Jewish news briefs: April 16, 2015

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On Yom HaShoah, Netanyahu compares Iran to Nazi Germany
(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared the current Iranian regime to Nazi Germany in his Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) speech on Wednesday night in Jerusalem.

“Just as the Nazis aspired to crush civilization and to establish a ‘master race’ to replace it in controlling the world while annihilating the Jewish people, so too does Iran strive to gain control over the region, from which it would spread further, with the explicit intent of obliterating the Jewish state,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister proceeded to reiterate his criticism of the nuclear negotiations between world powers and Iran, which recently produced a framework agreement and have a June 30 deadline for a final deal.

“The West is yielding in the face of Iran’s aggressive actions,” said Netanyahu. “Instead of demanding a significant dismantling of the nuclear program in Iran—a country that clearly states its plans to exterminate 6 million Jews here and elsewhere, to eradicate many countries and many regimes—the superpowers back down. They are leaving Iran with its nuclear capabilities, and even allowing it to expand them later on, regardless of Iran’s actions in the Middle East and around the world.”

He added, “As the civilized world is lulled into slumber on a bed of illusions, the rulers of Iran continue to encourage subversion and terrorism, and disseminate destruction and death. The superpowers turn a deaf ear to the crowds in Iran shouting, ‘Death to America; Death to Israel.’ They turn a blind eye to the scenes of execution of those who oppose the regime and the members of minority populations. And they hold their peace in the face of the massive arming of terrorist organizations.”
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Israeli man killed by Arab driver in possible ramming attack
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) An Israeli Jewish man died and a woman was seriously injured after being hit by a car at a bus stop where they were standing on Wednesday night at the French Hill junction in Jerusalem.

The man who died was identified as Shalom Yohai Sharki. He and the woman were evacuated to Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center, where Sharki died on Thursday morning.

The car was driven by an Arab man, who was lightly injured. He was taken into custody for questioning. Police are investigating the possibility of the incident being a terrorist attack, following a series of recent car-ramming attacks in Jerusalem.
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Israeli High Court: state may punish anti-Israel boycotters
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Knesset did not violate constitutional rights when it legislated a bill aimed at punishing those who call for a boycott of Israel, the Israeli High Court of Justice said Wednesday.

A panel of nine justices ruled that the Law for the Prevention of Boycotts Targeting Israel is constitutional, noting that the state of Israel has the right to defend itself against those who want to forcefully undermine its foundation. The court said it is possible to reconcile freedom of speech with certain restrictions on boycotts, so long as the restrictions are designed to protect the state from a real threat to its wellbeing.

The 2011 law, sponsored by MK Ze’ev Elkin (Likud), says that the government may seek damages from anyone who actively promotes an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of Israel or any other entity because of its affiliation with the Jewish state. This includes boycott campaigns that target Judea and Samaria. The law allows the Israeli finance minister to prevent those who promote or take part in such a boycott from submitting bids for various projects, and to deny them state funding and other benefits.

During court hearings, the state said the bill would help safeguard Israel’s stature on the world stage and protect its foreign relations. Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel had petitioned the High Court shortly after the law’s enactment, claiming the measure imposes a “price tag” on legitimate political views and undermines public discourse on controversial issues in Israeli society.
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World’s tiniest bible to be presented at Israel Museum for 50th anniversary
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) As part of its yearlong 50th anniversary celebration, the Jerusalem-based Israel Museum will display the “Nano Bible,” the world’s smallest bible, an Israeli innovation created at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

The tiny bible will be displayed alongside the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Aleppo Codex, a manuscript of the Jewish bible from 10th century C.E. The Nano Bible is a gold-coated silicon chip smaller than a pinhead. It is 0.04 square millimeters, and 0.00002 millimeters (20 nanometers) deep. The 1.2 million letters of the bible were written using a focused ion beam generator that shot gallium ions onto a gold surface covering a base layer of silicon.

Dr. Ohad Zohar and Professor Uri Sivan of the Technion Physics Department developed the idea, and the engineers of the Technion’s Sara and Moshe Zisapel Nanoelectronics Center were responsible for the manufacturing of the chip and the development of the software that allows the engraving of the letters.

The Israel Museum will also exhibit a documentary on the creation of the Nano Bible and will enable the reading of the biblical text under a microscope.
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Pre-Holocaust ID cards of thousands of Jews discovered in Lithuania
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum archivists found some 26,000 previously unknown identification cards belonging to Jewish citizens in the national archives in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania.

The cards represent about two-thirds of the Jewish population in the city before the Holocaust. They were found as part of a wide-ranging effort to locate any and all documentation of Jewish heritage in the former Soviet Union and Baltic region. Found among the ID cards in Kaunas was that of poet and author Leah Goldberg, who moved to Israel in 1935.

The cards were kept with a collection of all ID cards issued by the local population authority in Kauna, to Jews and non-Jews, from 1920-1940. Each resident received a copy of their card, while the original was kept by the local authorities for internal use.

The identification cards contain personal information, including first and last name, father’s name, date of birth, profession, nationality (Lithuanian or Jewish), and a photograph and signature of the resident. The cards were moved during the war and returned to the city’s archives following liberation.

The director of Yad Vashem’s Archives Division, Dr. Haim Gertner, explained that most Eastern European communities “did not keep orderly lists of residents before the war, and the Nazis did not often list the names of the people murdered in these areas.”

“For this reason, the fate of many Lithuanian Jews, including those from Kaunus, is unknown to us,” Gertner said. “This collection that we are now photographing, thanks to the assistance Yad Vashem receives from the Genesis Philanthropy Group, allows us to recreate the list of the city’s Jewish residents before the war and to give these victims of the Holocaust a face and a story.”
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Report released on Yom HaShoah shows 38% rise in European anti-Semitism
(JNS.org) There was an “explosion of hatred” against Jews through a dramatic rise in violent anti-Semitic incidents in Europe in 2014, according to a report released Wednesday by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University.

The report shows a 38-percent rise in violent anti-Semitic attacks in 2014 on that continent, with a total of 766 incidents ranging from assaults with weapons to vandalism against Jewish property, compared to 554 such incidents in 2013.

The uptick in European anti-Semitism has been partly attributed to increased hostility to Israel as a result of last summer’s war with Hamas, as well as the “general climate of hatred and violence” instigated by the rise of the Islamic State terror group in the Middle East, the report’s researchers wrote. Last year was the worse year in terms of anti-Semitism in Europe since 2009, when there was also an Israeli military operation in Gaza.

Jews feel like “they are facing an explosion of hatred toward them as individuals, their communities, and Israel, as a Jewish state,” wrote the researchers, pointing to the often blurred line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Some of the protests that were held against Israel’s Operation Protective Edge “deteriorated into violence while almost all of them included signs with hurtful slogans that included comparisons between Israel and the Nazis and the blaming of IDF soldiers for anything wrong under the sun,” they added.

“Synagogues were targeted, not Israeli embassies,” said Dina Porat, a historian who edited the report, according to Yedioth Ahronoth.

The report was released on the day that Israel marked Yom HaShohah, the Jewish state’s Holocaust Remembrance Day (which begins Wednesday night and lasts through Thursday). Around the world, there have been commemorations of the 70th anniversaries of the end of World War II and the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Another poll conducted by the Forsa Institute, also released Wednesday, showed that about 42 percent of Germans no longer want to revisit their country’s Nazi past.

“There is a certain feeling that a lot is being shown about the past, about the horrors of it all, the liberation of Auschwitz and so on. It goes in the direction of people being swamped by it,” said Forsa Institute founder Manfred Guellner, according to Reuters.
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Anne Frank’s death at Bergen-Belsen commemorated with #notsilent campaign
(JNS.org) The 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, along with the end of World War II, is being commemorated Wednesday on the same day that Israel marks Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). To commemorate the famous teenage diarist Anne Frank, who died in Bergen-Belsen, the Anne Frank Trust UK launched a social media campaign encouraging people (including celebrities) to record themselves reading excerpts from Frank’s diary and to publish the videos online with the hashtag #notsilent.

“We could have a minute’s silence to mark Anne Frank’s death, but it wasn’t appropriate,” said Gillian Walnes, co-founder and executive director of the Anne Frank Trust, Reuters reported.

“Anne Frank could not be silenced. Her voice has resonated across the generations in the 70 years since she died, and she’s inspired people… to actually speak out in her memory, and try to make the world better, as she wanted to do but couldn’t do,” she added.

British actress Naomie Harris and children’s author Jacqueline Wilson are among those who have already posted recordings of themselves reading Frank’s diary.
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Aid groups blast donors for failing to deliver on pledges to rebuild Gaza
(JNS.org) A new report by a group of international aid organizations criticized donors for failing to follow through on their pledges for the rebuilding of Gaza after last summer’s war there.

According to a report from the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), an umbrella group of 46 NGOs, only 26.8 percent of the $5.4 billion pledged by international donors at a conference in Cairo last October has been delivered so far.

“The promising speeches at the donor conference have turned into empty words,” Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, said in a statement.

The report also called for a “new approach” that addresses the underlying causes of the Gaza war in order to prevent the next such conflict, such as holding all parties to accountable for “violations” of international law.

While the report strongly criticized Israel’s blockade on Gaza as a contributor to preventing reconstruction, it also called on Egypt to reopen its border crossing with Gaza.

Israel, however, has taken a number of steps in recent weeks to ease restrictions on Gaza—restrictions the Jewish state maintains to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its rocket arsenal and terror tunnels. Israel recently allowed Gazans to export hundreds of tons of produce into Israel for the first time in nearly a decade, while easing restrictions on imports of construction materials such as cement into Gaza.

At the same time, the aid groups’ report was extremely critical of the ongoing Palestinian split between the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza, saying that the split has “enormous negative impact on the delivery of aid and services in Gaza.”

According to AIDA, not a single one of the 19,000 homes destroyed in the Gaza conflict has been rebuilt, with 100,000 people still homeless or in makeshift camps and schools.
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Poll: Republicans far more likely to support Netanyahu in clashes with Obama
(JNS.org) Americans affiliating with the Republican Party are significantly more likely than Democrats to support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in clashes with U.S. President Barack Obama, a new poll conducted by Bloomberg Politics found.

In the poll, conducted among 1,008 adults from April 6-8, 67 percent of Republicans said they are more sympathetic towards Netanyahu than Obama amid the leaders’ recent disputes on issues such as Iran and a Palestinian state. Democrats were substantially more likely—76 percent—to support Obama over Netanyahu. Overall, 47 percent of Americans support Obama compared to 34 percent who support Netanyahu, with Independents also favoring the president (44 percent to the prime minister’s 37 percent).

“The national poll is consonant with the strongly pro-Israel positioning by most of the Republicans jumping into the 2016 presidential nominating contest,” Bloomberg Politics said, referencing U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio.

Additionally, Americans were split on the issue of whether or not to support Israel when U.S. interests (as in the case of the Iranian nuclear issue) diverge, with 45 percent of Americans supporting Israel regardless of U.S. interests and 47 in favor of pursuing America’s interests when they differ from Israel’s.

Similarly, Republicans were substantially “more pessimistic” (62 percent) than Democrats (70 percent “more optimistic”) when it came to the recent nuclear framework agreement struck by the Obama administration and world powers with Iran. Independents were mostly split on the issue, with 48 percent more pessimistic and 45 percent more optimistic.

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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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