Around the Jewish world

By JEWISH REVIEW

article created on: 2008-10-15T00:00:00

NATIONAL

Ithaca professor may sue
 

WASHINGTON (JTA)—A professor threatened to sue Ithaca College, saying it denied her tenure because of claims she is anti Israel. Margo Ramlal Nankoe, an assistant sociology professor at the upstate New York college, hired Lynne Bernabei, a Washington lawyer, the college’s weekly newspaper The Ithacan reported recently. The lawyer, who represented controversial Israel critic Norman Finkelstein in a similar case against DePaul, wrote the university threatening a “long and protracted legal case” if it did not reverse its decision to deny her tenure. The university, which says it is reviewing the letter, twice denied her tenure based on her scholarship and “unevenness” in her teaching, The Ithacan said. Ramlal Nankoe has taught at Ithaca since 1997 and was eligible for tenure in 2006. She is active in Students for a Just Peace, which advocates for an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. She vehemently denies that she is “anti-Israel.”

N.Y. federation
may tap reserve funds
 
NEW YORK (JTA)—North America’s largest Jewish federation may tap into reserve funds to deal with the economic crisis. Officials at the UJA-Federation of New York said that they were prepared to dip into their reserves to help out agencies in dire need sustain their services, the CEO of the federation, John Ruskay, told The New York Jewish Week. The UJA’s endowment, which holds most of the reserve money, doubled to about $850 million over the past five years, and the money could be used to help agencies in New York that have been hit hard by the economic crisis. The federation already has given an emergency grant of $400,000 to the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty to help sustain its food bank.

Suit against made-up
Shoah memoirist is tossed
 
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A lawsuit against the author of a fabricated Holocaust memoir was dismissed by a Massachusetts judge. Publisher Jane Daniel had sued Misha Defonseca, the author of the 1997 book “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years,” and her ghostwriter Vera Lee to overturn a $32.4 million court judgment the writers had won against Daniel in a prior dispute over profits. The story about surviving the Holocaust by living with wolves was false, so Daniel argued that Defonseca had” perpetrated a hoax” on the trial judge and jury. But Middlesex Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley threw out the lawsuit Oct. 7 because it had been filed after the one year statute of limitations, The Associated Press reported. Feeley said the memoir’s lack of truthfulness “did not go to the heart of the case.” Daniel’s lawyer said he plans to appeal. The book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France before Defonseca admitted in February that she had made up the stories in the book and was not even Jewish.

AJC: Withdraw Zionism chapter in race book
 
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The American Jewish Committee is calling on a leading publishing house to withdraw a chapter on Zionism in a new encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism is published by Macmillan Reference USA, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. It is available in print and online versions.”It is incomprehensible that a reputable publisher would include the national movement of the Jewish people, Zionism, in an encyclopedia on racism,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris. “No other form of nationalism is included in the three volume encyclopedia. Gale has given fodder to academia and beyond to assault the State of Israel.” In a letter to Frank Menchaca, Gale’s executive vice president and publisher, AJC not only questioned why Zionism was included in the encyclopedia, but also pointed out a number of factual and historical inaccuracies in the chapter. The author of the Zionism chapter, Noel Ignatiev, has no track record of scholarship in Middle Eastern or Jewish studies, but his previous writings show an inherent bias toward Jews and Israel, according to the AJC. Indeed, the entry misrepresents Zionism as an” ideology of race” and promotes the canard of Zionist Nazi” collaboration.” “The chapter is littered with serious errors and deliberate distortions,” Harris said. “Yet it is presented to readers as an impartial and objective overview of Zionism in what purports to be a reference work.” “What is being marketed as scholarship actually is propaganda, and that’s shameful.”

UW cops file bias suit
 
JERUSALEM (JTA)—A Jewish officer was among six current and former University of Washington police officers who sued the department for discrimination. The lawsuit, which was filed Oct. 9 in U.S. District Court, alleges that the university’s police department was rife with racial slurs, and that management decisions were motivated by the ethnicity and gender of the employees, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Officer Andrew Cohen alleges that a co-worker said Cohen could not be Jewish because he did not have numbers tattooed on his arm. Cohen also said that swastikas were placed around the office.

MIDDLE EAST

Kadima sends draft
coalition pact to Labor
 
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Labor would be the senior partner in a new government, according to a draft coalition agreement reportedly sent on by Kadima. Associates of Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni reportedly passed the draft agreement Oct. 12 to the Labor Party. Israeli media are reporting that the agreement will serve as the basis for continuing talks between the ruling Kadima and Labor. A deal between the two parties was expected soon. According to Ynet, the agreement would make Labor the senior partner in the new government, with its chairman, Ehud Barak, serving as a senior deputy prime minister and playing a significant role in negotiations with Syria. Barak reportedly is concerned that the Shas party will not join a Livni-led government, and that Labor will be stuck in a government with a narrow ruling coalition, thereby hamstringing the party. Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, the chairman of the Likud Party, met Oct. 13 with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Shas, to encourage him not to join a Livni government. Livni has until Oct. 20 to form a new coalition government, although she can ask President Shimon Peres for a two-week extension.

Olmert calls for crackdown
on Acre violence
 
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The car of a Jewish resident was torched as violence continued for a fifth day in the mixed Jewish-Arab Israeli city of Acre. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in his weekly Cabinet meeting Oct. 12 “instructed the police to show zero tolerance and bring about a cessation of the violence” in the northern city of 53,000. The riots started on Yom Kippur eve, Oct. 8, when an Arab man drove through the Jewish sector of the city and was confronted by Jewish youths who said he was deliberately desecrating the holiday by driving, smoking and playing loud music. The ensuing riots between Jewish and Arab youths have resulted in extensive damage to property in Acre. A large police presence continues to patrol the city’s Arab and Jewish sectors. On Oct. 11 three Arab-owned homes were torched, making a total of 12 since the riots began. At least 54 people have been arrested since Oct. 8. Water cannons have been used to disperse the rioters. Arab leaders in Acre agreed to issue an announcement condemning the Arab driver whose actions touched off the riots. Meanwhile, an Acre theater festival, which brings in thousands of visitors from outside the city, has been postponed.

Bush waives PLO ban
 
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Bush waived a ban on a PLO office on Washington for another six months. Laws banning the PLO’s presence in the capital have been in place since the 1980s, but President Bush and his predecessor, President Clinton, have waived them every six months so as not to upset peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Harry Hurwitz dies
 
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Harry Hurwitz, an adviser to Menachem Begin, has died. Hurwitz, who founded the heritage center named for the late Israeli prime minister, died in Jerusalem on Sept. 29. He was 84. A Zionist leader in South Africa, Hurwitz formed a fast friendship with Begin when they met in 1946. After Begin was elected prime minister in 1977, he asked Hurwitz to move to Israel to advise him. Hurwitz served in the early 1980s as an information officer at the Israeli embassy in Washington and was on the ground floor in establishing close ties between Israel and the United States Evangelical community. Perhaps the staunchest defender of Begin’s record as prime minister, Hurwitz established the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem after Begin died in 1992.

Hamas, Fatah to resume talks
 
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Hamas and Fatah are set to resume talks in Cairo. Egyptian-brokered talks between Fatah, the dominant party in the relatively moderate Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, the terrorist group running the Gaza Strip, have stalled in recent months over Fatah’s insistence that it return to some positions of power in Gaza. Hamas seeks an end to the crackdown on its institutions in the West Bank and greater P.A. advocacy for opening up Gaza’s borders with Israel. The sides now expect to resume talks before the end of the month, media reports said this week.

Israeli universities
say they can’t reopen
 
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Cutbacks will prevent Israeli universities from opening for the new academic year, according to the university heads. With more money slashed from the Finance Ministry’s budget for higher education, the universities will not open Nov. 2 as scheduled, representatives of the country’s universities told an emergency session of the Knesset Education Committee Oct. 12. “After seven years of continual cutbacks we have reduced the number of courses, we have raised the number of students in classes and we have banished an entire generation of lecturers overseas,” Rivka Carmi, the president of Ben-Gurion University in the Negev, told the committee. “We’re not issuing a threat not to open the academic year; we simply can’t open the year.” The threat was made just a week after The Hebrew University of Jerusalem was ranked 93rd in the world by the Times Higher Education survey, jumping 35 places since last year.

Libya pays into victim account
 
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Libya deposited a “substantial amount” into an account for victims of Libyan terrorism, U.S. officials said. The account was set up to settle lawsuits brought against the regime over the last two decades and to pave the way to full normalization between Libya and the United States. “We’ve received a substantial amount of money in the account the U.S. government established for American claimants,” said David Welch, the U.S. assistant secretary of state. “This is a direct deposit that was just made overnight.” The settlement is for the Libyans to pay $1.5 billion toward American victims of its terrorism and for the United States to pay $300 million toward Libyan victims of its raids. Welch would not specify the amount the Libyans deposited except to say that it was “evidence of their commitment to fully implementing the whole agreement, and a substantial indication of their commitment.” U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) has placed a hold on confirming a U.S. ambassador to Tripoli until the Libyans pay settlements to victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

INTERNATIONAL

Haider killed in accident
 
ROME(JTA)—Joerg Haider, a far right politician in Austria who had praised Nazi employment policies, died in a road accident. Haider, the governor of the province of Carinthia, was killed early Oct. 11 when his car ran off the road as he was driving to a family gathering. He was58. Known for his anti-immigrant and anti-European Union policies, Haider ledthe right wing Freedom Party from 1986 to 2005. He made headlines with remarks that appeared to praise Hitler; his parents were members of the Nazi Party. The Freedom Party won 27 percent of the vote in 1999. That year, Haider described Nazi SS veterans as “men of honor.” In 2000, the party’s entry into the Austrian government sparked international sanctions, demonstrations and street riots, and prompted calls by Israel and Jewish groups to isolate the country. Haider left the Freedom Party in 2005to found a separate far right party, Alliance for Austria’s Future. In Austrian general elections last month, the Alliance for Austria’s Future and the Freedom Party created a far right faction that together captured about 29 percent of the vote.

Russia may be backing
away from Iran sale
 
WASHINGTON(JTA)—Russia appears to be backing away from a proposed sale of state-of-the-art anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert raised the sale of the S-300s in meetings in Moscow this week with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Israel fears the missiles, which have a range of 150 kilometers, will diminish its air superiority in the region and inhibit its ability to preemptively attack Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. Asked Oct. 9 about the Russian response to Olmert’s request, Andrei Nesterenko, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: “We have declared more than once at the very highest political level that we do not intend to supply those types of armaments to countries located in regions that are, to put it mildly, uneasy. This is not in the interests of our country’s policy or the interests of preserving stability in one region or another of the world.”

Rome mayor
condemns anti-Semitism
 
ROME (JTA)—Rome’s mayor condemned “any form of anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination.” Mayor Gianni Alemanno made his remarks Oct. 12 during a march commemorating the 65th anniversary of the World War II deportation of Roman Jews to Auschwitz. Some 8,000 Jews were rounded up and deported on Oct. 16, 1943. Alemanno, who began his political career in a neo-fascist youth group, also condemned the 1938 anti-Semitic laws imposed by the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini.