Pollard: ‘I haven’t been forgotten’
(JNS.org) Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a jail sentence in the United States for espionage on behalf of Israel, spoke to his wife Esther by telephone Thursday, who told him that the city of Jerusalem has decided to give him the Jerusalem Freedom Award.
“Esther, you don’t know how happy this makes me. I haven’t been forgotten. They want me,” an emotional Jonathan Pollard told his wife, Israel Hayom reported.
“I spoke with Jonathan and I told him about the award you are giving him,” Esther Pollard told Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat on Thursday. “It revives him and gives him a reason to go on. I interpret it as a sign of mutual love between Jonathan and his land and his beloved city. You are keeping him alive.”
“The decision made by the city council in the name of the city of Jerusalem carries a message that we want him back home ahead of the holiday of freedom (Passover),” Barkat told Esther Pollard. “The people of Israel are obligated to redeem captives, and I am full of hope that this message will reach all of our friends in the United States. This award is an embrace of love for Jonathan.”
Jerusalem City Council member Yair Gabai, who approached the mayor with the idea of granting Pollard the award, said, “I bless the mayor for embracing my idea to give the Jerusalem Freedom Award to Jonathan Pollard. As public representatives, it is our duty to do everything to bring him home and to help him to realize the dream of freedom and immigration to Israel. I hope that this initiative echoes in the halls of the White House and that there is an end to the suffering of our brother Jonathan Pollard.”
More than 80,000 people have so far signed the petition calling for Pollard’s release. The petition will be presented to U.S. President Barack Obama during his visit to Israel.
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Amid trouble in coalition talks, Netanyahu seeks deadline extension
(JNS.org) Amid growing difficulty to form a new government by the March 2 deadline, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has scheduled a meeting with President Shimon Peres on Saturday, most likely to discuss a 14-day extension, which would give him until March 16 to form a government.
Netanyahu has been attempting to form a government composed of the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox religious parties. But the leaders of the centrist Yesh Atid party and far-right Habayit Hayehudi party, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennet, have formed a pact not to enter the government without the other.
Despite widely differing political platforms, both Lapid and Bennet campaigned on reforming Israel’s military draft law to include ultra-Orthodox conscription, which the ultra-Orthodox community strongly opposes. Netanyahu, however, has been reluctant to alienate the ultra-Orthodox community, which has strongly supported him in his past two terms..
But in meetings with Likud officials, Yesh Atid has explicitly stated that it will not enter the government if the ultra-Orthodox parties are included.
“The answer we got on this matter was that, essentially, to Yesh Atid there is no place for haredim [ultra-orthodox] in the next government,” Netanyahu’s chief negotiator David Shimron said, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Meanwhile, a report on Israel’s Channel 10 News cited by the Times of Israel said that U.S. President Barack Obama would cancel his trip to Israel if a government is not formed by March 16. Obama’s highly anticipated trip to Israel, his first as president, is scheduled to begin on March 20.
Netanyahu, whose Likud-Beytenu party alliance won 31 Knesset seats, needs at least 60 seats to form a governing coalition. Netanyahu has only signed Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua party, which won six seats. If Netanyahu does not form a government by March 16, Peres may ask another party leader to form one or call new elections.
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Joan Rivers angers with Holocaust ovens joke
(JNS.org) Comedian Joan Rivers is under fire for her comment Monday on German model Heidi Klum’s Academy Awards dress on theE! network’s “Fashion Police” program, in which she quipped about the Holocaust. “The last time a German looked this hot was when they were pushing Jews into the ovens,” Rivers said, according to ABC News.
The remark has since been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Director Abraham Foxman called the remark “so vulgar and offensive to Jews and Holocaust survivors, and indeed to all Americans, that we cannot believe it made it to the airwaves.”
“Making it worse, not one of her co-hosts made any effort to respond or to condemn this hideous statement, leaving it hanging out there and giving it added legitimacy through their silence. Almost as bad as her original comment is the fact that she sat there doubled over with laughter after saying it,” he said.
Rivers is refusing to apologize. “My husband lost the majority of his family at Auschwitz, and I can assure you that I have always made it a point to remind people of the Holocaust through humor,” she said in a statement.
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Amid growth of Evangelical Christian movements, support for Israel follows
(JNS.org) Amid the growth of Evangelical Christian movements worldwide, the clout of pro-Israel Christian groups is increasing, including some from non-traditional places.
Today, Evangelical and Pentecostal Christian groups combine to number near 869 million globally, according to the Pew Research Center. This growth has been especially exceptional in the developing world such as in Latin America, where the percentage of Pentecostals has grown from 4.4 percent to 28 percent in 2005, or Africa, where they have grown from 5 percent to 17 percent of the population.
“There is a new dynamic taking place in our world where [Christian supporters] are growing in a dramatic way, who are standing with the nation of Israel like never before,” said Jürgen Bühler, executive director of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
While the growing number of Evangelical Christian movements in developing countries has not yet matured enough to wield political influence yet, in the U.S., some argue they may be stronger than Jewish support for Israel.
“AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is a great organization… but there’s no doubt there are more Bible-believing Christians than there are Jews in America,” says Josh Reinstein, director of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
“Already I think the Christian community is more influential than AIPAC.”
The numbers line up with this assumption. According to the Pew Research Center, about 26 percent of U.S. adults belong to Evangelical churches, while only 1.7 percent are Jewish.
“We have the numbers and geographical reach to reach every member of Congress,” said David Brog, the executive director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the Christian Science Monitor reported. CUFI is the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., with more than 1.2 million supporters.
The ability of groups like CUFI to mobilize powerful support for Israel was on display recently during the debate over Chuck Hagel’s nomination for Secretary of Defense. CUFI supporters sent over 21,000 emails to their senators urging them to vote against the nomination and more than 400 CUFI leaders converged on Washington, DC, to lobby the Senate. While Hagel was ultimately confirmed, the vote was the closet ever to approve a defense secretary, 58-41.
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Nasrallah denies reports of poor health
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah appeared on Lebanese television Wednesday to deny reports on his failing health and the successful attack on his deputy by Syrian rebels.
“The rumors that have been spread and their effect on the region prompted me to quickly arrange an appearance before you to talk about some of the issues at hand,” Nasrallah said at the start of his address, aired on Al-Manar, a Hezbollah-affiliated TV station based in Lebanon.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Lebanese outlets, and later the Turkish Anatolia News Agency, reported that Nasrallah was battling cancer. According to the reports, a malignant tumor inside his brain metastasized to the rest of his body. He was reportedly hospitalized in Beirut and later secretly flown to Tehran for further treatment.
“I would like to stress that all of what has been said in the media regarding my health is false,” Nasrallah said in the video, which was purportedly broadcast live. “I decided to make a media appearance and to stress with my voice and image that all of what you have been hearing is patently false. If more rumors come out, I will appear again to debunk those rumors too.”
Nasrallah also denied the reports that his deputy, Sheikh Naim Qassem, was seriously wounded after being targeted by Syrian rebels.
The Syrian opposition issued an official statement on Wednesday in which it said that its forces “attacked a convoy with high ranking Hezbollah officials and Syrian military officers… The attack completely destroyed the vehicles, and resulted in Naim Qassem being seriously wounded, and the commander of the Syrian brigades in the Beqaa Valley region being hurt as well.”
Qassem’s state of health may have severe implications, as he was reportedly handed most of Nasrallah’s powers due to the latter’s supposed poor health.
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Ethiopian wins Miss Israel, honors MLK
(JNS.org) A 21-year-old woman became the first Ethiopian-Israeli contestant to win the Miss Israel 2013 beauty pageant. Yityish Aynaw is a former IDF officer who had immigrated with her family to Israel 10 years ago. During the competition, she referred to U.S. civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as her hero.
King “fought for justice and equality, and that’s one of the reasons I’m here: I want to show that my community has many pretty qualities that aren’t always represented in the media,” she told the judges in response to a question during the competition Wednesday, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Jews have been present in Ethiopia for more than 2,000 years and were persecuted for centuries there. In 1984 and 1991, the Israeli government conducted two operations, Operation Moses and Operation Solomon, to bring thousands of Ethiopian Jews to settle in Israel. According to the Israeli Bureau of Statistics, as of 2011 the Ethiopian community in Israel numbered more than 125,000 people.
“It’s important that a member of the Ethiopian community wins the competition for the first time… there are many different communities of many different colors in Israel, and it’s important to show that to the world,” Aynaw also said.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org.