Twelve prominent American Latina leaders are visiting Sephardic heritage sites during a mission to Israel.\n\nThe women are senior figures from major American businesses, media networks and civic organizations. They are in Israel through March 14 with Project Interchange, an educational institute of the American Jewish Committee.
A Barcelona bookshop owner was sentenced to prison for the crime of “honoring and justifying genocide.”\n\nPedro Valera, owner of the Europa bookshop, was given a term of two years, nine months for “selling and spreading in a continuous manner books that honor and justify the genocide committed by Hitler against the Jewish people and other minorities.”\n
A Knesset committee approved the advancement of a civil union bill to the floor of the Israeli parliament.\n\nThe Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee authorized the bill to advance for a second and third reading in the Knesset next week.
Israel will allow the U.N.\’s secretary-general and a top European Union official to enter the Gaza Strip from Israel.\n\nBan Ki-moon of the United Nations and Catherine Ashton, the EU\’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, will be allowed to enter Gaza through border crossings with Israel, an exception to Israel\’s current, but unwritten, policy of preventing foreign officials who visit Israel from crossing into Gaza.\n\nBoth officials are scheduled to visit the region next week.
Arnold Forster, an attorney who had a nearly 60-year career at the Anti-Defamation League, has died.\n\nForster fought against anti-Semitism and extremism, and advocated for civil rights and the State of Israel. He was 97 when he died Sunday night.\n\nIn 1938 he organized a team of lawyers to serve as the volunteer legal arm of the Anti-Defamation League. He joined the staff of ADL in 1940, and as associate national director was primarily responsible for building ADL’s law department and civil rights program. In January 1946 he was appointed general counsel, a position he held until 2003, though he retired from the ADL in 1979.
The president of Brazil, who has sparked controversy by his continued relationship with Iran, will visit Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.\n\nLuiz Inacio Lula Da Silva will be the first president from the largest Latin American country to visit Israel in an official capacity. A statement released last week by Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim indicates that the president may present a new peace initiative during his visit, scheduled for March 14-18.\n\nSince his election, Silva has tried to position Brazil as a mediator in the Middle East, having hosted Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2009. He has stated that he supports both Israel\’s right to exist and an independent Palestinian state.\n
A Brooklyn rabbi was found guilty of sexually assaulting a male teenager.\n\nA Brooklyn Supreme Court jury on Tuesday found Baruch Lebovits guilty on eight of 10 counts, the New York Daily News reported.\n\nLebovits, 59, who owns a travel agency in Borough Park, was convicted of sexually molesting the Jewish teen in 2004 and 2005. He faces up to seven years in prison.\n\nThe victim, now 22, testified last week that the rabbi assaulted hi
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