At least 2 killed in hostage crisis at kosher grocery in Paris
(JNS.org) While the French operation to apprehend the Islamist terrorists behind Wednesday’s deadly shooting at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper continues, at least two people have been killed Friday in a developing hostage crisis at a kosher grocery store in the Porte de Vincennes neighborhood of eastern Paris, where an Islamist gunman took five people hostage.
Reports indicate that the gunman at the kosher grocery, who is armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, is refusing to set his hostages free until security forces end their siege of fugitive brothers Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, the suspected Charlie Hebdo shooters. The Kouachi brothers have taken a hostage of their own amid their standoff with the police.
*
American yeshiva student stabbed in Jerusalem
(JNS.org) A yeshiva student from Brooklyn was stabbed with a screwdriver on Thursday while he was on his way to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
The victim, Joshua Fishman, was visiting Jerusalem’s Old City for his 21st birthday, the New York Daily News reported. Following the attack, which took place near the Damascus Gate, police began canvassing the area in search of the perpetrator, who as of Friday was still at large.
First responders who were dispatched to the scene said Fishman remained fully conscious and was taken to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment. “When we arrived at the Damascus Gate, we were led to the youngster, whose upper torso had been lacerated by a sharp object,” said Magen David Adom paramedic Rafael Herbst, Israel Hayom reported.
According to Herbst, Fishman recalled the moments before the attack, saying he had been walking in Jerusalem’s Old City when he suddenly felt a strong jolt in his back. Hospital officials said he sustained moderate wounds and was operated on after undergoing several scans.
*
El-Sisi becomes first Egyptian president to attend Christmas mass
(JNS.org) Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has become the first holder of his office to ever attend a Christmas mass.
El-Sisi was present at the Christmas mass at Cairo’s Saint Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, where he visited with Coptic Pope Tawadros II and gave a brief speech, Al-Ahram reported.
Unlike Christians in the West, Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7 due to their use of the older Julian calendar.
Saint Mark’s Cathedral, which serves as the seat of the Coptic papacy and the largest church in the Middle East, was the site of an unprecedented Islamic mob attack in April 2013 under then-president Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member.
El-Sisi has embarked on an ambitious plan for a “revolution” in Islam, in order to reform the faith that he says has made the Muslim world a source of “destruction” that is “making enemies of the whole world.”
“So 1.6 billion people [in the Muslim world)] will kill the entire world of 7 billion? That’s impossible… We need a religious revolution,” El-Sisi said during a Jan. 1 speech at Al-Azhar University, The Associated Press reported.
El-Sisi’s vision includes purging Islam of extremist intolerance and violence, elements that terror groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State use as recruitment tools.
*
Joan Peters, TV producer and acclaimed author on Arab-Israeli conflict, dies at 76
(JNS.org) Joan Peters, a former CBS news producer and a renowned author on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict, died Jan. 6 at age 76.
Peters was best known for her 1984 book on pre-state Israel, From Time Immemorial, in which she argued that a large fraction of the Arabs of British Mandatory Palestine were not indigenous to the land, but rather arrived through waves of immigration from the 19th century onwards.
At the time of its publication, Peters’s book drew widespread acclaim and sparked a lengthy debate on the demographics of pre-1948 Israel that continues until this day.
“Joan was a force of nature, passionately devoted to Israel and the Jewish people,” Andrea Levin, executive director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), told JNS.org. “Her landmark book, From Time Immemorial, upended conventional wisdom about the Palestinian Arabs, documenting the fact that many were new arrivals—not ancient inhabitants—attracted by British and Zionist economic development during the Palestine Mandate.”
“[Peters] was a beloved friend and we were enormously proud to count her a member of CAMERA’s Chicago Advisory Board,” added Levin.
*
Rand Paul launches Senate bill to defund Palestinian Authority over ICC bid
(JNS.org) U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has introduced legislation calling on the U.S. government to defund the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The bill, titled “Defend Israel by Defunding Palestinian Foreign Aid Act of 2015,” calls on an immediate halt on all funding to the PA until the PA withdraws its request to join the International Criminal Court (ICC)—a request that was approved by the U.N. on Wednesday, allowing the PA to join the court on April 1.
In addition to the PA’s efforts to join the ICC and intent to bring war crimes charges against Israel, other reasons to defund the PA are outlined in Paul’s bill, including the fact that the PA last year entered into a unity government with Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction and declares that ”there is no solution to the Palestinian question except by Jihad.”
The bill also notes that the U.S. gives more than $400 million to the PA annually, despite the fact that Section 7041(i)(2) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2015 (division J of Public Law 133-235) limits “assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it seeks to join the International Criminal Court.”
“It is up to the new Republican-led Congress to move on its own so that the President does not once again circumvent clear funding restrictions. We are currently sending roughly $400 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian Authority,” Sen. Paul said about the bill.
“Certainly groups that threaten Israel cannot be allies of the U.S. I will continue to do everything in my power to make sure this President and this Congress stop treating Israel’s enemies as American allies,” he added.
*
Charlie Hebdo shooting leads to Jewish condemnations of Islamist terror, self-censorship
(JNS.org) Global Jewish leaders are weighing in on Wednesday’s shooting at the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in which at least 12 people (including Jewish cartoonist Georges Wolinski) were killed, condemning both Islamist terrorism and the mainstream media’s self-censorship of Charlie Hebdo cartoons that reportedly motivated the attack.
Roger Cukierman, president of the French-Jewish umbrella group CRIF and a vice president of the World Jewish Congress, called the shooting a “despicable crime,” adding that “this attack requires a strong and determined response not just by France, but by the European Union as a whole… Islamist terrorism is the main threat to our security and well-being today, and it must be fought vigorously everywhere, because it is a poison for our societies.”
World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder said, “We must not be intimidated by their (Islamists’) campaign [of terrorism] and must uphold and defend our Western values, including that of freedom of expression.”
A letter to the editorial team of Charlie Hebdo by the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s French president, Richard Odier, and its director of international relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, called Wednesday a “black day for freedom of expression, tolerance, and respect in France as the very values of the republic are under attack.”
“Jihadi fanaticism and terrorism are the same reality for its victims, whether in France, Israel, or beyond,” stated the letter.
Anti-Defamation League National President Abraham Foxman said, “Radical Islamist terrorists targeted a French symbol of press freedom. While we have criticized Charlie Hebdo’s insulting caricatures in the past, terrorism is never justified and freedom of the press must be protected.”
The American Jewish Committee (AJC), meanwhile, criticized “the decision by key media outlets in Great Britain and the United States—such as the London Daily Telegraph, the New York Times, CNN, and NBC—to omit or blur the Charlie Hebdo cartoon images that, according to confirmed reports, motivated the reprehensible attack on the paper’s offices that killed 12 people.”
“Through this act of self-censorship, these news organizations are depriving the public of its right to know exactly what Charlie Hebdo had done to arouse the ire of the jihadists,” AJC Executive Director David Harris said. “Keeping this information from the public not only betrays the canons of free journalism, but also furthers the goal of the killers and their sympathizers: to create an atmosphere of fear where freedom of expression is limited and make Islam, alone among all other world religions and secular ideologies, immune from public criticism.”
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOS) linked the Paris attack to the Palestinian issue.
“The ZOA again urges that all nations put an end to all rewards for Muslim extremism and fanaticism,” ZOA said in its statement on Charlie Hebdo. “Every nation in the U.N. should vote against Palestinian Arab demands—for a Palestinian Arab Hamas-Fatah terror state that throws 700,000 Jews out of their homes in eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. Every nation must vote against granting control of the Jewish Old City and Jewish Western Wall and Jewish Temple Mount to the Palestinian Arabs as they demanded to the U.N.”
*
Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman