Jews, Camps, and the Red Cross

An interesting article. Reference to the Red Cross of the 1940's,
brought me back to my childhood, growing up as a Working Class kid in
a White Collar All White community in Seattle. In my school we held
God, the Flag, Mother, Apple Pie, and the Red Cross as Sacred. Oh
yes, we included the March of Dimes at certain times. During our
daily flag salute, some teachers offered up short prayers to our all
white, christian God, asking Him to watch over and protect the above
mentioned Sacred Ones.
I believed that all of our pennies and dimes that we dropped into the
collection jars, went to help people all around the world who had been
driven from their homes by floods, earthquakes, tornadoes and mud
slides.
In my All White cocoon on Queen Ann Hill, I thought in terms of an all
white world. Even though I knew there were Asians and Africans who
looked different than "My People", I just didn't think of our Red
Cross helping them. But that was my boyish view of the world. For
some years I clung to this notion that the Red Cross spent every cent
on charity, and I gladly put my coins in the collection jars.
It wasn't until my best buddy joined the Coast Guard, and was sent out
to aid flood victims North of Seattle, that I learned of a very
different Red Cross. In fact, the subject didn't come up until some
time later when the Red Cross drive was in full swing. Dick said, "I
wouldn't give them a single red cent". I was startled. He went on to
tell me of sloshing through the flood waters, searching for survivors
and escorting them to shelters where the Red Cross had set up
canteens. "They charged everyone for everything. Even the civilian
volunteers were shaken down for "donations" in order to get a cup of
coffee."
I told Dick that this was a shock to me. I believed that my donations
were used to provide these services free to those in need. And I was
angry that people giving their time and even risking their lives would
be expected to pay.
Dick was honest to a fault, but nonetheless, I began checking into the
"charity" provided by the Red Cross. And I looked up the
administrative costs. I no longer have the figures for that time
period back in the 1950's, but it can be found on-line for current
costs.
My wife and I give to many Causes, but for the past sixty years I've
not given one cent to the Red Cross.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/8/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Jews, Camps, and the Red Cross
> 2Nov
> A mini-controversy has broken out over a new research paper that analyzes
> four detention camps Israel ran during and after the 1948 war. There the
> Israelis held some 5000 Palestinians, who were subject to forced labor,
> beatings, torture, and ritual humiliations. Writing in Haaretz, Amira Hass
> cites the testimony of one former inmate, who claims that prisoners were
> lined up and ordered to strip naked as a punishment for the escape of two
> prisoners at night. [Jewish] adults and children came from the nearby
> kibbutz to watch us line up naked and laugh. To us this was most degrading.
> All told, Israel may have run as many as twenty of these camps from 1948 to
> 1955, and may have held several thousand additional prisoners, but only
> four
> camps are officially acknowledged and were subject to international
> inspection.
> One of the more disturbing elements in this relatively unknown chapter from
> early years of Israel's existence is the connections between the forced
> labor in the camps and Israel's economy. As Yazan al-Saadi reports in Al
> Akhbar:
> The policy of targeting civilians, particular "able-bodied" men, was not
> accidental according to the study. It states, "with tens of thousands of
> Jewish men and women called up for military service, Palestinian civilian
> internees constituted an important supplement to the Jewish civilian labor
> employed under emergency legislation in maintaining the Israeli economy,"
> which even the ICRC delegation had noted in their reports.
> The prisoners were forced to do public and military work, such as drying
> wetlands, working as servants, collecting and transporting looted refugee
> property, moving stones from demolished Palestinian homes, paving roads,
> digging military trenches, burying the dead, and much more.
> As one former Palestinian detainee named Habib Mohammed Ali Jarada
> described
> in the study, "At gunpoint, I was made to work all day. At night, we slept
> in tents. In winter, water was seeping below our bedding, which was dry
> leaves, cartons and wooden pieces."
> Another prisoner in Umm Khalid, Marwan Iqab al-Yehiya said in an interview
> with the authors, "We had to cut and carry stones all day [in a quarry].
> Our
> daily food was only one potato in the morning and half dried fish at night.
> They beat anyone who disobeyed orders."
> Because of the forced labor, the torture, threats, beatings, and
> humiliations, the specter of concentration camps has inevitably risen. As
> Hass writes:
> In an article about the Palestinian study published on the Lebanese website
> Al Akhbar, Abu Sitta [one of the article's authors] said that German Jews
> were among the guards at the detention camps (a detail that does not appear
> in his article in the Journal of Palestine Studies). Whether they were
> German Jews or not, forcing prisoners to line up naked and using boots on
> those who fall are part of the family histories of many of us, but from the
> other side.
> Israeli historians vigorously dispute these claims:
> Aaron J. Klein, an Israeli historian and author, said he was shocked to
> read
> the new study. Klein had researched the very same issue in the late 1990s
> for his master's thesis at the Hebrew University. A version of it was later
> published in a collection of works on the War of Independence, edited by
> Kadish. Klein said the new study adds nothing to the facts already revealed
> and published in his thesis. He described himself as "disgusted" by the
> attempt to describe Israeli POW camps as concentration camps. "This is an
> attempt to enlist another piece of history to the Palestinian narrative,
> but
> it isn't serious," Klein said.
> His reading of the documents from the time paints a picture of an Israeli
> leadership eager to win international legitimacy by adhering to the Geneva
> Convention and working with the Red Cross. The civilians arrested by Israel
> were legally recognized as POWs; their internment conditions were no better
> or worse than those of all Israeli soldiers at the time, and working
> outside
> the camps was seen as beneficial to the inmates. "Whoever reads the reports
> sees that the Red Cross understood the circumstances and gave Israel, all
> in
> all, good grades."
> .
> The Israeli researchers argued that it would be a mistake to give oral
> testimonies recorded 60 years after the events took place the same
> credibility as Red Cross reports that were documented and prepared in real
> time.
> I haven't yet read the research article, which appeared in the Journal of
> Palestine Studies. But from the reports in the media, it seems as if the
> Red
> Cross records actually provide a great deal of the evidence for the
> authors'
> claims.
> Regardless, it's a bit unnerving to hear Jewish Israeli historians cite Red
> Cross good housekeeping seals of approval as evidence of a camp's
> benignity.
> The Red Cross of the 1940s doesn't exactly have the best record on that
> score. As Jews of all people should know.
> Jews, Camps, and the Red Cross
> 2Nov
> A mini-controversy has broken out over a new research paper that analyzes
> four detention camps Israel ran during and after the 1948 war. There the
> Israelis held some 5000 Palestinians, who were subject to forced labor,
> beatings, torture, and ritual humiliations. Writing in Haaretz, Amira Hass
> cites the testimony of one former inmate, who claims that prisoners were
> lined up and ordered to strip naked as a punishment for the escape of two
> prisoners at night. [Jewish] adults and children came from the nearby
> kibbutz to watch us line up naked and laugh. To us this was most degrading.
> All told, Israel may have run as many as twenty of these camps from 1948 to
> 1955, and may have held several thousand additional prisoners, but only
> four
> camps are officially acknowledged and were subject to international
> inspection.
> One of the more disturbing elements in this relatively unknown chapter from
> early years of Israel's existence is the connections between the forced
> labor in the camps and Israel's economy. As Yazan al-Saadi reports in Al
> Akhbar:
> The policy of targeting civilians, particular "able-bodied" men, was not
> accidental according to the study. It states, "with tens of thousands of
> Jewish men and women called up for military service, Palestinian civilian
> internees constituted an important supplement to the Jewish civilian labor
> employed under emergency legislation in maintaining the Israeli economy,"
> which even the ICRC delegation had noted in their reports.
> The prisoners were forced to do public and military work, such as drying
> wetlands, working as servants, collecting and transporting looted refugee
> property, moving stones from demolished Palestinian homes, paving roads,
> digging military trenches, burying the dead, and much more.
> As one former Palestinian detainee named Habib Mohammed Ali Jarada
> described
> in the study, "At gunpoint, I was made to work all day. At night, we slept
> in tents. In winter, water was seeping below our bedding, which was dry
> leaves, cartons and wooden pieces."
> Another prisoner in Umm Khalid, Marwan Iqab al-Yehiya said in an interview
> with the authors, "We had to cut and carry stones all day [in a quarry].
> Our
> daily food was only one potato in the morning and half dried fish at night.
> They beat anyone who disobeyed orders."
> Because of the forced labor, the torture, threats, beatings, and
> humiliations, the specter of concentration camps has inevitably risen. As
> Hass writes:
> In an article about the Palestinian study published on the Lebanese website
> Al Akhbar, Abu Sitta [one of the article's authors] said that German Jews
> were among the guards at the detention camps (a detail that does not appear
> in his article in the Journal of Palestine Studies). Whether they were
> German Jews or not, forcing prisoners to line up naked and using boots on
> those who fall are part of the family histories of many of us, but from the
> other side.
> Israeli historians vigorously dispute these claims:
> Aaron J. Klein, an Israeli historian and author, said he was shocked to
> read
> the new study. Klein had researched the very same issue in the late 1990s
> for his master's thesis at the Hebrew University. A version of it was later
> published in a collection of works on the War of Independence, edited by
> Kadish. Klein said the new study adds nothing to the facts already revealed
> and published in his thesis. He described himself as "disgusted" by the
> attempt to describe Israeli POW camps as concentration camps. "This is an
> attempt to enlist another piece of history to the Palestinian narrative,
> but
> it isn't serious," Klein said.
> His reading of the documents from the time paints a picture of an Israeli
> leadership eager to win international legitimacy by adhering to the Geneva
> Convention and working with the Red Cross. The civilians arrested by Israel
> were legally recognized as POWs; their internment conditions were no better
> or worse than those of all Israeli soldiers at the time, and working
> outside
> the camps was seen as beneficial to the inmates. "Whoever reads the reports
> sees that the Red Cross understood the circumstances and gave Israel, all
> in
> all, good grades."
> .
> The Israeli researchers argued that it would be a mistake to give oral
> testimonies recorded 60 years after the events took place the same
> credibility as Red Cross reports that were documented and prepared in real
> time.
> I haven't yet read the research article, which appeared in the Journal of
> Palestine Studies. But from the reports in the media, it seems as if the
> Red
> Cross records actually provide a great deal of the evidence for the
> authors'
> claims.
> Regardless, it's a bit unnerving to hear Jewish Israeli historians cite Red
> Cross good housekeeping seals of approval as evidence of a camp's
> benignity.
> The Red Cross of the 1940s doesn't exactly have the best record on that
> score. As Jews of all people should know.
>
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