‘Aramean’ officially recognized as nationality in Israel
(JNS.org) Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Tuesday approved having “Aramean” as a nationality on Israeli identification cards, a move warmly received by Israel’s Aramean-Christian community.
In a letter written to Population Authority Chairman Amnon Ben-Ami, Sa’ar said that after receiving an appeal on the matter, he heard the recommendations of three experts from three different academic institutions, who said the Israeli Supreme Court found that “the Aramean nationality clearly exists, and has the conditions required to prove its existence, including historical heritage, religion, culture, origin and common language.”
Aramean-Christian community leader and IDF Maj. (res.) Shadi Halul called the decision “a historic change for the relations between Christians and Jews in the state of Israel,” according to Israel Hayom. He said the move pulled the rug under the feet of anti-Semites and “those who slander the Jewish people and Israel.”
“It is proof that Israel protects its citizens and the identity of its minorities, unlike all the Arab nations around us,” said Halul.
“All Christians from the 133,000 Christians who live in Israel and belong to one of the Eastern churches can now be listed as a Aramean,” noted Father Gabriel Nadaf, a proponent of Christian enlistment into the Israel Defense Forces as director of the Israeli Christians Recruitment Forum.
Israel’s economic slowdown more pronounced than initially reported
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), which several weeks ago said that the Israeli economy grew at an annualized rate of 1.7 percent during the second quarter of 2014, revised its assessment on Tuesday, saying growth in that quarter was only 1.5 percent on an annualized basis.
According to the agency, the modest growth resulted from private consumption, which experienced a 4.3-percent rise, as well as a 3.2-percent increase in government spending. These factors, the CBS said, helped Israel maintain a growth trajectory despite an economic slowdown. By comparison, the Israeli economy grew at an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the first quarter of 2014 and 2.5 percent in the last quarter of 2013.
A CBS official said that increased consumer activity—which is usually associated with the High Holidays—came early this year as a result of Operation Protective Edge, noting that private consumption recovered and even grew once the operation ended. Retailers whose revenues suffered during the Gaza campaign saw sales bounce back after the cease-fire was announced, a trend evidenced by a surge in credit card transactions in August.
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First mortar launched from Gaza into Israel since cease-fire
(JNS.org) Another mortar has been launched from Gaza into Israel, the first such attack since the cease-fire agreement that ended the latest conflict with Hamas on Aug. 26.
No injuries or damage were reported from the mortar, which landed between Eshkol and Sdot Negev, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Hamas initially denied any knowledge of the launch on Tuesday, but later informed Israel that it had arrested the perpetrators of the attack, Israeli security officials said.
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Ahead of Scottish referendum, party leader equates Israel and Islamic State.
(JNS.org) As the world awaits a decision on Scottish independence in a referendum this week, Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond gave an interview in which he compared the terrorism of the Islamic State with the actions of the state of Israel.
Salmond was speaking to the BBC about the beheading of British aid worker David Haines by the Islamic State when he stated that “the Muslim community of Scotland isn’t responsible in any shape or form for atrocities or extremism in Iraq or elsewhere.”
“I mean, just like a few weeks ago, the Jewish community of Scotland wasn’t responsible for the policies of the State of Israel,” he said.
While it is not clear whether Salmond intentionally made the comparison, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews Vivian Wineman told the London Jewish Chronicle that “any attempt to equate the actions of the democratically elected Israeli government in defending its citizens from attack with the despicable cold-blooded murder of a British aid worker by terrorists would be self-evidently absurd and vile and we cannot conceive that this was the First Minister’s intention.”
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Eilat underwater photo competition draws participants from 16 countries
(JNS.org) A group of 130 international divers participated in an underwater photography competition held in the Red Sea in Eilat from Sept. 7-13.
Organizers tried to break a world record by getting the largest-ever underwater live-stream audience on YouTube for the event.
The participants from 16 countries competed in various photography categories. Israeli diver-photographer Eyal Cohen won in the “best five photos” category, while Japanese photographer Yuzuru Masuda won in the fashion category.
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Massive 5,000-year-old stone monument unveiled in Israel
(JNS.org) A 5,000-year-old monument was revealed northwest of the Sea of Galilee in Israel. The structure is a lunar-crescent-shaped stone with a volume of nearly 500,000 cubic feet and a length of about 492 feet.
The stone dates to between 3050 B.C. and 2650 B.C., which makes it older than both the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge.
“The proposed interpretation for the site is that it constituted a prominent landmark in its natural landscape, serving to mark possession and to assert authority and rights over natural resources by a local rural or pastoral population,” Ido Wachtel, a doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has been working on the site, wrote in the summary of a presentation by the International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East.
“The estimation of working days invested in the construction [of] the site is between 35,000 days in the lower estimate [and] 50,000 in the higher,” Wachtel told Live Science. This likely means that more than 200 people needed to work for more than five months in order to construct the monument.
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Report: Turkey is largest source of fighters for Islamic State
(JNS.org) Turkey is believed to be the largest source of foreign fighters for the Islamic State terror group.
According to a report in the New York Times, more than 1,000 Turks are suspected to be fighting for Islamic State, many of them disaffected youths who are attracted to the jihadist group by its ideology as well as the money it pays its fighters, which may be up to $150 a day.
A recent Central Intelligence Agency estimate said that Islamic State has 20,000-31,500 fighters in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. has pressed Turkey to take a more active role in combating Islamic State by stopping the flow of foreign fighters who use Turkey as an entry point and by preventing Islamic State from using Turkish black markets to export its oil, a key revenue source for the terror group.
But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has resisted the calls to crack down on Islamic State, citing the fate of 49 Turks the terror group is currently holding hostage.
“There are clearly recruitment centers being set up in Ankara and elsewhere in Turkey, but the government doesn’t seem to care,” Aaron Stein, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told the New York Times.
Additionally, Turkey has refused to allow the U.S. or other allies to use Turkish airbases for attacks on Iraq or Syria, and abstained from a declaration of support for the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State that was recently signed by Arab leaders.
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Three people injured in suspected arson at Belgian synagogue
(JNS.org) Three people were injured in a suspected arson at a synagogue near Brussels, Belgium.
The fire was reported around 6:20 a.m. local time Tuesday in the suburb of Anderlecht. Three people were injured as a result of smoke inhalation, Deutsche Welle reported.
Police investigators believe that the evidence points to an arson attack, but it is unclear if the incident was anti-Semitic. “All leads are open,” a spokesman for the city prosecutor said.
The suspected arson came just days after the reopening of the Brussels Jewish Museum, which had been closed since four people were killed there on May 24 by a French-Algerian terrorist with ties to the Islamic State.
“The rapid increase in anti-Semitic acts in Belgium observed these last few months signal the urgency that there is in integrating this fight into the next governmental program,” Joel Rubinfeld, president of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, said in a statement issued after the suspected arson.
“The fight against anti-Semitism is more than ever a real national cause. It is the honor and probably future of our country,” he said.
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Mideast Christian leaders call Arab states ‘timid’ in confronting Islamic State
(JNS.org) Prominent Middle East Christian leaders say that Muslim leaders have been “timid” in their response to the massacres by the Islamic State, and urged Arab leaders to do more to defeat the terror group.
“The situation of Christians and other minorities amid the massacres and atrocities of [Islamic State] is dire and our future in the region is at stake,” Patriarch Ignace III of the Syrian Catholic Church of Antioch said at a news conference announcing a joint statement by eight Middle East Christian leaders, Reuters reported.
“The leaders of Arab countries and the Arab League have to stand up and do something,” he said.
Chaldean Catholic leader Patriarch Sako of Iraq joined the Syrian patriarch in calling on Muslim leaders to issue a fatwa against the killings of religious minorities, saying that their voice so far “has been very timid.”
Patriarch Ignace also blamed the close ties between Islam and the governments of many Arab countries for those nations’ reluctance to recognize the human rights of Christians and other minorities.
“Our Arab friends tell us they want us to stay but we have to ask them: what are you doing to stop the fanaticism of your fellow Muslims?” he said.
According to Patriarch Sako, more than 10,000 Christians have been killed in Iraq by the Islamic State jihadists and some 170,000 have been expelled from their traditional homeland in the Nineveh Plains region of Iraq.
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Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the courtesy of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman