Israeli court denies petition by anti-coercion activist to be recognized as Israeli without connection to Judaism, says citizenship is solely determined by law of return.
An Arab-Israeli suspect in a series of killings and attacks in three U.S. states has been bound over for three murder trials in Michigan. A Michigan judge on Tuesday ordered Elias Abuelazam, 33, a Christian Arab from Ramla, to be tried in a Flint courtroom for a third murder. In addition to the three murder charges, Abuelazam also is facing six assault with intent to murder charges in the Flint area, as well as attempted murder charges in Toledo, Ohio. He is a suspect as well in several attacks in Leesburg, Va.
Iranian authorities have downgraded the status of the tomb of Esther and Mordechai, while an official state news agency has publicized the Purim story as a Jewish massacre of Iranians. Officials recently removed the sign that identified the mausoleum of the biblical figures in the central Iranian city of Hamadan as an official pilgrimage site. The removal of the sign signifies that its status has been downgraded, according to reports. The actions come about two weeks after a group of about 250 militant students surrounded the tomb and threatened to tear it down. Their threats were in response to alleged Israeli excavations under the Al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem.
A top Hamas leader called the Holocaust a \”lie.\” \”The lie according to which they were a victim of a holocaust and the (Jewish) people are a victim — this lie has crumbled with the holocaust of Beit Hanun, the holocaust of Al-Fakhura and the other countless holocausts … committed by the Zionist enemy,\” AFP, the French news agency, quoted Mahmoud Zahar as saying on Thursday.
The American Jewish Committee called on Israel\’s Knesset to reconsider its decision to form a parliamentary committee to investigate Israeli groups critical of the country\’s military. “The Knesset’s action today contravenes the democratic principles that are Israel’s greatest strength,” AJC Executive Director David Harris said in a statement released Wednesday. “Israel’s vibrant democracy not only can survive criticism, but it also thrives and is improved by it.” The initiative, proposed by the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, passed Wednesday by a vote of 47 to 1
Itzik Abu-Hatzera rarely attended synagogue in his native Haifa when he lived in Israel. But last December his family was among those of nearly 200 other Israelis in South Florida at a Chanukah party sponsored by the Chabad Israeli Center in Boca Raton. “In Israel you don’t need it, Jews are all around you,” says Abu-Hatzera, who moved here 10 years ago. Like Abu-Hatzera, the rabbi of the Chabad center, Naftali Hertzel, is Israeli. At the Chabad he runs with his wife, Henya, Hebrew is the lingua franca. That, rather than the specific religious components of the evening, was why Abu-Hatzera and his family came here rather than to one of many similar Chanukah events organized by American Jews in this heavily Jewish area.
Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus. Hoenlein said the meeting Monday was at the invitation of Syria and not, as had been reported originally by the Israeli media, at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. \”I went to Damascus on an important humanitarian issue to the Jewish people,\” Hoenlein told Haaretz. \”Netanyahu did not ask anything from me, and any attempt to link me to the diplomatic process with Syrian is manipulation.\”
The Chief Rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, said he would refuse to respond to a police summons for questioning on suspicion of incitement to racism. Eliyahu reportedly did not present himself to Jerusalem police on Sunday, as ordered, over a letter signed by nearly 50 municipal rabbis calling on the Jewish public not to rent or sell homes to non-Jews, specifically Arabs. The official reason given for not answering the summons was time restrictions, the Jerusalem Post reported. But Eliyahu reportedly said, according to the Jerusalem Post that he “asked whether David Grossman, Yossi Sarid and Shulamit Aloni, who demonstrated against Jewish presence in the Shimon Hatzadik (Sheikh Jarrah) neighborhood, were also summoned for questioning. Were there summonses for the heads of the Jewish National Fund, whose constitution prohibits selling apartments to non- Jews? If not, double standards are being applied here, and I don’t intend on playing into the hands of a legal system that acts in a non-egalitarian manner.”
At the beginning of Shemot, when Jacob’s offspring were enslaved, oppressed and abused, where were the people who dared to speak truth to power? Where were the consumers who demanded that Egyptian products be free from slave labor? Alas, the world didn’t work that way then. Few stood up against the mighty overlords. We praise the exceptions, like midwives Shifrah and Puah, who defy Pharaoh’s deadly order (Exodus 1:15-21). Fewer still spoke out about how Egypt’s products were made; most Egyptians did not think twice about the morality of slave or child labor. Few if any cared about how much Egypt’s military-industrial complex profited from slavery, even though this cheap source of income fed the fires of Pharaoh’s ever-expanding conquests.
The Eulogizer is a new column (soon-to-be blog) that highlights the life accomplishments of famous and not-so-famous Jews who have passed away recently. Learn about their achievements, honor their memories, and celebrate Jewish lives well lived with The Eulogizer. Write to the Eulogizer at eulogizer@jta.org. Read previous columns here. Noted Israeli Bible scholar Professor Shemaryahu Talmon, a Holocaust survivor who became a noted Israeli Bible scholar with a worldwide reputation, died Dec. 15 at 90.\n
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.