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Journalist and scholar Aharon Ariel, 97, veteran of Israel’s war of independence and ‘walking encyclopedia’
(JTA) — In May 1948, a decommissioned U.S. Navy ship, the Marine Carp, was carrying passengers from New York to Haifa when, stopping in Beirut, it was met by 400 Lebanese soldiers. Israel had just declared its independence and war was underway — the Lebanese had no intention of allowing Jewish men of fighting age to sail on to the nascent Jewish state.
Among the 69 passengers removed from the ship and trucked to a former French military camp in the city of Baalbek was a Jerusalem-born polymath and former Haganah fighter named Aharon Ariel. Ariel had been studying history at Columbia University and Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary when the war broke out and quickly rushed home.
After the U.S. government brokered the release of the prisoners in late June, Ariel was sent back to the United States and tried again to get home. Eventually, he and a number of the detainees “found creative ways to get back to Israel,” as one history of the incident puts it, and he rejoined the Israeli military.
Still in his 20s, Ariel had already seemed to embody the history of Israel — a pattern he would sustain the rest of his life as a scholar, broadcaster, encyclopedia editor, translator and father of a son who would himself become a prisoner during the Yom Kippur war. He died June 20 in Jerusalem at age 97.
“My grandfather was a true son of Jerusalem,” a granddaughter, Tamar Ariel, wrote in a tribute posted shortly after his death. “Born just outside of Jerusalem in the Palestinian Mandate in 1925, the youngest of 6, and raised on King George St., he was a scholar and lover of Hebrew, history, and Jerusalem. “
Aharon Ariel worked as a journalist whose assignments, according to his granddaughter, included the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. He worked as editor of the “Encyclopedia Hebraica,” a monumental reference work issued between 1949 and 1983. His books include a historical lexicon, written with the historian Joshua Prawer in 1964, and a translation of “Annals of England” (1968) by the British historian George Macaulay Trevelyan.
The son of immigrants to Israel from Hamburg, Germany, he spoke a precise academic Hebrew and delivered a regular Hebrew lesson, “Rega shel Ivrit,” on Kol Yisrael, Israel’s main and then only radio station.
“This was before Israel had a television station, and … when it had just one radio station,” remembered another granddaughter, Yael Ariel-Goldschmidt.”I’ve never met or heard anyone speak better Hebrew. As a child I thought his job was … simply to speak Hebrew.”
In his youth he attended Ma’aleh, a religious high school in Jerusalem, where his best friend was Yehuda Amichai, who would come to be regarded as Israel’s greatest poet. At 14, he joined the Haganah, the general defense force of the pre-state Jewish community, eventually becoming a junior commander.
Aharon Ariel rides on the shoulders of his childhood friend, Yehuda Amichai, at left. The two attended the same high school in Jerusalem before Israel became a state. (Courtesy Yael Ariel-Goldschmidt)
He studied mathematics at Hebrew University before, in 1947, he went to New York City for his graduate studies.
When the war interrupted those plans, he joined the fighting that would last until March 1949. His units suffered major casualties, including a number of his close friends.
After the war he worked as a Hebrew teacher whose students included an American immigrant named Batya (Betty) Cohen, who had been raised on New York’s Lower East Side and came to Israel as a member of Hashomer Hatzair, the socialist Zionist youth group. The two married in 1951 in the United States, where Batya had returned for graduate studies, and returned to Israel to live. Batya died in 2021.
They had three sons and nine grandchildren, one of whom predeceased them.
During the Yom Kippur war, one of those sons, Yaakov, was wounded, captured and tortured by Syrian forces. He spent nine months as a POW; because the Syrians refused to release the names of prisoners, his parents knew he was alive only after they saw a photograph of him taken by a Turkish journalist. During his captivity Aharon and Batya lobbied in Israel and the United States for his release.
“My father, with a group of other parents, went to the United States and met with anyone willing to meet them,” recalled Yaakov Ariel, now a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to withholding the names of the captured, Syria refused Red Cross visits or mail. “Many parents didn’t know what was going on.”
Once again the United States brokered a prisoner exchange. Afterwards, the elder Ariel rarely talked about his own captivity in 1948 nor his son’s ordeal, according to Ariel-Goldschmidt.
“My grandparents never spoke to me about this, except for once,” she recalled. “My friend Jordana came over on Shabbat for lunch and brought her little sister, who was just young enough and bold enough to ask questions no one else asked. My grandmother took out photo albums with newspaper clippings from when my father was MIA, from when he was a POW. That is how I learned that my grandfather was elected by the parents of the POWs to fly to the U.S. and campaign on their behalf, to urge the U.S. to exert pressure on Syria and broker a prisoner exchange, which the U.S. (and [Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger) eventually did.”
Her grandfather was forthcoming on many other topics.
“He was a connoisseur of whiskey, art, pescatarian food, and coffee,” wrote Tamar Ariel. “He and my grandmother introduced me to Impressionism, taking me to art museums across Israel, the U.S., and Europe from a young age.”
He could also expound on the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud and the history of the country whose biography parallelled his own.
“My grandfather was a walking encyclopedia,” wrote Ariel-Goldschmidt.
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The post Journalist and scholar Aharon Ariel, 97, veteran of Israel’s war of independence and ‘walking encyclopedia’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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University of California, Santa Barbara Accused of Ignoring Antisemitic Bullying of Student
University of California, Santa Barbara student body president Tessa Veksler on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Instagram
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) has been accused of responding inadequately to the antisemitic harassment of its Jewish student government president, Tessa Veksler, and thus violating Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act, The Algemeiner has learned.
According to a civil rights complaint filed with the US Department of Education by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Veksler was endlessly bullied at UCSB after Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. Anti-Zionists there allegedly sent her threatening messages, called her a “Ziofascist,” and slashed pictures of her displayed around the campus.
In February, her bullies escalated their scare tactics, graffitiing over a dozen messages at the school’s Multicultural Center which called her a “neutral ass b—ch” and said “resistance is justified,” “you can run but you can’t hide Tessa Veksler,” and “get these Zionists out of office.” Additionally, someone graffitied “Zionist not welcome” on a door, just inches away from a mezuzah, a small parchment scroll containing Hebrew verses from the Torah that members of the Jewish community fix to their doorposts
Later, a faction of anti-Zionists in the student government attempted to remove Veksler from office.
The Brandeis Center alleges that UCSB did not address the problem in a way that is consistent with its obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which requires universities to implement robust measures that stop discriminatory behavior and prevent its recurrence.
“The harassment started online, and the university didn’t do anything to intervene despite Ms. Veksler’s pleading with them to intervene due to the negative effects on her mental health and the undermining of her ability to lead the student body,” Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives at the Brandies Center, told The Algemeiner during an interview on Friday. “The harassment only intensified and continued, moving to the physical campus.”
Katz-Prober continued, “We’d like to see the university acknowledge, recognize, and condemn the anti-Zionist form of antisemitism that motivated the harassment which targeted Ms. Veksler on the basis of her Jewish identity. A statement they issued condemning ‘all forms of hate’ is just not enough given the antisemitism students are enduring in our time.”
Veksler is a senior political science major who was elected in April 2023 as president of UCSB Associated Students (AS), making history by becoming the school’s first ever Shabbat-observant student body president. At the time, Veksler told The Algemeiner that becoming president was always her “far-distant” goal. Since then, she has become one of the most recognized leaders of the pro-Zionist student movement, traveling to colleges across the country to speak to other students about the centrality of Zionism to Jewish identity and the importance of resisting antisemitism.
On Friday she told The Algemeiner that the discrimination she endured derailed her presidency.
“The incidents of the past seven months were designed to make my life miserable,” she said. “They called me a ‘genocide supporter,’ ‘a baby killer,’ and pushed libel claims. So much of it was based on information that is completely untrue. People accused me of doxxing students, although I never did, and that’s something that people continue to hang on to. People have even commented on my complaint, saying it’s ridiculous that a white person is pursuing a civil rights case.”
She continued, “They don’t want to recognize Jews as a minority group that can experience hate, but if you look at any of the things that people said to me online, calling me a ‘Ziofascist’ and a ‘Nazi,’ it’s obvious that my identity makes me a walking target.”
College campuses across the West have become hubs of antisemitism since the Oct. 7 attacks. Both students and faculty have demonized Israel and rationalized Hamas’ terror onslaught, and incidents of harassment and even violence against Jewish students have increased. As a result, Jewish students, who in at least one instance were threatened with rape and mass murder, have reported feeling unsafe and unprotected.
Earlier this year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) measured the rise of antisemitism on college campuses, finding a 321 percent increase in antisemitic incidents.
“What has been allowed to happen to Tessa over many months — shaming, harassing, and shunning a student until they disavow a part of their Judaism — is shameful and illegal,” Brandeis Center chairman and former US assistant education secretary Kenneth Marcus said on Thursday. “Sadly, this is not the first time we are seeing this mob behavior against a Jewish student elected by their student body to serve. It is incumbent upon UC Santa Barbara and all universities to say ‘enough is enough.’”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post University of California, Santa Barbara Accused of Ignoring Antisemitic Bullying of Student first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Tourist Attacked by Mob in Belgium, Suffers Broken Jaw
People take part in pro-Hamas protest in Brussels, Belgium, Nov. 11, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
A 64-year-old Israel tourist was attacked by a mob in the Belgian city of Bruges and suffered a broken jaw after he and his daughter removed an anti-Israel sticker in a train station on Friday, according to the European Jewish Association and Israel’s Embassy in Belgium.
The assailants saw Amnon Ohana and his 29-year-old daughter Shira removing the sticker from a wall at a Bruges train station and proceeded to attack the father, punching and kicking him.
The Israeli tourists fled to a lower floor but were pursued by at least one of the attackers, who knocked Ohana to the ground and continued to strike him.
After the assailants left the scene, Ohana was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a broken jaw.
BREAKING
Belgium: Jewish father and his daughter attacked by a FreePalestine mob when they were discovered to be Israelis.
The mob beat up the father and continued kicking his head when he was down. pic.twitter.com/rs5Y1av4rN
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) May 17, 2024
According to several reports, passersby ignored the father and daughter’s pleas for help.
Ohana filed a complaint with local police against the assailants but reportedly said the authorities did not seem willing to prosecute them to the full extent of the law, despite the attack being filmed by his daughter and security cameras.
Israeli Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg Idit Rosenzweig-Abu decried the incident, calling attention to a spike in antisemitic incidents that has turned increasingly violent.
“A 64-year-old Israeli man was attacked while on a tourist visit in Bruges,” the ambassador wrote on X/Twitter. “He was kicked to the head and suffered a fracture to his jaw. What started as violent discourse has turned in past weeks to actual violence on the streets. We expect the authorities to denounce this violence in the strongest terms possible. And we expect the police to find and press charges against this man.”
A 64 year old Israeli man was attacked while on a tourist visit in @StadBrugge . He was kicked to the head and suffered a fracture to his jaw.
What started as violent discourse has turned in past weeks to actual violence on the streets.
We expect the authorities to denounce… pic.twitter.com/hlKMQb8K12
— Ambassador Idit Rosenzweig-Abu (@IditAbu) May 17, 2024
The Israeli Embassy in Belgium reportedly filed a complaint with the mayor of the city, calling on the attackers to be arrested.
The attack came amid a global surge in antisemitism following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and during the ensuing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Antisemitic incidents have reached record highs in several countries, especially in the US and Europe.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, head of the European Jewish Association, condemned the assault and the rise in antisemitism, noting that the incidents have been escalating to full-scale violence against Jews and Israelis.
“It is no longer just verbal violence or spitting but real physical attacks that can end in disaster,” Margolin said, according to Israeli media reports. “Don’t wait for us to be murdered to understand that you must act more decisively against the troublemakers. Today it is against Jews and tomorrow the incited mob will attack anyone who looks Western in their eyes.”
Margolin then called on Belgium to prosecute the assailants to the fullest extent of the law.
“It cannot be that a Western country claiming to be a state of law like Belgium will not act for the immediate arrest of the antisemitic assailants and refrain from immediate enforcement to prosecute them to the full severity of the law,” he added.
The post Israeli Tourist Attacked by Mob in Belgium, Suffers Broken Jaw first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hundreds showed up to walk a Toronto boy to school after his family said he’s been facing antisemitic harassment from other kids
About 300 people came to a suburban Toronto neighbourhood on the morning of May 17 to support a child whose family says he has been the victim of ongoing antisemitic verbal and physical harassment at school. The family, fearing for the boy’s safety, asked for the community’s support to walk with him for the one […]
The post Hundreds showed up to walk a Toronto boy to school after his family said he’s been facing antisemitic harassment from other kids appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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