Rohani linked to council responsible for Argentina Jewish center bombing
(JNS.org) Iran president-elect Hassan Rohani has been linked to a secretive government council responsible for a global assassination campaign against Iran’s enemies in the 1990s that included the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that killed 85 people, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Citing a 2008 report by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), a U.S. non-profit group that documents patterns of human rights abuse in Iran, the Free Beacon reported that Rohani sat on the Special Affairs Council, which was tasked with recommending individuals for assassination in consultation with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
According to the report, Rohani was a special representative for the Supreme Leader in the mid-1990s, around the time of the Buenos Aires bombing.
It is unlikely that Rohani had any say in the operations approval process of the council due to his subordinate position behind Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s president at the time.
“Rohani’s power at that time comes directly from one individual, and that’s Rafsanjani,” Reuel Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Free Beacon.
But despite his possible circumstantial role in the secretive committee, Gerecht added that there is nothing in Rohani’s background “that would suggest to you he has any moral qualms about bombing the enemies of the [Islamic] Republic.”
Rohani, who won nearly 51 percent of the vote in Iran’s presidential election last week and will replace firebrand Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been welcomed by many in the West for his calls to restart negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. But others are more skeptical of Rohani’s openness in light of his deep ties to Iran’s revolutionary government.
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ADL expresses concern over anti-Israel summer programs
(JNS.org) The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has expressed concern over “summer camps” and “summer institutes” being organized by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—groups ADL said have “established records of stoking anti-Israel activity.”
According to the ADL, the camps raise concerns of the indoctrination of children as young as 8 years old into the anti-Israel movement, as well as bringing older recruits into the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement.
“Efforts to isolate Israel on campus do not cease with the end of the school year,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director, in a statement June 19. “These organized summer camps serve to indoctrinate the next generation of activists with biased messages intended to single out Israel. Organizers of the college-level programs seek to provide students with tools to steer public opinion away from the Jewish state.”
The groups organizing the camps have been major players within the BDS movement. JVP has been one of the leading groups behind the effort to get pension giant TIAA-CREF to divest from Israel.
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Israeli-born Micky Arison now has two straight NBA titles
(JNS.org) The Miami Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs, 95-88, in Game 7 of the National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals on Thursday night to give Israeli-American team owner Micky Arison his second straight NBA championship.
Arison, who is also CEO of the Carnival cruise operator and bought the Heat in 2010, was born in Tel Aviv in 1949. His estimated wealth is $5.7 billion, making him the 211th-richest person in the world, according to Forbes. He is a full billion dollars richer than a year ago, when Forbes ranked him at 223rd in the world with a fortune of $4.7 billion.
LeBron James scored 37 points in Game 7 to lead Arison’s Heat to the third championship in franchise history.
Newly appointed Palestinian Authority prime minister abruptly resigns
(JNS.org) Rami Hamdallah, the newly appointed Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister, has abruptly submitted his resignation to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Ma’an News Agency reported.
Hamdallah, who took office on June 6, resigned as a result of a dispute over his powers, Ma’an News Agency reported.
Hamdallah, who was the president of An-Najah University in Nablus, was appointed to the position following the resignation of Salam Fayyad. A political newcomer, many analysts suspected that Abbas choose Hamdallah for the position in order to maintain the ties with Western countries, which provide the PA with substantial amounts of foreign aid, that Fayyad had established.
But the PA, which is controlled by Abbas’s Fatah party, has been accused by many of corruption and mismanagement. Hamdallah, who was not a member of Fatah, may have resigned over clashes with other Fatah party leaders in his cabinet.
The PA has not held elections since 2006 due to a dispute with Hamas, which ousted the PA and Fatah from the Gaza Strip in 2007. Abbas, meanwhile, has been serving more than four years since his term as PA president expired in January 2009.
Concern grows over possible conversion of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia to mosque
(JNS.org) Amid fears in Turkey of the Islamist policies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, concerns are growing over a government commission to convert the historic Hagia Sophia Church of Istanbul into a mosque.
“The desire to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque is not about Muslims wanting a place to pray—as of 2010, there were 3,000 active mosques in Istanbul alone. Rather, it’s about their reveling, and trying to revivify, the glory days of Islamic jihad and conquest,” Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim recently wrote, PJ Media reported.
The current church was built in 537 CE during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian and became the seat of the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople until the Ottoman invasion in 1453, when it was converted into a mosque. Then, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Turkey’s secular leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, converted the mosque into a museum.
But today, Turkey’s Islamist government is looking into reconverting the museum into a mosque. Turkey’s Hurriyet News reported last February that a parliamentary commission is considering an application to turn the Hagia Sophia into a place of Muslim worship.
Following the announcement, Turkey’s Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople stated, “We want Santa Sofia to remain a museum,” Catholic Culture reported.
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UNESCO adds Yad Vashem testimonials to world heritage list
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Holocaust survivors’ testimonials, as archived by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, are among the 54 new additions to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Memory of the World Register.
The collection of “pages of testimony”—a form issued by Yad Vashem in efforts to document the lives of Holocaust survivors—was founded in 1954 and contains about 2.6 million testimonials. The forms were filled out by relatives and friends of the victims. The testimonials are part of Yad Vashem’s project to document the names of all the victims of the Holocaust. So far, the project has recorded the names of some 4.2 million victims.
UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, established in 1995, is not a physical collection, but a list. The items in the register remain in their original locations. The Yad Vashem collection is the first Israeli entry in this forum.
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Anti-Semitic comments by Panama governor draw condemnation
(JNS.org) The governor of the province of Panama , Omaira Mayin Correa, has been condemned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center for calling Jewish journalist Flor Mizrachi Angel “that little Jewboy from the Gestapo” on the radio June 17. The comment was a reaction to accusations from the journalist that Panama’s government is covering up corruption.
Simon Wiesenthal Center Director for International Relations Dr. Shimon Samuels, and the center’s Director for Latin America Sergio Widder, wrote a letter of complaint to Deputy Elías Castillo, president of the Latin American Parliament Deputy, asking him to “denounce the incident,” Israel National News reported.
“The Governor’s comments offend the memory of Jewish and other victims of the Nazi Gestapo and injure Panama, a long and devoted friend of the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” Samuels wrote.
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Pope Francis praises Mideast Christians who have ‘kept the faith’
(JNS.org) Pope Francis, speaking to an audience of Middle Eastern Christian leaders and Catholic aid workers in the region, expressed gratitude for the years of difficulty they have faced in the “Christian name” and for having “kept the faith,” Vatican Radio reported.
Addressing the plenary assembly of Reunion of Aid Agencies for the Oriental Churches, a Catholic organization founded in 1968 that brings together agencies committed to supporting Oriental Catholic Churches, Pope Francis spoke about his concern for “so many brothers and sisters who live in a situation of insecurity and seemingly interminable violence which does not spare the innocent and most helpless.”
Pope Francis also renewed his call for “the leaders of nations and of international organizations, to believers of every religion, and to women and men of good will to put an end to all suffering, to all violence, to all religious, cultural and social discrimination,” calling on them “to do everything possible to alleviate the grave necessities of the stricken populations, especially of Syria, as well as the ever increasing number of refugees and displaced persons.”
The address by the Pope concluded a three-day assembly that focused on issues of the Oriental Churches. The first morning of the assembly was dedicated solely to the situation in Syria. Other sessions and speeches were devoted to the deteriorating situation in Egypt, the renewal of the Chaldean Church in Iraq, and the situation in Israel.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org