03/13 Links Pt2: At UCLA, a culture of equating 'Israel' with 'guilty'; Jews attacked in Marseille

From Ian:

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At UCLA, a culture of equating 'Israel' with 'guilty'

UCLA is a campus that has allowed Middle East history to be taught by instructors who demonize Israel, and has permitted its Center for Near Eastern Studies to be directed and co-directed by BDS supporters. It is a culture where a student can come to class wearing an "Israel Kills" T-shirt, yet any mention of Muslim symbols is sure to trigger the heaviest gun of political correctness, "Islamophobia!"
It is a culture where pro-coexistence students, especially in the social sciences, prefer to keep silent rather than risk mockery and social estrangement. Most importantly, it is a campus overrun by soft-spoken BDS propagandists who managed to hijack the student government's agenda with repeated proposals for anti-Israel resolutions, the purpose of which is one: to associate the word "Israel" with the word "guilty."
Coming from this culture, it is quite natural for a council member to assume that Rachel Beyda, as a Jew, is likely to have a built-in reluctance to joining the never-ending orgy of Israel indictments. Especially indictments authored by a movement like BDS, which openly denies one of Jews' most deeply held convictions – Israel's right to exist.
I am purposely using the generic term "as a Jew" here, in its most inclusive, people-based sense. I do so because a great many Jews do consider Israel the culmination of their millennia-long history. Likewise, I follow the observations of Hillel's leadership, who repeatedly assures concerned parents and outraged donors of its commitment to the Zionist dream, and to pro-Israel education.
So why all the outrage about the misuse of the inclusive term "Jewish?" Roth's mistake was not that she probed into Beyda's faith as a Jew, but that she implied that Jews can only gain social acceptance and student government credentials by joining the "indict-Israel" circus, as some of their professors have chosen to do.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Condemns Anti-Semitism, Champions New Film

On Wednesday in Brookline, Massachusetts, women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali headlined an event revolving around the rise of anti-Semitism. Her remarks followed the Boston premiere of the Jerusalem U film, Crossing the Line 2: The New Face of Anti-Semitism on Campus, directed by Shoshana Palatnik, who also attended.
Hirsi Ali pulled no punches, offering scathing commentary regarding the anti-Semitism around the world. She offered these statements:
It is appalling that only seventy years from the Holocaust, crowds in Europe chant "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas." It is even more appalling that 10,000 soldiers in Paris are needed to protect Jewish sites. That is the continent that promised never again. The men and women who were in the concentration camps, who are tattooed, some are still here. And it is happening again.
Watching Crossing the Line 2: the New Face of Anti-Semitism on Campus, was like having a bucket of ice water being poured over my head. I saw the film last week. And I watched it again last night. And I couldn't sleep. The more we pretend that this is happening somewhere far away, the more hopeless and helpless we feel. But this is not happening far away. This is happening on American campuses, British campuses, Canadian campuses. The filmmakers who made this film made it because it is important that we listen to this message while it is at a smaller stage.

Jewish teens attacked in southern France

Two Jewish teens in France were robbed and beaten after leaving their Marseille synagogue.
The teens were attacked on Tuesday by two assailants who they described as youth “of African origin,” according to the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA.
According to the victims, the assailants said, “Dirty Jews, we will exterminate all of you,” before they were robbed and beaten. The Jewish teens required medical attention.
One of the victims told BNVCA that he recognized the attackers.
The bureau called on police in the southern French city to “do everything possible to identify and question the attackers,” and for the assailants to be severely punished to act as a deterrent to future attacks.

UN chief Ban responds to letter by Judea and Samaria school girls

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon issued a lukewarm condemnation this week of a terrorist attack which left an 11 year-old girl in critical condition when a fire bomb was thrown at her car last December.
Ban was responding to a letter penned earlier this year by students at the AMIT Lehava Ulpena, an all girls' school in Kdumim, who called on the secretary-general to denounce the attack.
"No child should ever have to endure such a horrendous experience and no child should have to share the grief of a friend's pain," he wrote.
Ban said he was "deeply saddened to learn of the attack," falling just short of naming it a terrorist attack.
Ban’s letter fell short of the expectation by the girls’ letter, signed by more than 1000 students, calling on the secretary general to condemn the attack and to condemn the burning of children worldwide.
"It is good and important that the UN Secretary General condemned the attack. It is a shame though that it only happened following our letter and not beforehand," Chana Lester the student who led the initiative said on Thursday.
"We are sorry that he believes that in order to save the lives of children in this region two states need to be established and for that, to remove us from our homes," she said.

Daniel Gordis: Beware the universities, for they are barometers

In his early days at the University of Vienna, Theodor Herzl – the father of modern political Zionism – applied to join the Lesehalle, a student association devoted to intellectual conversation and debate. But in March 1881 (when Herzl was 21), the Lesehalle was dissolved when a discussion devolved into a viciously anti-Semitic rant.
Undeterred, Herzl joined the Fraternity Albia instead. Here too however, the academy and the intellectual world of Europe’s elite proved themselves fundamentally hostile to Jews. Two years after he joined, several of his fraternity brothers attended a Richard Wagner Memorial – which again turned into an anti-Semitic rally.
Disgusted and furious, Herzl resigned from the fraternity in protest; but the members rejected his resignation, then threw him out on their own terms.
While it is commonly said it was the Dreyfus trial which drew Herzl to the idea of a Jewish state, that is apparently not true. Herzl was despairing of the possibility of a Jewish future in Europe long before Alfred Dreyfus was tried and unfairly convicted. His days at the university, which should have exposed him to the very best of European society, unsettled him long before Dreyfus did.
That is why a recent turn of events at UCLA is so disconcerting. On February 10, just a month ago, the UCLA student council met to discuss the nomination of Rachel Beyda to the judicial board.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: We Want Democratic Elections, Too

As Israelis prepare to head to the ballot boxes on March 17, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are wondering whether they, too, will ever have the privilege of holding their own free and democratic elections.
In the past few weeks, Palestinians have launched a campaign to demand free and democratic elections. But the campaign seems thus far to have fallen on deaf ears.
All that is left for Palestinians to do is sit and watch with envy as voters in Israel practice their right to elect new representatives.
The average age of the PLO leadership is 75. The same faces have been in control of Hamas for the past two decades.
The last time the Palestinians went to the ballot boxes was in January 2006, when they voted for a new parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council. The vote resulted in a victory for the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform list.
Exactly one year earlier, the Palestinians had a presidential election, which brought Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to power.

The Many Myths of Jerusalem: Part 1

Given the penchant for myth-making in the Middle East, it is no surprise that many legends have popped up around the Holy City of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, given the pervasive nature of these myths, most people don't even recognize them as such.
So we here at the Judean People's Front, having long since abandoned our suicide squads have instead decided to fight back by exposing these myths for what they are: lies.
This begins our multipart series on The Many Myths of Jerusalem
Myth Number 1: Jerusalem Must be Internationalized
Most people probably think the current borders of Jerusalem are a result of the Jordanian occupation of the eastern part of the city in 1948 that led to the city's division for 19 years. However, this was only a partial cause. The true source of this actually stems from Jordan's sponsor at the time: Great Britain.
After 27 years of unsuccessfully ruling its Mandate of Palestine, the British resolved to abandon the territory, recommending it be divided between the Jews and Arabs, with the Arab section to be joined with Jordan (then known as Transjordan or East Jordan in Arabic). In dividing the territory, it only made sense for areas with a Jewish majority to go to the Zionists, and areas with an Arab majority to go to the Arabs.
But this brought up a major problem: since Jerusalem was two-thirds Jewish (with over 100,000 Jews, 1/6th of Israel's population at the time) that would require handing the holy city over to Israel. That simply would not work for the British, so they had to find a workaround.
After putting together all the heads in Perfidious Albion, the Brits finally came up with a solution:
If Jerusalem has a Jewish majority within its current borders, let's just redraw the borders until "Jerusalem" has more Arabs than Jews!

The Truth About Islam and the Threat We Face

It is baffling that some well-meaning Westerners still regard Islamist extremists - jihadists – as carrying the banner of the oppressed or the underprivileged. They disregard the reality that the extreme Islamists are not the modern incarnation of the members of the movements that pressed for liberation from Western colonial powers or the elimination of imperialism. Those individuals had a specific objective in mind, the creation of a freer and more egalitarian society, and, for the most part, they observed basic moral rules in their general behavior and political tactics.
From about 1950 until 1970, the “Third World” group of countries and their Western supporters expressed the aspirations of those who wanted to liberate themselves from what they perceived as the iniquities of Western controls. They were influenced to a considerable degree by the heralded, though imaginary, Communist utopias of the Soviet Union and China.
Almost all of those would be reformers were disillusioned by the gods that failed with the revelations of the horrors and mass murders in the two Communist countries. Nor could they seek any comfort in the present autocratic and corrupt Russian regime, or in the semi-transformation, economically if not politically, of China. Perhaps because there is nowhere else to turn, some, especially younger people, have sought out the Muslim world and the Islamists as a surrogate of progressive resistance against Western systems.
But the difference is enormous between contemporary Islamists and those reformers who once regarded Stalin, in spite of the evidence of his brutality and killing of millions, as the incarnation of wisdom. Leftists of the past operated in the context of a Western culture that they, rightly or wrongly, sought to improve. The jihadists and their supporters are not anti-imperialists. They are opposed not simply to the U.S. and other Western-style democracies, but to essential Western values of civilization. Indeed, they reject the traditional leftist concepts – socialism, communism, liberalism, and nationalism.

Month after Denmark attack, bat mitzvah girl celebrates in Israel

A month after her bat mitzvah party at a Copenhagen synagogue was disrupted by a shooting attack, Hannah Bentow got another chance to celebrate her coming of age—this time in Jerusalem.
Still reeling from the February 14 attack, in which a lone Islamic gunman’s opened fire on the synagogue, killing community guard Dan Uzan, Bentow and her family were warmly supported by friends and strangers who showed up Thursday night to celebrate with them.
The Jerusalem party was the idea of Josh Salmon, a 33-year-old Toronto activist, who had read a Times of Israel article in which Bentow was quoted saying that she wished she had not had a bat mitzvah so that Uzan could still be alive.
Struck by the 12-year-old’s remark and saddened by the situation, Salmon offered to fly Bentow, her parents Mette (Miriam) and Claus, and brothers Jacob and Elias, to Israel for a week. He also used a personal connection to the owners of the Dan Hotels chain to arrange accommodation for the family in Tel Aviv, Eilat and Jerusalem.

Paris’s Hyper Cacher to reopen next week

The Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket in Paris that became the site of a bloody hostage drama during a jihadist attack in January will re-open Sunday, according to a management source.
The kosher shop has been fully renovated and will re-open with new staff, the source said on Friday.
The Hyper Cacher store on the eastern edge of Paris was badly damaged during the attack on January 9, when jihadist Amedy Coulibaly killed four Jewish hostages before he was shot dead when police stormed the building.
His assault came two days after two other jihadists killed 12 people at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine.
On Thursday European countries agreed to begin giving extra scrutiny this summer to travelers who meet criteria indicating they could be terrorists or Muslim foreign fighters.

France to keep 10,000 'tired' troops on streets

France will maintain its deployment of 10,000 troops that have been patrolling across the country in the wake of January's jihadist attacks, the presidency said on Wednesday. Fears have been raised that the soldiers are suffering from fatigue.
"The threat of terrorist attack against our country remains high," the office of President Francois Hollande said in a statement after a special meeting of top ministers.
"The head of state has decided to maintain the level of the army on the national territory at 10,000 troops in support of security forces from the interior ministry."
It added that "7,000 of them are deployed primarily for surveillance and protection at religious sites that are particularly threatened".
Soldiers have also been patrolling stations, media buildings and other potential targets since the jihadist attacks in Paris in January that left 17 dead.

Jewish center, cemetery attacked in Argentina

Anti-Semitic graffiti was drawn on a Jewish center and a Jewish cemetery was vandalized in the same Argentina city.
The Argentine Zionist Union of Rosario, or USAR, a Jewish community and sports center in a city some 200 miles north of Buenos Aires, was attacked this week with graffiti reading “F*** Jew.” The damages at the Rosario cemetery were discovered earlier this week.
Some 15,000 Jews live in Rosario among a population of about 900,000.
On Wednesday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed its solidarity with the city’s Jewish community and said it contacted USAR leaders. The group called for reinforcing preventive measures and installing surveillance cameras around the cemetery’s perimeter.
“Prompt investigation and prosecution by the regional government is crucial,” Shimon Samuels, the center’s director for international relations, said in a statement.

Southampton U. to Host Three Days of Hate

The announcement that Southampton University in England is to host a conference delegitimizing Israel’s basic right to exist is just one more reminder of how warped the conversation about Israel has become in the academic world. The conference has drawn criticism from a handful of British politicians, but not nearly as many as would have spoken up if the fundamental rights of just about any other people were being called into question in this way. Naturally, the university has gone on the defensive and is invoking arguments about academic freedom. Of course, the university has every right to hold such a conference if it wishes, but that still doesn’t make the decision to do so a decent one. And a glance over some of the names attending this conference reveals that this event has nothing to do with free or credible academic inquiry.
It should be said at the outset that even if the organizers could demonstrate that they are structuring the sessions and speakers for this conference in a balanced manner, to put Israel’s right to exist up for question is itself far beyond the pale. It’s not as if debating the existence of the world’s other nation-states is a routine practice. Unless Southampton University can provide a serious list of other countries that have been subjected this kind of treatment—a three-day-long extravaganza of condemnation and delegitimization—then we are left with no choice but to conclude that this institution just doesn’t mind playing host to bigotry.
Of course, the whole undertaking is not only profoundly offensive; it is also utterly absurd. The conference is being hosted by the college’s law faculty, and claims that it will be exploring the question of Israel’s right to exist with regard to international law. But as Israel is one of the few states in the world that was actually established by specific instructions by both the League of Nations and the United Nations, there are simply no plausible grounds for inquiry here.
Similarly, the university’s website defends the conference as being part of the effort to establish an “enduring peace.” But what kind of genuine peace process involves telling one side that it doesn’t have any rights, not even to so much as exist?

What’s at Stake When Anti-Zionism Aims for Academic Respectability?

So on one level, this conference is more of the same: the same speakers, the same themes, the same visceral hatred not just of the Jewish state, but of the expression of Jewish identity in nearly any form you can think of. (There is a grudging acceptance of those Jews whose sole mission is to campaign for the so-called Palestinian “right of return.”) You need only look at the output of the main conference organizer, Southampton professor Oren Ben-Dor (yep, another “ex-Israeli”) for confirmation. For Ben-Dor is known, when he is known at all, as a particularly sycophantic defender of Gilad Atzmon, the “ex-Israeli” jazz musician and writer who flirts with Holocaust denial and believes that American Jews are living proof that the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was not the vile fabrication that most respectable historians have judged it to be.
But I’m reluctant to summarily dismiss the conference as irrelevant. The reason is simply this: Ben-Dor’s initiative aims to turn anti-Zionism from a variation of traditional anti-Semitic ideology into an academic methodology. In other words, the point of departure for this conference, as well as the writings of its participants, is that Israel’s illegitimacy must be recognized as a “fact” that is not open to debate.
Given how Middle East studies have degenerated in America in recent decades, as documented by academics like Martin Kramer, we shouldn’t be surprised if the Southampton conference repeats itself on this side of the Atlantic. And the danger lies not in the impact these ideas will have on the policy of the current and successive administrations, but in the establishment of a norm among students of the Middle East that Israel, by definition, shouldn’t be in the region in the first place.

Muslim Student Speaks Out Against BDS Bigotry (h/t IsraellyCool)

This Muslim student at the University of Johannesburg speaks out against the BDS activists after Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid was threatened by boycott Israel (BDS) activists during his speech criticizing the the boycott movement.
Interesting that even those who don't agree with all of Israel's policies can separate that from antisemitism, but the BDS movement cannot.

The Persecution Of Mohammed Continues

The Arab Professor from Al-Quds University who took his students to Auschwitz and lost his job has just posted something deeply disturbing. You may also remember that Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi also discovered his car had been burned.
It now appears that the retribution against him for trying to teach Arab students about the Holocaust continues and now the University is throwing out a considerable volume of books purely because they were donated to the library by Mohammed.
He writes on Facebook:
In a step unprecedented in the history of university libraries, Al-Quds University throws away all books on various topics donated to its libraries by Professor Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi. Students rescue the books taking them home. This reflects the struggle in the Developing Countries where the university administration wants to limit student access to knowledge and the aspiration of students to search for truth and advance their knowledge far beyond the scope of what is being prescribed to them. While the university administration action registers a pessimistic note of the present status, the student reaction represents an optimistic signal for the future. Each student at Al-Quds University pay as part of their tuition $100 to be allocated for the libraries, but 0% of that fund is allocated for the development of the libraries.

Former Minister slams Sydney-University Lynch mob

The following letter from Peter Baldwin, former ALP Minister for Higher Education excoriates 'repulsive' anti-Israel protesters, demands university take disciplinary action
Dear Dr Spence,
On Wednesday 11 March I attended a meeting at Sydney University that was addressed by Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan. Colonel Kemp was scheduled to speak about the ethical dilemmas that face military forces confronted by non-state adversaries, especially those that deliberately conduct their operations in close proximity to civilian populations with the goal of gaining propaganda advantage from the inevitable casualties. He was in Israel during the Gaza conflict of July-August last year. He stated at the time that he was impressed by the IDF’s measures to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties and that he had difficulty envisaging what more they could do to this end given the reality of military operations.
By way of background, I am a former politician: the Labor MP for the seat of Sydney for fifteen years, and a member of the federal ministry for six years. For three of those years (1990-93) I was the Minister for Higher Education. During that period I visited a great many campuses and was, more than once, the target of student protest demonstrations.
But I never experienced anything quite as repulsive as what I witnessed last Wednesday, partly captured in this YouTube video.

Swastikas, Other Hate Graffiti Found On John Jay College Campus

Messages of hate were discovered this week on the campus of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice on the West Side of Manhattan.
Bigoted graffiti was discovered in campus restrooms and in classrooms. It included racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs, including swastikas.
A letter to friends of the Hillel Club for Jewish students at John Jay said a swastika was first found last week in a men’s room on campus. The person who found it notified the public safety office, the letter said.
This week, another swastika was found, and the college Office of Student Life reached out to the society and student executives, the letter said.
Some Jewish students said they felt targeted by the graffiti.
“In this case it was specifically anti-Semitic because it was swastikas, but whether it was racist speech or any show of bigotry, I don’t think that belongs on a college campus,” said Tomer Kornfeld of the John Jay Hillel Club.

Mrs Brown Boys star Rory: 'I got death threats over hosting Israeli event'

Mrs Brown's Boys star Rory Cowan received death threats after a video of him hosting an event at the Israeli embassy went viral.
The Ballyfermot native has been visiting Israel for years and said he was shocked at the torrent of abuse he received.
"I've had death threats, I've been warned to stay out of Derry. There's been a campaign to get me replaced in Mrs Brown's Boys", he told the Herald.
"All because I was asked to MC an event at the Israeli embassy for Israel's 65th anniversary. It was May 2013 and they filmed it.
"I love going to Israel, I've been going since 1982 and I was telling them about my good experiences there and why I wouldn't be boycotting it.
"It was put up on the internet and it was there for 15 months when the thing in Gaza kicked off last year.

The Times: Confused, garbled and pointless on Israel

The Times of London is confused. It's even confused about the digital revolution; the paper is behind a paywall meaning that there's no point in even linking to their articles. But when it comes to the British establishment's view of Israel, it's a more commonplace kind of confusion.
Today, the paper ran an editorial about Israel, with the forthcoming Israeli elections in mind.
If you're one of the few people who does have access to their website, the title of the piece, tellingly enough is: "Bibi at the Crossroads: Israel must end years of inertia and find a path to peace with the Palestinians."
In a nutshell, it's the standard shallow "analysis", essentially blaming Prime Minister Netanyahu for not having a vision of peace with the Palestinians and for wrecking the relationship with America.
This isn't a Guardian-style rant. It's just, well, stupid.
"There is a strong sense, not just on the Israeli left but in many western countries, that Mr Netanyahu is leading Israel in the wrong direction. For six years he has failed to build a foundation for the future of Israel. And there is no significant diplomatic process that could hold out hope for some form of agreement with the Palestinians."
You try making peace with the Palestinians. Israel has been accepting two state solutions since 1947, only for the Palestinian side always to reject them.
The Times is aware of the problems with Hamas. But it shows a Foreign Office degree of denial about the "moderate" leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, which routinely glorifies terrorism.
Opinion polls consistently show that The Palestinians don't even support a two-state-solution, viewing it as merely a stepping stone to a one state solution, meaning the destruction of Israel.

L.A. Times Identifies Family of Slain Israeli Arab as “Palestinian”

The Los Angeles Times, ignoring facts that would conflict with its anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian messaging, identified Muhammad Musallam, the 19-year-old boy shot and killed by a child from the group Islamic State, as a “Palestinian,” instead of what he actually was–an Israeli Arab who lived in East Jerusalem.
The Times piece began:
A month ago, the family of a young Palestinian man was horrified to discover his photo on the cover of Dabiq, the Islamic State magazine, with an interview inside purporting to detail his recruitment by Israel’s spy agency, Mossad. This week, the family’s worst fears were realized when an Islamic State video showed a child shooting Muhammad Musallam in the back of the head, killing him.
In contrast, the Times of Israel begins its article, in which it interviews Musallam’s father, with: “The father of an Israeli national who was executed by the Islamic State …”. The Jerusalem Post notes in its first paragraph, about the reaction of the family: “Sitting in the wood-paneled family room of their modest apartment in Jerusalem’s primarily Jewish Neveh Ya’acov neighborhood on Wednesday…”.

The BBC, ‘settlements’ and cognitive dissonance

In the latest version of the article readers find an insert titled “At the scene: Yolande Knell, BBC News, East Jerusalem”. The report also states:
“The 19-year-old left his home in East Jerusalem for Turkey last year, apparently intending to fight in Syria.”
The Musallam actually family lives in Neve Ya’akov: a neighbourhood of Jerusalem usually described by the BBC as a ‘Jewish settlement’ despite the fact that it was established in 1924 on land purchased by Jews, evacuated during the War of Independence and reconstructed after the Six Day War.
But the prospect of explaining to audiences why an Israeli Arab Muslim family lives in a ‘Jewish settlement’ obviously generated too much cognitive dissonance and so Neve Ya’akov became “East Jerusalem” and thus the standard insert to the effect that “settlements are illegal under international law” could be omitted from this report.

‘Unprecedented’ claim from BBC’s White House reporter does not stand up to scrutiny

Clearly the writer of this article intended BBC audiences to go away with the impression that never before had members of the US Congress intervened on foreign policy issues without the approval of the White House – but is that actually true?
Marc Thiessen, writing in the Washington Post, doesn’t think so. Here is just one of the examples he cites as showing that the letter “is far from unprecedented”:
“In June 2000 […] President Bill Clinton set off for Moscow to negotiate a new arms control treaty with Vladimir Putin that would have limited the United States’ ability to build defenses against ballistic missile attack. The morning the talks were scheduled to begin, the president was greeted by on op-ed on the front page of Izvestia by committee chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). “After dragging his feet on missile defense for nearly eight years, Mr. Clinton now fervently hopes that he will be permitted, in his final months in office, to tie the hands of the next President,” Helms wrote. “Well I, for one, have a message for the President: Not on my watch. Let’s be clear, to avoid any misunderstandings: Any modified ABM treaty negotiated by this administration will be dead-on-arrival at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . . The Russian government should not be under any illusion whatsoever that any commitments made by this lame-duck Administration, will be binding on the next administration.””

Chief rabbi: Remove headstones from Lithuanian church stairs

Lithuania’s chief rabbi urged the country’s Evangelical Reformed Church to remove Jewish headstones being used as stairs to a Vilnius Christian house of worship.
Rabbi Chaim Burshtein’s call on Facebook last month concerns a 30-foot-long staircase made out of Jewish headstones that leads to the main entrance of the church’s largest building in the Lithuanian capital. The headstones were installed when Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union.
“We regret the deplorable state and destruction of the last remnants of the memory of Lithuanian Jewry,” Burshtein told JTA. Lithuania, he added, “has many places built out of Jewish headstones. I think the authorities and the Jewish community need to perform thorough research and correct at least this historic wrong.”
The church on Pylimo Street was featured in an article published in 2013 on the website DefendingHistory.com, run by Dovid Katz, a Yiddish scholar and member of the Jewish Community of Lithuania.

Jewish group to oppose Qatar UNESCO bid over anti-Semitic lit

Citing an abundance of anti-Semitic literature at the Doha International Book Fair, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said it would resist the candidacy of Qatar’s education minister to head UNESCO.
In a March 6 letter to the minister, Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari, Shimon Samuels, the center’s director for international relations, said that the material on display at the event organized every January under the auspices of the Qatari education ministry called into question the minister’s commitment to the values promoted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Al-Kuwari was nominated by the Gulf state earlier this month as its candidate for director general of the Paris-based organization.
In his letter, Samuels asked Al-Kuwari “to condemn the Doha Book Fair, remove [his] patronage and investigate and prosecute those responsible for sowing these seeds of xenophobia, violence and conflict in a world of growing antisemitic terrorism.”
At the fair, which this year drew 700,000 visitors, Samuels documented 35 anti-Semitic titles, including nine editions of the anti-Semitic hoax titled “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion;” four editions of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and four editions of Henry Ford’s “The International Jew.”

British Science Official: Scientific Partnership Between U.K. and Israel is “Booming”

Noting that scientific collaborations between Britain and Israel are “booming,” Sir Mark Walport, chief scientific adviser to the British Government, writes that “British businesses and universities are keen to collaborate,” in the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, yesterday.
From the prime minister down, the government of the U.K. is committed to a stronger research and innovative partnership with Israel. This is why 2014 was a record year for trade between the two countries. This is why our cutting-edge collaborations – such as the 10-million-pound-sterling BIRAX Regenerative Medicine Initiative and the U.K. Israel Tech Hub – are expanding in 2015.
And this is why I am in Israel this week to launch new researcher mobility programs, to meet with Israeli students wanting to study science in Britain, and to discuss our priorities for future collaboration with the U.K. Israel Science Council.
Also in Israel with me this week is a delegation of senior British scientists and companies looking to work with Israel on dementia. They are following up on the excellent joint meeting of the British Neuroscience Association and the Israel Society for Neuroscience in Eilat.

Israel has the ‘brains’ to solve brain problems, says US congressman

The US congressman in charge of appropriating federal money for science and medical research and development programs is a big fan of Israeli efforts in the field, especially in the area of neuroscience.
“The US and Europe may have more breakthroughs in neuroscience, but you have to put that in perspective,” said Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Democrat of Pennsylvania. “The US has 350 million people, and there are 28 countries in the European Union. Israel is third behind these countries in its neuroscience developments, but per capita it is way ahead of everyone.”
In an exclusive interview with The Times of Israel, Fattah, who was a keynote speaker at this week’s BrainTech 2015 event in Tel Aviv, was barely able to contain his admiration for Israel’s scientific and medical innovations and discoveries, especially in the neuroscience, a discipline he has taken a special interest in.

Israeli Ambassador Aims to Bring 100,000 Chinese Tourists to Israel

Israeli Ambassador to China Matan Vilnai said he aims to bring a one-year total of 100,000 Chinese tourists to Israel two years from now.
“My personal goal is 100,000 tourists in Israel in the year 2017,” Vilani said Wednesday.
“That is why we are promoting a process of abolition of visas,” he said, explaining that the process for canceling visa requirements for Chinese citizens traveling to Israel is already underway and is a crucial step in the growth of diplomatic and economic relations between China and Israel, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Jerusalem Marathon athletes running against terrorism, for disabled children

Athletes representing leading organizations dedicated to victims of terrorism and war, as well as children with disabilities, will be among the 25,000 runners participating in the 5th annual Jerusalem Marathon on Friday morning.
OneFamily, which rebuilds the lives of Israel’s thousands of victims of terror attacks, said that it has 161 runners taking part in the event on its behalf.
“The inspiring runners, many of whom have been injured or lost loved ones in attacks and war, will be joined by supporters of Israel around the world who are running to unite against terror,” the group said in a statement.
Aharon Karov, a former commander of 30 soldiers during 2008’s Operation Cast Lead, who was critically wounded in the conflict, will be among the runners representing the organization.
“Aharon is taking on the challenge after recovering from the blast which left him close to death with eight pieces of shrapnel in his head, all his teeth knocked out, his nose dislodged, his left eye dismembered, and his stomach and upper left side of his body crushed,” the statement said.

26-year-old from Ethiopia wins 5th annual Jerusalem Marathon

Tadesse Dabi, 26, from Ethiopia won the 5th annual Jerusalem Marathon on Friday, finishing in a time of two hours, eighteen minutes and 20 seconds.
Some 25,000 runners from 60 different countries participated in the race around the capital.
The race began at 6:45 a.m. in Sderot Ruppin and continued for various distances -- the full marathon of 42.2 kilometers, the half marathon at 21.2 kilometers and shorter races of 10, five 1.7 and 0.8 kilometers.

Brooklyn tragedy shines light on charity crowdfunding platform

On Sunday night, the Jewish community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn was shocked by the sudden death of Nadiv Kehaty, 30, a father of four.
Kehaty, a real estate agent who helped found a local Crown Heights synagogue named Itchke’s Shtiebel, did not have life insurance. He collapsed at an event Sunday night at his son’s yeshiva school, suffering an apparent heart attack.
Fortunately, one of Kehaty’s closest friends was Moshe Hecht, a co-founder of Charidy.com, a crowdfunding platform that matches donors willing to quadruple people’s donations to charity and nonprofit causes.
Hecht got together with some of Kehaty’s other friends and decided to start a Charidy campaign for the Kehaty family.
The results were inspiring.