JNS news briefs: July 2, 2014

Tens of thousands attend funeral for slain Israel teens
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Tens of thousands of Israelis arrived Tuesday at the Modiin cemetery for the funeral of the three Israeli teenagers whose murdered bodies were found on Monday. After roads were closed due to the masses of mourners, Israelis walked for miles to pay their last respects to Gilad Shar, Eyal Yifrach, and Naftali Frenkel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres attended the funeral, among many others from the political arena.

“We learned a lesson from you that we shall not forget—a lesson of faith, determination, unity and sensitivity, of Judaism, of humanity,” Netanyahu told the boys’ families. “An entire nation stood together and was reminded who we are, why we are here. Your light shone even brighter against the terrible darkness of those who want us dead.”

Rachel Frenkel, Naftali’s mother, said, “Rest in peace my child. We will learn to sing without you. We will always hear your voice inside of us.”

Recording of murdered Israeli teen’s emergency call released by police

(JNS.org) A recording of a phone call to police by one of the murdered Israeli teens was officially released on Tuesday.

“They’ve kidnapped me,” a whispering voice said at the beginning of the call, made at 10:25 p.m. The voice was identified as Gilad Shaar’s by his father.

Next, a voice is heard shouting “heads down, heads down,” in Arabic-accented Hebrew.

Meanwhile the police operator attempts to speak to the caller, asking “hello, hello” several times, but gets no response.

A few seconds later, several loud noises are heard, which are believed to have been gunshots. According to Israeli Army Radio, the three teens were shot during the phone call, with blood and bullet casings found in the vehicle.

The police officers who received the call have come under heavy criticism for not taking the call seriously, believing it was a prank. But the call’s original operator did transfer the call to a senior officer, who called the number eight more times, but either received a busy signal or voicemail.

Nevertheless, four senior police officers were dismissed for their handling of the call.
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Israel an increasingly popular Mideast trade hub via Haifa port
(JNS.org) Israel is becoming a more popular hub for the transport of supplies throughout the Middle East. The number of trucks carrying food, machinery, medicine, and other materials crossing between Israel and Jordan has increased by 300 percent since 2011 to more than 10,000 trucks a year, reports the Israel Airports Authority.

Since a still-raging civil war engulfed Syria more than three years ago, exporters have needed to find new trade routes throughout the Middle East. Turkish exports in particular have begun to pass through Israel to Jordan and several other Arab nations. Those Turkish exports increased to more than 77,000 tons in 2013 from about 17,000 in 2010.

Israel plans to invest at least 6 billion shekels ($1.7 billion) to improve this growing transport, in particular via greater use of the Haifa port to move goods to Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle East nations through the same route that had been used by the Ottoman and British empires before the Jewish state’s founding.

Although “a lot of secrecy still surrounds the topic and it is probably premature to speak of a blossoming and fast-growing trade route,” this transport of goods over the last few years is “almost unprecedented,” said Coline Schep, Middle East analyst with the consultancy firm Control Risks, according to Reuters.

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Jewish community weighs in on both sides of Hobby Lobby ruling
(JNS.org) Nine Jewish Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives denounced the U.S. Supreme Court’s contested ruling in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case, while Orthodox Jewish organizations applauded the decision.

The Court ruled 5-4 that the Christian-owned crafts store chain could not be forced to provide its employees with contraception coverage as part of the Affordable Care Act because doing so would violate its religious liberty.

“The Affordable Care Act is designed to ensure women have access to quality, affordable health care, including contraception and family planning—services that are critical to a woman’s health care needs. In fact, an overwhelming majority of women use birth control or contraceptives at some point in their lives and the idea that they should be denied access to these basic health care services because their boss finds it religiously objectionable is ridiculous,” said U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI).

The other Jewish Democrats blasting the decision were U.S. Rep.  Eliot Engel (D-NY), U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL), U.S. Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI), U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), U.S.  Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), and U.S. John Yarmuth (D-KY).

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (OU), however, praised the ruling.

“Today the Supreme Court actualized the fundamental purpose of the First Amendment’s guarantee of the ‘free exercise’ of religion. In essence, the Court’s ruling stands for the proposition that—even when the government seeks to implement valuable policy goals—it must do so without trampling upon the conscientious beliefs of American citizens, especially, as is the case here, when there are many other ways to meet the policy goals without infringing on religious liberty,” said Nathan Diament, the OU’s executive director for public policy.

Rabbi Abba Cohen, Agudath Israel of America’s vice president for federal affairs and Washington director, said the Hobby Lobby decision “affirms that religious freedom is, indeed, a freedom of the highest order, which deserves broad and strong protection under our law.”

“This protection should, as the court asserts, extend to businesses that are owned and operated by persons and families according to their sincerely-held religious beliefs,” said Cohen. “No distinction is found or even contemplated in our Constitution or federal statute.  Americans of faith should not, and do not, forfeit their religious rights when they form family businesses and wish to make moral and ethical imperatives part of their corporate persona.”
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Preceding provided by JNS.org