JNS news briefs: October 23, 2014

jns logo short version

Israel and Australia sign new work visa deal
(JNS.org) Israel and Australia signed an agreement on Wednesday that will allow young adults from both countries to get work visas from the other. The deal was part of a recent effort to secure work arrangements for young Israelis abroad, to prevent them from getting in legal trouble when looking for work.

The agreement, signed by Israeli Ambassador to Australia Shmuel Ben Shmuel and Australian Deputy Immigration and Border Protection Minister Senator Michaelia Cash, stipulates that citizens ages 18-30 with no children will be able to request a one-year work visa. Five-hundred such visas will be allotted for Israelis seeking to work in Australia, and 500 are slated for Australians seeking to come to Israel. Prior to Wednesday’s agreement, Israelis who got travel visas were only able to stay in Australia for six months.

Israel decided that draft dodgers will not be eligible for the visas, with exceptions, including Israeli Arabs and those who completed national service other than military service. The visa is both a travel visa and a work permit for year, provided that a job lasts for no longer than six months at any employer.

“The agreement is another important means of strengthening the good bilateral relationship between Israel and Australia and will also enable the strengthening of ties between the two nations and for us to get to know each other’s culture,” Amb. Ben Shmuel said, according to Israel Hayom.
*

Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif is alive, Mashaal claims
(JNS.org) Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said in a Vanity Fairinterview published Tuesday that the terrorist organization’s military wing commander, Mohammed Deif, is still alive, having survived the Israeli assassination attempt during Operation Protective Edge this summer.

“Mohammed Deif is alive,” Mashaal said. “Israelis failed to kill him. But they succeeded in killing his wife and his two children. … Mohammed Deif is still alive, and will continue to fight the Israeli aggression and occupation. Inshallah [God willing].”

Israel Defense Forces Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz surmised that Deif remains alive in a recent interview with Israel Hayom.

“You know, there is meat, there is milk and there is parve,” he said. “Sometimes there are signs that the man exists, and sometimes there are indications that he does not exist. In my opinion, he is still with us.”
*

Infant killed in Jerusalem light rail attack was U.S. citizen
(JNS.org) Three-month-old infant Chaya Zissel Braun, who died in the hospital after her stroller was hit in Wednesday’s vehicular terror attack on the Ammunition Hill light rail station in Jerusalem, was a U.S. citizen.

“We express our deepest condolences to the family of the baby, reportedly an American citizen, who was killed in this despicable attack, and extend our prayers for a full recovery to those injured,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Chaya and her parents were on their way back from the infant’s first visit to the Western Wall.

“They had their picture taken,” said Chaya’s grandfather, Shimshon Halperin, according to Israel Hayom. “They held her in the direction of the Temple Mount. They told her ‘that is where the Temple was, and that is Temple Mount.’”

The parents had just gotten off the light rail. The attacker waited for people to gather at the station and then accelerated, driving directly into the crowd.

“The car hit the baby’s stroller,” Halperin said. “The baby flew 10 or 20 meters (30-60 feet) in the air and hit her head on the concrete. The doctors at the hospital did the best they could. I want to thank them.”

Chaya’s parents had “waited for a baby for several years,” said Halperin.

“The parents are in shock,” he said. “They are traumatized. The baby was born after a long period of time that they did not have children, and they were overjoyed at her arrival. I have been living in the U.S. for 40 years, but we were here with them for the holiday. I kept joking that God sent them a gift from heaven.”

The attacker, 21-year-old eastern Jerusalem resident Abed al-Rahman Shaludi, was shot by a police officer and later died of his wounds in hospital. Shaludi was a Hamas activist who had been imprisoned in Israel for 16 months for security offenses. Released from prison in December 2013, Shaludi was the nephew of Mohiyedine Sharif, a one-time commander of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades.
*

U.S. paying social security payments to deported Nazi criminals
(JNS.org) A new report has revealed that the United States continues to make social security payments to former concentration camp guards and other Nazi collaborators who had been living in the U.S., but were expelled once their Holocaust history became apparent.

The Associated Press revealed that at least four such individuals are still collecting social security payments. They were allegedly offered the continuation of the payments as an incentive to leave the U.S.

“It’s maddening that some of these criminals who were forced out of the US once their past was uncovered were able to collect Social Security and live free lives,” Estee Yaari, a spokeswoman for Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust research center, told the Jerusalem Post.

Former member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council Deborah Lipstadt called the payments “outrageous, especially if it were done to make the OSI’s stats look good.”

But Dr. Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which called for the cessation of the payments, explained that the reasoning behind the continuing social security payments is not so clear-cut.

“The maximum ‘justice’ available in these cases under U.S. law was deportation, except in cases in which there was a country seeking extradition to put the Nazi on trial, which was a very rare occurrence,” he said. “Under those circumstances, the U.S. pushed to get as many of these out of the country and one of the ways of doing so, was to offer them the possibility of retaining Social Security privileges, if they would depart before a court ordered them deported, thereby hastening their departure and saving the US endless legal proceedings (and the expenses involved). The thought of these Nazi war criminals and collaborators enjoying their final years courtesy of U.S. payments is absolutely abhorrent, but the reality is much more complex than that.”

*
Germany offers to sell naval ships to Israel
(JNS.org) The German government has proposed the sale of naval ships to Israel for the protection of the Jewish state’s Exclusive Economic Zone in the Mediterranean Sea, an area that contains underwater gas reservoirs.

The Israeli Defense Ministry said Germany proposes to supply “defense ships through a German shipyard, and for a partial [financial] participation by the German government.”

“The offer is being examined by the relevant elements but no decision has been taken regarding this issue,” the ministry said in a statement.

If approved, the plan would help avoid a situation in which both Israel and Cyprus patrol aircrafts that must fly and monitor in the same airspace and transmit information to their own governments without coordinating with one another.

“Looking out from the rig, one sees only water all around. But that’s a deceptive view. It’s not an island. There’s a whole world [of defenses] around,” former Israeli Navy chief Adm. (res.) Eliezer Marom said in May, referring to multiple defenses that Israel has installed across the area.

*
Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman