The British Foreign Office informed Israel that it will not supply replacement parts and other equipment for the Sa’ar 4.5 gunship because the fleet participated in Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, Haaretz reported Monday.
After reviewing 182 licenses for arms exports to Israel, Britain decided to cancel five, according to the Israeli daily. The review was announced in April.
The embargo follows efforts by British lawmakers and human rights organizations to impose a complete arms embargo on Israel.
The British Embassy in Tel Aviv said there had been no change in policy, according to Reuters.
“We do not believe that the current situation in the Middle East would be improved by imposing an arms embargo on Israel,” the embassy said Monday in a statement. “Israel has the right to defend itself and faces real security threats.”
The statement adds: “Future decisions will take into account what has happened in the recent conflict. We do not grant export licenses where there is a clear risk that arms will be used for external aggression or internal repression.”
Demjanjuk Indicted in Germany
Convicted Nazi guard John Demjanjuk was formally charged with being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews.
The Munich State Prosecutor on Monday issued the indictment accusing Demjanjuk of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at the Sobibor death camp in Poland. No date has yet been set for a trial, but Demjanjuk’s attorney has suggested it will not take place before the end of September.
The 89-year-old retired autoworker, who spent most of the postwar period as a United States citizen, was extradited to Germany in May and is being held in a Munich prison.
According to the German Press Association, Demjanjuk was formally accused of having been a guard at Sobibor, where he allegedly drove thousands of victims into gas chambers. Among the evidence against him is an SS identification. His name is also on a 1943 list showing that he was transferred to Sobibor, the press group noted.
Earlier this month, Demjanjuk was declared medically fit to stand trial, but medical experts said he could not be on the stand longer than three hours per day, broken up into two segments.
Demjanjuk, who was born in Ukraine, has claimed that he was a Soviet prisoner of war in a German prison camp.
He reportedly was later trained to be a guard, and was transferred from an agricultural posting to Sobibor, where he stayed for seven months before being transferred to the concentration camp at Flossenbuürg. After the war he was labeled a “displaced person” and in 1952 immigrated to the United States.
Germany was able to apply for his extradition after Demjanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship for lying about his Nazi past.
Sentences of Halimi Accomplices Appealed
France’s justice minister requested an appeal of the prison terms given to gang members who abetted the murder of a French Jew.
Michèle Alliot-Marie said Monday that she asked the public prosecutor’s office to appeal some of Friday’s sentences of members of the so-called “gang of Barbarians” responsible for helping torture 23-year-old Ilan Halimi to death in 2006.
A French court ruled Halimi’s killing was partly motivated by anti-Semitism, and the leader of the Barbarians gang, Youssouf Fofana, received the maximum sentence of life in prison and 22 years without the possibility of parole.
Other gang members, however, were handed prison terms shorter than those recommended by the prosecuting attorney.
Alliot-Marie asked the city public prosecutor for a retrial of the convicted accomplices.
Jewish organizations, the Halimi family and their lawyer over the weekend criticized the lighter sentences given to Fofana’s accomplices. They planned a Monday protest.
Ruth Halimi, the victim’s mother, told the French daily Le Parisien on Sunday that the shorter sentences “didn’t serve as an example” or show that “anti-Semitism is not just a miscellaneous news item.”
However, Christophe Régnard, president of the judicial union USM, said that Alliot-Marie’s decision to appeal the Halimi verdict was “rather dangerous and worrisome for the future” because, like other leading French judges, he believed it was the result of political pressure, the French news agency AFP reported.
“Politics reasserted itself over justice,” Régnard told AFP. “I find that rather sad.”
He added that appealing a sentence because of a couple years’ difference meant that “one would have to appeal three-fourths of penal cases.”
The Jewish umbrella group CRIF congratulated Alliot-Marie’s call for an appeal.
Low-Income Senior Housing Opens in Long Beach
The Menorah Housing Foundation has opened up its newest facility for low-income seniors in Long Beach.
The City of Long Beach unveiled the 66 housing units, as well as the facility’s community rooms and outdoor decks, on June 22. The complex is located near shopping areas, public transportation, the Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, Veterans Memorial Park and the Burnett Neighborhood Library.
The Long Beach Redevelopment Agency and the Long Beach Housing Development Company worked in partnership with the Menorah Housing Foundation — an affiliate of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, which owns and manages affordable senior housing units. The foundation currently operates 16 senior housing apartment buildings throughout Los Angeles County.
For more information about possible openings or to apply for the waiting list, call the Menorah Foundation leasing number at (310) 477-1476. — Lilly Fowler, Contributing Writer
Briefs courtesy Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.