Obama stresses ‘window of opportunity’ for Mideast
(JNS.org) Israel and the Palestinians have a “window of opportunity to get back to the peace table,” U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday after meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the Oval Office.
Obama said the two discussed how “the United States, as a strong friend of Israel and a supporter of a Palestinian state, can work with the United Nations and other multilateral bodies to try to move that process forward.” Ban and Obama also discussed the situation in Syria and North Korea, Israel Hayom reported.
Ban said he appreciated Obama’s recent visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. “We need to do more of our efforts to fully utilize the generated momentum by President Obama’s visit so that a two-state solution can be successfully implemented as soon as possible,” Ban said.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Israel this week to try to bring the two sides together. Kerry told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Palestinians want borders to be the first issue discussed and expect Israel to present a map of the borders of a future Palestinian state. Netanyahu said the issue must be left for the final stage of negotiations, as there are essential issues that need to be agreed upon first.
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UC Santa Barbara rejects Israel divestment
(JNS.org) The student government at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) has rejected an Israel divestment resolution in the latest victory for pro-Israel students in the University of California (UC) system.
After a 14-hour hearing—most of which was devoted to the Israel divestment resolution—that lasted from Wednesday night until 8 a.m. Thursday, the resolution was narrowly defeated, 11-10-1, before the Associated Students of the University of California, Santa Barbara (ASUCSB). The debate lasted so long because ASUCSB opened up the discussion for public comment to every person who wished to speak, with each commenter getting five minutes of airtime, explained Max Samarov, a UCSB graduate and a research assistant for the pro-Israel education group StandWithUs.
The resolution, titled “A Resolution To Divest From Companies that Profit From Apartheid,” called for UCSB to divest its holdings in American companies that supply to the Israeli military.
“The most recent UC Annual Endowment Report shows University of California, Santa Barbara holding in Caterpillar, General Electric, Northrop Grumman, Hewlett Packard, and Raytheon, whose military technology is used by the Israeli Defense Forces to maintain Israel’s military occupation and siege of the Palestinian territories,” the resolution stated, according to the UCSB student newspaper The Bottom Line.
Samarov told JNS.org that the resolution’s language marginalized “if not every Jew on campus, a vast majority,” in addition to singling out and marginalizing Israel. Since the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement—which supporters and organizers of the resolution tied to the measure to—calls for the end of Jewish self-determination through its demand for the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, Samarov said ASUCSB would have been “contributing to a movement that calls for the violation of Jewish rights” by passing the measure.
“The argument against the bill was pretty multi-faceted, but essentially rested on the fact that there were a bunch of claims in the resolution that were either false, taken out of context, or disputed by independent experts, and so the effect of passing the resolution would be to declare Israel guilty of all these accusations despite all the conflicting evidence,” Samarov said.
The UCSB vote comes on the heels of last week’s vote to overturn a student government Israel divestment resolution at nearby University of California, Riverside, by a 10-2-1 margin. Student governments at UC Berkeley and Stanford University have also rejected Israel divestment resolutions.
Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs, said in a statement, “StandWithUs congratulates the pro-Israel students at UC Santa Barbara for their victory this morning over the BDS movement. UCSB student leaders worked tirelessly to defeat a divestment resolution that unfairly singled out and condemned Israel. Their courage and determination paid off.”
Rabbi to receive award for rescue of 300 children
(JNS.org) The UK’s Department for Communities on Monday will posthumously honor a British rabbi who saved about 300 Jewish children during the Second World War as a British hero of the Holocaust.
Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld is known for founding the London Hasmonean High School and for presiding over the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations of England. After the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, Schonfeld traveled back and forth to rescue Jewish children from Europe and bring them to Britain. He also helped shelter 1,000 yeshiva students, rabbis and other Jews. He died in 1984 at the age of 72.
“Before the war, he risked his life going to Germany and Austria even though the Foreign Office told him not to go,” said his son, Dr. Jeremy Schonfeld, according to the London Jewish Chronicle.
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Poll: 60% of Palestinians oppose armed conflict
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Nearly two-thirds of Palestinians oppose armed resistance against Israel, according to a recent Jerusalem Media and Communication Center poll.
Some 1,200 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip were polled, and only 31 percent supported armed conflict, a 20 percent drop since the last poll was taken four months ago, shortly after Operation Pillar of Defense ended in November.
While the popularity of a violent resistance has dropped, there was a notable rise in support for nonviolent resistance. The poll also shows that nearly two-thirds of Palestinians oppose renewing negotiations with Israel until it freezes construction of Jewish communities beyond the 1967 Green Line.
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Cardinal Sean O’Malley in Israel pilgrimage
(JNS.org) Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who was considered by some to be a leading candidate for Pope at the recent conclave, is on a weeklong Easter retreat to Israel with 29 Catholic priests from the Boston archdiocese.
The Catholic leaders will visit a number of Christian holy sites in Israel. These include the Basilica of the Annunciation, Mount Carmel, the Sea of Galilee, the Church of the Transfiguration, Qumran, the Mount of Olives, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Cenacle, according to TheGoodCatholicLife.com, which has a blogger traveling with the group.
“It is a packed itinerary and each stop contains untold riches of spiritual reflection on Jesus’s life, ministry, and teachings as well as our own Christian walk,” archdiocese spokesperson Terrence Donilon said in a statement to the Boston Globe.
Under the leadership of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, relations between Catholics and Jews took several positive steps. Both Catholic leaders visited Israel and Pope Benedict became the first pontiff to declare a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ in his book Jesus of Nazareth-Part II—a longtime sticking point in Jewish-Catholic relations. The newly elected Pope Francis I has expressed the willingness to continue his predecessors’ work and has reached out to Jewish leaders early in his papacy.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org