IDF reserve colonel beaten to death in Jordan Valley terror attack
(JNS.org) Israel Defense Forces reserve colonel Sariya Ofer was killed Thursday night in the Jordan Valley village of Brosh Habika in a suspected Palestinian terrorist attack.
Ofer was reportedly beaten by at least two Palestinian men wielding iron bars and axes. His wife, Monique, sustained minor injuries.
“They were beaten with blunt instruments,” Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
Israeli security forces arrested five Palestinians suspected of being involved, Army Radio reported. The attackers escaped while Monique ran to Route 90 to flag down help for the couple.
“No one will rest until the trails of the murderers are uncovered and the whole picture becomes clear,” Israeli President Shimon Peres said in a statement.
Ofer, who was in his 50s, was a former commander of IDF troops in the Gaza Strip.
The number of terror attacks and attempted terror attacks in Israel rose from 68 in August to 133 in September, according to recently revealed data from the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet). Among the September attacks, 104 took place in Judea and Samaria.
Iran sanctions shouldn’t be lifted, Netanyahu tells EU
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday held a series of interviews with European media outlets with the aim of convincing EU countries not to lift Iran sanctions.
From his office in Jerusalem, Netanyahu spoke to leading media outlets including France’s Le Monde, the British Financial Times, Germany’s ARD, French television channel TV24 and Britain’s Sky News.
“No deal is better than a bad deal, and a bad deal would be a partial agreement which lifts sanctions off Iran and leaves them with the ability to enrich uranium or to continue work on their heavy water plutonium, which is what is needed to produce nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told The Financial Times.
“Don’t give up now, finish the job, let it take effect,” Netanyahu said. “Don’t give up now, and don’t say later that I didn’t warn you.”
Israeli left-wing activists attend Arab celebration calling for murder of Jews
(JNS.org) Israeli left-wing activists from the Yesh Din organization celebrated with Arabs at the Jewish community of Homesh in Samaria, which was transferred from Jewish hands by the Israeli government in the wake of a Yesh Din lawsuit. During the celebration, a banner was waived depicting a religious Jewish man with a spear through his mouth. Other Jewish symbols in the area were replaced with PLO flags.
Acting Head of the Samaria Council Yossi Dagan said that some people at the celebration called for the murder of Jews.
“Unfortunately, the reality of occupation…sometimes it spills over into hostile expressions and cruel actions,” said Yesh Din Director Haim Erlich.
Dagan said Yesh Din’s activity “crosses a red line, and brings them to depths I wouldn’t have dreamed they would reach,” Israel National News reported.
Council of Europe won’t ban male circumcision after Peres appeal
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Council of Europe will not ban male ritual circumcision as it does female genital mutilation, the organization’s Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland wrote in a letter to Israeli President Shimon Peres. The letter came in response to Peres’s appeal over the council’s resolution against circumcision last week.
The council’s Parliamentary Assembly called male ritual circumcision a “violation of the physical integrity of children,” and voted in favor of the non-binding resolution, 78-13. Peres wrote to Jagland that male circumcision is a “fundamental element of our tradition and obligation as Jews.”
Jagland wrote that female circumcision is considered gender-based violence. “While our organization is of course fully committed to children’s rights to physical integrity, nothing in the body of our legally binding standards would lead us to put on equal footing the issue of female genital mutilation and the circumcision of young boys for religious reasons,” he wrote.
Catholic and Jewish leaders head to Spain to discuss religious freedom and persecution
(JNS.org) With the backdrop of positive steps on Jewish-Catholic relations under Pope Francis I, leaders from both faiths will gather in Madrid, Spain on Oct. 13 for the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee (ICJLC) to further religious cooperation.
The ICJLC, which is the official Catholic-Jewish dialogue group, was formed in 1967 shortly after the Second Vatican Council’s groundbreaking declaration Nostra Aetate, which disavowed centuries of Catholic Church anti-Semitism and paved the way for improved Catholic-Jewish relations.
Since 1967, the committee has met nearly two dozen times and has issued several important joint declarations concerning matters of faith, ethics and social issues.
At the upcoming summit, 50 Jewish and Catholic leaders plan to tackle issues of religious freedom and persecution of faiths.
“At this 22nd meeting of the Vatican-Jewish dialogue in Madrid, we’ll address the serious challenges to religious freedom and to the safety and security of houses of worship emerging around the world,” Betty Ehrenberg, chair of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) and representative of the World Jewish Congress on the committee, told JNS.org.
Ehrenberg, who is also the first woman to chair the IJCIC, added, “We’ll also seek ways to help faith communities grapple with the many changes wrought by international political upheavals. Working together, we can surely help both faiths.”
Leaders will also address modern Catholic-Jewish relations in Spain, Spanish-Israeli relations, and anti-Semitism in Europe, given the gathering’s setting in Spain.
Since becoming pontiff in March, Pope Francis has made Jewish-Christian relations a priority for the Catholic Church, continuing the legacy of his predecessors. Recently, Pope Francis praised the Jewish people for “keeping their faith in God” despite centuries of persecution, and also declared in June that a true Christian “cannot be anti-Semitic.”
New head at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College a historic hire for female rabbinic, LGBT communities
(JNS.org) Rabbi Deborah Waxman will step in as president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) on Jan. 1, becoming the first female rabbi ever to head a Jewish congregational organization. A lesbian, she is also the first LGBT rabbi to attain a senior leadership position for a Jewish denomination.
“I deeply appreciate—and have richly benefited from—the Reconstructionist movement’s vanguard work on inclusion, and hope to continue it as president,” Waxman, 46, told the Forward.
Waxman, who previously served as vice president of the RRC, helped integrate the Reconstructionist movement’s rabbinical college with its congregational union. She succeeds Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org