IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi visited the Warsaw Ghetto and a Jewish cemetery in Poland ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Wednesday night.

The top IDF commander visited the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, Poland where the Jews who died in the Warsaw Ghetto were buried. Ashkenazi reportedly stood silent for a few moments and then said: "The answer to what we see here is us, the State of Israel, the IDF and victory."

IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi visits the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.
IDF Spokesman)

Ashkenazi met with Jews who continue to live in Poland and visited the Nozyk synagogue. He also visited a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, located at the site of the home used as a command center by Mordechai Anielewicz, the local commander of the Jewish uprising against the Nazis.

"In this place Mordechai Anielewicz didn’t just hide from the Nazis,” Ashkenazi noted, “he also fought. It is fitting that the soldiers of the IDF soldiers learn the story of this uprising. That is why we came to admire and salute the heroes who - despite the realities and balance of power, and the fact that they were untrained civilians - got up and took action and fought. Today we call these principles and moral norms."

“They knew they had no chance of winning, but they fought nevertheless. That is bravery… The importance of victory is a norm for the IDF and a central part of it, alongside remembrance and study of the Holocaust."

The IDF Chief of Staff will lead thousands of young people in the annual March of the Living at the Auschwitz concentration camp on Thursday. It will be the first time an IDF commander has led the march.

IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi lays a wreath at a memorial for the Warsaw Ghetto fighters.
(IDF Spokesman)

Accompanying Ashkenazi is IDF Chief Rabbi Brig.-Gen. Avichai Ronsky, who recited the E-l Malei Rachamim prayer, IDF Education Corps Chief Brig.-Gen. Eli Shermeister and IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Avi Benayahu.

Also accompanying the Chief of Staff is Sgt.-Maj. Tal Shabbat, who was badly wounded while conducting counter-terror operations in the northern Gaza rocket-launching capital of Beit Hanoun in November, 2006. Corp. Ro'i Granitza, wounded during the Second Lebanon War by a rocket fired at his tank, is also a member of the delegation.

Ashkenazi will meet with Polish defense officials during his visit as well. Both Israeli and Polish security forces are deployed throughout the region, in anticipation of Islamist attempts to attack the IDF chief.

Jews around the world, and particularly in Israel, will commemorate the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, as well as those who were able to fight back, beginning Wednesday evening.

Yom HaShoah V'Hagvurah, Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, begins this evening at 8 PM with a public ceremony at Warsaw Ghetto Square in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.  President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will speak, survivors will light six torches (see below), the Chief Rabbis will recite prayers, and Cantor Asher Heinowitz will sing the El Malei Rachamim prayer.

The central theme of this year's commemorations is "Choose Life." Last year, it was "Bearing Witness."  At 10 PM, a symposium will be held on the topic of "Choose Life," with the participation of Holocaust survivors and Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev.

The six survivors lighting the torches are the following:

• Esther Samuel-Cahn, born in 1933 in Norway. A religiously observant professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she was awarded the Israel Prize in Statistics in 2004. When she was 9, her father, Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Samuel, the rabbi of Norwegian Jewry, was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. Several months later, she and her family were hidden behind potato sacks and smuggled to Sweden.  At age 13, a year after World War II ended, she immigrated to Israel with her mother and two brothers.
• Meir Brand, born in 1936 in Poland. In 1943, closed up in a Nazi-built ghetto, his parents decided to smuggle him out, and after many narrow escapes, he arrived in Budapest, Hungary.  He was on the Kastner Train - a trainload of almost 1,700 Jews who escaped from Hungary to safety in Switzerland - but was one of the few dozen who was detained in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  After his rescue in 1945, he was brought to Israel via the Jewish Agency's Aliyat HaNoar (Youth Immigration) project.  Here he learned that his parents had been murdered.  Meir lived in the Jordan Valley's Kibbutz N'vei Eitan, and fought in most of Israel's wars.
• Naomi Shadmi, born in 1931 in Hungary.  At age 13, her father, older brother and mother were abducted, one after the other, by the Nazis. Naomi and her remaining younger brother were taken to the Budapest Ghetto.  After their release, they found that their relatives had been murdered.  They came to Israel, where Naomi worked for Israel Police for 20 years.
• Tzvi Ungar, born in 1929 in Poland.  He survived the Birkenau and Buchenwald concentration camps, as well as the infamous Death March, but the remainder of his family was murdered.  In 1948, he immigrated to Israel, fought in the War of Independence, and helped found Kibbutz Malkiyah, practically atop Israel's border with Lebanon, where he still resides.
• Menachem Katz, born in 1925 in Poland. At age 17, he and his family were taken to a ghetto, then banished to the Belzec concentration camp in Poland, where an estimated 600,000 people were murdered.  He escaped, and was later followed by his family.  In 1946, they were caught on their way to Palestine and taken to Cyprus, where they remained for about a year.  A prominent architect, Menachem designed the museum at Kibbutz Baram in memory of the Jews of Berezhany, his birthplace.
• Michael Maor, born in Germany in 1933. His family fled to Yugoslavia, then to Italy, and then to the forests with the partisans when Italy came under Nazi influence. In 1944, the Nazis murdered his parents, and he was taken to an orphanage.  In Israel, he worked for the Mossad Intelligence Agency, collected evidence against Adolph Eichmann, and established the Border Guard's intelligence department.

The date of Yom HaShoah was chosen to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  Although the day became official by an act of Knesset, it has been traditionally commemorated by Jewish communities around the world.  Some religious communities prefer not to commemorate the Holocaust on this day, which falls in the generally happy month of Nissan, but rather on Tisha B'Av or on the Tenth of Tevet, which the Chief Rabbinate of Israel fixed as the day for the recital of the Kaddish prayer for those murdered during the Holocaust whose date of death is not known.

The rocket bombardment of Israel continues: 21 mortar shells and 16 rockets on Tuesday, and seven rockets so far Wednesday morning. Damage was caused.

The rockets landed in the western Negev areas, and one smashed a building in the Shaar HaNegev industrial zone.  Another one landed just outside Sderot, yet again unnerving the citizens of the city who have heard the Red Dawn early warning alarm sound many times over the past several days.

Two rockets were fired during the night, two around 7 AM, and three more about an hour later.

Fatah Did It
Responsibility for the latest wave of Kassam rockets was claimed not by Hamas, but rather by the Al Aqsa Brigades of Fatah, under the auspices of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.  Abbas has an international reputation as a "moderate" in comparison with Hamas.

One of Tuesday's rockets smashed directly into a home in Sderot. The house was empty, but several people nearby suffered shock.  The owner of the home said that when he came home, "I saw our dog trembling in fear, and the bathroom was nearly totally destroyed... Olmert should come here and see how we're living. It's nothing more than roulette."

Moyal: Exodus is Worrisome
Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal says he estimates that at least 15% of the city's population has left because of the rockets in the past year.  "Those who leave," he said, "don't come back."  He said last week that "if Sderot falls, the State of Israel will follow."

Moyal met on Tuesday with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in a meeting planned a month ago.  Speaking afterwards to reporters, Moyal had praise for the Prime Minister, saying, "He seems to be much more on top of the situation with the Kassams and with the residents' suffering.  He won't rest until there is quiet here, and my impression is that a decision will soon be made that could be very dramatic in regards to what is going on here."

The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum launched English and Arabic video channels on Tuesday, just two days before Jews around the world begin their annual commemorations of the Holocaust.

Yad Vashem, the world's largest repository of information on the Holocaust, launched two YouTube channels in advance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which occurs on Thursday, May 1.  The English channel contains testimonies from Holocaust survivors, as well as archival footage, historians’ lectures on key issues related to the Holocaust, footage from world leaders' visits to Yad Vashem, and human interest stories such as family reunions.   The Arabic channel has testimonies and archival footage about the Holocaust with Arabic subtitles.

Yad Vashem says the channels are dynamic, and plans to add new videos frequently. Channels in additional languages are also to be added soon.

Avner Shalev, Chairman of Yad Vashem, explained, “We know that YouTube is one of the most popular websites today.  This is equally true in the United States and Europe, as it is in Arabic speaking countries. Unfortunately, there is a plethora of misinformation and deliberate lies available on the Internet.  The Yad Vashem channel will counter this material, and make reliable information widely available to anyone who seeks to know more about this terrible chapter in human history."

“By meeting the survivors through their testimonies," Shalev said, "and viewing the foremost experts in the field address difficult questions, viewers will be able to connect on yet another level to this pivotal and defining event."

The Yad Vashem Channels are at http://www.youtube.com/user/YadVashem and http://www.youtube.com/user/yadvashemarabic.

The IDF has announced that the Gazan family that was killed during a battle Monday north of Beit Hanoun was not the direct victim of an IDF attack but rather, of explosive charges carried by Arab terrorists. However, an IDF officer has been assigned to investigate the incident more fully and is expected to present his findings Wednesday.

"The responsibility for the casualties among Palestinian civilians rests upon the shoulders of Hamas, which operates under cover of the civilian population while endangering it by holding bomb-making and explosive materials in its midst," the IDF Spokesman said following Arab reports about the death of a woman and her four children from Israeli fire.

The IDF Spokesman said that in the course of activity in the Beit Hanoun area, an IAF aircraft attacked two armed terrorists who were identified near the IDF forces. The two, who were near the house where the woman and her children were staying at the time, carried large knapsacks on their backs. When the two were hit, a large explosion occurred, evidence that that the two had been carrying a large amount of explosives and bombs in the knapsacks. As a result, a large explosion occurred next to the house where the civilians were located.

Barak: Hamas is responsible
Defense Minister Barak also blamed Hamas for the incident during a tour of the Israel Military Industries. "We see Hamas as being responsible for everything that goes on in the Gaza area, for all of the casualties. Hamas is also responsible for some of the civilian casualties, the ones who are not involved in the fighting, who are hurt in the course of these operations, as a result of the fact that it operates from within civilian concentrations, and by planting and holding explosive charges among the civilian population."   

The Arabs claimed that Israeli fire killed five members of one family: a mother and four children aged 5, 4, 3 and 1. The Arabs also said a 17-year-old youth was killed. A source within the Islamic Jihad terror group confirmed that one of its gunmen, Ibrahim Jahjouh, 23, was killed.

News wire photographs that were featured prominently in Israel and outside of it showed the small bodies of the children who were killed and news reports were quick to blame Israel for the deaths. MK Ibrahim Sarsur (Ra'am-Ta'al) said that "Israel proves every day that its army is the foremost competitor of Nazism and that it carries out an ideology of destruction, just like in humanity's worst periods." Sarsur accused Israel of "cold-bloodedly wiping out an entire family, including its innocent children."

Similar incidents in the past were used to pressure Israel to halt large scale IDF operations in Gaza as well as in Lebanon. These included Operation "Grapes of Wrath" in 1996 and the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Lower civilian death ratio
"We make great efforts to avoid hitting civilians," an IDF source said. "These efforts are expressed in the IDF's tactics of warfare, in armaments and in strict operating procedures. Many attacks have been cancelled because of proximity to civilian concentrations. We regret that Hamas has no qualms about risking civilians by operating among them and creating a false impression that Israel is the one endangering them."

IDF statistics show that in 2007, the ratio of terrorist to civilian casualties was 39 dead gunmen for every innocent civilian killed. In 2006 this ratio was 5 to 1 and in 2005 it was 4 to 1.

Three IDF soldiers from the Givati Brigade were lightly injured in the fighting in Beit Hanoun. One was hit in the leg during a firefight. Another was hit in the hand and a third was very lightly wounded from shrapnel when terrorists fired an anti-tank missile at an IDF armored vehicle. Terrorists fired dozens of mortar shells and anti-tank missiles at the IDF.

Civil Administration and police officials swooped down on the small Jewish neighborhood of Havot Yair, located in Samaria 14 miles east of Herzliyah, and destroyed a small unauthorized swimming pool. The pool was about seven feet wide and 28 feet long.

Though word of the impending law-enforcement operation was received early, dozens of youths who made their way to Havot Yair in order to stop the destruction were blocked by police vehicles, and the destruction was carried out without incident.

A similar attempt was made to destroy the Hazon David synagogue in Kiryat Arba on Monday night, but was thwarted when hundreds of people arrived in the area.

It is not clear why the police targeted only the swimming pool and not the other structures of Havot Yair, which is considered an "unauthorized illegal outpost."  However, the pool's owner, Attorney Doron Nir-Tzvi, has an idea.  "There are 22 families here," he told NRG-Maariv, "and the fact that they hit only the pool and not the other houses is because they are trying to terrorize a lawyer who has been representing [right-wing] anti-establishment causes for ten years."

"An even worse reason for what they did today," Nir-Tzvi suggested, "is simple narrow-minded envy, according to which the settlers [Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria] are not allowed to live comfortably."

"I am comforted by the fact that at this very hour, dozens of houses are being built in Jewish towns all over Judea and Samaria," he concluded, though he did not provide documentation for this statement.

About Havot Yair
Havot Yair [Yair's Farms, named for the story at the end of Numbers 32] is located between the city of Ariel and the community of Nofim. It was first established in 1999, was later destroyed by the government, was rebuilt in 2001, and now has 22 families and six permanent buildings.  It is built on state-owned land.

The community's website lists its hiking sites, as follows:
- The ancient winepress, near the synagogue
- The spring, in the wadi [valley]; the hiking route begins near the Cohen home
- Hirbet Shehade - a hiking path at the end of which all of the greater Tel Aviv region can be seen, including the Mediterranean Sea
- The cave; the hiking route begins near the Yaakobson and Eisinger homes.

Fuel prices in Israel will rise to an all-time high of $7.19 a gallon at midnight Wednesday – a rise of 4.6 percent. Self-service 95 octane gas will be priced at 6.58 shekels a liter, with 96 octane 6.60 a liter – a rise of 29 agorot per liter for both types.

Gas prices have risen for three months straight, rising 5.6 percent since the beginning of the year.

The rising prices are due to a general rise in oil prices worldwide, with the cost of a barrel nearing the $120 mark.

Where Does Israel Get Its Oil?
Israel’s gas prices have always been relatively high, as it must buy its fuel from middle-men and smaller oil-producing nations across the globe. Israel has purchased oil from Mexico, the UK and Norway, and more recently, from Russia and Kazakhstan. A steadily increasing amount of natural gas is bought from Egypt, and Israel also imports coal for some of its power plants from Australia, Angola, South Africa and Columbia.

For the decade following the 1967 Six Day War, Israel benefited from direct reasonably-priced fuel piped in from Iran, when it was ruled by the Shah. In 1979, when Iran underwent an Islamic revolution, the pipeline was closed. Israel also lost a major source of oil when it relinquished the oil fields of the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for a treaty with Egypt in 1982.

In 2004, Minister of Infrastructures Yosef Paritzky (Shinui) revealed that most of Israel’s oil imports originate in countries with which the Jewish state does not maintain diplomatic relations. He did not elaborate. 

In response to Israel’s recent condemnation of a Swiss oil deal with Iran, Swiss newspapers alleged that Israel continues to purchase a large amount of high-quality oil from the Islamic Republic through a European intermediary.

About 3 percent of Israel’s energy consumption is supplied by solar power, mostly in the form of rooftop solar panels to heat water for residential buildings. Several projects to expand solar power through large facilities in the Negev desert are currently underway.

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