Jewish news briefs: April 24, 2015

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On Independence Day, Gaza rocket launched at Israel for first time in 2015

(JNS.org) For the first time in 2015, and on the same day Israel celebrated its 67th Independence Day, a code-red rocket siren sounded Thursday in the southern Israeli town of Sderot and other communities on the border with Gaza.

While there were no reports from local residents of any explosions around the time of the siren at 9 p.m. Israel time, the IDF investigated the siren and determined that one rocket was fired at Israel from Gaza. The rocket reportedly exploded in an open area. In response, Israeli forces fired two shells at a Hamas training facility. No injuries were reported.

No specific terror group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s rocket attack.

“Even without pinpointing the identity of who fired, we expect the defense establishment to ensure peace and quiet in the area,” Alon Shuster, head of the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council in southern Israel, told Israel Hayom.

Shaar Hanegev is the partnership region with the Jewish Federation of San Diego County.

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Poll: 57% of Americans disapprove of Obama’s policies on Iran

(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Fifty-seven percent of Americans disapprove of the job President Barack Obama is doing on Iran, with 32 percent approving, according to a new Fox News poll.

Fifty-one percent of respondents said Obama is “being too soft” in the nuclear negotiations with Iran, while 34 percent believe he is “striking the right balance.” Only 2 percent said Obama is “being too tough” with Iran. Sixty-five percent said they believe Iran poses a real threat to national security, and 50 percent believe that negotiating with the Islamic Republic is the wrong thing to do, saying Iran cannot be trusted to honor any agreement.

The Fox News poll was based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,012 randomly chosen registered voters across the U.S.

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New film: Boston U.-affiliated high school workshop promotes anti-Israel agenda

(JNS.org) The advocacy group Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) on Thursday released a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lbrkTCKBnM) that sounds the alarm on a Boston University-affiliated high school workshop that APT says attempts “to indoctrinate students, especially Jewish students, against the state of Israel.”

While Axis of Hope (AOH) claims that its mission is “developing in young adults an understanding of alternative, non-violent approaches to resolving complex conflicts locally, nationally and internationally,” AOH’s “Whose Jerusalem?” workshop runs mock negotiating exercises that specifically select Jewish students for roles that try to get them to empathize with Hamas, the Palestinian terror group whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction and the murder of all Jews.

Carl Hobert, AOH’s founder, has admitted to receiving guidance for the workshop from anti-Israel professors Noam Chomsky (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Denis Sullivan (Northeastern University), according to APT. Hobert has told the Al Jazeera broadcaster that one of the workshop’s goals is “putting pressure on our government to create a Palestinian state.”

AOH has worked in at least 28 high schools across the U.S., which are listed on its website athttp://www.axisofhope.org/index.php/testimonials/clients. The 27-minute film by Boston-based APT, titled “Axis of Bias @ Weston High School,” focuses on AOH’s presence at Weston High School because the group received outreach from a concerned individual in that area.

APT President Charles Jacobs explained that while Jewish organizations are finally taking action on the threat of anti-Zionism on college campuses, the new film shows how “the poison that we now know is on the campuses” is also spreading on the high school level. Programs like AOH are “grooming these kids” in a way that by the time they reach college, “they’re already coming pre-heated against Israel,” Jacobs told JNS.org.

“Under the banner of global education, and peace studies, and conflict resolution, and activist diplomacy, all kinds of things are being brought into the schools that are anti-Israel,” Jacobs said. “This is one of the more egregious examples, and we’ve got it on film. We’ve shown this film around to people who are experts in education, and also to Jewish leaders in the city, and they’re absolutely appalled.”

Dr. Sandra Stotsky, former senior commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education, said, “This is a must-see video for parents who care about their children’s education and want educators with academic integrity in the classroom.” Dr. Sandra Alfonsi, chair of the “Curriculum Watch” initiative at the women’s Zionist organization Hadassah, called AOH “a pedagogically flawed program by a self-styled guru of educational civil disobedience promoting anti-Israel propaganda to well-meaning students who want to bring peace to the world.”

The AOH website says that the initiative “is no longer conducting official teacher training sessions,” instead pointing visitors to new conflict resolution teacher training programs at the Boston University Global Literacy Institute website. Those programs are also led by Hobert.

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Iranian ships off Yemen turn back after U.S. aircraft carrier deployment

(JNS.org) A fleet of nine Iranian ships off the coast of Yemen believed to be carrying weapons bound for Shi’a Muslim Houthi rebels turned around on Thursday.

The ships, which included seven freighters and two frigates, were purportedly headed back in the direction of Iran.

“They turned around before they crossed the line extending from the Yemen/Oman border,” a Pentagon official told Fox News.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Navy announced that the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt and its escort ship, the U.S.S. Normandy guided-missile cruiser, would join several other U.S. vessels to form a blockade around Yemenite waters. The U.S. mission was in support of a Saudi-led coalition that was launching airstrikes on the Houthi rebels.

Meanwhile, U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met in Vienna on Thursday as part of the latest effort to secure a final nuclear deal by the June 30 deadline, Reuters reported. Foreign officials from the P5+1 nations and Iran are expected to meet this weekend, with Secretary of State John Kerry joining negotiations next week.

Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Hamid Baidinejad, said that the “drafting of the final deal has started,” according to Iranian state television.

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FBI director apologizes for op-ed placing blame on Poland for Holocaust

(JNS.org) The head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) apologized to the Polish ambassador to the U.S. for suggesting that Poland was complicit in the Holocaust.

In a Washington Post op-ed published April 16, FBI Director James Comey wrote, “In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do.”

The Polish government took offense at the op-ed, claiming Comey implied that Poland was responsible for the murder of the Jews.

“I regret linking Germany and Poland… because Poland was invaded and occupied by Germany,” Comey wrote in a letter to Polish Ambassador to the U.S. Ryszard Schnepf, which was released by the Polish foreign ministry, Reuters reported Thursday. “The Polish state bears no responsibility for the horrors imposed by the Nazis. I wish I had not used any other country names because my point was a universal one about human nature.”

Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman wrote in an op-ed for MSNBC that Comey’s original argument does contain some truth, but that the FBI director could have been clearer in articulating his point, because it was Nazi Germany that organized concentration camps and managed the logistics of the Holocaust.

“As evil as the Nazis were, their phantasmagoric mission to destroy the Jewish people was made much easier because the public in most European countries, Poland included, too often acted as bystanders and sometimes even as accomplices,” Foxman wrote.

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Jewish hostage among 2 accidentally killed by U.S. airstrike on al-Qaeda

(JNS.org) President Barack Obama apologized for the deaths of two hostages who were held by the al-Qaeda terrorist group in Pakistan, admitting that Jewish-American prisoner Warren Weinstein and Italian captive Giovanni Lo Porto were accidentally killed by a U.S. airstrike in January.

“As president and as commander in chief, I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations,” Obama said, adding that he “profoundly regrets” the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto and offering his “deepest apologies to the families.”

A White House statement said that two American citizens who were members of al-Qaeda, Ahmed Farouq and Adam Gadahn, were killed in the same region in Pakistan.

Weinstein, 73, was abducted in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2011. According to police reports at the time, 8-10 men approached Weinstein’s house as a ploy, tied up Weinstein’s three guards, and took him away. At the time of his capture, Weinstein had been working in Pakistan for several years as a director of J.E. Austin Associates, a U.S.-based development contractor that advises different Pakistani business and government sectors.

Mike Redwood, a leather industry expert who worked with Weinstein in Pakistan, told JNS.org in 2013 that Weinstein was “one of the cleverest and most resourceful people” he knew.

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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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