Knesset speaker slams foreign lawmakers over visit to Hamas-ruled Gaza
(JNS.org) Reuven Rivlin, speaker of the Israeli Knesset, said he would boycott an Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) delegation set to arrive in Israel next month after IPU announced that it would include the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on its itinerary, Israel Hayom reported.
According to its website, the IPU—of which Israel is a member—is “the focal point for world-wide parliamentary dialogue and works for peace and cooperation among peoples and for the firm establishment of representative democracy.” The national parliaments of 162 countries are part of the IPU, an organization which has permanent observer status at the United Nations.
Rivlin’s bureau said in a press release Monday that the Knesset will not host the delegation and will not allow its members to hold meetings with Israeli lawmakers and diplomats. “The Gaza Strip is run by Hamas, which has been designated as a terrorist by the Quartet and the international community,” Rivlin said in the statement. “The Knesset will consider taking additional measures should the IPU insist on visiting Gaza,” he said, warning that “such a visit is a bad omen when it comes to the relationship between the Knesset and the IPU.”
The speaker’s bureau dismissed the IPU’s claim that a visit to Gaza was necessary because visiting the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority officials necessitated, for the sake of balance, a visit to the Gaza Strip. The speaker’s bureau also challenged the IPU’s assertions that its members will not hold official meetings with Hamas officials, saying Hamas has forged extensive ties with many parliamentarians outside Israel.
Last January, Rivlin said Israel might opt out of the IPU after it invited Hamas members to attend a human rights forum in Geneva, the online news portal Megafon reported.
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First rocket launched at Israel since Pillar of Defense ceasefire
(JNS.org) The first rocket since the Nov. 21 Israel-Hamas ceasefire was launched from Gaza on Sunday night.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials said the rocket, which fell inside Gaza territory and short of the Jewish state, does not signal a new escalation between the two sides, according to Army Radio.
A total of 1,500 rockets were launched at Israel last month during the IDF’s eight-day Gaza operation, Pillar of Defense.
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Netanyahu sets Iranian nuclear threat as top priority if re-elected
(JNS.org) Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday affirmed that the Iranian nuclear threat would be the top issue on his government’s agenda if he wins re-election, saying there is “not a day on which I do not speak to foreign leaders about Iran.”
The latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report revealed that Iran is set to step up uranium enrichment significantly at its heavily fortified underground nuclear site at Fordo. November’s report said the Fordo site was nearly complete, possessing the full capacity of 2,784 centrifuges, an increase of 644 since the previous IAEA report in August.
“Preventing Iran becoming a nuclear [threat] is, I would say, the central aim in my next term if I earn the confidence of voters,” Netanyahu said in an interview aired Saturday by the Israeli Channel 2 television station.
In September, Netanyahu outlined Iran’s nuclear timetable to the international community by providing a diagram of a bomb at the United Nations General Assembly. On the diagram, he drew a red line across where he thinks Iran’s nuclear program would be beyond the point of no return—sometime in the spring or summer of 2013.
The Israeli elections are set for Jan. 22.
Sacramento city council members who resisted BDS dedicating ambulance to Ashkelon
(JNS.org) After resisting a push by local Palestinian Americans and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) advocates to block the adoption of Ashkelon as a sister city last August, members of the Sacramento city council will now join the with the American Friends of Magen David Adom (Israeli Red Cross) and pro-Israel education group StandWithUs to dedicate an ambulance to Ashkelon, Israel, in honor of the newly created sister-city relationship with Sacramento.
The ambulance was given as a gift to Ashkelon by Robert Leeds, a 13-year-old from the Los Angeles area who wanted to make a contribution to a worthy civic cause, according to a StandWithUs press statement. Attendees of Leeds’s bar mitzvah, instead of giving him gifts, were told to designate money toward the ambulance.
“The ambulance dedication is a thank you to the city of Sacramento for approving the newest sister city resolution with Ashkelon last August despite opposition from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in their on-going attempts to pariah the state of Israel,” Gail Rubin, representing the Sacramento-Davis area chapter of SWU, told JNS.org.
Rubin said Leeds “understands the true meaning of doing good deeds for others, as this ambulance will help save lives.”
“This is a great story of a young man seeing a need and making a difference,” Sacramento Councilmember Steve Cohn, who was one of the councilmembers behind the initiative, said in a statement.
Leeds said in a statement that it is his hope to show Israel and the City of Ashkelon that I stand with them and that’s what becoming a man means to me.”
The dedication will take place Jan. 8.
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Egyptians approve Islamist-backed constitution
JNS.org) After two rounds of voting, Egyptians have approved a new Islamist-backed constitution, despite strong opposition and widespread reports of disenfranchisement.
Seventy percent of voters opted in favor of the constitution in the second round of voting on Dec. 22, the New York Times reported.
A broad coalition of secular liberals, leftists and Christians have accused President Mohamed Morsi, who is backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, of seeking to entrench his own power and give rise to a new Islamist authoritarian style rule.
Last month, protests erupted after Morsi issued a decree giving him near absolute powers. Morsi later backed down.
Adding to the turmoil, Egypt’s vice president resigned during the vote; several of Morsi’s top advisors have resigned over the past month.
During the vote, there were widespread reports of Christians being intimidated and kept away from poll stations by Islamists, resulting in a low Christian turnout.
About a week before the vote, some 50,000 Islamists marched on Christian neighborhoods of a provincial capital, Assiut, chanting that Egypt will be “Islamic, Islamic, despite the Christians.”
At their head rode several bearded men on horseback with swords in scabbards on their hips, evoking images of early Muslims conquering Christian Egypt in the 7th Century, the Associated Press reported.
“When all issues become religious and all the talk is about championing Islam and its prophet, then, as a Christian, I am excluded from societal participation,” Shady Magdy Tobia, a Christian activist in Assiut, told AP.
“If this does not change, things will only get worse for Christians.”
Israel’s Christian community continues to grow
(JNS.org) On the eve of Christmas celebrations in the Holy Land —Dec 25 for Catholics and Protestants and Jan. 7 for Orthodox Christians—the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) released new data on the Christian community in Israel, Ynet reported.
According to the CBS, there are 158,000 Christians living in Israel, constituting 2 percent of the population. This is up slightly from 154,500 last year.
Of the Christian population, 80.6 percent are Arab, primarily residing in northern Israel. Nazareth—the childhood home of Jesus—is the largest Arab-Christian town.
Most of the non-Arab Christians are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who came to Israel with their Jewish families under the Law of Return.
The CBS noted that Arab Christians fared best in terms of education in comparison to all other ethnic groups in Israel. For example, some 56 percent of Arab Christians, compared with 50 percent of Jewish students, 36 percent of Druze students and 34 percent of Muslims, received a high school diploma that met the basic demands of Israeli universities.
Israel is one of the few countries in the Middle East that has seen its Christian community grow. An estimate 100,000 Christians have fled the civil war in Syria, while in Egypt, Christians are fearful of the rise of Muslim Brotherhood. Even in the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Bethlehem—the birthplace of Jesus—the Christian population has shrunk to a third of the town’s residents, down from 75 percent only a few decades ago.
After Spain grants Sephardic Jews path to citizenship, Muslims want the same
(JNS.org) Muslims are demanding that Spain grant instant citizenship to all the descendants of Muslims expelled from Spain in the Middle Ages after the Spanish government had announced plans to grant automatic citizenship to all Jewish descendants of those expelled from Spain in the 1492 Inquisition.
Spanish Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón and Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo announced the decision regarding descendants of expelled Spanish Jews last month in Madrid.
According to the Gatestone Institute, Sephardic Jews could already get Spanish citizenship after living in Spain for two years. Now, Sephardic Jews who reside elsewhere can immediately get a Spanish passport if they confirm their ancestry through a special accreditation. Only those who identify as Jewish today, however, can benefit from this policy, not the descendants of Jews who converted to Christianity to escape persecution. Those Jews must undergo aformal conversation to Judaism first.
Moroccan journalist Ahmed Bensalh Es-salhi wrote in the newspaper Correo Diplomático that the “decision to grant Spanish citizenship to the grandchildren of the Hebrews in Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while ignoring the Moriscos, the grandsons of the Muslims, is without doubt, flagrant segregation and unquestionable discrimination…This decision is absolutely disgraceful and dishonorable.”
“Is Spain aware of what might be assumed when it makes peace with some and not with others? Is Spain aware of what this decision could cost? Has Spain considered that it could jeopardize the massive investments that Muslims have made on its territory?” Es-salhi wrote.
Jamal Bin Ammar al-Ahmar, a university professor at the Ferhat Abbas University in Sétif in northeastern Algeria, has also called on Spanish King Juan Carlos I to condemn those who expelled Muslims from Al-Andalus in the 15th century, to apologize “on behalf of his ancestors,” and to assume “responsibility for the consequences.”
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Author: Buchenwald memorial employee said ‘Jews should have settled in Uganda’
(JNS.org) Israeli-born author and the director of the Jewish Theater of New York, Tuvia Tenenbom, said that the head of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial has told him that Jews should have settled in Uganda instead of Israel.
Tenenbom spoke about his conversation with Volkhard Knigge in an interview with the German newspaper Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, and also described it in his book, I Sleep in Hitler’s Room: An American Jew Visits Germany.
“Volkhard… recommends a bar in Jerusalem, one he really likes: Uganda. Free-minded people are there, he tells me. Uganda? Why Uganda?… He refers to the idea that Jews should have settled in Uganda instead of Palestine. Uganda, the bar, made a name for itself as a place that sympathizes with the Palestinian plight… Why the director of the Buchenwald memorial gets his hands wet in the Israeli-Palestinian mess is beyond my understanding,” Tenenbom said.
In response, Knigge wrote in a statement to the Jerusalem Post that Tenenbom “reproduces the conversations he held with me and the head of the memorial education department in distorted form.”
“I never at any time said that Jews should have been settled in Uganda… The Uganda Bar is an establishment which presents artistic events and is very popular among young Israelis,” he wrote. “I enjoyed going to that bar with my Israeli wife of many years, who is herself an artist.”
Tenenbom also criticized Daniel Gaede, an educator at the Buchenwald memorial camp, for participating in anti-Israel rallies. “Yes, he too has the right to think whatever he wishes… Gaza has the world’s highest concentration of people who believe in driving the Jews into the sea. Why would anybody from Buchenwald join them?” Gaede called Tenebom’s interpretation of his remarks as “random and distorting.”
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