French President Francois Hollande, in change of heart, will speak to Knesset
(JNS.org) French President Francois Hollande, who initially said he did not intend to address the Israeli Knesset during his visit to Israel next week, announced Sunday that he changed his mind and will deliver a speech before the plenum after all.
Hollande at first planned to speak to Israeli university students rather than to the Knesset.
“I am happy and proud that President Hollande has decided to speak to the people of Israel from the platform of the Knesset. I believe the visit will be significant for both countries,” Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said, Israel Hayom reported.
*
Netanyahu at Federation GA reiterates opposition to Iran deal
(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, addressing the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Jerusalem, reiterated his opposition to a U.S.-backed deal in which Iran would receive sanctions relief if it suspended high-grade uranium enrichment (20 percent) for six months.
According to the deal, Iran would still be able to enrich to 3.5 percent.
“It’s a dangerous deal because it keeps Iran as a nuclear threshold nation and it may very well bring about a situation where the sanctions are dissolved or collapsed… When it comes to the question of Jewish survival and the survival of the Jewish state, I will not be silenced, ever. Not on my watch. When the Jewish people were silent on matters relating to our survival, you know what happened,” Netanyahu said.
*
John Kerry’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict comments blasted by top Jewish leaders
(JNS.org) Top American Jewish leaders, in interviews published Sunday by The Algemeiner, blasted U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for his comments last week on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Kerry had said that failed Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations could lead to a third Palestinian intifada, and that the U.S. agrees with the Palestinian Authority’s position that Israeli construction beyond the 1967 lines is illegitimate and presents an obstacle to peace.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told The Algemeiner, “The danger [of Kerry’s comments] is that you legitimate an escalation by saying that ‘because there is no progress it can start an intifada.’ There are elements there that will use this to legitimize what [the Palestinians] are doing.”
Daniel Mariaschin, executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International, said Kerry “introduced views that can only complicate the [negotiations] process.”
“It would be more productive to exhort the parties to work toward compromise, rather than speculating on worst-case scenarios,” Mariaschin said.
“Why would the Palestinians negotiate on anything when the secretary of state calls settlements ‘illegal,’ when he says Israeli troops have to leave West Bank, when he increases aid to the PA when their corruption infuriates the Palestinian street, and seems to make no demands for Palestinians to once and for all stop the attacks on their neighbor’s legitimacy?” said Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
*
Iran sanctions relief proposal accentuates U.S.-Israel differences
(JNS.org) The latest P5+1 talks in Geneva ended with no deal between Western powers and Iran, but a U.S. offer to Iran of reduced sanctions in exchange for temporarily reduced uranium enrichment has accentuated America’s policy differences with Israel.
According to the U.S. deal, Iran would reportedly receive sanctions relief if it suspended high-grade uranium enrichment (20 percent) for six months. Iran would still be able to enrich to 3.5 percent.
The U.S. offer differs from Israeli policy in a number of areas: it is a temporary deal while Israel wants a permanent solution; it limits uranium enrichment to a certain level while Israel wants all enrichment to cease; and it allows continued construction at Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor (producing plutonium), which Israel wants dismantled.
“[The deal] is dangerous for world peace because it lowers the pressure of sanctions that took years to build while, on the other hand, Iran, in practice, retains its nuclear enrichment capability as well as the ability to advance along the plutonium track,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.
France also opposed the U.S. deal, with its foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, telling France Inter Radio, “The security concerns of Israel and all the countries of the region have to be taken into account.”
*
Naftali Bennett to Jewish groups: Help defeat Iran sanctions relief deal
(JNS.org) Israeli Minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi) called on Jewish groups to help influence governments to reject an American-Iranian sanctions relief deal, Israel Hayom reported.
Bennett’s letter—sent to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Russian Jewish Congress, and other groups—stated:
“When Iran launches a nuclear missile at Rome or Tel Aviv, it will have happened only because a Bad Deal was made during these defining moments. The free world stands before a fork in the road with a clear choice: Either stand strong and insist Iran dismantles its nuclear-weapons program, or surrender, cave in and allow Iran to retain its 18,500 centrifuges.”
*
Typhoon Haiyan relief provided by Jewish groups
(JNS.org) Jewish groups organized relief efforts following Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded. Authorities said it is possible that more than 10,000 people died from the storm.
“We immediately activated our network of global partners and will leverage our previous experience in the region to provide immediate, strategic relief to survivors in their time of need,” said Alan Gill, CEO of The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
The American Jewish Committee said it gave a grant to the Israeli relief organization IsraAID for humanitarian efforts in the Philippines.
JDC’s Gill said the relief efforts “are especially poignant for us given the Philippines’s life-saving actions during the Second World War, when the country offered safe haven to more than 1,000 Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi onslaught.”
*
Poll: Anti-Semitism prompts nearly one-third of European Jews to mull emigration
(JNS.org) Almost one-third (29 percent) of European Jews have considered emigrating over the past five years because they did not feel safe as Jews in their home country, according to a new survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.
Twenty-one percent of respondents said they experienced anti-Semitism through a physical attack or another form of harassment during the last year, and 52 percent said they fear their children will be subjected to a physical anti-Semitic attack. Seventy-six percent of respondents who experienced anti-Semitic harassment over the last five years said they did not report the harassment to any authorities.
*
Belgium upgrades Palestinian diplomatic status
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Belgium is upgrading the status of the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic representation in Brussels from “general delegation” to “mission.”
“The raising [of status] reflects Belgian and European support for the two-state solution,” Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Saturday during a visit to Jordan.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian mission in Brussels, will now be able to use the title of ambassador.
In November 2012, Belgium was one of the 138 nations that voted to recognize “Palestine” as a nonmember observer state at the U.N. General Assembly.
*
U.S., Israel lose voting rights at UNESCO over Palestinian dispute
(JNS.org) The United States and Israel have lost their voting rights at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) two years after the countries stopped paying their dues over the granting of membership to the Palestinians.
According to UNESCO’s constitution, any member who fails to pay dues for two years loses its voting rights. In 2011, the U.S. and Israel ceased all activity in UNESCO after the organization voted to give the Palestinians full membership. The U.S. Congress in the 1990s passed a law prohibiting the U.S. from providing money to any U.N. agency that admits the Palestinians.
*
Preceding provided by JNS.org