Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Jewish pirates of the Caribbean


  ...THE MOST famous of the Caribbean’s Jewish pirates, or privateers, was Moses Cohen Henriques. His name is of Portuguese origin. Like many of his contemporary buccaneers, Henriques’s life is shrouded in mystery. Together with Dutch folk hero Admiral Piet Pieterszoon Hein, Henriques captured a Spanish treasure fleet off Cuba’s Bay of Matanzas in 1628. The booty of gold and silver bullion amounted to a staggering 11,509,524 guilders, worth around US$1 billion in today’s currency. It was the Dutch West Indies Company’s greatest heist in the Caribbean.Another notable – if poorly documented – Jewish pirate was Yaakov Koriel, who commanded three pirate ships in the Caribbean. Upon repenting, he retired to Safed where he studied mysticism under the famous kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria (known as the holy Ari). Koriel is buried near the Ari’s grave in the Upper Galilee town’s Old Cemetery. Similarly a pirate named David Abrabanel, evidently from the same family as the famous Spanish rabbinic dynasty (which included Don Isaac Abrabanel who fled Spain in 1492 after unsuccessfully trying to bribe Ferdinand and Isabella to rescind their catastrophic expulsion decree), joined British privateers after his family was butchered off the South American coast. He used the nom de guerre “Captain Davis” and commanded his own pirate vessel named Jerusalem.
Henriques, Koriel and Abrabanel spoke Ladino, and knew the sting of the anti-Semitic slur marrano, meaning pig. The most infamous American Jewish freebooter spoke French, and knew the insult of maudit juif (damned Jew).
A US national park in Louisiana proudly bears the name of Jean Lafitte of New Orleans. According to the aforementioned author Edward Kritzler, the kosher swashbuckler was the inspiration for Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.According to retired political science professor Edward Bernard Glick (“Lafitte’s Jewish origins,” The Jerusalem Post, July 14, 2006) “[Lafitte] was a Sephardi Jew, as was his first wife, who was born in the Danish Virgin Islands. In his prime, Lafitte ran not just one pirate sloop but a whole fleet of them simultaneously. He even bought a blacksmith shop in New Orleans, which he used as a front for fencing pirate loot. And he was one of the few buccaneers who didn’t die in battle, in prison or on the gallows.”...


http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Jewish-pirates-of-the-Caribbean-447397

& wiki

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Israelis in germany, how many



  The Frankfurt-based pro-Israel media watchdog NGO Honestly Concerned filed a

complaint with the Press Council in late 2014 against SZ because of the article.

Schmitz’s claim that tens of thousands of Israelis sought refuge in Germany was

contradicted by Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. The Office

reported a total of 11,655 Israelis living in Germany in 2013. In 2012, 11,244 Israeli

citizens lived in the Federal Republic.
.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Rainer Höss, the grandson of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, is active in Holocaust education

Grandson of infamous Nazi spends lifetime making amends for namesake's atrocities
Rainer Höss, the grandson of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, is active in Holocaust education and preaches tolerance.

Rainer Höss



THE HÖSS family (from left to right) Ingebrigitt; Klaus; Rudolf’s wife Hedwig, holding Annegret; Rudolf Hoess, Hans- Rudolf (Rainer’s father); and Heidetraut.

http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/The-sins-of-the-grandfather-437607


Thursday, December 24, 2015

IDF Christian recruits on rise as soldiers gather for Christmas party




Father Gabriel Naddaf of Nazareth recently gathered some of these Israeli Christian soldiers for a Christmas party at an IDF base in northern Israel, delivering treats and thanking them for their service to Israel.  Father Gabriel Naddaf of Nazareth recently gathered some of these Israeli Christian soldiers for a Christmas party at an IDF base in northern Israel, delivering treats and thanking them for their service to Israel.  Naddaf's Israeli Christians Recruitment Forum, with support from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, seeks to increase the number of Christian Arabs enlisting in the IDF.According to figures provided by the IFCJ, the number of Christians drafted into the IDF has steadily increased from just 40 in 2012 to more than 100 in 2014 and in March of 2015 alone, 102 Christian Arabs were inducted into the army, through the Israeli Christians Recruitment Forum.  “I believe Israel's Christian community should integrate more into mainstream Israeli society,” Naddaf recently said. “Why do the Druse serve? Why do the Beduin serve? But not the Christians? It's because they're scared. This has to change. It's time to say in a loud and clear voice: Enough," he added.  At a recent Jerusalem ceremony, Naddaf, who prefers to call Arab Christians Israeli Christians, thanked “Christian donors around the world” for supporting him through IFCJ.  IFCJ's founder and president, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, told Naddaf at the ceremony: “You're at the forefront of a just cause. Trust, equality and mutual assistance between citizens is crucial for the continued existence of a just and strong Israeli society.”IFCJ estimates that there are an estimated 165,000 Arab Christians in Israel. 

In historic first, Israel to award academic prizes to 40 IDF Christian veterans