I pursued readings in the well stocked Hazorea library. Reading in the program of the Communist International ('third") about its "democratic centralism", according to which party members (in touch with "The Masses") determined policies, but after decisions were reached members had to fight for them whether they agreed or not, did make sense to me. Maybe especially since this was while Soviet Communists had a very tough battle fighting off the Nazi assault. It was the time between the (1941) battle for Moscow and the Stalingrad one. The library had the trial transcripts of some of the major 1930s victims of Stalin's purges of old Bolsheviks, and it was obvious from the official transcripts themselves that the trials were phony; but that was years past, and "the party was more important than Stalin", whom "we" can replace later. I had made contact with some party members in Haifa, also Hashomer Hatzair veterans, but don't recall that persuasion from them was needed. On the other hand our wonderful Hazorea guide, Moni Langermann, made valiant efforts to save my soul from this apostasy. I was really eager, especially to help the Soviet Union prevail over the fascist invaders.
Even without party membership, I was quite ready to carry out any action decided on. As to ideas of my own to contribute, I was especially eager to replace a slogan that had been painted prominently at the top of the Ester Cinema building on Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv before the invasion of the Soviet Union. It read "Away the Imperialist War" (Hal'ah ha-Milkhamah ha-Imperialistit), while the new slogan was "A Second Front At Once" (kHazit Shniyah Miyad). It would have been quite a job, since it evidently required, after painting over the old, writing the new upside down from the roof, all illegally at one of the busiest places in the country. In retrospect, it seems fortunate that this idea of mine was not adopted.

Then, at a meeting of the Proletarian Faction, a barely disguised front organization of the party, there was a call for a resolution to demand a law to ban strikes. I had found it odd when I read of the British party making the demand for England shortly before, since my left socialist sensibilities had survived my abandonment of Zionism. I asked why that was needed; who would want to strike nowadays. I was cut off by the chair, also a "deserter" from a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz. At my second attempt to speak, I also got dirty looks from some other proletarians. That seemed to mark a tacit mutual agreement to call off any future marriage. Had I joined nonetheless, there would have been other occasions soon for removing me. So, like Kurt Tucholski, I was spared that fate by never joining. It was not the last time in my long life that I did not take kindly to the corruption of declared democratic principles. I continued to view myself as a left socialist militant, but independent until 1948.

Pending more to come, this ought to be enough to explain why I, unlike almost all other visitors, could guess that the Beirut whorehouse for British troops described earlier (March 11, 2005) may have been operated by Lebanese Communists. It would have ensured that the women could not decide to strike.

Other Rebbes?

2006-05-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

"On May 8th detachments of Germans and Ukrainians surrounded the Headquarters of the ZOB Command. The fighting lasted two hours, and when the Germans convinced themselves that they would be unable to take the bunker by storm, they tossed in a gas-bomb. Whoever survived the German bullets, whoever was not gassed, committed suicide, for it was quite clear that from here there was no way out, and nobody even considered being taken alive by the Germans. Jurek Wilner called upon all partisans to commit suicide together. Lutek Rotblat shot his mother, his sister, then himself. Ruth fired at herself seven times.
Thus 80% of the remaining partisans perished, among them the ZOB Commander, Mordechaj Anielewicz. "

This is from the account of Marek Edelman, the representative of the Bund in the Command of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB by the Polish initials) in the Warsaw Ghetto, the only one of them still alive (the last time I read about it). The complete text gives a fascinating, matter-of-factly written account of the period leading up to the uprising. While the activities of the anti-Zionist Bund take most space, he does not detract from the Zionist contribution; as evidenced by the passage quoted here on what happened 63 years before today. It was several weeks after Hitlers birthday on April 20 for which the elimination of that ghetto April 19-20 was to be a birthday present.

Some sporadic fighting continued for a while longer, but it was the end of organized fighting; and the death of essentially all remaining fighters of the Hashomer Hatzair. Yet they thought they had accomplished more than they had thought possible. I agree.

In the Hashomer Hatzair, the Bund was like a dirty word, (about the same as the Yevsektsia, the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party in the 1920-s, which played a major role in the persecution of Zionists by the regime). It may have been so in other Zionist organizations, too, and probably reciprocated in the Bund. I only found out details about the outfit in the process of writing this WEBSITE (the Wikipedia article on it looks well informed) . It may be Yitzkhak Zuckerman's personal open mindedness that made him emphasize that he respected, and found it easy to work with, Marek Edelman in occupied Warsaw. Lately the mutual hostility seems to be abating; possibly because there are only small isolated Bundist groups left of what used to be the main organization of Jewish workers in the Eastern European countries that gained their independence at the end of the Tsarist Russian empire.

I haven't had anyone even remotely comparable to a rebbe who viewed himself as an anti-Zionist; non-Zionist, yes. That refers to what we considered Zionism to be, that we Jews just pack our bags and all take off for Eretz Yisrael, then British Mandatory Palestine, so as to become a normal nation again. My father was not such a Zionist. We did have a blue coin collection box of the Keren Kayemet (usually referred to now as Jewish National Fund, or JNF) at the entrance to our apartment. It was for buying land in Palestine where Jewish kHalutzim (pioneers) coming to Palestine could establish a new life in agriculture (and was corrupted badly after Israeli independence so as to dispossess Arab Israelis). My uncle, M. Jahre (later Yaari in Israel), was an old Zionist and the Dortmund representative of the Keren Kayemet. Most Jews now referred to as Zionists in North America are non-Zionist in that sense. The "ultra-orthodox" sects that sprouted the fanatical, violent characters dominant among the "settlers" in the occupied Palestinian territories were mostly anti-Zionist. This is not the place to clarify all that has been confused on that, largely deliberately.

Unlike other members, I had not joined the Hashomer Hatzair but rather was transferred to it. It had no chapter in Dortmund. My Jahre - Yaari cousins and I had joined the Werkleute ("deedpeople" may be the best way to render that) when they established a chapter with groups in our age range. The Werkleute had been founded from a part of the Kameraden (a German Jewish youth movement with affinity to the Wandervogel) at the initiative of Herman (later Menakhem) Gerson, who continued to be the leading spirit. It would stretch the term even more than up to here if I referred to him as a rebbe, both in view of his modest personality and his background of thorough assimilation to the "monocultural" German environment; until he felt the need to reconnect to the sources of Jewish culture, for which Martin Buber turned out to be the right address. While Buber influenced the other youth organizations, too (and many others), he had a direct role in the formation and development of the Werkleute through (mainly) his meetings and correspondence with Gerson. Buber thus could fill the role of a former rebbe of mine, although I never met him personally. Like Meir Yaari, he did come from a kHassidic family. His paternal grandfather Solomon, a major Jewish scholar, was close to the Sadgora rebbe, and the young Martin, born in Vienna, spent several years with his grandfather in Lemberg (now Lviv; there are many websites about Buber).

Possibly the only thing on the web about the short history of the Werkleute as an independent outfit is this short account in German (which I may translate later.

Im Deutschjuedischen Wanderbund Kameraden hatte sich um Hermann Gerson ein Kreis gebildet, der sich intensiv mit Martin Buber und seinen Schriften auseinander setzte. Bei der Spaltung der Kameraden 1932 bildeten seine Anhaenger mit 1000 Mitgliedern die groesste Fraktion und nannten sich Werkleute. Innerhalb der Kameraden hatte Gerson angeregt Hebraeisch zu lernen, nun wendete sich der neue Bund ganz dem Zionismus zu. Grund dieser Entscheidung war das "Galutherlebnis des Jahres 1933". Schon im alten Bund hatten die Werkleute durch deutsche Kultur und die emotional erlebte deutsche Landschaft ihre Identitaet definiert. "Und nun stiess uns dieses Land, [...] das uns in so vielen geistig-seelischen Beziehungen die Praegung gegeben hatte [...] von sich" schrieb Gerson 1934. Die intellektuell ausgerichteten Werkleute stellten sich auf die Auswanderung um: Ein eigener Kibbuz wurde gegruendet und durch Sammlungen brachten sie Gelder für den Landkauf in Palaestina auf. Bis 1936 konnten ca. 200 Jugendliche auswandern. Der Bund umfasste zu dieser Zeit 1150 Jungen und Maedchen, von denen sich 400 auf die Auswanderung vorbereiteten. Die durch die gesetzlichen Einschraenkungen der Schulausbildung für juedische Kinder mangelhafte Ausbildung versuchte der Bund durch eigene Seminare und Schulungen zu verbessern.

Bodo Mrozek (Letzte Aktualisierung dieser Seite erfolgte am: 01.02.2005
From: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bodomr/kameraden.html

Early influences (from what would now be called role models) also must include the other major left Zionist youth organization. It has figured here mainly as represented by Yitzkhak Zuckerman (or Antek), leading figure of the Polish wartime Hekhalutz Hatzair after its fusion with Dror; both of which were tied to the United Kibbutz (Me'ukhad). In Germany (and other Western countries) the Habonim stood for the same, instead. Before the Werkleute started, we had followed Hermann Jahre (later Tzvi Yaari), my oldest Dortmund cousin, into the Habonim. It later turned out that, along with my youngest Yaari cousin Shraga ("Spatz"), we had not been formally members, since we were not yet 10. We had just participated in their activities. After deportation to Zbaszyn, our local leader was Oskar Handler, shown earlier in a photo with Antek (whom he had rescued when "lost" at the beginning of the war). Before Zbaszyn, Oskar had been in the German leadership of both the Habonim and the Hekhalutz, the umbrella for all the kibbutz bound outfits. It was through him that we found out in Zbaszyn that Werkleute and Hashomer Hatzair were together now; and that the move to the latter's hakhsharah kibbutz in Czestochowa was arranged. It was through another who had been in our group in the kibbutz, whom we happened to encounter, that we managed to make contact with the Zionist underground forming in the part of (prewar) Poland newly under Soviet rule; specifically with Oskar Handler; thus got to Vilna, newly in still independent Lithuania; then, in Palestine, by another strange coincidence, ended up in Hazorea, the kibbutz of the Werkleute now within the Hashomer Hatzair. Although he didn't bring it up, I am confident that Oskar expected me to join one of their kibbutzim; and in most respects it probably would have been preferable (but especially Hazorea was a good place for a youngster to spend almost two years in). Anyway, he surely was important in my life. (And I surely ought to tell some more about the very eventful half year between getting stuck in what was becoming Soviet Ukraine and arrival in Hazorea; the other outfits are found on the same website as shown above for the Werkleute, with Kameraden replaced by Habonim, Hechaluz or Haschomer; i.e. German spelling).

Also important was my cousin Hermann, who drew my brother and me away from the direction our father preferred and toward the left Zionist outfits described (also in some other ways). But so most surely was my father; not just because I soon abandoned my Zionist convictions. He was a small businessman, but clearly a very good one. Apart from volunteered admiring testimony, it is seen by his record of making a good living in tough times with only 2-3 salespeople; during the depression, during Nazi rule. He was seldom involved in selling, but always went himself to Pirmasens to select the shoes to buy at the factories; rather than relying on the local pitch of their representatives. I never sold anything myself, but I am good at buying, too. I can't see how I learned anything on buying directly from him; but there can't be a good buyers gene; some sort of osmosis. And that has been a very important effect on (my part in) the design of our lab's solar energy project. Now, more than three decades later, it is becoming more obvious than ever that this readily competitive solar power would have been society's buy of the century.

Meir Yaari.

2006-04-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

Mark was the closest I had professionally to a rebbe. But I have long outgrown a need for one; and had abandoned earlier ones in other spheres. Since this is the anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the first that come to mind are leaders of the left Zionist youth movements. Let's take Meir Yaari of the Hashomer Hatzair.

Up to now I have used the spelling of the organization as Ha-Shomer Ha-Tzair, following practice in the Yitzkhak Zuckerman book; e.g. in the April 20 posting last year on the march of our Czestochowa kibbutz at the outset of WW II; but shall now switch to the simpler form above following wider practice (the "H" prefix, with a vowel, usually "a", denotes the definite article in Hebrew. Most literally then, it translates to "The Guardian The Young").

Everyone was supposed to be equal. At the same time, it was understood that Meir Yaari was the most equal. There are all sorts of things that could be said in a way to make him and / or the movement sound funny, and maybe there'll be some of that here. If so, they cannot outweigh the very real greatness of which those may often have been the reverse of the coin. As to the equality achieved, including that between the genders, there may not have been a society with greater equality in human history than within kibbutz society; to which nobody contributed more. Personally, he did not have more material advantages than others in his kibbutz(im) , just unusual prestige, thus "power"; along with Yaakov kHazzan, #2.

To the extent then that he was responsible for the formation and growth of the Hashomer Hatzair, including that in Poland when it was invaded, and nobody would deny the primacy of his role, he deserves major credit for the exemplary role of the movement in the Jewish resistance to the Nazi murder machine; including that of Mordekhai Anielewicz, the first commander of the Warsaw ghetto uprising 63 years ago.

Meir Yaari later recalled the founding of the Hashomer Hatzair in Vienna during WWI from two existing youth organizations, one a back to nature outfit tied to the scout movement, the other ideologically committed to Zionist "hagshamah", i.e. actually to go to Zion to rebuild it. They remained committed not only to that but also continued in the international scouting organization, its only component with boys and girls together. Added to that later was a commitment to Marxist socialism (almost Leninist); although there had been a less ideological thread of socialism, or social justice, from the outset.

Not only because of the latter, with its rejection of religion (as opiate for the masses), but also because of the role of the Haskalah (Enlightenment) trend in secular Zionism, he could not have liked being referred to as a rebbe (i.e. head of a kHassidic, thus religious, sect), but it evidently happened. What follows here is copied from part of a book page I reproduced in the 1980s in my Last Emanations without noting title or author.

"Despite his retirement at the end of 1973, Meir Ya'ari remains the father image of Mapam. He led his party for a longer period than any other political figure in the Western world, trying to merge the principles of Zionism with the dogmas of Leninism. It is said of his ideological orthodoxy that it is a virtual extension of the hassidic spirit in which he grew up in his parents' home in Galicia. His opponents refer to him as the 'Mapam rebbe'.
Ya'ari, born in 1897, was a leader of the Hashomer Hatzair movement, which was inspired by such back-to-nature protagonists as the Russian Lev Tolstoy and the Zionist dreamer Aharon David Gordon......Ya'ari himself studied in Vienna with the founder of psychoanalysis, Dr. Sigmund Freud, and was an officer in the Austrian army during World War I....."
(looks reasonable for a brief sketch. Mapam [M.P.M., Hebrew initials for United Workers Party] had only been founded in 1947-8, so that part can make sense only if you add his leadership of the Hashomer Hatzair and its Kibbutzim federation, "Kibbutz Artzi").

While I had been aware of his having been an officer in the WW I Austrian army, his having studied with Freud was news to me. It does make sense. Psychoanalese was all over conversations at the kibbutz. The Bittania period of the early 20s, where Meir Yaari apparently had presided over a life of gruelling group therapy of a small commune lends support to it. Some details became known later on Bittania, on the web I found, e.g. a long, very positive, and a brief, somewhat critical, one. The sect or cult- like aspect continued in the movement later, and I have been quite aware of having internalized it at the time.

It was only in the process of writing this that the odd similarities between Yaari and Mark, my two last guru like influences, came to the fore. While never a student of Freud's, Mark got to know him as a friend of his father's since their days in medical school and as dinner guest at the Mark home . Both Mark and Yaari joined the same army prematurely and became officers in the same war. Yaari was just two years younger. I doubt that they met. There were differences, too. Mark was not a Jew (his father had been until he married). To him it probably made little difference; but in Nazi Germany he would have been a Halbjude ("half Jew") by "racial" criteria, in Israel a non Jew (in most countries now, government does not make such decisions. Mark was a friend of Weizman's, Israel's first president, and played a major role in setting up the Weizman Institute of Science).

The last professional paper I wrote, really a preprint for a talk I then presented to the Institute of Environmental Sciences, was about the work we had done in our USDA laboratory on methods by which agricultural communities could harvest concentrated solar energy for their electricity and other energy needs, as well as supply some electricicity to the power grid (at the time of the first "oil shock", 1974-5). When my boss told me that a short biography of the senior author was needed (I had initiated the project), I wrote something for him to pick from, but he submitted it "as is", and it was thus printed in the "Proceedings". It was the only paper of mine requiring such a bio. I mentioned that I had got my Ph.D. under Herman Mark (in parenthesis), since he really had credit coming for what I still regard as the most important of my ~20 published papers; and that may be standard practice. What clearly must be unusual is that in this very brief sketch I mentioned my approx. two years in Hazorea, then a kibbutz of the Hashomer Hatzair. That had played a significant role in my contribution to that design of a novel rural community; which we had termed sun villages.

Herman Mark and Turner Alfrey

2006-03-13T22:04:00.000-08:00

It can't be surprising that Herman Mark would have exerted a strong influence on my professional life. The direct student-professor relationship surely played a significant role in that, but there were many other ways. He only taught one (2 semester) graduate course, an Introduction to Polymer Chemistry. It was held in the evening in the largest lecture room of the Institute, which was filled with people from all over the New York area, few of them full time graduate students. His lectures were as good as they come. The one on polymerization kinetics was a real work of art. It included, just by the way, what amounted to an easy introduction to differential calculus. But the only scope for personal attention was through a term paper at the end of the course.

For the dissertation research, he left me wide latitude after the initial discussion, and we met almost only at my initiative; which meant not very often. I had been in awe of him since before I ever saw him and was reluctant to bother him, although he never refused to meet when I did come. That awe originated in an assignment in undergraduate school, which first made me decide to continue with graduate studies. So Mark's effect on my life had preceded our direct contact, and it also continued after formal study.

I had come to the US to study for a BS degree in "Chemistry and Dyeing" in Fall River, Massachusetts. It was to prepare me for a working life dyeing fabrics (a traditional, well respected Jewish occupation since ancient times that had helped make the world more colorful). Like other former textile mill towns in the state, such as New Bedford and Lowell, Fall River had a college grade textile school. These were expanded to general schools of technology as the textile mills moved from New England to the South in search of cheaper labor, and the number of students seeking college degrees rose sharply with the end of World War II and the GI Bill of Rights . Our chemistry department at "Durfee Tech" (later nucleus of Southwestern Mass. U) was of high quality, due especially to James Watters, the department head; but the dyeing courses did not seem to be on a comparable level of scientific understanding, important especially for the new fibers which were just emerging in mid century. In part it was due to a real lack of understanding of the underlying processes, but it probably bothered me more than other students. Then Dr. Watters, in a course on Chemical Literature made me report on a paper by Herman Mark (and the references he cited); which answered not only many of the questions that had bothered me, but others that hadn't occurred to me; i.e. it opened up a whole new horizon (and eventually led me to elucidate some of what had not been understood). That made me decide to go to graduate school (which evidently was Dr. Watters' intent), but also to forego immediate fellowships at other universities and instead go to Brooklyn without that. So Mark (along with Watters) was co-responsible for my spending my working life in reseaech rather than dyeing fabrics. Whether that was for the better only became questionable recently.

Regardless of whether it will turn out to have been preferable, Mark had much to do with it apart from that initial inspiration and the dissertation relation. Like the fellow students working with other professors as thesis advisors, I benefitted from his participation in seminars and his regular reports on recent developments in Europe and wherever else he had travelled. More fundamentally, he had put together this first academic Polymer Research Institute (PRI, of many to follow), assembling an outstanding research and teaching staff and creating the ambience of excitement of new science emerging or being made public right around you; with regular symposia, monographs being published and the first journals of polymer science (still the main ones) being founded. He himself later referred to this period as the high point of the PRI.

Turner Alfrey.
Turner Alfrey had been a professor at the Institute until some time before my start there. Even though I missed him then in person, he was present in constant recollections of more advanced students, as much for personal features like his large physical presence, high boots and beer drinking feats in informal sessions as with the formal academic ones. Those must have been substantial; like the course which led to the pioneering book on the Mechanical Behavior of High Polymers (probably still a classic in an important field). By the time I came, he had left for a position with Dow Chemical Company as Research Scientist. It gave him complete freedom to pick his own work. In practice he was also available for consultation to others in polymer research, mainly at the company HQ in Midland , Michigan.

As it turned out, I also took a research job with Dow after completing my studies. It was at a new fiber division the company was setting up in Williamsburg , Virginia; based on initial research done at the Western Division near San Francisco; where I started in 1957. I discussed things with Alfrey before publishing anything that involved a significant scientific departure from generally accepted theory, regardless of the degree of my own confidence in my conclusions. In that sense he probably served more as a post-doctoral professor than as a senior colleague.And since he had also been Herman Mark's (first American) docoral student, it could also be viewed as part of Mark's continuing effect on my professional life.

I had been working for 3-4 years in Williamsburg before I first went to Midland to give a talk and to talk to Alfrey. It concerned what still looks like my foremost scientific contribution. I was suggesting, and providing strond and varied evidence for a new mechanism by which dye molecules move from the surface of a fiber (in contact with the dyebath) toward it center; by utilizing the motion of segments of the long chain fiber molecules. That motion was known to become available above the glass transition temperature (below which rubbery polymers become brittle glasses, hence the Challenger accident, as Mark was shown explaining on TV); and the simplest supporting evidence was that dye uptake by fibers practically ceases, below the glass transition, where that motion ceases. Not only could known things be explained , but others also predicted. The theory that had prevailed for decades in dozens of scientific papers and reviews was that fibers are criss-crossed by "pores" through which the dye liquor can flow and deposit dye molecules on the pore walls. No evidence or predictive power, but a simple static fiber picture and complex, ingenious calculations, some by outstanding British mathematicians, that showed that it is geometrically (almost) possible.

There had been a specific reason for consulting with Alfrey before publishing such a diffusion model based on segmental motion. Were such polymer segments (that could move by cooperative rotation around single bonds) of a length adequate to thus make way for a dye molecule (which can be about 10-20 Angstrom units long)? The closest to a discussion of that had been in the book on mechanical behavior mentioned. And in a way Mark had played some early pioneering role toward that, too; but I shouldn't overdo those connections.

After my return to the Western Division , where I worked on membrane permeation and where Alfrey came periodically, we used to meet in the evening at his motel room, well stoccked with beer. He was never negative, but not always as supportive as for the above. I aso still view it as my most significant scientific contribution (though not nearly as important as my later work on solar power, which in normal current parlance would also be classified as science).

The last time we met after I had switched from Dow to the USDA. We went to eat at Chez Margherite, then a(n almost) new little place in San Francisco. He was seriously worried about imminent mass starvation. If he talked that way so as to persuade me to work on that , now that I was in an agricultural lab, rather than on protein fibers, he did not succeed then. But I certainly did remember it later when obstacles arose to our solar energy project.

The Real Comeback Kid is .... & Torino 2006 Olympics

2006-02-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

And the Real Comeback Kid is .....
About three weeks before our expulsion from Germany to Zbaszyn on October 28, 1938 (discussed in the preceding posting), thus a month before the Kristallnacht, I had received an unusual report card at the gymnasium in Dortmund. It is shown midway at the left of the collage below, above the picture representing my delivery there 13 years earlier. To view details of the report card ("Zeugnis" in German) you will probably have to follow the directions below for the enlarged version. (The collage is from a kind of supplement to my Last Emanations from the Dungheap of History written in the mid 1980s).

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I can think of only two earlier events during the almost six preceding years of Nazi rule that loom worse in my recollection than getting this phony Zeugnis, and it was one of the last times that I cried. That may require an explanation (later); but it evidently also had the effect on my father to finally make him decide to become serious about emigrating; too late.

You may have read (as I did more than once, e.g. in Time and / or Spiegel) that Jews had been barred from public gymnasium (~ high school, junior & senior combined) in Germany years before that. It seems very unlikely that Dortmund would have been an exception in something like that. More likely those reports had to do with a "numerus clausus", under which only a small number with the highest grades could continue. I don't know about this Ludendorffschule, the former Oberrealschule just renamed after the WWI general who had participated in Hitler's failed 1923 Munich putsch attempt, but at the Bismarck Realgymnasium, then just about to be renamed Hermann Goering Schule, which I had attended until 1937, we were only five Jews out of about 1500 students. So if the Zeugnis was honest, I would have had to have undergone a very abrupt decline in learning ability. Some evidence indicating that it wasn't honest can be seen by comparing the average or overall grade "Gesamterfolg" of "noch ausreichend", i.e. barely adequate or 4- with your own averaging using the numbers given in the "Leistungen" row. You won't even have to "do the math", since there so obviously are more "befriedigend" or 3 than the one "mangelhaft" or 5, so the result has to be between 3 and 4, not worse than 4. (don't conclude that the Nazis lost the war because their teachers couldn't do such simple calculations).

But assuming that I really had suddenly deteriorated that badly, there are two things worth pointing out. First, that at least they didn't flunk me. Second, if it was true, I sure ought to be able to claim that I'm the real comeback kid; as the grades below ought to show convincingly enough (typing at left on another 1980s collage).

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They are from the graduate school of "Brooklyn Poly" (now Polytechnic University of New York, after addition of some NYU departments); at the time the foremost anywhere for my chosen field of polymer science (about very big molecules). There had been less than four years of formal education since the "Zeugnis" above. (My unexpelled "Aryan" classmates needed more than five years just for high school graduation; and it would have been more than six, had not Der Fuehrer made a special gift to award the "Abitur" a year earlier, so they could serve Fuehrer, Volk und Vaterland in a lost war; after Stalingrad and El Alamein). I could also show my similar intervening grades for my undergraduate degree ("with high distinction", or magna cum laude). But since this is supposed to be about bragging, the framable document below, for election to the New York Academy of Sciences shortly thereafter, ought to look more impressive. And that was before my real contributions to science.

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But couldn't all this just be personal bragging about what is really a social achievement? Could human kind be the real comeback kid from fascist insanity? So what; I had still managed to play my part in that. In any case, even any really personal successes of mine became possible because of very unusual people I was with, some of them already mentioned earlier. If this here were to follow the usual practice of other modest authors in their book forewords, I would have to point out now that, on the other hand, my failures are mine alone. But why don't I instead leave something for my detractors to detract.

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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2006

Torino 2006 Olympics

In 1937, more than four years after the Nazi takeover at the end of January 1933, I was still on my class football team (that's soccer to North Americans) at the Bismarck Realgymnasium in Dortmund. (That may surprise you, if you were born yesterday or a few decades earlier and have had to make do with the treatment of the period in the mass media. The Nazis did not, and could not, start murder factories as soon as they took over government; and any subsequent power intrinsically capable of comparable stuff against any community ought to be challenged at earlier atrocity levels.) Then, in 1937-8, our situation began to deteriorate rapidly. Early in 1933, there had been one of the worst incidents during the boycott of Jewish businesses, including my father's shoe store, when SA brownshirts stormed into our apartment in the evening to pick up my father. He had evidently been warned and was away in Pirmasens, centre of the German shoe industry. A non-Jewish friend of my mother's and her coal miner husband, Herr Scheida, were with us. The stormtroopers first tried to take him, then relented. Dortmund still had many coal mines, and miners.

Then there was a period without much serious trouble, at least not what would affect wholly Jewish kids; the Nuernberg "race" laws having been about things like "mixed marriages". It is widely thought that there was a policy of caution, to minimize negative economic consequences of persecution. Later, there was a real lull for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, for which the Nazis wanted to create an impression of civilised reasonableness, in addition to power, on the many foreign visitors. Those may have been the first Olympics where competition between top athletes became subordinate to a "higher" goal, the greater glory of the regime. (Having been to the following games, 1948 in London, which still were real games of sport lovers, i.e. amateurs, I can affirm that the commercial ascendency and concomitant hoopla started later; also performance enhancing drugs).

Some time before the Berlin games, a classmate told me that in "Rassenkunde" (~race knowledge, maybe even race "science"), a class from which I was excused, they were told that there had to be caution, and not to molest people who look like Jews, because "our Italian friends" also look like that.

And now the winter Olympics are on in Berlusconi's Italy, right next to Fiat's city, beautiful Torino; or Turin as the place is called in Germany and Austria, but also here in no less beautiful Vancouver; where the next winter games are to take place in 2010. Everything is already affected by that here. Even before the Torino games, a major cost overrun was announced; also a suggestion to import temporary workers from abroad to counteract it, and union protest against cheap temporary labor. The Safeway supermarket sale this week of "Olympic Wieners" of two packages of eight at $ 5.00 (or, shown in small print, one for $ 2.50, for the benefit of those who can handle more complex mathematics, like fractions of a dollar), a saving of over $3 for two, need not have been related to the performance of Austrian athletes at the Torino games.

But they have been doing very well with a lopsided number of gold medals for such a small country. The other lopsided performers have been the Canadian women, with more than three times the number of medals than the men two days before the end; and not just in hockey, where they almost had to apologize for making the competition look so harmless; without any doping suspicions. The Austrians did have a doping scandal. Their quarters were raided by the Italian police after a tip that their former long distance skiing trainer Walter Mayer, already barred from both Turin and Vancouver games, had been seen there. The final results are pending, but Mayer managed to escape across the border back to Austria, where he was arrested after ramming a police car. Some long distance skiers were also reported to have fled across the border.

It was enough to make one wonder whether Herman Mark, my main professor (doctoral thesis advisor) might have been on performance enhancing steroids. It would be the easiest way to understand how he could have done all the things he did, including an earlier Austrian cross border escape. He had been born near the end of the 19th century in Vienna, then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire of legendary Kaiser Franz Joseph; for whose army the even more legendary good soldier Schweik was reported to have enlisted in 1914.

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Mark had joined that army a year earlier, right after high school, so he wouldn't have to do his military service after university. Then the crown prince was assassinated in Sarajevo, leading to World War I in August 1914. So instead of quickly getting his required one year service behind him, Mark was iin from 1913-19, was wounded three times (first at the Russian front in bitter battles near Lvov; Lemberg on map in November 21, 2005 posting) and became the most decorated soldier in the Imperial army. Along with the whole division, he was later a POW 1918-19 in Italy, got his doctorate two years after that at Vienna, played on the then famous Austrian national football team, started work 1922 at the Kaiser Wilhelm (forerunner of current Max Planck) Institut in Berlin, where he became one of the first pioneers in what was to become polymer science, as much by his efforts as anyone's; reinforced that while directing IG Farben polymer research at Ludwigshafen (now BASF again) until 1932, when the imminent Nazi takeover made leaving advisable.

So he became professor at his old University of Vienna. Until in March 1938 the Nazis came there, too. After Gestapo detention the next day and days of severe interrogation in their special prison, he decided to take off. According to the grapevine during my student days, he just skied across the border into Switzerland.

That would be more than the current Olympian long distance skiers and Walter Mayer are credited with now, sneaking into Austria, but it turns out to have been overdone. The American Chemical Society published a book (see cover below) as part of a series about the lives and work of eminent chemists, which I had just got after first trying to see it through the Public Library. It is partly biographical, partly autobio. Mark's own account is that he put his family into their car with their skis mounted on top and a swastika flag on the radiator and thus drove across the Swiss border(without ramming any police cars there).

If you are interested in his accomplishments to follow, the most thorough way would be to get the book. I ought to have some more to say, but meanwhile a couple of links to what others wrote. The more intimate and best informed is likely to be the one by Prof. Herbert Morawetz. Another, by the American Chemical Society, should also be of interest. Here only that he had a long standing offer to come to Canada to organize a modern research lab for the Canadian International Pulp and Paper Company. With his prompt acceptance now, he got the Canadian visa, thus the transit visas needed.

As a personal aside, I ought to mention that I was a sort of beneficiary of the "Anschluss" that drove him out, since I got to see two of the famous Vienna football teams (I believe Rapid and Austria Wien, who came to tour in their new Vaterland) play against Borussia Dortmund; before we got kicked out later that year. The yellow class card for my last semester of thesis research also shows a phony grade; for research, there was no S+, only S (as the grade is actually entered, see above) for satisfactory and U for unS; but here the intention was just to make me feel good, a characteristic generally ascribed to his origin in Franz Joseph's Vienna (he was fondly adressed and referred to as Geheimrat).

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It is the Monday after. While I was struggling to keep this from getting too long , the long distance skiers and skaters have finished their thing and the Olympic flag has been passed to Sam Sullivan, our new mayor. Austria is in third place (at least for now) in the official medal rankings, which emphasize the gold, with only Germany and US above. Canada is fifth, but with more medals than Russia, #4, or Austria; and one of its glorious women, Cindy Klassen, the star of the Torino Games. They had Andrea Bocelli do what here is a job for a fat lady. We are unlikely to march that (although I know places here with musicians who can play much louder). But I'm ready to bet that nobody saw sunsets like those below in Turin. For those, you'll have to come to Vancouver.

Cittadino

di Torino;

vieni qua!

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Stuck in Zbaszyn

2006-01-10T17:40:00.000-08:00

As discussed toward the end of the preceding posting, there will be something here on Zbaszyn, the small town on the Polish side of the pre-WWII German-Polish border, where several thousand of us were confined for months after being expelled from Nazi Germany in 1938; some until shortly before the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. The only thing about it that seems to have been admitted into the historical record is that, after Herschel Grynszpan, the son of a couple who had been expelled, assassinated a German diplomat in Paris, the Nazis unleashed what became known as the Kristallnacht; in which Jewish homes and stores throughout Germany had their windows smashed, belongings thrown out on the street, and synagogues were burned down. I want to at least repeat here what I had written to the publishers of Abba Kovner' s Scrolls of Testimony (cover shown in the November 22 posting) in my comments to them, the only long comment. It relates to a letter by Leo der Junge, a major character also in later parts of the Scrolls.

"I was a year older than the (presumably fictional / composite) writer of the letter, Leo der Junge, and was born (August 1925) at Dortmund; like Dinslaken (where Leo originated) in the Ruhr district, but much (~ 20x) bigger and with a more substantial Jewish community, more like 40 times the few dozen Jews of Dinslaken. That Leo would have witnessed a whole trainload from a small percentage (Polish passport holders) of those few dozen arrive at the Polish border makes no sense. He is described as being expelled at the end of November, i.e. after the Kristallnacht. We (and I believe all confined to Zbaszyn) were expelled at the end of October 1938 (leading to the pretext for the Kristallnacht a week and a half later)"

"There were loud bangs on the door about 5 in the morning, and four SA brownshirts commanded by a non-uniformed man made us dress and walk to the nearby police station. Later we were assembled from all over the city on the old market square (city center) for all to see (and be scared to still associate with Jews), then taken to the railroad station and put on normal passenger compartments (3rd class, i.e. no upholstery).The train went to Neu-Bentschen, on the German side of the Polish border; on the other side of which was the old Bentschen, as the Polish town of Zbaszyn was evidently called when it had been part of "West Prussia" until the end of WWI, when Poland regained its independence (below the a in Zbaszyn there is a wiggle I can't type here, like that of the French cedille, which makes the name of the town sound almost like Zbonshin; that is evidently were that spelling comes from, also elsewhere; the sh sound in English is obtained by sz in Polish)."

"Our train had stopped several times on the way, e.g. in Hanover. If more compartments were added to our train there, the Grynszpans would have been on the same train. More surely they were expelled at the same time, and we later saw them on Zbaszyn streets. On arrival at the Neu-Bentschen station, it became quite unpleasant, with loud shouts of "Alle raus!", "Schneller! Schneller!" from loads of brownshirted stormtroopers (maybe also SS) on the platform. My immediate family, except my father, could go inside the station, where I fell asleep sitting on a bench until we were taken by train across the border to the Zbaszyn station; outside of which we joined a big crowd of people from all over Germany sitting or lying on the ground for at least one night; during which our father arrived, also by train."

"It soon became known that many others experienced much worse before they got to Zbaszyn. As I recall it, they were told to walk across the border, and shots were fired to make them run; but then they were made to run back by shots fired from the (then near fascist) Polish authorities; back and forth. While I did not hear of people getting killed, , that needn't mean that there were none at all. But I have been dumbfounded by what has been told about this, e.g. in the Jewish Chronicle, UK, at the time of the 50th anniversary; without correcting the distortions (easily) after I called those to their attention. Leo's letter mentions 'many dead bodies' in freight wagons, as experienced routinely later, during the 'Final Solution'."

"Especially in view of what started to happen a year later, the most significant thing is probably that this 'Polenaktion' was the first in which children were targeted. Judging by what I read much later about the roundup of Jews in Rennes (France), it may also have served as dress rehearsal for the later death camp Aktionen. In view of those, and as stated wisely elsewhere in the book, there is no need to jazz up what did happen, and especially not in the name of someone like Abba Kovner; who surely would want even a fictionalized account to keep within the real historical setting."

"In some other cities, the roundup may have been worse than in Dortmund, with its anti-Nazi past; and even our parents must have experienced the long confinement to Zbaszyn more severely than us kids. Like them we slept on straw 'mattresses' (on the floor) and ate cheaper, though adequate , food. But to us that wasn't a big deal. They also did not have the side benefit of not having to attend school, and instead to be able to play football (soccer) every day; on the real football field of Zbaszyn, sure better than the Viehmarkt where we had to play in Dortmund recently."

"So it ought to be understood that I am also not the best possible (representative) source, although these are honest, first hand recollections; and too much of the little that was published, and that presumably was available to Abba Kovner, does not seem to be. There may now be better. In the course of writing this, I just became aware of a 2002 book by Jerzy Tomaszewski called (in the German translation from Polish) Auftakt zur Vernichtung (Prelude to Extermination). Judging by the internet blurb on it, it looks far superior to anything I encountered before. I intend to order it and recommend it to you, in case you contemplate changes."

"Let me add only that Zbaszyn was Polish, not 'no man's land', as seemingly everyone, including 'Leo' here, refers to it; possibly because we were not allowed to enter the bulk of Poland. Also, the 'sister of mercy' mentioned as taking care of Leo probably was called that by virtue of too literal a translation from the Hebrew 'akhot rakhmaniyah'. If so, 'nurse' should be preferable."

Having received that book after sending my comments (the others of which are of little significance to most readers, especially here), I can confirm that it indeed appears as well informed as could be hoped for after all this time, with many of the documents and most of the primary human sources lost during the war. While it tends to support what I had written, a few modifications are indicated. Tomaszewski's thorough research also didn't come up with any people killed during the expulsion.But there may only have been one case, with a group from Altona, when some shots from the Polish side were fired in the air. Even though that must have scared the people badly enough, considering the shooting from the German side, it does not amount to the story that circulated of people being chased back and forth by shooting from both sides, and which I also believed.

Also my (parenthetical) reference there to "then near fascist" Polish authorities should have been more differentiated; as indeed I had done earlier. But on that the author has thorough information showing a very complex and evolving spectrum; including even really good behavior toward Jews with Polish citizenship on the part of Polish consuls in Germany. By contrast, a memo from the consular division in the Foreign Ministry, shows outrageous bigotry in action, and foreign minister Beck is shown to favor administrative anti Jewish measures in Poland over legislative ones that may embarass internationally. The Revisionists (New Zionists) were to be strengthened relative to other Jewish organizations. It had actually been a Polish government initiative that was about to deprive its Jewish citizens in Germany of their citizenship (thus the right to return to Poland) which induced the Nazis to quickly organize that expulsion; but that had been initiated by the Interior rather than the Foreign Ministry.

Rather than repeat here a lot of details, let me link to the site that describes the German version for those specifically interested. For those who read Polish, the original title is Preludium Zaglady, published by Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warsaw.

While the lack of interest of Zionist organizations, both mainstream and "New", in finding emigration countries for the expelled other than (White Paper blocked) Palestine is reported adequately, all that is said about Zbaszyn itself is that there are likely to have been Zionist organizations since "some youths went to different Polish kibbutzim", (like me and my brother). I wouldn't have expected a big deal to be made about us, but that Oskar Handler of the Hekhalutz headquarters in Berlin, later also Warsaw, who had also been expelled and who organized that and other things in Zbaszyn, that his role be known to the author could really have been expected, e.g. from his yad vashem sources. He certainly knows about Antek (far right), with whom (i.a.) Oskar (far left) is shown again below and who ended up in the same Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz.

While we are back with (Antek) Cukierman, as spelled by New Zionist Moshe Arens, it may be well to mention that in this book Arens' idol is spelled Wlodzimierz Zabotynski (the website with the name shown earlier could not be located now). Unlike Zuckerman's story, some of Abba Kovner's, whose Scrolls gave rise to the bulk of this posting, can be seen in a History website I found on the web.

On Socialists and Semi-Fascists

2005-12-31T17:45:00.000-08:00

When I first encountered Abba Kovner's book at the Vancouver Public Library, I did something I had never done before; writing to the publisher with a list of suggested corrections for future editions. Most of these concerned the side commentary, some clearly not written by Kovner before his death and others almost surely problems of the English translation only. It was thus quite possible that I was one of very few still alive to be adequately familiar with much of the story and to read the book in its English translation. Also, while Abba Kovner was far more knowledgeable than I, or possibly anyone, with the story as a whole, there was at least one aspect where he also was subject to an almost universal misinformation, but where I had been directly involved. It concerned a boy about my age from Dinslaken, a small town in the Ruhr district not far from Dortmund, where I came from; who also was expelled from Germany and confined to Zbaszyn.

The response from the Jewish Publication Society, who had published the book (see preceding posting), was to acknowledge the corrections with thanks, but that a second edition did not appear likely. They clearly were also surprised, and disappointed, by it. So when I came across the book by Yitzkhak Zuckerman, the only one with comparable authority to bear witness on what has been the subject of a constant stream of less informed books, I saw no point wasting my time with the minor corrections that could have helped there , too. What I have seen since, seems to confirm the impression that there again will not be another edition.

On the other hand, there are quite a few websites repeating a novel version of events by one (Moshe Arens) with less first hand knowledge of background and events in Warsaw than the very limited one I have, but with a decidedly less sympathetic attitude toward Zuckerman; as we probably should have expected from a long time Revisionist politician.The question may be whether they will decide what will be remembered in the future.

From the various accounts I had read (long before coming across the "Antek" book), their Betar was the only group that formed their own separate resistance outfit (ZZW) apart from the ZOB. The rationale was that, unlike the other Zionist youth groups who wanted to build kibbutzim (and other agricultural settlements peacefully, while defending themselves when attacked), the Revisionists explicitly wanted to conquer the land (on both banks of the Jordan river) by force of arms; "blood and fire" they sang. By a secret deal that would sound too insane if summarized here briefly, some of their people from Palestine had indeed been trained before the war for military action by Polish army officers of the increasingly antisemitic post-Pilsudski ND regime; and returned home for their terrorist activity. I had also read of tunnels they had dug to the "Aryan" side, for bringing in supplies and through which they expected to leave for the forests after a brief, spectacular fight in the ghetto; which latter they did, flying Polish and David Star flags over their headquarters. But that they were betrayed by their Polish allies beyond the tunnels and killed by the Germans without reaching the forests.

Arens cannot really claim that the fight of their ZZW was kept from the public. If any have a basis for such complaint, it is the anti-Zionist groups in the ZOB, Communist and Bund; at least in Israeli and Western sources.

In the book, Antek also describes other reasons for Betar non participation in the ZOB in some detail, which Arens does not address. Instead he keeps harping on the ZOB "Socialists" in an obvious attempt to appeal to readers hostile to socialists. For an old Revisonist, he shows unexpected honesty in at least mentioning the Akiva "General Zionists", maybe hoping readers won't notice that they were not socialists, but part of the ZOB. All non-fascists could be labeled Socialists by fascists at that time, thus justifying things like violently breaking up their meetings. All Arens says on this, is that the others regarded his Betar as "semi-fascist". Even if you are not of my advanced age group, with memories of their pride at their leader's (Jabotinsky) reception by Mussolini, you should have no problem googling such ties. Since the Einstein Year, celebrating 100 years since the most outstanding series of papers in the history of science, is now at an end, let me just recall that Einstein generally avoided that F word when expressing his disparaging opinion of them; but that he did co-sign a letter to the New York Times warning against the fascist nature of Begin's party when the latter came to New York to give it a democratic veneer.

If Antek touched on that at all in his book, he sure doesn't emphasize it. He seems to have been an especially unifying figure in a fractious environment. And his role was not confined to Warsaw. He travelled to organize ZOB branches far away, without wearing the obligatory Jew badge, which by itself could have got him shot had he been caught. The book simply tells the story as he (also others) remembers it, and Arens wants to discredit it and to substitute one in which the ZZW are the main resisters who died fighting, so none to speak of were left to tell the tale. Until he found new memories in 2003.

Arens consistently refers to Zuckerman as Cukierman, apparently the Polish spelling, rather than the normal one transcribed from Hebrew or Yiddish / German. On the other hand, he calls the Revisionist leader, who didn't come to live in (pre)Israel, by the Hebrew Zeev; whom I saw in an English language right wing Polish website referred to as Wolodimierz Jabotinsky. Wolodimierz had already shown the same pretensions described above much earlier when, having lost his bid for Zionist leadership to Weizman, he quit and formed the separate "New Zionist" organization. Again later, when the State of Israel was proclaimed, the terrorist disciples of Wolodimierz wanted to keep their own private little armies, until Ben Gurion made very clear they would serve in the one Israeli army (Tzahal) or their leaders would be in jail (Begin et al; Arens remained in the USA, I believe). Tzahal's predecessor Haganah, consisted of the same Zionist spectrum as that in the Warsaw ZOB, i.e. all but Wolodimierz's folks, who had quit, and democratic socialists of various stripes / degree again the most involved.

The Israeli Likud party has often been called the latest version of the Revisionists; not quite accurately, since it also incorporated others, e.g. the right wing of those General Zionists. It was true of the prime ministers, Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu. Arens, who didn't succeed in his bid, had looked like less of a demagogue to me. Maybe I shouldn't have spent all this space on his Warsaw snow job, at the expense of something on Zbaszyn intended earlier here. In any case, they are not the only ones working on distortion of our historical memory; which can only benefit if the recent news from Israel means that a rump Revisionists' Likud will return to the margin they used to occupy.

Yizkor 2

2005-11-22T20:31:00.000-08:00

The three men below played central roles in the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB, from the initials in Polish: Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa) and the Anti-Fascist Bloc that organized the resistance, and eventual 1943 uprising, in the Warsaw Ghetto established by the Nazis following the 1939 invasion of Poland that started WWII. In the centre is Mordekhai Anielewicz, already mentioned earlier here as the ZOB commander. He was of the countrywide leadership of Ha-Shomer Ha-tzair, the organization I had belonged to. Long after the war I read that he had been in Vilna in the winter of 1939-40, when I was at our kibbutz there. So I must have met him, but at least could not recall him when I read that (from the one photo I found). We did not know, of course, what he would represent a few years later. He died when the Nazis discovered the command bunker at Mila 18. The book by that name is far from the most authoritative about the events.

http://members.shaw.ca/ElSol/One_Life/Part_VI.html

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Emanuel Ringelblum, at the right, was a historian who, with his Oneg Shabat group, secretly assembled an archive on what was going on in the ghetto, including the resistance being organized. He was captured and killed by the Gestapo along with his wife and son. But most of the buried archives were found after the war beneath the rubble of the former ghetto in metal containers, e.g. milk cans, some welded shut before burial. Shortly before the war, Ringelblum had come to Zbaszyn when we were confined there at the end of October 1938 to organize minimal services on behalf of the Joint Distribution Committee.

Yitzkhak Zuckerman, at the left, ZOB co-commander, then commander following the death of Anielewicz, survived fighting in both Warsaw uprisings, albeit wounded; a possible reason for his early death at the Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz in Israel.

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2851.html

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His book of memories, the publisher website and cover of the English translation of which is shown here above, records the stories of many who died fighting; in other ghettos, too, although the Warsaw one was clearly the outstanding one. Not that a lot of SS were killed, but for the shock value that they can no longer just come and pick out their next extermination victims without fear of becoming victims themselves. And if the most oppressed and least armed can fight back for a month in this first revolt in a Nazi-occupied city, then others can follow; and did.

And then there were the partisans in the forests around Vilna, after their attempt at an uprising in the Vilna ghetto had failed, but who may have caused more serious Nazi casualties. The main initiator there, and the commander following an especially tragic death of the first (Itzik Wittenberg), was Abba Kovner, a poet. He is shown below, first in a decent photo many years later, then (left) with another partisan at the time.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~wgst60/projects/poetry/Yaarah-Tami/Biographies.html

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It may have required the imagination of a poet to conceive of the possibility that the shootings of masses of Jewish men and women in the Ponary forest outside Vilna were not just too many massacres, as has happened in wars, but a program of systematic annihilation of the whole people, subsequently termed genocide. After more evidence and consultation, this was transmitted to others by couriers, mostly women; e.g. to Warsaw where the ZOB, with aid from Polish railway workers, later obtained confirmation of a death camp at Treblinka and passed that news to Allied leaders through a Polish underground liaison. In a meeting of Jewish youth organizations in Vilna next to the headquarters of the SS while these were being drunk on New Year's eve 1942, Kovner made the first impassioned appeal for resistance; including the often repeated call: "Let's not go like sheep to the slaughter !"

http://www.juden-in-europa.de/baltikum/vilna/biographien.htm

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Abba Kovner became one of Israel's foremost writers. He also died too early, before quite finishing his biggest writing project; a really ambitious work to pass on the feel of what was done to Jews and by their resistance under Nazi occupation. It is based on what really happened in diverse places by one almost uniquely qualified to know, but woven into a coherent fiction-like account with fictional names. The format is somewhat like the Talmud, with commentary adjacent to the text, and like the parchment scrolls of the Hebrew bible (as e.g. the Book of Ester) recited in synagogues on Jewish holidays. The site of the publishers' and the cover of the English translation are shown below.

http://www.jhom.com/bookshelf/kovner_scrolls/index.html

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Abba Kovner was of the Ha-Shomer Ha-Tzair in Vilna. As a leading member there, he must have spent time at our kibbutz there also, again without my recalling him. There were over 600 members there, all of that age, about 20 (+) except for me at 14; so they are likely to have remembered me. Oddly enough, these two main surviving resistance leaders, who wrote the two probably most significant books of a huge literature, both came from Vilna and had gone to the same gymnasium (~ high school), without having interacted then. Zuckerman, again shown on the right below, was of the He-kHalutz Ha-Tzair-Dror, as were all the others on that photo.The related text in the website from which the photo is taken is quite wrong. Next to Antek is Zivia Lubetkin, also of the Warsaw ZOB command, later his wife, and Yudke Helman, emissary from Palestine. At the left is Oskar Handler, the "guardian angel" mentioned, in whose apartment in Lvov the photo was taken in early 1940. My brother and I had been with him and slept overnight there in November 1939. There should be more on Oskar later. Here only that in a History Channel program on the Warsaw ghetto earlier this year, where this photo was shown, Oskar Handler, who also died too young, had simply been cut out of the the picture. That sure is strange.

http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/HolocaustChronicle.taf?_function=largepicture&RecordID=141211

Such odd omissions and gross inaccuracies can have an innocent explanation. The time to deliberately distort the record of these anti-fascist fighters has not come. There may no longer be those from WWI able to stand and march, but many who fought against fascism in WWII are still alive and kicking.

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Yizkor

2005-11-21T22:30:00.001-08:00

On Remembrance Day (elsewhere Armistice or Veterans Day, November 11) there were observances everywhere. That in Vancouver was again in Victory Square and seemed like a repetition of the August celebration described earlier (I didn't go but wore my campaign medals; out of sight). The national event in Ottawa for the first time did not have any World War I veterans, only five of whom are still alive.

Peter Mansbridge had a program with three Auschwitz survivors responding to questions of school youngsters. So let me here recall those who died fighting the Nazis in the ghettos and forests of Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere. That seems especially appropriate now, since this
blog has just been concerned with the part of my life which intersected with that of those people.
There have been other things I should, and meant to, write about first. Maybe later. Here only something on the ceremony at which I became a Canadian citizen. I had looked forward to it for what it meant, not for what would go on, but it turned out to be pleasant and interesting. The presiding judge evidently enjoyed herself, notably the interaction with the children involved. She was of Ukrainian origin so this also fits in well with where I had interrupted the account.

The neat little map below, found on the internet, provides a number of good features to show how "historic events", like wars, can move people across international boundaries from one sovereign state to another without their ever leaving their place of birth. Starting as we approached (cyan line) from Lublin toward Kowel, both in then independent Poland, the boundary line to Volhynia on this map is along the river Bug, as it became again a day after we passed and is to this day. But the town about midway was not yet Chelm, which we passed, but was rendered as Kholm, or Khelm. That goes to show that, when that map was published, this part of Poland was part of the Russian empire, where sounds rendered in Polish or German as ch were written like an X in the Russian Cyrillic and transcribed as Kh in English.

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As we moved south from Kovel, the boundary, just to the west, was still as it again became just then and is today, along the river Bug; until just to the west of Lutzk. There a new, very prominent, border is shown on the map; where there is none today. That was the border between two empires which fought each other in WWI and then disappeared: the Tsarist Russian and the Austra-Hungarian Habsburg empires.

Lemberg, the big city to the south had been the main city of Eastern Galicia. The Lembergers then became inhabitants of Lwow in newly independent Poland; until Eastern Galicia became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic along with Volhynia as the Red Army moved in in 1939, and as we were walking around there. They then were transferred to Lvov for about 50 years, when the newly independent Ukraine converted them into inhabitants of Lviv. We got to Lvov for the first time in early October 1939 after hiding out in Lanovitz for a couple of weeks, then again in November when we managed to make contact there with the zionist underground in the process of formation; specifically with Oskar Handler, already mentioned earlier as "guardian angel" in a quotation from Yitzkhak Zuckerman's memoir (June 28, 2005 posting).

The people of Czernowitz, the city further south on the map, became Ukrainians only at the end of WWII. They also had been subjects of the famous Habsburg Kaiser Franz Joseph until WWI, but then belonged to Romania until the victorious Soviet army came in the last winter of WWII. Kief, to the East, more often written Kiev (now officially Kyiv, I believe), has been the capital of Ukraine (and originally of "Kievan Rus). But there is no mention of "Ukraine" on the map; presumably because it was not recognised by the tsarist regime of that time as a separate national/ethnic or geographic entity. Just above Kief, however, the map has very prominent lettering (Littl), which in the complete map, not found on the internet, is likely to have read "Little Russia". I only paid attention to that now because a major hullabaloo touching on this surfaced while I was completing this posting: after the Canadian Liberal Party's minority government under prime minister Paul Martin was voted out of office by a no confidence vote (something that would require armed revolution in the USA). Harvard Professor Michael Ignatieff is returning to his native Canada after 30 years and was nominated to run as a star candidate for Liberal party MP in a Toronto riding (constituency) with a substantial ethnic Ukrainian minority. A group of these had earlier taken control of the local party organisation and is contestng the "parachuting" of Ignatieff into the riding. He has a paper trail, including a book in the 80-s with passages claimed to be offensive to Ukrainians. He claims to have opposed only Ukrainian nationalism, the way he opposes all nationalism (the definition of which varies). Specifically, he apparently referred to "Little Russians" as distinct from "Great Russians", from whose upper class he is descended. I have no way of judging whether that reference should cause offence. My guess is that he did not mean it seriously as a putdown. But that may not be good enough, especially since he is rumoured to be in line to succeed Paul Martin as leader of the governing Liberal party (something like the latter even armed revolution couldn't achieve in the US).

End of WW II Remembered.

2005-08-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

A commemoration of the end of World War II 60 years ago started at Victory Square, continued with a parade along Pender Street and ended at the Chinese Cultural Centre. Apart from veterans of the war, there were soldiers on active duty and Royal Canadian Mounted Police; all in uniform including the RCMP in the famous red one, that nowadays seems reserved for special occasions like this. I had taken my (newly acquired) neat little digital camera, but also my campaign medals from the war. They were in my pocket; but since all the others wore theirs, I put mine on, too. That was only the third time that I wore those (visibly; underneath I had them on more often) and only the first time for an official occasion.

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Having taken quite a few pictures at the Victory Square stage, some pretty good ones, I was aiming the camera at army jeeps advancing near the head of the parade; but a jeep stopped, and I was made to get in and throw nickels they had in a big can at fellow civilians cheering /applauding the parade of which I had suddenly become a part. As far as I can recall, that was my first time in a jeep since the 1940s. Another benefit was that I participated in the last stage at the well air conditioned Chinese Cultural Centre, unlikely otherwise; and I really need air conditioning in the ever hotter Vancouver summers; hence the decision to get an air conditioner, unlike most West End apartment dwellers here.

In relation to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that had preceded the surrender of Japan, there were more articles questioning especially its moral justification. I shouldn't add to that, regardless of the way it looks in retrospect. At the time I /we were happy that we were now unlikely to be sent to the jungle disease infected Burma front. We had just delivered some American GMC trucks from Milan to an American base outside Rome (on the road to Ostia), presumably also for shipment to the Far East, and a few of us, including my brother and me, had gone to the Opera Reale outdoors at the Baths of Caracalla (Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci). The next morning -it was my 20th birthday- the news of the new kind of bomb was all over the papers. I had had no scientific education yet, so certainly never had the kind of guilt feelings attributed to some physicists. And even those directly involved in the Manhattan Project apparently didn't quite realize the long term effects of the radiation released. Isn't it stranger that many nowadays, well into the "nuclear age", are not aware of the long term dangers from low level radiation from nuclear power plants; which people like Prof. Gofman of Berkeley's Lawrence Radiation Lab made public decades ago?

You may have surmised from this that I also passed my 80th birthday; so I no longer need my months as an unborn baby to validate my octogenarian credentials.

Underground. Away from Kovel.

2005-07-26T21:01:00.000-07:00

For us, coming from Czestochowa, it seemed natural to get to Kowel {Ko} as we tried to stay out of the Nazi orbit. But the meeting with the Grochow kibbutz looked like a strange coincidence. It now turns out (from the Zuckerman book) that all had been coming toward Kowel (as it was spelled while still a Polish town); the various Zionist outfits, but also the leadership of the Bund. Although they were no less anti-Zionist than the Communists, the Bundists also were illegal in the Soviet Union [there is a long history behind this. This Jewish outfit had been the first socialist party in tsarist Russia before the Social Democratic party there was founded, then (1903) split into a Menshevik (minority) faction and a Bolshevik one under Lenin; who strongly opposed the Bund's attempt to constitute a separate Jewish unit within the Social Democratic party. The Bund eventually supported the Mensheviks and later, in revived independent Poland, the Polish Socialist party (PPS)]. In 1941, the two main leaders of the Bund in Poland, Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter (who had been in Kovel at the time), were executed in the Soviet Union. So it was surely a good idea for the Zionist groups to scatter. For some time, that was my last contact with anyone of the Czestochowa kibbutz, as I left with my brother and Yoine (Jonah) of the Grochow kibbutz toward the latter's home in what had been the Polish town of Lanowce, a few km from the old Polish-Soviet border.

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There isn't much that I recall of that walk, probably because not very much happened. The road was no longer clogged with people streaming east, and there were no more bombardments. The Soviet secret bureaucracies surely had more urgent targets than some youngsters hiking on the main road. The soles of my boots finally wore out all the way, so I walked partly on my socks. As we passed within a few km of Lutsk, another town with much Jewish history attached, it began to rain a little; noteworthy only for being the first rain during that whole September march from the western border of Poland to the eastern one. In Kremenets {Kr} Yoine was no stranger, and he got a horse and wagon; so the very last stage was the most luxurious. But in Lanovitz -as it was pronounced in Yiddish, or Lanovtsy as now rendered from Cyrillic Ukrainian- we had to hide well. During the couple of times we were out on the street, it was with care not to attract attention, notably of Jewish Communists (now released from the jails where the Polish government had kept them). While my brother stayed at Yoine's place, I had been moved to what must have been one of the wealthier homes in the little town. By the time we left after two weeks to try to find our parents, I had probably regained all the weight I must have lost in the preceding three weeks. I hope to be able to tell more about what followed, e.g. at Dubno (also elaborate on the second map; below, where places that have been mentioned, or are to be, have been marked); but in order to get this far, I have had to neglect major current developments I ought to write about. I have in any case now at least written a version of what I promised myself long ago too do: to write what I recall of the amazing retreat of the Czestochowa kibbutz at the beginning of World War II. Only one got lost; and of the four who had to be left behind, two made it anyway, I and my companion from Lublin through Chelm {Kh} (on this pre-WWI map called Kholm as rendered from Cyrillic Russian) to Kowel.

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Lublin to Kowel, Beyond the Bug.

2005-07-20T23:48:00.000-07:00

Lublin had been one of the most important centers of Jewish life in Poland for centuries, and I was somewhat aware of that as I approached. The view / skyline was memorable; as I found out when decades later I encountered a passage in Sholem Asch's book "Kidush Hashem" about the Cossak massacres of 1648 (the worst in Jewish history until what was about to follow now) where he describes the view as the wagon of the protagonists coming to the famous Lublin fair arrived. It must have been on the same road.

After the three months at the Czestochowa kibbutz, where conversations with the members from Poland had to be almost always in Yiddish, I had no problem making myself understood by an evidently Jewish man, that I was looking for the people of that kibbutz. It may be an indication of the significance of the Hashomer Hatzair then (hard to imagine these days) that in less than an hour I was with the only one left in Lublin, all the others having continued on toward Kowel, of which I had never heard. He had been unable to walk any further and was in bed at what must have been an emergency shelter maintained by the Jewish community.

When I indicated that I'll continue to Kowel, he wanted to come along and indicated that he shouldn't need much help. When he started to get out of bed, his feet turned out to be bloody all over; clearly from walking all that distance in ill fitting shoes, a problem I was completely free of due to my dad's parting present of made to measure boots when I left Zbaszyn. So instead of putting on his shoes, he just wound rags around his feet. Before he got done, all had to go to the ground floor during an air raid. It was one of the worst, largely because of children (and others) howling, and probably because there also was much anti aircraft fire which cannot be distinguished easily by novices from exploding bombs.

We tried to get a train ride, many tried. Indeed a freight train full of people started going east almost as soon as we got there. It also stopped again almost as soon as it got started. After a while it continued , then stopped again. Other trains obviously had preference. When a stop seemed to be endless, we got off and continued on foot. At first my buddy (I forgot his name but believe not that of he town he came from [Luniniec ?]) barely had to lean on me a little. After some distance, he got worse; so when we saw another train like the earlier, we got on, and it started to move after a while, then stopped, continued, stopped, until my companion suggested walking again, now to Chelm.

If you are a Jew, you surely have heard of Chelm; if a goy, ask a Jew about Chelm and observe him /her smile. It works every time (due to the wondrous tales of the wisdom of the Assemly of Chelmer, who never repeated a mistake, always finding new ones). But there wasn't much to smile about at that time. We passed a Jewish bakery with a long line of people evidently expecting serious events. My buddy led to the head of the line and used me to get some compassion / bread from the owners (the Zbaszyn affair was well known all over Poland, especially to Jews). I felt uncomfortable about it and would have preferred going longer without, having almost got used to it. In retrospect it was fine; and I only had to endure a squeeze of my cheek for good, free, still warm bread; with which we continued toward Kowel at once. I assume we had got some sleep during a train ride and stop; of which we got one more later. The road probably ran close to the railway.

When we got off this time, it was not just because the halt had been too long, which had made us discuss walking. Then we heard the planes, got off and away from the train which got bombed. We were beyond the river Bug,which was about to become the new border, but it still must have been quite a distance from Kowel. We were about to reach it, when we were stopped by Polish soldiers recruiting arrivals to dig trenches in expectation of the German attack. That came almost two years later when Kovel was part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

To Lublin, Alone

2005-07-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

As I continued toward Lublin, on foot again (as indicated by the again continuous cyan line on the map) there was once more a sign toward Rudnik, which meant not only some good food at my grandmother's immediately, but also the near certainty of coming under German Nazi rule a little later. It should be understood that I did not decide against that because I did not want to end up in the gas chamber of a death camp like Auschwitz. Things like that were inconceivable at the time, not only to me. I had lived almost six years under Nazi rule in Germany, about half the lifetime of the thousand year "Third Reich", and experienced a few pretty ugly things, notably the "Polenaktion" leading to Zbaszyn; and was well aware of the Kristallnacht about a week later, the worst prewar action. That could hardly have enabled prediction of what was to follow now under cover of war.

A more likely motivation was that, sensing that the war now seemed likely to last quite some time, I wanted to be on the right side; specifically to be able to get to Palestine. What is most vivid in my memory of this stage is my singing our Zionist songs, as the road widened approaching Lublin from Krasnik. Although I abandoned Zionist ideology a few years later, I ought to emphasize that it was my fervent Zionist commitment that gave me the strength I needed at this time. I was in high spirits, daydreaming of my future ideal life in a kibbutz with a beautiful shomeret (the Hebrew name of our girls in the Ha-shomer Ha-tzair). The dysentery was over, for good. I don't recall any awareness of hunger, or danger of getting detained again with worse consequence. Maybe any real commitment can have such effect on a youngster. Then Lublin came into view.

Another Zbaszyn Kid Detained

2005-07-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

The Zuckerman description of the German spy scare east of Warsaw may be valid for Poland as a whole during the invasion; although we, certainly I, was unaware of it. The people at the landing of the little San ferry as I got off may have been looking out for potential spies, and suspecting any stranger who was not a regular passenger. Even though I was not aware of a special anxiety, I could understand that someone who speaks German rather than Polish could be worth examining. So I went along to one of the nearby houses of the village. I got a slice of bread with lard on it, which I had never had before, and I may not even have known what it is. It was delicious at least in my state of nourishment, so I gladly agreed when asked if I wanted another. That it may be suspect to Poles who know that Jewish religious law forbids pork didn't occur to me. As I recall, all were quite relaxed, and it may already have been settled with the aid of the gymnasium student who also had learned some French that I'll come along to the nearby town, Radomysl (nad Sanem); which was done on his bicycle. On the way, when this Polish Army officer came riding by on a horse, the student yelled something to him; just a sentence or two, but the officer made a grand stop of his horse with its forelegs raised, making him present a profile Like Napoleon's in the well known Ingres painting. Without a word, he pulled his gun and started aiming at me; at which my companion quickly turned the bike around, so he would have to shoot him first and said something. The officer rode off, and we got to the Radomysl townhall.

I assume it was the town council plus an interpreter to German that assembled. It turned out that we were pretty near to Ulanow, where my mother had been born and lived until age 4 or 5, when my grandparents moved with their kids to Cologne; and only a little further from Rudnik, where her mother had been born and now lived since being allowed to leave Zbaszyn after her expulsion from Germany. I was told that an army unit going that way would take me and check there whether I was telling the truth about my family; if so, to release me and to shoot me if not.

I believe there were three privates and a corporal in charge, with one horse pulling their wagon. The corporal tried to communicate a little in a friendly sort of way.The others disregarded me. We passed through little towns of which I had heard the names in Zbaszyn; where we had lived in a house along with quite a few families from Cologne, who had interacted there because they had originated in the same area. Specifically that included Rozwadow and Nisko (The latter is on the map, but partly obscured by my cyan line, here broken to indicate parts not covered on foot). In one of these two, an air raid started as we pulled up at the market square (Rynek). The soldiers went for cover, but I was given to understand that I stay on the wagon within view or they'll shoot. At Ulanow, I was left at the town entrance sign while they confirmed that my mother had been born there, and the date I had said she had.

I was now free to continue to my parents in Dynow, but I believe I was given to understand that the German army has already taken it, that they themselves were going back. When I indicated I wanted to go to Lublin (where the kibbutz had gone), I was offered a ride on the wagon as far as they went in that direction. At an intersection with a sign pointing to Rudnik 7 km, I had a last chance to go to my grandmother and have a decent meal that day, but I stayed on the wagon, albeit for only another few km. Let me add that in the detention stage, the corporal had divided the (unimpressive) food ration into equal parts for all soldiers, then gave me half of his.

Dive Bombers Over Poland 1939

2005-06-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

Although there are many things of wide current interest I'd like to discuss, I first ought to get back to the account of the long march through Poland at the beginning of WWII. It ought to start with a diversion to what happened to my brother's group as they went east from outside Warsaw; as recounted in (Antek's) Yitz(k)hak Zuckerman's book (and as outlined in violet on the map below). They took off about the time -give or take a day or two- when we crossed the bridge over the Vistula as it was being destroyed by dive bombers; or the next day, when I was detained on getting off the ferry crossing the river San.

As Antek described it, they left Warsaw {1 on the map} in response to an appeal broadcast in the name of the Polish army for able bodied men to leave eastward, possibly a German inspired provocation that resulted in hundreds of thousands clogging the roads needed for Polish army traffic. He had missed that appeal, since he had been working all that night on a defense trench digging project in response to an earlier appeal by mayor Starzinski. When they got to their Grochow kibbutz, it turned out that all had left. Somehow the other trench diggers also took off with the horse and wagon that had been left; so Antek had to march off by himself. As he described it:

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based on MSN Encarta - World Atlas - Map of The World

"I started walking with the masses streaming on the roads at the height of the bombings. I think I reached Minsk-Mazowiecki {2} at nightfall. I was hungry and worn out after a night of work, mad at myself, and without a cent; I was close to passing out. I sat down against some fence, and suddenly Oskar Hendler appeared, like a guardian angel."

In the text itself, there is no explanation who that angel is, whose name comes up in that same form repeatedly later in the book (which came about by taping conversations with close comrades of Antek's before his early death; somehow almost all these foremost resistance fighters / organizers seem to have died young, including Oskar Handler, as the name surely was spelled.
Notes may have been added for the Hebrew original, but certainly for the English translation). A footnote identifying Oskar could use improvements; which I could offer to provide, if there were a prospect for a second edition of this book. But that is very unlikely to happen, although there is no more important source about the Jewish fate and resistance in WWII. I do hope to add something later here.

Oskar "dragged" Antek into a courtyard' where he encountered his comrades from Warsaw (including those who had taken the wagon without him) . He ate and rested before they continued eastward. After a short while he suddenly saw "people from Grochow ...... a group of children from Zbaszyn who had been expelled from Germany" (with Frumka, a leading Polish member; she was killed a few years later [August 3, 1943] in a ghetto uprising in Bedzin, southwest Poland, which she had helped organize). They were looking for food. Antek, now with some money, got off the wagon and continued with this group; that included my brother Friedel (later Avshalom), then 15.

The severe bombing they experienced near Kaluszyn {3} has been mentioned, but not that "German spies were alsoswarming around there, signaling to German pilots" about the location of Polish troops. After the raid, it turned out to be important that Antek was one of the leadership people who had received a facilitating document from the Polish authorities when Zionist organizations in a meeting with them had pledged that all their resources countrywide would be made available for the defense effort.

"For as darkness came on, Polish gendarmes surrounded the woods searching for spies and caught us. Many of our young people didn't know a single word of Polish and spoke only German. I was their spokesman, and the document I had received from the central authorities helped us get away from the gendarmes." After that they decided to travel at night. There was some problem in Wlodowa {5} before they managed to cross the river Bug, which became the new Soviet border a few days later. He does not describe the route in greater detail, so I cannot know with any confidence where to locate what follows.

"On the way, before we got to Kowel, we had a single casualty, and I found out about that only later..... We tried to circumvent any place Polish soldiers were liable to be since these youths spoke German; so we traveled dozens of extra kilometers......One of the youths had relatives in Brisk [Polish: Brzesc} (but more widely known as Brest Litovsk, now just Brest), and he asked permission to go to his relatives, but I forbade him to go. Nevertheless, he left the ranks and went to Brisk where Polish soldiers captured him; and, because he didn't know Polish, they thought he was a German spy and executed him. The rest of the group reached Kowel safely." A footnote, with reference, adds: "Later, they learned of a few other victims among the Zbaszyn Halutzim" (pioneers), but that needn't mean that more were killed as spies. Even with that one, it sure is good that I couldn't have known about it when I was detained a few days earlier near Sandomierz; to which I ought to return now, leaving a few threads here to be tied up later; including finally something about what Zbaszyn was all about.

German Dive bombers over Poland.

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/blitz.htm

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Pres. George W. Bush's Moscow Victory Celebration.

2005-05-10T23:19:00.000-07:00

The Moscow observance of the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe had evidently been meant to be the major event of the occasion; presumably in recognition of the determined defense of Russian cities like Leningrad and Stalingrad and the huge sacrifices in the subsequent, most decisive, battles up to that of Berlin. Many heads of governments or state had been invited and attended (including those of the former enemies). At least in the North American media, attention was focused on the European trip of US Pres. George W. Bush, with Moscow just one stopover between other events. Was that intended?

The Netherlands visit may have been in recognition of their having joined the coalition in his current war. But then there was a visit to Latvia's capital Riga before, and to Georgia's Tbilisi right after Moscow. At least the Latvian coverage was dominated by anti-Russian rhetoric, aided by some loose play with the historical record. I can't believe that I was the only one to notice that all reports spoke of the Russians having occupied Latvia (and the other Baltic republics) immediately after liberating it from German occupation. As a matter of fact, Soviet bases had to be accepted soon after the beginning of WWII. A little later in 1940 (shortly after I spent a couple of days in Riga waiting to fly from there to Stockholm), the Baltic republics all "voted" to become Soviet republics as part of the Soviet Union, and thus continued following the German occupation.

If anyone believed that vote to be real, the US president at the time certainly did not, nor recognize the resulting annexation. That president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, died 60 years ago, just before the victory that might not have been possible without him. FDR differed in many ways from George W. Bush, who, let's hope, does not intend to start a new cold war with his buddy Vladimir. We sure have come a long way since "that man" did his thing in the 30-40s.

It is hard to believe that Latvian President Vike-Freiberga would have challenged Russia on this occasion the way she did, with George W standing next to her, without having obtained his assent beforehand. Russia's Pres. Putin then came back with a sharp rejoinder about Latvian collaboration with the Nazis. There really was collaboration everywhere. At least from a Jewish perspective, there is little doubt that some Latvian collaborators were among the most vicious. How widespread the collaboration was, compared to others, I neither know nor regard as especially significant now. I do recall a more recent news item, after the Baltic countries regained their independence, about former Latvian SS marching freely, proudly on the streets of Riga, something probably allowed nowhere else, certainly not in Germany. So I can't fault Putin's reaction.

It looks unlikely that only Russians made up the Soviet troops that liberated / occupied Latvia in 1944, rather than also Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Byelorussians et al; Latvians?. Nor can there be legitimate complaints about the Russians having imposed communism on the subject nations of the Tsarist empire, like Latvia, which became independent for the first time following the 1917 Bolshevik takeover. Latvian troops had served in the imperial Russian army. But more than most subject nationalities, Latvians had supported the Bolsheviks hoping to escape the subjection to tsarist autocracy. Latvian troops apparently were the most effective of the early Red Army, and the trusted guards of Lenin and the Bolshevik headquaters were picked from them. Nonetheless, I am not aware of anyone in post Bolshevik Russia expressing anti-Latvian prejudice on that basis.

Moreover, the autocrat in charge of the Soviet Union at the time of the 1940 Baltic takeover and of the 1944 reconquest was not a Russian. Stalin (Djugashvili) was a Georgian, as was Beria, his secret police chief at the time. And Georgia is where George W. Bush had scheduled the visit immediately after the Moscow victory celebration, where many other heads of state attended. Lesser ones? Surely not if judged by this George W performance.

And any comparison with World War II victor FDR is laughable; even if the religious right and neo-con men manage to utilize his administration to further erode the achievements of the New Deal.

VE Day

2005-05-08T18:36:00.000-07:00

So this is VE Day + 60 years. It marks the end of the war in Europe, the beginning of which I had been in the process of describing in earlier postings through my personal experience. It seems better to remember the end of war than its start or its battles. In Vancouver, many restaurants offered special menus; but that was for people who want to celebrate Mothers Day. Hurrah for motherhood. Mothers are probably happier than most about wars ending, too. But everyone ought to be happy about that victory over fascism, certainly including the people in the fascist countries.

In Ottawa there were some events yesterday, but most celebrations are in the Netherlands, where Canadian troops had been fighting some of the last battles of the war. Some fanatical Nazi held positions there actually resisted beyond the formal surrender.

While the official surrender led to wild jubilation in London and New York on this day, in the British army in Italy it was no big deal. The German Army in Italy had already surrendered in April. Mussolini, the originator of fascism had been summarily executed by Italian partisans about the same time. And we were aleady more worried about being sent to Burma, where most casualties came from jungle diseases rather than Japanese fire.

The main commemorative events are to take place tomorrow in Moscow, not without justification.