13 Nissan 5780
7 April 2020
Special News
Passover begins Wednesday at sundown, but Israel is already on lockdown as of Tuesday afternoon at 4:00. More than 400 Border Patrol vehicles will be assigned to make sure that no one travels to another city for the Passover seder. More than 500 police are already deployed within cities using such things as drones to make sure that no one ventures out of their homes.
Photo of the Day
What do you think you are looking at? These are three Israeli doctors who have put photographs of themselves on their hospital protective clothing so that patients will know who is treating them.
The daily Corona update . . .
As of this hour (3 am Israel time Wednesday) there are 9248 confirmed cases of Corona in Israel. 117 people are critically ill and on respirators. 65 Israelis have died. Approximately 25% of those who have died were residents of nursing homes, including 6 from one home in Beersheva.
As terrible as 65 deceased is during the past few months, the number is lower than the average number of deaths during the same period for the ordinary “pneumonia.”
The new goal is now to carry out 10,000 tests per day. According to the Ministry of Health 8318 were carried out per day during the last week.
On the political front . . .
About to sign, not about to sign, about to sign, not about to sign: just when it seemed yesterday that Netanyahu and Gantz had finished negotiations and were about to sign an agreement for a national emergency unity government, it all fell apart at the last minute.
Why? If reportage can be believed, it is because Yariv Levin, one of the more “right” Likud ministers and close friend of Netanyahu, told Netanyahu that his constituency would not forgive him if he turned over the Justice Ministry and the Judicial Selection Committee to Gantz.
When Netanyahu demanded to reopen negotiations on those items, Gantz’s team walked out.
By the way, even as the media continues to fraudulently excoriate Netanyahu for his actions to control Corona, the Israeli public appreciates Netanyahu’s efforts. According to a Jerusalem Post poll today, were an election to be held tomorrow, the results would be Likud and the Israeli right with 64 seats (with 42 of those going to Likud). 68% of the public supports Netanyahu’s efforts.
Another person who has been excoriated incessantly by the Israeli media during the last few years has been Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son. Pseud0-journalists love to report anything negative about Yair that they can. Here’s a photo from today (it appeared online, not in the mainstream media):
Yair Netanyahu (right) helping distribute food to the needy today.
TODAY’S BLOG:
From The Bubonic Plague To Corona
Bats are not responsible for the coronavirus, humans are . . . some born in the United States, others in Israel and another in Europe . . . are the owners of your life, who created this virus. [In Europe] I refer to the Rothschild family.”
Tomas Mendez, popular host of ADN (and raging anti-Semite) on Argentinian television speaking last week
This statement has not been alone; a multitude of people around the world have attacked Jews as being the source of the Corona virus. One person even has suggested that those infected with Corona find a Jew and cough and spit on “the Jew.”
The title of today’s blog is “From The Bubonic Plague To Corona”, and I think that you know the reason why, dear reader.
Through the centuries, Jews have always been targeted by anti-Semites as scapegoats for plagues that have swept across countries and continents. The only difference between those centuries and today is that massacres and pogroms cannot take place because of Israel.
At the first sign of any such activity, you can be assured that Israel would rush to the defense of Jews.
But Israel was not always there, and the Corona anti-Semitism is so reminiscent of what happened in the Middle Ages with the bubonic plague.
Four years ago, your humble servant took a trip through Europe. One of our stops was at Chambury, a beautiful city in northern France.
Here is the blog I wrote on October 5, 2016:
———-
“Following our experiences in Lisbon and Barcelona, we headed north for fresh air to the mountainous, windswept country of Andorra which is home to a Jewish population of around 125–and a small synagogue that opened in 1997. After some hiking, we headed across France to the southern alpine city of Chambery, once the capital of the independent, medieval duchy of Savoy.
Chambery
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The medieval castle at Chambery–the home of the House of Savoy :
We came into Chambery by train on a cloudy, cool afternoon. With its curving streets, flowery marketplace, and lively outdoor restaurants, Chambery is charming–as long as you don’t think about its sordid past.
For it was from Chambery that one of the most villainous frauds of the Middle Ages came, one that led directly to the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews . . .
In the Middle Ages, Chambery was at first a haven for Jews as a place of refuge after being expelled from France in 1182 and again in 1306. By the mid-1300s, the city had a flourishing Jewish population with its own Rabbi and synagogue.
But in 1348, the bubonic plague began to devastate central Europe, and, as always, the Christians looked for a scapegoat. That scapegoat quickly became the Jewish community and its Rabbi Peyret. After a series of confessions produced through torture, Rabbi Peyret was accused of poisoning the wells of Chambery and sending out his emissaries to poison the wells of other Christian towns and villages in the region and beyond.
The idea was that drinking the poisoned water caused the plague.
A number of Jews were arrested in Chambery and put on trial while other Jews in the city “for their own safety” were placed in the castle. Of course, the trial ended with the Jews being found guilty at which point a mob from the town overpowered the soldiers at the castle, dragged out many of the Jews, and butchered them in the street. Others were burned alive.
The “poisoned well” fraud quickly spread through the region with horrific results. The entire Jewish community of Basel was burned at the stake. A year later the entire Jewish communities of Brussels and Antwerp were exterminated.
A “flowery” drawing from 1349 showing Jews of Flanders being burned at the stake because of poisoning wells:
Drawing in Belgian manuscript Antiquitates Flandriae, dated 1349, now housed in the Royal Library of Belgium (ms 13076/77)
According to historians (see for example, Will Durant’s famed “The Renaissance”), 510 Jewish communities in central Europe were wiped off the map during the mid-1300s and their Jewish residents slaughtered.
From the Jewish History Source Book, we have the following account about what happened at Strasbourg, about 295 miles north of Chambery.
“THE JEWS ARE BURNT” Strasbourg, February 14, 1349
On Saturday–that was St. Valentine’s Day–they burnt the Jews on a wooden platform in their cemetery. There were about two thousand people of them. Those who wanted to baptize themselves were spared. [Some say that about a thousand accepted baptism.] Many small children were taken out of the fire and baptized against the will of their fathers and mothers. And everything that was owed to the Jews was cancelled, and the Jews had to surrender all pledges and notes that they had taken for debts.
The council, however, took the cash that the Jews possessed and divided it among the working-men proportionately. The money was indeed the thing that killed the Jews. If they had been poor and if the feudal lords had not been in debt to them, they would not have been burnt. After this wealth was divided among the artisans; some gave their share to the Cathedral or to the Church on the advice of their confessors.
Thus were the Jews burnt at Strasbourg, and in the same year in all the cities of the Rhine, whether Free Cities or Imperial Cities or cities belonging to the lords. In some towns they burnt the Jews after a trial, in others, without a trial. In some cities the Jews themselves set fire to their houses and cremated themselves.
In sum, it is virtually impossible to go to any place in Europe where a Jewish community did not once flourish–only to be wiped out.
Chambery is the story of Lisbon and the story of Barcelona and the story of Judenburg, and it is the story of Europe.”
———
It is also the story that some would make of Corona. Isn’t it amazing how anti-Semitism is always with us.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.