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November 28, 2011

Dump Iranian minister, German foundation told

Leave a Comment / News, Worldwide /

Iran critics are calling on a German foundation to cut ties with a board of trustees member who has called for Israel’s destruction.

The Stop the Bomb campaign has called for the ouster of Mostafa Dolyata, Iran’s acting vice minister, from the board of the Schloss Neuhardenberg Foundation, a German banking group foundation.

According to the campaign, which pushes for stronger sanctions against Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions, Dolatya told an Iranian news agency in June 2010, “We hope that the prophecy of the Imam [Khomeini] regarding the downfall of this regime [Israel] will occur very soon and that we will be witnesses of it.”

Michael Spaney, a spokesman in Germany for Stop the Bomb, said in a news release that “An anti-Semite who welcomes the annihilation of Israel is simply out of place as a board member in a democratic foundation.

Spaney also said that no one who represents a regime that oppresses its own people should be acceptable for a German foundation whose founder was moved by “ethically grounded resistance against a dictatorial, unjust regime,” according to the foundation’s website.

A foundation spokesman told The Jerusalem Post that the foundation would examine whether its longstanding contacts with Iran would continue following the restructuring of the board. Jorg Kronsbein said Mostafa’s anti-Israel comment “was not known” to the foundation” and called it “entirely unacceptable.”

Dump Iranian minister, German foundation told Read More »

Israel’s ‘Unmaking’

Leave a Comment / Books, Culture, Judaism, Leisure, News /

No book review I’ve written for The Jewish Journal has prompted as much feedback as the one I wrote about “A New Voice for Israel” by Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of J Street. His argument that Israel must make uncomfortable compromises and take dire risks in order to secure peace with the Palestinian Arabs is clearly unsettling to a great many Jews, both in Israel and America.

But Ben-Ami will find a kindred spirit in Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli author (“The Accidental Empire”) and journalist who comes to some of the same conclusions in “The Unmaking of Israel” (HarperCollins: $25.99), which he describes as “a selective and personal journey through Israel’s past and present, for the purpose of presenting an argument: that Israel is unmaking itself, and must put itself back together.” Gorenberg provides a deft but penetrating and highly nuanced account of the recent history and current politics of Israel, and he offers a prescription for curing the ills that afflict the Jewish state.

“Zionism, understood from within, is the national liberation movement of the Jews,” Gorenberg begins. But the land on which a Jewish homeland was to be built was also the homeland of an Arab community. “Seen from the shores of Palestine, Zionism was a movement of foreigners coming to settle the land, to colonize it.” The struggle between these contending points of view must be put aside, he writes, if we hope to find a path to peace.

What’s at stake, according to Gorenberg, is nothing less than the character and destiny of Israel itself. “[A]t the moment of its triumph, Israel began to take itself apart,” he writes, referring to the history-changing victories of the Six-Day War. “Long-term rule of Palestinians was a retreat from the ideal of democracy. … The settlement enterprise was a multi-pronged assault on the rule of law. … [T]he government’s support of settlement has fostered the transformation of religious Zionism into a movement of the radical right.” Above all, Gorenberg insists, all of these trends “now threaten Israel’s democratic aspirations and its existence.”

The current crisis, as Gorenberg demonstrates, can be seen as an accident of history. He reminds us that the founders of Israel lived in a world where the exchange of populations was one of the tools of geopolitics, and “it should be no surprise that Zionist leaders thought about transfer.” Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled from Israel during the War of Independence, a kind of de facto population transfer. By 1967, however, an even greater number of Arabs were back under Israeli rule. Thus began the “unmaking” of Israel, as Gor-enberg puts it.

The dilemma, of course, is that Israel cannot remain both Jewish and democratic for very long if its population includes a substantial and growing number of Arabs. Then, too, Gorenberg points out that Jewish settlement in the West Bank was undertaken by what he calls a “radical religious culture” that was itself a danger to democracy.

“A new generation of settlers has come of age, as radical or more in its theologized politics, alienated from the institutions of the state that have so assiduously fostered its growth,” he writes. “The meaning of these changes is a democracy in greater danger, a state that is weaker and less capable of ending the occupation.” Indeed, he puts it even more bluntly: The radical fringe of the settler movement “barbarized Judaism” by encouraging the kind of violence that ultimately took the life of Yitzhak Rabin.

Gorenberg warns that the growing role of observant Jews in the Israeli army is itself an obstacle to peacemaking. Only 9,000 settlers were removed from Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces, but no fewer than 65,000 Jews — and possibly many more — would need to be removed from the West Bank under even the most grudging version of an Israeli withdrawal. “The army would have to confront a young generation of settlers determined not to repeat the ‘shame’ of Gaza,” he points out. “Yet since 2005, the army’s dependence on soldiers coming out of the Orthodox academies … and other yeshivot aligned with the theological right has increased.”

Gorenberg is quick to characterize himself as “a religious Jew” and “an Israeli by choice.” He issues a heartfelt and heart-rending plea for the repair of the Jewish democracy: “I write from an Israel with a divided soul,” he writes. “It is not only defined by its contradictions; it is at risk of being torn apart by them.”

“For Israel to establish itself again as a liberal democracy, it must make three changes,” he concludes. “First, it must end the settlement enterprise, end the occupation, and find a peaceful way to partition the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Second, it must divorce state and synagogue. … Third and most basically, it must graduate from being an ethnic movement to being a democratic state in which all citizens enjoy equality.”

Gorenberg does not provide us with much reason for optimism that any of these things will happen soon, or at all. But he seems to embrace the old Zionist aphorism — If you will it, it is no dream — and he sees something uniquely Jewish in the argument that he hopes to provoke in Israel and throughout the Jewish world.

“This, perhaps, is the best definition of a Jewish state,” he concludes, “the place where Jews can argue with the least inhibition, in the most public way, about what it means to be Jews.”

Israel’s ‘Unmaking’ Read More »

Harvey Weinstein plays to Hollywood’s nostalgia with ‘The Artist’

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Entertainment, Hollywood, Is Featured?, News /

The Academy should have an Oscar honor named for Harvey Weinstein, the mega-producer whose name has become synonymous with “Oscar” and who is widely credited for transforming the way campaigns are played.

Thus far this year, Weinstein’s Oscar buzz is coming in the form of the black-and-white silent-era homage, “The Artist” which screened before a group of Academy voters last Monday night, reports Michael Cieply in The New York Times.

An audience packed with awards season voters heard Mr. Weinstein tell how even his brother Bob, a partner in the Weinstein Company, thought he was crazy to risk “a lot of millions” on a black-and-white valentine to Los Angeles, and to the movies, and to an industry that was packed into the Academy’s own theater to see what the mogul behind last year’s best picture, “The King’s Speech,” had wrought.

If they gave an Oscar for best campaign moment, Mr. Weinstein could have taken his home that night.

Weinstein can sometimes be more entertaining than his movies. He has a way of upstaging his product with his popularity; his legend—some of which radiates, some of which repulses—is a presence that infuses everything he does. In some sense, Weinstein is The Artist he’s promoting. And it is precisely that egocentric approach to campaigning may prove fortuitous for “The Artist,” which, as Cieply suggests, appeals to Hollywood’s sense of itself.

Hollywood’s professional Oscar campaigners — who generally do not discuss their craft publicly, for fear of diminishing its effect — are privately buzzing about Mr. Weinstein’s bid to outmaneuver films that are bigger, broader and better positioned for the general audience. He is doing that by playing to the movie industry’s wobbly sense of self, exactly at a time when it is fretting about declining attendance, weak economics and constant pressure from other media.

In other words, pump them up with nostalgia. Reminding Oscar’s eldest elders of the way things used to be, especially at a time when those things seems to be fundamentally changing or dying out altogether, may prove an effective tactic at winning one. But the appeal of the past carries more weight than the eight-and-half-pound statue Weinstein could add to his collection.

As A.O. Scott wrote in a recent Times think piece, movies are by nature, objects of nostalgia. They are things of the past; by the time we watch the scene playing out before us, it has already happened.

[T]here is also something about cinema’s essentially modern character that makes it vulnerable to fears of obsolescence. The camera has an uncanny ability to capture the world as it is, to seize events as they happen, and also to conjure visions of the future. But by the time the image reaches the eyes of the viewer, it belongs to the past, taking on the status of something retrieved. As for those bold projections of what is to come, they have a habit of looking quaint as soon as they arrive.

Nostalgia, in other words, is built into moviegoing, which is why moviegoing itself has been, almost from the beginning, the object of nostalgia.

A spate of recent articles have explored dying mediums—the death of movies, the death of the sitcom. The general complaint being, they don’t make ‘em how they used to. Part of that is a product of the times and changes in technology, and part of it, I suspect, is a lost ingenuity in filmmaking that has become so greatly overshadowed as an artistic medium by its commercial possibilities.

For the Academy itself, it represents a confrontation with mortality. Hollywood is not what it once was (and neither are they) because the industry is older. In some ways it is better and wiser, in other ways, it begs for a youthful rediscovery—a Harvey Weinstein passion for all the sight, sound and story possibilities that made film so wondrous in the first place.

 

Harvey Weinstein plays to Hollywood’s nostalgia with ‘The Artist’ Read More »

Strange celebrity sighting: Nicolas Cage attends Chabad gala in Alaska

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Entertainment, Hollywood, Is Featured?, News /

Apparently, the Blockbuster star left early because he was under-dressed. Unfortunately, there were no black hats up for auction at Chabad of Alaska’s premiere fundraising event.

According to JointMedia News Service, which reported the event:

Unbeknownst to Cage, who showed up in typical Alaskan attire (comfortable clothing), the gala was a black tie affair. According to a photographer on site, he retreated soon after because he did not feel it was appropriate to attend such a glamorous event without being properly dressed.

That didn’t sink the party, however, which went on to raise $250,000 for the establishment of a Jewish Museum and Cultural Center in Anchorage.

Read the rest at JNS.

Strange celebrity sighting: Nicolas Cage attends Chabad gala in Alaska Read More »

Brooklyn DA claims record number of child sex-abuse charges vs. haredim

Leave a Comment / News, United States /

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office says it has charged 89 men in the borough’s haredi Orthodox communities with child sex abuse—a threefold increase over a two-year span.

However, the Forward reported that Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes declined to provide any details about the cases, making the number of arrests impossible to verify. His spokesman, Jerry Schmetterer, gave the figures to the newspaper in mid-November.

The numbers reflect the number of haredi Orthodox men charged with sexual abuse since October 2009.

In an e-mail to The Forward in late October, Schmetterer said his office was not prepared to discuss the cases at the time. “Perhaps towards the end of November,” he wrote.

In 2009, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said it had arrested 26 haredi Orthodox men in the borough for sexual abuse over the previous two years.

Hynes had come under fire for allegedly neglecting sexual abuse cases in Brooklyn’s haredi communities. Sexual abuse survivors and their advocates say that Hynes has been lax on the issue because he is afraid of political retaliation from Orthodox voters.

Ben Hirsch, president of Survivors for Justice, told The Forward, “We deserve public notice of the arrest and conviction of Orthodox sex offenders, not culturally sensitive policies that keep these cases from the public, thereby placing children in danger.”

Brooklyn DA claims record number of child sex-abuse charges vs. haredim Read More »

Rep. Barney Frank, author of Wall Street reform, to retire

Leave a Comment / News, United States /

U.S. Representative Barney Frank, a Democrat who helped to craft the landmark overhaul of financial regulations that bears his name, will not seek re-election in 2012, his office said on Monday.

Frank, 71, one of the most outspoken liberals in Congress, will hold a 1 p.m. EST news conference to discuss the decision, according to his office.

He has represented his Massachusetts district since 1981, and is known for his detailed knowledge of banking and housing regulations, as well as his acerbic wit.

“Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in it,” he told a detractor in 2009.

He was one of the first openly gay politicians to serve at a national level.

Democrats expect to retain control of Frank’s seat as they try to win back control of the House of Representatives in the November 2012 elections.

Frank has said to several aides that he did not want to die in Congress. He has indicated that he would be interested in heading up the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to media reports.

With then-Senator Christopher Dodd, Frank led a comprehensive overhaul of Wall Street regulations following the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010 with little Republican support, was one of the most ambitious legislative efforts of Obama’s first term in office.

Frank’s departure will deprive Democrats of the law’s chief defender at a time when Wall Street and Republican lawmakers are trying to dilute its impact.

Republican presidential candidates argue that it is placing new burdens on the economy while the unemployment rate is stuck at 9 percent, and have vowed to repeal the law even as regulators are still putting it into effect.

Frank has fended off efforts to weaken the law’s consumer protections, but has shown an openness to some of the banking industry’s complaints. Earlier this year, for example, he said a new crackdown on debit-card fees was too harsh.

FEW FRIENDS ON WALL STREET

Still, he will not be missed on Wall Street.

“I think they will cheer that he has taken himself out of the running. I don’t think he had many fans on the Street,” said Ken Polcari, managing director of ICAP Equities.

An advocate of affordable housing, Frank would have had a hand in efforts to reshape the government-owned mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

House Republicans have been trying to unwind the enterprises, but the administration and other policymakers have warned against removing support too quickly given the weak state of the housing market.

Representative Maxine Waters, an even more vocal critic of Wall Street, is next in line to succeed Frank as the top Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, which oversees the economy, housing finance, and the Federal Reserve and other major financial regulators.

Waters faces an ethics investigation following allegations that she broke House rules by trying in 2008 to help a bank in which her husband served on the board of directors.

Frank survived an ethics scandal in 1989 after he admitted hiring a prostitute as a personal aide. Frank apologized and said he had never used official funds.

Democrats say they expect to hold on to Frank’s seat. President Barack Obama in 2008 won 61 percent of the vote in the district, which stretches from upscale Boston suburbs to Fall River, a blue-collar fishing town.

But the district has become more conservative after it was redrawn this year, and one Republican said Frank’s retirement gives his party a better chance of victory in a state where all House seats are currently held by Democrats. The Massachusetts delegation will fall to nine from ten in the 2012 election.

“There is no obvious heir to the throne on the Democratic side. And on the Republican side Sean Bielat who challenged him in 2010 could make a very strong contender,” Republican strategist Todd Domke said.

Frank won 54 percent of the vote in 2010 against Bielat, a political unknown.

James Segel, a former aide, said Frank felt that he had accomplished what he wanted to accomplish in Congress and enjoyed it less now that Democrats do not control the House.

Frank, who publicly acknowledged his homosexuality in 1987, told Reuters in March that he would like to write a history of the gay-rights movement.

Additional reporting by Dave Clarke, Rachelle Younglai and Richard Cowan in Washington, Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston and Charles Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Bill Trott and Vicki Allen

Rep. Barney Frank, author of Wall Street reform, to retire Read More »

Can Tel Aviv become a center for fashion?

Leave a Comment / Culture, Leisure, News /

For Israeli fashionistas, last week’s inaugural Tel Aviv Fashion Week proved what they’ve known for years: Israeli fashion is creative, current and worthy of worldwide attention—and, hopefully, sales.

“I wanted to help my business and help my country,” said organizer Ofir Lev, deputy CEO of the Israel Textile and Fashion Association and a former model. “I wanted to show that there is fashion and creativity in Israel.”

Lev drew on his extensive contacts abroad to bring together foreign fashion writers and Italian star designer Roberto Cavalli in Tel Aviv for the three-day fashion fest.

While the Israeli fashion scene has been around for decades, starting with Lea Gottlieb and her Gottex swimwear empire, it has been many years since there was any kind of public fashion extravaganza.

[SLIDESHOW: Fashion Week in Tel Aviv]

In the 1970s, a fashion week was held twice a year at the Tel Aviv Hilton, recalls designer Gideon Oberson, who is also known for his swimsuits, and buyers came from the United States and Europe. But the Israeli manufacturing industry then was quite different, with at least a dozen fashion companies manufacturing entire collections for export.

“Now we don’t have companies doing fashion, but we have solo designers, at least four or five talented ones emerging each year,” Oberson said. “I think this fashion week was created to offer information, to create a bit of a hubbub and make some noise.”

And, of course, to generate orders and positive media coverage. But does Tel Aviv have any chance of becoming a major stop on the fashion circuit?

Lev says he’s already planning another Fashion Week for next April. He’s intent on getting Israeli-American Elie Tahari as well as Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Italian designer Miuccia Prada and fashion luxury house Dolce & Gabbana on board. Everyone is just “two phone calls away,” Lev says.

The challenge is to get everyone to Israel, and the country’s reputation as a dangerous place—albeit undeserved—makes it an uphill fight.

“We have to battle with a Wild West existence,” said designer Dorit Frankfurt, who heads a well-established Israeli label that exports overseas.

Frankfurt, who has manufactured her collection since 1983 at her own factory in Tel Aviv, showcased her spring collection during Fashion Week.

For Sasson Kedem, a creator of artsy, architecturally styled pieces for women who also served as a mentor on the one season of “Project Runway Israel,” said Tel Aviv Fashion Week—referred to here as TLV FW, in Fashion TV style—was an opportunity to show the world that “we’re not just about bombs.”

“We’re very clever,” Kedem said, referring to his fellow design colleagues. “But we are different because of this place. We have passion, and we have to grab our opportunities because no one can take our inspiration from us.”

Lev and his partner Motty Reif, a producer known for Beverly Hills Fashion Week, say Israel’s security situation is part of what encourages Israeli fashion creativity.

“It’s not an easy life here, it pushes us to be very creative, makes us think differently and improvise,” Lev said. “We’re brave because of the situation we live in.”

Israeli designer Dorit Bar Or, center, acknowledging applause with models at the close of her show at Tel Aviv Fashion Week, Nov. 21, 2011. Photo by Meir Partush/Flash 90

A handful of well-known Israelis already are established in the fashion world, including Alber Elbaz from the Parisian house of Lanvin and designer to the stars Yigal Azrouel.

Well-known Israeli designer Ronen Chen, who exports his women’s collection to the United States and Europe, was conspicuous in his absence from Fashion Week. He said the timing wasn’t good—he’s already working on next winter, and the shows focused on spring 2012—and he acknowledged a certain amount of ambivalence regarding the concept.

“Here in Israel, we don’t do shows in order to get orders—there’s just a link missing,” he said. “Department store buyers aren’t going to come here to order our clothes because we don’t have a long enough track record, we don’t have the standards necessary. I just didn’t know if it was worthwhile.”

Designers had to spend some $7,000 each on runway shows, and some of the younger designers split the costs, with each sharing a half-hour show with one or two others. Lev estimated that the week cost about $2 million, including costs for flying in Cavalli and the fashion writers, and putting them up at Tel Aviv hotels. He did snare some sponsorship, including from Maybelline USA and several Israeli companies, such as the women’s magazine HaIsha and retailer Renuar.

Still, it wasn’t easy. The city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa did not offer any financial assistance, except for free space at HaTachana, the recently refurbished Ottoman-era train station in Jaffa. Lev likes to compare Israel to Denmark, a similarly sized country that sponsors a 2 million euro fashion week each year.

“The growth of the Israeli design industry was 8 percent last year; that’s something,” he says. “That’s a lot and I want to show it off.”

Lisa Armstrong, a journalist for the British Telegraph, wrote about Israeli soap star and designer Dorit Bar Or, the designer of Pas Pour Toi.

“Israeli editors declared the local flavour of her collection a bit parochial,” Armstrong wrote. “To outsiders, it was exotic: entirely black (despite the enviable climate, they’re not exactly embracing The New Colour), with impeccably executed gold embroidery, a lot drawn from Arab designs—and gorgeous gold earrings in the shape of leaves that curved up the lobes.”

That’s the idea, says Kedem: Israel is not Paris, but Israeli designers excel at “translating the land.”

“You see the Mediterranean in our clothing,” he said. “We do intimate clothing that offers the feel of our country.”

Can Tel Aviv become a center for fashion? Read More »

[UPDATE] Sound of blast reported in Iran’s Isfahan City, home to key nuclear facility

Leave a Comment / News, Worldwide /

The sound of an apparent explosion was heard from Iran’s Isfahan city on Monday afternoon, the head of the judiciary in the province said, but the province’s deputy governor denied that there had been a big blast.

“In the afternoon, there was a noise like an explosion, but we don’t have any information from security forces on the source of the noise,” provincial judiciary head Gholamreza Ansari was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.

However, Mehr news agency quoted Deputy Governor Mohammad Mehdi Ismaili as saying: “So far no report of a major explosion has been heard from any government body in Isfahan.”

State run Press TV, also citing Ismaili, said the report of an explosion was “completely baseless and fabricated.”

An important Iranian nuclear facility involved in processing uranium is located near Isfahan city, although Iranian media reports of the incident did not refer to it.

International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Gill Tudor said the U.N. watchdog was aware of the media reports but had no further information.

Iranian media provided contradictory information about the incident, which came less that three weeks after a massive explosion at a military base near Tehran that killed more than a dozen members of the Revolutionary Guard including the head of its missile forces.

The Fars news agency reported a large blast in the province but later removed the report from its website. Fars was not immediately available to comment on the withdrawn report.

The Mehr news agency cited other Iranian news media, which it did not identify, as reporting that a blast had taken place at a petrol station at a town near Isfahan city.

Several residents of the city contacted by Reuters by telephone said they heard nothing.

On November 12, Iran said a massive explosion at a military base 45 km west of Tehran killed 17 Revolutionary Guards, including the head of the elite force’s missile program. Iran said that explosion, which could be heard as far away as the capital, was caused by an accident while weapons were being moved.

Monday’s report of the apparent blast near Isfahan was the lead story on evening TV news broadcasts in Israel, although these did not include comment from Israeli officials or provide details beyond those given by Iranian agencies. An Israeli military spokeswoman reached by telephone declined to comment.

Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization operates several nuclear facilities east of Isfahan, according to the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a leading Washington-based think tank.

They include the Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF), which began operating in 2006 and is able to produce uranium hexafluoride gas, the feed material that Iran uses to make refined uranium at its Natanz nuclear enrichment site.

“These things are well protected, some of them underground. Basically they have stocked all the raw material for quite some time. I think most of the material is stored in Isfahan,” said Olli Heinonen, former head of IAEA safeguards inspections worldwide and now a senior fellow at Harvard University.

Israel and the West are concerned about Iranian processing of uranium, because they believe that it could be used to make a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.

Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Writing by Peter Graff and Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Jon Boyle

[UPDATE] Sound of blast reported in Iran’s Isfahan City, home to key nuclear facility Read More »

Thousands of Chabad emissaries gather for Brooklyn banquet

Leave a Comment / News, United States /

Thousands of emissaries from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement gathered for their annual banquet in Brooklyn.

The nearly all-male crowd of about 4,500 at Sunday night’s gala dinner included nearly 4,000 Chabad emissaries from around the world, according to chabad.org. The event was hosted at a massive port facility building in the Red Hook neighborhood.

Guest speaker Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s chief rabbi, talked about the influence of the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, on his own life. Sacks credited meeting Schneerson with inspiring his own rabbinic career.

He called Schneerson “one of the greatest Jewish leaders not just of our time but of all time.”

“Throughout Jewish history there were great leaders, but I know of no precedent for one who transformed visibly and substantively every single Jewish community in the world, including many parts of the world that never had a Jewish community before,” Sacks said.

The banquet is a highlight of the annual international Chabad emissaries conference that brings the far-flung representatives back to the Chasidic movement’s home base in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.

The banquet’s signature roll call of all the locations served by emissaries highlighted the diverse locations on all six regularly inhabited continents where the Chabad movement has a presence—from Bolivia to Laos to the Congo.

The movement’s female emissaries—spouses of the male emissaries—had a separate conference in January.

Thousands of Chabad emissaries gather for Brooklyn banquet Read More »

Netanyahu considering releasing frozen PA funds

Leave a Comment / Israel, News /

UPDATE: Israel releases PA funds

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Knesset committee that he could release frozen Palestinian Authority (PA) funds soon.

Netanyahu reportedly told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Nov. 28 that he is reconsidering holding $100 million in Palestinian tax revenues collected by Israel since the Palestinians have halted their bid to be accepted into international organizations.

Israel has been withholding the tax payments collected on the Palestinians’ behalf since the Palestinians were accepted as a full member of UNESCO, the United Nations scientific and cultural agency. It has continued to withhold them over Fatah-Hamas unity talks.

On Nov. 27, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said that Israel’s suspension of transferring the tax revenue has had a “devastating impact” on the Palestinian economy. He told the Associated Press that he will be unable to pay the salaries of tens of thousands of civil servants.

A Netanyahu aide told the Israeli daily Haaretz that Israel does not want to bring about the collapse of the PA, one reason the prime minister is considering releasing the funds.

Meanwhile, May 4 has been set as the date for general Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza, according to reports. PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced the date on Nov. 28 during a meeting in Vienna.

Netanyahu considering releasing frozen PA funds Read More »