World briefs
By JTA
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Protesters disrupt Irving’s Oxford speech
LONDON (JTA)—Hundreds of students demonstrated, sometimes violently, at the Oxford University debating society Nov. 26 to protest the appearance by Irving and Nick Griffin, the leader of the extreme-right British National Party.
Protesters chanted “Nazi scum” at those attending the event, according to London’s Times newspaper. Some hit students who were trying to enter the rooms where the Oxford Union was holding the controversial event, where Irving and Griffin discussed their views on free speech. Police had to intervene to ensure security. The Times reported that only 250 people, half the expected audience, attended the event, which started several hours late due to the demonstrations. Irving was convicted of Holocaust denial in Austria last year for a 1989 speech in which he questioned the existence of the Nazi concentration camp gas chambers.
British lawmaker quits Oxford over Irving
LONDON (JTA)—A British lawmaker renounced his membership to the Oxford debating society in protest of an appearance by David Irving. Julian Lewis, the shadow defense minister and a Conservative Member of Parliament, turned in his 37-year-old membership to the Oxford Union, where Irving and Nick Griffin, head of the extreme right British National Party, are to discuss the topic of free speech Nov. 26. Irving was convicted of Holocaust denial in Austria last year based on a speech in which he cast doubt on the existence of concentration camp gas chambers. British Defense Secretary Des Browne, television anchor June Sarpong, Labor Parliament member Austin Mitchell and other prominent Britons have canceled future engagements at the Oxford Union in reaction to the decision by students to give a platform to Irving and Griffin, whom many consider racist. Denis MacShane, another Labor Member of Parliament, told the British media that the speeches “will be a festival of anti-Semitism.” Luke Tryl, the union’s president, told The Daily Telegraph that his aim was to defeat fascism with “liberal, informed debate.” “I believe their own publicity will destroy them—they will implode,” Tryl is quoted as saying. In a poll, 1,062 students voted to support the invitations extended to Irving and Griffin, with 640 voting against.
Canadian students reject anti-Israel motion
NEW YORK (JTA)—An anti-Israel motion was rejected by the Canadian Federation of Students. More than two-thirds of the voting plenary Nov. 22 at the federation’s annual congress rejected the call for an investigation into the feasibility of a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel. The motion was proposed by the Ryerson Student Union. “We are very pleased that CFS has determined that this issue has no place on the agenda and that the organization stands in support of academic freedom,” said Alex Halpern, the president of the Canadian Federation of Jewish Students.
Berlin Jews apparently changing leaders
BERLIN (JTA)—Berlin’s strife-torn Jewish community is likely to gain a new president, according to early voting estimates. Frida Suesskind and her Jewish communal political group Atid won a majority of the 9,694 votes cast by members of the Berlin Jewish community on Nov. 25. This means Atid, with 13 seats on the board, will get to choose the next president of the Berlin Jewish community, and it is likely to be Suesskind. The selection will be made in January. The Berlin Jewish community has been plagued by fighting between leaders, charges and countercharges of mismanagement, and general mistrust. Atid had pledged to respond to the needs of Russian-speaking immigrants, who comprise a majority of the community, and repair the community’s finances. Suesskind, 61, was born in Poland and is a past chair of the WIZO women’s Zionist organization in Germany. She said she would take the post unpaid; Joffe had received a salary for the position. Like the rest of Germany, the Berlin Jewish community has grown four-fold since the fall of communism due to the influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union. The Berlin community has about 12,000 members.
Kasparov arrested in Moscow
MOSCOW (JTA)—Former chess champion Garry Kasparov was arrested after leading a protest to Moscow’s federal election authority offices. Kasparov was sentenced Saturday to five days in jail for holding an unauthorized march. He had been on his way to give election officials a letter claiming that the upcoming Russian elections are biased toward President Vladimir Putin. Kasparov is the presidential candidate for the opposition Other Russia coalition. He was arrested at a demonstration in April, when he was levied a fine but no jail time. On Sunday, Kremlin riot police broke up an anti-Putin rally near the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
Canadian students reject anti-Israel motion
NEW YORK (JTA)—An anti-Israel motion was rejected by the Canadian Federation of Students. More than two-thirds of the voting plenary Nov. 22 at the federation’s annual congress rejected the call for an investigation into the feasibility of a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel. The motion was proposed by the Ryerson Student Union. “We are very pleased that CFS has determined that this issue has no place on the agenda and that the organization stands in support of academic freedom,” said Alex Halpern, the president of the Canadian Federation of Jewish Students, the umbrella organization of Jewish student organizations across Canada. The motion stated that “student union solidarity was critical in the dismantling of the South African apartheid system” and that “there is a growing international movement declaring Israel an Apartheid State.” It called for a committee to research the feasibility of a boycott of Israel report back with recommendations to the May 2008 national meeting.
Ukrainian Jewish activists meet
KIEV (JTA)—Ukrainian Jewish activists met to discuss rising anti-Semitism and Ukrainian-Jewish relations. More than 30 Jewish activists and experts from throughout Ukraine gathered Nov. 23-24 in Kiev for the annual meeting of the Coordinating Council of the Association of Jewish Communities and Organizations of Ukraine, or Vaad, together with the Zionist Federation of Ukraine. Josef Zissels, a longtime Vaad and Zionist leader in Ukraine, told JTA that there has been a “reduction of [Zionist] activities” in Ukraine. Other participants complained that when Zionist activities did occur, there was little publicity. “I did not get any information nor see any real action from Zionist organizations in Ukraine in the last two years,” Valery Kontzevich, the Vaad and Zionist Federation representative in Sumy, told JTA. This year the number of returning Ukrainian émigrés decreased nearly 25 percent compared to the previous year, while remigration to Ukraine from Israel increased, the activists noted. The meeting also addressed the problem of Ukrainian-Jewish relations, including the presentation of national awards to controversial Ukrainians such as Gen. Roman Shukhevich, politician Levko Lukyanenko and parliament member Ivan Spodarenko, as well as the glorifying of World War II nationalist combat units.
Australian Jewry picks president
SYDNEY (JTA)—A Sydney-based lawyer was elected president of the umbrella body of Australian Jewry. Robert Goot ran unopposed Monday at the annual conference of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. He succeeds Grahame Leonard, of Melbourne, who served a three-year term. The presidency of Australian Jewry rotates between Sydney and Melbourne every two or three years. The former president of Moriah College, Australia’s largest Jewish school, Goot has been heavily involved in Jewish affairs since he was elected the youngest president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies in 1978 at the age of 30. He was appointed a member of the Order of Australia in 1988 for service to the Jewish community. During the recent Australian federal election, Goot was accused of tipping off the Liberal Party about a Labor Party policy launch, prompting an uproar by several Labor apparatchiks. Goot’s election comes just two days after incumbent John Howard of the Liberal Party was soundly beaten in the prime minister’s election by Labor’s Kevin Rudd. Howard’s government had been exceptionally close to the Jewish community and Israel.
Lauder urges Hungary to fight extremists
PRAGUE (JTA)—Ronald Lauder urged the Hungarian prime minister to combat right-wing extremism in his country. The World Jewish Congress president and Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany met Monday in Budapest. Lauder expressed concern over the formation of a paramilitary guard earlier this year by a group known for its xenophobia. “It is alarming that only 60 years after the Holocaust, people in uniforms closely resembling those of Hungarian fascists during World War II are parading again in the streets of Budapest,” Lauder said, according to a WJC statement. Gyurcsany, a left-wing politician, has been one of the most outspoken critics of the far right in Hungary. Lauder thanked him for his support.Lauder has welcomed the parliamentary approval last month of a bill that makes it easier for member of religious, ethnic or sexual-choice minorities to seek litigation if they are publicly offended or targeted with hate speech or acts of hatred.
Australia’s Howard swept from power
SYDNEY (JTA)—John Howard, a staunch ally of Israel and America, has been swept from power in Australia after 11 years of conservative rule. Australians delivered a landslide victory to Labor in Saturday’s compulsory elections. The country’s new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, will lead a government that includes two Jewish members of parliament -- the first Jews to sit in government since 1990. Howard, Australia’s second longest-serving prime minister, appears to have lost his own seat in parliament after 33 years. While Rudd has forged close ties to the 110,000-strong Jewish community in Australia since he became Labor leader last December, the 50-year-old from Queensland is not expected to be able to replicate Howard’s rock-solid support for the Jewish state. Rudd visited in 2003 and 2005. The two victorious Jewish candidates were Michael Danby and Mark Dreyfus, who was standing in his first election for the seat of Isaacs, named after Australia’s first Jewish governor-general, Sir Isaac Isaacs. Some analysts have speculated that Labor’s support for Israel may waver at the United Nations. However, Rudd has declared that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be tried at the International Court of Justice for his genocidal declaration to “wipe Israel off the map.” He also has vowed not to negotiate with Hamas “unless it undergoes radical change.” George Newhouse, a high-profile Jewish lawyer, failed in his bid to unseat Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Wentworth, the nation’s largest Jewish electorate. Also elected was Mike Kelly, a former colonel who served in Iraq and whose wife is Israeli, and Nicola Roxon, whose father was a Polish Jew
Ukrainian Torahs still not returned
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Ukrainian Torah scrolls have not been returned to the Jewish community, despite a presidential decree. In spite of Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko’s Oct. 24 decree to transfer Torah scrolls held in Ukrainian state archives to the Jewish community within a month, government bodies and state archives say they are still not ready to do so. Georgy Popov, head of the Ukrainian State Committee on Nationalities and Religious Affaire, said on the Inter TV channel Sunday that “there are some technical problems” and “it is necessary first of all to make some changes in legislative acts and other documents.” Aleksandr Bystrushkin, head of the president’s humanitarian department, said the administration will demand adherence to Yuschenko’s instructions without delay. More than 1,000 historic Torah scrolls are sitting in state-run museums and archives in Ukraine, according to Josef Zissels, head of the Va’ad, or Association of Jewish Communities and Organizations of Ukraine. Jewish leaders have been asking for their return to help revitalize Jewish religious life in the country. They believe Yuschenko will keep his promise. The scrolls originally had belonged to synagogues and private Jewish households in Ukraine, and were either confiscated by Communist Party authorities during anti-religion campaigns during the Soviet era or seized by Nazi forces during the World War II occupation of Ukraine.
Ukranian cemetery vandalized
KIEV (JTA)—The Jewish cemetery in the Ukrainian city of Zhitomir was vandalized. Unidentified vandals forced open the front door of the Ohel of Tzadik Rabbi Aharon from Zhitomir, a student of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov. Swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans were spray-painted on the walls and ceiling of the Ohel. The vandalism took place within the last two weeks. Local police are investigating the case, but no arrests have been reported. Acts of anti-Semitism in Zhitomir have been occurring almost monthly this year, but local Jewish leaders told JTA they are not sure that this is an act of anti-Semitism or, more likely, “vandalism organized by hobos or drug addicts.”
‘Righteous gentile’ joins Polish government
PRAGUE (JTA)—An Auschwitz survivor and “righteous gentile” was named to the Polish government. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, 85, is the new secretary of state responsible for Poland’s relations with Germany, Russia and Israel. Bartoszewski, who has been foreign minister of Poland twice since the end of communism, is a non-Jew who spearheaded the anti-Nazi underground government’s aid to Jews during World War II. He has been recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Museum and Memorial in Jerusalem. He joins the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a centrist politician who defeated his more conservative rival, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Relations with Israel were largely positive during Kaczynski’s term, with Poland as a fierce defender of Israeli interests in the European Union. Relations with Germany, however, dramatically declined under the former prime minister as he repeatedly invoked Germany’s Nazi past in his criticism of the country’s current policies. Relations with Russia were equally poor, with both countries carrying old grudges in their economic and political disputes.
Ukrainian Jew gets top honor
KIEV (JTA)—A prominent Jewish leader and member of Ukraine’s parliament received a top national honor. President Victor Yuschenko awarded Aleksandr Feldman the Order of Merit of first degree on Nov. 22 for his “prominent personal contribution to the Holodomor 1932-1933 history research in Ukraine and active public work to perpetuate the memory of the tragedy’s victims.” Feldman, 47, heads the Jewish Foundation of Ukraine and International Center for Tolerance. Feldman openly backed Yuschenko’s call on Israel to recognize Holodomor, the great famine that killed millions of Ukrainians during 1932-33, as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people and organized Ukraine’s Holodomor exhibition in Israel in September. He accompanied Yuschenko on his state visit to Israel this month. Feldman is a well-known politician, advocate of Jewish interests in the Ukrainian parliament and philanthropist. Previously he had received the Order of Merit of second degree and third degree.
Bnei Akiva dedicates Paris center
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Bnei Akiva dedicated its new Paris headquarters. The religious Zionist youth movement’s Paul Roitman Center was dedicated Sunday. Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, David Kornbluth, and the former chief rabbi of Paris, Alain Goldman, attended the ceremony. Paul Roitman was the founder of Bnei Akiva in France and a hero of the French resistance. He died in Jerusalem in August. Roitman, a native of Poland, moved to eastern France at the age of 5. In 1941 he fled to Toulouse in the French free zone, where he set up a Jewish studies circle that formed the core leadership of the Jewish underground. He settled in Paris, where he devoted his life to rebuilding the Jewish community. In 1950 he was named the Jewish Agency’s European and North African director of the Religious Section of the Youth and Pioneer Department. For 20 years he criss-crossed Europe by train, strengthening Jewish youth centers and creating new ones in postwar communities throughout Europe. Roitman moved to Jerusalem with his family in 1970, where he continued his involvement in social issues.
Mahler jailed over Nazi greeting
BERLIN (JTA)—Right-wing German extremist Horst Mahler has been jailed for raising his arm in a Nazi salute. Mahler, 71, who created an uproar with a controversial interview earlier this month in Germany’s Vanity Fair magazine, had used the Nazi salute to greet his jailers the last time he was put in jail in the former East German city of Cottbus. That time, he served nine months for incitement to hate. This time, he is to spend six months behind bars, according to a report in the Geman Press Agency. Mahler, a former left-wing extremist and co-founder of the now defunct Red Army Fraction, has since became an outspoken neo-Nazi. Meanwhile, historian and Holocaust survivor Arno Lustiger has started proceedings to sue Vanity Fair over the Nov. 1 Mahler interview, which Lustiger’s attorney’s said constituted illegal Holocaust denial.
Police arrest man in swastika carving case
BERLIN (JTA)—German police made an arrest in the case of a teenage girl who had a swastika forcibly carved into her hip by a neo-Nazi gang. The 17-year-old had been attacked earlier this month in the former East German state of Saxony when she came to the aid of a 6-year-old girl who was being harassed by four men. The teenage victim reported the incident this week, and police were able to find the child she helped as well as arrest a 19-year-old man for his involvement in the attack. No formal charges have been filed yet. The 17-year-old said at least two of her attackers were wearing leather bomber jackets with Nazi party emblems, which are illegal in Germany. She said one had Nazi runes tatooed on his finger.
Epleman receives honor
BUENOS AIRES (JTA)—Argentina’s Foreign Ministry honored the executive director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, Claudio Epleman. On Thursday, the ministry honored four faith-based activists for their work on behalf of their different communities. Aside from Epleman, honorees included Muslim educator Soraya Seibaa, Catholic priest Francisco Ballarni and Evangelical pastor Lisandro Orlov. The ceremony was part of the 26th anniversary celebrations of the United Nations’ statement on eliminating all forms of intolerance and discrimination.
Greece to come to summit
ATHENS (JTA)—After pressing for an invitation to Annapolis, Greece has been invited to the upcoming peace conference. Greece wanted to be a part of the summit both because Turkey, its regional rival, had been invited, and because Greece wants to demonstrate that it has a role to play in the Arab-Israeli peace process. In 1982, it was Greek ships that evacuated Yasser Arafat and his henchmen from Lebanon and brought them to Greece following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and attack on the PLO. Over the last decade, Greece has hosted several conferences on the conflict involving Arabs and Israelis. Greece will be represented at Annapolis by Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis. During Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ last visit to Greece, in April 2007, Bakoyannis called on the Palestinian leader to curb violence and release kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilat Shalit. Sources in the Greek Foreign Ministry say Bakoyannis is contemplating hosting a peace summit in Greece following the Annapolis meeting.