Hezbollah terrorists smuggled from Poland the remote control and the detonating device used to set off the bomb that exploded on a Bulgarian tourists bus last summer and killed five Israelis, according to the Polish Trud daily newspaper.

Last week, Bulgaria named two native Lebanese as part of the cell that carried out the attack near the airport in Burgas, a resort city on the Black Sea.

Hassan El Hajj Hassan, who also holds Canadian citizenship, is suspected of detonating the bomb from the a remote control device,. Meliad Farah, who holds Australian citizenship, is suspecting of having put together the bomb in Bulgaria after receiving the parts that arrived on a train form Warsaw, according to Trud.

Hezbollah wired the terrorists $100,000 for their “success,” the newspaper added.

The Bulgarian Interior Ministry last week published pictures of the two wanted suspects, who it said registered at a  hotel and rented a car under fake names days before the bombing.

Bulgaria’s evidence that Hezbollah was behind the bombing helped pressure the European  Union to declare Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, but the designation applies only to the military branch and to to the political arm, which gives orders to its terrorists.

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As a child growing up in Melbourne, Australia (this is Arnold Roth writing), I thought I knew what we meant when twice each year, on Anzac Day and on Remembrance Day, we would solemnly recite and sign and write and in various ways render an archaic-sounding phrase that was put to use on those days only. Lest we forget.

I had a sense of what was meant, though never looked into its origin until thus morning. Those were simpler times, and it turns out that “Lest we forget” is part of the refrain of a poem, “Recessional“, by Rudyard Kipling. It was composed for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and carries with it both religious and nationalistic notes. But then it became, as we would call it today, repurposed:

It introduces the reason for the entreaty expressed in the poem: that God might spare England from oblivion or profanity “lest we forget” the sacrifice of Christ (“Thine ancient sacrifice”).
The phrase later passed into common usage after World War I across the British Commonwealth especially, becoming linked with Remembrance Day observations; it came to be a plea not to forget past sacrifices, and was often found as the only wording on war memorials, or used as an epitaph [Wikipedia]

one of the worst terrorist atrocities in Britain

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Australia, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, now has a deputy prime minister who is a founding member of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group, a sign of shifting political sands that may change the country’s attitudes towards the Jewish state.

Anthony Albanese, a longstanding member of the left faction of the Labor Party, was sworn in by Australia’s Governor-General Quentin Bryce Monday as part of Kevin Rudd’s new cabinet. Albanese describes himself as “a strong advocate of justice for Palestinians” but also has been at the forefront of the fight against those promoting a boycott of Israeli goods, blasting the campaign as “clumsy and counterproductive.”

Rudd was parachuted into power last week for his second stint as prime minister after Julia Gillard called a leadership ballot amid plunging polls and rising support for Rudd. He served as prime minister from 2007 to 2010 and said the day after he was re-elected that he doubted he would stick to the federal election date selected by Gillard of September 14, which is Yom Kippur, because of the “massive inconvenience” to Australia’s 110,000-plus Jews.

Rudd’s re-election as party leader sparked a bounce in the polls, but Labor still trails the conservative Liberal Party led by Tony Abbott. The election must be held by November 30.

Michael Danby, a pro-Israel Jewish legislator inside the Labor government, said although Albanese “doesn’t have my views on the Middle East,” he does support a two-state solution.

A Vilna Ghetto survivor and partisan fighter whose restaurant in Melbourne became a meeting place for the postwar survivor community died on Saturday at the age of 89.

Avram Zeleznikow was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust and waded through more than 30 miles of sewers to escape the ghetto in 1943 and join the partisans.

After the war, he and his wife-to-be, Masha, met in a Parisian cafe named Scheherazade, and soon after immigrating to Australia they opened their own Cafe Scheherazade, which became an iconic institution in Jewish Melbourne.

His son John said his parents served meals even to those survivors who could not afford to pay.

”He did not want to make a profit; he wanted to help people,” John Zeleznikow told The Age newspaper. ”They would talk, they would eat and they would argue. He provided sustenance for the body and sustenance for the soul.”

A Bundist, Avram Zeleznikow taught Yiddish at Sunday school, was president of the Australian Jewish Welfare and Relief Society, on the executive of the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, chairman of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria and a representative of the Jewish community on the Ethnic Communities Council.

He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2003 “for service to the Jewish community of Victoria.”

South African newspapers have been reporting for some days that Prof. Cyril Karabus, 77, whose involuntary detention by the people who run the United Arab Emirates has been going on now for seven months in defiance of basic principles of due process, has been cleared, acquitted, found not guilty, freed to go home and so on. The spokesperson for South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Co-operation broadcast a tweet a week ago exulting (after the earlier intervention of the department’s minister) that “He is free!”

However, South Africa’s Eyewitness News website reports that:

CAPE TOWN – Prosecutors in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have told Professor Cyril Karabus’ legal team they intend appealing the decision to find him not guilty of manslaughter. Last week, an Abu Dhabi court found the elderly professor not guilty of manslaughter and forgery. A medical committee cleared the paediatric oncologist of all blame for the death of a young cancer patient he treated there more than a decade ago. The latest development means Karabus will remain in the UAE indefinitely…

We have not yet seen any reports originating in the UAE that confirm this, but we will keep looking. And if there is anyone out there still thinking the man’s own government is willing to do what ought to be done, think again:

“Professor Cyril Karabus has no choice but to submit to the UAE’s legal process, the dept of international relations said on Thursday, after it emerged that he will not be allowed to come back to South Africa yet.” [SAPA]

We have posted numerous times here about the Kafkaesque ordeal that this distinguished medico has suffered at the hands of the authorities in the UAE. For a quick overview, we suggest these: “21-Mar-13: Is Prof Karabus finally being released and going home?“; and “29-Jan-13: UAE “Justice” officials fiddle: The scandalous treatment of Prof. Karabus goes on and on“.

May we suggest again that anyone planning to travel to or through Dubai should carefully review what we posted here yesterday? (See “27-Mar-13: Final call for Australian travelers to London with Qantas“). And for the record, the advice is not meant only for Australians.

This outrageous affair is barely known outside South Africa. It’s time to change that.

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Australia has confirmed that “Prisoner X,” since identified as Ben Zygier, worked for the Israeli government, and it warned Israel it faces a strong protest if it is proven his home country passport was misused.

Zygier, alias Ben Alon and Ben Allen, hanged himself in an Israeli jail two years ago after having been arrested for an unknown charge, but his identity was not revealed until last month.

It is assumed he worked for the Mossad and at some point acted against Israel’s interest, possibly through a treasonous act.

Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr told reporters in Australia that a Dept. of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) report has raised serious problems on how the case was handled.

He also said there are still many unanswered questions, one of the most serious being the issue of passports.

“Certainly if Australian passports were misused here, that’s something we are forced to take very seriously,” Senator Carr said. “No country can allow the integrity of its passport system to be compromised.

If it is confirmed that Israel misused his passport, “We’ll be registering the strongest protest,” Carr added.

He dismissed reports that Zygier was involved in the assassination of a senior Hamas official in Dubai in January 2010, when some of the killers used Australian passports.

The incident prompted the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat from Australia, one of the most pro-Israel countries in the world.