Lithuanian Jewish Community

ICC Oversteps Jurisdiction

by Geoff Vasil

The recent request by an International Criminal Court prosecutor for a three-person panel of judges at the ICC in the Hague to issue arrest warrants for the prime minister and defense minister of Israel oversteps the court’s jurisdiction.

First, Israel isn’t a member-state to the ICC. Second, while the ICC recognizes Palestine as a state, Palestine doesn’t have the judicial abilities to act as a full-fledged state. Third, according to the ICC’s own rule or statutes, it must first petition the offending state aka defendant to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity itself.

Israel’s courts have already undertaken investigations into alleged war crimes by the Israeli Defense Forces against aid workers and civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Fourth, the ICC isn’t qualified to assess whether Israel is targeting Gazan Palestinians for extermination aka genocide by means of starvation and casualty attrition. In point of fact that’s the job for the UN’s International Court of Justice in the Hague. The UN has downgraded casualties reported by the Hamas suicide cult’s health department to about half of what the latter have been reporting, putting the ration of enemy combatants to civilian deaths to about 1:1, which is the lowest ratio in any war, let alone an urban house-to-house conflict, in the 20th and 21st centuries.

2024-05-222024-05-24

Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners Send Birthday Greetings

Today Fania Brantsovskaya celebrates a venerable birthday.

With the whole of our hearts we greet you and wish you great health, strength of spirit and the joy of spending time with loved ones.

Mazl tov!

2024-05-222024-05-22

Happy Birthday to Fania Brantsovskaya

Today we wish a very happy birthday to Fania Brantsovskaya, Vilnius ghetto inmate, Jewish partisan and living eye-witness to the Holocaust in Lithuania.

In the name of the entire Lithuanian Jewish Comuunity, chairwoman Faina Kukliansky extends our birthday greetings:

Dear Fania,

Your strength and tenacity in overcoming the most difficult obstacles and your passion in defense of the memory of Holocaust victims has become an example for all of us and inspire us to exert all efforts that future generations might learn the lessons of the past. We are so grateful to you for this, and wish you health, warmth, love and of course many more years to come.

Mazl tov! Bis 120!

2024-05-22

Intensive Yiddish Course 2024

Embark on a journey to learn a 1000-year-old language with a rich cultural heritage in Vilnius, the fabled “Jerusalem of North!”

You will meet and learn from world-names in Yiddish education: professors Avrom Lichtenboim (Argentina), Dov-Ber Kerler (US) and Anna Verschik (Estonia). Apart from directly learning Yiddish, You will get tons of additional and fun educational events–museum and cultural site tours, film-screenings and Yiddish song–every afternoon!

2024-05-222024-05-23

ICC Prosecutor Seeks Arrest Warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hamas Leader Yehya Sinwar

Associated Press, May 20, 2024

THE HAGUE, Netherlands–The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in connection with their actions during the seven-month war.

Karim Khan said that he believes Netanyahu, his defense minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders–Yehya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh–are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Speaking of the Israeli actions, Khan said in a statement that “the effects of the use of starvation as a method of warfare, together with other attacks and collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza are acute, visible and widely known. … They include malnutrition, dehydration, profound suffering and an increasing number of deaths among the Palestinian population, including babies, other children and women.”

Of the Hamas actions on October 7, he said that he saw for himself “the devastating scenes of these attacks and the profound impact of the unconscionable crimes charged in the applications filed today. Speaking with survivors, I heard how the love within a family, the deepest bonds between a parent and a child, were contorted to inflict unfathomable pain through calculated cruelty and extreme callousness. These acts demand accountability.”

Full article here.

2024-05-20

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 9:05 P.M. on Friday, May 17, and concludes at 10:40 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.

2024-05-172024-05-17

Lithuanian Makabi Sporting Extravaganza in June

The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club invites families with children to their summer sporting holiday at the Pailgio Perlas recreational site June 8 and 9. The two days of sport include the traditional competitions and fun, but this year there will also be a Makabi Challenge including orienteering, puzzles and tug-of-war.

Lithuania’s top players Ignas and Gerda Šišanovas and Rafaelis Gimelšteinas will be there to teach ping-pong. Registration is required before June 4 by sending an email to info.maccabilt@gmail.com.

Cost:

• Children under 7 free;
• aged 7-12 with overnight stay 25 euros;
• 13 and older with overnight accomodation 40 euros;
• 7-12 without overnight 15 euros;
• 13 and older without overnight stay 25 euros.

2024-05-172024-05-17

UN General Assembly Approves Hamas Genocide against Israelis with Vote for Full Palestinian Membership

On Friday the General Assembly of the United Nations meeting in New York voted to recognize Palestine as a full member-state of the organization, replacing Palestine’s observer status. The ballot was largely a straw vote and the smart money is on a veto in the Security Council, although embattled US president Joe Biden could allow it to pass in order to placate Muslim voters in Michigan to help secure votes in the upcoming US presidential election.

Voting in favor of full endorsement of Hamas’s policy of genocide against Israelis were 143 members, including Estonia, Russia, China, Iran, Syria, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Australia, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria and Norway, among others.

The nine voting against were Argentina, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia. Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the US.

Canada, Lithuania, Latvia, Austria, Fiji, Finland, Germany, Georgia, Italy, Malawi, Marshall Islands, Monaco, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and Vanuatu, among others, abstained.

Full results here.

2024-05-142024-05-14

Seminar to Celebrate 95th Birthday of Grigoriy Kanovitch

The Judaica Research Institute at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library in Vilnius will host a seminar to celebrate the life of Litvak writer Grigoriy Kanovitch on Wednesday, May 15.

Time: 11:00 A.M., Wednesday, May 15
Place: Events hall, Martynas Mažvydas National Library, Vilnius

2024-05-142024-05-16

Yom HaAtzmaut Today

Israeli celebrates its 76th birthday today on Israeli independence day, or Yom haAtzmaut. Israel’s Memorial Day or Yom haZikaron was marked Monday in Israel, the day of remembrance of all those who have fallen in defense of Israel, including Jewish partisans from Lithuania.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky issued a special greeting for the holiday:

“Today Israel marks Independence Day for the 76th time. It is darkened by the shadow of the lives of thousands of our dear people taken by the October 7 attack by Hamas terrorists and our thoughts for the 132 hostages still held in Gaza.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with them, the fallen soldiers and the victims to whose loved ones we send our deepest condolences and support.

2024-05-142024-05-14

Ystreet Camp on Seaside in Latvia

Jewish children and young people aged 7 to 17 (in grades 2 to 11) are invited to attend a varied set of classes from singing to handicrafts on the Baltic Sea in Latvia in comfortable conditions under the tutelage of qualified adult consultants. Participants are expected from the Baltic states and beyond, and space is limited.

The camp will take place from June 26 to July 4, for nine days and eight nights, at the Minhauzena Unda Hotel (https://www.hotelunda.com) just outside Riga. The cost is 450 euros per participant with payment plans available, and 390 euros if you register before May 20.

For more information and to register, call +371 2918 7555 (Ilona) or +370 6300 3388 (Alina), or send an email to info@ystreet.lv. The YStreet organization is also on facebook and Instagram:

www.facebook.com/YStreet/
www.instagram.com/ystreetriga/

2024-05-14

Eurovision Fails to Ghettoize Israel

by Geoff Vasil

Opaque participation rules, a system of internal patronage, sad attempts at bad pop music and a voting system which emulates the worst Third World satrapy. Yet, the Eurovision Song Contest has a cult following in Europe, and has had for many decades. In practice this race to the bottom of pop culture has led to performers intentionally playing to the lowest common pop-denominator, making themselves and the contest into a complete caricature, or a caricature-within-a-caricature, if you like.

Besides the byzantine voting process, “reformed” in recent years for a proportional voting system where unelected local/national juries or commissions account for perhaps (no one really knows) half of the total vote, while nation-state-member audiences call in their votes amounting to perhaps half the total, no one has really defined what “European” means in terms of this odd competition. Earlier contestants included Morocco and Lebanon, Australia seems to have secured a permanent vote, and Israel has been an on-again, off-again participant and voting block.

This year around 20,000 protestors descended on Malmo in Sweden–Sweden is the venue because their team, band, or horde, won last year–to demand Israel be excluded.

In semi-finals whoever actually runs the Eurovision Song Contest demanded the Israeli group rename their entry from “October Rain” to something else, which became “Hurricane,” although the actual message of the song seems to revolve around Hamas’s unprecedented atrocities against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.

2024-05-132024-05-14

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 8:52 P.M. on Friday, May 10, and concludes at 10:23 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Lithuanians will vote in national elections held this Sunday.

2024-05-102024-05-10

LJC Invites Holocaust Survivors and Veterans to Commemoration Ceremony

Last Wednesday Lithuanian Jewish Community programs director Žana Skudovičienė invited so-called was children, now senior citizens, to a commemoration and celebration of the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies in 1945.

As in past years, the LJC invited Holocaust victims and our veterans to celebrate the end of the Holocaust in early May, on Victory Day, celebrated on May 8 and 9.

Participants lit candles in memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the victims of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and in hope for the safe return of Hamas’s Israeli hostages.

Liba Britanishkina and Samuil Retznik, both now in their nineties but still extraordinarily active, and our centenarians Jewish partisan Fania Bratzovskaya and Aleksandr Asovski, were singled out for special attentions and presented gifts and flowers by LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky who visited them personally.

2024-05-10

March of the Living in Šiauliai

The Šiauliai Jewish Community and Lithuania’s International Commission for Assessing the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania held a March of the Living in Šiauliai last week. The procession included 55 Holocaust survivors from around the world including those who were attacked by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

2024-05-102024-05-10

Chagall, Ernst and Picasso Exhibit Opens in Vilnius

The Museum of Applied Art and Design in Vilnius opened an exhibit of mainly tapestries based on the artists’ sketches and ceramic works by Marc Chagall, Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso on April 25. The exhibit will continue until September 30, 2024. The museum is located at Arsenalo street no. 3A in Vilnius.

2024-05-082024-05-08

Israeli President Isaac Herzog Visits Lithuania

On the War in Israel and the Situation in Lithuania