Indonesia executes six drug convicts, five of them foreigners

Indonesia executes six drug convicts, five of them foreigners
Widodo has pledged to bring reform to Indonesia

Ban appeals to Indonesia to stop death row executions

Ban appeals to Indonesia to stop death row executions
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has pleaded to Indonesia to stop the execution of prisoners on death row for drug crimes. AFP PHOTO

Pope: 'Death penalty represents failure' – no 'humane' way to kill a person

Pope: 'Death penalty represents failure' – no 'humane' way to kill a person
The pope wrote that the principle of legitimate personal defense isn’t adequate justification to execute someone. Photograph: Zuma/Rex

Obama becomes first president to visit US prison (US Justice Systems / Human Rights)

Obama becomes first president to visit US prison   (US Justice Systems / Human Rights)
US President Barack Obama speaks as he tours the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, July 16, 2015 (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)

US Death Penalty (Justice Systems / Human Rights)

US Death Penalty (Justice Systems / Human Rights)
Woman who spent 23 years on US death row cleared (Photo: dpa)



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"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Indonesian Jews fondly remember tropical home

Scholars, ex-members meet in Haifa to discuss a now-extinct Southeast Asian community.


In 1938, as Nazi Germany absorbed Austria and anti- Semitic violence worsened, the situation of Jews in Europe became desperate. Lines of would-be émigrés formed outside embassies hoping to get permits that would allow them to escape.

Most were turned away.
Once upon a time in the Dutch East Indies (Photo by: Dr. Ely Dwek)

The Lehrers of Vienna were among the lucky ones. They boarded a boat that took them halfway across the world to Indonesia, where a relative who had been working as a physician had helped obtain permits for them.

Shoshana Lehrer, who was then four years old, recalled arriving in the Dutch East Indies and her encounter with the small but vibrant Jewish community.

“It was very hard, we were like olim,” Lehrer, who lives in Haifa’s bayside suburbs, said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. “I never wanted to speak German so I had to speak Dutch with the other kids, which wasn’t easy. We were very poor, living together with other refugees in houses rented out for us by the Jewish community. It was a hard life,” Lehrer said.

“In Vienna I had a room and in Indonesia I had nothing but my bear. But although we had a very hard time there I loved it, it’s a beautiful place. It really felt like it was my country.”

The history of the Jews in Indonesia was the subject of a two-day symposium at the University of Haifa that ended on Monday. The gathering included many firsthand accounts by former community members like Lehrer, who spoke about what it was like being part of a tiny Jewish minority in what is now the most populous Muslim country in the world.

Prof. Rotem Kowner of the university’s Department of Asian Studies, who organized the event, said there was an unusual revival of interest in the remote and largely forgotten Jewish community.

“This is an interesting story of a community which was reformed in Israel after it had fallen apart,” Kowner said. “Seven years ago, the community members here decided to officially form an organization and sought funding but were largely ignored. The Dutch weren’t interested and the Indonesians certainly weren’t. Up until then not a word had been written about them.”

Lehrer is the head of Tempo Dulu, the association of Indonesian Jews in Israel, whose name means “former times” in Indonesian. She said the idea for members of the community to meet regularly emerged in 1995, when a Dutch film crew interviewed several of its members for a documentary.

“We meet in kibbutzim once or twice a year and at least 50 people come,” Lehrer said of the get-togethers, where participants often share spicy homecooked Indonesian food. “It’s not just members of the community but their children and grandchildren sometimes come, although they’re not as interested.”

Jews first arrived in the islands of Southeast Asia from the Netherlands when they were being colonized by the Dutch East India Company in the 19th century. These Jewish merchants and plantation owners were later joined by Jewish Iraqi businessmen, who had created a network of trading posts covering most of Asia from Mumbai to Shanghai.

Finally, the community was bolstered by refugees like the Lehrers fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe.

The Indonesian Jewish community was never big. At its peak shortly before outbreak of World War II, it numbered 3,000 people, based mostly in Surabaya, the island of Java’s second largest city; Batavia, later renamed Jakarta; and a few other smaller cities and towns.

With the exception of the refugees, life for members of the community during those years was one of privilege. Old photos reveal festive banquets held in large mansions, sports competitions and many religious ceremonies.

“We had a sports car which my father would drive around the island,” said Dr. Ely Dwek, who was born in Indonesia to Iraqi Jews but has lived in Israel most his life.

The Jews of Indonesia did not, however, escape the horrors of WWII. When Japan invaded the Dutch colony in 1942, most Jews were put together with other non-Asians in internment camps where conditions were extremely harsh. Many died of malnutrition, disease and violence inflicted by the Japanese and their allies.

Shoshana Lehrer was separated from her father and put in an internment camp with her mother for three years before the allies liberated them.

“My mother always said it was bad, but it was still better than what would have happened had we stayed in Europe,” she said.

After the war the community found itself in a precarious position, caught between the nationalists, who demanded independence, and the Dutch, who sought a return to the status quo before the war.

When the nationalists finally gained the upper hand in the fighting in 1949 it became increasingly difficult for Jews as well as for other non-Asians to remain. The Lehrers left for the Netherlands in 1952, never to return. Others moved to the UK, US, Israel and Australia. By 1965 there were only a few dozen Jews in Indonesia.

Nowadays an estimated 20 Jews live there. Judaism is not a recognized religion in the country and in 2009 the old synagogue in Surabaya, which seats 200 people, was forced to close under pressure from Islamists because of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Asked if she would like visit her childhood home, Lehrer, who has fond memories of the country, said she had mixed feelings.

“I would like to go back, but it has changed quite a lot so I’m not sure what I’ll see,” Lehrer said. “It is a place of 18,000 islands, a really beautiful place.”

But despite the community’s exodus the story of Jews in Indonesia may not be over yet.

Dr. Giora Eliraz of the Hebrew University referred on Monday to a recent New York Times article on a newly formed Jewish community in Manado, a city in a largely Christian part of the island of Sulawesi.

According to the article, pro- Jewish sentiment is widespread in the region. A giant menorah was recently erected on a mountain top and several families who claim Jewish ancestry are reconnecting with Judaism and even opened a small synagogue.

“The Jewish origin of these individuals is ambiguous,” Eliraz said. “There seems to be some Christian evangelical influence at work. Nonetheless, this may mean the curtain might not have set on Jews in Indonesia yet.”

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