JTA News Briefs

Plane Diverted over Tefillin Mistaken as Bomb

Jan. 21, 2010 — A commercial flight was diverted to Philadelphia after a Jewish passenger’s tefillin were mistaken for a bomb.

A passenger on the US Air flight Thursday from New York to Louisville mistook the religious prayer article as a bomb after the Jewish passenger had taken them out to pray, according to reports.

Tefillin consist of two boxes each on a strap of leather.

The passengers and crew were taken off the plane in Philadelphia. Fire trucks and police met the plane on the runway.

The Jewish passenger, reportedly 17, was questioned and released. No one was arrested in the incident.

IDF sets up communcations system in Haiti

JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Israel Defense Forces team in Haiti has set up a satellite-based communications system.

The $2 million system is one of the area’s main means of communications, according to a report in the Israeli business daily Globes.

The system enabled doctors at Israel’s field hospital in Port-au-Prince to conduct surgery using video conferencing with surgeons at Israeli hospitals.

Communications lines in Haiti were destroyed in the devastating earthquake on Jan. 12.

Journalists from around the world have used the system to file stories, and members of the Israeli delegation have been able to call home.

A survivor pulled from the rubble after six days also was able to call her mother using the system, according to Globes.

Chabad project vying for $1 million prize

NEW YORK (JTA) — A Chabad-initiated project is among the top finalists in a national competition that will award $1 million to a local charity.

The Friendship Circle, a Michigan-based project that helps families with children with special needs, was in fourth place this week with just over 43,000 votes in the JP Morgan Chase Bank contest. The bank is offering $5 million in prizes to charities with budgets smaller than $5 million through its Chase Community Giving Project.

The top vote earner will earn $1 million, while those in the top five will receive $100,000. Voting for the top finalists closes Friday.

The bank created a platform on which charities could create fan pages and ask for votes. Thousands of charities created pages, and the top 100 vote getters by Dec. 12 were named finalists and awarded $25,000 each. The top finalists are now competing in a second round of voting.

Though Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an organization that fights breast cancer, was started in honor of a Jewish woman, and Seeds of Peace works in Israel seeking a solution to the Palestinian-Israel conflict, the Friendship Circle is the overtly Jewish project.

Founded in 1994 by Rabbi Levi and Bassie Shemtov in West Bloomfield, Mich., the Friendship Circle now has 65 branches in the United States, Canada, Australia, France and China comprising 4,000 beneficiaries and their families, and more than 8,000 volunteers. At its annual conference in Newark, N.J., last week, Friendship Circle International announced that the program was well on track to have 100 branches operating worldwide by the end of this year.

Obama: U.S. ‘overestimated’ ability to bring Mideast peace

(JTA) — President Obama acknowledged that the Middle East peace process has not moved forward.

The U.S. leader told Time magazine in an interview published Thursday that “we overestimated our ability to persuade” the Palestinians and Israelis “to start engaging in a meaningful conversation.”

“This is as intractable a problem as you get,” he told Time’s Joe Klein.

Obama said that the Israelis, while showing a willingness to modify their policies, found it hard to make “bold gestures,” and that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had to contend with Hamas looking over his shoulder and an Arab world that is “impatient with any process.”

“I think it is absolutely true that what we did this year didn’t produce the kind of breakthrough that we wanted, and if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high,” Obama told Time.

The interview came on the first anniversary of Obama’s inauguration.

Israel wants troops on Palestinian state’s eastern border

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel wants to keep troops on the West Bank’s border with Jordan even after the formation of a Palestinian state, its prime minister said.

Benjamin Netanyahu made the statement during a news conference with foreign reporters Wednesday, just hours before the arrival in Israel of U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell. The Israeli leader said the presence was necessary to prevent weapons being smuggled into the new state and to prevent rockets from being fired at Israel.

Chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat rejected the idea Thursday during an interview on Israel Radio.

“The borders of the state of Palestine will be Jordan,” he said. “The Jordan Valley is ours, is Palestine. Why do they insist on being on our territory?”

“The Palestinian leadership will not accept the presence of a single Israeli soldier in the Palestinian territories after the end of the occupation,” Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, told the French news agency AFP. “We will not accept anything less than a completely sovereign Palestinian state on all the territories with its own borders, resources and airspace.”

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Mitchell in a meeting Thursday in Tel Aviv talked about advancing the political process with the Palestinians. Mitchell was scheduled to meet later in the day with Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Erekat also denied news reports that the Palestinian Authority had asked the United States to negotiate a final peace settlement with Israel on its behalf.

Sign returned to Auschwitz

(JTA) — The “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign stolen from the memorial at the Auschwitz death camp was returned.

Polish police returned the 16-foot metal sign from the front gate of the camp during a ceremony Thursday in Krakow.

The sign, which means “work makes you free,” was stolen Dec. 18 and recovered across the country 72 hours later.

Experts will now try to restore the sign, though it is not certain that it will be returned to its place; a copy was placed at the front gate immediately after the theft. The stolen sign had been cut into three pieces.

Five Polish men have been charged with the theft, though a Swedish neo-Nazi is suspected of ordering the crime.

There are about 450 buildings and remains of buildings at the site, including the ruins of gas chambers, as well as 80,000 pairs of shoes of victims and 3,800 suitcases.

Some 1.1 million people, including about 1 million Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz.

Gibson, Jewish reporter spar

(JTA) — Mel Gibson and a Jewish broadcaster sparred over the actor’s anti-Semitic rant in 2006.

In a recent interview, Gibson became irritated when Sam Rubin of Los Angeles television station KTLA 5 asked about the remarks Gibson made during his arrest that year on suspicion of drunken driving. A Jewish policeman had pulled over the actor.

Gibson is on a media circuit to promote a new movie.

After Gibson bristled over Rubin’s questions about the anti-Semitic comments, he asked the reporter, in an allusion to his being Jewish, “I gather you have a dog in this fight? Do you have a dog in this fight? Or are you impartial?”

The interview continued without incident after Rubin changed the direction of his questions.

Gibson reportedly became aggressive during his 2006 arrest and then said, “F*****g Jews — Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” He also reportedly asked the arresting officer if he was Jewish.

Jewish organizations condemned Gibson, who apologized for the statements.

British prince to help rebuild Mumbai Chabad

(JTA) — Britain’s Prince Michael has donated $100,000 to rebuild the Chabad House in Mumbai.

The prince in a visit to the house Wednesday was accompanied by Israeli Consul General Orna Sagiv and Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, director of the Chabad Mumbai Relief Fund. Michael made the donation on behalf of the DVK Foundation, a charity committed to victims of terror.

“I am pleased to be a part of the good that is emerging from this terrible darkness,” said the prince, a grandson of King George V. “Chabad is known globally for its spiritual and humanitarian work.”

A temporary Chabad House is in operation in Mumbai during the reconstruction of the house, one of 10 Mumbai sites that came under siege during a three-day attack that began on Nov. 26, 2008. The attack by an Islamist Pakistani group left 166 dead and hundreds injured. Among those killed at the Chabad House were the Chabad emissary and his wife.

A new Chabad emissary family will be arriving in the city soon, Berkowitz told The Hindu News.

Holocaust-denying teacher reassigned

(JTA) — A Nevada teacher who reportedly denied the Holocaust in front of her students has been reassigned to a new school.

Lori Sublette, a gym teacher at the Northwest Career and Technical Academy, was shifted from the northwest Las Vegas high school to a middle school in North Las Vegas. The school district did not give a reason for the transfer, according to reports.

Sublette had been working at home, while continuing to receive salary and benefits since the November incident, as the school district investigated. A Nevada statute from 1967 prohibits Sublette, or any teacher, from being fired for “unprofessional conduct” unless they have been cited previously for a similar offense, according to the Las Vegas Sun.

In an advocacy class that prepares students for life after high school, Sublette said during a discussion that the Nazis did not have the technology to kill millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Students reportedly told their parents about the comments. The students also quoted Sublette as saying that information on the Holocaust in history books was doctored or distorted.

Sublette apologized to one parent, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, but only for conveying her opinion in class and not for denying the Holocaust.

Netanyahu: Illegal immigration threat to Israel

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Illegal African immigration is a serious threat to Israel’s Jewish and democratic character, Benjamin Netanyahu said.

“We have become almost the only First World country that can be reached by foot from the Third World,” Netanyahu said Thursday in an address to the Manufacturers Association of Israel. “We are flooded with a surge of refugees who threaten to wash away our achievements and damage our existence as a Jewish democratic state.”

The Israeli government earlier this month announced approval for the construction of a border fence with Egypt to prevent migrant workers from illegally entering Israel.

Netanyahu said the thousands of African and other migrant workers who have infiltrated to Israel from Egypt “are causing socio-economic and cultural damage and threaten to take us back down to the level of the Third World. They take the jobs of the weakest Israelis.”

The prime minister reportedly said that the government would work to encourage employment to hire local manpower and encourage fervently Orthodox Jews, or haredim, to join the work force. Laws against hiring illegal workers also will be more stringently enforced, he said.

Netanyahu has said that Israel will remain open to war refugees.

Israeli film makes Oscar semifinals

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Israel’s entry in the Oscars has made the first cut.

“Ajami” was among nine semifinalists in the Academy Awards’ foreign-language film category announced Wednesday. Sixty-five films were entered.

The semifinalists will be winnowed to five when all Oscar nominations are announced Feb. 2.

“Ajami” paints an unsparing picture of Arab-Jewish and intra-Arab tensions in a mixed quarter of Jaffa. Its co-directors are two young Israelis, Scandar Copti, a Christian Arab, and Yaron Shani, who is Jewish.

Also named was Germany’s “The White Ribbon,” which won the 2010 Golden Globe for best foreign film. The movie by Michael Haneke is set in a rustic German village in 1914 whose seemingly placid life holds the seeds for the Nazi flowering to come.

The other semifinalists are “El Secreto de Sus Ojos,” from Argentina; “Samson and Delilah,” from Australia; “The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner,” from Bulgaria; “A Prophet,” from France; “Kelin,” from Kazakhstan; and “Winter in Wartime,” from The Netherlands, in which a Dutch boy aids a downed British pilot during World War II.

Israel Policy Forum joins up with Middle East Progress

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Israel Policy Forum has merged with Middle East Progress.

In a letter this week to its friends and supporters, IPF announced that it was “embarking on its next chapter” by becoming a part of MEP, which is a project of the liberal Washington-based think tank Center for American Progress. The move, rumored for months, became effective Jan. 1.

IPF said the new pairing would “form a strong base of American support for a comprehensive Middle East peace, including a two-state solution.”

IPF launched in 1993 with the encouragement of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as a think tank and advocacy group to back the peace process, and it forged close ties wtih the Clinton administration. It did not have such ties with the Bush administration, and in recent years other groups pushing U.S. involvement in the peace process, such as J Street, have become more prominent.

In a letter to the IPF community, Center for American Progress senior vice president Rudy deLeon said the combination of the two groups will “enable us to make an even more significant contribution by providing resources in support of President Obama’s push for peace.” The letter said that MEP would be welcoming the “IPF team and advisers,” and that IPF would continue to fund-raise at its historical levels to help support the combined entity.

Middle East Progress publishes a twice-weekly e-mail with news and commentary on the Middle East, holds meetings and conferences on the subject, and supports public-private partnerships in the Middle East, among other activities.

Pacific islands leaders visit Israel to solidify ties

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The presidents of two Pacific islands who vote consistently with Israel at the United Nations visited the Jewish state to enhance their relationship.

Emanuel Mori, of the Federated States of Micronesia, and Marcus Stephen, of the Republic of Nauru, met Thursday with Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres, who also was hosting a dinner in their honor later in the day.

The presidents and their ambassadors, accompanied by Aaron Jacob of the American Jewish Committee and Michael Ronen of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, visited Yad Vashem and laid wreaths at the Memorial Hall.

Following meetings with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, both presidents signed a Memorandum of Understanding on visa issues.

Mori and Stephen are scheduled to meet Thursday night with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Pacific islands delegation will discuss issues of global and strategic importance with Israeli officials and be briefed on security issues.

The weeklong visit, inaugurated by an official invitation by Peres, is being implemented under the auspices of Project Interchange, an institute of the American Jewish Committee, in collaboration with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.