Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff is fighting libel charges filed by an alleged war criminal in Hungary. The case, being heard in a Budapest courtroom, began Oct. 8 and is scheduled to continue through a final hearing Dec. 16. It is likely the first time that a man under investigation for mass murder has sued his accusers, Zuroff told JTA.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, met by cheering crowds in Lebanon, said his country and Israel\’s northern neighbor \”endorse a bitter struggle against Zionist aggression.\” Ahmadinejad arrived in Lebanon on Wednesday and immediately met with Lebanese President Michael Suleiman at the presidential palace. During a joint news conference, Ahmadinejad said he felt \”as though I am at home, in my homeland among my brothers.\”
A Jewish center in central Russia was vandalized for the second time in a week. Anti-Semitic pictures and epithets were found Tuesday painted on the walls of the center in Barnaul, Radio Free Europe reported. Similar graffiti had been found Oct. 7 on the building, which opened in January 2008. Police are using fingerprints taken from the center\’s walls in their investigation.
A British Jewish author won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction for a comic book about what it means to be Jewish today. Howard Jacobson, who was shortlisted for the prize this year for the first time, was named the winner of the $80,000 prize Tuesday night for \”The Finkler Question.\” The book is about \”love, loss and male friendship, and explores what it means to be Jewish today,\” according to a news release from the prize committee.
Two Israeli Arabs who sailed with a flotilla of ships that attempted to break Israel\’s Gaza blockade ignored a subpoena to appear before the Israeli commission probing the incident.
Argentina\’s economics minister apologized for using Holocaust imagery in a complaint against two journalists. Amado Boudou reportedly said he used an \”out-of-place metaphor\” earlier this month in comparing two journalists critical of his administration with \”those who were in charge of cleaning gas chambers during the Holocaust,\” the Buenos Aires Herald reported.
A coalition of Jewish organizations in California is waging a campaign against a ballot proposition they say would hurt efforts to wean the United States off foreign oil. Proposition 23 effectively would repeal the Global Warming Solutions Act, a California law that established a timetable to bring the state in line with environmental standards set in the Kyoto Protocol. While the United States is not party to that treaty, California has sought to go beyond U.S. requirements and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020.
The original documents of the Nuremberg Laws were placed on display at the National Archives in Washington.
The government of Israel and a North American foundation are partnering on a literacy program for Israeli preschoolers.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\’s Cabinet will take up a loyalty oath requiring new citizens to swear allegiance to \”the State of Israel — a Jewish and democratic state.\”
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