Wounded Syrian treated in Israel comes with doctor’s note
(JNS.org) A severely wounded Syrian rebel carrying a note from the Syrian doctor who treated him was transferred to Israel’s Ziv Hospital in Safed for treatment on Tuesday, Israel Hayom reported. Ziv Hospital has treated 20 Syrians since the onset of the Syrian civil war.
The Syrian doctor wrote: “To the honorable surgeon hello, the patient is 28 years old, was wounded by a bullet that struck him the chest, causing broken ribs, and fragments have damaged the liver and diaphragm. A thoracotomy [incision into the chest] was performed to stop the bleeding and abdominal surgery was performed to stop the hemorrhaging in the liver. The liver could not be stitched up and a pressure bandage was applied to the abdomen. The wounded patient was left under observation. Since 11 a.m. Saturday, June 8, 2013, his vital signs and hemoglobin levels were monitored. The doctors believe the abdominal surgery is required to analyze the state of the liver and to remove the pressure bandage. Please do what is required and thank you in advance.”
Ziv Hospital Director Dr. Oscar Ambon said, “A civil war is a complicated thing, and it should be noted that despite being portrayed as their enemy, the rumors that one can get good medical treatment in Israel are spreading by word of mouth.”
Islamic Jihad summer camp prepares ‘strong resisting generation’ to fight Israel
(JNS.org) The Palestinian terrorist organization Islamic Jihad held a summer camp for 80 children in order to groom what a spokesman called a “strong resisting generation” of Palestinians to fight Israel.
“We need to prepare our children to defend themselves, and protect themselves against Israeli persecution and crimes,” Daoud Shibab told Ma’an News Agency on Wednesday.
“We do not hide the fact that we are working on raising a strong resisting generation that is ready to defend themselves, their families and their brothers when the need arises,” Shibab said.
The Islamic Jihad camp included several military training exercises. Photos of the camp published by Ma’an News Agency show participating children wearing military fatigues, sporting face paint, and carrying AK-47s.
Pope asked to declare Islam as “peaceful”
(JNS.org) An envoy from Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, one of the highest centers of learning in the Islamic world, has called on Pope Francis to declare Islam as a “peaceful religion” in order to restore ties between the world’s two largest faiths.
“The problems that we had were not with the Vatican but with the former pope. Now the doors of Al-Azhar are open,” Mahmoud Abdel Gawad, diplomatic envoy to the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb, told the Cairo-based Italian daily Il Messaggeroin a report cited by AFP.
“Francis is a new pope. We are expecting a step forward from him. If in one of his addresses he were to declare that Islam is a peaceful religion, that Muslims are not looking for war or violence, that would be progress in itself,” he said.
But Gawad ruled out any dialogue that would include Jewish leaders, saying during the interview that Al-Azhar “will not take part in any meeting with Israelis.”
Under Pope Benedict, the Catholic Church had strained relations with the Muslim world over comments Benedict made about the Prophet Mohammed in 2006. Additionally, both Benedict and Francis have been critical of Muslim treatment of Christian minorities in the Middle East.
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Nablus rejected as sister city for Boulder, Colorado
(JNS.org) Concerns over Palestinian terrorism spawning from the West Bank city of Nablus led the city council of Boulder, Colo., to reject Nablus’s bid to become Boulder’s sister city in a 7-2 vote this week, The Tower reported.
Dr. Reuven Erlich writes in a paper titled “Nablus: The Main Infrastructure of Palestinian Terrorism” that the Nablus terrorist infrastructure has “directed and executed suicide attacks in which scores of Israeli citizens were killed and over 400 were wounded.”
“The terrorism operational centers in Nablus instructed terrorist squads in the Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, and Ramallah areas to perpetrate terror attacks in the West Bank and inside Israel,” Erlich writes.
In addition to terrorism, Boulder’s city council attributed its rejection of Nablus’s sister-city bid on June 10 to the Palestinian Authority’s human rights abuses and suppression of freedom of the press in the city.
The city-sister partnership with Nablus would have been “limited to those who subscribe to the particular philosophy, which is to damage Israel,” Bill Cohen told the local CBS affiliate in Boulder on June 10.
“We don’t think that works for free exchanges, which are the hallmark of sister cities,” Cohen said.
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Taglit-Birthright participants more likely to marry within the Jewish faith
(JNS.org) A study presented Wednesday during a conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows that those who participate in Taglit-Birthright Israel trips are more likely to choose Jewish partners and also tend to marry later in life.
The study—conducted by Professor Leonard Saxe, director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University Professor Leonard Saxe—shows that Taglit-Birthright participants have a 31 percent chance of getting married by age 28, while non-participants have a 39 percent chance.
Saxe’s study followed 3,000 people who took Taglit-Birthright trips between 2001 and 2006. He told Haaretz that the “most obvious explanation” for the tendency of Taglit-Birthright participants to marry later is that “the Taglit experience makes these people want to look for a Jewish spouse,” which may lead to a longer search for a spouse.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org