Remains Of Jewish Nazi Victims Found In France

Remains of Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust have been found in test tubes and a jar in a medical research facility in France.

The tissue samples were discovered in a closed section of the Strasbourg Forensic Medical Institute after being tracked down by a researcher.

Raphael Toledano set out to locate the remains after uncovering a Second World War-era letter from the institute's director that mentioned wartime experiments.

The letter gave details of the storage of the samples taken from Jews killed in gas chambers specifically built for Nazi anatomist August Hirt.

The SS captain was chairman of the Reich University in Strasbourg during the war and worked with others to make detailed examinations of the corpses of inmates murdered in concentration camps.

It was part of an attempt by the Nazis to smear the Jews by 'proving' what the Nazis believed was their inferiority compared to other races.

Some of the victims were taken from Nazi death camps and transported to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in the Vosges mountains in France, about 20 miles (30km) outside of Strasbourg.

According to Le Monde, Mr Toledano worked with the institute's director Professor Jean-Sebastien Raul to identify several items including "a jar containing skin fragments of a victim of the gas chambers".

Also discovered, the newspaper said, was "two tubes containing the contents of an intestine and the stomach of a victim" and a registration list from the Natzweiler-Struthof camp.

Mr Toledano believes the remains are from some of the 86 victims Hirt used to make his comparisons.

The remains of most of the victims were found by the allies when Strasbourg was liberated in 1945, and quickly buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Le Monde reported that the researcher also believes that numbers on a label on one of the jars correspond to a known victim - former Auschwitz prisoner Menachem Taffel.

The Strasbourg mayor's office said it hopes to return the remains to the Jewish community so they can be buried in the city at some time in the future.

Russia looks for new regional footing post-Iran deal

A Russian surface-to-air missile system S-300 PMU2 Favorit drives by during a rehearsal of the Victory Day Parade in Alabino, outside Moscow, April 18, 2012. (photo by Getty Images/Kirill Kudryavtsev)

Russia looks for new regional footing post-Iran deal

In a press statement after the negotiations in Vienna, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov chose his words carefully: “I’d be remiss not to mention the broader context of what happened. The solutions will, first, play an important role in strengthening the nonproliferation regime. Second, they will, of course, have a healing effect on the overall situation in the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf. Third, once this agreement is implemented, it will be possible to tackle other issues in that region.” Clearly, the message was meant to emphasize key takeaways from the deal with Iran. However, real challenges and opportunities for the Russian state stretch far beyond those sugarcoated in diplomatic courtesy. Moreover, the deal is not the culmination but rather the beginning of some serious, complicated multi-level work for Moscow in its relationship with Tehran.

what seemed for years to be a nuclear deadlock, Moscow was believed to be less disturbed than most about the prospects of Iran getting the bomb. Some even opined that it could “live with it.” Indeed, Russia never emphasized the danger as a direct threat, as Washington saw it. Nevertheless, the Russian attitude to this issue was partly dictated by security concerns of another nature: Moscow feared the “export of insecurity” to its own boundaries, should another big war in the region have ignited — partly because the Kremlin probably overestimated its own relationship with the Islamic Republic. In any case, if the deal holds firm, the idea of a non-nuclear Iran is indeed a decent diplomatic achievement for all involved, including Russia.

It is more nuanced on a bilateral level, and the buzz is about arms sales. Russia and Iran are most likely to come up with a new contract that would have Moscow supply Tehran with its S-300 surface-to-air missile systems. Lifting of the sanctions may — and probably will — revise the provisions of the previous deal signed in 2007, under which Russia was to sell six S-300 batteries for a total of $800 million. Lifting the arms embargo was one of Moscow’s top demands for its Western counterparts during the Vienna negotiations, and Russian arms manufacturers and exporters are among the winners of the deal.

Moscow has already clinched several deals with Tehran in commerce and trade. The two sides already have preliminary agreements for a number of joint industrial projects as well others in the aviation, ship construction and car industry that couldn’t be implemented because of the sanctions. The enthusiasm with which Russian entrepreneurs cajole their Iranian colleagues indicates that Russians foresee the likelyreturn of international businesses to the Iranian market. Some tough competition is expected on the part of Europeans (such as French Peugeot) as well as Turkish and UAE-based companies and financial institutions.

On the downside, the lifeblood of the Russian economy — the gas and oil industries — will likely weaken. Currently the issue may be frustrating to the Russians in at least three ways. First, Iran’s full-fledged return to the market will increase supplies and degrade prices, hurting the already limping Russian economy. The morning after the deal was announced, oil prices collapsed to less than $57 per barrel, taking the Russian ruble down with them. Although not an immediate shock to Russian traders, it was an omen of the precarious future of the Russian economy. If Iran is serious about its intent to double its oil exports within six months after the lifting of the sanctions — and it is — the turbulence in prices and currency may become a permanent problem for the Russian economy.

Second, some buyers in the oil market may now seriously consider diversifying their suppliers. Russian energy companies may experience even bigger competition from their Iranian counterparts. Energy experts believe it will be Russia’s top brand Urals oil to take the first hit from Iranian competitors. The brand is similar in its characteristics to Iranian oil and wasused in Europe prior to the sanctions.

Finally, Iran may represent a challenge to the Russian supply. Certainly, there are many security risks and logistical nuances, but once most of the ifs and woulds are resolved, the long debated “Iranian oil route” to Europe may become Russia’s not only market but also geopolitical rival, especially now that the Europeans are considering alternative energy sources. All three groups of potential challenges in this area are well understood, heavily discussed and critically accepted in the Russian energy industry and expert community.

On the international level, assessments are more diverse. While some Russian analysts are positive the deal is a “loss because it inclines Iran more toward the West,” others believe it is a mutual victory for Washington and Moscow alike. In truth, there are many skeptics that the deal will mean an immediate rapprochement between the United States and the Islamic Republic, simply because there are too many obstacles and variables for the Obama administration domestically to take it further than a “legacy milestone.”

However, what could sound like bad news for Moscow is that its status of an informal intermediary between the United States and Iran is no longer needed. Now that the issue is on a settlement path, Russia’s role as wielder of important leverage over Tehran seriously diminishes. But ironically, it gives more leverage to the Kremlin elsewhere. At the press conference, Lavrov reminded listeners of President Barack Obama’s remarks in 2009: “If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security. And the driving force for missile defense construction in Europe will be removed."

"Today," said Lavrov, "we drew the attention of our American colleagues to this. We’ll see what they have to say.” In other words, Moscow regards the deal on Iran not only as a bargaining chip but as a key component for strengthening its security standing in Europe.

As for Iran itself, the deal reinforced the state's role in the region. Tehran’s influence is likely to continue to grow. Even with severe constraints, Tehran was relatively successful in implementing its policies in the region. Now that its wings are no longer clipped, it possesses more resources to leverage its opponents among the Gulf states and Israel if necessary. Likewise, for years Russia has reaped the benefits of Iran’s “limited presence.” Now it has no such advantages. It still enjoys working relations with the Islamic Republic, buoyed by the warm personal chemistry of its leaders. But while the deal carries its own significant opportunities, it's a rather mixed bag for Russia. As Iran will most likely attempt to restore its presence in some of the niches Russians have filled over the years, Moscow will have to craft a coherent strategy not to let the competition acquire an adversarial tint.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/07/russian-interest-iran-deal.html#ixzz3gLjvA3PL

Goldman to Bhadrakumar: Turkey and Iran will escalate in Syria

BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN 

MK, your observations about the shared interest of Turkey and Iran in suppressing Kurdish independence are an point. Logic dictates, though, that both will escalate the conflict in Syria precisely in order to pursue this interest. The sensible and humane thing to do in Syria is to partition the country: let the Assad regime (or its successor) survive as an “Alawistan” in the northwest cost of Syria and the adjacent mountains, with a Sunni entity emerging in the East and center. I do not believe that the United States or Russia would object to this solution. Absent Tehran and Ankara, Obama and Putin could work out a solution to the Syrian problem quickly.

The trouble is that any such partition would make it hard to contain Kurdish separatist ambitions for every long, and impossible to contain them indefinitely. As you observe, Turkey and Iran have the most to lose if the Syrian Kurds assert their independence and link up with their Iraqi brethren.

A related problem is ISIS. This is not the “junior varsity” of President Obama’s infelicitous phrase, but the de facto successor to Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led army. It has experienced officers drawn from the Iraqi military as well as parts of the Sunni Awakening sponsored in 2008-2011 by the United States, and an extensive call on manpower given the massive social disruption in the region. Syrian partition under present circumstances would allow ISIS to dominate the Sunni portion of Syria. Turkey might provide assistance to ISIS on the sly, but it cannot be happy with the prospect of an ISIS-controlled state.

That leaves Iran and Turkey no other choice but to escalate in Syria. Of course, they can lettheir  proxies kill each other in Syria while they boost trade–this after all is the Levant–but Shia-Sunni conflict may not be so easy to contain. Iran has an enormous investment in Syria, and with the end of sanctions it wll have a great deal more resources to commit to the fighting. Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Timing is important: Iran’s nuclear-deal dividend will be available soon, which gives the Sunnis strong motive to act preemptively.

Reuel Marc Gerecht’s July 8 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “The Iran Nuclear Paradox,” argues that the nuclear deal makes a US-Iranian confrontation more likely and more quickly. It is the first piece by Gerecht I agree with, but I would generalize his point: the nuclear deal makes a confrontation between Iran and everyone else more likely, more quickly.  I do not know (and I don’t think anyone knows) how this will play out, but it will be instructive to watch.

Balance of power models of the sort that are taught in political science departments remind me of the economic models taught across the quad: They are invariably one-country, one-period models for purposes of simplification. If you internationalize the Keynesian model, you get Robert Mundell’s supply-side economics, and if you extend the Capital Asset Pricing Model to a number of periods, you destroy all of its assumptions. The balance of power in the Middle East may be improved in the very short-term by giving Iran greater status, but the position of every power in the region sits on shifting sands–catastrophic decline of the youthful population in Iran, the shift in demographic weight towards the Kurds in the case of Turkey, and so forth. To the extent that each side positions itself to preempt foreseeable problems, we get an earlier rather than a later confrontation.

Of course you are correct about the economic benefits of peace with Iran. On this I refer you to Norman Angell’s 1910 book The Great Illusion, which argued that economic interdependency made war futile and therefore unlikely. Republished in 1933, it won Angell the Nobel Peace Prize. Such is our longing to see our neighbors act rationally.

On cue: Iran asks India to invest $8 billion

BY ASIA UNHEDGED 

Iran isn’t wasting any time.

Even before the US Congress approves the recent nuclear arms treaty with Iran, its president, Hassan Rouhani, is asking India to invest in infrastructure projects worth $8 billion. The proposal includes an expanded role in developing Chabahar, a strategic port that will open up access to Central Asia, Iran’s envoy to New Delhi said on Friday, according to Reuters.

Rouhani met with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the emerging markets economic summits in Russia this month. This occurred before the historic nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers was finalized, Iran’s ambassador to India told Reuters. If approved, the nuclear deal would end most economic sanctions on Iran.

Iran’s Chabahar port

India’s foreign ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment, so Modi’s response to the offer remains unknown.

Expecting that the sanctions will be lifted soon,Tehran is making up for lost time. It’s trying to find investment opportunities and launch projects that have been stalled for years because of the sanctions.

In particular, Iran wants to improve transport links in Central Asia. The port of Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman near Iran’s border with Pakistan has been one of these dormant projects. India and Iran agreed to develop the port in 2003.

The move not only helps kick-start the Iranian economy — it helps India economically outflank  archrival Pakistan. Chabahar allows India to circumvent Pakistan as an entry point into landlocked Afghanistan, where Delhi has developed close security ties and economic interests. It also provides a strategic hub for China’s New Silk Road project.

“The potential between Iran and India is great but we were just facing such a wall of sanctions, wall of American pressure,” ambassador Gholamreza Ansari told Reuters. “Connectivity is the main policy of Modi that coincides with Iran’s government policy. We have offered them, in connectivity, $8 billion of projects.”

In May, India’s Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari and his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Ahmad Akhoundi, signed an $85 million deal for India to lease two existing berths at the port and use them as multi-purpose cargo terminals, said Reuters. Under the new proposal India could help build second and third terminals at the port, as well as railway connections into the rest of Iran, Ansari said.

US Iranian Jews: 'we blame ourselves'

In the aftermath of the signing of the nuclear deal with Iran,  Iranian Jews in US blame themselves for not being more vocal about the dangerous politics and goals of the regime, for fear of reprisals against the 10, 000 Jews still in Iran. Karmel Melamed reports in the Jewish Journal:

Detail from the Mullah Jacobs synagogue, Isfahan

Not all Iranian Americans opposed the negotiations at their start, according to Sam Yebri, an attorney and co-founder of 30 Years After, an organization created to engage a younger generation of Jewish Iranian Americans. “Most Iranian Americans welcomed these negotiations at the outset as providing a glimmer of hope that Iran was willing to change its ways as the West was prepared to use its leverage as robustly as possible. Those of us who understand or lived under the Islamic Republic of Iran, we sensed an opportunity, an opening for change,” he said. Yet, “This deal closed the door on any opportunity to transform Iran for the better.”

Yebri added, “The only beneficiaries of this deal will be Iran and its allies Hezbollah and [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and the Russians.”
Many Iranian-Jewish leaders in Los Angeles have long been hesitant to criticize the current Iranian regime for fear of reprisals by the Iranian regime against the nearly 10,000 Jews still living in Iran. Nevertheless, some activists in the local Iranian Jewish community have been very vocal in their efforts to educate Americans about the dangerous nature of the Iranian regime. Some of those expressed concern that the community had not advocated strongly enough against any deal with the Iranians.

“I, for one, blame us, as the Persian-Jewish community, for not being more vocal about these issues of Iran,” Simon Etehad, an Iranian-Jewish attorney and L.A.-area activist, said Tuesday. “We know the politics and goals of the Iranian regime, yet we put our heads in the sand and pretend that everything is fine and dandy — well, it is far from that.”

Frank Nikbakht, a leader of the L.A.-based Committee for Minority Rights in Iran, said the current Iran nuclear deal will embolden the Iranian regime through newfound economic relief in the lifting of sanctions, despite the regime’s heinous human-rights record against the people of Iran.

“Internally, with all the inequalities and atrocities remaining in place, this agreement enhances the regime’s legitimacy, wealth and dictatorial power over a people who will have to deal with an imminent inflationary economy, a higher degree of ruling-class arrogance and a financial corruption surpassing even today’s incredible levels,” Nikbakht said.

David Nahai, an Iranian-American Jewish community member and former L.A. Department of Water and Power chief, said, “If there ever was a deal in history that required robust scrutiny because of the unimaginable consequences of getting things wrong, it is this one. For that reason, I commend the president for seeking congressional approval of this deal … because we can be looking at 100 pages of snakes in the grass here, and we owe it to posterity to have a thorough examination of all the repercussions that are being proposed.

Read article in full

Israeli High Court to state: Broaden plan to defend southern Beduins.

High Court to state: Broaden plan to defend southern Beduins

by YONAH JEREMY BOB, Jerusalem Post

The High Court of Justice suggested to the state on Monday that it broaden its plans for defending southern Beduin from rocket attacks. The state should place more bomb shelters near key public locations such as schools and other public buildings, and report back on the issue within 60 days, the court said.

           These suggestions came after the state—in what the Association for Civil Rights in Israel is calling a “historic first”—announced at the Monday hearing that it was willing in principle to place bomb shelters in Beduin villages in the South, including some that are not legally recognized.

            ACRI took credit on Monday for the state’s willingness to add bomb shelters and the High Court’s more specific push to do so in key areas; the NGO had filed a petition to that effect during the 2014 Gaza war, after some Beduin civilians were killed by Hamas rockets in areas with no bomb shelters. A press release by the NGO said that “until this time, Beduin citizens residing in these villages have had no safe place to hide from rocket attacks.”

            ACRI recalled that the state and the High Court had initially rejected the petition. The petitioners were Omar al-Wakili, the uncle of Maram and Asil Wakili—11 and 13 years old respectively—who were wounded after a rocket fell on their village. Two days after the petition was filed, 32-year-old Auda al-Wadj was killed in a rocket explosion that wounded five members of his family, including a newborn infant, said ACRI.

            The NGO said that its petition defended the right to life and physical integrity and demanded that the state defend all of its citizens equally. It deals with 46 villages, 35 of which the state does not recognize.

            The court said Monday that the state had a duty to distribute resources equally among the population—a statement that ACRI said paved the way for “a judicial recommendation that could save lives.”

            Responding to the High Court interim decision, ACRI attorney Nisreen Alyan declared that “the state has so far reneged on its obligation to supply quality protective measures to village residents. Hopefully it will use this period to formulate sufficient protective solutions for the 100,000 Beduin citizens who are still living under threat of rocket fire, and who have no places to run or hide.”

           The Justice Ministry responded to the ruling, saying that the state’s and the High Court’s initial rejection of the 2014 petition had been based on security experts’ evaluation of limited resources for defending the home front. The assessment at the time, the ministry said, was that many areas considered more vulnerable than the Beduin villages were still undefended.

            The ministry added that despite the High Court’s rejecting the immediate request to install bomb shelters, the state, at the court’s request, had undertaken a longer-term review of the possibility of installing bomb shelters in the Beduin villages. That review concluded in May.

            Furthermore, the Justice Ministry said, the High Court’s ruling essentially validated the extensive work the state had already done on the issue, such as integrating the villages into the Iron Dome defense system’s protected space, and launching an educational campaign to better prepare the villagers for safety measures.

 

* This might be an ideal opportunity for the EU to offer an official supply of shelters, similar to their unofficial supply of several hundred pre-fab homes in Judea & Samaria. Further, the Scottish Government might wish to make a donation towards shelters for the Beduin, as they did for Gaza, showing their impartiality. Even the Church of Scotland could be asked to dig a little deeper into their pockets for such a humanitarian cause.

Renaud Sarda 

Scottish Friends of Israel 

 

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/european-union-building-illegally-for.html

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-28577271

 

 

As usual from Church of Scotland blog July 2015; "Palestinians are the victims. Jews are the perpetrators".

http://cos.churchofscotland.org.uk/blogs/witness-in-jerusalem/2015/07/06/sitting-in-the-judgment-gate/

 

“Palestinians who have their homes and olive groves demolished to make way for Jewish settlements are dispossessed and deprived of all dignity in the land of their birth. Palestinian children who have to cross military checkpoints every day to get to school and back, because the Separation Wall has been built through their communities, are being brought up in a climate of fear, deprivation and intimidation. The violent response of Hamas and other Islamist groups is both wrong and ineffective: it only provides Israel with a justification to deploy overwhelming force. Every missile fired out of Gaza only brings collective punishment on the Palestinians and strengthens the resolve of the Israeli government and military. Many Palestinians adhere to nonviolence. If this could be embraced more widely, it would be a far more powerful weapon that would pull the rug from under Hamas and deprive the Israeli government of any excuse for using force”.

John McCulloch, July 6, 2015

 

http://cos.churchofscotland.org.uk/blogs/witness-in-jerusalem/2015/07/10/tempted-by-violence/ 

 

“If the church is to have any place in our 21st-century world, it will be by rediscovering the core message of Christ, which calls us to live out our worship and adoration of God in service to others. If we love our neighbours, then justice follows as a direct result”.

John McCulloch, July 10, 2015

 

John McCulloch, is currently doing a six-week summer placement in St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem. John is about to enter his third year of training for the ministry with the Church of Scotland. His training is going well and seems in accordance with Church of Scotland doctrine.

 

Palestinians are the victims. Jews are the perpetrators of violence and dispossession. The violence of Islamic terrorists is always and only in response to aggression from an Israel ever looking for an excuse to “deploy overwhelming force”.

Yet, he does, grudgingly, concede that the Church of Scotland has still to find a place in the 21st century. But only if it can change its ways (Perhaps he is referring to its recent embrace of revisionist teachings – Kairos)

 

While a previous Moderator (Lorna Hood) and her successors can continue to ignore the institutional anti-Semitism within their organisation, I think that place in the 21st century is still far off.

Renaud Sarda 

SFI