Israel summons four envoys over European criticism of Israeli construction
(JNS.org) Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Friday summoned ambassadors to Israel from Britain, France, Italy, and Spain, in response to those countries’ reprimanding of Israeli envoys for the Jewish state’s announcement of the planned construction of 1,400 new residential units beyond the 1967 lines.
“Our ambassadors to the EU are now called in because of this, the construction of a few houses,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “When did the EU call in the Palestinian ambassadors to complain about the incitement that calls for Israel’s destruction?”
“I think it’s time to stop this hypocrisy,” Netanyahu added. “I think it’s time to inject some balance and fairness into this discussion.”
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IDF on alert after more Gaza rocket fire
(JNS.org) Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip fired another rocket into southern Israel on Thursday night, after five rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome system over Ashkelon on Thursday morning. The rocket on Thursday night exploded in open territory, causing no injuries or damage, Israel Hayom reported.
Israeli defense officials believe the Islamic Jihad terrorist group was responsible for Thursday’s rocket salvo. But defense officials said both Islamic Jihad and Hamas were not interested in an escalation with Israel at this time and that Thursday’s rocket fire was prompted by internal affairs within Gaza.
Military officials said the Israel Defense Forces was prepared for any scenario and that the IDF had raised its level of alert due to the rocket fire.
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UNESCO pulls Simon Wiesenthal Center exhibit after Arab League objection
(JNS.org) The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) pulled a Simon Wiesenthal Center exhibit on the Jewish connection to the land of Israel after the Arab League objected to the display, The Algemeiner reported Thursday.
“People, Book, Land—The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel” was a project initiated by the Wiesenthal Center after the Palestinian Authority was unilaterally accepted as a UNESCO member state in 2011. Invitations had already gone out for the Jan. 20 opening of the exhibit at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters, but “the Arabs protested and they kicked us out,” Wiesenthal Center Dean Rabi Marvin Hier told The Algemeiner.
UNESCO broke the news to the Wiesenthal Center in a Jan. 14 letter that said the exhibit “could create potential obstacles related to the peace process in the Middle East.” Abdulla al Neaimi, the president of the Arab group within UNESCO, in a letter to UNESCO President Irina Bokova had expressed “deep worry and great disapproval” about the exhibit, writing that the display’s theme—the age-old Jewish connection to Israel—is “one of the reasons used by the opponents of peace within Israel.”
“The Arabs don’t want the world to know that the Jews have a 3,500-year relationship to the Land of Israel,” Hier said. UNESCO “is not supposed to deny one nation the right to their history,” he said.
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Brandeis Center withdraws anti-Semitism complaint against UC Santa Barbara
(JNS.org) The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law said it is withdrawing a civil rights complaint on anti-Semitism that it had directed at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), after the school pledged to implement several recommendations to combat discrimination against Jews on its campus.
The Brandeis Center initially filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights under its Title VI provision, which asserts that the university had “created a hostile environment for Jewish students.” Over the past year, as a result of measures by anti-Israel groups to divest from Israel, there were reports of Jewish students being verbally and physically attacked.
The school has promised hold educational programming about anti-Semitism and to moderate on-campus events.
“We were initially disappointed by UCSB’s slow response to anti-Semitic incidents, but [UCSB] Chancellor [Henry T.] Yang is now personally engaged, and he has been forceful in articulating his concern to protect all Santa Barbara students,” Brandeis Center President Kenneth L. Marcus told JNS.org.
“We are pleased that they are implementing our recommendations, but this is a long process, and there is much work to do,” Marcus added.
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Tunisia’s next tourism minister will be Jewish
(JNS.org) The Tunisian government is set to appoint Rene Trabelsi, who is Jewish, to be the next tourism minister in the new moderate government under Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa, the Tunisian French-language daily Africa Manager reported.
Trabelsi is the CEO of Royal First Travel, a successful Tunisian travel agency. One of Trabelsi’s main goals will be rebuilding the tourism sector, which has been affected by the country’s upheavals.
According to reports, Mehdi has also faced some opposition from the Islamist Ennahda party to not appoint Trabelsi.
Unlike other countries affected by the so-called “Arab Spring,” Tunisia’s transition to democracy has been remarkably peaceful. Recently, the Ennahda party agreed to share power with liberals and secularists. A new moderate constitution is also set to be approved.
Once home to more than 100,000 Jews, Tunisia’s Jewish community now numbers between 1,000 and 2,000. Tunisian Jews mainly live in the city of Tunis and on the island of Djerba, whose ancient synagogue is a popular pilgrimage site.
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Pope Francis hosts Argentinian rabbis
(JNS.org) Pope Francis hosted 16 rabbis from his home country of Argentina on Thursday.
The meeting was organized by the Latin American Jewish Congress and the pontiff’s close friend, Rabbi Abraham Skorka of Argentina, who made headlines last fall when he spent the Jewish holiday of Sukkot with Pope Francis.
Meanwhile, a conference focusing on furthering dialogue between Catholics and Jews called “Jewish-Catholic dialogue, 50 years after ‘Nostra Aetate.’ A Latin-American perspective,” was held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome on Thursday.
The conference was organized by Skorka and presided over by Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Vatican News reported.
Since being elevated to the papacy last year, Pope Francis has made Jewish-Catholic relations a priority, meeting several times with Jewish delegations. As a Cardinal in Argentina, when he was known as Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis forged a close relationship with Argentina’s Jewish community. The pope is also scheduled to visit Israel in May.
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Polish ruling: Gas chamber chants by soccer fans not criminal
(JNS.org) A Polish municipal prosecutor ruled Wednesday that chants by Polish League soccer fans calling for Jews to be sent to gas chambers are not criminally racist.
Fans of the Lech Poznan soccer club shouted things like “move on Jews,” “your home is at Auschwitz,” and “send you to the gas (chamber)” last September in a match against Widzew Lodz. Some fans also waved flags with Nazi symbols.
Prosecutor Monika Rutkowsk ruled that the chants were not criminal because the slurs were directed at opposing players, and not at Jews. “The calls were not directed at a specific group of fans and not at Jews in particular,” said Rutkowsk, Israel National News reported.
Unlike the right to free speech in the U.S., as granted in the First Amendment, European laws frequently criminalize hate speech. But the laws are not uniformly applied. The European Court of Human Rights does not offer an accepted definition for “hate speech.” Prosecutors therefore exercise a great amount of discretion. “That assessment [on hate speech] can be subjective,” Talia Naamat, legal researcher at the Kantor Center for the Study of European Jewry in Jerusalem, told JNS.org last year.
“Unfortunately, extreme anti-Semitic chants like those in Poznan are regularly heard in many European stadiums, including in England and Holland, and the reaction of the authorities is minimal,” said Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org