World briefs

By JTA

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Kirchner cites terror as she takes office

BUENOS AIRES (JTA)—Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner referred to terrorist attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina as she took office as the country’s president.

“We have been part of the global terrorism,” Kirchner, the first woman elected president of Argentina, said during her one-hour address, referring to attacks in 1992 and 1994. “We cannot be part of the global violation of human rights.”Kirchner succeeds her husband, Nestor Kirchner.

Ex-Jerusalem Post publisher meted prison

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Former Jerusalem Post publisher Conrad Black was sentenced by a Canadian court to 6-1/2 years in prison. Black, 63, was convicted July 13 on three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice for bilking millions of dollars from shareholders of his Hollinger International newspaper publishing conglomerate. The Canadian-born member of the British House of Lords was ordered to report to prison in 12 weeks; he remains free on $21 million bond. Black will serve his time in an American prison, not a Canadian prison as his lawyer requested. Black was ordered to pay restitution of $6.1 million and was fined $125,000. Prosecutors have calculated the total loss to shareholders to be about $32 million.

Waterboarding ‘torture’

WASHINGTON (JTA)—The American Jewish Committee’s Board of Governors issued a statement saying that waterboarding is “unquestionably torture” and “clearly illegal.” The board condemned the practice of simulated drowning after meeting Dec. 10 in New York. Its statement came in response to the national discussion surrounding the confirmation hearings for Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who had claimed during those hearings that he wasn’t sure if waterboarding was torture. “An interrogation practice associated with the Spanish Inquisition and prosecuted under U.S. law as torture as much as a century ago is unquestionably torture,” the statement read. “The use of officially sanctioned torture techniques corrupts our intelligence services, removes our military from the moral high ground, materially damages our nation’s standing in the world, and exposes our military to similar treatment when captured,” the AJC wrote.

Rabbi backs Putin

MOSCOW (JTA)—A chief rabbi of Russia came out in support of Vladimir Putin as prime minister, calling the possibility a “great present.” Anointed presidential successor Dmitry Medvedev went on state television Dec. 11 to ask Putin to head his government following elections in March. Rabbi Berel Lazar, of the Chabad-led Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, spoke enthusiastically about the idea in an interview with the Interfax news service. “When president, Vladimir Putin has showed that he is equal to any task,” Lazar told Interfax. “If Putin considers the scenario offered by Dmitry Medvedev realistic, it will surely be a great present, if the government is headed by the most efficient statesmen in Russia.” These remarks stand in contrast to statements made yesterday by Lazar about the role of religion in politics. Following an endorsement of Medvedev by Putin that virtually guaranteed him the presidency, Lazar told Interfax that it is not ‘the matter of religious figures to agitate for any candidate.’

Russia wants Jews back

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Russia reportedly is trying to lure back Russian Jews who immigrated to Israel. Israeli intelligence believes that a cultural center recently opened by the Russian Embassy in Tel Aviv is designed to promote the repatriation of Jews who emigrated from Russia. During the recent parliamentary elections in Moscow, the cultural center sent emissaries throughout Israel to encourage ex-Russians to vote. According to Ha’aretz, the cultural center is headed by a former KGB spy whose appointment Israel briefly tried to block.

Reform women’s Torah commentary debuts

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA)—A project that Reform officials are saying is the first comprehensive treatment of all the Torah portions by women scholars was unveiled Dec. 13. “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary,” a 14-year effort by Women of Reform Judaism, was presented the biennial conference of the Union for Reform Judaism in San Diego. While there have been several recent books focusing on women in the Bible, or giving a feminine perspective on biblical history, Reform officials say this project is a landmark. “We’re at a point in the history of Bible study where for the first time in history we have a critical mass of serious scholars who are women,” said Rabbi Hara Person, chief editor of URJ Press, which published the book. “So partly this has to do with the timing. And certainly there is a need for women’s perspectives to fill in the gaps.” Women of Reform Judaism raised $1.5 million and spearheaded the project. The book retails for $75 and will be available from URJ Press beginning Dec. 15.

European Arabs decry Al-Jazeera

BERLIN (JTA)—A group of Arabs in Europe is demanding an end to Al-Jazeera broadcasts on the continent. A few Arab activists are circulating a petition accusing the Qatar-based broadcaster of fostering extremism among European Arab youth and supporting terrorism, according to a report by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute. The activists are demanding the channel be banned from European TV. The petition also calls for a boycott of Qatar for exporting hate.

Its initiators remain anonymous, but MEMRI said the campaign was posted primarily on Iraqi Web sites after Iraqi exile Joseph Shallal initiated the plea in an article published Nov. 28 on the Arab Modern Discussion Web site. MEMRI cited Shallal as writing that the 10-year-old channel should be blocked because it challenges the very principles of freedom and human rights that have attracted so many Arab refugees to Europe. Al-Jazeera TV “has already been prevented from operating in many countries, and some of its presenters and technical crew have been arrested for their involvement in aiding obscurantist terrorist forces like Al-Qaeda and others,” Shallal wrote, according to MEMRI’s translation. “The time has come for Al-Jazeera TV, whose name has become ‘the bin Laden channel,’ to face its day of reckoning on the European continent.”

Jews ask Australia to ban Coratian band

JERUSALEM (JTA)—A Jewish group asked the Australian government to ban a Croatian rock band that plays anti-Semitic lyrics. The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission asked the federal government to ban the rock group Thompson, according to the Australian Age newspaper. The rock group’s anti-Semitic lyrics have attracted fans of the Ustashi, Croatia’s Nazi-era nationalist party, as well as neo-Nazis who shout “Heil Hitler” and make the Nazi salute at live performances. The group, which has been banned from the Netherlands, is scheduled to perform in several locations throughout Australia this month, including in Sydney on New Year’s Eve. Thompson performed a concert at Melbourne’s Croatian Social Club in October organized by a neo-Nazi music promotion organization.

Charges over Wikipedia Nazi symbols dropped

JERUSALEM (JTA)—A German government official dropped charges against Wikipedia for displaying Nazi symbols. Left Party deputy chairman Katina Schubert had filed charges with Berlin police saying the online encyclopedia’s German-language site contains too many Nazi symbols, citing in particular an article on the Hitler Youth movement. The symbols are banned in Germany except for educational and artistic purposes. Schubert withdrew the complaint last Friday after speaking with Wikimedia Deutschland, which began removing some of the symbols. Wikimedia Deutschland said the symbols are clearly used for informational purposes.

Bush meets with Jewish leaders

WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Bush met with Jewish leaders from throughout the world. The president customarily meets with Jewish leaders before the White House’s annual Hanukkah reception in the Roosevelt Room. At the meeting Dec. 10, which was International Human Rights Day, many of the leaders were born outside the United States and came to America in search of religious freedom.

The guests included Jack Abraham, president of what is believed to be the only Afghan synagogue in the United States, Anshei Shalom in New York; Dr. Mayer Ballas, the founding president of the Council to Rescue Syrian Jews; Yuli Edelstein, the former deputy speaker of the Knesset; and Ruth Pearl, the co-founder of the Daniel Pearl Foundation and the mother of the slain Wall Street Journal reporter. Bush said the group discussed “how America must remain engaged in helping people realize the great blessings of religious freedom and where we find societies in which religious freedom is not allowed to practice, that we must do something about it.”

Warsaw Cemetery re-creating records

PRAGUE (JTA)—The director of the 19th-century Warsaw Jewish Cemetery is reconstructing the records of its 250,000 graves. Przemyslaw Israel Szpilman told The Associated Press that 60,000 records of the cemetery’s headstones, records destroyed by the Nazis, have been recorded since the project began five years ago. He expects to finish in 2012. The project will help those seeking to find the graves of their ancestors. Szpilman told AP that he has not yet located the grave of his grandfather, Jankiel Szpilman, who was buried in the cemetery in the 1930s. Jankiel Szpilman was a distant relative of Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose survival story was told in Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning film “The Pianist.”

N.Y. museums fight for artwork

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Two New York museums are fighting to keep artwork that may have been sold under duress during the Holocaust. The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation filed a lawsuit Dec. 7 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan asking the court to declare them the owners of two Picasso paintings that German scholar Julius Schoeps claims were owned by his great-uncle, Paul von Mendelssohn-Barthodly, a descendant of composer Felix Mendelssohn.

Schoeps demanded through his lawyers on Nov. 1 that the museums return “Boy Leading a Horse” (1906), donated to MoMA in 1964 , and “Le Moulin de la Galette” (1900), given to the Guggenheim in 1963 by Jewish art dealer Justin Thannhauser. Schoeps claims that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy sold the two paintings, as well as other valuable artwork that included three other Picassos, to Thannhauser because he expected the Nazis to confiscate his estate. The two museums claim that their extensive research shows the paintings were not sold under duress.

Schoeps filed the same claim a one month ago, but it was dismissed by a New York state judge who declared that Schoeps was not the legal heir to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. He also filed a federal lawsuit a year ago to stop another Picasso work from being auctioned off by Christie’s. Schoeps is the director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam in Germany.

Jewish leaders qualified on Romney speech

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Jewish organizational leaders expressed qualified praise for Mitt Romney’s speech on his faith. The former Massachusetts governor, whose Mormon faith has prompted resistance during his bid for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, delivered a major speech on how his Mormonism informs his life. Romney said his specific faith would have no bearing on how he governs, but added that he believes that American public life acknowledges a “creator.”

“We should acknowledge the Creator as did the founders, in ceremony and word,” Romney said in a speech delivered Dec. 6 at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Park, Texas. “He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from ‘the God who gave us liberty.’”

Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, welcomed the speech but said he regretted that Romney felt compelled to deliver it.

ADL critical of hate-crimes loss

WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Anti-Defamation League slammed the U.S. Congress for dropping legislation to extend federal hate-crime protections to gays. The measure had passed in the U.S. House of Representatives as stand-alone legislation but failed to do so in the Senate. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), a key backer of the bill, then attached it to a defense authorization bill, which passed. However, the legislation died in the House-Senate conference to reconcile the defense authorization bills. “We are profoundly disappointed that Congress missed an opportunity to enact this legislation because of political maneuvering related to other issues, in a year when it had support of majorities in both the Senate and the House,” the ADL said in a statement.