Auschwitz memento thief is top Herzliya official

Motti Posloszny and his wife were fined and given two-year suspended sentences for stealing items from the former Nazi death camp. Gili Cohen reports in Haaretz. Hat tip to Meir Javedanfar for the following:

"He said he made a mistake," one official said. "I don't know what would come over a man to make him steal from Auschwitz. It's completely insane."

"It's very sad - for him, for his family and for the municipality," the official added. "This is the largest department in Herzliya; it has everything. This is inconceivable."

Posloszny returned to Israel on Sunday after having spent a night in a Polish jail. He and his wife were fined and given a two-year suspended sentence; the Polish prosecutor said the fine would be used to help preserve exhibits at the camp, which now serves as a museum. Posloszny could not be reached for comment yesterday.

According to Reuters, the couple stole nine items - including spoons, knives, scissors and porcelain bottle stoppers - from a warehouse where the personal effects seized from prisoners at the former Nazi camp are stored. They were arrested at the Krakow airport with the items in their possession.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/auschwitz-memento-thief-is-top-herzliya-official-1.369942

Flotilla spoof video distributed 'in error'

Uh oh - not everyone got the joke on this clip, apparently. Once nine bullet-ridden corpses were added to the mix (as well an additional half dozen activists who remain missing in action) the international press corps in Jerusalem was less than amused.
Perhaps the skit, with its 25 year old tune, should have been relegated to Jew-Tube or Saturday Night Lifeless. The Guardian newspaper's Rachel Shabi reports on the questionable video which features the vitriolic Jerusalem Post scribe Caroline Glick in a keffiyah.

The Israeli government has been forced to apologise for circulating a spoof video mocking activists aboard the Gaza flotilla, nine of who were shot dead by Israeli forces last week.

The YouTube clip, set to the tune of the 1985 charity single We Are the World, features Israelis dressed as Arabs and activists, waving weapons while singing: "We con the world, we con the people. We'll make them all believe the IDF (Israel Defence Force) is Jack the Ripper."

It continues: "There's no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the biggest bluff of all."

The Israeli government press office distributed the video link to foreign journalists at the weekend, but within hours emailed them an apology, saying it had been an error. Press office director Danny Seaman said the video did not reflect official state opinion, but in his personal capacity he thought it was "fantastic".

Government spokesman Mark Regev said the video reflected how Israelis felt about the incident. "I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny," he said. "It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it."

The clip features a group led by the Jerusalem Post's deputy managing editor Caroline Glick, wearing keffiyehs and calling themselves the Flotilla Choir. The footage is interspersed with clips from the recent Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound aid ship, the Mavi Marmara.

The clip has been praised in Israel, where the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot said the singers "defended Israel better than any of the experts".

But Didi Remez, an Israeli who runs the liberal-left news analysis blog Coteret, said the clip was "repulsive" and reflected how out of touch Israeli opinion was with the rest of the world. "It shows a complete lack of understanding of how the incident is being perceived abroad," he said. Award-winning Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport said the clip demonstrated prejudice against Muslims. "It's roughly done, not very sophisticated, anti-Muslim – and childish for the government to be behind such a clip," he said.

A similar press office email was sent to foreign journalists two weeks ago, recommending a gourmet restaurant and Olympic-sized swimming pool in Gaza to highlight Israel's claim there is no humanitarian crisis there. Journalists who complained the email was in poor taste were told they had "no sense of humour".

Last week, the Israel Defence Force had to issue a retraction over an audio clip it had claimed was a conversation between Israeli naval officials and people on the Mavi Marmara, in which an activist told soldiers to "go back to Auschwitz". The clip was carried by Israeli and international press, but today the army released a "clarification/correction", explaining that it had edited the footage and that it was not clear who had made the comment.

The Israeli army also backed down last week from an earlier claim that soldiers were attacked by al-Qaida "mercenaries" aboard the Gaza flotilla. An article appearing on the IDF spokesperson's website with the headline: "Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be al-Qaida mercenaries", was later changed to "Attackers of the IDF Soldiers found without identification papers," with the information about al-Qaida removed from the main article. An army spokesperson told the Guardian there was no evidence proving such a link to the terror organisation.

Space Case:big boys with toys aim to convert cosmos to killing fields

Four years ago, a miniature Torah, once smuggled out of a Nazi concentration camp, was carried aboard the space shuttle by the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who was the son and grandson of Auschwitz Holocaust survivors. Bits of this tiny Torah were sprinkled all over Palestine from outer space.

Palestine,Texas, that is: the historically resonant name of the Columbia shuttle crash site.

Although security surrounding Columbia's liftoff and landing had been stepped up to avert any terrorists tempted to target an Israeli officer aboard, the flight ended in tragedy because of faulty insulation.

"I'm secular in my background, but I'm going to respect all kinds of Jews all over the world," Ramon had said before the launch, and he ate only kosher meals in orbit and kept the Sabbath. Aside from the cherished mini-Torah, Ramon also had carried a small pencil sketch of a "Moon Landscape" by Peter Ginz, a 14-year-old Jewish boy who dreamed of outer space while imprisoned at a concentration camp but did not survive Auschwitz. Tragically, in spite of all the uplifting symbols, all seven Columbia astronauts died upon re-entry because of a malfunction of protective foam which exposed fuel tanks to hyper-temperatures.

Against all odds, a similar tiny Torah did make it back from space, two years later, carried by Steve MacLean, a Canadian astronaut, aboard the shuttle Atlantis.

Sadly, all these cosmic overtones of space flight and exploration now are being cast away.

Awe-struck space explorers are getting shunted aside by three-star generals with earthbound morals and sky-high budgets, and the public sits idly by. It is poignant that Neil Armstrong, the born-again Christian who was the first man to walk on the moon, told an Israeli archaeologist in 1979 that he was far more excited to walk on the same stones in Jerusalem that Jesus had trodden than to take his famous small step onto the lunar landscape.

Suddenly, after a Chinese test blasted apart a defunct weather satellite in orbit on January 11th, some world leaders insist it is time to gird for battle in space. Israeli Air Force Chief Major General Elazar Shkedy was quoted on the Jerusalem Post's front page, expounding on this topic:
“It is hard to imagine fighting a war without these [space-based] assets. Israel will develop its capabilities in space in the coming years as the connection between the military and space is growing. The Americans, Indians and Chinese are all investing huge sums of money in space....Battle in space is on our agenda, whether we want it there or not.”

Meanwhile, the name of the air force has been upgraded to reflect this change: starting this month, it is now designated the Israel Air and Space Command. And there is a growing uneasiness among the military that Tehran aims to target Israeli surveillance satellites as soon as they have the know-how. Izzy despairs that the space race has gone from rhapsodic to rapacious so quickly.