Print
E-mail
Comment
Rate
Latest news briefs from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
(JTA) - Powell to go to Israel
Secretary of State Colin Powell is slated to travel to Israel. Powell will hold talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials next Sunday and Monday, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department announced. The talks are expected to focus on how to restart peace talks following the death of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. On Tuesday, President Bush named Condoleezza Rice to replace Powell, who resigned this week.
(JTA) - Israel, NATO grow closer
Israel could take part in NATO military exercises for the first time. NATO officials have asked Israel to take part in exercises, as well as anti-terror activities such as patrols in the Mediterranean, Ha'aretz reported. Israel's inclusion is part of efforts to increase the treaty group's "Mediterranean dialogue." The dialogue includes six Muslim nations: Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania.
(JTA) - Even in death, a controversy
Yasser Arafat died from a blood condition, Le Monde reported. Citing French doctors close to Arafat's case, the paper reported Wednesday that Arafat died of a blood disease known as disseminated intravascular coagulation. The disease is manifested by a complete breakdown of the blood's coagulation systems, the medical sources said. The condition is a symptom of a disease either of cancerous or infectious origin, the paper quoted the doctors as saying. Doctors established that Arafat was not poisoned shortly after the Palestinian leader was admitted to a French military hospital near Paris, the paper added. Arafat died at the hospital on Nov. 11 and was buried in his presidential compound in Ramallah. Since his death, some Palestinian officials, including the Palestinian Authority's senior diplomat in Paris, Leila Shahid, have suggested he might have been poisoned. Meanwhile, a French Jewish organization called on President Jacques Chirac to officially announce the cause of Arafat's death. In a letter to Chirac on Wednesday, a copy of which was seen by JTA, the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism said that rumors propagated by Shahid suggesting that Israel had poisoned Arafat "are spreading in our cities and sensitive housing estates."
(JTA) - Lebanon: Rockets against Israel are terror
A Lebanese official reportedly called Katyusha rocket fire into Israel terrorism. Speaking Wednesday to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Information Minister Eli Firzli said the army has set up roadblocks in southern Lebanon to prevent rockets from being fired across the border, and said that if Israel responds militarily, Lebanon will blame the terrorist group that fired the rockets. Two Katyusha rockets were fired at Israel on Monday night. One of the rockets fell off the Lebanese coast, and the second landed near the northern Israeli town of Shlomi. Hezbollah denied any connection to the strike, which caused no injuries and was claimed by an unknown group named for a late Hezbollah official. The United Nations called on Lebanon to prevent attacks on Israel, as Israel warned that it holds the Lebanese government responsible for any violence from its territory.
(JTA) - Buzz over Africa
French media accused Israeli mercenaries of operating spy drones in the war-torn Ivory Coast. Israeli security sources on Wednesday denied the TF1 television report, but confirmed that a private Israeli company had supplied unmanned aerial vehicles to Ivorian forces. Ivorian forces have attacked French troops in the African country this month. According to the sources, Israel stopped supplying UAVs to the Ivory Coast after unrest erupted. But Jerusalem sources had no immediate comment on a report in the French newspaper Le Monde that 46 Israelis had run an intelligence-gathering center for the Ivorian military.
(JTA) - ICHEIC cuts ties with Generali fund
The commission handling Holocaust-era insurance claims has cut ties with an Israel-based fund. The International Commission of Holocaust Era Insurance Claims severed ties earlier this month with the Generali Trust Fund, claiming it was not meeting ICHEIC's timetable and was unable to improve the quality of its work. Mara Rudman, ICHEIC's chief operating officer, said all claims being processed by the trust fund, which was established to handle pre-war claims taken out by Italian insurance company Generali, will be processed by Generali itself. Meeting in Washington on Tuesday, ICHEIC rolled out plans to cease operations at the end of 2005.
(JTA) - No apology for anti-Sharon sign
Spain's ambassador to Israel defended a street sign in a Spanish town attacking Ariel Sharon. There have been fierce exchanges between Jerusalem and Madrid over the sign erected by the mayor of Oleiros, reading, "We will stop the beast! Sharon is a murderer. Stop the new Nazis." On Wednesday, Acting Ambassador Diego Bustamante rejected Israeli charges that the municipal protest was bigoted. "I do not see graffiti against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as an act of anti-Semitism or racism," he told Yediot Achronot. "Most Spaniards do not think this way, and we cannot be blamed for the stupidity of a few people in a small town."
(JTA) - France to publish list of non-Jewish deportees
France is to publish a list of non-Jews deported by the Nazis. The Memorial Foundation for Deportation will publish the four-volume lists detailing more than 80,000 names of those deported and the camps to which they were sent, Le Monde reported Wednesday. The lists include political deportees, homosexuals, gypsies, Spanish Republicans and non-Jews with Jewish spouses. Around half of the deportees were killed in Nazi concentration camps. The publication follows the detailing of Jewish deportees by Serge Klarsfeld in 1978, though the foundation said that the two cases should not be compared. "In the case of the political deportations, death was the result," the foundation's director general, Yves Lescure said, but in the case of Jews, "death was the aim." Klarsfeld said it would have been better to prepare a list of political detainees and resisters first because there was a danger that the list might include "black marketeers or even known collaborators arrested for petty crimes."
(JTA) - Harvest clash in W. Bank
Israeli police arrested 15 settlers for harassing Palestinian olive pickers. Wednesday's scuffles broke out when farmers from the West Bank village of Awarta tried to harvest their olives in a grove that falls within the security perimeter of the nearby settlement of Itamar. Settlers tried to block their access and, according to one report, stoned the Palestinians and attacked police.
(JTA) - Goldman, Cardin honored
Two legendary and beloved Jewish communal leaders received special honors at the United Jewish Communities' General Assembly in Cleveland. The Jewish Communal Service Association of North America paid tribute at a G.A. breakfast to Ralph Goldman, executive vice president emeritus of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, in honor of his 90th birthday and lifetime of service to world Jewry. The organization also dedicated a special edition of its Journal of Jewish Communal Service to Shoshana Cardin, who has chaired numerous major national Jewish organizations and umbrella groups.
(JTA) - Chabad launches projects in ex-USSR
Chabad-Lubavitch is launching a series of new projects in the former Soviet Union. At a session this week during a Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries conference in New York, close to 200 emissaries to the Former Soviet Union met with New York philanthropist George Rohr to discuss numerous initiatives throughout the region. These included creating a new Russian-language, annotated beginners' prayer book; a Russian-language scholarly edition of the Tanach; a regional Internet site for Jewish dating; and the construction or revitalizing of dozens of synagogues and community centers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The projects are estimated to cost several million dollars.
(JTA) - Jerusalem Post to have new owner
A Canadian media company and an Israeli media group appear set to take over the Jerusalem Post. CanWest Global Communications Corp. and the Mirkaei Tikshoret Group each will own 50 percent of the newspaper, as well as the Jerusalem Report magazine and other properties, according to media reports. The sale by Hollinger International group is believed to be for $13.2 million. Hollinger paid $21.5 million for the newspaper, which it acquired in two stages in 1989 and 1990. Hollinger International has been selling off its holdings after Conrad Black, its CEO, resigned amid an internal investigation that found that Black and others stole tens of millions of dollars from the company. Black has denied any impropriety. Mirkaei Tikshoret has holdings that include TV and radio stations, as well as daily newspapers in Russian and magazines in Hebrew and Russian.
(JTA) - Nazi salutes lead to probe
Five men were placed under judicial investigation for giving Nazi salutes at a concentration camp in France. The men, aged between 22 and 27, were shown on police film giving the salutes earlier this year at Struthof, a Nazi concentration camp near the German border where close to 20,000 political prisoners from across Europe died during World War II. The men were placed under criminal investigation over the weekend by a magistrate in the southeastern city of Grenoble for aggravated violation of a monument. They are also likely to face charges in connection with obscene behavior at a Christian cemetery in the Grenoble region.
(JTA) - Israel deports pro-Palestinian activist
Israel deported a pro-Palestinian activist from Britain. On Monday, Charlotte Carson, a British citizen active in the International Solidarity Movement, was deported for entering Israel illegally. Carson, who had previously been arrested on charges of trying to thwart Israeli military activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and of participating in violent demonstrations, entered the country in September by changing her name, government officials said. Carson is on a list of people who cannot enter Israel.
(JTA) - Nazi-hunting program yields a find
An alleged World War II criminal was located in Austria. The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Efraim Zuroff announced this week that Austrian and Croatian police have found Milivoj Aschner, 91, who allegedly deported hundreds of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies to Nazi concentration camps during the war. The discovery of Aschner was made possible by the center's Operation Last Chance, a program offering financial rewards for information on suspected war criminals.
(JTA) - Russian Jewish group gets new leader
Vladimir Slutsker was unanimously approved as president of the Russian Jewish Congress. The presidium of the charity group on Tuesday approved the banker, a Kabbalah enthusiast and member of the upper house of Russia's Parliament. The RJC's former president, Yevgeny Satanovsky, will remain within the group's leadership, overseeing its charity projects, while Slutsker is expected to take over financial matters, religious policy and public relations.
Wallenberg honored in Slovakia
A monument to Raoul Wallenberg was unveiled in Slovakia. The monument to the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest during the Holocuast was unveiled Tuesday in Bratislava. The monument is made of a bronze metal sheet featuring an engraving of the ruins of a house, through which several people can be seen. A decorative park will be planted around the monument.
(JTA) - N.Y. show to go on
A New York art show that one lawmaker wanted canceled for being anti-Israel will go on. After Assemblyman Ryan Scott Karben called on the Westchester County Center to close the exhibit, county executive Andre Spano said he would preview the one-day exhibit, which is slated to be shown this weekend. On Monday, however, Spano backed off his demand, saying any government involvement would constitute censorship, The Associated Press reported. The slide-show exhibit includes a piece with a tent, called a "Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948," and another that shows a kaffiyeh trapped in a Star of David made of barbed wire. JTA END
(JTA) - Powell to go to Israel
Secretary of State Colin Powell is slated to travel to Israel. Powell will hold talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials next Sunday and Monday, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department announced. The talks are expected to focus on how to restart peace talks following the death of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. On Tuesday, President Bush named Condoleezza Rice to replace Powell, who resigned this week.
(JTA) - Israel, NATO grow closer
Israel could take part in NATO military exercises for the first time. NATO officials have asked Israel to take part in exercises, as well as anti-terror activities such as patrols in the Mediterranean, Ha'aretz reported. Israel's inclusion is part of efforts to increase the treaty group's "Mediterranean dialogue." The dialogue includes six Muslim nations: Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania.
(JTA) - Even in death, a controversy
Yasser Arafat died from a blood condition, Le Monde reported. Citing French doctors close to Arafat's case, the paper reported Wednesday that Arafat died of a blood disease known as disseminated intravascular coagulation. The disease is manifested by a complete breakdown of the blood's coagulation systems, the medical sources said. The condition is a symptom of a disease either of cancerous or infectious origin, the paper quoted the doctors as saying. Doctors established that Arafat was not poisoned shortly after the Palestinian leader was admitted to a French military hospital near Paris, the paper added. Arafat died at the hospital on Nov. 11 and was buried in his presidential compound in Ramallah. Since his death, some Palestinian officials, including the Palestinian Authority's senior diplomat in Paris, Leila Shahid, have suggested he might have been poisoned. Meanwhile, a French Jewish organization called on President Jacques Chirac to officially announce the cause of Arafat's death. In a letter to Chirac on Wednesday, a copy of which was seen by JTA, the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism said that rumors propagated by Shahid suggesting that Israel had poisoned Arafat "are spreading in our cities and sensitive housing estates."
(JTA) - Lebanon: Rockets against Israel are terror
A Lebanese official reportedly called Katyusha rocket fire into Israel terrorism. Speaking Wednesday to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Information Minister Eli Firzli said the army has set up roadblocks in southern Lebanon to prevent rockets from being fired across the border, and said that if Israel responds militarily, Lebanon will blame the terrorist group that fired the rockets. Two Katyusha rockets were fired at Israel on Monday night. One of the rockets fell off the Lebanese coast, and the second landed near the northern Israeli town of Shlomi. Hezbollah denied any connection to the strike, which caused no injuries and was claimed by an unknown group named for a late Hezbollah official. The United Nations called on Lebanon to prevent attacks on Israel, as Israel warned that it holds the Lebanese government responsible for any violence from its territory.
(JTA) - Buzz over Africa
French media accused Israeli mercenaries of operating spy drones in the war-torn Ivory Coast. Israeli security sources on Wednesday denied the TF1 television report, but confirmed that a private Israeli company had supplied unmanned aerial vehicles to Ivorian forces. Ivorian forces have attacked French troops in the African country this month. According to the sources, Israel stopped supplying UAVs to the Ivory Coast after unrest erupted. But Jerusalem sources had no immediate comment on a report in the French newspaper Le Monde that 46 Israelis had run an intelligence-gathering center for the Ivorian military.
(JTA) - ICHEIC cuts ties with Generali fund
The commission handling Holocaust-era insurance claims has cut ties with an Israel-based fund. The International Commission of Holocaust Era Insurance Claims severed ties earlier this month with the Generali Trust Fund, claiming it was not meeting ICHEIC's timetable and was unable to improve the quality of its work. Mara Rudman, ICHEIC's chief operating officer, said all claims being processed by the trust fund, which was established to handle pre-war claims taken out by Italian insurance company Generali, will be processed by Generali itself. Meeting in Washington on Tuesday, ICHEIC rolled out plans to cease operations at the end of 2005.
(JTA) - No apology for anti-Sharon sign
Spain's ambassador to Israel defended a street sign in a Spanish town attacking Ariel Sharon. There have been fierce exchanges between Jerusalem and Madrid over the sign erected by the mayor of Oleiros, reading, "We will stop the beast! Sharon is a murderer. Stop the new Nazis." On Wednesday, Acting Ambassador Diego Bustamante rejected Israeli charges that the municipal protest was bigoted. "I do not see graffiti against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as an act of anti-Semitism or racism," he told Yediot Achronot. "Most Spaniards do not think this way, and we cannot be blamed for the stupidity of a few people in a small town."
(JTA) - France to publish list of non-Jewish deportees
France is to publish a list of non-Jews deported by the Nazis. The Memorial Foundation for Deportation will publish the four-volume lists detailing more than 80,000 names of those deported and the camps to which they were sent, Le Monde reported Wednesday. The lists include political deportees, homosexuals, gypsies, Spanish Republicans and non-Jews with Jewish spouses. Around half of the deportees were killed in Nazi concentration camps. The publication follows the detailing of Jewish deportees by Serge Klarsfeld in 1978, though the foundation said that the two cases should not be compared. "In the case of the political deportations, death was the result," the foundation's director general, Yves Lescure said, but in the case of Jews, "death was the aim." Klarsfeld said it would have been better to prepare a list of political detainees and resisters first because there was a danger that the list might include "black marketeers or even known collaborators arrested for petty crimes."
(JTA) - Harvest clash in W. Bank
Israeli police arrested 15 settlers for harassing Palestinian olive pickers. Wednesday's scuffles broke out when farmers from the West Bank village of Awarta tried to harvest their olives in a grove that falls within the security perimeter of the nearby settlement of Itamar. Settlers tried to block their access and, according to one report, stoned the Palestinians and attacked police.
(JTA) - Goldman, Cardin honored
Two legendary and beloved Jewish communal leaders received special honors at the United Jewish Communities' General Assembly in Cleveland. The Jewish Communal Service Association of North America paid tribute at a G.A. breakfast to Ralph Goldman, executive vice president emeritus of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, in honor of his 90th birthday and lifetime of service to world Jewry. The organization also dedicated a special edition of its Journal of Jewish Communal Service to Shoshana Cardin, who has chaired numerous major national Jewish organizations and umbrella groups.
(JTA) - Chabad launches projects in ex-USSR
Chabad-Lubavitch is launching a series of new projects in the former Soviet Union. At a session this week during a Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries conference in New York, close to 200 emissaries to the Former Soviet Union met with New York philanthropist George Rohr to discuss numerous initiatives throughout the region. These included creating a new Russian-language, annotated beginners' prayer book; a Russian-language scholarly edition of the Tanach; a regional Internet site for Jewish dating; and the construction or revitalizing of dozens of synagogues and community centers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The projects are estimated to cost several million dollars.
(JTA) - Jerusalem Post to have new owner
A Canadian media company and an Israeli media group appear set to take over the Jerusalem Post. CanWest Global Communications Corp. and the Mirkaei Tikshoret Group each will own 50 percent of the newspaper, as well as the Jerusalem Report magazine and other properties, according to media reports. The sale by Hollinger International group is believed to be for $13.2 million. Hollinger paid $21.5 million for the newspaper, which it acquired in two stages in 1989 and 1990. Hollinger International has been selling off its holdings after Conrad Black, its CEO, resigned amid an internal investigation that found that Black and others stole tens of millions of dollars from the company. Black has denied any impropriety. Mirkaei Tikshoret has holdings that include TV and radio stations, as well as daily newspapers in Russian and magazines in Hebrew and Russian.
(JTA) - Nazi salutes lead to probe
Five men were placed under judicial investigation for giving Nazi salutes at a concentration camp in France. The men, aged between 22 and 27, were shown on police film giving the salutes earlier this year at Struthof, a Nazi concentration camp near the German border where close to 20,000 political prisoners from across Europe died during World War II. The men were placed under criminal investigation over the weekend by a magistrate in the southeastern city of Grenoble for aggravated violation of a monument. They are also likely to face charges in connection with obscene behavior at a Christian cemetery in the Grenoble region.
(JTA) - Israel deports pro-Palestinian activist
Israel deported a pro-Palestinian activist from Britain. On Monday, Charlotte Carson, a British citizen active in the International Solidarity Movement, was deported for entering Israel illegally. Carson, who had previously been arrested on charges of trying to thwart Israeli military activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and of participating in violent demonstrations, entered the country in September by changing her name, government officials said. Carson is on a list of people who cannot enter Israel.
(JTA) - Nazi-hunting program yields a find
An alleged World War II criminal was located in Austria. The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Efraim Zuroff announced this week that Austrian and Croatian police have found Milivoj Aschner, 91, who allegedly deported hundreds of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies to Nazi concentration camps during the war. The discovery of Aschner was made possible by the center's Operation Last Chance, a program offering financial rewards for information on suspected war criminals.
(JTA) - Russian Jewish group gets new leader
Vladimir Slutsker was unanimously approved as president of the Russian Jewish Congress. The presidium of the charity group on Tuesday approved the banker, a Kabbalah enthusiast and member of the upper house of Russia's Parliament. The RJC's former president, Yevgeny Satanovsky, will remain within the group's leadership, overseeing its charity projects, while Slutsker is expected to take over financial matters, religious policy and public relations.
Wallenberg honored in Slovakia
A monument to Raoul Wallenberg was unveiled in Slovakia. The monument to the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest during the Holocuast was unveiled Tuesday in Bratislava. The monument is made of a bronze metal sheet featuring an engraving of the ruins of a house, through which several people can be seen. A decorative park will be planted around the monument.
(JTA) - N.Y. show to go on
A New York art show that one lawmaker wanted canceled for being anti-Israel will go on. After Assemblyman Ryan Scott Karben called on the Westchester County Center to close the exhibit, county executive Andre Spano said he would preview the one-day exhibit, which is slated to be shown this weekend. On Monday, however, Spano backed off his demand, saying any government involvement would constitute censorship, The Associated Press reported. The slide-show exhibit includes a piece with a tent, called a "Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948," and another that shows a kaffiyeh trapped in a Star of David made of barbed wire. JTA END
 |
||
| Taking Jewish pulse of Russia's St. Petersburg |
Article Rating
Reader Comments
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of clevelandjewishnews.com.
You must register with a valid email to post comments. Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments. Registration is free.
Registered users sign in here: |
Become a Registered User |
