Jewish news briefs: September 2, 2015

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Anti-Semitic cartoon printed on credit card from Norwegian bank

(JNS.org) A credit card issued by a Norwegian bank sparked a controversy by featuring an anti-Semitic cartoon that resembles a throwback to the Nazi era.

The DNB Bank card features an unflattering image of a large-nosed Jewish man wearing a prayer shawl that bears the Star of David, grinning in front of a pile of gold coins. An Australian citizen who discovered the card sent it to the Hallelu Foundation for the Advancement of Israel’s Global Image, a group established three months ago to combat global anti-Israel sentiment and portrayals. The foundation published a picture of the card on Facebook, garnering thousands of responses.

“We also contacted the bank, and the vice president apologized within hours. They also apologized on our Facebook page, claiming that [the cartoon] had been the initiative of an individual and was not bank policy,” the foundation told Israel Hayom.

In a letter of apology, the bank’s vice president wrote, “The card was issued by a system that allows our customers to upload their own images and have them printed on the card issued for them. However, we have strict guidelines for what images are allowed to be uploaded, and the oversight is done manually….Unfortunately, the manual oversight failed in this particular case, and we are very sorry about it. This card should never have been printed. We intend to contact the customer, freeze the card and issue him a card without an image.”
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Reserve soldiers show increased faith in IDF, survey says

(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) A newly released survey shows significant improvement in reserve soldiers’ faith in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The IDF surveys reservists twice a year to gauge issues believed to affect their motivation to perform reserve service. According to the latest poll, published Tuesday by the Behavioral Science Department at the IDF’s Personnel Directorate, 83 percent of reservists believe in the military’s ability to secure a decisive victory should hostilities with Gaza-based terrorist groups resume.

A similar question posed to reservists before the summer 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza had found that 75 percent of them believed in the IDF’s ability to win a conflict decisively. Further, a similar IDF survey after the 2006 Second Lebanon War found that only 48 percent of Israeli reservists believed in their military’s fighting capabilities.

The latest survey also found that 75 percent of reservists have faith in the command skills and decision-making abilities of the IDF’s top military echelon, up from only 28 percent following the Second Lebanon War. Eighty-six percent said they would report for reserve service without hesitation, a 6-percent rise from the survey before the Gaza conflict. Eighty-four percent said they consider reserve service their duty.
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Police: tunnel to Jerusalem archaeology museum could be built by thieves

(JNS.org) Jerusalem police are investigating a suspicious 30-meter (98-foot) tunnel leading from a Palestinian woman’s home in eastern Jerusalem to the city’s Rockefeller Archaeological Museum.

A neighbor of the woman reported to authorities that he had seen men digging a hole in the woman’s garden for several weeks.

“The elderly lady said the suspects told her that they were working on behalf of the municipality and electric company to fix pipes and other things,” said Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

“Every time she asked them what they were doing, they replied ‘fixing, fixing, fixing,’” he said, which has led police to suspect the men may have been digging the tunnel for the purpose of stealing.

The Rockefeller museum has not reported any theft or missing archaeological artifacts. No such artifacts have been found inside the tunnel.

“Police are searching for the suspects to determine what’s behind this,” and the men “have not returned since officers inspected the tunnel on Monday,” Rosenfeld said, the Jerusalem Post reported.
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Convicted killer at Kansas Jewish sites faces death penalty

(JNS.org) Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., who on Monday was convicted of capital murder and five additional charges for the August 2014 shootings near the Jewish Community Center and the Village Shalom retirement facility in Overland Park, Kan., is facing a possible death sentence.

Miller, a white supremacist with a history of involvement with the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party, represented himself during his trial and stated that he “wanted to kill Jews, not people,” in reference to the murders of 69-year-old William Corporon, 14-year-old Reat Griffin Underwood, and Terri LaManno. None of the three victims, however, were Jewish.

If the 74-year-old Miller receives the death penalty during his sentencing, it is possible that he will never actually undergo lethal injection because he suffers from emphysema and may not have long to live, the Associated Press reported.

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Iran hopes U.S. Congress isn’t swayed by ‘warmongers’ in nuclear deal review

(JNS.org) Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tuesday that he hopes the U.S. Congress won’t be swayed by “warmongers’ propaganda” during its upcoming vote on the Iran nuclear deal.

“What happens in the U.S. Congress, that’s certainly a U.S. issue,” Zarif said at a news conference in Tunisia, AFP reported.

Praising the deal as “mutually beneficial” to the U.S. and Iran, Zarif added, “And if people are not too much concerned with the propaganda being raged by warmongers in our region and outside our region, there’s no reason for the deal to face any impediments in the United States.”

President Barack Obama has leveled similar criticisms at opponents of the Iran deal. During a speech in July, he said the most fervent critics of the deal in Congress are “the same folks who were so quick to go to war in Iraq and said it would take a few months.” But Obama has denied the assertion that he has described critics of the agreement—including many prominent Jewish leaders and organizations—as “warmongers.”

“At no time have I suggested that somebody is a warmonger, meaning they want war,” Obama said in the webcast hosted by the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations last week.

Obama reiterated that view in an interview with the Forward newspaper, saying that if Congress rejects the deal, then “the logical conclusion is that if we want to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, military strikes will be the last option remaining at some point.”
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Turkey helps return Israeli man who planned to join Islamic State

(JNS.org) Turkey has helped return a young Israeli man who planned to join the Islamic State terrorist group to Israel, despite the strained Israeli-Turkish relationship.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it received a call last week from family members who were concerned about their 21-year-old son, who flew to Crete with the intention of traveling on to Syria via Turkey. Based on what he wrote on the Internet, the family feared he was going to join Islamic State in Syria.

Working together, Interpol, the Israeli Embassy in Ankara, the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul, and Turkish authorities were able to track down the youth in Iskenderun, which is near the Turkish-Syrian border.

Ilana Ravid, who serves as the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s director for Israelis abroad, said that “this is a complex and worrisome case, but with the diplomatic work of Israeli representatives in Turkey, and the good will of the Turkish authorities, the situation ended well.”
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Conflicting reports emerge over Abbas’s future as head of PLO

(JNS.org) Conflicting reports have arisen over whether or not Mahmoud Abbas, who serves as both the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), will be a candidate in the upcoming elections for the PLO Executive Committee.

According to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, a senior Palestinian official said Abbas has no intention of running to maintain his post as PLO leader.

“Abu Mazen (Abbas) said that he wants to give a space for other factions to participate.…We asked him to think again, especially in this hard and serious period, and amid the effort by some people to get rid of him,” said Amin Maqbul, secretary-general of the Fatah Revolutionary Council.

In August, Abbas and 11 other senior Palestinian officials announced their resignation from the PLO Executive Committee. But according to a report in Haaretz, a senior Palestinian official said reports of Abbas’s retirement are premature. The official, however, conceded that Abbas feels “abandoned” by the United States government in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and is “seeking to leave.”

Meanwhile, reports indicate that Abbas will remain the president of the PA, a separate interim government established during the Oslo Accords to administer the West Bank and Gaza (the latter territory is now governed by Hamas).

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Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman.