[A-List] Palestine: seeing stars

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Uproar at orange star protest by Jewish settlers
JOSEF FEDERMAN, Jerusalem
The Herald, December 22 2004

Jewish settlers are threatening to wear orange Star of David patches,
similar to the yellow stars Nazis forced Jews to wear, in protest against a
planned Gaza withdrawal.

The campaign has caused uproar in Israel, which gave refuge to large numbers
of Holocaust survivors after the second world war. About 250,000 survivors
still live there and mention of the Nazi genocide in a public forum remains
an extremely sensitive subject.

Settler activists in Gaza said they would distribute the orange stars this
weekend but a handful of Gaza residents displayed them yesterday. Miriam
Freiman, 67, a Holocaust survivor who lives in Neve Dekalim settlement,
said: "We want to shock the nation."

Israel Meir Lau, the former Israeli chief rabbi and a survivor, denounced
the initiative. "Spare us this return to the nightmares of the past and
leave the Holocaust in its proper place," he said. "The deliberate murder of
six million Jews is such a sacred and significant thing it cannot be
compared with anything else."

The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre urged the settlers not to use the
stars. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which focuses on Holocaust issues,
accused the settlers of cheapening the memory of Holocaust victims.

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli premier, plans to withdraw from Gaza and part of
the West Bank next year, uprooting about 8800 settlers.

Security officials believe several dozen extremists could offer armed
resistance.

Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO chief tipped to succeed Yasser Arafat as Palestinian
president, meanwhile marked the end of 40 days' mourning by saying he
remained committed to a peace deal that would produce a Palestinian state
with Jerusalem as a capital.

Tony Blair, the prime minister, arrived in Jerusalem last night, the
highest-ranking visitor to the region since Arafat's death. -AP