Jewish news briefs: July 1, 2015

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Obama admin. won’t enforce anti-BDS trade provision in Judea and Samaria
(JNS.org) After President Barack Obama signed a trade bill that takes a stand against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, his administration said the U.S. would not use the legislation to protect Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership bill, which was passed by Congress last week and signed into law by Obama this week, includes an amendment requiring American negotiators to stipulate the rejection of boycotting products made in “Israeli-controlled territories” as a core principle in trade talks with other countries, particularly in the European Union.

But State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that the bill’s language on BDS “runs counter to longstanding U.S. policy” on the disputed territories because it conflates “Israel and ‘Israeli-controlled territories.’” The U.S. has “strongly opposed boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions targeting the State of Israel, and will continue to do so,” but will not “pursue policies or activities that would legitimize” Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, said Kirby.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a key sponsor of the trade bill’s anti-BDS amendment, said the measure never intended to take a stance on Israeli settlements, the Associated Press reported.
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Hamas readying for next war with Israel, Shin Bet chief says
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Hamas terrorist group is facing a strategic predicament and has seen its status as the sovereign power in the Gaza Strip eroded, Yoram Cohen, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

Cohen said Hamas has stepped up its preparations for a future military confrontation with Israel by resuming its tunnel-construction activities, renewing its development and production of rockets, increasing training, and intensifying its efforts to receive Iranian aid. He said Hamas is unlikely to launch an offensive against Israel now, but warned that it is capable of fighting Israel for an extended period in the event of flare-up.

The Shin Bet chief said that some of the funds that were supposed to go toward the rebuilding of civilian infrastructure in Gaza have been used instead to shore up Hamas’s military capabilities, which were badly damaged during last year’s war in the coastal territory.
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Israeli man dies from wounds suffered in Palestinian drive-by shooting
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Malachi Rosenfeld, the 27-year-old Israeli man who was seriously wounded in a Palestinian drive-by shooting attack near Shvut Rachel in Samaria on Monday night, died from his wounds on Tuesday. He was buried on Wednesday in his hometown of Kochav Hashahar.

Monday’s terrorist attack was not the first tragedy to strike the Rosenfeld family. In 2002, Malachi’s older brother, Yitzhak, an Israeli Air Force pilot, was killed when a jeep he was in was swept up in a flood in southern Israel.

Malachi Rosenfeld was studying economics and business administration at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Known as an excellent student, he was due to complete his studies next month. Rosenfeld and three of his friends where shot as they drove home from playing basketball. The three others were moderately wounded. The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet are conducting a massive search for the perpetrators of the attack.

“Malachi Rosenfeld was gifted and exceptional,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “To his parents, Eliezer and Sarah, I say there is no greater pain than the loss of a son or daughter. We will fight terrorism, we will find the attackers, and we will bring them to justice. We will exact a price from the terrorists and those who dispatch them. This is an ongoing fight.”
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United Church of Christ passes resolution to divest from Israel
(JNS.org) The United Church of Christ (UCC) on Tuesday passed a resolution that calls for divestment from companies that do business with Israel at its General Synod in Cleveland.

The vote—508 in favor and 124 against, with 38 abstentions—culminates a process that began in 2005 “to end the Church’s complicity in Israel’s nearly half-century-old occupation and other abuses of Palestinian human rights,” according to a press release from UCC’s Palestine-Israel Network.

“As disciples of Jesus, we hear and seek to heed his call to be peacemakers, responding to violence with nonviolence and extending love to all,” said Rev. John Deckenback, Conference Minister of the Central Atlantic Conference of the UCC, which submitted the resolution to the synod. “It is in that spirit of love for both Israelis and Palestinians, and a desire to support Palestinians in their nonviolent struggle for freedom, that the United Church of Christ has passed this resolution.”

The resolution follows in the footsteps of Presbyterian Church USA, which last year voted to divest from Israel. Two other mainline churches, the Episcopal Church and Mennonite Church USA, are also considering divestment votes this week.

Tuesday’s divestment vote was quickly condemned by Jewish and pro-Israel organizations.

“The UCC’s one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process singles out Israel and, shockingly, ignores any Palestinian accountability,” said Rabbi Noam Marans, the American Jewish Committee’s Director of Interreligious and Intergroup Relations.

In addition to the divestment measure, a UCC resolution describing Israel as an “apartheid” state gained a majority, but failed to amass the two-thirds affirmative vote it needed to pass.

“Anti-Israel extremists within the UCC advanced these anti-Israel measures through deceptive rhetoric and tactics, and despite opposition from respected members of the synod,” the Israel education group StandWithUs said, adding that the measures “severely damaged the UCC’s relationship with the vast majority of the Jewish community.”

Dexter Van Zile, Christian media analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, noted that the UCC synod “did not offer one word of solace or support to Christians and other religious minorities suffering in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East.”

“How can a responsible organization remain silent about what’s happening to the Assyrians, to the Yazidis, and what the Copts endured in Egypt when [president Mohammed] Morsi was in power? The silence is criminal, simply criminal,” Van Zile told JNS.org.
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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie becomes 14th GOP presidential candidate
(JNS.org) New Jersey Governor Chris Christie—who has a somewhat controversial record on issues relating to Israel—on Tuesday said he will run for president, promoting his straight-talking persona and desire for bipartisanship in his announcement.

“I mean what I say and I say what I mean, and that’s what America needs right now,” Christie said at an event at Livingston High School, his alma mater.

“Both parties have failed our country,” he added. “Compromise is now a dirty word.”

The 14th Republican candidate to enter the 2016 race, Christie was once considered a top contender for the nomination, but has seen his popularity decline amid a scandal about the closure of lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge by his subordinates. Former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive David Wildstein has admitted that the lane closures were political retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J.

Christie, the governor of a state with one of the largest Jewish populations in the country, has at times come under the microscope for his stances on Israel and radical Islam. In 2008, he called Passaic County, N.J., resident Imam Mohammad Qatanani—who was discovered by the FBI to have been previously arrested and convicted in Israel for aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood and the Hamas terrorist group—a “man of great goodwill.”

In 2014, during a speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s (RJC) leadership retreat in Las Vegas, Christie used the Palestinian narrative’s “occupied territories” descriptor for the West Bank, drawing condemnation from some pro-Israel leaders. Christie reportedly met afterward with prominent Republican Party donor Sheldon Adelson, who hosted the RJC retreat, and apologized for the remark.

Later that year, Christie did not mention the word “Israel” during a speech he gave at the Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala in New York City.

But more recently, Christie criticized President Barack Obama for his “shameful” policy on Israel.

“Our commitment to Israel must be absolute,” Christie said at an event in New Hampshire in May. “Israel is a beacon of freedom in a sea of autocracy and our friendship should be unshakeable. Over the last few years this administration has taken our Israeli partners for granted and it is shameful how the president has treated them.”

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