JNS news briefs: August 18, 2014

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Sen. Lindsey Graham: U.S.-Israel relations arent the relationship of the leaders

(JNS.org) Amid reports of bilateral tension following the Obama administration’s decision to delay a shipment of Hellfire missiles to Israel, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the U.S.-Israel relationship is not defined by “the relationship of the leaders.”

“Relations between Israel and the U.S. are relations between two countries,” Graham said in an interview with Israel Hayom. “The terrorists see us as the Great Satan and you (Israel) as the Little Satan. As far as they’re concerned, we’re exactly the same thing. The relations between the two countries aren’t the relationship of the leaders.”

Graham said he believes President Barack Obama “supports Israel”and that Secretary of State John Kerry is “not Israel’s enemy,” but is not sure if Kerry understood he was “serving the interests of Hamas”by supporting a Gaza cease-fire proposal from Hamas-funding nations Qatar and Turkey.

“President Obama has to realize that in Israel, the war against Hamas wasn’t a war of the right, left, or center,”said Graham. “It was a war of the entire Israeli people against a terrorist organization that wanted to destroy it, and Obama has to take that into account.”

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IDF destroys homes of Jewish teens murderers

(JNS.org) The Israel Defense Forces said Monday that its Combat Engineering Corps special forces, in conjunction with engineering and border police teams in Judea and Samaria, destroyed overnight the home of Husam al-Qawasmeh, who led the terrorist cell responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Israeli teens Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach in June.

In the same operation, Israeli forces also destroyed the homes of the two murderers who carried out the kidnapping, demolishing the home of Omar Abu Aysha and sealing off the entrances to Marwan Qawasmeh’s home.

Destroying the homes of terrorists serves as powerful deterrence, reminding would-be terrorists that there is a price to be paid for their crimes, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said.

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Israeli Arab MKs visit Hamas-funding Qatar

(JNS.org)A group of three Arab members of Knesset from the Balad party—Jamal Zahalka, Hanin Zoabi, and Basel Ghattas—visited Qatar last week and met with former Balad MK Azmi Bishara, who fled Israel in 2007 after being accused of providing intelligence to Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War.

Qatar is a key financial and political supporter of Hamas. During their trip to the country, the MKs were interviewed on Al-Jazeera. According to Ghattas, the MKs “did not hide their harsh criticism of the conduct of the [Israeli] government.”

In response to the trip, Yesh Atid MK Yifat Kariv called on Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein to investigate the relationship among Balad, Qatar, and Bishara.

“Qatar has three Knesset seats for terrorism,” Kariv said.

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Gaza tunnel digger recounts being beaten, threatened by Hamas

(JNS.org)A newly revealed letter written by a Gaza resident depicts a grim picture of life under Hamas rule.

The letter, reportedly written by a 30-year-old man named Ahmed and published by Fox News over the weekend, recounts Ahmed’s history as a tunnel digger for Hamas.

An Israeli citizen said that in a letter smuggled to him from Gaza, Ahmed wrote that on multiple occasions tunnel diggers were berated and beaten for not working hard enough. Additionally, they received minuscule wages for their work.

“We didn’t know where we were or which tunnel we dug,” Ahmed wrote.

Ahmed said he agreed to dig tunnels because he needed money after Hamas, following the death of his father, confiscated the family’s workshop and turned it into a rocket-manufacturing factory.

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Israeli high schools seek to expand Chinese studies beyond language

(JNS.org)An Israeli Education Ministry task force recently recommended introducing a new Chinese studies course for high school students. The plan would include, for the first time in Israel, an elective matriculation course for the study of Chinese language, culture, and economics.

Since 2009, Israeli high school students have been able to study only the Chinese language. Due to the high demand, Education Ministry officials decided to also allow study of Chinese culture and history, providing background for China’s current status as an economic and political global power.

In the upcoming school year, some 100 elementary and high schools will begin teaching Mandarin as an elective course, double the number of classrooms teaching the language just a year ago.

“The demand for studying Chinese [in Israel] is growing by the year,”said Tamar Kahat, who heads the Education Ministry’s Chinese Studies Department, according to Israel Hayom.

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The Guardian rejects Alan Dershowitz ad on Hamas tactics

(JNS.org) The British newspaper The Guardian rejected an advertorial piece penned by famed Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz that refutes statements by many media outlets that all of the Gaza Strip is densely populated, a claim that has been used to justify the use of human shields by Hamas in the terrorist group’s recent conflict with Israel.

“The British media is divided,” Dershowitz said. “But The Guardian, which holds itself out to be a purveyor of diverse truth, clearly reflects a bias against Israel on its editorial pages, as well as in its presentation of the news. Now that bias has spread to the advertising pages.”

The advertisement—whose rejection was first reported by JNS.org—was based on an older editorial written by Dershowitz for the Gatestone Institute and was sponsored by the Wechsler Family Foundation, confirmed a New York City-based agency specializing in overseas advertisement placements confirmed.

Dershowitz said that newspapers “have a right to decide which ads to accept and reject,” but questioned The Guardian’s decision not to run his advertorial.

“My column was factually sound and not a personal attack on anybody. It simply laid out the geographic facts of the Gaza Strip and its implications,” he said.

A spokesperson for The Guardian told JNS.orgthat the newspaper “reserves the right to reject any advertisement.”

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Campaign posters of New Zealand PM with Jewish roots defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti

(JNS.org) Campaign posters for New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key, who has Jewish roots, were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti.

One of the defaced campaign posters featured a picture of John Key was that spray-painted to resemble an observant Jew with a black hat and peyot. Painted next to the picture was the words “Lying Jew ****sucker.”

“The Jewish community in New Zealand, they are hard-working, decent people and they don’t deserve to be brought into some sort of personal campaign that’s directed at me,”said Key, who was born to an Austrian Jewish mother and has family members who died in the Holocaust.

Stephen Goodman, president of the New Zealand Jewish Council, told the Jewish news website J-Wire that New Zealand’s 7,500-person Jewish community “is concerned about the rise in anti-Semitic acts and statements being made at present.”

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Hamas admits it deported foreign journalists who reported on rocket launches

(JNS.org) Hamas spokesperson Isra al-Mudallal said that the terror group often intimidated and sometimes deported foreign journalists who attempted to film “from where missiles were launched”during the Gaza conflict.

In an interview with Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen TV network that was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, al-Mudallal said journalists filming such locations “were deported from the Gaza Strip.”

“The security agencies would go and have a chat with these people. They would give them some time to change their message, one way or another,” he said.

Al-Mudallal also said some of the foreign journalists in Gaza “were under security surveillance” by Hamas.

Israel’s Foreign Press Association said it “protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful, and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.”

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Hebrew U. refuses to remove anti-Israel professor from advisory role

(JNS.org) The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has refused to remove Professor William Schabas from the advisory board of a law faculty publication despite his anti-Israel views.

Schabas was recently appointed to head the U.N. Human Rights Council’s investigation into Israel’s conduct during Operation Protective Edge, despite his well-publicized political views, sparking outrage among Israeli politicians.

Israeli lawyer David Schonberg wrote to Hebrew University requesting Schabas’s dismissal from the advisory board role in light of the U.N. appointment and his history of inflammatory comments about Israel.

The university’s law faculty dean, Professor Yuval Shany, responded to the request with a letter stating that Schabas “was appointed to the academic advisory board for the periodical based on his expertise in human rights law, not because of his political stance.”

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Israels first Christian pre-military class graduates

(JNS.org) Thirty members of Israel’s first pre-military course specifically tailored for Christian citizens entering the Israel Defense Forces celebrated their graduation in a formal ceremony in Haifa last week. The group includes four women.

Israeli law does not require most non-Jews to serve in the military. But in April, the IDF launched a campaign to encourage more Christians to volunteer, mailing out voluntary enlistment forms to potential recruits. About 128,000 Christians currently live in Israel.

“We are actively working toward integrating all populations [into the army] and see this [pre-military course for Christians] as a very important step in that direction,”said Gadi Agmon, head of the Human Resources, Planning and Management Division of the IDF.

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