Ron's World

Author: admin

  • Ron Jacobsohn Investigates the Complex Jewish-Turkish Heritage

    Ron Jacobsohn Investigates the Complex Jewish-Turkish Heritage

    The over 500-years of history of the Jews in Turkey is brought to live at Bar Ilan University’s conference – The Jews of turkey: identity and Heritage.
    As the pages if history were visited at the conference a clear message arose from all speakers: the current strain in the relationship between the Turks and the Jews should be taken with a grain of salt as a new page of good relations between the two is just around the corner.

    Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent:
    The over 500-years of history of the Jews in Turkey is brought to live at Bar Ilan University’s conference – The Jews of Turkey: Identity and Heritage

    The perseverance of the Jewish community in Turkey over hundreds of years is definitely something worth taking a look at, says Dr. Efrat Aviv of the BESA Institute at Bar Ilan University, who helped organize this conference.

    Dr. Efrat Aviv, Organizer of the Conference:
    The Jewish community in Turkey and even in the Ottoman empire was a very successful one, they had their Golden Age and it’s true, it happens, it still happens but there’s a problem ever since the state of Israel was established, I mean ever since the relations between the government or their attitude towards the Jewish community is much controlled or dictated by the relations between the Israeli state and the Turkish state. The Jews of Turkey come or maybe fall in between both governments and we can see that very clearly in what is going on these days. It’s one of the largest Jewish communities under Muslim rule and it’s a vivid community that flourishes and still has roots, strong roots in Turkey, and how all this sheds a light towards what happened in the past; how they wereused to be treated in Ottoman era and how they are treated these days and I think it’s really an interesting, intriguing topic for the Israeli society as well.

    MK Shimon Ohayon, of the Ha’Likud-Beytinu party, explains why the Jewish community in Turkey is so crucial to the Jewish History as a whole.

    MK Shimon Ohayon, Chairman of Dahan Center, Bar-Ilan University:
    We had in this area over three hundred thousand Jewish people, now we haveonly 27 thousand so of course if you compare this situation totally has been changed and we are aware also of this situation because of the political situation. We do worry about what’s going and we do believe and we hope that our historywould have some kind of influence, the contribution, the good relationship between Israel, the Jewish people and the Turkish people, and the hospitality of the Ottoman empire maybe will come back and we’ll be able to see a good relationship between Israel and Turkey.

    Abdel-Raouf Arnaout who is the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the Turkish Anadolu News Agency explains that although the relationship between Turkey and Israel is still very strained on government level it didn’t really hurt the business relationship between the two countries. Soundbite – Abdel-Raouf Arnaout, Jerusalem Bureau Chief, The Anadolu AgencyIsraeli relations and you know, after the establishment of Israel, Turkey was the first Muslim country who recognized Israel and this was another importantthing but then after, you know, after the flotilla crisis you know, when ninepeople has been killed by the forces of the Israelis, for the Turkey it was dramatic, you know, the perception Israel as the change it immensely, not Anti-Semitic but on the other rate the people are really upset because the Turkey and Israeli relations during the time after the flotilla 30% rate of the commercial volume increased and almost 4 billion dollars, in comparison these kind of trade
    Turkey doesn’t even have with neighboring Syria or Iraq. So you can imagine that this kind of good commercial relations is very important so now the building of the reconciliation relations is very crucial and we are waiting for Israel withthat stuff.

    Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent:
    As the pages if history were visited at the conference a clear message arose from all speakers: the current strain in the relationship between the Turks and the Jews should be taken with a grain of salt as a new page of good relations between the two is just around the corner.
    For JN1 I am Ron Jacobsohn at Bar Ilan University.

     

  • Ron Jacobsohn Meets the People Behind the French Connection

    Ron Jacobsohn Meets the People Behind the French Connection

    Ron Jacobsohn Meets the People Behind the French Connection

    Twenty of the top French film and TV producers have traveled to Israel to find potential content and co-production opportunities at the conference everyone calls: The French Connection.
    In the past fifteen years we have seen several Israeli-French successful movie co-productions, however with the recent success of Israeli television shows around the world, it looks like the French want to be part of this success story too.

  • Ron Jacobsohn Learns about the Little Holocaust Survivors

    Ron Jacobsohn Learns about the Little Holocaust Survivors

    As the world remembers the end of World War II, sixty-nine years ago, we came to the Ghetto Fighters Museum to learn about the little survivors of the Holocaust, the around 150-thousand children who survived and started a new life in Israel.

    Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent:
    As the world remembers the end of World War Two, sixty-nine years ago, we came to the Ghetto Fighters Museum to learn about the little survivors of the Holocaust, the around 150-thousand children who survived and started a new life in Israel.

    The manager of the children’s holocaust museum, Yad Layeled, Anat Carmel, has come up with new ways to teach the kids of today about the atrocities by reenacting, of the now deceased survivors testimonies, through actors live in-front of the visitors at the museum.

    Anat Carmel, Manager, Yad Layeled Museum:
    I’m very hopeful that that we can continue to keep the memory of the holocaust alive, to teach the holocaust. We have on our website many testimonies, which we have collected for over 18-years, we created little monologues and we have actors who come and reenactment the stories. They come here next to the written testimonials or near the plaques and perform the monologues and testimonies and suddenly it all comes to live for the spectators who come to see it and it’s very unique that you put theater in a museum, in an exhibition, in the workshop and that’s how we in cooperate the actors on the tour.

    Telling the story to the future generations has become her life’s mission says Madene Shachar, who is one of the educators at the Museum.

    Madene Shachar, Educator, The Ghetto Fighters Museum:
    The idea that the gallery that we’re standing in right now is to present stories of Jewish children that survived the holocaust and the twist that you’re talking about is actually looking at the children the day after World War II ends, after the liberation everyone has this feeling that; OK now everything is going to go back to being ok and suddenly we realize many many children were orphaned, children that went into hiding that didn’t know where their families were, and many children didn’t even know their own identity. And so we try to deal with that subject through the prism of children’s homes that were created immediately after the war. From what we know, we’re talking about 150,000–200,000 children that survived after the war and found some sort of a home after. I think the biggest shock, and we hear this from many survivors that were young, is that they discovered that they didn’t have a family anymore and I think that during the holocaust, children will be children, and they had this hope that they would find their parents, they would find their families again and after the war, when they looked for their homes and their families they discovered that actually they’ve been left orphaned. So everything here actually documents, in an authentic way, what happened so it’s really hard for deniers to say well this didn’t happen when you have the actual facts, figures and photographs and documents.

    The eternal optimist, Dorka Sternberg, who herself survived the Holocaust as a young teen; want to believe that the world will not the let memory of all the victims fade away.

    Dorka Sternberg, 86-year-old Child Holocaust survivor:
    I think that the memory of our story will continue, not the same as in a first-person form where you talk about yourself, but I think that our stories will continue to be told, perhaps in a different way and all this in order to be able to warn, in order for us to build a society made up of good people.

    Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent:
    And as the survivors pass away it is crucial that exhibits like this will continue to teach the new generations about the atrocities of Nazi’s so that something as vicious as the Holocaust will never happen again.
    For JN1 I am Ron Jacobsohn at Kibbutz Lochami Hagetaot in Northern Israel.

  • Ron Jacobsohn gets to the Bottom of UNESCO Controversy

    Ron Jacobsohn gets to the Bottom of UNESCO Controversy

    Ron Jacobsohn gets to the Bottom of UNESCO Controversy

    The Turbid relationship between the United Nations Education Organization is not a big secret. So it was quite a big surprise when the Simon Wiesenthal Centre convinced UNESCO to host an exhibit about the 3500-year relationship of Jews and the holy land. Three days before the official gala opening at its headquarters in Paris a message came out which postponed the exhibit to an unnamed date. We wanted to find out what really happened behind the scenes that lead to the dramatic announcement.
    Not to be quoted sources claim that what cause the upheaval of the Arab country members was the fact that the name of exhibit was changed last minute as the invites were sent out from “People, Book, Land: the 3500-year relationship of the Jewish people with the holy land” to the “relationship of the Jewish people with the land of Israel”. So was that enough to cause such a reaction?

  • Jimmy Fallon debuts on the Tonight Show

    Jimmy Fallon debuts on the Tonight Show

    i24news’ Morning Edition with Yael Lavie for January 21st, 2014
    Ron Jacobsohn talks about the historical tie at the PGA Awards and what that means for the Oscar race, the latest headlines from the Sundance Film Festival, the changing of the guards at the Tonight Show as Jimmy Fallon takes over and a groundbreaking copyright infringement suit hits the supreme court.