Around the Jewish world
By JTA
article created on: 2010-01-28T00:00:00
WORLD
Sign returned to Auschwitz
(JTA)—The “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign stolen from the memorial at the Auschwitz death camp has been returned.
Polish police returned the 16-foot metal sign from the front gate of the camp during a ceremony Jan. 21 in Krakow.
The sign, which means “work makes you free,” was stolen Dec. 18 and recovered across the country 72 hours later.
Experts will now try to restore the sign, though it is not certain that it will be returned to its place; a copy was placed at the front gate immediately after the theft. The stolen sign had been cut into three pieces.
Five Polish men have been charged with the theft, though a Swedish neo-Nazi is suspected of ordering the crime.
Israel joins U.N. bloc
NEW YORK (JTA)—Israel was granted membership in a United Nations regional group in Geneva.
Israel’s membership in JUSCANZ—an acronym for Japan, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—was approved last month by consensus. The group also includes Norway, Switzerland and several other democratic countries.
The move was hailed by both the American Jewish Committee and its Geneva affiliate, U.N. Watch, which called it a “historic accomplishment.”
Israel has long been prevented from joining regional groups at the United Nations, a state of affairs that has inhibited its full participation in the world body and aroused the ire of its Foreign Ministry and American Jewish groups, which considered the exclusion a blatant contravention of the U.N. charter’s guarantee of state equality.
In 2000, Israel was admitted to the Western European and Others Group, or WEOG, at U.N. headquarters in New York.
Israeli team to leave Haiti
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The Israeli medical and rescue team in Haiti will finish operations on the devastated island nation in the next few days, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The team’s members were set to return to Israel by Jan. 28.
The decision to bring the team home came after the arrival of additional aid forces to Haiti, including military and civilian assistance from the United States that is now providing regular medical services, according to a statement released Jan. 25 by the IDF. Local hospitals also are functioning as well.
A few dozen patients treated at the IDF field hospital have been transferred to the American hospital in Haiti; others will be transferred to additional medical facilities.
Some equipment and materials brought by the Israeli delegation will remain in Haiti for use by medical personnel, including tents, medications and other medical gear. Heavy equipment will be brought back to Israel, according to the IDF.
The delegation, which left for Haiti on Jan. 15, three days after the devastating earthquake, treated more than 960 patients, conducted 294 successful surgeries and delivered 16 babies, including three by Caesarean section.
Four arrested in Greek arson
ATHENS, Greece (JTA)—Four men have been arrested in connection with two arson attacks on a synagogue on the island of Crete.
Two of the men in Greek police custody are British, one is American and one is Greek. They are aged 23 and 33 and have not been named.
The four are being held in the coastal town of Hania, where the Etz Hayim synagogue is located. Police said they are all being held on charges of arson.
The men work as bouncers and waiters at local clubs, according to police.
Asked why they committed the crime, the accused reportedly said it was because they do not like Jews. The Greek man was arrested first, at which point he reportedly confessed and gave the names of the others.
The first attack occurred Jan. 5, but it was the second attack on Jan. 16 that caused extensive damage to the synagogue’s interior, its archive material and technical equipment.
Polish bishop says Jews exploiting Holocaust
ROME (JTA)—Just two days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a leading Polish bishop was quoted as accusing Jews of exploiting the Holocaust for propaganda purposes.
Tadeusz Pieronek later said on Polish television that his remarks, which appeared Jan. 25 on a conservative Italian Catholic Web site, had been manipulated and taken out of context.
“The Holocaust, as such, is a Jewish invention,” Pieronek, a former head of the Polish bishops’ conference, was quoted as saying in an interview run on the Web site.
Undoubtedly, the majority of those who died in the concentration camps were Jews, but also on the list were Poles, Gypsies, Italians and Catholics. So it’s not right to expropriate this tragedy to make propaganda, he added.
Pieronek reportedly said memorial days should be established for other victims of communist and other persecutions. But, he added, “The Jews enjoy good press because they have powerful financial means behind them, enormous power and the unconditional backing of the United States, and this favors a certain arrogance that I find unbearable.”
NATION
Nuremberg witness dies
NEW YORK (JTA)—Leon Weliczker Wells, a Holocaust survivor who testified at both the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, has died.
Wells died of cancer Dec. 19 at his home in Fort Lee, N.J., at the age of 84. He was cremated, as per his wishes, having said that his people had gone that way.
He was 17 years old in 1943 when he was among those in the Janowska camp in Lvov forced by the Nazis to dig up and burn the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Jews and some Polish political officials murdered in Lvov in order to hide the truth about the Nazi death camps from the approaching Allies.
Wells testified at the Eichmann trial in Israel in 1961 that he was the only member of his “whole family, including all cousins, uncles,” among 76 to survive the Holocaust. Among those killed were his parents and six siblings.
His harrowing memoir, “The Death Brigade,” first published in 1963 by Macmillan as “The Janowska Road,” is universally considered a classic of Holocaust literature.
“I knew him very well and his work was a very important contribution,” Elie Wiesel, a Noble Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor, told JTA. “Everybody who knew him liked him very much because of his intelligence and sensitivity.”
After World War II, Wells immigrated to the United States, where he taught at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and was a research fellow in the Naval Research Office.
Obama: U.S. ‘overestimated’ ability to bring Mideast peace
(JTA)—President Obama acknowledged that the Middle East peace process has not moved forward.
The U.S. leader told Time magazine in an interview published Jan. 21 that “we overestimated our ability to persuade” the Palestinians and Israelis “to start engaging in a meaningful conversation.”
“This is as intractable a problem as you get,” he told Time’s Joe Klein.
Obama said that the Israelis, while showing a willingness to modify their policies, found it hard to make “bold gestures,” and that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had to contend with Hamas looking over his shoulder and an Arab world that is “impatient with any process.”
“I think it is absolutely true that what we did this year didn’t produce the kind of breakthrough that we wanted, and if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high,” Obama told Time.
Boteach wants Libyan mission
(JTA)—Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wants to purchase the Libya-owned mansion next door to his New Jersey home and turn it into a Jewish learning center.
Boteach told NorthJersey.com that he plans to raise up to $6 million in order to purchase the 4-acre property and mansion in Englewood.
Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi had planned to stay on the property in a tricked-out Bedouin tent during his visit last year for the United Nations General Assembly. Boteach led neighborhood protests to keep out Gadhafi, and he did not stay in the community.
The Libyan ambassador to the United Nations and his family moved into the estate in December.
Boteach is suing the Libyan mission to the United States for damage to his property allegedly caused during construction work on the property.
Tefillin flight flap
leads to calls for training
NEW YORK (JTA)—An Orthodox group is calling for better training after a commercial flight was diverted when a passenger’s tefillin were mistaken for a bomb.
Rabbi A. D. Motzen, the Ohio regional director of Agudath Israel of America,
issued a statement Jan. 21 that his group had created a brochure explaining Orthodox customs for individual airlines to facilitate training and awareness.
Rabbi Mark Kalish, Agudath Israel’s national director of government affairs, said the group has also cautioned members of its community to understand that many citizens may not be familiar with Jewish prayer rituals, and that they might consider explaining the practice to individuals in authority before boarding planes, buses, trains and other forms of public transit.
On Jan. 21, a flight attendant on a US Air flight from New York to Louisville mistook the religious prayer article as a bomb after the Jewish passenger, Caleb Leibowitz, 17, had taken them out to pray, according to reports. Tefillin consist of two black boxes, each connected to leather straps.
The passengers and crew were taken off the plane in Philadelphia. Fire trucks and police met the plane on the runway.
Leibowitz was questioned and released.
MIDDLE EAST
Bin Laden threatens U.S.
JERUSALEM (JTA)—A new audio statement allegedly from Osama bin Laden threatens more attacks on U.S. targets “as long as you maintain your support to Israel.”
The statement was broadcast Jan. 24 on the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera television. Although the voice on the tape has not been verified, Al Jazeera said it was that of bin Laden.
In the statement, bin Laden claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight.
The al-Qaida leader said he wanted to deliver a message to America: “(T)hat America should not dream of security until we enjoy it as a reality in Palestine.”
“It is not fair that you enjoy a good life while our brothers in Gaza endure the worst standard of living,” bin Laden said. “Therefore, God willing, our attacks against you will continue as long as you maintain your support to Israel.”
Bin Laden has been in hiding, reportedly on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, for the past eight years. The Jan. 24 message is bin Laden’s first in seven months. There were six in 2009.
Report: Anti-Semitism
up dramatically in 2009
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Anti-Semitic incidents increased dramatically around the world, particularly in Western Europe, during 2009, according to an annual report.
The report, conducted by the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, found that more anti-Semitic incidents were recorded during the first three months of 2009 than during the entire previous year. Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip was cited as the cause for the dramatic rise.
France recorded the largest increase, with 631 anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2009 compared with 474 in all of 2008. Britain was next with more than 600 incidents in 2009. The Community Security Trust, which handles security for the British Jewish community, had recorded 541 incidents in 2008.
The incidents were notable as well for being more serious, according to the report, with hundreds being considered extremely violent. Eight murders were attributed to anti-Semitism.
The report cited the findings of a poll by the University of Bielefeld in Germany showing that 42 percent of respondents agreed that “Jews exploit the past to extort money.” Poland and Spain were the countries with the highest percentage of respondents who agreed with the statement.
Israeli film nearer Oscar
LOS ANGELES (JTA)—Israel’s entry in the Oscars has made the first cut.
“Ajami” was among nine semifinalists in the Academy Awards’ foreign-language film category announced Jan. 20. Sixty-five films were entered.
The semifinalists will be winnowed to five when all Oscar nominations are announced Feb. 2.
“Ajami” paints an unsparing picture of Arab-Jewish and intra-Arab tensions in a mixed quarter of Jaffa. Its co-directors are two young Israelis, Scandar Copti, a Christian Arab, and Yaron Shani, who is Jewish.
Also named was Germanys “The White Ribbon,” which won the 2010 Golden Globe for best foreign film. The movie by Michael Haneke is set in a rustic German village in 1914 whose seemingly placid life holds the seeds for the Nazi flowering to come.
The other semifinalists are El Secreto de Sus Ojos, from Argentina; Samson and Delilah, from Australia; The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner, from Bulgaria; A Prophet, from France; Kelin,” from Kazakhstan; and Winter in Wartime, from The Netherlands, in which a Dutch boy aids a downed British pilot during World War II.
AJC protests treatment
of women’s prayer activist
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The American Jewish Committee complained to the Israeli government about the police treatment of an activist for women’s prayer at the Western Wall.
“Without questioning the intentions of the police officers involved, the recent humiliating questioning—including fingerprinting—of the distinguished director of the Israel Religious Action Center, a leader of the worldwide movement for Reform Judaism, Ms. Anat Hoffman, is viewed in some quarters as a form of harassment based on her religious practice and values,” said the letter sent Jan. 22 to Yitzhak Aharonovitch, the Israeli minister for internal security.
“Whatever may have been the determinations of domestic Israeli law on this matter, we are concerned that the processing of Ms. Hoffman was insensitive to the values of gender equality before God that so many of us hold central to our Jewish beliefs,” continued the letter, signed by Richard Sideman and David Harris, president and executive director, respectively, of the group.
Oil found in Israel
JERUSALEM (JTA)—An Israeli oil exploration team said it has found oil at a drilling site north of the Dead Sea.
The group digging the Tzuk Tamrur 4 oil exploration well said Jan. 24 that it did not know how much oil was located at the site and whether it was enough for commercial purposes, according to reports.
Delek Group Ltd. subsidiaries Avner Oil and Gas and Delek Drilling, together with Zerah Oil and Gas Explorations, began drilling the well last October, according to the Israeli business daily Globes.
The well has been dug to 6,700 feet; the group plans to dig now to 7,000 feet. Once it reaches that depth, the group will decide whether to continue with production tests.
