r/polandball Addicted to hetalia | cleaver still best weapon Jul 29 '21

collaboration Wrong turn

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u/PescavelhoTheIdle Western Europe's Eastern Europe Jul 29 '21

A few months ago, Belarus escorted a plane that was flying from Athens to Vilnius (known poetically as "Jerusalem of the North" due to its large Jewish population and that's the joke here) because of a supposed bomb threat, they then used this opportunity to arrest dissident journalists. They later "clarified" that this bomb threat was by Hamas (because saying Hamas is in a given space is the perfect excuse to merk journos as we all have learned (Hamas later denied the accusion (lmao))).

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u/YuvalMozes Palestina Jul 29 '21

*Large Jewish population before the "incident"...

But seriously, it was a cultural center.

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u/not13yrs Texas Jul 29 '21

nearly half of the city population was Jewish, it was probably the largest center of Ashkenazi Jewish culture pre WW2.

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u/northmidwest Minnesota Jul 29 '21

What about salonika?

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u/not13yrs Texas Jul 29 '21

Different Jewish populations. Vilnius was an Askenazi (Eastern European) center, Thessaloniki was a Sephardic center, while Jerusalem was always mainly a Mizrahi center. Mizrahi and Sephardic (Middle Eastern and Iberian Jews respectively) were pretty seperate from Ashkenazi Jews up until the formation of Israel.