Hamas will not recognize Israel, official says
(JNS.org) Hamas will not recognize Israel if a Palestinian unity government is formed, a top official of the Gaza-based terrorist said Tuesday, Reuters reported.
Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a Hamas strategist, also told Reuters that the recent unity pact signed by Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party will not result in any Gaza terrorists coming under Abbas’s control.
Fatah and Hamas last week agreed to form a government within five weeks and to hold elections after six months.
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Israeli invention obviates divers’ need for periscopes
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Researchers from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed a new apparatus that enables divers and submarines to see above the surface of the water without a periscope.
The traditional periscope has been used by divers and submarine sailors for more than a century, but its main weakness is that using it exposes the ship or diver to detection.
Prof. Yoav Shechner and doctoral students Marina Alterman and Yohay Swirski from the Technion’s electrical engineering department have built a camera that rests underwater and can see above the water level without breaking the surface.
“Distortions that are random in space, time and viewpoint are created when viewing objects through a wavy water-air interface. Such distortions are also created in turbulence. In both cases, the distortion is caused by dynamic refraction,” Shechner’s website says.
“We have just devised a passive system to counter distortions caused by water waves, in a single-viewpoint and instant. This single-frame approach is deterministic: It can be stand-alone, or be an enabler for stochastic methods,” adds the website.
The camera, named Stella Maris (Latin for “Star of the Sea” and short for Stellar Marine Refractive Imaging Sensor), will be displayed this weekend at a leading electronic imaging conference in California.
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Turkey’s Erdogan says normalization with Israel coming soon
(JNS.org) Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says that a compensation deal between Israel and Turkey is forthcoming.
In an interview with Charlie Rose of PBS, Erdogan said the deal would lead to “normalization” with Israel and will be signed in the next few weeks.
“With the completion of this stage, we may move toward a process of normalization. I have spoken with my colleagues in the Foreign Ministry and I think it is a matter of weeks,” Erdogan told PBS.
According to Israeli Army Radio, Israeli government officials confirmed that the deal with Turkey was nearing. The deal will likely include a $20 million compensation package for the Turkish family members of the victims of the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla incident, which led to the severing of Turkey-Israel relations. After militants attacked Israeli soldiers on board the flotilla, which was trying to break the naval blockade of Gaza, eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish American were killed in clashes.
The push to reestablish relations began during a March 2013 visit to Israel by U.S. President Barack Obama. At the time, Obama urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apologize to Erdogan for the flotilla deaths. Netanyahu made the apology over the phone.
“The Turkish government believes that making up with Israel will alleviate some of the recent tension with the U.S., and President Obama reportedly emphasized his expectation that Erdogan make tangible moves toward patching things up,” Dr. Michael Koplow—who maintains a blog on Turkey and Israel called “Ottomans and Zionists” and serves as the program director at the Washington, DC-based Israel Institute think tank—recently told JNS.org.
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Immigration to Israel increases 2 percent in 2013
(JNS.org) Immigration to Israel increased by 2 percent in 2013, with more than 16,000 new immigrants arriving, according to new figures released by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.
A total of 16,884 immigrants arrived in Israel last year—with roughly 43 percent coming from the former Soviet Union, primarily Russia and Ukraine—the bureau said.
While immigrants from the former Soviet Union were by far the largest nationality, immigration from France rose the most sharply, as that figure was up 76 percent from 2012 to 2013. French immigrants constituted 17 percent of total immigrants to Israel (2,904) in 2013.
Rising French aliyah has also continued in 2014, with the Jewish Agency for Israel saying at the end of March that 854 French Jews had immigrated to Israel in the early months of this year, marking a 312-percent increase from the same period in 2013.
Other nationalities moving to Israel in 2013 included 2,186 immigrants from the United States, 1,355 from Ethiopia, 403 from the U.K., and 228 from Canada.
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Rand Paul: End aid to Palestinians unless they recognize Israel as Jewish state
(JNS.org) U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said he plans to introduce legislation cutting funding to the Palestinians unless they recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
“The recent announcement of a Fatah-Hamas unity agreement brings both danger and opportunity to the peace process, and the next five weeks may prove critical,” Paul said in a statementMonday.
Referring to the unity deal, Paul said, “Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with an entity [Hamas] that does not believe it should exist and that has used terrorist tactics to seek its end.”
A libertarian stalwart who may be considering a run for president in 2016, Paul has in the past been a frequent critic of foreign aid. Last year, he proposed legislation cutting off aid to Egypt following the military ouster of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi.
Paul called on the future Palestinian unity government to “put itself on record” and recognize the “right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state” within the next five weeks.
Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, the U.S. has provided nearly $5 billion in foreign aid to the Palestinians. In 2013, the U.S. gave the Palestinians nearly $440 million, according to the Congressional Research Service.
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Holocaust-complicit French rail company targeted by NY legislators
(JNS.org) U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) and New York City Council Members Mark Levine and Benjamin Kallos on Monday announced their plan to introduce a resolution prohibiting city businesses from working with companies that had profited from the Holocaust and did not compensate victims.
The initiative could impact Société Nationale des Chemin de fer Français (SNCF), the French national railroad company, which deported 76,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps. SNCF recently won contracts with the states if Virginia and Massachusetts, and is among the top contenders to become the operator of the proposed Purple Line from Washington, DC into suburban Maryland.
According to Maloney, SNCF has compensated Holocaust survivors in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the U.K., but not those in the U.S. Maloney and U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) last year introduced the Holocaust Rail Justice Act, a bill intended to make it illegal to award SNCF government contracts. The bill did not pass.
“SNCF has acknowledged its role in transporting victims, but has always refused to pay compensation for its actions,” Maloney said, The Jerusalem Post reported. “The survivors deserve their day in court. We believe that this will add to the pressure on France. After 69 years there’s no reason for France to drag its feet.”
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Preceding provided by JNS.org, which is sponsored on the pages of San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman.