Peru joined several Latin and South American states in recognizing a Palestinian state. “Today the government communicated to the ambassador of Palestine in Lima recognition of the Palestinian state as free and sovereign,” Peruvian Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde said Monday, according to reports. Belaunde did not specify the borders of the state endorsed by Peru.
Former U.S. Sen. George Allen, who said the denial of his Jewish roots helped bring about his ouster, is running for his old seat. Allen was set to formally announce a bid Monday to replace Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), who replaced Allen in 2006, The Washington Post reported. Allen, addressing a Chabad Lubavitch event in August, said he believed denying his Jewish past helped cost him re-election. During the 2006 campaign Allen, who lost by just 10,000 votes, heatedly denied any Jewish heritage, although research by the Forward and other Jewish media outlets made it clear that he had Jewish ancestors.
Two more flotillas will attempt to break Israel\’s blockade of Gaza, organizers said. The new convoys, organized by the Free Gaza movement and the Turkish pro-Palestinian organization IHH, will leave in the spring and have been dubbed Freedom Flotilla 2, according to reports. An official announcement will be made later this week, Haaretz reported Monday. The groups also organized the May 31 flotilla that was intercepted by Israeli naval commandos, with the ensuing violence leading to the deaths of nine Turkish activists.
Anti-Semitism around the world appears to be strengthening, despite fewer incidents in 2010, according to a new report. The Annual Report of the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism released Sunday in Jerusalem showed fewer anti-Semitic incidents from a record-setting 2009. Still, the authors of the report — the Jewish Agency Task Force on Anti-Semitism and the Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs — found that organized activity aimed at the delegitimization of Israel as a Jewish state increased in 2010. The report also said that the blurring of lines between legitimate criticism of Israel and demonizing the nation has turned into the major strategic threat to the State of Israel and to Diaspora Jewish communities. 2010 saw the continued escalation of delegitimization activity led by anti-Semitic, Palestinian and extreme left organizations, according to the report.
An Illinois court ruled Rahm Emanuel ineligible to run for mayor of Chicago. The state\’s Appellate Court in a 2-1 decision ordered that Emanuel\’s name be removed from the ballot. Opponents of the former White House chief of staff had said his two years in Washington disqualified him from running because the city\’s Board of Election Commissioners requires that a mayoral candidate live in Chicago for a year before the election, which takes place in February.
Stuart Levey, the Obama administration\’s top Iran sanctions enforcement official, is leaving. Stuart Levey, who has been a Treasury undersecretary since 2005, will leave in about a month, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Levey, who is Jewish, devised a strategy of persuading not just governments but businesses to sanction the Islamic Republic for its defiance of international pressure to make its nuclear program more transparent.
The United Nations and many countries officially commemorate the Holocaust on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. That place, where the Nazis perfected mechanized murder, has correctly become a universal symbol of the genocide of the Jewish people. But the Holocaust did not begin at Auschwitz. Rather, 70 years ago, well before the gas chambers and crematoria were designed or constructed, the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews began as the German army swept through Poland, Ukraine and Belarus on its way eastward. Mobile killing units, frequently aided by regular soldiers and local collaborators, shot them where they lived and buried their bodies in hundreds of mass graves.
A bombing at the busiest airport in Moscow that killed at least 31 and injured 130 is being called a terrorist attack by Russian officials. \”From the preliminary information we have, it was a terror attack,\” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said of Monday\’s attack on the Domodedovo Airport in a televised briefing. Medvedev also said that those responsible for the attack would be \”tracked down and punished.\” All Moscow transportation services went on high alert following the attack. Israel canceled all flights to Moscow.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.