I must say I do not like Corona. Why did they name a beer after a virus? The truth is, I personally do not like beer, much prefer wine or whiskey, and that fits into today's story.

I got to see a few short videos recently, one of which was by Monty Python, they are always valid in my opinion. The new president of the United States has declared that the United States has crossed the threshold of half a million deaths from the virus, more than all four years of World War II (remember that the United States entered two years after the war began). At the same time in the Monty Python video I was watching, I heard someone call out, "Bring out your dead, bring out your dead" and then I decided to take out this newsletter.

I recently began to build a one-frame exhibit on the Palestinian refugee problem. While searching for material for this exhibit I came across a sale of the cover shown below. On the front is a private cancel (not a postmark) in purple for "The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees". The initials of this organization are UNRWAPR, but most of us are mostly familiar with the abbreviated acronym UNRWA. However this was the initial name.

When the letter arrived I first noticed the name of the recipient, and I realized that there is an interesting story here. The letter was sent in October 1960 from the UNRWA agency in Beirut by registered mail, and it carries the International Refugee Year Stamps. The letter was sent to Mr. Yul Brynner, Special Adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.

The High Commissioner for Refugee Affairs is an office established in 1950 in order to assist refugees all over the world to integrate in the countries in which they reside. This commission, which has its hands full of work to this day, has also twice won the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1954 and 1981. Because Arab states opposed the integration of Palestinian refugees into their states, it was decided on the establishment of a separate body - UNRWA - that dealt exclusively with Palestinian refugees.

I guess we all remember film and theater actor Yul Brinner, mostly because of his unforgettable performance as King Mongkut of Siam in the musical "The King and I" on Broadway stages and on the movie screen, for which he even won the 1956 Academy Award. Brynner died in 1985, at the age of only 65, from lung cancer because he was a heavy smoker. In the last months of his life he joined a campaign by the American War Association that called on the public to quit smoking.

A brief examination I conducted revealed that in 1959 Brynner was appointed special adviser to the High Commissioner Of the United Nations Office for Refugees. 1960 was declared International Refugee Year, and Brynner used his status as an international superstar and was interviewed by media all over the world to highlight the plight of millions of refugees.

It turns out that Brinner was also an amateur philatelist.

An American friend showed me two more Yul Brynner covers related to the United Nations. One is shown here as it is also related to refugees. These covers seem to be philatelic in nature, and it is doubtful that they were actually sent. It is clear that Brynner collected such items, presumably to keep a souvenir for himself from his time as a "special adviser."

This was originally published in a Hebrew language two monthly newsletter, NosonNet, and was translated from that newsletter

Let us begin with a joke.

A CNN reporter, a BBC reporter and an Israeli commando are captured by ISIS in Syria. The terrorist leader told them he would grant them any last request before they were beheaded. The CNN reporter said, "Well, I'm American, so I would like one last burger with fries." The leader instructed an aide to bring a burger and fries. The reporter ate it and said "Now, I can die."
The BBC correspondent said, "I want to take out my tape and describe the scene here and what's going to happen. Maybe one day someone will hear it and know I was on duty until the end."
The ISIS leader ordered the aide to hand over a tape and dictated some remarks. The reporter then said, "Now I can die knowing I stayed true to the end."
The ISIS leader then turned to the Israeli commando and said: "And now, Mr. tough Israeli guy, what is your last wish?"
"Kick me in the ass," the soldier said.
"What?" The leader asked, "Are you joking with us in your final hour?"
"No, I'm not kidding. I want you to kick me in the ass," the Israeli insisted.
So the terrorist leader pushed him into an open area and kicked him in his ass. The soldier fell over, but rolled to his knees, pulled out a 9mm pistol from under his shirt and shot the leader dead. He jumped into his bag, pulled out an Uzi machine gun and shot the rest of the terrorists.
"Why didn't you just shoot them at the beginning? Why did you ask them to kick your ass first? "
"What?" The Israeli replied, "And that you will report that I started and I am the aggressor?"

And why am I telling you this? Good thing you asked because it is a result of things I hear on social media. So let’s embark on our story of the day. 

Now let's dive into today's story. We all remember that there was a another war of survival in our area in 1967 and if you didn’t know, well now you do. The biggest losers were the Egyptians who once again lost control of the entire Sinai Peninsula but it doesn’t really matter as they got everything back again, but that's not the point.

On May 22nd, 1967, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran and once again blocked the entry of ships on their way to Israel. Déjà vu? After all, in 1956 they did the same thing and the Sinai War broke out. But in June 1967, 14 innocent cargo ships from 8 different countries, entered the Suez Canal on their way north but no one bothered to pick up the phone and warn them that war was about to break out. Now as you now know a war broke out and the Egyptians lost all of a Sinai and finally decided to close the canal, there was no entry and no exit.

So the ships had to dock at a lake called the Great Bitter Lake. They waited there for the war to end. Well this was a short war but they suddenly realized that Egypt was not reopening the canal. "Let us go home" they cried out, but Nasser, the President of Egypt had other plans, the ships were hostages of 8 countries: England, West Germany, Poland, Sweden, Bulgaria, France, USA and Czechoslovakia and why not try to blackmail some of these countries.

The truth is that I do not know if that happened and maybe just telling stories but the fact is that Nasser did not release the ships and Sadat who replaced Nasser also didn’t release them, so they must have had a reason. In essence Egypt only controlled the western side and Israel occupied the eastern side. In practice it was possible to operate the canal together but this was not realistic as it would also allow ships going to Israel to use the canal and it would add salt to their wounds of their great loss and in addition, heaven forbid that an Arab state would cooperate with Israel?

The trapped ships were quite active during the war, using their boats to help Egyptian soldiers who fled Sinai and the doctor on the Polish ship treated about 400 wounded soldiers, very nice of them. There were also about 200 passengers on the ships and at the end of June they were allowed to return home and in August the crews on all the ships were replaced.

Now we have a problem and anyone who has gone through a real lockdown, like Israel’s first Corona lockdown, knows what it is like to be imprisoned in the same place for a long time. So you have a good book, you’re finished in three days; you'll watch a video on the internet, well no, because in 1967 there was no video or internet.

What do bored, restless adults do? Unite! And so the Great Bitter Lake Association was born. The sailors played a wide variety of different activities together such as: cards, chess, table tennis and more. Remember this is a time before Facebook so they had to actually meet, and unlike today, without masks! Who knows when we will return to that? So what else? They played football and handball on the deck of the English ship "Port Invercargill" and of course they had medical service by the doctor from the Polish ship "Djakarta" which we mentioned earlier. The staffs exchanged groceries as well as prepared food, as I teach my daughter "Sharing is Caring". One Swedish ship, the "M/S Killara" had a pool and the other Swedish ship the "M/S Nippon" had a gym. Of course one of their favorite things was movies, not video, there used to be such a thing. In 1968 they all united for an Olympic game of their own.

But how do you communicate with your family? There were no mobile phones, so you need to send letters! And what will they use for stamps? "Let's make them ourselves!" But hold your horse, wait a moment, not everyone can print stamps and mail them, it is not exactly legitimate. If it was legitimate, I would print my own stamps. So in the beginning, towards the end of 1967, the post offices in Egypt, Cairo and Alexandria were very tolerant of the sailors' distress and allowed the letters to be sent without any real stamps and of course the eight countries to which the ships belonged, accepted the stamps of the GBLA and even encouraged the practise. The post office of the organization was on the German ship "Northwind" and everyone gathered there to send and receive letters and the postman took the mail to Egyptian post offices for delivery. Not every postal clerk received the stamps as there was no official procedure in place and quite a few of the postmen demanded that they use regular Egyptian stamps..

Since there was no official status, the GBLA applied to the International Postal Association UPU for recognition since the letters were sent by sea and as of 1891, there was a law that allows letters to be sent by sea, PAQUEBOT and this also applies to the GBLA. The UPU accepted the claim that Clause 21 was valid for these ships and at the end of 1969 introduced a change to the bylaws to allow these stamps and make the practice official and it was accepted as Clause 23.

Only in 1975 did the Suez Canal reopen and the ships were finally allowed to leave the quarantine. But between 1967 and 1975, there was also 1973 and of course the Egyptians attacked Israel. This time the ships were inactive except for one, the American ship "Africa Glenn" which was abandoned and the Egyptian army used it as an observation and direction. As a result, the IDF sank the ship.

Real letters from the first period, that is, until 1970, sell for hundreds of dollars. Personally if I did not know the story behind the stamps, I would laugh at the stamps and think it is not true. They were simple stamps with bad graphics and looked as if they were cut with scissors, but that's the advantage of knowledge and that's why I pass the knowledge on.

The story is based on the stamp catalog of the Slovakian Peter Valdner, the Great Bitter Lake Association. Contact: valdpete@yahoo.com. Here is the site: https://valdpete.blogspot.com/p/great-bitter-lake-association-catalogue.html

We all know there was a war for Israel’s basic existence in 1948 and if you didn’t, sorry about that. At that time, there was a worldwide boycott of arms sales to Israel except for one country, Czechoslovakia. Whoever thinks that the Americans stood by us at this time, is wrong, this is a pretty common mistake nowadays that is heard mostly on social media.

Why did countries not want to sell us weapons? Good question, and I don’t have many answers only that Western countries did not want to annoy their Arab customers, after all we are a small country compared to the many large countries surrounding us that also had oil. An old joke says that it is a pity that Moshe, our ancestor from the Bible should have turned left instead of right. If he had turned right we would have the oil and the Arabs oranges, referring to Jaffa oranges. Of course it is an old joke, because Jaffa oranges are not what they once were, if there is such a thing today.

Czechoslovakia was willing, but only with Russia's approval, since in 1948 they were a part of the Russian Alliance. And why were they willing, other than to receive money like Pfizer nowadays? 😊 

Our story began 100 years ago when as you know, in 1917, during WW1, a British General named Edmund Allenby, managed to drive out the last Turkish occupation forces from our area, thus ending 400 years of occupation. He commanded a military force known as the Egyptian Expeditionary Force or EEF; remember that name because we will get back to it soon. The force was established the previous year, specifically for the invasion of Sinai and Palestine.

We will not go into various historical details but we will talk about interesting aspect. With the Turks out, the British became the new occupiers and both soldiers and civilians were living in the Holy Land, and of course people wanted to send messages out. Since there were no emails in 1917, they had to write letters. But they had no stamps; the Turks had been driven out. So what were they going to do? Simple, use the stamps already used by the armed forces, the EEF stamps. These stamps were in use since the establishment of the force. After the League of Nations gave the British the mandate to prepare our area for the Jewish state, General Allenby transferred the administration to the representative of the British government, the High Commissioner to Palestine, Lord Herbert Samuel. Lord Herbert Samuel arrived in Palestine in 1920, that is, a hundred years ago.

Now things are starting to get complicated. Herbert Samuel saw that there was no indication on the stamps to show that the letter had been sent from Palestine and that, of course, was inappropriate. So he decided to add on overprint on the stamp itself. After consultations, Herbert Samuel decided that the overprint would be in three languages, Hebrew, English and Arabic! The word Palestine in three languages! Houston, we have a problem, the Jews wanted the Land of Israel to be used and not Palestine, their claim was that the territory was promised to them, not only in the Balfour Declaration but also in the San Remo Agreement. The Arabs objected because it was a political statement. 

Does the story end here? It's a good place to end but unfortunately it doesn’t. Why unfortunately and here we have an historical distortion. In 2018 the Palestinian Authority, which had decided to issue stamps with the name, the State of Palestine, issued a stamp for "100 years since the first Palestinian stamp" and the stamp depicted the high value of the original EEF stamp. And here's the issue, in the official declaration of the issue and the First Day Cover, instead of the correct interpretation of the letters EEF, they called it Education, Endowment and Foundation, the same letters but changed them without any historical basis. And in which printing house were the stamps printed? The official printing company of Bahrain, our new buddies. A little birdie told me that the Palestinian Authority was so angry with Bahrain as a result of their peace agreement with us that they demanded that the PA stamps would no longer be printed in Bahrain, but at a local printing house. They were getting the printing for free, now you are going to pay for it.

Going back to the matter of distorting historical information and you're probably asking, as I was asked, who cares? Distortions in stamp catalogs and articles refer to stamps as a historical tool. So you're probably asking yourself again who cares and if so, I suggest you read George Orwell's "1984" book.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.

The world has just had the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day and so it is a good time to reissue this newsletter, in English. International Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on a different date than the Israel Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day selected by the UN, is the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp on 27th January 1945.

Everyone who is not a Holocaust denier knows about the genocide of six million Jews as well as many other nations. Everyone remembers names like Auschwitz and everyone has heard about the Warsaw Ghetto and how Jews were pushed into a very small area where Corona would have a great time, a mask would not help and there would certainly be no place to practice social distancing. There is no need to remind everyone of Europe’s dark past in the last century.

In 1933 the Nazis rose to power and immediately issued a series of laws against the Jews and there were many. The first laws were intended to remove Jews from public office. Albert Einstein was not in Germany at the time, and decided he had nowhere to return to. One of the first events of 1933 was the burning of the books of Jewish writers, including the Bible. Jews were not allowed to be doctors, lawyers, bankers etc.

The Jews were an integral part of the German community, seeing themselves as secular Germans and their being Jewish was secondary. All of a sudden a plethora of laws come out against them, one of them being that a Jew must be identified by his name and therefore were forced to add a middle name, Sarah for a woman and Israel for a man (there was a list of names). So, Hans now becomes Hans Israel.



But now there is a problem. An executive order was issued saying that a German could not buy from a Jew, so how can one know that someone is a Jew, the yellow badge! By the way, in Germany today, there are many that accuse Israel of the Corona virus and attach a yellow badge to the image of the corona.

Continuing with our story, about two thousand years ago, a Jew named Joshua, (Jesus), began to claim that he was the Son of God, and began to persuade people to walk another path. In those days, the area of Judea was controlled by a chief rabbi and a Roman governor. The chief Rabbi, Caiaphas, claimed it was blasphemy, and transferred judgment to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilatus, for trial. Pilatus condemned Jesus to death in the cruelest Roman method, crucifixion. Of course I shortened the story, but Jesus became what is today called a martyr. However that was when Christian anti-Semitism began. To this day, Jews are accused of murdering their God (savior). No, Jesus was not a Palestinian, this name was given to the Judean area only after the Bar Kochba revolt or the Second Judean War of Rome and that was about a century after Jesus was executed.

Christianity grew and even Roman emperors converted and we all know the history, but around the year 1100, about the time of the First Crusade, due to demands from the Vatican, European kings from France, England and others, began to enact laws against Jews. The laws were quite reminiscent of Nazi laws, such as a ban on buying from Jews and a ban on mixed marriages, and so on. During the Crusades, the kings even confiscated land belonging to Jews (maybe we should ask for our land back or at least retroactive rent) and even at some point expelled them from those countries. In France, Jews were deported, allowed to return several times, until the final deportation at the end of the 13th century.

So now the question arises again, how do you identify that he is a Jew?

Very simple, an addition to the garment, in other word, a yellow badge! But it was not a badge as we know it. The Pope instructed that Jews be required to wear a unique clothing item that will identify them as Jews. Each country could choose its own form. Even a piece of material as large as that of Miss Universe band, would have been acceptable, if it had been in the color required by the king.

But what was the easiest way to identify a Jew, even from behind? A comical hat! Usually the hat was in the shape of a cone but also had a spike of some kind. This method was known for use in Central Europe, in countries such as Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and others. In a city called Judenburg, the Jewish hat is in the city emblem! According to the municipality, the name of the city has nothing to do with the Jews, yeah right.