Middle East Roundup: May 12, 2016

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Netanyahu proposes return of Israeli Independence Day military parades

(JNS.org) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday suggested that Israel reinstate the tradition of military parades on the country’s Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut). Israel held such parades from 1949-1968, and then once more to mark the Jewish state’s 25th independence anniversary in 1973.

At a Yom Ha’atzmaut event in Jerusalem that was held to honor 120 outstanding Israeli soldiers, Netanyahu said, “There was something of a revival, of independence, and that came across in parades. There were military parades in Jerusalem. I remember seeing a cannon, I saw a tank for the first time. I saw soldiers. It moved me enormously.”

“You know what, I have a proposal,” he said, Haaretz reported. “My friends, let’s renew the parades in Jerusalem. A military parade on Independence Day in Jerusalem—that’s the basis of our independence, those soldiers.”

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Cuban-Jewish women make landmark visit to Israel

(JNS.org) Ten Jewish women from Havana, Cuba, arrived in Israel on Tuesday as part of what organizers called an unprecedented nine-day visit sponsored by The Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project (JWRP) and Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. The trip culminates May 16 with a gathering of more than 800 Jewish mothers from around the world at Bar-Ilan University.

At the mass gathering of Jewish mothers, dubbed the “Momentum Mega Event,” participants will commit to becoming involved in various Jewish-focused and Israel-focused programs when they return home. The Cuban-Jewish mothers’ Israel trip comes against the backdrop of the ongoing rapprochement between the governments of America and Cuba.

JWRP’s founding director Lori Palatnik, came up with the idea for the trip to Israel from Cuba when she visited a Havana synagogue and noticed that remembrance plaques for deceased synagogue members did not have the traditional light bulbs that are illuminated on each person’s Jewish death anniversary (yahrzeit). She provided the bulbs to the congregation, but said she also realized how “those who founded the community are not asking for bulbs to be remembered, they are crying out for us to save their grandchildren and great-grandchildren from further assimilation.”

“Let’s light up their souls,” Palatnik resolved.

The Israel visit, according to a press release, is part of a partnership between JWRP and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs “to bring women from Jewish communities across the Diaspora facing increased threats of anti-Semitism and economic hardship, including Argentina, Cuba, the former Soviet Union, France, the U.S., and Canada.”

Tamara Kely Marinto Zagovalov, one of the Cuban-Jewish mothers on the trip, said in a statement that visiting Israel for the first time means “to connect with our roots and share it with friends from our community—it is a miracle that has come true.”

“Spiritually, [the trip] completes my Jewish wholeness. My family is so proud of me. I thank God and all the people who made this project possible,” said Ileana Carrillo Chavez, another member of the Cuban-Jewish delegation.

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Israel Prize winner plans to donate cash reward to pro-Palestinian group
(JNS.org) Prof. David Shulman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a winner of the Israeli government’s prestigious Israel Prize, released a video announcing that he intends to donate his 75,000 NIS ($20,000) cash reward to the pro-Palestinian organization Ta’ayush.
In the video posted online Wednesday, Shulman talks about his 15 years of working with Ta’ayush and criticizes the Israeli settlement movement’s actions toward Palestinians.

Ta’ayush is a joint effort of Palestinians and Israelis who are “striving together to end the Israeli occupation and to achieve full civil equality through daily non-violent direct-action,” the group’s website states.

Shulman said he had mulled whether or not to even accept the Israel Prize because of the “general deterioration of the situation and the witch-hunt against Ta’ayush, peace, and human rights activists by a right-wing establishment determined to perpetuate the occupation.”

In January, Ta’ayush was one of two left-wing Israeli NGOs—B’Tselem being the other—who came under fire after the activities of their senior leaders were exposed by the “Uvda” investigative television program of Israel’s Channel 2. According to that report, Ta’ayush and B’Tselem help the Palestinian Authority (PA) detain, torture, and potentially kill Palestinians who are selling land to Israeli Jews. Ta’ayush activist Ezra Nawi was caught on camera discussing an encounter with Palestinian land sellers to whom he pretended to be interested in buying land. “Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the [PA’s] Preventive Security Force,” Nawi said in the footage.

Shulman will receive the prize on Thursday for his research on the languages and culture of southern India.

“Prof. Shulman is known for a variety of publications in these areas, which has brought him renown in Israel and in the world, and he has won cooperation with leading researchers in the field,” the Israel Prize committee stated. “His outstanding research in diversity deals with different literary issues and numerous research topics including: religion, myth, art, folklore, and imagination. In Israel he founded the field of study of India and the majority of researchers of India in Israel are his students.”

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Nominee for Israeli ambassador to Italy drops out

(JNS.org) Israel’s nominee for the country’s ambassador to Italy, Fiamma Nirenstein, withdrew her candidacy on Tuesday after being offered the role last year.

Nirenstein, an Italian-born journalist and former lawmaker, emigrated to Israel in 2013. She cited “personal reasons” as to why she withdrew herself from consideration for the envoy post.

Last month, Haaretz reported that Italian officials had alluded to possible conflicts of interest regarding Nirenstein still receiving a salary as a former Italian parliamentarian, as well as relating to her son’s work in Italy’s state intelligence services.

An official from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister’s office did not withdraw Nirenstein’s candidacy.

This marks the second time in 2016 that a diplomatic nomination has failed to go through for Israel. In March, Israel’s nominee for ambassador to Brazil, Dani Dayan, was rejected by the Brazilian government due to Dayan’s former role as a leader of the Israeli settlement movement in Judea and Samaria. Dayan was later named appointed as Israel’s consul general in New York.

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Researchers claim to confirm Indian Bene Israel community’s Jewish roots

(JNS.org) A new study conducted by Tel Aviv University (TAU), Cornell University, and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine has claimed to discover genetic proof that the Bene Israel community in western India has Jewish roots.

The Bene Israel community has always considered itself Jewish and believes it descends from 14 Jews who found themselves on the India’s Konkan shore after they were shipwrecked. Legends indicate the shipwreck could have happened 2,000 years ago, while others estimate the date of the event to be about 175 BCE or in the 8th century BCE.

“Almost nothing is known about the Bene Israel community before the 18th century, when Cochin Jews and later Christian missionaries first came into contact with it,” said a statement by the study’s lead author, Yedael Waldman, a faculty member of both TAU’s Department of Molecular Microbiology and Cornell’s Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology. “Beyond vague oral history and speculations, there has been no independent support for Bene Israel claims of Jewish ancestry, claims that have remained shrouded in legend.”

The study’s team conducted comprehensive genome-wide analyses on the genetic markers of 18 Bene Israel individuals and found that “while Bene Israel individuals genetically resemble local Indian populations, they constitute a clearly separated and unique population in India,” according to Waldman.

“The results point to Bene Israel being an ‘admixed’ population, with both Jewish and Indian ancestry. The genetic contribution of each of these ancestral populations is substantial,” said co-lead author on the study Arjun Biddanda of Cornell. The results of the study explain that the Jewish and Indian ancestors of the Bene Israel interbred anywhere from 19 to 33 generations ago, corresponding to between 650 and 1,050 years ago.

“We believe that the first encounter involved Middle-Eastern Jews and was followed by a high rate of tribal intermarriage,” Waldman said. “This study provides a new example of how genetic analysis can be a valuable and powerful tool to advance our knowledge of human history.”

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Brooklyn arson of Jewish school bus being probed as possible hate crime

(JNS.org) Police are seeking five black youths who were captured on video torching a Jewish school bus in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, the same neighborhood where tensions between the black and Jewish communities led to riots in the early 1990s.

One 11-year-old boy has been arrested and charged with juvenile offenses for arson and criminal mischief relating to the fire, which was set on Sunday, while the other boys remain at large. The crime is being investigated as a possible hate crime.

The torched school bus belonged to a Jewish school for girls, the Bnos Chomesh Academy. “It was purposefully done with prior planning,” New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said, the Associated Press reported. “Clearly this was a religious school bus. Anyone in the community knows that.”

The arson is the third recent incident being investigated as a possible hate crime against Jews in the neighborhood. Last Friday, a bus driver for a different Jewish school said his side mirror was smashed. A day earlier, a religious Jewish man said he was harassed by a teenage boy who shot rubber bands at him. After the Jewish man chased the boy, the boy punched the man in the face. The man, however, was able to hold the boy until police arrived and arrested him for assault.

Boyce called the incidents “troubling” and said authorities are “hoping to get out in front of it and make these arrests and close these things out.”

In August 1991 in Crown Heights, after the child of a Guyanese immigrant died from being unintentionally struck by a car that was part of a motorcade belonging to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community, subsequent race riots led to the killing of 29-year-old Jewish man Yankel Rosenbaum.

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Jewish Agency ceremony remembers victims of anti-Semitism worldwide
(JNS.org) The Jewish Agency for Israel on Wednesday held a memorial ceremony for Jews killed in anti-Semitic attacks around the world. The ceremony, held at Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem, coincided with Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and terror victims.

“The war on our right to be a free people in our land has no borders. We have been attacked in France, in Copenhagen, and in Argentina,” Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky said at the ceremony.

“Our enemies keep trying to destroy Jewish life and we continue to build it. They try to sever the chain of generations and we keep it going strong. Our tool is aliyah,” he said.

Sharansky also mentioned Jewish teacher Moshe Ya’ish Nahari, who was murdered in an anti-Semitic attack in Yemen in 2008 and whose family attended the service. “The entire Nahari family made aliyah after their father’s murder and was successfully integrated into Israeli society,” he said.

“We will continue to strengthen the connection between Jews and Israel around the world in order to ensure that the final words of Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl and Jewish teacher Moshe Ya’ish Nahari—‘we are Jews and we will remain Jews’—live on,” said Sharansky.

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