Around the Jewish world

By JTA and Wire Reports

article created on: 2010-02-11T00:00:00

NATION

Arab students heckle Oren
    
NEW YORK (JTA)—Arab students interrupted a lecture by Israel’s U.S. ambassador more than 10 times Feb. 8 during his speech at the University of California, Irvine, shouting “Israel is a murderer” and “how many Palestinians did you kill?”
    
Eleven students were arrested following the presentation.
    
Oren was removed from the stage for a period because of the outbursts, prompting a university faculty member to take the podium and admonish the crowd, calling the incident “embarrassing.”
    
Oren returned to finish his speech but did not take questions from the audience, as was scheduled, Haaretz reported.
    
The university’s Muslim Student Union organized the protest.
    
In a statement received by the Orange County Register, the union said that “We condemn and oppose the presence of Michael Oren, the ambassador of Israel to the United States, on our campus today.”
    
“We resent that the Law School and the Political Science Department on our campus have agreed to cosponsor a public figure who represents a state that continues to break international and humanitarian law and is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined.”
    
Irvine has the second largest concentration of Arabs in the United States, according to Ynet.

Rosenthal, Oren to address civility at JCPA Plenum
    
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Israel’s ambassador to the United States and the U.S. envoy on anti-Semitism will address a plenum featuring the theme of civility in the Jewish community.
    
Michael Oren will speak at the plenum of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in Dallas on Feb. 20. Hannah Rosenthal, the State Department envoy, will address the umbrella body the following day.
    
The plenum’s title is “BYachad: Building Bridges—Acting Together.”
    
Rosenthal last year criticized as “unfortunate” Oren’s claim that J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group, had views that were dangerous for Israel. It is not clear whether the two speakers will overlap.
    
Oren will speak on Israeli security. Rosenthal will join Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, in a panel on anti-Semitism.
    
A six-person delegation from Portland will attend the JCPA Plenum.

Mumps strikes Orthodox Jews
    
(JTA)—More than 300 people in two New York State Orthodox enclaves have contracted the mumps.
    
The cases broke out in Monsey and New Square in Rockland County, about 25 miles from New York City, and have spread to Brooklyn and New Jersey Orthodox Jewish communities, according to The Journal News.
    
Most of those affected in Rockland Country are Orthodox or Chasidim; many had been vaccinated against the mumps.
    
The outbreak started in August in a summer camp in the Catskills for Orthodox Jewish boys. Twenty-five campers came down with the illness, the Centers for Disease Control told the newspaper.
Breast cancer activist honored
    
NEW YORK (JTA)—The Anti-Defamation League honored breast cancer activist Nancy Brinker with its Americanism Award.
    
Brinker, the founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, received the award Feb. 4 from ADL National Director Abraham Foxman at the organization’s annual dinner at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla.
    
“Nancy is a woman to be admired and emulated,” Foxman said, according to his prepared remarks. “When she sets her sights on an issue her determination, creativity, expertise and leadership come into play. Problems get solved. Success is achieved.”
    
Brinker, a former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, established the Komen organization following the death of her sister from breast cancer in 1980.

MIDDLE EAST

Abbas reportedly agrees
to indirect peace talks
    
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly has agreed in principle to hold indirect peace negotiations with Israel brokered by the United States.
    
An unnamed senior Palestinian official confirmed the talks, which are expected to begin Feb. 20, the French news agency AFP reported Feb. 8.
    
The official told AFP that the talks brokered by U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell “will be aimed at creating a better climate and reaching an understanding on the borders of the Palestinian state, and they will begin on Feb. 20.”
    
“They will last three months, with the Americans negotiating directly with the two sides after determining a timetable and agreed-upon mechanisms for implementation,” AFP quoted the source as saying.
    
Abbas has not yet given his final approval to the deal. He will consult with Arab leaders and get some clarifications from the United States before responding, AFP reported.
    
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes the shuttle diplomacy will lead to direct negotiations, according to reports.
    
Also Monday, Abbas’ Cabinet announced plans to hold municipal elections on July 17, according to The Associated Press. They would be the first Palestinian elections since Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2007.
    
The Cabinet statement said elections also would be held in Gaza, according to the AP.
    
Presidential and legislative elections were supposed to have taken place in January. They have not been rescheduled.

Reassign Jerusalem reporter, N.Y. Times’ public editor says
    
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The New York Times’ public editor recommended that the newspaper’s Jerusalem bureau chief be reassigned because his son joined the Israeli army.
    
Clark Hoyt, who serves as the paper’s independent ombudsman, wrote about the issue in a column Feb. 6, weighing whether bureau chief Ethan Bronner can be objective, and whether the Times’ reporting can be seen as fair, given that Bronner’s son is serving in the Israel Defense Forces. Bronner’s son enlisted last December for a year and a half of service with plans to return to the United States for college.

Netanyahu: Israel wants peace with Syria
    
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel wants peace with Syria following several days of mutual recriminations.
    
“Israel aspires to complete peace agreements with all of its neighbors,” the Israeli leader said at the start of the Feb. 7 Cabinet meeting. “We did this with Egypt and Jordan, and we aspire to achieve similar agreements with both the Palestinians and Syria.”
    
Netanyahu said the negotiations must be conducted “without preconditions. We do not accept the idea that Israel must always make extraordinary concessions in advance while the other side is exempt from making its own concessions. It is negotiations that will bring about an agreement, and we will not enter into negotiations when everything is known in advance.”
    
Syria has demanded that Israel agree to give up the Golan Heights under a peace agreement before entering into negotiations.

Ahmadinejad orders
further uranium enrichment
    
(JTA)—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered his country’s nuclear agency to begin enriching uranium at a higher level in order to fuel a medical research reactor.
    
The order given live Feb. 7 on Iranian national television comes just days after Ahmadinejad said on state television that he would be willing to export enriched uranium for further enrichment for use in the reactor.
    
“Please start 20 percent enrichment, though we are still in talks about a fuel exchange,” Ahmadinejad told Iran’s atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi. “We are ready for exchange. But if [the Western governments] don’t like an exchange, we go our own way.”

Snow falls on Israel
    
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Snow piled up on the Golan Heights and in the Galilee, and dusted Jerusalem as rain, hail and strong winds swept the rest of Israel.
    
Schools in the Golan Heights were canceled and roads were closed to traffic. Six inches to a foot of snow fell on Israel’s only skiing site, Mount Hermon, which was closed Feb. 4.
    
The Jerusalem municipality was prepared in advance with snow plows, bulldozers and salt.

Israel warns ships
in Mediterranean
    
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s Port Authority warned all ships in the Mediterranean Sea to be alert for explosive devices floating near beaches in southern Israel.
    
Beaches remained closed Feb. 2, the day the warning was issued, as several suspicious objects were reported at southern beaches.
    
A day earlier, two explosive devices in barrels were discovered near southern Israeli beaches in Ashkelon and Ashdod, according to reports, and deactivated by police sappers.

Lake Kinneret rises
    
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The level of Lake Kinneret has risen by more than 34 inches in the past two months.
    
Water Authority workers returned to work Jan. 31 for the first time since beginning a strike in November.
    
The measurement of Lake Kinneret is the first since the strike, and follows heavy rains throughout the country during the month of January. It was the largest January rainfall in five years, according to the Jerusalem Post.
    
Another 15 feet are needed to bring the Kinneret to full capacity.

Human Rights Watch: Hamas targeted Israeli civilians
    
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Human Rights Watch rejected a Hamas claim that the Palestinians did not target Israeli civilians with rockets during the Gaza war.
    
In a statement Feb. 4, the human rights group said there is strong evidence that “Hamas’ claim that rockets were intended to hit Israeli military targets and only accidentally harmed civilians is belied by the facts.”

Israeli Arabs indicted for planning civilian attack
    
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Two Israeli Arabs were indicted for planning a terror attack on civilian targets in Israel.
    
Merad Namar and Merad Camal, both 25, had been arrested early last month at the Beersheba Central Bus Station, where they were found with a portable computer memory card that included detailed plans for terror attacks on Israeli civilian targets.
    
The targets included the Jerusalem Central Bus Station, the Tel Hashomer Medical Center, the tourist hotel area in Tel Aviv and the Malha Mall in Jerusalem, as well as soldiers’ bus stops in Jerusalem and Mevasseret Tzion, according to a statement by the Israel Defense Forces.

WORLD

Warrant issued for Auschwitz theft mastermind
    
(JTA)—A Polish court has issued a European-wide warrant for the arrest of a Swedish man suspected of ordering the theft of the famous Auschwitz sign.
    
The warrant, issued Tuesday, is for Anders Hogstrom, a former Swedish neo-Nazi, according to reports. Hogstrom is suspected of ordering five Polish men, who have been arrested by local authorities, to steal the metal sign reading “Arbeit macht frei” from the front gate of the former concentration camp, now a memorial.
    
Hogstrom reportedly acted as an agent for a British Nazi sympathizer who wanted the sign.
    
The warrant requires authorities in the 27 member states of the European Union to arrest Hogstrom and turn him over to the Polish authorities.
    
The 16-foot metal sign, which means “work makes you free,” was stolen Dec. 18 and recovered across the country 72 hours later.
    
Experts are working to restore the sign, which had been cut into three pieces. It is not certain that the sign will be returned to its place; a copy was placed at the front gate immediately after the theft.
    
Some 1.1 million people, including about 1 million Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz.

Canadian lawmakers: Israel support may cause backlash
    
TORONTO (JTA)—Some Canadian lawmakers fear the Conservative government’s staunch support of Israel risks triggering a backlash against Israel and Canadian Jews.
    
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his ministers have voiced nearly unconditional support for Israel and have slashed funding to groups that are critical of Israel.
    
Winnipeg-area Liberal Parliament member Anita Neville, who is Jewish, feels the government’s hard-line policies could spark an “anti-Semitic response.”
    
Neville and other lawmakers made the comments before the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism, an all-party committee that is at arm’s length from the government.
    
“By making [support for Israel] frequently into a black-and-white issue, [the Conservatives are] setting it up as a wedge,” said Neville, who is co-chair of Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel. “And they’re also setting it up so that people who have been longtime strong supporters of Israel are questioning issues.”
    
“And it’s creating a backlash,” she told reporters.

Costa Rica elects Jewish VP
    
(JTA)—A Jewish former banker was elected the vice president of Costa Rica.
    
Luis Lieberman will become vice president after Costa Rican voters on Feb. 7 elected Laura Chinchilla as the Central American country’s first female president by a wide margin.
    
Lieberman’s parents immigrated to Costa Rica from Poland before World War II. He is the grandson of a mohel.
    
Lieberman told Ynet that his being Jewish did not affect his candidacy. He said Jews are very active in Costa Rican politics. Jews have served in previous governments.
    
Approximately 3,000 Jews live in Costa Rica.

Jewish leader to step down
    
BERLIN (JTA) —Germany’s top Jewish leader plans to step down to make way for a new generation of leaders.
    
Charlotte Knobloch, elected head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany in 2006, announced she would not run for re-election in November, according to a statement released Feb. 7. Previous chairs have died in office.
    
Knobloch, 77, the longtime leader of the Jewish community in Bavaria and Munich, is likely to be the last council president to have lived through the Holocaust. She was hidden as a child by a non-Jewish family in Bavaria.

Descendant of Marranos returning to Spain
    
JERUSALEM (JTA)—A descendant of forcibly converted Spanish Jews who immigrated to Israel and became a rabbi is returning to Spain.
    
Rabbi Nissan Ben-Avraham of Shiloh will serve as emissary to the Bnei Anousim, or Marranos, for the Shavei Israel organization.
    
Shavei Israel is a nonprofit organization founded to strengthen ties between the Israel and descendants of Jews around the world, including the Bnei Menashe of India, the Bnei Anousim in Spain, Portugal and South America, the Subbotnik Jews of Russia, the Jewish community of Kaifeng in China and the “Hidden Jews” of Poland from the Holocaust era.
    
Ben-Avraham, 52, immigrated to Israel from his native Spain in 1978 and formally returned to Judaism. He is the father of 12 children.

Britain logs record number
of anti-Semitic incidents
    
LONDON (JTA)—The Community Security Trust in Britain has reported an increase in anti-Semitic incidents of 55 percent from the previous year. The 924 incidents were the most since records have been kept, according to reports.
    
The main rise in attacks was recorded in January and February of 2009, during and after Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip. According to the CST annual report, the 628 incidents in the first six months of 2009 were more than in any entire previous year. There were 296 incidents from July to December.
    
“These record figures show that anti-Semitism is an increasingly significant problem for British Jews,” CST spokesman Mark Gardner said.
    
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that anti-Semitism is one of the most ancient of hatreds—and yet it constantly adapts to modern times, requiring ever greater vigilance from all of us who are determined to stand up for tolerance and for the truth. “
    
Twenty-three percent of the incidents in 2009, or 212, included some form of reference to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. In January, 158 of the 288 incidents made reference to Gaza.
    
Some 124 violent assaults occurred last year, 41 percent more than in 2008. However, violent assaults fell to 13 percent of the total, from a high of 21 percent in 2007.
    
Michael Gove, the Conservative Party spokesman and a member of the shadow cabinet, said that “Britains Jewish citizens face a real and growing danger. The dramatic increase in anti-Semitic incidents over the last year proves that the oldest of prejudices has been given a new lease of life. Everyone in public life—politicians, media figures, academics and community leaders—has to recognize that this growth in anti-Semitism is a stain on our society.”