Dutch Lawyer who saved Jewish Boy in WWII returns Medal to Israel over Bombing of his Family in Gaza

[kpete]

Dutch Lawyer who saved Jewish Boy in WWII returns Medal to Israel over Bombing of his Family in Gaza
By Juan Cole | Aug. 16, 2014 |

Henk Zanoli, a 91-year-old Dutch attorney who in 1943 saved a Jewish boy from the Nazis, has returned to Israel the “Righteous among the Nations” medal awarded him three years ago by the Yad Vashem museum. Zanoli’s mother had sheltered the boy, Elchanan Pinto, at risk to her own life, until the end of the war.

Zanoli’s grand-niece married a Palestinian, Ismail Ziadah, who had a house in Gaza where some of his relatives continued to reside. On July 20, an Israeli fighter jet bombed Ziadah’s home, killing his mother, three of his brothers, his sister-in-law and a nephew. These were, as Zanoli noted in his letter to the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, the blood relatives of Zanoli’s mother’s own descendants: “The great- great grandchildren of my mother have lost their grandmother, three uncles, an aunt and a cousin at the hands of the Israeli army…”
He said to the ambassador:

“I understand that in your professional role, in which I am addressing you here, you may not be able to express understanding for my decision. However, I am convinced that at both a personal and human level you will have a profound understanding of the fact that for me to hold on to the honour granted by the State of Israel, under these circumstances, will be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family, four generations on, who lost no less than six of their relatives in Gaza at the hands of the State of Israel.”

the rest:
http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/returns-israel-bombing.html

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. He had to return the medal, heartbreaking though that is.

It was a grand, heroic and ultimately useless gesture.

Useless? Because the state of Israel will give this gesture no attention, none at all.

K&R

[malaise]

4. I disagree CaliforniaPeggy

The state of Israel's response does not matter. Living up to a family tradition of decency re the right to life, human rights and international law - now that matters. His mother would be proud of him and so am I.

[marmar]

2. K/R

[malaise]

3. Get thee to the greatest page

Thank you Henk Zanoli - convictions matter

May the world see how you and your family handled and handle genocide and violations of human rights and international law.

[JEB]

5. K&R Henk Zanoli= real mensch

[TexasProgresive]

6. K&R

[Pisces]

7. K & R!!

[Purveyor]

8. Related NYT Article: Resisting Nazis, He Saw Need for Israel. Now He Is Its Critic

By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE and ANNE BARNARDAUG. 15, 2014

THE HAGUE — In 1943, Henk Zanoli took a dangerous train trip, slipping past Nazi guards and checkpoints to smuggle a Jewish boy from Amsterdam to the Dutch village of Eemnes. There, the Zanoli family, already under suspicion for resisting the Nazi occupation, hid the boy in their home for two years. The boy would be the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.

Seventy-one years later, on July 20, an Israeli airstrike flattened a house in the Gaza Strip, killing six of Mr. Zanoli’s relatives by marriage. His grandniece, a Dutch diplomat, is married to a Palestinian economist, Ismail Ziadah, who lost three brothers, a sister-in-law, a nephew and his father’s first wife in the attack.

On Thursday, Mr. Zanoli, 91, whose father died in a Nazi camp, went to the Israeli Embassy in The Hague and returned a medal he received honoring him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations — non-Jews honored by Israel for saving Jews during the Holocaust. In an anguished letter to the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, he described the terrible price his family had paid for opposing Nazi tyranny.

“My sister lost her husband, who was executed in the dunes of The Hague for his involvement in the resistance,” he wrote. “My brother lost his Jewish fiancée who was deported, never to return.”

Mr. Zanoli continued, “Against this background, it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel.”

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/world/middleeast/henk-zanoli-israel-gaza-holocaust-ziadah.html

[calimary]

9. This story just hurts my heart.

Such anguish.

That slogan - "a world of hurt" - sure applies here. Shit - all over the "here." We all so greatly need contemplation and healing and a little personal retreat. Something involving beauty, kindness, serenity. Calm. And sustaining, not diminishing. Sustaining, not destructive. It's just felt like body blow after body blow, at least psychically.

I don't suffer from severe depression - or at least I think I don't. But it just struck me, just now, writing this - could it be that we are collectively going through some sort of spell of a severe depression - now? I am NO expert! So I make no claims of any expertise and any more entitlement to sit here and pontificate than the next guy. Because anonymous discussion boards. And all that.

But I find I've been deep in contemplation of the human condition lately. What - I dunno - seems to be built into our bone marrow and mitochondria. Evolution and the ages speaking to us and moving through us. My husband and I just talked about it a moment ago. Again that clip of the big kid in the little local quickie-mart and some cigars. My husband said - the other sad fact is that this shit (convenience store robberies) does happen, and in EVERY community. It's just young guys. That's guys. That's what some of us do." He's usually pretty insightful.

It suddenly occurred to me that - shit! I can't think of too many female-perpetrator videos I've seen. I'm sure there are a few but I can't think of any at the moment. I always flash to the male-perp ones. Doesn't matter what color person it is. It's the gender.

And then we got into a discussion about "Things Men Do." He said - "that's what young guys do. It's what men are conditioned to do. They were more likely to be the hunters. And they needed to go out and basically be fierce. Bravery, bravado, pushing forward - literally/physically, jumping in head first." Asserting dominance. Attempting to overpower and overwhelm, in other words. Basic (pardon the pun) caveman stuff. And I said - "see, that just strikes me as the dumbest, least-likely-to-succeed approach possible. You have to think this stuff through. You can't approach stuff like you're taking a baseball bat to a hornet's nest!"

And he described it as very basic to our nature. My husband is a science-wonk, and he takes seriously the theories of evolution, natural selection, and survival of the fittest. He takes astronomy books and magazines to the bathroom with him. When we were first together, it was math books. As he framed it, men are the chaos, women are the stabilizers. Could it be that basic? Could it be as basic as active/passive? Yin/yang? Is humanity one big push me/pull you machine? And for how many ages has humanity studied this and contemplated it and hypothesized about it?

We've had a week filled with smacks in the face with various figurative 2x4s. One of those 2x4s was Robin Williams. Another was Michael Brown. On top of the hurt and chaos seemingly everywhere. Robin Williams brought depression full frontal for many of us who'd never thought it through that deeply and intimately before. Made it personal. And something about the whole Ferguson MO tragedy really brought some things home to a lot of us who don't have to live under that big boot like our dark-skinned brothers and sisters do. That made it personal. I don't know why this one touched such a nerve and resulted in such serious discussion that even, finally, brought the President and the Attorney General and many more working down the food chain in on it. Maybe it was the ham-handed war-toy response of the local cops? Maybe it was just Critical Mass Time. Straw meet overloaded back of camel.

I think we really seriously need to know. Mad-Eye Moody said that, too, to Harry Potter all the time. Just as he always cautioned - "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!!" (And I repeat that here probably to the point of nausea for everybody else - sorry!) he also said "You've GOT to KNOW!!!!" To KNOW. Really and seriously, truly-madly-deeply. To grok. The concept presented in Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" about the depth of understanding. You "get" or internalize or understand something so completely and intimately that it is as though you ate it. We have to grok this. Because perhaps it's only "getting" it, living with it and thinking about it and seeing it and hearing it discussed, can we ever even HOPE to get some sort of control of it, manage it to the least detriment of everyone.

Maybe what's happened this week is a baptism of fire? To motivate us to get beyond the politics and the name-calling and the anger and the resentment and the bitterness and the mourning and the sadness and the outrage and the long held grudges and misconceptions and misunderstandings...

To understand who we are at our most basic and what makes us tick and move and act on it - or not. And why we are who and what we are. When it gets this personal, and hits us this hard. Maybe if we, at long last, can get a handle on THAT...

It gets people talking, at least. And talking's a lot better than hitting. Or shooting.

Aw crap - sorry this is so long...

[Enthusiast]

10. Kicked and recommended!

Israel, wake the fuck up!