JNS news briefs: December 19, 2014

Israeli-Canadian architect wins prestigious award for Singapore hotel
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has awarded the Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie with its 2015 Gold Medal for his international work in planning structures in public and cultural spaces.

The AIA Gold Medal is considered the most prestigious award in the field of architecture. Safdie was awarded the prize for, among other projects, planning the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore, which is owned by Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands company.

More than $6 billion was invested in the Singapore hotel, which features an infinity pool constructed over the roofs of Singapore skyscrapers, an architectural wonder that has become the No. 1 tourist attraction in the city. The Marina Bay Sands also includes a museum, theaters, tourist attractions, and expo centers.

Safdie began his career in 1967 by building Habitat 67, the beehive-shaped athlete’s village for the Montreal Olympics. The architect’s many notable projects include the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, the Khalsa Heritage Memorial, a museum dedicated to India’s Sikh people, the main branch of the Salt Lake City Library, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas.

Christian-Jewish group sends delegation to aid Ukrainian Jews in distress
(JNS.org) A delegation from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) landed in Ukraine on Dec. 17 to provide aid to poverty-stricken Jews. IFCJ has allocated a special budget of $5.1 million to provide food, clothing, and heating for Ukrainian Jews in need.

“When the Ukrainian revolution began, many people lost their jobs,” said IFCJ President Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein said, according to Israel Hayom. “The government stopped old-age stipends or cut them back, and the Jewish institutions have been forced to use most of their budgets for security following anti-Semitic incidents and incitement.”

IFCJ has also helped move refugees from the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine to camps in the western part of the country. Alexander Klass, a Jewish man in his 20s who came to the capital of Kiev from one of the combat areas, said that “my life and my family’s weren’t easy when there was peace, and now, in a time of war, life has become insufferable.”

“I really love my parents and always tried to help them as much as I could,” he said. “I have a serious illness, so I couldn’t immigrate to Israel with my parents before this. Now, the insufferable conditions in Ukraine are making me think about moving to Israel.”

Kansas Jewish sites shooter found mentally competent, state seeks death penalty
(JNS.org) White supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan member Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., who fatally shot three people at two Jewish facilities in Kansas earlier this year, in a hearing on Thursday was found mentally competent enough to stand trial for the charge of capital murder. Additionally, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said the state of Kansas would seek the death penalty for Miller.

“I don’t fear the death penalty,” Miller said, the Kansas City Star reported. “I’m already dying.”

The 74-year-old Miller is accused of murdering William Lewis Corporon, 69, Corporon’s 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, and 53-year-old Terri LaManno at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and a nearby retirement village last April. None of the victims were Jewish, though Miller has said that he went to the locations “for the specific purpose of killing Jews.”

In November, Johnson County District Court Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan had granted a motion filed by Miller’s public attorney to have him examined by a mental health professional.

CAMERA launches latest billboards accusing NY Times of biased reporting on Israel
(JNS.org) A series of new billboards in New York City calls out The New York Times for what a media watchdog group says is persistent anti-Israel bias in the newspaper’s reporting.

Five new billboards from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) will join an existing CAMERA billboard opposite the headquarters of The New York Times in midtown Manhattan. The midtown billboard reads, “The New York Times Against Israel—All Rant, All Slant, All The Time. Stop The Bias!” The other billboards can be found near the intersection of 10th Ave. and 36th St., at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, and on expressways.

“We are expanding our effort to let the public know, beginning with the newspaper-reading public in New York City, that The Times persists—[and] has even doubled-down—in its long-standing pattern of prejudiced reporting and editorializing when it comes to Israel,” said Andrea Levin, CAMERA’s executive director.

In November, CAMERA called out the “passive language” in an initial New York Times headline on the Palestinian terror attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem. The headline stated, “Four Killed in Jerusalem Synagogue Complex,” without any mention of terrorism. CAMERA also noted that the newspaper, when reporting on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s condemnation of the synagogue attack, omitted any reference of Abbas’s repeated incitement to violence—such as a condolence letter Abbas wrote to the family of the late Palestinian terrorist who attempted to murder Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick.

On Dec. 10, The Times’s choice of columnist to analyze the controversy surrounding an Israeli bill to formalize the country’s status as a “Jewish state” was pro-Hamas activist Max Blumenthal, the creator of a Twitter hashtag (#JSIL) equating Israel with the Islamic state terror group.

Over the summer, CAMERA used its midtown Manhattan billboard to call out biased reporting on the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, stating, “Hamas attacks Israel: Not surprising. The New York Times attacks Israel: Also not surprising.”

Levin noted that the billboards are a quick and high-impact way of reminding viewers of “journalistic malpractice” concerning Israel and that CAMERA’s focus on the New York Times’s coverage enjoys “enthusiastic support from the organization’s members and supporters.”

“If The Times imagines it can escape scrutiny, it’s quite mistaken. As long as The Times keeps lying about Israel, we’ll keep telling the truth about them,” she said.

Israeli archaeologists uncover entryway to King Herod palace
(JNS.org) Israeli archeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have announced the discovery of an elaborate entryway to the Herodian hilltop palace in Herodium National Park.

The 65-foot-long, 20-foot-wide entrance was uncovered as part of excavations conducted over the past year to develop the site for tourism, the university said. According to the archaeologists, the entryway features a complex system of arches on three separate levels, which allowed the king and his entourage to directly enter the Palace Courtyard.

“During the course of the current excavations, the original impressive palace vestibule, blocked when the corridor became redundant, was also exposed. … This appears to have happened when Herod, aware of his impending death, decided to convert the whole hilltop complex into a massive memorial mound—a royal burial monument on an epic scale. Whatever the case, the corridor was back-filled during the construction of the massive artificial hill at the end of Herod’s reign,” Hebrew University said.

Additionally, the excavations turned up impressive evidence from the Bar Kokhba Revolt period (132-135/6 CE) with hidden tunnels dug by the Jewish rebels as part of guerrilla warfare against the Romans.

Abbas continues to pursue U.N. measure on Israeli withdrawal from West Bank
(JNS.org) Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that he supports further negotiations over a draft resolution outlining Israel’s United Nations-imposed withdrawal from the West Bank. The measure is currently being considered by the U.N. Security Council.

That resolution, which calls for Israeli forces to withdraw by the end of 2017 from the territories the Jewish state took over after the Six-Day War of 1967, was submitted to the U.N. on Wednesday night by Jordan. If the measure gets the nine affirmative votes it needs to pass, the U.S. will be forced to decide whether or not to use its veto power at the Security Council to stop the resolution.

The U.N. resolution “comes in the context of our political battle to liberate the land and end the occupation of the Palestinian state,” Abbas told a Palestinian leadership meeting, the Associated Pressreported.

“We will continue in our consultations with the brothers and friends through deliberations, which will take place in the United Nations,” he said.

Meanwhile, Abbas’s advisor on religious and Islamic affairs, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, said in several sermons in recent months that the ultimate goal of the PA is to claim the entire state of Israel.

“The entire land of Palestine (including all of Israel) is waqf (an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law) and is blessed land… It is prohibited to sell, bestow ownership, or facilitate the occupation of even a millimeter of it,” Al-Habbash said, the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported in October, according to Palestinian Media Watch.

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