Israelis ‘believe we have no better friend than Canada,’ Netanyahu says
(JNS.org) Upon hosting Canadian Foreign Minister Robert Nicholson in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israelis believe the Jewish state has “no better friend than Canada.”
Netanyahu cited recent instances of “international hypocrisy,” including the passage of a motion to boycott Israel by the United Kingdom’s National Union of Students “less than a year after they refused to support a boycott of ISIS (Islamic State)” as well as seeing “Turkey and Iran vote to give Hamas affiliate status” at the United Nations.
“I stress these points, Rob, because Canada stands out so clearly and so powerfully against these distortions of truth and distortions of justice, and I want to express the feeling of the people of Israel that we believe we have no better friend than Canada,” Netanyahu told Nicholson. “We value that partnership. It was exemplified last week, two weeks ago, in the vote of Canada, alongside the United States and Great Britain, in rolling back the attempt to single out Israel in the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty on nuclear weapons) votes. That is deeply appreciated here.”
Netanyahu also said that the Canadian-Israeli friendship “is a model of the partnership between two democracies, exemplary democracies.”
“Israel values the support, unstinting, unfaltering, of Canada in an international environment that is often marked by cynicism and double talk,” he said. “Canada, led by Prime Minister [Stephen] Harper, is always stalwart and tells the truth. And we think that this is a refreshing wind in an increasingly hostile environment, hostile to the truth.”
The prime minister’s statement on Israelis believing they have “no better friend than Canada”—rather than America—could be the latest indicator of sharp tension between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, who has publicly and repeatedly criticized Netanyahu’s pre-election comments in March on Palestinian statehood and Israeli Arab voters. The Obama administration has also been at odds with Netanyahu on the nuclear talks with Iran and on Israeli construction beyond the 1967 lines. Canada’s Harper, however, has consistently been an outspoken defender of Israeli policies.
U.K.’s largest student union passes motion to boycott Israel
(JNS.org) The United Kingdom’s National Union of Students (NUS), which represents millions of students at universities across that country and is the largest British association of its kind, on Tuesday passed a resolution to affiliate with the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
The resolution, titled “Solidarity with Palestine: Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions,” passed the NUS National Executive Council with 19 votes in favor, four against, and one abstention, London’s Jewish Chronicle reported.
The motion, which was put forward by the students’ union of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, was passed as an amendment to a Justice for Palestine motion that condemned Israel for its actions in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the vote had “little practical implications, since this body has already voiced anti-Israel opinions in the past.”
“Instead of expressing hatred, British students would benefit from studying history and understanding that the distance between conveying hate language and prejudice to committing despicable crimes is not that great,” Nahshon added.
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Obama awards posthumous Medals of Honor to Jewish and black WWI vets
(JNS.org) President Barack Obama on Tuesday awarded two posthumous Medals of Honor to Jewish and black World War I veterans who likely did not receive the awards due to discrimination at the time.
The medals were given to Jewish Army Sergeant William Shemin and black Army Private Henry Williams.
“No one who serves our country should ever be forgotten,” Obama said. “We are a nation, a people who remembers our heroes. We never forget their sacrifices and believe it’s never too late to say thank you. Today, America honors two of her sons who served in WWI.”
Shemin joined the army in 1917, and while serving in France in 1918 “left the cover of his platoon’s trench and crossed open space, repeatedly exposing himself to heavy machine gun and rifle fire to rescue the wounded,” according to the White House. He later took command of his platoon after all the officers and senior non-commissioned officers had become casualties.
Johnson received the Medal of Honor for his actions in Germany in 1918, when he mounted a “brave retaliation resulting in several enemy causalities” after being attacked by a German raiding party of 12 soldiers.
Shemin’s daughter, Elsie Shemin-Roth, 86, fought to get Congress to pass an exemption to award her father with the Medal of Honor. The exemption was included in last year’s $585 billion defense bill.
“This was anti-Semitism, no question about it,” Shemin-Roth said at the time of bill’s passage in late 2014, the Associated Press reported. “Now a wrong has been made right and all is forgiven.”
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Hamas kills leader of Gaza-based Islamic State supporters
(JNS.org) A local leader of the Gaza-based Salafi terror groups, who have expressed their allegiance to Islamic State, was killed by Hamas forces on Tuesday as tensions between the two terror groups continue to escalate in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian coastal enclave.
Hamas identified the slain terrorist as 27-year-old Yussef al-Hatar, a local leader of the Salafi extremists in the northern Gaza neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan, AFP reported.
According to Hamas spokesman Iyad Buzum, Hamas forces sought to arrest al-Hatar for “illegal activities,” but the terrorist fought back, firing at Hamas forces and attempting to blow himself up with a suicide vest. Hamas forces also found a number of weapons belonging to the Salafis, including “explosive belts, explosive devices, and rocket-propelled grenades.” Photos of the weapons were posted by Hamas’s Interior Ministry on its Twitter page.
Over the past month, Hamas has launched a widespread crackdown on Salafi extremists in Gaza, including arrests of several Salafi leaders and the destruction of a mosque belonging to them. As a result, the Salafis, who call themselves “Supporters of the Islamic State in Jerusalem,” have vowed to launch more attacks on Hamas. The group launched a rocket at a Hamas base in southern Gaza last month, and also claimed to have fired a rocket at Israel last week.
The pro-Islamic State Salafi terrorists argue that Hamas, which fought a 50-day war against Israel last summer, is too soft on the Jewish state and has failed to impose strict enough Islamic laws in Gaza.
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Conflicting reports emerge over purported Israeli airstrike in Lebanon
(JNS.org) Lebanese media reported on Tuesday that Israel had launched an airstrike in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley town of Brital against a Hezbollah terrorist outpost, which was later denied by both Hezbollah and its satellite TV station, Al-Manar.
According to Lebanon’s Daily Star, a Lebanese security source also denied that the airstrike took place, saying that Israeli jets only hovered over the area. The Israel Defense Forces would not comment on the purported airstrike, saying that it does not respond to foreign media reports.
Hezbollah has been engaged in heavy fighting in the struck region, on behalf of the Syrian government, against the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra terror group and other rebels.
Israel has previously carried out airstrikes against Hezbollah interests in Syria, often to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons from the Syrian and Iranian governments to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group. Earlier this year, Israel killed several top Hezbollah commanders and an Iranian general in an airstrike in the Syrian Golan Heights region.
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IDF rescinds punishment for soldier who brought ham sandwich on base
(JNS.org) The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has rescinded a punishment levied against an American-born “lone soldier” (the term for members of the IDF without parents living in Israel) for eating a ham sandwich on a military base. Ham is not kosher.
“In the bottom line, we were wrong. The IDF continues to keep kosher on the one hand, but will not pry into the sandwiches brought by soldiers on the other hand,” IDF spokesman Moti Almoz wrote on Facebook.
The lone soldier was originally punished with 11 days in a military jail. The solider, who was living with his grandmother, says that she gave him the ham sandwich and that he was unaware of the IDF’s kosher rules. After the story was reported by Israel Radio and picked up by several domestic and foreign news outlets, the IDF modified its position on the punishment.
“There are tensions in Israeli society and there are different positions and different views. The IDF has room for everyone. The punishment was canceled and the soldier will be released home just like his friends in the commanders’ course,” Almoz wrote.
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Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman.
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