Western Wall superimposed with Palestinian Authority flag on Abbas Facebook page
(JNS.org) In the midst of renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations, the Facebook page of the Presidential Guard of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas recently featured a photo illustration with the PA flag superimposed on the Western Wall, Palestinian Media Watch reported.
The photo included a young Palestinian man giving a two-finger peace sign, next to an Orthodox Jewish man facing the Western Wall. Above the two men, the PA flag featured the text “The Al-Buraq Wall,” which is the Muslim term for the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, and text above the flag read “Palestinian youth know their rights.”
Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations resume Aug. 14 in Jerusalem.
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Italian wines feature Nazi slogans and Hitler pictures on labels
(JNS.org) The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called for a global boycott of a company producing Italian wines whose labels sport Nazi slogans and images of Adolph Hitler.
A Norwegian couple recently discovered the wines, produced by Vina Lunardelli, in the coastal Italian town of Rimini. Last summer, American Jews Matthew and Cindy Hirsch noticed the wine labels in a supermarket in the town of Garda.
“It is very shocking to us,” Hirsch said, according to Russia Today. “It makes you wonder about the sympathies of the local people.” Hirsch’s father is a Holocaust survivor, and many of her family members died in concentration camps.
“Enough is enough,” said Simon Wiesenthal Center Dean Rabbi Marvin Hier and Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper in a statement. “We first protested the marketing of ‘Führerwein’ by an Italian-based company in 1995. Now an expanded line of wines that demean, diminish and mock Hitler’s victims are promoted on a slick website.”
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Eydie Gorme, Jewish-American singer, dies at 84
(JNS.org) Jewish-American singer Eydie Gorme, who became famous for her popular duet performances with her husband Steve Lawrence in the 1950s, died in Las Vegas on Saturday at the age of 84.
Born Edith Gorme in New York City in 1932, the singer’s parents were Jews of Spanish descent who were born in Turkey and later immigrated to the U.S. Gorme and Lawrence starred in the 1958 summer-replacement television series “The Steve Lawrence-Eydie Gorme Show,” and won a Grammy Award in 1960 and an Emmy Award in 1979.
Among her solo singles, Gorme’s best-known hits are “Too Close for Comfort,” “Mama, Teach Me to Dance” (both 1956), “Love Me Forever” (1957), “You Need Hands” (1958), “Blame It on the Bossa Nova” (1963 Grammy nominee), and “If He Walked into My Life” (1966 Grammy Award), according to the Jewish Women’s Archive.
Gorme’s publicist confirmed her death, the New York Times reported. She is survived by her husband, son, and granddaughter.
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International Christian Embassy Jerusalem to aid fund for children victimized by terror
(JNS.org) The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), a Christian Zionist organization based in Jerusalem, has announced that it will be providing support to the Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund through its aid agency.
The Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund is a non-profit organization established by former Shiloh mayor David Rubin that offers therapeutic and emotional support for children from Jewish communities, primarily in Judea and Samaria, who have suffered from terrorist attacks over the past several years.
“In representing compassionate Christians from around the world, the ICEJ wants to be sensitive to the serious problems facing these traumatized children and thus we have begun supporting the work of Rubin’s center,” the organization said in a press release.
Shiloh is an ancient biblical city located in the hills of Samaria that was the religious and cultural capital of Israel before Jerusalem. It is mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible as the location where Joshua divided the land between the 12 tribes and where the Ark of the Covenant was located before moving to Jerusalem. It also became an important center of worship during the early Christian period.
Modern Shiloh is home to a small Jewish community that was founded in the late 1970s.
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Iran’s new defense minister linked to 1983 U.S. Marine barracks bombing
(JNS.org) Iran’s newly appointed defense minister, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, has links to the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks terrorist attack in Beirut that killed 199 American and French servicemen, says an Israeli think tank.
According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), Dehghan, who has spent his entire military career in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, was sent to Lebanon in the early 1980s to help organize and train Shi’a militia units that would become known as Hezbollah. Part of his mission was to establish Iranian control over Hezbollah through the creation of a central command center.
According to JCPA’s Dr. Shimon Shapira, “It was from this headquarters that Iran controlled Hizbullah’s military force and planned, along with Hizbullah, the terror attacks on the Beirut-based Multinational Force and against IDF forces in Lebanon.”
“The order to carry out the attacks was transmitted, and the funding and operational training provided, with the help of the Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon under the command of Hossein Dehghan,” Shapira wrote for JCPA.
Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, has called for direct talks with the United States regarding the Iran nuclear program. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called such talks a ploy for Iran to continue to enrich uranium.
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First 26 names revealed in prisoner release for Israeli-Palestinian conflict talks
(JNS.org) Israel on Monday published a list of 26 Palestinian prisoners set to go free in the first phase of the prisoner release it agreed to as part of U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian conflict talks. A total of 104 prisoners will be freed in the deal.
Of the 26 prisoners, 14 will return to Gaza and 12 will return to Judea and Samaria. Seventeen have been convicted of murder, and the remaining prisoners were jailed on charges of manslaughter, attempted murder, kidnapping and conspiring to commit murder, Israel Hayom reported.
Among the prisoners to be released are terrorists who killed Menachem Dadon and Salomon Abukasis in Gaza in 1983, Israel Tenenbaum at the Sironit hotel in Netanya in 1993, Israel Defense Forces reserves soldier Binyamin Meisner in Nablus in 1989, Isaac Rotenberg at a construction site in Petah Tikva in 1994, one of the men involved in the murder of Simcha Levy in 1993, and one of the terrorists involved in the murder of Haim Mizrahi near Beit El 1993.
Also included in the prisoner release is the terrorist who carried out the 1990 stabbing attack on bus line 66, traveling from Petah Tikva to Tel Aviv. In that attack, three terrorists boarded the crowded bus and began indiscriminately stabbing passengers.
Israeli ministers stressed that if any of the prisoners resume terror activities, they will be put back in jail to serve out the remainder of their sentences.
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‘Jewish state’ line describing Israel leads Peres Center for Peace to reject play
(JNS.org) The Peres Center for Peace decided not to include the play “Snow Ball” in its program for the visit of the Barcelona soccer team in Israel, because the play includes the line that “the state of Israel is the national home of all Jews.”
The affair began this April when the new play, directed by Roy Horovitz, was performed as part of the Haifa International Children’s Theatre Festival. The play is based on an original Israeli script that tells the story of Felipe, a 10-year-old new immigrant to Israel from Argentina who is a huge fan of FC Barcelona star Lionel Messi.
After learning that FC Barcelona was coming to Israel, Sherry Aryeh, artistic director of the Israel Children and Youth Social Theater, which produced the play, approached the Peres Center for Peace with the suggestion of performing the play during Messi’s visit to Israel. She suggested the theater perform a festive rendition of the play with the Argentinian star, while Jewish and Palestinian children watched it together. Initially, the Peres Center was very enthusiastic about the initiative. They sent staff members to watch the play and indicated that they were favorably impressed.
But much to the theater’s surprise, the Peres Center ultimately nixed the play, via a letter written by Dvir Zivan, the manager of the Peres Center’s sports department. The email, which was obtained by Israel Hayom, says, “We would be happy to bring all the Jewish children to the play, but there is a problem. We do not do activities intended for one nationality only. It is hard for us to bring Palestinian children to a play that uses the words ‘Jewish state.’ Unfortunately, we will be unable to cooperate on this venture.”
“Snow Ball” director Roy Horovitz said in response that the Peres Center’s decision “caused us great disappointment.”
“What is particularly outrageous is the argument they gave,” Horovitz said. “It’s sad to discover that in a center that carries the name of the president of the state of Israel, there are those who believe that identifying Israel as the Jewish state is a problematic statement that is not part of the consensus.”
“We saw the play during Passover 2013,” read a statement issued by the Peres Center. “At the time, it had nothing to do with the visit by FC Barcelona. We try to display sensitivity in everything connected to presenting material to mixed audiences, and the purpose of the project is to find common denominators and not to emphasize differences. It was decided not to present the play because we feared that its content, as good as it is, would not be suited to all the participants. There is no connection between this and FC Barcelona’s visit.”
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Preceding provided by JNS.org