Vanik
Around our Jewish world
By JTA
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Charles Vanik dies
NEW YORK (JTA)—Charles Vanik, a former U.S. congressman who co-authored a historic law designed to pressure the former Soviet Union into allowing freer emigration of Jews and other dissidents, died Aug. 30.
He was 94 and living in Jupiter, Fla. Vanik, an Ohio Democrat, wrote the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to a 1974 trade law with Sen. Henry Jackson, a Washington Democrat. Supporters say the legislation eventually spurred huge increases in emigration of Soviet Jews. It requires the United States to assess the human rights records of countries with non-market economies before deciding whether to grant them special trade privileges. While the measure’s intent was to allow Soviet Jews to emigrate, its reach extended to many other countries, including China and Vietnam. Critics have called for its elimination, arguing that it is an outdated obstacle to trade and harms U.S. economic and diplomatic ties abroad.
Israel warned U.S. on Iraq
NEW YORK (JTA)—A former senior U.S. official says Israel warned the Bush administration in the lead up to the Iraq war that Iran posed a greater threat. "The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy. Iran is the enemy," Lawrence Wilkerson, the State Department’s policy planning chief at the time, told Inter Press Service in an article appearing on antiwar.com.
New amnesty planned
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel may free more imprisoned Fatah members as a goodwill gesture toward the Palestinian Authority. Jerusalem officials said that there is a plan to release 100 members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s faction who are serving prison sentences for low-level security offenses. If approved by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the releases will take place during the Muslim fast month of Ramadan, which begins this month. Israel freed 250 jailed Palestinians, most of them from Fatah, in July after Olmert revived rapprochement with Abbas. Israel wants to bolster Fatah in face of Hamas after the Islamist group overran the Gaza Strip in June, prompting Abbas to dismiss it from the Palestinian Authority government.
Vanunu appeals term
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu appealed a prison sentence he received for unauthorized contacts with foreigners. Vanunu, who completed an 18-year jail term for treason in 2004 but has been barred from leaving Israel, was handed a new six-month prison sentence in July for speaking to the foreign press without state approval. His lawyers said they had filed an appeal with the Jerusalem District Court, which should deliver its decision within three months. Should the prison sentence be upheld, Vanunu may have the option of turning to the Supreme Court. Israeli officials argue that Vanunu’s movements and contacts must be limited because he has more secrets to spill about the Dimona nuclear reactor, where he used to work as a midlevel technician. Vanunu denies the charge, saying he just wants to start a new life abroad, but has won few friends in the Jewish state by railing against Zionism and repeating his past disclosures about the Israeli nuclear program.
War heroes honored
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s top brass awarded citations for bravery to 142 military personnel who distinguished themselves in the Lebanon war. Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the chief of Israel’s armed forces, Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, officiated Sept. 2 at a Tel Aviv ceremony where 38 soldiers, pilots and seamen, some of them reservists, received decorations for courage during last year’s 34-day offensive against Hezbollah. Another 104 recipients—among them several who fell in battle—were honored in private ceremonies. Posthumous decorations went to the families of the deceased.
Top Austrian in Israel
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer became the first Austrian head of state to visit Israel in nearly a decade. His two-day visit that began Sept. 3 is aimed at repairing an often tense relationship between his country and the Jewish state. "It’s true that the relationship between Austria and Israel not always has been an easy one, but I think we are embarking on a new initiative," Gusenbauer said Sept. 3 at the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. Austrians, including political leaders, for many decades saw themselves as Hitler’s first victims during World War II instead of as collaborators with the Nazis’ murderous regime. Most Austrians welcomed Nazi Germany’s 1938 annexation of Austria, which led to the murder of some 70,000 Austrian Jews during the Holocaust. Recently, however, Austria has made an effort politically to acknowledge its role in the Holocaust and its responsibilities to its former Jewish citizens and their heirs. Gusenbauer began his visit by touring the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and memorial.
Report: Israel plans blitz on outposts
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel reportedly plans to remove more than 1,000 settlers from illegal West Bank outposts after the High Holy Days. Defense Minister Ehud Barak has drawn up a list of 26 outposts to be dismantled early in the new Jewish year, Ma’ariv has reported, a move that would entail evacuating some 1,200 settlers. A crackdown on outposts ahead of the fall peace conference planned by the Bush administration could be perceived as a good-faith gesture by Israel. According to independent reports, there are at least 80 of the outposts in the West Bank, some of them hilltop shacks and others full-fledged communities with roads and electricity.
Toronto vandals undeterred by cleanups
TORONTO (JTA)—Vandals continue to spray-paint anti-Semitic slogans and other offensive graffiti in a Toronto neighborhood despite cleanup efforts by volunteers. The vandals have left threatening notes and thrown rocks through the windows of local residents who have removed the graffiti from garage doors and other spaces. "Figuratively speaking, the perpetrators have said, ‘Oh yeah?’ and it’s escalated; it’s a war now," said Police Superintendent Paul Gottschalk, who has tripled police patrols in the east Toronto neighborhood.
Tallinn gets mikvah again
MOSCOW (JTA)—The first new mikvah built in Estonia since World War II opened in the capital of Tallinn. Some 100 guests attended a small ceremony Aug. 28 marking the opening of the The Mei Menachem Mikvah, according to a report by the Chabad.org news service. All the guests were Jewish women married to Jewish men. Estonia has been without a mikvah since its predecessor was destroyed, along with its synagogues, by the Nazis.
Swiss party accused of Nazi techniques
PRAGUE (JTA)—Switzerland’s biggest political party was accused of adopting Nazi propaganda techniques in an anti-crime campaign. The People’s Party has run an advertising campaign showing three white sheep on a Swiss flag booting out a black sheep accompanied by the slogan, "For more security." The ads are part of the party’s attempt to enact the first law in Europe that would punish the immigrant parents of children who commit crimes by ejecting them from the country. Ronnie Bernheim of the Swiss Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism said the proposal was similar to the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft, or kin liability, which held relatives of criminals responsible for their crimes and punished them equally.
