This is totally Ironic, I am trippin...

[Jagsbch]

German industrialists guard Jews against poison gas threat

Israelis seeking shelter against chemical attack have put their faith in a hive of German activity. Robert Tait reports from Zikhron Ya'akov

IN the heart of the Holy Land, based in one of the original Zionist towns in Israel, one of history's great role reversals is taking place -- a group of Germans developing an industrial process to protect Jews from poison gas.

The Germans, a fundamentalist Christian sect called Beit El -- Hebrew for House of God -- have fashioned themselves as protectors of the Jews, citing prophecies of an apocalyptic attack they believe is foretold in the Bible's Old Testament.

Describing themselves as Christian Zionists, they say that their protective mission has nothing to do with assuaging German guilt feelings over the Holocaust. Instead, they say they have been inspired by the apocalyptic prophecies in the Book of Ezekiel and by Chapter 15 of the Book of Romans, where it states that 'if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings'.

Chapter 22 of the Book of Ezekiel prophesises that the 'House of Israel' will be 'gathered into the midst of Jerusalem' and 'melted' before the second coming of the Messiah.

The group's sense of mission is such that they have made an exception to the strict Christian beliefs that lead them to reject such fixtures of contemporary life as television, the internet and even modern medicine. In the service of love of the Jewish people, they have harnessed the German national gift for technological innovation to develop a gas filtration kit, which filters out noxious gases circulating in the atmosphere.

The equipment, marketed under the brand name Noah's Ark, has caught on among Israelis fearful of an attack from weapons of mass destruction as war with Iraq looms. There is a three-month waiting list to buy the equipment. One hundred Israeli workers have been recruited in the past six months -- augmenting 200 German employees -- to meet surging demand.

The scene of this hive of Germanic productivity is Zikhron Ya'akov, one of the first towns founded by Zionist settlers in 1882 with funding from the French Jewish financier, Baron Edmond de Rothschild.

In a small factory on the outskirts of town, workers and management converse in German. Factory signs are in German and Hebrew. In keeping with the community's credo, women workers dress with deliberate modesty.

Standing in a factory forecourt whose German character is attested to by tidiness and neat surrounding flower gardens, Rudy Winter, 62, a merchandise manager, said: 'We don't feel guilty for the Holocaust.

'I'm very sorry for what happened. But I was just a kid at the time and we had Jewish friends and neighbours who my parents helped by giving love, shelter and food.'

Speaking Hebrew in a strong German accent, he said: 'We came here because we were a group of people who came to realise from reading the Bible that the Jews are the chosen ones.

'It's prophesied that there are going to be bad and disastrous times in the world and in Israel. We don't know what will happen or when, but this factory we are running is to protect the people of Israel when harm comes.'

Putting his biblical views in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said: 'I don't like Arabs. It's very simple. This is the land of the Jewish people and the Arabs don't want the Jews to be here. The Arabs hate the Jews, so we don't like the Arabs.'

The community began producing the gas-protection equipment in 1977, led by a community member with a background in electrical engineering. It was initially ignored by the Israeli public but came to public attention in the first Gulf war in 199l when Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at Tel Aviv.

The basic kit, providing protecting for a family of six, costs £625 and depends upon premises having a sealed room. More extensive models have been made for workplaces and hotels. The biggest system, offering protection to 100 people, costs £2500. Factory managers say they have sold between 4000 and 5000 kits in the past five months.

A variant of the system exists in the form of a transparent plastic tent for buildings without a sheltered area. The basic family model costs £750. Each system affords months of protection, its manufacturers say.

The factory says that it is selling to the Israeli Defence Force and other public bodies such as schools and hospitals as well as to the armed forces of 12 Nato states and companies in America.

Amir Benvzi -- an Israeli and the factory's marketing and sales co-ordinator -- said: 'Our sales are up 1000 per cent. The big change happened after President Bush's axis of evil speech. We believe here at Beit El that the pre-September 11 times are gone for good. The threat doesn't come from Saddam Hussein or Iraq, but from non- conventional terrorists.'

Beit El was founded in 1963 by two sisters, Emma and Elsa Berger, who emigrated from Stuttgart. A wave of German immigrants followed. The community has about 1000 members living in kibbutz-like conditions. The last new arrival was several years ago.

Its members use modern technology for work only. Telephones are used in the factory but not at home. Cars are owned collectively.

So ascetic are their beliefs that its members worship not at church, but in a special prayer house, where crucifixes or religious icons are forbidden.

Their loyalty to Israel extends to observing Saturday -- the Jewish Sabbath -- as their day of rest.

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Let me get this straight the Germans saving the Jews... I am scratching my head. Not too many things make me go off the deep end any more with all the info around, but this, this is classic.

ART.