November 10, 2019

(JTA) — Stickers shaped like yellow stars that Nazis made Jews wear during the Holocaust were placed on multiple Jewish sites in Denmark and Sweden on the Kristallnacht pogroms’ anniversary.

In Denmark, the stickers were found on Saturday on the mailbox of Ella and Henrik Chievitz, a Jewish couple from Silkeborg, a town located 150 miles west of Copenhagen, on the home of another Jewish family in the Copenhagen area and on the Jewish cemetery of Randers, a town located some 30 miles north of Silkeborg, according to Rabbi Yitzi Loewenthal of Copenhagen.

In Sweden, the same stickers were found at the Bajit Jewish café near the Adat Jeshurun synagogue and also on the Great Synagogue of Stockholm.

Jewish buildings in Helsingborg, Sweden, where a Jewish woman was stabbed and severely injured earlier this year, and Norrkoping also received the stickers on Saturday, the 81st anniversary of the pogroms in Germany and Austria, which marked the beginning of wide-scale violence by Nazis against Jews.

Authorities in Sweden and Denmark are treating the stickers as anti-Semitic hate speech, according to Lowenthal and Aron Verstandig, president of the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities.

“It is no longer possible for anybody, Jew or non-Jew alike, to be shocked by the callous reminders unleashed against our communities in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe this past Shabbat that antisemitism is alive and well, and right at our doorsteps,” Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, wrote in a statement. He called for “deliberate and targeted action.”

(JTA) — A French former model and actress has accused director Roman Polanski of raping her when she was a teenager.

Valentine Monnier told Le Parisien newspaper in an article published on Friday that the alleged rape happened in 1975 at Polanski’s chalet in Gstaad. She was 18 at the time. She called the alleged rape “extremely violent.”

Two women who Monnier told about the alleged rape at the time that it occurred, who also were staying at the chalet, confirmed her story to the newspaper.

Monnier said she decided to speak out about the alleged rape due to the release of Polanski’s latest film, “An Officer and a Spy,” about the wrongfully convicted French army officer Alfred Dreyfus. She said she contacted the Los Angeles police about the attack in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Polanski’s attorney on Sunday told the French news agency AFP that the director may sue the newspaper for publishing the accusations.

Polanski, 86, pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with Samantha Geimer when she was 13. In 1978, he fled to Europe rather than face a possible jail sentence. Polanski has since lived outside of the United States and avoided extradition to California. Other women have accused him of rape or other sexual abuse over the years.

Raised in Poland, Polanski survived Krakow’s Jewish ghetto as a child and, after launching his film career in Poland after the war, moved to the United States in 1968.

(JTA) — The Virginia House of Delegates will have its first female and first Jewish speaker.

The current minority leader, Democrat Eileen Filler-Corn, 55, of Fairfax County, Virginia, was chosen as speaker by the House’s incoming Democrats on Saturday. She has served in the state General Assembly since 2010.

She said in a statement that she is “humbled and honored” to have been chosen speaker by her colleagues.

“The firsts are not lost one me – the first woman and the first Jewish person elected Speaker-designee in our 400-year legislative history – but it doesn’t define me. When I joined this body less than 10 years ago, I was the only mom serving with school-aged kids. We have come so far since then. We have the most diverse House Caucus in our history, which includes cultural, gender and geographic diversity. It also means a diversity of experience and perspectives on issues that affect Virginians, in all regions,” she said in the statement.

Democrats won a majority in the Virginia State house on Tuesday. It is the first time in 20 years that Democrats will be the majority, The Associated Press reported.

Filler-Corn is on the board of directors of the Washington region’s American Jewish Committee. Until Saturday she had been serving as leader of the Virginia House Democratic Caucus.

(JTA) — Jordan reclaimed two pieces of land leased by Israel as part of the 1994 peace agreement.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II announced Sunday that Jordan would “impose our full sovereignty on every inch” of the properties known in Jordan as Ghumar and Al-Baqoura, and in Israel as Tzofar and Naharaim, also known as the “Isle of Peace.”

Thousands of Israelis visited Naharaim and its peace park on Saturday for a final look before Israeli troops closed off the territory. Reports said that Jordan would allow farmers to harvest what they planted in Tzofar before completely closing it off.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi agreed in talks this month with Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat only to offer undisclosed financial compensation to farmers forced to relinquish their fields, Channel 13 reported Thursday.

In the leasing agreement that was part of the peace deal, Israeli kibbutzim and towns were allowed to keep about 1,100 acres in Tzofar and Naharaim that belong to Jordan in exchange for arid lands belonging to Israel in the Aravah desert. But the agreement said the deal would be reviewed in 25 years’ time.

Last year, amid a wave of anti-Israeli sentiment in Jordan, the kingdom announced it did not wish to extend the deal, spelling heavy losses to the affected growers. The deal expired Sunday.

The head of the Israeli delegation for negotiations with Jordan said result was “a strained relationship with unresolved issues, but overall a success.”

Elyakim Rubinstein, a former deputy president of the Israeli Supreme Court, who led talks for late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, spoke about the accord last week at an event in Odessa, Ukraine, organized by the Limmud FSU Jewish learning group.

In addition to the land swap issue, there is “coldness and reluctance” in some areas of relations between the two countries, Rubinstein said. “But there’s tight cooperation on security with a country that has a 300-mile border with Israel. Strategically, that’s a huge success.”

(JTA) — Woody Allen has ended his lawsuit against Amazon for killing a $68 million movie deal.

Allen and Amazon notified the federal court in Manhattan late on Friday night that the lawsuit would be voluntarily dismissed. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, Deadline Hollywood reported.

Amazon backed out of the four-movie deal and refused to release the Jewish Oscar-winning director’s film “A Rainy Day in New York,” in a move connected to Allen’s comments on the #MeToo movement, after allegations resurfaced of a 1992 claim by Allen’s daughter Dylan Farrow of sexual abuse, claims that he has denied.

Allen filed the lawsuit in February.

“Rainy Day” was released to international audiences in late September, including Europe, Latin America and Asia, and has cleared nearly $11 million at the box office, the Hollywood Reporter reported.

Actress Rebecca Hall announced she would donate her salary on the film to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund and Timothée Chalamet is donating his earnings to RAINN, Time’s Up and the LGBT Center in New York.

(JTA) — Greece will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, its prime minister announced.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made the announcement on Friday during a meeting at his office with President of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece David Saltiel, and the head of the Greek Delegation to the IHRA, Dr. Efstathios Lianos Liantis, the Ekathimerini newspaper reported.

Mitsotakis assigned the country’s vice president, Panagiotis Pikrammenos, oversight of the project as well as coordinating and supervising the integration of the IHRA definitions into domestic legislation and education.

Liantis is a founding member of the Holocaust Museum of Greece. In April he was appointed Greece’s Special Envoy on Combatting Anti-Semitism and Preserving the Memory of the Holocaust.

The IHRA working definition offers a comprehensive description of anti-Semitism in its various forms, including hatred and discrimination against Jews, Holocaust denial and, sometimes controversially, the way anti-Semitism relates to the ways criticism of Israel is expressed.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — Argentina has asked Azerbaijan to arrest a high-level Iranian adviser to the country’s supreme leader in connection with the bombing in 1994 of the Buenos Aires AMIA Jewish center

Alí Akbar Velayati was scheduled to attend the Second Summit of religious world leaders in the Azerbaijani capital Baku, Nov. 14-15.

Velayati, who was Iran’s foreign minister at the time of the terrorist attack and has been implicated in ordering the bombing, is now an adviser on international affairs to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Under existing Argentine law, an accused person must have the opportunity to defend himself before a judge. Since the Iranians accused in the attack, many from the upper political echelons, have not set foot on Argentine soil, it has been impossible to move the judicial process forward.

The Argentine Foreign Minister summoned the ambassador of Azerbaijan in Buenos Aires on Friday and expressed the “deep concern” of Argentina’s government about Velayati’s presence in Baku and asked for Azerbaijan’s cooperation “in order to carry out the detention for extradition purposes.”

Iran also is believed to be behind the 1992 car bombing that destroyed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 and injuring 242.

Iranians have been on Interpol’s most wanted list since 2007 in connection with the bombing. They include Mohsen Rabbani, a mullah and former cultural attaché who did not travel to Colombia in 2016 after political pressure to prevent his official government visit. Rabbani is believed to be a leading figure in spreading radical Islam in Latin America.

In 2016, ahead of another Velayati trip, Argentina made requests for his arrest to Singapore and Malaysia but was not successful. Two years later, another unsuccessful request was made to Russia

(JTA) — The soccer match between the national teams of Argentina and Uruguay scheduled to be held later this month in Israel is under attack by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Global soccer stars Lionel Messi from Argentina and Luis Suarez from Uruguay are in the confirmed teams to participate in the friendly match in Tel Aviv on Nov. 18. Both strikers play together on the Barcelona team in Spain’s La Liga professional soccer league.

Over the weekend, protesters demonstrated in front of the Barcelona training camp calling on the stars to cancel the sold-out match in Israel.

One year ago, a BDS campaign led to the cancellation of a match between the national teams of Argentina and Israel scheduled to be played in Jerusalem.

The official Twitter account of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, or PACBI, posted photos of the demonstrators in Barcelona, tweeting that “Reports confirm the players got the message loud and clear at Barcelona training ground.

“Israel uses the prestige of championship teams like Argentina and Uruguay and star players Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez to sports-wash its regime of oppression, apartheid and occupation. We’ve stopped this before. We can stop it again” the BDS movement said in a statement.

Global soccer star Lionel Messi previously visited Israel in 2013 with members of FC Barcelona. He has won the FIFA Ballon D’Or prize for the best soccer player in the world five times and often is considered one of the greatest players of all time.

(JTA) — A teenager was arrested in connection with a series of attacks on Jewish men in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The teen, said to be 16 and not named because he is a juvenile, turned himself in to police on Friday and was arrested, PIX11 reported.

It is not known which of the at least three incidents he was involved in.

The teen was charged with two counts of aggravated harassment, according to the report.

The incidents on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 were being investigated by the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes unit, which tweeted about the arrest.

Surveillance cameras captured each incident, in which several men jump out of the car and chase Hasidic men and boys. In one incident, the passengers punched a Hasidic man after their vehicle pinned him against a parked car. Victims also were punched in two other incidents.

On Saturday night, unidentified youths threw eggs at several Jewish buildings and at some identifiably Jewish people walking near them.

The targets included a synagogue, a girl’s school, a bus and residences, the news website Boropark24 reported.

(JTA) — More than 80 headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Denmark were overturned and vandalized with green paint.

The damage at the the Ostre Kirkegard cemetery in the town of Randers in western Denmark was reported on Saturday though it is not known when the vandalism took place. The green paint was just dashed on the headstones and did not form any words or symbols, the French news agency AFP reported.

Burials in the cemetery date back to the early 19th century.

Also on Saturday, a family in Silkeborg, Denmark, located about 28 miles from Randers, awoke to find a large sticker bearing a yellow Star of David with the word “Jude,” German for Jew, in the center stuck to their mailbox. Saturday was the end of the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, a pogrom against Jewish homes, synagogues and Jewish owned-owned businesses in Germany and Austria.

The Danish Ekstrabladet reported the incident, and photos of the mailbox circulated on Facebook.

Ella Chievitz, who is Jewish and has dual Danish and Israeli citizenship, said in a post on Facebook that she is “shocked and angry.” Her husband is Christian, but serves as chairman of the Israeli-Denmark Association.