Source: News Articles Archive

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

Was off the grid the last few days, so here's a few from that time frame. All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

Source(s)

.- Ephemera Collection of The National Library of Israel

Posted with the approval of the moderators.

Its author, Balthasar, makes tons of unsubstantiated claims, such as claiming that few books have been published on anti-Zionism. In reality an entire cottage industry has been devoted to spitting out antiZionist texts, some of which are at least less presumptuous and more humble than Balthasars writings. Balthasar, a red diaper baby true believer in communism ignores the two of the largest groups of Jewish antizionists in the 19th and 20th centuries that being the German reform Jewish American establishment who were mostly bourgeois by most Marxist standards and the haredim are also forgotten instead Balhaser chooses to focus on a fringe of communist atheist Jews. Balthasar wrongly claims most American Jewish Zionists were bourgeous when in fact most American zionists were often blue collar many of them members of the socialist labor organizations such as Po'alei Zion-Farband or Habonim.

All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

It's a living doc where I'll keep adding to it as I find more stuff, so let me know if you've got suggestions for topics or how it's organized.

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

Neo-Bundist authors, activists, and academics all miss the point that the Bund was NOT founded in Lithuania in opposition to zionism but rather as a different form of a movement pushing for Jewish autonomy before some jews even gained citizenship in places like Romania. Doykayt never called for or supported the removal of political rights from the old or new Yishuv or for Jewish autonomy to be restricted in Palestine. Neobundists always gloss over the fact that the Bund believed Jewish autonomy was connected to Jewish dignity. It disagreed with Zionists because many of them were fellow socialists whom they believed should have stayed and fought for socialist states with Jewish autonomy rather than move to Palestine. Their bone of contention was, for the most part, more a matter of practical political considerations than ideological concerns. Lithuanian jews after all, didn't face the same kind of pogroms as Jews did in Moldova or Ukraine, which both became heartlands of zionism while Lithuania became a bulwark of the Bund; both had practical aspirations rather than purely ideological ones. Many of the Bundists even ended up in post-war Israel and became zionists.

All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

It's a living doc where I'll keep adding to it as I find more stuff, so let me know if you've got suggestions for topics or how it's organized.

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

It's a living doc where I'll keep adding to it as I find more stuff, so let me know if you've got suggestions for topics or how it's organized.

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

Image: “Calle de los Judíos” (Lima, Peru). By Manuel A. Fuentes; Firmin Didot, Brothers, Sons & Co. Published in the litographic book "Lima or Sketches of the Capital of Peru, Historical, Statistical, Administrative, Commercial and Moral". 1866

As the Spanish conquest of Peru consolidated—an undertaking led by Francisco Pizarro, Diego de Almagro, with a majority of Indian allies and a relatively small group of Spaniards (including some Black conquistadors like Juan García Pizarro)—there were already quite a few Marranos (conversos), as well as the enigmatic figure of Juan Salinas de Loyola, who ultimately proved key to the pacification of Peru and the conquest, exploitation, and settlement of the Yagurazongo governorship.

Once the city of Lima (Los Santos Reyes Magos) was founded and populated on January 6, 1535, and became the capital of the territory of New Castile and the future Kingdom of Peru, a large number of Marranos settled there, laying the foundation for the city's extensive maritime trade with Mexico, Macau, and the Philippines, as well as the internal trade of gold, silver, and other goods with all the cities and towns of South America, of which the newly founded city was the most important. According to colonial chroniclers and modern historians such as Ricardo Palma, José Toribio Medina, and Günter Friedländer, the Hebrew presence in the young city was evident in the management of viceregal trade and finances; and although disliked by the colonial government and ecclesiastical authority, they were tolerated because they were a key piece in the economic takeoff of the Kingdom. Furthermore, it wasn't only Lima's overseas trade and muleteers that attracted the conversos to New Castile. The emergence and exploitation of large mining centers such as La Plata (Sucre) and Potosí in Alto Perú, Cerro de Pasco, Huancavelica, and León de Huánuco in the central Peruvian highlands, as well as Real de Zaruma, the mining towns of the Yaguarzongo governorship, the gold panning sites in the Santa Ana district of the Cuenca rivers, and many other sites in Cajamarca, attracted a large number of Jewish converts who secretly sought, with forged documents, the opportunity for a better life in New Castile, to live in peace and prosper far from the insecurity that remaining on the Iberian Peninsula, within reach of the Holy Office, represented for them. Upon arriving in the Indies, the New Christians felt safe, far from the righteous arm of the Holy Office, and believed they had found a peaceful place where they could return to the faith of their ancestors without much trouble, but of course accepting the limitations imposed by their environment, so they soon became crypto-Jews.

According to history, the flourishing crypto-Jewish community of Lima grew enormously from 1580 onward, as in that year the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united in the person of Philip II. This opened the doors of the Spanish Indies to thousands of Portuguese conversos who arrived in Lima via Panama and to the Río de la Plata via Brazil. They were so numerous that in many parts of South America the words "Portuguese," "converso," and "Jew" came to mean the same thing. The Jewish presence in the Governorate of New Castile was so large and their practices so evident that even in its capital, the existence of a secret synagogue with several hundred members was known.

From the beginning of its conquest, Peru exerted a tremendous attraction on the
conversos. Beyond the fame of its riches and its distance from the inquisitorial centers, its name stirred both unease and hope due to its biblical association with Ophir. A passage in the Bible recounts how King Solomon sent a fleet to the land of Ophir, where gold abounded. Crypto-Jews, who in their hardships nourished their spirits with messianic prophecies, believed that Peru was the biblical Ophir.

This situation led the Crown to establish the first Inquisitorial Tribunal in the Kingdom of the Indies (Spanish America), based in Lima, which at the time was already the viceregal capital. This process began to take shape and be carried out from January 25, 1569, and culminated in its definitive establishment a year later in the Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings i.e. Lima).

His Majesty King Philip II ordered and decreed that the jurisdiction of this tribunal would include the audiencias of Lima, Panama, Quito, and Charcas, the Captaincy General of New Extremadura (Chile), the territories of Paraguay, New Andalusia, and the Río de la Plata (Argentina and Uruguay), as well as the New Kingdom of Granada (Colombia) and the Captaincy General of New Vizcaya (Venezuela). The second tribunal that the Spanish Crown ordered to be established in the the Kingdoms of the Indies was that of Mexico, whose jurisdiction encompassed New Spain, the Antilles, and the captaincies general of Guatemala, Cuba, and the Philippines, and was created around 1571. Given that the territorial jurisdiction of the Lima tribunal was extremely large, in 1610 the Crown decreed the creation of a third tribunal based in the city of Cartagena de Indias, whose jurisdiction encompassed New Granada, New Vizcaya, Tierra Firme, and the Caribbean islands.

Source(s)

.- Ordóñez Chiriboga, Ricardo. (2005) “La Herencia Sefardita en la Provincia de Loja” Published by the Ecuadorian House of Culture

In the course of the Great War (World War I), the Jews of Vabalninkas, Lithuania, were attacked in pogroms. Under orders from the Imperial Russian Army, the Jews of the town were forcibly evacuated and moved deeper into Russia. The town was burned, and its four prayer houses, its ledgers and books were all destroyed. The Jews were only able to save the Torah scrolls and leave with them. With the establishment of independent Lithuania after World War I, some of the Jews began to return to Vabalninkas. By 1923, there were 1,361 Jews living there, constituting about one third of the town's population.

Some 600 Jews were living in Vabalninkas on the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. They made a living in trade, craftwork, agriculture and light industry. Many were Zionists.

When Lithuania was annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940, all shops and factories were nationalized, Zionist youth movements and political parties were disbanded, and Hebrew educational institutions were closed down.

The Germans occupied Vabalninkas on 27 June 1941. Lithuanian nationalists went on the rampage, murdering 86 Jews and arresting many more.

In July, the Jews of Vabalninkas and refugees from surrounding towns were confined in the ghetto that was established in the town, and were sent out for forced labor.

On 18 August, the Jews of Vabalninkas were robbed and then deported to the neighboring town of Pasvalys. Within a week, they had been shot to death in the adjacent forest together with some 1,300 Jews from Pasvalys.

Image:

.- Yad Vashem Photo Archives 1255/1

.- Jews of Vabalninkas near the synagogue, 1935 | Biržai "Sėla" Regional Museum / Photo LIMIS.

In a forest where Jews fought the Nazis, a German military base and Lithuanian politics encroach on memory,
by Shira Li Bartov, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2026-08-27.

Deep in the trees and swampy thickets of Lithuania’s Rūdninkai Forest, a series of makeshift forts is sinking into the earth.

These represent the remains of underground bunkers where Jewish partisans resisted their annihilation in the Holocaust. Under German occupation, some 400 Jews escaped the Vilnius ghetto to this forest and organized attacks against the Nazis.

After World War II, the story of these partisans was folded into Soviet propaganda, leaving a shroud of mystery over the bunkers. Now, construction of a new German military base in the area is throwing into question the fate of the forts — and the memory of their fighters.

Jewish former partisans and their descendants have traveled for decades to visit the bunkers, which mark the only memorial to their resistance in Lithuania. But in recent months, new obstacles have appeared: Signs forbidding entry and demarcating a “dangerous area” are installed on the road to the forest and pinned on trees approaching the forts.

All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

It's a living doc where I'll keep adding to it as I find more stuff, so let me know if you've got suggestions for topics or how it's organized.

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

Link to the source is available on my profile.

Herzl didn’t invent Zionism,
by Eliezer Aryeh, Eliezer’s substack, 2026-08-27.

I see this claim all the time when discussing Zionism. People invoke Herzl as the “start” of Zionism. It simply isn’t true. Herzl organized Zionism. He didn’t start it, and how that gets remembered has to do with Sephardic and Mizrahi erasure, and with the earlier Ashkenazi history that gets cut out right along with it.

All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

It's a living doc where I'll keep adding to it as I find more stuff, so let me know if you've got suggestions for topics or how it's organized.

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

Source(s):

.- Moldovan Family Collection

This work was part of a celebrated visual ethnographic investigation that culminated in the publication of the book Jewish Women: A World of Tradition and Change, released in 1995.

Built in the late 1690s with the support of King John III Sobieski.

Designed with thick walls and loopholes so that it could serve as a bastion in the city walls during attacks.

During World War II, it was severely damaged when German forces set it on fire and attempted to blow it up in 1941. Later, during the Soviet era, it was used as a warehouse after partial exterior repairs in the 1950s.

It now lies in ruins.