Series on NJ synagogue’s ties to poverty-stricken Kentucky town earns journalism prize
(JNS.org) New Jersey Jewish News (NJJN) staff writer Johanna Ginsberg was announced as the winner of an annual award named after a distinguished Jewish journalist for her two-week series of stories on the relationship between the members of Congregation B’nai Israel in Milburn, N.J., and the poverty-stricken town of McRoberts, Ky.
Ginsberg’s three-article series from June 20-27 last year—whose headlines were “Those we work with are my teachers for life,” “I get to do good stuff all day long,” and “You don’t know what impact we may have”—earned her the 2014 David Twersky Journalism Award, which comes with a medal and a $1,000 prize.
“Johanna Ginsberg draws attention to a remarkable story of a congregation taking action and making real its commitment to heal the world,” said Elana Kahn-Oren, a former president of the American Jewish Press Association and a judge for the award, whose winner is announced annually on the late David Twersky’s Feb. 19 birthday. “The depth, nuance, and compassion in her reporting should serve as a model to all those who seek to use journalism to shine a light on the human condition.”
The award, in its third year, was established to recognize the work of journalists at the NJJN and The Forward, the newspapers where Twersky worked for a combined two decades. Twersky’s time at The Forward “was a scoop-filled period when he established the newspaper as a serious voice for the Jewish community in Washington,” and at NJJN he “transformed a community paper into a strong, state-wide publication through a series of mergers with neighboring Jewish community newspapers,” according to a press release.
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Israel bolstering ties with China
(JNS.org) A special delegation headed by Israeli National Security Council chief Yossi Cohen will leave for China in the coming weeks to hold a strategic dialogue with Chinese officials,Israel Hayom reported.
Political sources said Tuesday that Israel cannot ignore China’s growing standing as a world power and the subsequent need to reinforce Jerusalem’s ties with Beijing. Israel maintains strategic dialogues with a number of key nations, including the U.S., Germany, Britain, France, Italy, and Russia. These dialogues focus, first and foremost, on issues pertaining to defense and security, alongside fostering solid economic ties.
Israel is barred from collaborating with China on defense matters due to various agreements it has with the U.S. and other key Western nations, and its ties with Beijing have so far been predominately based on bilateral trade.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to bolster ties with China both on a political level, as it is a key player in the international community’s efforts to stop a nuclear Iran, as well as on an economic level.
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Hadassah nurses, maintenance workers end strike
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The nurses and maintenance workers’ strike that has crippled the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem ended Wednesday, after Histadrut Trade Union Department head Avi Nissenkorn and Hadassah Director-General Avigdor Kaplan reached an agreement that ensured the staff’s wages will be paid while the struggling medical center continues its attempts to secure a financial lifeline.
Hadassah is currently 1.3 billion shekels ($370 million) in debt and has been struggling to meet payments to both creditors and staff.
The six-hour meeting, which began Tuesday night and ended at 4 a.m. Wednesday, yielded an agreement by which the nurses and maintenance staff on Hadassah’s Mount Scopus and Ein Kerem campuses will return to work as part of the debt restructuring plans afforded to the medical center. Negotiations with the Israeli Medical Association, which represents Hadassah’s doctors, are ongoing.
The deal signed Wednesday will serve as an interim agreement, and the parties have agreed to enter intense negotiations with the aim of formulating a permanent recovery and wage plan by April 13.
“I’m happy to say that Hadassah will resume its operations in full throughout the day,” Nissenkorn said after the meeting. “The interim agreement stipulates that the 120 dismissal proceedings scheduled prior to the strike will be suspended and all employees making up to NIS 15,000 ($4,300) will be paid in full during the freeze,” he said, referring to the court-ordered suspension of the receivership proceedings Hadassah is facing.
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Israel-Peru ties strengthened through president’s visit to Jewish state
(JNS.org) Israeli President Shimon Peres on Monday welcomed Peruvian President Ollanta Humala with a reception at Peres’s Jerusalem residence. Humala, who is visiting Israel as part of a larger tour of the Middle East, also met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who declared that the Israeli relationship with Peru “will have big branches in coming years.”
“Peru hopes to strengthen ties with countries in the Middle East, promoting areas of mutual interest to support development, environment conservation and intercultural dialogue while giving a boost to trade and investment ties and strengthening cooperation in key areas,” the Peruvian congress said in a statement ahead of the trip, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Fred Reich, a Peruvian Jewish leader and member of the board of the American Jewish Committee’s Latino and Latin American Institute, joined Humala on his trip to Israel among a delegation that included other Peruvian political, business, and Jewish leaders.
“Peru has long viewed Israel as a strategic partner in the country’s economic development,” said Dina Siegel Vann, director of AJC’s Latino and Latin American Institute (LLAI). “It has benefited from the Jewish state’s agricultural and security technology, and has received assistance in other areas as well. Israeli companies have invested more than one billion dollars in Peru, primarily in the fields of agriculture, medicine, energy and telecommunications.”
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Egypt reports arrest of two Israelis accused of spying for Mossad
(JNS.org) An Egyptian public prosecutor charged two Israelis and two Egyptians with spying for Israel’s Mossad. “The public prosecutor ordered Ramzy Mohamed, Sahar Ibrahim, Samuel Ben Zeev and David Wisemen—two officers in the Israeli Mossad—to be sent to a Cairo criminal court for spying for the interests of the state of Israel,” the prosecutor said in a statement.
The two Egyptians are accused of giving information about Egypt to the Israelis with “the intent of damaging national interests in exchange for money and gifts and sex.” Mohamed is accused of sleeping with women who work in Israeli intelligence, Reuters reported.
The statement said that the two Egyptians admitted they had “committed the crime of spying for Israel” during investigations, but the statement did not clarify whether or not the two Israelis were detained while in Israel and if they confessed to the crimes they are accused of. The government of Israel has not yet issued a reaction.
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At Geneva talks, Iran says it has no intention of dismantling nuclear program
(JNS.org) Iran says that it has no intention of dismantling its vast nuclear program as talks between Iran and the world powers resumed in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday.
The P5+1 have insisted that Iran needs to dismantle most of its 20,000 nuclear centrifuges as part of a comprehensive nuclear deal.
But Iran rejected that proposition and has no plans to discuss scaling back.
“Dismantling (the) nuclear program is not on the agenda,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, the Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on a tour of an Israeli field hospital in the Golan Heights that treats the wounded from Syria’s civil war, blamed Iran for the Syrian refugees’ suffering.
“On the day that the world powers are opening talks in Vienna with Iran it is important for the world to see pictures from this place,” Netanyahu said, the Jerusalem Post reported. “This place separates the good in the world from the evil in the world.”
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(JNS.org) The Sinai terrorist group behind the deadly bombing of a bus that killed three South Korean Christian tourists and their Egyptian driver near an Egypt-Israel crossing to Israel threatened more attacks on tourists unless they leave.
In a statement posted on their Twitter account, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic terror group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which claimed credit for the attack on Sunday, told the tourists to leave before their deadline later this week or face more attacks.
“We recommend tourists to get out safely before the expiry of the deadline,” the tweet read in English.
While Islamic terror groups have mainly targeted government forces since the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, the attack on Sunday against tourists represents a shift in strategy. Egypt’s Red Sea resorts have largely been immune to the violence that has plagued Egypt elsewhere, and are an important source of income for the country.
The group also boasted in a post on a terrorist online forum that one of its “heroes” perpetrated the bombing.
“God helped your brothers in Ansar Beit al-Maqdis to assign one of its heroes to blow up the tourist bus that was heading to the Zionist entity (Israel),” the group said, the Associated Press reported.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org
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