13th of May 2008 /

National briefs

By JTA

Pollard: I don’t know Kadish

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Jonathan Pollard says he does not know alleged spy Ben-Ami Kadish. Kadish, 84, allegedly passed American military secrets to Israel during the same period as the former Navy intelligence analyst.

Esther Pollard, the wife of the convicted and jailed spy, said in an interview published April 24 that the first her husband had heard of Kadish was when his arrest was announced last month.

Wright tips hat to Jewish acquaintance

WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. delivered greetings to a top American Jewish Committee staffer. Wright, the former pastor of presidential contender U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), is on a media blitz countering charges of extremism by Obama’s critics. Speaking April 27 in Detroit to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Wright suggested that he had a broad base of allies in Chicago, where he is based.

Listing his supporters, he said, “I would also like to thank sister Melanie Maron, the former executive director of the Chicago chapter of the American Jewish Committee and the current executive director of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the American Jewish Committee. I would like to thank my good friend and Jewish author Tim Wise for his support.”

Maron at the Chicago AJC chapter organized the city’s leg of AJC tours of the United States for up-and-coming European civic and political leaders. The tours were aimed at explaining pluralism, and Maron coordinated visits to Wright’s Trinity United Church. AJC staffers said Wright always made sure visitors had a warm welcome. Otherwise, AJC spokesmen said, there is no relationship between the AJC and Wright, whose past statements attributing terrorist attacks on America in part to U.S. foreign policy have stirred controversy since Obama became a front-runner in the Democratic race. Tim Wise is a prominent Louisiana expert on white racism.

In remarks April 28 to the National Press Club, Wright denied likening Israel’s policies to apartheid. “My position on Israel is that Israel has a right to exist; that Israelis have a right to exist, as I said, reconciled one to another,” he said. “Palestinians and Israelis need to sit down and talk to each other and work out a solution where their children can grow in a world together and not be talking about killing each other; that that is not God’s will. So my position is that Israel and the people of Israel be the people of God who are worrying about reconciliation and who are trying to do what God wants for God’s people, which is reconciliation.”

Columbia to mark Nakba

NEW YORK (JTA)—Arab-American student groups at Columbia University are marking the 60th anniversary of what Arabs call “the catastrophe”—Israel’s founding. The Arabs use the term Nakba in referring to Israel’s achieving independence in 1948. Among the events planned for Al-Nakba Week is the hanging of 2,000 posters each marked with the name of a Palestinian village destroyed that year. Also, a faculty discussion titled “60 Years of Nakba: The Catastrophe of Palestine 1948-2008,” will feature controversial anthropology Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj and Professor Joseph Massad, who Jewish students have accused of harassment and intimidation. The sponsoring organizations are the Arab Student Association, Filasteen and Turath.

Ukraine cites Jewish theater head

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA)—A Jewish Ukrainian theater director received one of his country’s top honors. Mykhail Reznikovych received the Order of Merit of the first grade from President Victor Yuschenko, who congratulated the director on his 70th birthday at a ceremony Friday in Kiev. Reznikovych has served as the director of the Lesya Ukrainka National Academic Theater of Russian Drama in Kiev since 1994.

Slovak priest holds mass for fascist leader

PRAGUE (JTA)—A Slovak Catholic bishop reportedly held a mass in honor of the fascist president of Slovakia during World War II. The Slovak newspaper Sme published a video showing Jan Sokol, head of the diocese in the city of Trnava, memorializing Jozef Tiso 61 years after he was executed by a Czechoslovak court for war crimes. Tiso, a Catholic priest, led the fascist puppet state that was the only nation to pay for its Jews to be deported to Nazi concentration camps. A representative of the umbrella group for the Catholic Church in Slovakia said Sokol’s mass for Tiso was his own private initiative, according to Sme. In 2006 Sokol told a Slovak TV station that life under Tiso had been ‘‘propserous.’’ More than 70,000 Slovak Jews died in the Holocaust.

House nixes Medicaid cuts

WASHINGTON (JTA)—The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected proposed Bush administration cuts to Medicaid. The House legislation passed Wednesday puts a one-year moratorium on such cuts. The United Jewish Communities, the federation umbrella group, had led lobbying against the cuts to the federal program, which insures the poor.

Jews voice preference in Rome race

ROME (JTA)—A group of 80 Jewish intellectuals called on Italian voters to reject the center-right  candidate in the run-off race for Rome mayor. Their appeal was published Friday in the leftist daily L’Unita. The group said that center-right candidate Gianni Alemanno has the backing of the extreme-right Destra party as well as neo-Nazi skinheads and other far-right extremists. “One doesn’t defend democracy by rewarding anti-Semitism and the moral heirs of Nazi-Fascism,” the petition said. Signatories included well-known authors, journalists, entertainers and others. Alemanno faces center-left candidate Francesco Rutelli in the run-off vote Sunday and Monday.

Jewish War Veterans suspend alleged spy

NEW YORK (JTA)—The Jewish War Veterans of the USA reportedly has suspended suspected spy Ben-Ami Kadish. The move was ordered by the group’s national commander, Lawrence Schulman, the New Jersey Jewish News reported. Kadish was arrested in April for allegedly passing U.S. military secrets to Israel from 1979 to 1985, while he was an employee at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J. Kadish, 84 and a veteran of World War II who fought with both the Americans and the British and later in Israel’s Haganah, is a former commander of the Jewish War Veterans Post 609 in Monroe, N.J., where he lives. The Jewish War Veterans is moving to remove him from the organization.

McCain picks up Hamas-Obama linkage

WASHINGTON (JTA)—John McCain said voters should draw judgments from a report that Hamas favors Barack Obama. “I think it’s very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States,” Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), the putative Republican presidential nominee, said in a conference call April 25 with conservative bloggers, in response to a question from Jennifer Rubin of Commentary magazine. Saying that he would be “Hamas’ worse nightmare” McCain added: “If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly.” Obama, who has advocated meetings with leaders of pariah states, has explicitly excluded Hamas, noting that it is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

Clinton gains in revised exit poll

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Revised exit polling data increased Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. The updated exit polling figures showed Clinton with 62 percent of the vote among Jewish Democrats in in the April 22 primary and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) with 38 percent. The adjustment to the numbers used by news organizations also increased the percentage of Jews voting in the primary to 8 from 7. The original numbers had the New York senator defeating Obama among Jews 57 percent to 43 percent. Sources familiar with exit polling procedures told JTA that polling analysts corrected their data for suburban Philadelphia, where most of the state’s Jewish population resides. Given the relatively small sample size of the Jewish electorate, the adjustment resulted in an additional 5 percentage points for Clinton. Based on the earlier data, JTA had reported that Obama had fared better among Jews than whites overall. The updated data indicate that Obama fared essentially the same among Jewish and white voters, winning 37 percent from the latter group; slightly worse among Catholics (30 percent to 70 percent for Clinton); and slightly better among Protestants (45 percent to Clinton’s 55 percent).

Human rights board: Mezuzah can stay

NEW YORK (JTA)—A condo association discriminated against a Jewish resident with a mezuzah on her door, a Florida human rights board ruled. The Port Condominium did not have the right to order Laurie Richter, 29, to remove the mezuzah or face a $1,000 fine, the Broward County human rights board said. Richter also believed she could be evicted, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. She told the three-member panel of the rights board that after seeing Christmas wreaths on condo doors when she moved into the building in December 2006, she did not think a mezuzah would be a violation. Richter no longer resides in that building. Richter will now mediate with the condo association or, if that fails, file a lawsuit. If the case is not settled, the Civil Rights Division of the Broward County Office of Equal Opportunity could fine the condo association up to $11,000. Florida’s state House last week passed a bill making it illegal for a condo board to prohibit a small religious object on a door frame, the Sun-Sentinel reported. The state Senate was slated to debate the bill.

Jews decry Rome mayoral candidate

ROME (JTA)—The head of Rome’s Jewish community and leaders of a far-right party traded barbs ahead of a runoff vote for mayor. Gianni Alemanno of the rightist National Alliance Party faces center-left candidate Francesco Rutelli in the election on Sunday and Monday. Jewish community president Riccardo Pacifici had threatened a Jewish sit-in protest if Alemanno officially allied himself with the small, far-right La Destra party. Alemanno refused a formal alliance with La Destra. But on Wednesday, La Destra leader Francesco Storace announced his party’s backing of Alemanno. At a news conference, Storace demanded an apology from the Jewish community for what he termed its “shameful campaign” against La Destra and rebuffed accusations of anti-Semitism. Pacifici, from Israel, rejected Storace’s demand, saying that any apologies should come from La Destra, which has links to fascism.

Ukrainian teacher guilty of anti-Semitic slurs

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA)—Jewish leaders in Ukraine welcomed a court decision finding a teacher guilty of making anti-Semitic statements. Nikolay Yakimchuk, a public school teacher of Ukrainian language and literature in the city of Kirovograd, was charged with ethnic incitement after several students testified that he allegedly said during class that “Jews are bad and impudent people,” that Jewish students are only “taking space in our school,” and there should be “no place for them among people.” In 2006 the Court of Ukraine’s Kirovograd region acquitted Yakimchuk of hate crimes charges. After an appeal from the Jewish community, however, the local court on Tuesday brought down a guilty verdict. Lyudmila Borisenko, the leader of the Kirovograd Jewish community, told JTA that the local Jewish community appreciates the verdict, but that Jews are afraid Yakimchuk will be granted amnesty.

JDate earns a Webby

JERUSALEM (JTA)—JDate was honored in the 12th annual Webby Awards. The Jewish online dating site was cited in the social networking category. The Webby Awards, called the “Oscars of the Internet,” is an international contest that recognizes excellence on the Internet. JDate, owned and operated by Spark Network, has more than 650,000 active members worldwide and is the leading online community for Jewish singles.

Both Houses mark Israel’s 60th

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Both Houses of Congress unanimously congratulated Israel on its 60th anniversary. The U.S. Senate passed its non-binding resolution late Tuesday and the U.S. House of Representatives passed a similar resolution on Wednesday. The Senate resolution was unusual because it was co-sponsored by all 100 senators. The House resolution was also unusual in that it was sponsored by U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the House speaker, joined by Republican minority leader Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio.).

In the House resolution, the sponsors said the House “reaffirms its support for Israel’s right to defend itself against threats to its security and existence and commends the people of Israel for their remarkable achievements in building a new state and a pluralistic, democratic society in the face of terrorism, as well as hostility, ostracism, and belligerence from many of their neighbors.” In floor remarks, Pelosi also said she would travel to the region next month to join Israel’s 60th anniversary festivities. President Bush is also attending the festivities. “These important congressional measures celebrate the six-decade relationship between our two democracies,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in a statement. “They are a demonstration of broad, bipartisan American support for Israel and the strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”