Knesset member demands Turkish apology for Struma sinking
(JNS.org) Amid the continuing aftermath of Israel’s apology to Turkey for the May 2010 Gaza flotilla incident, Likud Member of Knesset Moshe Feiglin demanded on Sunday that Turkey apologize for the February 1942 sinking of the MV Struma in the Black Sea, Israel Hayom reported.
In mid-December 1941, more than 700 Jews boarded the Struma at the Romanian port of Constanta with the intention of sailing to British-controlled Palestine despite British limitations on Jewish immigration. On Dec. 16, the Sturma reached Istanbul. There, the Struma’s passengers learned both that they would not receive visas from the British to enter Palestine and that they would not be permitted to go ashore in Turkey.
The Struma was quarantined in the Istanbul harbor for more than two months. On February 23, 1942, Turkey towed the ship and its passengers out to international waters in the Black Sea and abandoned it there, even though the Struma’s engine was not working. The next day, the Struma sunk, killing everyone on board except one. It is believed that the Struma either hit a mine or was mistakenly torpedoed by a Soviet submarine.
On Sunday, Feiglin wrote a Facebook post, linked to his Twitter feed, titled “Demand for an apology from the Turks,” in which he detailed the Struma sinking. Feiglin concluded his post by saying, “The truth is that we don’t need an apology! And also not financial compensation. The Jewish people have a special skill. They know how to remember!”
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, clarifying initial reports that Turkey-Israel ties had been normalized following his conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that those ties would not be fully restored until Israel both provides financial compensation for the nine Turkish citizens who died in the Mavi Marmara altercation and ends its blockade on Gaza. The Turks who died in the flotilla incident had attacked Israeli soldiers on board, and a subsequent United Nations report confirmed the legality of Israel’s blockade.
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‘Energy independence day’: Israel’s Tamar gas field begins production
(JNS.org) In advance of this year’s Israel Independence Day (April 16), Israeli officials are celebrating news that they hope will mean long-term energy independence for the Jewish state.
The Tamar offshore gas field has started production after four years of exploration and drilling by Israel, Israel Hayom reported.
Israel’s Energy and Water Resources Ministry confirmed on Saturday that natural gas “is now moving from the Tamar reservoir to a new naval production rig across from Ashdod.” Israel has invested $3.5 billion in the Tamar project in order to reduce its dependency on gas imports.
“This is Israel’s energy independence day,” Energy and Water Resources Minister Silvan Shalom said. “It is truly a historic event—Israel has received energy freedom.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that Saturday was “an important day for Israel’s economy” due to the news surrounding the Tamar field. The field, which was discovered in 2009 about 130 kilometers (81 miles) west of Haifa, reportedly has gas reserves of up to 238 billion cubic meters (8.4 trillion cubic feet). U.S.-based Noble Energy as well as Israeli firms—Delek, Isramco and Dor Alon—own the field.
“This is a very proud day for all of us. Our vision has become a reality,” Delek owner Yitzhak Tshuva told Agence France-Presse. “This is a tremendous achievement for the Israeli energy market and the beginning of a new era.”
The Tamar field’s progress is also welcome news for Israel because Egypt canceled its gas supply agreement with the Jewish state in April 2012, citing that the agreement was undermining Egyptian interests. In August 2011, terrorists bombed the gas pipeline connecting Israel and Egypt.
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Christians celebrate Easter Sunday in Israel
(JNS.org) Catholics and Protestants celebrated Easter Sunday throughout the Holy Land on March 31.
The leader of the Catholic Church in Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, held Easter Mass in the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem—the spot where most Christians believe Jesus was crucified and later rose from the dead on Easter Sunday.
Protestants celebrated Easter Mass in the Garden Tomb, located outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, in his first “Urbi et Orbi” address on Easter Sunday in Rome, Pope Francis appealed for peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as other conflicts in the world including in Syria and on the Korean Peninsula.
In his Easter Speech from a balcony in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis urged Israelis and Palestinians, who “struggle to find the road of agreement,” to find the courage to resume peace talks and end a conflict that “has lasted all too long,” the Associated Press reported.
Roman Catholics and Protestants, who follow the Gregorian calendar, celebrated Easter on March 31, while Eastern Orthodox Christians, who follow the Julian calendar, will mark Easter in May.
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Ancient Synagogue burns in Damascus, rebels and government exchange blame
(JNS.org) The ancient Ancient Eliyahu HaHavi Synagogue in Damascus has reportedly gone up in flames while rebel forces and the Syrian government exchange blame over the incident.
The rebels contend that the Syrian government burned the synagogue and stripped it of its content, while the government blamed the rebels for the arson, Israel Hayom reported. The government later released a video purportedly showing the rebels breaking into the synagogue.
Tradition holds that the ancient synagogue is built on the site where the prophet Elijah hid himself in a cave to avoid arrest. It is considered one of Judaism’s holiest and most ancient synagogues.
But this is not the first report of the ancient synagogue being attacked amid the ongoing Syrian civil war. In early March, a video posted by rebel forces showed the same synagogue being severely damaged from shelling, according to Israel National News. Once home to a vibrant Jewish community, Syria’s Jewish population has dwindled to around 100 people today.
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Canada’s largest student group joins BDS movement as vote’s validity questioned
(JNS.org) Canada’s largest student union, the York Federation of Students (YFS) University, passed a resolution last week to join the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the Canadian Jewish News reported.
The student union, which represents more than 52,000 undergraduates at Toronto’s York University, overwhelmingly passed the motion after a hearing with Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA).
The resolution calls on York University to “abide by the BDS call; specifically urging the university to withdraw its investments from Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Amphenol and other companies that are selling weapons and military equipment to Israel,” SAIA said.
YFS is the third student union at York to pass a BDS resolution. Last fall, the Graduate Student Union and York’s Graduate Students Association both voted in favor of the resolution. Jewish leaders on campus condemned the vote in a joint statement, saying it is “fundamentally racist, and a possible violation of the university’s anti-discrimination codes.”
Pro-Israel supporters also questioned the vote’s validity, claiming that they were surprised that YFS allowed the vote to take place without checking the authenticity of the 5,000 signatures.
“Those signatures have not been verified for authenticity or duplication,” Howard English, senior vice-president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, told the Canadian Jewish News. “We don’t really know whether these are 5,000 genuine students.”
“While we may have lost the vote, we do feel like we do have the support of the majority of students on campus who don’t want to see their student government, to which they owe money, radicalized or politicized,” Chaim Lax, president of York’s Hasbara, a pro-Israel group, told the Canadian Jewish News.
The York University BDS campaign is the latest effort by anti-Israel activists in a global campaign to challenge Israel on college campuses. Similar divestment votes have taken place at a number of campuses in the University of California system. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, Oxford University students recently overwhelmingly rejected a motion to divest from Israel.
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Holocaust memories revived as Berlin Jewish museum puts Jews in box
(JNS.org) Almost 70 years after the Holocaust, the Jewish Museum in Berlin is fending off criticism for hosting an exhibit, “The Whole Truth, everything you wanted to know about Jews,” which asks Jewish men and women to sit in a glass box and answer questions by visitors about Jews and Judaism.
Adolf Hitler’s Nazi government planned and executed the murder of six million Jews by 1945. Today “a lot of our visitors don’t know any Jews and have questions they want to ask,” said museum official Tina Luedecke, according to Fox News.
“With this exhibition we offer an opportunity for those people to know more about Jews and Jewish life,” Luedecke said.
But critics have voiced concern that the exhibit is not an appropriate way to educate the German pblic about Judaism. In addition to the glass box, another part of the exhibit includes a placard asking “How you recognize a Jew?” next to several yarmulkes, black hats and Jewish women’s hair covers. In another section, visitors are asked if Jews are “particularly good looking, influential, intelligent, animal loving or business savvy.”
As to the box idea, prominent Berlin Jewish community figure Stephan Kramer, according to the Associated Press, rhetorically asked, “Why don’t they give him a banana and a glass of water, turn up the heat and make the Jew feel really cozy in his glass box?”
The museum Jewish curator, Miriam Goldmann, says the “in your face” approach is necessary to deal with a subject still painful in Germany for both Jews and non-Jews. The exhibit has attracted a lot of visitors. While sitting in the box, Ido Porat, a 33-year-old Israeli, was asked what should be brought to a Shabbat dinner in Israel and why only Jewish men and not women wear yarmulkes. Another person asked about Judaism and homosexuality.
Some German Jews and Israeli Jews volunteering at the museum are resigned to the idea. “With so few of us, you almost inevitably feel like an exhibition piece. Once you’ve been ‘outed’ as a Jew, you always have to be the expert and answer all questions regarding anything related to religion, Israel, the Holocaust and so on,” museum volunteer Leeor Englander said.
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Israeli autism researcher wins UNESCO fellowship
(JNS.org) Israeli scientist Dr. Osnat Penn—a postdoctoral researcher in computational biology at Tel Aviv University whose work examines the genetic origins of autism—has been awarded a 2013 UNESCO-L’Oréal International Fellowship for promising young female scientists, Israel Hayom reported. Penn, 32, and 14 other researchers worldwide were awarded the prestigious fellowships out of hundreds of candidates.
The fellowships are given to female scientists “whose promising research projects have a potential impact on human well-being and the environment.”
This is the third year in a row that an Israeli has received the fellowship, which comes with a $40,000 grant. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Penn on her achievement, saying, “You have joined the prestigious and excellent club of Israeli female scientists.”
“Autism is known to have a hereditary component but scientists have had difficulty identifying the precise genetic causes. Computational biologist Osnat Penn plans to tackle this challenge by analyzing massive quantities of data obtained through genome sequencing,” the website for the international fellowship said. “She will use cutting-edge computer programs to compare the genomes of autism sufferers, their unaffected parents and thousands of unaffected people from populations around the world.”
“The goal is to identify the specific areas where the autism variation occurs in the human genome,” according to the website. “Her research is designed to help enable prenatal screening and early diagnosis of autism in children and could one day contribute to creating treatments for the disorder.”
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