July 14, 2019

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s new education minister Rafi Peretz said in a television interview that he supports gay conversion therapy and that he has used the practice to help homosexual youth.

The comments from Peretz, who was appointed to the position last month, is the second controversial statement he has made in two weeks. Last week it was revealed that Peretz during a Cabinet meeting on July 1 called intermarriage a “Second Holocaust.”

The new comments spurred calls for his resignation from politicians, educators and people who work with gay youth.

The interview was aired on Channel 12 news on Saturday night. During the interview Peretz was asked about his attitude toward LGBT people and about his opinion of so-called conversion therapy.

“I think that it is possible to convert (someone’s sexual orientation),” Peretz responded. “I can tell you that I have deep familiarity on the issue of education, and I have also done it (practiced conversion therapy).”

Peretz said that for someone who is gay, the goal is “that first of all he gets to know himself better and then he can decide.”

“The remarks by the education minister regarding the gay community are unacceptable to me and do not reflect the position of the government under my leadership,” Netanyahu said in a statement Saturday night. “I spoke this evening with Rabbi Rafi Peretz, and made it clear to him that the Israeli educational system will continue to accept all Jewish children whoever they are and without any difference based on sexual orientation.”

Peretz later attempted to clarify his comments. “During my years as an educator, I met with students who felt terribly distressed over their sexual orientation and chose to turn to professionals to change their [sexual] orientation. What I said in the interview was from my personal acquaintance with similar cases,” he said a couple hours after the interview. He also noted that he did not claim that a child must be sent for conversion therapy.

Conversion therapy is legal in Israel and is practiced by both licensed and unlicensed therapists.

Ohad Chizki, director of The Aguda – The Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel, told the Jerusalem Post that conversion therapy is a “hate crime.” He called on Netanyahu to fire Peretz.

Justice Minister Amir Ohana, who last month was appointed to his position and became the first openly gay Israeli government minister, condemned Peretz’ remarks. “The Likud government, the national-liberal movement won’t give her hand to conversion therapy. The serious studies in the world of psychology are united around the position that not only can they not ‘convert’ the sexual orientation – it’s dangerous and can cause pain and suffering to youth and even lead them to suicide,” he said.

Peretz is head of the Religious-Zionist Jewish Home Party. He served as the chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces from 2010 to 2016.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The northern Israeli city of Afula agreed to lift a ban on non-residents visiting its city parks, after being accused of trying to keep Arabs out.

The city said Sunday that the signs prohibiting non-residents from entering the parks would be removed by Tuesday, forestalling a ruling by the Nazareth District court, where a lawsuit was filed against the rule.

The lawsuit was filed by Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

Rights groups charged that the city policy set in place a month ago was designed to keep Arabs from neighboring villages out of the city.

Afula Mayor Avi Elkabetz during his recent reelection campaign in November ran on a platform of “preserving the Jewish character of Afula,” and promised that “the conquest of the municipal park must stop. We must proudly hoist Israeli flags throughout the park and play music in Hebrew,” The Times of Israel reported.

Two investigations by television news programs also found that the ban on non-residents was only enforced when the family trying to enter the park was Arab.

The municipality said it made the decision to restrict entrance to the park to reduce overcrowding.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak said his attorneys are working to dissolve a limited partnership company that he formed with Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire who was convicted in 2008 of soliciting a teenage girl to prostitution.

Barak formed the Israeli Democratic Party last month to run in the September 2019 elections, with the express purpose of defeating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Epstein was indicted last week in connection with allegations that he was involved in sex trafficking dozens of minors in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005.

Barak said in a statement posted on Facebook that as soon as he heard about the new indictment he instructed his attorneys to look into removing the company tied to Epstein from the limited partnership.

Epstein financed much of an investment of several million dollars formally made by Barak in the company Reporty Homeland Security, according to Haaretz. It’s now called Carbyne. It develops call-handling and identification capabilities for emergency response services.

Barak defended his decision to enter a business relationship with Epstein though other former partners kept their distance.

“He’d served his sentence for soliciting prostitution — the indictment didn’t say she was a minor,” he said on Saturday on Channel 12’s “Meet the Press.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has challenged Barak to explain why he was paid over $2 million by the Wexner Foundation in 2004 for what was described as a research program when Epstein was among the foundation’s trustees. Barak was not serving in office at the time. The Jewish philanthropist Leslie Wexner and Epstein were close friends and business associates at the time.

(JTA) — A man was convicted for shouting anti-Semitic epithets at French philosopher and writer Alain Finkielkraut.

The 36-year-old salesman from the easteryellow vesdtsn Alsace region was sentenced to two-months’ probation, though prosecutors requested six months.

Finkielkraut is one of the most famous intellectuals in France. In February at the end of a Yellow Vest demonstration, Yellow Vest protesters yelled “Dirty Jew,” “you’re a hater, you’re going to die, you’re going to hell,” “Dirty Zionist,” “France is ours” and “return to Tel Aviv.” Police intervened to protect Finkielkraut.

The man was taken into custody and investigated for “public insult based on origin, ethnicity, nationality, race or religion.”

Finkielkraut, 69, has expressed support in the past for the social movement. His philosophical writing mostly discusses identity-based violence, including anti-Semitism.

The Yellow Vests began in the fall as a series of protests against a hike on fuel prices but has been mired since in countless instances of violence against police and a substantial amount of anti-Semitic hate speech.

(JTA) — British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said a recent BBC program on anti-Semitism in the party had “many, many inaccuracies.”

Corbyn, quoted by the Guardian daily newspaper as saying Saturday at the Durham Miners’ Gala that he watched the program that aired Wednesday titled “Is Labour anti-Semitic,” also said the program “adopted a predetermined position on its own website before it was broadcast.”

The investigative program reported that thousands of hate speech complaints led to only 15 expulsions from the party. The findings appear to confirm allegations earlier this year that made Labour the subject of an official probe by the United Kingdom’s watchdog on racism.

He said, according to the Guardian, that every accusation of anti-Semitism against members of his party is taken seriously. “We investigate every case that comes up… It’s less than 0.1 percent of our membership that have ever been involved in any accusation.”

Labour denied that Corbyn’s team had intervened in disciplinary cases, saying the claims were made by “disaffected former officials.”

Meanwhile, a letter published Saturday in the Guardian signed by a group of Jewish writers and artists expresses their “bewilderment and disgust” with Labour’s handling of the party’s anti-Semitism crisis.

The letter – signed by Howard Jacobson, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sir Simon Schama, Neil Blair, Tracy Ann Oberman and Rabbi Julia Neuberger – claims that anti-Semitism has been “protected, sanctioned and propagated by the leadership faction.”

If the allegations of interference are correct, they mean that Corbyn’s team has compromised Labour’s internal processes and ethics committee. That would strengthen the case for external action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which began its probe of Labour earlier this year.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will deal a “crushing military blow” to Lebanon if it attacks.

His remarks Sunday at the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem come two days after the head of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror organization, Hassan Nasrallah, said that Israel could be wiped out in a war between the United States and Iran.

“Iran is able to bombard Israel with ferocity and force. When the Americans understand that this war could wipe out Israel, they will reconsider,” Nasrallah said on Friday in an interview on Hezbollah’s Al Manar television.

Nasrallah pointed to specific targets on a map of Israel, including Ben Gurion International airport, Ashdod port, water desalinization plants, petrochemical plants, and military installations.

Netanyahu returned the threat on Sunday at the beginning of the meeting, to which reporters are invited.

“Over the weekend we heard Nasrallah’s remarks on his attack plans. It should be clear that if Hezbollah dares to do some nonsense and attacks Israel, we will hit him and Lebanon with a crushing military blow,” Netanyahu said. “In contrast to Nasrallah, I do not intend to detail our plans.”

Netanyahu also said: “It is enough to recall that Nasrallah had – for years – dug terrorist tunnels, which we destroyed within days.”

Hezbollah has been named a terrorist organization by both Israel and the United States, as well as the European Union.

The threats come amid rising tensions between Iran and the United States.

(JTA) — Tax records for Jeffrey Epstein show that he gave $50,000 to New York’s UJA-Federation in 2017.

The convicted sex offender, who was arrested this week and is alleged to have sexually abused dozens of underage girls, gave the donation through his charity, Gratitude America. The charity was first linked to Epstein by the Daily Beast.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has reached out to UJA-Federation, the umbrella Jewish philanthropy organization for metropolitan New York’s Jewish community.

The gift was one of more than a dozen Epstein gave that year, according to his tax return, though according to NBC, charities Epstein claims to have given to said they never received the money. Epstein’s tax return shows that he gave to several cancer research organizations.

(JTA) — A Jewish-owned café in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia was hit with an anti-Semitic comment on a social media review days after a swastika was sprayed on her business twice in one week.

The internet review of the café in Chadstone in south-east Melbourne read: “Auschwitz has better food than this, who do you keep trying to impress me with this?”

The posted review also read: “Auschwitz also came with a pool, soccer field, hospital along with 10 other facilities for your convenience and you still cry over it.”

The owner, Aliza Shuvaly, is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, a fact which she made public after her establishment was hit twice in one week with a swastika and graffiti that denied the Holocaust. On July 8, the café was spray-painted with the words: “The Holocaust didn’t happen but it should have,” as well as a large blue swastika. Four days earlier, the graffiti read: “The Holocaust is a lie.”