U.S. maintains opposition to Israeli building
(JNS.org) During a speech at the United Nations Security Council’s Open Debate on the Middle East, U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Susan Rice outlined the Obama administration’s stance on key Middle East issues including Israeli building in the West Bank, peace efforts and the Palestinian bid for statehood.
Rice emphasized that the U.S. “does not accept the legitimacy of Israeli settlement activity, and will continue to oppose any efforts to legalize outposts.”
“The fate of existing settlements must be dealt with by the parties along with other permanent-status issues,” Rice said.
Rice also called on the Israelis to do more to prevent violence against Palestinians in the West Bank: “Israel should step up its efforts to deter, confront, and prosecute anti-Palestinian violence and extremist hate crimes.”
Speaking on the latest bid by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to upgrade the Palestinians’ status at the UN, Rice rejected their efforts; the vote would “only jeopardize the peace process and complicate efforts to return the parties to direct negotiations,” she said.
The Palestinians currently hold an observer status at the UN. Last year, Abbas attempted a high-profile bid to gain full member status, but failed to gain the necessary votes in the UN Security Council after the U.S. threatened to veto. To obtain non-member status, Abbas will only need a simple majority vote in the UN General Assembly. He is expected to pursue this vote in the coming months.
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Pricey iPhone5 on sale in Gaza amid professed poverty
(JNS.org) A pricey version of the latest iPhone from Apple is on sale in Gaza despite Palestinians’ professed poverty due to an Israeli and Egyptian partial blockade of the territory.
Meanwhile, Israelis looking to get their hands on Apple’s latest technology without traveling to Gaza will have to wait until December, when Israel’s mobile carriers will start selling the iPhone5.
According to the Israel Hayom, the iPhone5 has been on sale for weeks inside the Palestinian coastal enclave controlled by Hamas. But its price is nearly double that found in the United States, ranging from $1,170 for the 16 gigabyte (GB) model to $1,480 for the 64GB model, because the phones must be brought in from Dubai through Gaza’s notorious smuggling tunnels.
“I ordered 30 and I’ve sold 20 so far,” said one dealer. “We can order as many as we want. But most people are waiting for the price to go down. They’re pretty expensive.”
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‘A good Jew’ yields French anti-Semitic tweet wave
(JNS.org) Twitter has been engulfed in a wave of French anti-Semitic posts using the hashtag #unbonjuif, meaning “a good Jew” in French. The tweets were condemned by French anti-racist and Jewish organizations on Monday.
Typical tweets with the hashtag included phrases such as “A good Jew can pump up your tyre with his nose,” “A good Jew wears a Gucci kippa” or “A good Jew is a dead Jew,” reported Yedioth Ahronoth. Twitter should “take the appropriate measures” to end the “flood of anti-Semitism,” the anti-racist group MRAP said in a statement. Last week France’s Jewish security watchdog SPCJ reported that anti-Semitic acts in France jumped by 45 percent in the first eight months of 2012.
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September sees record number of tourists in Israel
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) A record 306,000 tourists and visitors entered Israel in September, an all-time high for the month, according to a Central Bureau of Statistics report issued Monday. The report said 8 percent more visitors had come to Israel in September than in the same month last year, and 13 percent more than in September 2010.
The bureau recorded 70,000 one-day visits, a 28-percent increase from last year, of which 33,000 were cruise-ship vacationers visiting for the day. Ben-Gurion International Airport noted a 6 percent increase in travelers in September as well, with 1,225,837 travelers passing through the airport last month. The Israeli Airports Authority said there had been a 1.7 percent increase in departures and arrivals compared with September 2011.
The most popular destinations for travelers leaving from Ben-Gurion Airport last month were the U.S., Greece, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Russia, Turkey, France, Britain and Spain. The airport that received the most traffic from Ben-Gurion was Kiev’s, likely due to the annual pilgrimage of ultra-Orthodox Jews to visit the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov during the High Holy Days. Since January, the Central Bureau of Statistics has recorded 2.6 million visitors to Israel, 7 percent more than the same time period last year, setting another record.
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Netanyahu says Israel faces increasing cyber-attacks
(JNS.org) The threats facing Israel these days come not only from Gaza rockets, unrest in the Sinai and Iran’s nuclear development, but from virtual sources as well.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at his cabinet meeting Sunday that there are “increasing attempts to carry out cyber-attacks on computer infrastructures in the State of Israel.”
“Every day there are attempts, even many attempts, to infiltrate Israel’s computer systems,” he said, according to Globes.
Netanyahu said Israel’s National Cyber Bureau is working to establish a digital counterpart to the Iron Dome missile defense system—which Netanyahu literally called a “digital Iron Dome”—to defend the Jewish state against cyber-terrorism.
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Jewish Agency Facebook page inundated with anti-Semitic posts
(JNS.org) In an apparently coordinated cyberattack of a different kind, the Jewish Agency for Israel’s Facebook page was flooded with hundreds of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel messages over the past week. A representative of the agency, which was formally established by the Israeli government in 1952 to facilitate economic development and the absorption of immigrants, said the assault was severe.
The messages, which were mainly sent by Egyptian Facebook users, were apparently coordinated to mark the 39th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, which began on Oct. 6, 1973.
Authors of the messages congratulated Egypt’s success in the war and promised that Israel would be destroyed soon. Most of the messages included swastikas, violent images and hate-filled words in Arabic, English and Hebrew. The messages were removed from the site immediately after their appearance.
“We can’t recall a similar volume of messages in a social network on the Internet. This represents an escalation and a disturbing phenomenon,” Amos Hermon, head of the Jewish Agency taskforce on anti-Semitism, told Israel Hayom on Monday.
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New painting signed by 26 living Jewish baseball players
(JNS.org) In the midst of the Major League Baseball playoffs, an artist came out with a new lithograph painting that depicts 27 Jewish baseball players and contains the signatures of 26 of them—all except the late Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg.
Ron Lewis’s painting includes signatures by the following living players, according to a press release: “Sandy Koufax, MVP award winners Al Rosen and Ryan Braun, Cy Young winner Steve Stone, All-Stars Shawn Green, Ian Kinsler, Kevin Youkilis, Brad Ausmus, Joe Horlen, Jason Marquis, and Richie Sheinblum, World Series players Art Shamsky, Gabe Kapler, Steve Yeager, Mike Epstein, and Scott Feldman, first designated hitter Ron Blomberg, plus Norm Sherry, (Dodgers player, Angels manager), John Grabow (.558 winning percentage), Craig Breslow (77 appearances in 2009), Norm Miller (10-year veteran), Ross Baumgarten (13-8 in 1979), Ike Davis (31 home runs in 2012), Sam Fuld (2011 Division champ), Ruben Amaro Jr., (now the Phillies GM), and ‘One More Pitch’ wonder Adam Greenberg.”
Lewis—whose previous works have centered on baseball’s 500-home-run club, 3,000-hit club, and 3,000-strikeout-pitcher club, as well as hockey’s 500-goal club—said in a statement that the new painting is “one of my most unique and finest pieces yet, with the details of Jewish history subliminally placed throughout the litho.”
The 24-by-36 inch painting is being sold in five editions. Details for orders are at www.JewishBaseballPlayer.com.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org and reprinted with permission