Poll: Israelis trust Netanyahu on Iran far more than Herzog, Obama
(JNS.org) A large plurality of Israelis back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stance on the Iranian nuclear issue compared to the more conciliatory approaches of U.S. President Barack Obama and Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog, a new Israel Hayom-New Wave Research Institute poll found.
Asked whom they trust more to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, 41 percents of respondents chose Netanyahu, while 15 percent chose Obama and only 6 percent chose Herzog.
Forty-six percent of those polled said Netanyahu’s address to Congress about Iran was the right move, while 39 percent thought it was a mistake. The poll was conducted from March 3-4 among a random sample of 500 Hebrew-speaking Israeli Jews ages 18 and over.
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National Geographic rates Tel Aviv one of world’s top 10 seaside cities
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Tel Aviv has been named by theNational Geographic magazine as one of the world’s top 10 oceanfront cities, joining Tallinn, Estonia; Saint Johns, Canada; San Diego, Calif.; Marseille, France; Perth and Brisbane, Australia; Durban, South Africa; Vladivostok, Russia; and Portland, Maine.
“There’s plenty of room for beach bathing in this modern Israeli city on the Mediterranean,” National Geographic said of Tel Aviv.
The magazine noticed the rejuvenation of the Jaffa port, saying, “The historic port of Jaffa has found new life in recent years with a vibrant gallery, cafe, and restaurant scene.”
In recent years, Tel Aviv has been included on a number of travel-related top 10 lists. In 2014, Twitter users from across the globe rated Tel Aviv as one of the top 10 hottest destinations to visit.
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1st-century house unearthed in Nazareth could be Jesus’s childhood home
(JNS.org) A leading archaeologist is hinting that a house dating back to the 1st century CE unearthed in Nazareth may have been the childhood home of Jesus.
The house, which is made up of simple mortar and stone walls that was cut into a rocky hillside, was first discovered in the 1880s by nuns at the Sisters of Nazareth convent. In 1936, a Jesuit priest, Henri Senes, catalogued the site with drawings and notes that had been exposed by the nuns. Then in 2006, team of archaeologists led by Ken Dark, a professor at the University of Reading in the U.K., began an examination of the site based on Senes’s work, Live Science reported.
“Was this the house where Jesus grew up? It is impossible to say on archaeological grounds,” Dark wrote in Biblical Archaeology Review. “On the other hand, there is no good archaeological reason why such an identification should be discounted.”
According to the archaeologists, the house was later decorated with mosaics during the Byzantine Period (roughly from the 4th century until the 7th century CE), and a church known as the “Church of the Nutrition” was constructed over the dwelling to most likely protect it.
The site fell into disrepair following the Islamic invasions in the 7th century CE. Later, when the Crusaders conquered the Holy Land in the 12th century, the church was rebuilt, but then it was burnt again in the 13th century.
Artifacts found inside the 1st-century house include a broken cooking pot, a spindle whorl, and limestone vessels, which suggest that it was home to a Jewish family because of the Jewish belief that limestone could not become impure.
The archaeological evidence is also corroborated by a text from 670 CE written by a monk on the Scottish island of Iona, based on a pilgrimage to Nazareth made by the Frankish Bishop Arculf, which mentions the church “where once there was the house in which the Lord was nourished in his infancy.”
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Number of Israeli tourists to Germany rises by 14 percent
(JNS.org) New data from the German National Tourist Board shows that among non-European nations, Israel was the sixth-highest source for tourists to Germany in 2014.
Nearly 870,000 Israeli tourists stayed in Germany overnight in 2014, an increase of 14 percent from 2013, according to statistics cited by Yedioth Ahronoth. Forty-six percent of Israelis who stayed in Germany stayed in the city of Berlin. Based on a breakdown of the average number of nights a tourist stayed in Berlin, Israelis stayed the longest, with an average of three nights.
The U.S. is the top source for tourism to Germany among non-European countries, followed by China.
The new statistics follow a number of recent media reports on Israelis choosing to move to Germany, for factors such as Israel’s increasingly high living costs. Official estimates of Israelis living in Berlin range from 5,000 to more than 15,000, according to a New York Times report from October 2014.
The decision by some Israelis to relocate to Germany has received some criticism in Israeli society.
“People move to where Hitler designed the Final Solution and do it happily?” said Aluf Benn, editor of the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. “The Holocaust is the most important pillar of Israeli education. Going to Berlin is like, ‘Have you learned anything?’ It’s the ultimate failure of Zionism.”
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U.S. officials: ‘some progress’ made in Iran nuclear talks
(JNS.org) U.S. officials say that “some progress” has been made in world powers’ Switzerland-based negotiations with Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
“We have made some progress but have a lot of challenges yet ahead,” a senior U.S. State Department official said, Reuters reported.
“The bottom line here is that [there is] no deal to announce to anybody today, but very intense, hard work, some progress, but tough challenges yet to be resolved,” the official said.
The two sides are working towards forging a deal before the March 24 deadline for a “political framework agreement.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s on Tuesday told Congress that the current negotiations are paving the way for “Iran’s path to the bomb,” adding that restrictions on Iran should be maintained until the country’s “aggression” ends. But U.S. President Barack Obama said that Netanyahu’s speech offered no “viable alternatives” to the current negotiations.
In Switzerland, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry echoed Obama, saying that “no one has presented a more viable lasting alternative for how you actually prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”
Talks between Iran and world powers are expected to resume sometime around March 15 in Geneva.
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Iranian FM rejects U.S. demand to halt sensitive nuclear activity for 10 years
(JNS.org) Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called U.S. President Barack Obama’s demand that Iran freeze sensitive nuclear activity for at least a decade as part of an agreement with world powers “unacceptable.”
Zarif’s statement, made in a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Switzerland, came a day after Obama told Reuters that Iran needs to commit to halting its sensitive nuclear work for 10 years in order for a deal to be reached.
The Iranian semi-official Fars news agency quoted Zarif saying that Iran “will not accept excessive and illogical demands.”
“Obama’s stance… is expressed in unacceptable and threatening phrases,” Zarif said.
But Zarif said that negotiations with world powers will continue. “That’s why we are here. … The only way to move forward is through negotiations,” he said.
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Israel to double water supply for Gaza despite threats from Hamas
(JNS.org) Israeli officials say they are doubling the amount of water the Jewish state provides to the Gaza Strip, despite ongoing threats from the Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) chief Major General Yoav Mordechai said that Israel would increase water supplies from 1.3 to 2.6 billion gallons to help ease the ongoing water crisis in Gaza.
A recent report by the Israeli non-governmental organization B’Tselem said that more than 90 percent of Gaza’s water is un-potable due to decades of over-pumping of Gaza’s coastal aquifer, the territory’s main water source, leading to contamination from seawater and saline groundwater as well as a lack of wastewater treatment.
Mordechai added that he hopes Hamas “would not steal water from civilians as they steal construction materials intended for the reconstruction of houses,” the Associated Press reported.
The news concerning Gaza’s water supply comes after a recent false report repeated by several news outlets, including Al-Jazeera and Agence France Presse (AFP), that Israel purposely opened dams in southern Israel and flooded parts of Gaza. No such dams exist in southern Israel. Al-Jazeera later retracted and apologized for the false reporting.
Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups such as Islamic Jihad regularly use building materials sent from Israel, such as concrete, for the construction of tunnels used to launch attacks inside of Israel.
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Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman.
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