The Netanyahu's by Joshua Cohen2021 238pg

 Benjamin Natanyahu or Bibi is the Prime Minister of Israel today.  10/2/23

Warning : This is not a history book and it is a work of pure fiction however, woven into it are some very interesting comments. The author is very well informed on American Jewish society as well as life and literature in Israel.

An account of a minor and ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family.  This was inspired by and anecdote of Harold Bloom, the famous literary writer and also dedicated to him. The book won the  Pulitzer prize for fiction 2022.  Authors 6th novel. He married at a religious wedding. Author was born in 1982. He has followed all current Israeli writers. The book is more about American Jewish society of the 50s. 

 Benzion Natanyahu 1910 to 2012

 1960 Rubin Blum  only Jewish faculty member, to host an obscure historian on late-medieval Spain – Netanyahu’s real specialty – who is coming for an interview. Benzion brings along his uninvited wife and three sons. Netanyahu's as a parallel to the Trump family, a “reality-show family. Big publishes were scared but  a small Israeli literary journal subsequently published this book in Hebrew. Bibi has not reacted to the book. Immersive novel that also wants to answer questions about Jews and history .

This  story takes place in 1959 1960

According to Netanyahu everything we know about the inquisition is wrong. It was launched by the Popes in collusion with the monarchies, it was to stop new conversions and turn many  Christians back into Jews, Catholics still required people to hate. Limpia de sangre History was actually facts but really beliefs of theology. 1490 and 1940 were identical events.  Isabelle and Ferdinand when they wanted to unite Castile and Arangon their chief opposition was the nobles and so attacking the Jews fitted into their plan. BenZion looked at the holocaust and Hitler and then explained the Spanish Inquisition in those terms. 

Herzel , Nordau, Zangwill and Zev Jabotinsky (from Odessa) and his mentor Nathan Mileikowsky who was Benzion father. Jabotinsky went to campaign Jews in the US. Benzion left Jerusalem for Philadelphia to get better opportunities.  Most people only need the clergy to marry and bury them so   seminars struggle for funds.

If you decide not to hire this Jew it is to avoid Jewish favoritism, but you might not want another Jew to share the woods with.

Revisionist  - Jews had to found an army first and a country second, and the Nazi threat was real.  You could not influence British foreign policy as it was in the hands of aristocrats, however in the US foreign policy was in the hands of popular appeal. Writing about Iberian Jews inability to save them selves was a proxy to current Jewry in the same position in Europe.

Ruby's father was an expert cutting cloth and so could cut a Turkey easily.  The Soviets have an idea that doesn't work as it is against nature.

Andrew Jackson is said to have invited guests to his home who he knew would damage it and afterwards was able to ask Congress for funds to repair it.

Their door was enwreathed with Christmas decoration the only one in the town so it would be easy for the Netanyahu's to identify. Instead of only Benzoin arriving the whole family of 5 arrived. His wife Tzila and Jonathan 13 (Jonni) Benjamin (Bibi)10  and Iddo  (Iddy)7.   Edith asked them to take off their wet shoes and later to Rubie they referred to them as the Yahus  (Yahoos from Gulliver's travels stand for crude, brutish or obscenely course person.)  The children came with because the babysitter cancelled because of a fire caused by a flood of frozen pipes. and Benzoin forgot to phone and tell them. 

Ruby could not talk to Edith in Yiddish as the guests spoke that also. The children saw a color TV for the first time and were watching Bonanza and Gunsmoke.

The theological seminary had been founded to produce Puritan and Congregationalist ministers.

Revisionist History - this is where a  set of historic relationships is agreed on and somebody bring another set of ideas, like the Red ideas.  Benzoin assures them that he is not  welcome at home where he has rejected the socialist view. Revisionism can be unsettling.  When BenZion was at the Hebrew University it had world leading academics from every university in Europe and world figures like for example. Martin Buber. He also never saw eye to eye with Menachem Begin. One of  BenZion recommendations comes from Lubner (liar)

Benzoin askes if he'll get his honorarium (money for the lectures he is giving) and Ruby tell him that that has to be agreed by the university before he visits. He could only get the lectureship in history if the cost could be split with the theology dept. where they needed a Hebrew scholar. 

Tzila (She has Sara Netanyahu's personality)- because she couldn't get an attached room for the children yells at the receptionist that she did not want to be a a flea bag dump any way and informs Edith they are staying at her home. They downstairs and the children in Ruby's study.  " These people don't give they take" At the hotel when Ruby arrives and askes the receptionist if his wife is there she says yes she is sitting with a horrible foreign woman in the lounge.

When they get home the discover the house is in a complete mess the new color TV is smashed and the floor is covered with the glass and Joni is in bed with Julia who is older than him and supposed to be the babysitter. Is this meant to be a comparison to what Bibi has done to the State of Israel today.

Jabotinski died in 1940 his remains were reburied at Mount Hertzel in 1964.

Harold Blood was living in New Haven Connecticut when Joshua Cohen visited him and got the story of the Netanyahu's. Cornell University has a campus in Ithaca upper state NY.

The Wright Brothers by David Mc McCullough 2015 267pg

The brothers who invented the aeroplane and flying 10/3/23

1867 to 1912  Wilber Wright.   1871 to 1948 Orwell  Wright

  

1884 The railway arrived where the lived they lived in Dayton Ohio. This brought potential for development of the area. The father was a preacher and they had a big library collection and the whole family was avid readers.

They read works on religion as well as Origen of Species and Agnostic books.

1889 Orville who had spent a 2 summers working in a printshop started a newspaper and Wilfrid edited it as a local advertiser. They were at school with the black poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar and published his first book of poetry he was know for "I know why a caged bird sings" Later they stopped the newspaper and did printing on contract.

1980 the safety bicycle came into fashion and many used them for country rides and so they opened a bicycle shop.

1893 Charles Duria and J. Frank build the first successful gasoline car.

1896 in Germany the glider enthusiast Otto Lilienthal crashed and died but left a lot of information on gliding. He had started in 1869 and had tried a variety of gliders and had observed bird flight..  At the same time dry plate photography had come into use and the George Eastman box camera. The Singer sewing machine as well as the Otis company lifts. Wilfrid concluded that with all the research done very little practice  had been done in the air.

1898 cars were coming into use.  A French engineer Clement Alder had tried to fly with a steam engine.  At this time along with the cost of the experiments risks of humiliation, failure and death, you could also be mocked as a crank or crackpot.

With the help of the meteorological service Wilber figured out the Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, offered the best area for gliders it was isolated and had constant wind. this was an area of lots of fish available to eat. Long spruce strips were what he looked for to build the glider. A good glider would mean that if it had a motor which failed it would slowly descent to the earth. He had to work to get an equilibrium the correct camber for the wings using a double wing. After their trials they were able to return home with their theories intact.

Octave Chanute an engineer of great repute gave the brothers a portable anemometer to measure wind speed.

1901Back at Kitty Hawk where there was a plague of mosquitoes. First trial of gliding on the Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk in N. Carolina because of the soft sand to crash on and the steady winds plus it was isolated from prying eyes.. The had to figure out the angle of the camber of the wings to get it to work. Till now they used the tables of Lilienthal, Langley and  Chanute but realized they were wrong. They took photos themselves.

1901 President William McKinley who came from their state Ohio, was assassinated at the Buffalos World Fair by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz at this time. Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States. Wilber was invited go give a lecture on his work in Chicago." The speech was the Book of Genesis in the 20 C Bible of Aeronautics. It was only now recognized that the concept of flying was no longer a myth. However no less than chief naval engineer Rear Admiral George Melville said flying is going against the natural phenomenon. 

1870s Wind tunnels had been used for experimenting  in England, and they devised a small scale wind tunnel to test their glider in model.

Octave Chenute suggested to them to apply for a grant from his friend Andrew Carnegie and they refused.

Wilber now realized that the rear rudder must be hinged and not fixed and its control should be connect to the warping to simplify piloting. Now they had mastered gliding and could soar float and dive they needed to build a motor.

1903 Under President Teddy Roosevelt the economy was booming. Of 7 motor manufactures none  offered  the specification that Wilber described. Only 1 replied so they got a block of aluminum and build an engine. The first they made cracked when the tried it and they made another. They wanted 2 propellers going in  different direction to stop the gyro effect.  A thousand glides was equivalent to 4 hours of practice. Nod only did they need to get the flyer correct but also had to learn aeronautics along the way.

Samuel Langley was financed by the war dept. to the tune of $50,000 of public money. The Great Aerodrome was launched went 1000 feet and landed in the water and Charles Manley almost drowned. The Wrights never commented on this like the press. The army now lost interest in flying as a result.

The cost of raw material for the Wright flyer was only $4. All their expenses had come to less than $1000, but they had to get back to the shop and keep it running. Terrance Huffman the Dayton bank president allowed them to use his land  nearby free. Here because it was not downhill they used a catapult to launch the flyer. They also received the patent rights on Flier no.III

The US army had no interest in their flyer, they must go abroad and  the British Army balloon section liked the idea and the French government also. The airship had reached its limit it cost 10 time that of the flyer which was the future.  The Wrights had to master their flyer design as well as teach themselves with lots of practice step by step to be pilots, they understood this and advance slowly and carefully. 

The flyer was displayed in France as a success but Wilber was not prepared to sell a portion of his rights over it.

For a possible contract they flew for the army at Fort Myer a flyer designed for 2 to ride. Orwell took an officer Thomas Selfridge who weighed 175lbs for a ride the plane vibrated a piece of propeller broke off and it dropped out of the sky at 75 feet. Orwell recovered in hospital but the officer died.

1908 In France the first woman taken up was Edith Berg the wife of his French agent Hart Berg. In France Wilber was a celebrity and there is a long list of people that he met at parties held in his honour including the engineer Gustav Eiffel. Later on in flying test at Mons race track without the catapult he won the prize offered by the Michelin tyre company, where he stayed up for 2 hours twenty minutes.

Orwell and Katherine Wright came to France and she made a point of learning French at this stage they had over $35000 in the bank and went to Pyrenees Mountain resort of Pau to fly. This is where they were introduced to Lord Northcliff the London press magnet, Lord Balfour, Joseph Pulitzer, French PM Georges Clemenceau, King Alfonso XIII of Spain King Edward VII. Katherine went up for several flights. He trained a few  army officers to fly and later the same in Italy where he was introduced to King Victor Emanuel III. They were in Europe at a perfect  time when peace and prosperity prevailed  and they had accumulated from contracts and prizes $200,000

(1909 to 1913) President William Howard Taft.  awarded a medal. An enormous parade was put on for them in Dayton.

1909 July First cross channel flight by Frenchman Louis Bleriot. Calais to Dover. 20 miles in 23 minutes.

Instead of wing warping ailerons (flaps) and a hinged rudder was now being used. The Wright manufacturing plant was set up in Dayton. This was also a period of many flying accidents in America and Europe as more enthusiast went into as a sport.  Every case of patent infringement they won in the US courts

1912 Wilber died of Typhoid fever. Katherine aged 52 married  Henry Haskell  but she died in 1929.

1927 Charles Lindberg flew the Atlantic to land in Paris. On his return visited Orwell in Dayton.

1929 Neil Armstrong also born in Ohio took a tribute to the Write Brother to the moon

Teheran Children A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey by Mikhal Dekel 2019 355pg

                                                                                                                                                       3/3/23

The book starts in 2007 while working at City  Collage NY at the dept. of Literature with a colleague Salar Abdoh who had fled Iran after the Islamic Revolution. Her father was a Teheran child but was not traumatized by the holocaust like most survivors. He arrived in Palestine after a journey of 13,000 kilometers in 1943. 

By the time they arrived in Iran they had endured so much hunger and sickness that they were dying in droves. "Children of Zion" testimonies by Henryk Grynberg he also wrote some books in fictional form. "Children do not manipulate information the tell it as it is." With Poland occupied the Polish soldiers escaped to Paris and later to London under Wladyslaw Sikorsky's Polish Government in Exile. Norman Neumark at Stanford University found material that he sent to Grynberg 

A few children kept diaries of the journey.  They were taken by ship to the south of the Caspian to Bandar Pahlavi and arrived to see Chevrolet and Studebaker trucks parked at the port. 

1942 by this time Persia had mandatory education and was being developed by German engineers and Iranian engineers trained in Germany. Germany wanted oil from Iran while Iran wanted protection from Russia. German Jewish engineers were trying to get visas at the Iranian embassy in Berlin.  Iran declared neutrality in 1939. A pro German PM Ahmad Martin Daftari and ordered that Jews should not works in Government offices. * month later he was replace by a pro British PM Ali Mansour.

1941 August an Anglo, Soviet Alliance and Britain and Russia occupied Iran. The Iranian oilfields had been under the control of the  Anglo Iranian Oil Company since 1909 and were worried about Germany getting them for the war. Initially the  Iran embraced the refugees as victims of the Soviets.   

1906 the situation for Jews improved when a constitutional revolution granted full rights of citizenship to all minorities.  By 1942 besides Polish Jews the were Austrian and German Jews who had fled from Hitler. Bukharan Jews escaped the Soviets and Caucasian Jews used their Iranian passports to out of Soviet territory. Wealthy Iraqi merchants set up business in Teheran.. Solel Boneh was encouraged by the British to  sent 450 skilled workers to set  up a refining facility in Abadan . This occurred after Burma fell to the Japanese so making Iran one of the allied only oil facilities and it was encouraged by Churchill. Mossad Aliyah Bet agents also arrived. Their were over 5000 Polish non Jews who remained in Iran and married locals their children got Polish passports to go to Europe because of  1979 Islamic Revolution, but only after1998.

The Teitel family originated in Ostrow Mazowwieka Poland and ran a very big brewery. Before WW2 9.5% of Poland's population was  Jewish compared to O.75% in Germany, 0.6%  in France. By the beginning of the 20C half of Poland's urban population was Jewish.

1935 Persia changed its name to Iran as only half the population were Farsi speaking the others were minorities.

Once the war began the family took 2 Chevrolet trucks and used them to flee to the Soviets. Under the Soviets anything useful in Poland the carted away eastwards, entire factories furniture and food. The uncle Zindel Teital relinquished his Polish citizenship for Soviet and was appointed superintendent for breweries for the Bialystok area.

Some made a choice to return to the Nazi region and survived while others in the Soviet area did not.

His father registered to return home and they were all rounded up and sent to the Timber Amalgamation which was short of workers because of the Russo Finish war to be in special settlements not Gulags in Komi near Archangel . Adults chopped wood while children under 13 were sent to school. Soccer coach Avram Grants parents had been in this area. Ethnic Germans from the Volga region were also deported to  here. They had been in the Volga Republic are since Catherine the great who brought them and offered them free land and there 800,000 of them there.

1940 April 22000 Katyn Massacre. Polish officers and intelligencia murdered by Soviets.

1941 June When Russia attacked by Hitler. Wladyslaw Sikorski the PM of the Polish gov in exile with Soviet Ambassador to London and in the presents of Churchill and Antony Edan. All Polish Citizens in the Soviets would be given an amnesty and a Polish army in exile would be established on Soviet soil, to fight the Nazis. About 300, 000 Jews were in this group. Colonel Wladyslaw Anders was released and given the task to form the Polish army in exile. Most Polish on Soviet soil headed for the Muslim republics of Central Asia.

 1925 Uzbekistan became a Socialist Republics. Under the Soviets farmers were not allowed to grow wheat or rice but only cotton. Farmers grew a few vegetables at their homes but did not grow spare food to sell. Refugees were sent to Kolkhozes or refugee camps.

In the US there were 5 million Polish citizens. With the JDC or Joint million of dollars were collected and ship of food used clothing and medicines were sent via Iran to the Polish army in exile and Jewish refugees but they received very little of this even though the warehouses were bursting with supplies. This was negotiated through the Polish government in London but many of them were anti-Semites.

Initially Anders recruited Jews but when it transpired that between 40 to 60% of the soldiers in the first units were Jewish after that they only let very few Jews join, they kept this down to 10%. This they claimed were NKVD orders but it was really Poles that made the rules. Yurii Zhukov of the Tashkent NKVD claimed that this was entirely up to the Polish  There was however a very successful Jewish army unit under Anders. The Polish military camps had been turned into feeding stations.

In Samarkand the Poles set up orphanages and later on when  Catholic Poles started being evacuated  so more Jewish kids came to these. They left their parents as there got Polish schooling and some food.

1942 August evacuations with Anders army started. Most children chosen for evacuation were sent by their  parents even though they knew they would never see each other again.  Around 116,000 were sent of which 5%  or 6000 were Jewish. Moshe Shertok was the representative of the Jewish Agency who negotiated this with Britain.

  The JDC were wary of funneling money through the Polish Embassy as some Polish Government in Exile member were professed anti-Semites. Trainloads of donated good and bustling warehouses but hardly any was being distributed to Jews.

Many Polish women became prostitutes' in Iran and many Poles remained or married iranians.  After the Islamic revolution 1979 and end of Cold War in 1989 their children received Polish citizenship.

Initially the refugees were welcomed as victims of the Soviet but with their demand for food and clothing it unhinged the market and the local started complaining.

The Jewish agency Youth Immigration Department was under Henrietta Szold. In Persia the Jewish children started being taught to reclaim their Jewish Identify and self respect they had nothing left to claim of Polish identity.

1941 in Iraq British forces defeated the pro Axis  government of Rashid Ali Al Gaylani  he was now replaced by pro British Nuri as Said.

From this period Solel Boneh sent 250 technician to build in Persia including oil refineries under the British, later in the  1960 Israel became the modernizers of Iran replacing what the Germans had done in the past

1231 Refugees were put on a Red Cross ship of them 836 were children. It was from Iranians that the Aliyah Bet started the first mass movement of people. Instead of a 48 hour drive from Teheran to Tel Aviv it took 48 days by sea first they were taken to Karachi of British Colonial India.  At the time ships moved in conveys , due to Japanese and German submarines mines as many as 70 British ships were sunk in the Indian Ocean in 1942.They sailed on  to Aden and then to El Kantara where they were met by British troops who had been recruited from the Yishuv including Lova Eliav. From there  put on a train from their to Haifa. The British wanted them at Atlit the Internment Camp to register and process them. Henrietta Szold had made sure that Atlit was clean and ready for them she was 82 at the time and had arrived in Palestine at the age of 60.  She had had a social network with Jehuda Magnes Ernst Simon and Martin Buber who had a political party Ichud that believed that Israel would be a binational state. Szold died in 1945 and was replaced by Hela Gerlich. Hannan approached her to send food parcels to his parents and heard that they got there. Of the Polish Catholic orphans who were in Isfahan 733 were sent on a ship to New Zealand, some Jewish kids were definitely amongst them. Others children were sent to Kenya , Uganda and Tanzania. Non Jews lined up at the office to get visas to Palestine but were rejected. About 70,000 Anders army with many families and hundred of orphans were taken to Palestine across Iraq.

30,000 Poles were taken into Palestine which absorbed them and was now the principal Catholic Polish  centre in the Middle East. They were spread around all the major cities and it became a big cultural centre. There were many Polish language newspapers and new editions of Polish books were published at the Hebrew University in fact 340 Polish language books were publish in Palestine. The Anders army trained and went off and fought at the battle of Monte Cassini.

Religious parties did what they could to get hold of these children and stop them from going to kibbutzim. The United kibbutz movement decided to take in 400 of the the thousand children.

1942 April it was now officially publish about the mass extermination of Polish Jewry through information by Jan Karski who escaped Poland and informed the Polish government in exile. Until them the British knew about this but kept it secret. Antony Edan read out a statement in the house of Lords.

Sikorski gave orders not to search for Jews that had left the Polish Army in Palestine. Anders did not oppose this but the British did. 

Poles in Palestine were given a stipend to study by the Polish delegation at places like the Hertzlia Gymnasium and Hebrew University  where the Jewish children like the writers father had to both study, learn Hebrew and work on the kibbutz.

The Home army in Poland did not help the Warsaw Ghetto when Mordechai Anielevicz called for help and  to bring weapons.  

1943 Jan this Amnesty of Polish citizens was revoked and Feb 1943 the German army in was defeated in Stalingrad.

The authors parents returned to Poland but discovered they were not welcome would never received back their assets and moved to Munich to a DP camp. Here her father who had Tuberculosis for a long time died. After  independence her was able to get to Israel where she tried the kibbutz and then settled with her son in his Haifa flat where she lived for nearly 2 decades. In Israel her father changed his name from Teitel to Dekel which both mean date palm.