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JTA World Briefs

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By FJN Staff

Various World Briefs from our 07/13/07 issue.

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Buchanan feuds with Foxman

Patrick Buchanan assailed Abraham Foxman’s criticism of the Vatican revival of the Latin Mass. In an article published Tuesday on the conservative Web site Human Events, Buchanan challenged the Anti-Defamation League national director’s understanding of Catholicism based on the ADL statement that it was "hurtful and insulting" for Catholics to pray for the conversion of Jews.

"What is Abe talking about?" Buchanan, a conservative commentator and erstwhile presidential candidate, wrote. "Does he not know that Catholics are required to pray for the conversion of all peoples to Catholicism and Christ? Who duped Abe into thinking this requirement was suspended by Vatican II?"

Buchanan was referring to the Church council in 1965 that absolved the Jews of responsibility for the death of Jesus and enacted several liberal reforms.

He went on to say that it would be anti-Semitic not to pray for Jewish conversion if one truly believed that Jesus was the only path to heaven.

Pope Benedict XVI’s decision Saturday to permit the use of the Latin Mass, which in its liturgy prays for the conversion of the Jews, has generated significant concern among Jewish groups that Catholic-Jewish relations could be set back.

NATO sees Israel tackling Iran alone

NATO leaders reportedly told Israel that it would have to stop Iran’s nuclear program alone. Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who visited NATO headquarters in Brussels two weeks ago, came away with the impression that Western powers are unwilling to resort to pre-emptive military strikes to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Yediot Achronot reported Tuesday.

"We’re stuck in Afghanistan, and European and American troops are wallowing in the Iraqi quagmire, which is something that is going to prevent the leaders of countries in Europe and America from deciding on the use of force to destroy Iran nuclear facilities," the newspaper quoted an unnamed NATO leader as telling Lieberman.

"Therefore, at the end of the day, Israel is going to have to remove the nuclear threat posed by Iran with the means at its disposal, and it won’t be able to count on international cooperation."

Lieberman’s office had no immediate comment on the report. But interviewed on Army Radio, Lieberman said he felt the "spirit of Chamberlain" in Europe when the Iranian threat was discussed ? a reference to the British prime minister who notoriously tried to appease Adolf Hitler before World War II.

Soldiers’ relatives meet with European lawmakers

The families of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah last year met with members of the European Parliament in France. Relatives of the two soldiers, Shlomo Goldwasser and Edlad Regev, met with the parliament’s president, Hans-Gert Poettering; the chairman of the foreign affairs committe, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski; and others in Strasbourg to keep attention focused on the soldiers’ fates. Other relatives met over the weekend with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris before returning to Israel ahead of the anniversary of the soldiers’ capture, for which several public rallies are planned. Regev and Goldwasser were captured by Hezbollah fighters on July 12, 2006 in Israel near the Lebanese border. Their capture sparked the monthlong Israel-Hezbollah war carried out mostly in southern Lebanon.

New Orleans synagogue flooded again

Copper thieves flooded a 103-year-old New Orleans synagogue that became unusable after Hurricane Katrina. The thieves sliced several pipes in the Congregation Beth Israel building last week, according to the congregation president, Jackie Gothard. A real estate agent and a prospective buyer discovered the flooding on the morning of July 5. The cleanup process began Sunday. "We lost everything in the flood," Gothard told JTA. "There was nothing more to lose expect the aggravation of it all." Gothard did not believe anti-Semitism motivated the crime. She said the sanctuary was filled with four feet of water and did not know what the cleanup costs would be. Gothard said it was unclear when the thieves entered the building because the neighborhood is desolate. Most members of the congregation lost their homes in the neighborhood a half mile from the levees. They have continued to worship together at an area Reform congregation in a social hall with a mechitza.

Priest reportedly slams Jews again

A controversial Polish priest reportedly bashed Jews over a potential government compensation deal on confiscated property. Tadeusz Rydzyk, a Roman Catholic priest and the owner of Radio Maryja, which has a history of broadcasting anti-Semitic sentiments, is reported to have said in a recording obtained by the Polish magazine Wprost: "You know what this is about: Poland giving [the Jews] $65 billion. They will come to you and say, ‘Give me your coat! Take off your trousers! Give me your shoes!’ Poland has been struggling for a decade to enact a compensation law for Poles who had property taken by the Nazis and then the communists. Jews are expected to account for 20 percent of the claims. Rydzyk has been sanctioned in the past by the Vatican and the Polish Catholic Church for his behavior, which has included airing commentaries in which Jews were accused of conducting "Holocaust business." Nonetheless, Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski was among 150,000 people who attended a Mass on Sunday in honor of Radio Maryja’s 15th anniversary. Kaczynski’s office has strongly condemned Rydzyk’s reported comments.

Boycott bill before House

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on a bill condemning the proposed British boycott of Israeli academics.

The measure, to be voted on Wednesday, censures the University and College Union of the United Kingdom for its proposal to boycott Israeli academic institutions. It also urges governments and educators to reaffirm the importance of academic freedom. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) proposed the bill, which has strong bipartisan support with 62 co-sponsors.

Hillel names Russia director

Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life in Russia has named a new director. Leia Berlin, a Moscow native, began her stint as regional director for the country’s 15 Hillel communities on July 1. The post had been been vacant for nearly two years. Berlin, 34, has a background in education and conflict resolution. She moved from Moscow to Cleveland 13 years ago and holds American citizenship. Berlin and Moscow director Dmitri Maryasis say the organization has struggled in recent years from a lack of resources and vision. "Hillel is coming to a new level," said Berlin, "and it’s important to have a person with [the] vision to implement those changes."

Sarkozy pledges to help Shalits

France pledged to help Israel recover the soldier held hostage in the Gaza Strip. Relatives of Gilad Shalit, an army conscript abducted and taken to Gaza by Hamas gunmen in June 2006, met Monday for 40 minutes with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris. Shalit’s father, Noam, said Sarkozy took note of the fact that the soldier holds French nationality and is from a French family. "From the moment he assumed office, he told us he has been taking action on all relevant channels and with the relevant people," Noam Shalit told Israel Radio. "He talks about this and considers Gilad a French citizen in all respects. He compared him to a Colombian citizen with French citizenship who was kidnapped." Shalit said Sarkozy did not give the family concrete information about recovery efforts. The Shalits, who are still in Paris, also will be meeting with officials from the French Foreign Ministry.

Italy plays down Gaza peacekeeper idea

Italy played down Israeli expectations that international peacekeepers could be stationed in the Gaza Strip. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, whose country has led the UNIFIL peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon since Israel’s war with Hezbollah last year, said Monday that a similar deployment in Gaza was unlikely. "While in Lebanon we sent international troops because there was a common request from the parties, here, certainly for now, there are not the conditions to do the same thing," Prodi told reporters during a visit to Israel’s border with Gaza. Israeli officials have suggested that with Hamas in control of Gaza since it ousted the more moderate Fatah faction last month, international peacekeepers could be the only way to prevent the cramped territory from becoming a major terrorist base. Hamas has threatened to attack any foreign troops that come to Gaza.

Rice to visit Israel, P.A.

The U.S. secretary of state will hold high-level talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah during a July 16-20 trip to the region, Washington officials said over the weekend. It will be Rice’s first visit since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip last month, triggering a split with P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas’ rival Fatah faction. She is expected to push for more vigorous peace talks between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a bid to marginalize Hamas. A former Iranian deputy defense minister defected to the United States and is spilling his country’s nuclear secrets, an Israeli newspaper reported.

Yediot Achronot reported Sunday that Ali Reza Asgari, who went missing while visiting Turkey last month, has revealed to the CIA that Tehran has been pursuing a secret nuclear program. According to the report, which quoted an unnamed U.S. official, the secret Iranian program involves enriching uranium with laser and chemical enhancers. Western and Iranian officials had no immediate comment.

Prince Charles meets Israeli president

Britain’s Prince Charles hosted Israel’s acting president in London. Dalia Itzik, who was on a state visit to Britain over the weekend, met the next in line to the throne at his official residence. Itzik, who is acting president until Shimon Peres formally takes office next week, said she invited Charles to Israel next year to celebrate his 60th birthday, which coincides with Israel’s 60th birthday. "It would be a double celebration," she said.

Gibson denies plans for film

Mel Gibson denied he is making a film about a prominent Polish cleric with a history of anti-Semitism. Several days ago Father Henryk Jankowski said in an interview with Poland’s Dziennik daily that he was in talks with Gibson about a possible film. But when Gibson representative Alan Nierob was asked by the Forward newspaper whether the report was true, Nierob offered an emphatic no. "Neither my client, Mel Gibson, nor his company Icon Productions is involved in any project relating to this matter," Nierob wrote in an e-mail to the Forward. "They have no knowledge of this. "Jankowski, who came to prominence for his role spearheading strikes that ushered communism out of Poland in the 1980s, said in 1997 that there was no place for Jews in the Polish government. He also condemned the Polish government’s apology for the 1946 Kielce pogrom. Gibson’s career as an actor and director has been clouded by anti-Semitic remarks he made last year after being pulled over by police in California for drunk driving.

Polish prime minister invokes WWII

Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Poland has as much a right as Jews to invoke Nazi aggression in political discourse. "I am very surprised by the view of those who say that one is not allowed to return to the questions of history," Kaczynski told the German daily Die Welt on Friday. "The Germans return to this question," he said, and "the Jews also return to these questions, to the question of the Holocaust. Does that mean others are allowed to do it but not Poland?"

Kaczynski was defending his recent outburst at a European Union summit in June at which he said a reduction of voting rights for Poland within the E.U. decision-making apparatus was unfair because if it had not been for Germany, Poland would have a much larger population, thus granting it more votes. At least 6 million Poles died as a result of Nazi aggression, including 3 million Jews ? a greater loss of life than in any other European country during World War II except the Soviet Union. It is an unspoken rule in E.U. politics not to allude to Germany’s responsibility for World War II in an effort to maintain a high level of diplomacy and to account for the country’s efforts at peacemaking and reparations.

Moshe Decter, Jewish activist, dies

Moshe Decter, an activist who organized the first U.S. conference on Soviet Jewry in 1963, died last week at age 85.

Decter held several influential positions in organized Jewish life and campaigned tirelessly for Soviet Jewry both through his work and his articles. He was political editor of the Voice of America in the early 1950s and managing editor of the New Leader in the late 1950s, when he began writing and publishing articles about Soviet Jewry. He later served as executive secretary of the Conference on the Status of Soviet Jews and director of research at the American Jewish Congress. In the 1980s, he was editor of the Near East Report and an adviser to the Israeli Embassy in Washington. In the 1990s, he was a project director at Israel Bonds. Decter died of congestive heart failure last week in Manhattan, according to his son Joshua.

Algerian jailed as ‘Israeli spy’

Algeria jailed a journalist on charges of spying for Israel. A criminal court in Tizi Ouzou, a town outside Algiers, sentenced Sa’id Sahnoun to a 10-year prison term Saturday for passing the Mossad information about the Algerian military and local Islamist terrorist groups. Sahnoun works for several newspapers covering sub-Saharan Africa. Israeli officials had no comment on the case, though one Jerusalem source said that Algeria, being low on the Jewish state’s threat list, would provide little interest to the Mossad.

Salah seeks Libby deal

A Chicago man convicted on a Hamas-related charge is trying to capitalize on Lewis "Scooter" Libby’s commuted sentence. Mohammed Salah, 57, was convicted of obstruction of justice and is facing sentencing next week in Chicago. In the same trial Salah was cleared of racketeering charges in support of Hamas terrorist operations in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The maximum punishment for one count of obstruction is 10 years, but prosecutors are seeking a 22-year sentence based on evidence presented during trail they believe proves Salah was part of a terrorist conspiracy, reported the New York Sun. "To sentence Mr. Salah on the basis of non-relevant, state, and acquitted conduct would most assuredly result in an unreasonable sentence and promote disrespect for the law," said Salah s defense attorney, Michael Deutsch. President Bush pointed similarly to "allegations never presented to the jury" this week in his reasoning for commuting the 30-month sentence for Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convicted for obstructing justice into the investigation of the leak of the name Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent married to an Iraq war critic who had been targeted in a White House retaliation scheme. Although the president s decision sets no legal precedent, Deutsch believes Bush’s commutation to be relevant because the allegations the prosecution wants the judge to consider "were presented to a jury and he was acquitted."

ADL slams decision on Latin mass

The Anti-Defamation League called the decision to revive a Catholic prayer for the conversion of the Jews a "body blow to Catholic Jewish relations." Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, met this week in Rome with Vatican officials to press Jewish concerns over the revival of the Latin mass and possible beatification of Pope Pius XII. Though he had initially taken a softer line, on Friday Foxman slammed an expected papal order allowing the use of a 16th century prayer which beseeches God to "remove the veil from the hearts" of the Jews, "and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ." "We are extremely disappointed and deeply offended that nearly 40 years after the Vatican rightly removed insulting anti-Jewish language from the Good Friday Mass, that it would now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words by praying for Jews to be converted," Foxman said. "This is a theological setback in the religious life of Catholics and a body blow to Cahtolic-Jewish relations." Foxman also discussed the possible beatification of Pope Pius XII, the Holocaust-era pontiff accused of silence in face of the Nazi extermination of European Jewry. In an interview Thursday with JTA, Foxman said that Pius should not be granted a step towards sainthood until the Vatican’s wartime archives are released for scrutiny, though he is prepared to be patient in waiting for the archives to be opened. "If Pope Pius is worthy of beatification, that beatification will be available to him after the archives are open and possibly after the survivors are not there to witness this debate," Foxman said.

Congressional delegation to Ukraine

A congressional delegation visiting Ukraine this week met with President Viktor Yuschenko and visited the site of the Holocaust-era massacre at Babi Yar. Led by Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.), chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the delegation discussed U.S.-Ukrainian relations, Ukraine’s possible integration into NATO and the European Union, and protection of minorities in this former Soviet republic in meetings with Ukrainian officials. Yuschenko described his country’s ambition to join the EU and NATO as its "key national priority" and described Ukraine’s partnership with the United States as "strategic and increasingly important." The congressional delegation is attending the 16th session of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly in Kiev.

Russian rabbi welcomes Olympics

One of Russia’s two chief rabbis has welcomed the pick of the Russian resort of Sochi as the host city for the 2014 Winter Olympics. "The victory of Sochi is a very pleasant event," Rabbi Adolf Shayevich told the Jewish Journal Web magazine on Friday. "I think the Olympics will give an impulse to the development of sports in Russia." Shayevich was the only rabbi who was officially allowed to work at the Moscow Summer Olympics in 1980, the only time Olympic games were held in Russia. "I still remember this unforgettable feeling of the festival of sports," Shayevich said. On Thursday, Russia was awarded its second Olympics in history at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee delegates in Guatemala.

Riga gets new Holocaust memorial

The Latvian government has dedicated a new memorial to Jewish holocaust victims in the capital of Riga, according to RIA Novosti. The unveiling was held on July 4th, a day officially set aside by the Latvian government to honor the memory of those Jews lost during World War II. On that date in 1941 the occupying Nazi forces burned the Choral Synagogue in the city center, with approximately 1,000 Jews inside. The memorial, a sculpture of several people supporting a collapsing wall, is meant to symbolize the holocaust and was placed on the site of the burnt shul. During the Holocaust Latvia’s Jewish community was almost completely annihilated, primarily by a brigade drawn predominantly from existing citizens. Of the 90,000 Jews living in Latvia before the war, barely 100 survived.

LA oks Holocaust museum building

The Los Angeles City Council approved a plot of land as the permanent home of the Museum of the Holocaust. The site approved this week is in the centrally located Pan Pacific Park. Conceived by a group of Holocaust survivors, LAMH has been housed in a series of temporary quarters since its opening in 1978. The new $6-$10 million structure, expected to open its doors in late 2009, will be largely underground and adjoins the existing Martyrs Monument. More modest and less famous than the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, LAMH serves primarily as an educational venue for students from public, private and parochial schools. Currently, some 9,000 students, largely from Latino and other minority communities, visit the museum and its survivor-led tours annually, a figure that is expected to double and triple with the opening of the new building.

Maccabiah Games kick off in Rome

The 12th European Maccabiah Games began Thursday in Rome with more than 2,000 Jewish athletes from 38 countries. There are 16 different competitions this year, which marks the largest games ever. The games date back to 1929 when Jewish athletes from all over the world from local Maccabiah clubs vied for awards in Prague. After World War II and a long hiatus, the games began again in the 1960s and are held every four years.


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