Segev Shushan (28) And Anita Lisman (25) Z"l Were Murdered By Hamas Terrorists In The Re'im Music Festival

Segev Shushan (28) and Anita Lisman (25) z"l were murdered by hamas terrorists in the Re'im music festival massacre in the south of Israel, on October 7th, 2023. Anita and Segev were a couple, they had moved in together not long before the Nova festival. Each of them left behind parents, siblings, other family members and friends. May they rest in peace.

שגב שושן (7.1.1995-7.10.2023) ואניטה ליסמן (30.9.1998-7.10.2023) ז''ל נרצחו על ידי מחבלי חמאס בטבח במסיבת הטבע נובה ליד רעים ב7 לאוקטובר, כ''ב תשרי, תשפ''ד. שגב היה צלם, אניטה הייתה סטודנטית למנהל עסקים. יהי זכרם ברוך. ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I’m thinking about the documentary, Shoah. What I linked below is only part one, and I think part two is also right on YouTube. It is 9.5 hours long and is essentially nothing but witness testimony.

I understand why people wouldn’t have time to watch it, but I at least want to tell you about it. Roger Ebert actually wrote a great review of it, and I’ll include some excerpts here:

“There is no proper response to this film. It is an enormous fact, a 550-minute howl of pain and anger in the face of genocide. It is one of the noblest films ever made.”

There is a part where a Czech Jewish man named Filip Muller is interviewed. He had to work the door of the gas chambers. I won’t put his descriptions of the dead bodies here, but Ebert said:

“The images evoked by his words are unutterably painful. What is remarkable, on reflection, is that Muller is describing an event that neither he nor anyone else now alive ever saw. I realized, at the end of his words, that a fundamental change had taken place in the way I personally visualized the gas chambers. Always before, in reading about them or hearing about them, my point of view was outside, looking in. Muller put me inside. That is what this whole movie does, and it is probably the most important thing it does. It changes our point of view about the Holocaust. After nine hours of ‘Shoah,’ the Holocaust is no longer a subject, a chapter of history, a phenomenon. It is an environment. It is around us. Ordinary people speak in ordinary voices of days that had become ordinary to them.”

He talks about the calm and really unsettling interviews with former Nazis:

“Some of the strangest passages in the film are the interviews with the officials who were actually responsible for running the camps and making the ‘Final Solution’ work smoothly and efficiently. None of them, at least by their testimony, seem to have witnessed the whole picture. They only participated in a small part of it, doing their little jobs in their little corners; if they are to be believed, they didn't personally kill anybody, they just did small portions of larger tasks, and somehow all of the tasks, when added up and completed, resulted in people dying…The message of this film (if we believe in the brotherhood of man) is that these crimes were committed by people like us, against people like us.”

Filip Muller, mentioned earlier, shared his moment of despair when he heard the group of Czech Jews entering the gas chamber sing the Czech national anthem and “Hatikva.” He wanted to go inside and die with them:

“Q. You were inside the gas chamber?

A. Yes. One of them said: ‘So you want to die. But that's senseless. Your death won't give us back our lives. That's no way. You must get out of here alive, you must bear witness to our suffering and to the injustice done to us.’”

If you ever possibly have the time, please watch this, even just some of it. I can’t remember why I decided to watch this a few years ago, but I’m glad I did.

New English Review

In Memoriam

by Phyllis Chesler Day after day, I stare at their beautiful faces, learn their names, and read about the Israeli soldiers who have fallen i

by Phyllis Chesler

Day after day, I stare at their beautiful faces, learn their names, and read about the Israeli soldiers who have fallen in battle. I try to imagine their lives in all the cities of the land, lives cut so short. I salute them. I weep for them, and will always remember them.

The fallen soldiers are mainly men–boys really–in their early twenties, although some are only 19. Thus far, over 500 Israeli soldiers have been killed in battle; 168 in Gaza since 10/7.

Demographically speaking, this is equivalent to approximately 18,444 fallen American soldiers.

In addition, three thousand members of the IDF have been wounded which is the equivalent, demographically, to 110,666 wounded American soldiers.

Although one does not hear about this very much, about 200,000 Israelis have been displaced, pulled back from both the north and the south. This is the demographic equivalent of more than seven–nearly eight–million displaced American civilians.

Imagine the cost of such relocation, imagine the trauma of such internal exile.

This is a nightmare, a horror, a continuation of the atrocities launched by Hamas against Israel on 10/7.

You would not know any of this if all you read was the Western media. With some honorable exceptions, your attention would be primarily focused on the number of Gazans dead–statistics which routinely combine Hamas’s soldiers with pro-Hamas Gazan civilians. Even so, one can never trust the totally untrustworthy statistics issued by Hamas.

Where is the media and activist outcry about the Red Cross’s craven refusal to visit the Israeli hostages and to deliver medicine to the sick and dying? Where is the world’s righteous indignation about the Arab Muslim world’s refusal to allow Gazan civilians even temporary asylum?

Jews have watered our ancient homeland with their blood. Arabs have always, always attacked Jews, whether they lived in Iraq or Syria, in Morocco or Iran, or in the Holy Land. Jihad against the infidel always meant “Kill the Jews first.”

In the 1948 war of Independence, 4000 Israeli soldiers and 2000 Israeli civilians were murdered.

I’ve been told that during the Six Day War of self-defense in 1967, more than 700 soldiers fell in six days but no one knew this, (there were no cellphones), and so “it did not affect morale.”

According to Ambassador Michael Oren, 2,656 Israeli soldiers were killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. 

So many wars of self-defense, so many false accusations that Israel launched only unjust wars of aggression.

Nine or more wars later–here we are again.

One Israeli told me that his young soldier son has just lost thirteen friends, “real friends,” who have fallen in battle, and “how each funeral is devastating.” But he adds: “When you see the amazing kids this country has raised, you feel even more how lucky they were to grow up in this country and that this truly is a special place worth defending.”

Another Israeli described the unending shiva calls and how “the burial grounds are a place of honor, love, solace, and community. When one visits the homes of the bereaved, the mourners are surrounded by supporters from their towns and loved ones.”

The spirit of the people is amazing. I received a Newsletter about how a platoon of army reservists on their way to Gaza were treated at the Jerusalem market. The entire line of shoppers insisted on paying for their food and would not take “No” for an answer.

A third Israeli broke my heart with her eloquence. She wrote: “These dutiful Israeli soldiers will not grow old. Nor hug their parents again, nor meet someone they will love, nor parent, nor stroll in a Nature preserve in their beautiful land….ever again.”

Finally, the most humbling email I’ve received to date, was from an Israeli mother whose sons were in combat. She said that my words sustained her and functioned as a light in the darkness.

Oh, but they will all be enshrined in both history and memory. However, they were so young! I am about sixty years older than many of them and thousands of miles away. How many universes have been lost? How many future children and grandchildren will never be born?

When will the American government finally understand that Islamist Jihad is a religious war against infidels, (Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’i), a war launched by Islamist barbarians? What will it take for Western journalists and academics to understand that the Jihadists are coming for the Sunday people next; that Iran has Europe and America in its gunsights?

Most important, when will our government decide to respond to Iran’s attacks on America?

Mari Jääskeläinen on Instagram

Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald

“Arbeit macht frei” = “work sets you free”

“Jedem das Seine” = “to each what he deserves”