Sunday, October 09, 2016
Jerusalem shooting victims: A newly married cop and a grandmother
The victims of Sunday’s deadly shooting attack were named as Jerusalem resident Levana Malihi, 60, and police officer First Sergeant Yosef Kirma, 29.
Kirma, a member of the elite police reconnaissance unit Yasam, was killed in the shootout while trying to charge the gunman, police said. “He fearlessly pursued the terrorist in order to neutralize him and prevent further harm to innocent bystanders,” the police statement said.
Kirma, a resident of the Jerusalem suburb Mevasseret Zion, will be buried at 5:30 p.m. Sunday in the capital’s Mount Herzl cemetery. He is survived by his wife of five months, parents and two brothers. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of first sergeant.
Kirma was decorated after helping to stop a terror attack in December 2015.
Malihi, a mother of three and grandmother of six, was a retired Knesset employee.
Malihi worked in the Knesset for more than 30 years until retiring in 2010, the parliament’s spokesman said in a statement. “Veteran workers remember a very warm woman, loved by all, dedicated, caring and modest,” the statement said.
Police officer and civilian killed, 4 wounded in Jerusalem vehicular terrorist attack
A Special Patrol officer and elderly female civilian were shot and killed, and four wothers lightly and seriously wounded, during a two-point vehicular terrorist attack carried out near police headquarters in Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill, and the nearby Sheik Jarrah neighborhood.Police: Terror attack could have been much worse
The terrorist, an east Jerusalem resident, was shot dead during an exchange of gunfire with police in Sheik Jarrah.
The attack began at approximately 10:30 a.m., when the terrorist, who was driving a white vehicle, opened fire on a male and female civilian near the Ammunition Hill light rail stop, across the street from Police Headquarters.
“The terrorist opened fire on two people, and one woman in her 60s was wounded critically, and a man was moderately-to-seriously wounded,” said Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
The woman died of her wounds a short time later at Hadassah University Medical Center in Mount Scopus, said Rosenfeld.
Police are continuing their investigation into this morning's terrorist attack, in which Levana Malichi and Yosef Kirma were murdered in Jerusalem.
Kirma is to be buried on Mt. Herzl and the funeral for Malichi will be held at 7:30 tonight.
At approximately 10:10 Sunday morning, a terrorist drove his car to the light rail station at Ammunition Hill and shot at civilians waiting at the station. The terrorist then attempted to flee towards the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood, where he was intercepted by police and killed in the subsequent shootout, where he fatally wounded Kirma.
A police spokesman said that the officers that intercepted and neutralized the terrorist prevented the attack from becoming even worse. "The officers placed themselves between the shooter and the civilians, and their determination prevented further casualties among the civilian population and the security forces."
Jerusalem terrorist carried out attack on day he was set to be jailed for prior offense
The man responsible for a shooting attack at the Ammunition Hill light rail station on Sunday morning, which left two dead and several others wounded, told a Palestinian news site that he intended to turn himself into a Ramle prison that day.UN envoy: ‘Nothing can justify’ Jerusalem shooting
In an interview on Saturday night with the Ma’an Palestinian news agency, the assailant, who is 39 and from Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood, said, “If God wills, I will turn myself into the Ramle prison tomorrow,” adding that authorities “threatened to administratively detain [him] if he postponed turning [himself] in.”
The man, whose identity is under gag order, assaulted a police officer near the Temple Mount in 2013. Shortly thereafter, authorities indicted him, but later dropped the case. In 2015, authorities reopened the case, and a court sentenced him to four months in prison, to begin last May. However, he received permission from the court to delay his entry to prison until October. In its ruling, the court justified the delay, saying the assailant “cooperated.”
After Sunday’s attack, the terrorist fled to east Jerusalem’s Sheikh al-Jarrah neighborhood, where authorities shot and killed him
In the interview with Ma’an, the assailant said that authorities recently informed him of a number of decisions limiting his movements.
“They expelled me for a month from east Jerusalem a week ago, and gave me a ruling barring me from traveling abroad until the end of the year,” he said, adding that authorities arrested him five times over the past two weeks.
Authorities also recently banned him from the Temple Mount for six months.
The United Nations’ peace envoy to the region denounced Sunday’s deadly shooting by a Palestinian gunman in Jerusalem, calling it a “terror attack” and censuring Hamas for encouraging such assaults.'They were celebrating the attack'
US Ambassador Dan Shapiro and Australian Ambassador Dave Sharma similarly condemned the shooting.
UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov issued a statement following the shooting, in which a woman and a policeman were killed and six others injured after the terrorist sprayed bullets at passersby from a moving car. The shooter, whose identity was under a gag order, was shot dead by police. Hamas claimed the man was one of their members.
“I condemn this morning’s terror attack by a Palestinian perpetrator in occupied East Jerusalem which killed two Israelis and injured six others,” Mladenov wrote. “Nothing can justify such attacks. My thoughts are with the families and friends of all victims and I hope for a full and speedy recovery of the wounded.”
“It is deplorable and unacceptable that Hamas and others choose to glorify such acts which undermine the possibility of a peaceful future for both Palestinians and Israelis,” he added.
While Israelis and Jews around the world were mourning Sunday’s deadly terror attack in the Israeli capital, some Jerusalem Arabs celebrated the murders – including a very public display of rejoicing in a café next to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.Deutsche Welle Misreports Latest Terrorist Attack in Jerusalem
Alon Karko, a 24-year old law student at Hebrew University, was dining with his mother at Café Aroma on Mount Scopus, next to one of the university’s two main campuses, when news broke that two of the shooting victims in Sunday’s attack had succumbed to their injuries.
“I had something to take care of in the university,” said Karko, “and afterwards I went to the café. Obviously the atmosphere was very tense,” added Karko. Mount Scopus is just several minutes’ drive from the site of the attack.
Karko noted that all of the workers in the café were Arabs, as were nearly all of the diners, save for himself, his mother, and a group of Korean tourists.
At a certain point, Karko recounted, two Arabs made their way over from the nearby Hadassah Hospital – the same hospital where the most critically injured of the shooting attack victims were being treated – and offered their ‘congratulations’ to the Arabs siting in the café.
“It took a second for it to dawn on me what was happening – all of the sudden I saw the news flash saying ‘Two of the wounded declared dead’. Then I put two and two together and understood that, okay, this [their celebrating] is because of this [the deaths], and there was no question any longer why they were laughing together in Arabic.”
Was this indeed a case of a trigger-happy, brutal police force assassinating a "suspect" without giving him the benefit of a trial? This is the likeliest conclusion to be drawn from Deutsche Welle's distorted report.Danon: UN boycott demand is 'sheer lunacy'
But, in fact, the terrorist -- 39-year-old Mousabah Abu Sabih of the eastern Jerusalem Silwan neighborhood, who had been indicted for incitement to terrorism and who was reportedly supposed to begin a 4-month incarceration today -- went on a shooting spree instead and was in the midst of a murderous rampage when he was shot dead by border police. He had just critically wounded a Yasam special patrol officer, who later died of his wounds in hospital, as well as wounding a second officer. This came after he had critically shot a 60-year-old woman who later died of her wounds-- and wounded many others as he shot at people from the window of his car. He was not a "suspect" in an incident that was in dispute, but an active shooter who was in the midst of trying to kill as many people as he could.
The terrorist was reportedly a member of Hamas, whose spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, praised the attack and called it a confirmation of the intifada, urging an escalation in attacks. Islamic Jihad praised the attack, as well, while Fatah honored the terrorist as a "martyr".
But, of course, Deutsche Welle, reported none of this, spinning the story-- drawn from Reuters, AFP, and AP -- in an entirely different direction,and in the process revealing itself as more of a propaganda site than a legitmate news agency.
UN ambassador Danny Danon responded sharply to the UN Human Rights Commissioner's demand to boycott Israeli and international companies which have dealings in Judea and Samaria, East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights. The Commissioner also demanded that the UN cut off its ties with Israeli companies working in these areas.JPost Editorial: New UN beginnings
"The countries of the world will have to decide whether they are prepared to continue funding activities which are designed to mark and discriminate against Jewish businesses. The funding which the UN receives from other countries is designated to build bridges between nations and not to make blacklists of Jews," said Danon.
"If this ridiculous demand will be implemented it would be a disgrace to the UN. This is crossing a dangerous and slippery slope which harks back to dark periods in our history when such "blacklists" were made.
Ambassador Danon announced that he would use all the methods at his disposal in order to prevent the move. "We will fight this ridiculous initiative and demand that the international community intervene and stop this scandalous suggestion which is designed to undermine the state of Israel.
A new secretary-general is poised to take over the UN, and with him comes hope for a better UN.Wikileaks reveals Israeli concerns over future Clinton camp
Portugal’s former prime minister Antonio Guterres seemed to have won on Wednesday, the Security Council’s backing to become the next UN secretary-general.
Until the end of December 2015, Guterres, who formerly headed the Socialist Party in his country, was the UN high commissioner for refugees.
It is difficult to determine from past statements and actions Guterres’s attitude toward Israel. It is clear that as a UN official who dealt intensively with the issue of refugees, Guterres is sympathetic to Palestinians.
In September 2014, in Cairo, in a speech before the Arab League, Guterres said that “the refugee situations under the UNHCR’s mandate pale in comparison to the desperate situation of the Palestinians.” He went on to say that Palestinian refugees in Syria suffered more than other Syrians because they were “forced to flee for the second time.”
Was he equating Israel’s War of Independence with the Assad regime’s murderous crackdown on opponents? He also said that in times of war between Hamas and Israel, Gazans suffered more than Syria’s refugees because they “could not even flee to seek safety.” Was Guterres exempting Palestinians from their responsibility for allowing Hamas to turn Gaza into an Islamist, terrorist state? It is too early to say. We would like to join Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon in welcoming Guterres’s nomination and hoping the UN under his leadership will “act in the spirit of its founding principles as a fair body able to differentiate between good and evil.”
Israel is concerned that Hillary Clinton will fill her administration if elected president with former staffers of Barack Obama who allegedly played a role in the deteriorating ties between the countries over the last seven years, according to email correspondence released by Wikileaks over the weekend.How Obama spat in the face of the late Shimon Peres, the State of Israel, and history
In one email, Stuart Eizenstat, a former US diplomat, detailed to top Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan a meeting he had with Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, focused on the emerging Iran nuclear deal to be reached later that summer. Dermer allegedly expressed understanding that Clinton had no choice but to embrace the deal. “She should not get too invested in it,” he reportedly said, advising her to “list the concerns” she has with it.
And asking for a “close hold” to privacy in another 2015 email, Eizenstat said that, speaking with an unnamed “senior Israeli official,” he was told that Netanyahu feels he has a “surprising good relationship” with Clinton and that she is “easy to work with.”
Eizenstat wrote that the Israeli official he met was very close to Netanyahu and “wonders if a Clinton administration ‘will be a Saban Forum for four years’, due to ‘the people around her, but not her.'”
“Saban Forum” was a reference to an annual elite gathering of primarily Democratic officials hosted in Washington DC by top Clinton donor and Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban.
ICC has 'no deadline' on war crimes probe
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has no deadline for deciding whether to investigate alleged war crimes by Israel and Palestinian Arabs, an ICC official said on Friday.Security concerns among factors keeping ICC delegation out of Gaza
"There is no time limit," the ICC's Phakiso Mochochoko told AFP during a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA)-assigned territories.
"In due course when the time is right, when all the conditions have been met and when we have assessed everything, then the decision will be made," he added.
The PA officially joined the ICC on April 1, 2015, and immediately filed a series of legal complaints with the court. In addition to claiming that Israel committed war crimes during the 2014 Gaza war, it also claimed that Israeli “settlements” are “an ongoing war crime”.
PA foreign minister Riad al-Malki presented the court with a dossier alleging violations during the 2014 Gaza war and another on Israel's alleged “occupation” and “settlement” in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.
A top International Criminal Court Prosecution official has told The Jerusalem Post that his team could not go to Gaza during its current first-ever visit to Israel and the West Bank despite a desire to do so in the future, due to the short duration of the visit and security concerns.Russia vetoes UN resolution on Aleppo
The ICC official said their team wanted to visit Gaza, however at the same time Hamas has refused contact with them to date.
Phakiso Mochochoko, head of the ICC Prosecutor’s office on jurisdictional issues, made the comments to the Post on Friday in the only Israeli-media interview granted as part of a current five-day first-ever visit by the office. The visit is due to end Monday and had taken around two years of negotiations to occur.
Mochochoko may be the key player as the main issues which will determine whether the office dives deeper into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and allegations of war crimes during the 2014 Gaza war, are jurisdictional ones about Palestinian statehood and whether Israeli self-investigations of alleged war crimes are sufficient.
Responding to the ICC Prosecution team visit to the region, Hamas slammed the delegation on Saturday, claiming it “surrendered to the dictates of the Israeli occupation, [allowing] it (Israel) to take control over the agenda of its visit, which did not include the Gaza Strip, the primary theater of the Israeli crimes in 2014.”
“Hamas considers the visit of the ICC delegation to be meaningless and useless, causing greater pain for our people and the victims' families who were expecting the ICC to play an active role in guaranteeing them justice and bringing the murderous Israelis to international courts,” it added.
Russia on Saturday vetoed a UN draft resolution demanding an end to the bombing of Syria’s second city Aleppo, but its own rival measure on a truce in Syria's war-battered city was rejected, AFP reported.PreOccupiedTerritory: If You Don’t Stop Bombing Aleppo, I’ll Threaten To Make Threats! By John Kerry, US Secretary of State (satire)
The failure of the two resolutions deepened divisions at the Security Council between Damascus ally Moscow and the Western powers backing opposition rebels in the war.
It was the fifth time that Russia used its veto to block UN action to end the five-year war in Syria, which has claimed 300,000 lives.
As the council meeting got underway, the Syrian regime pressed its assault on rebel-held areas of Aleppo, where 125,000 people are living under siege and facing almost-daily heavy bombing.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault urged the council to take immediate action to save Aleppo from being destroyed by the Russia-backed Syrian bombing campaign.
"What is at stake today is first and foremost the fate of Aleppo and its people," Ayrault was quoted as having told the council.
"But it's more than that -- it's the hope of establishing at last an end to a conflict for which we are all, all of us, paying the catastrophic consequences," he added.
President Putin, the time has come for a fateful decision. Either you want to pursue a resolution of the Syrian conflict by diplomatic means, or you do not. But whichever choice you make, know that if you choose war, I will see no choice but to threaten to issue threats against you. You have been forewarned.German MP: No anti-Semite or Nazi will silence me
Everyone knows Russia has always seen a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean as a strategic asset that must be maintained. But bombing entire neighborhoods into rubble, including the last remaining hospitals in Aleppo, is no way to achieve long-term stability. Even if Assad survives, his hold on what remains of Syria will never be what it once was. You must see that. And you must also see that the US has never failed to defend its own strategic interests. Cross us once more and you will face the full wrath of my ability to make threats that threaten drastic threats I may yet regret making.
You are a reasonable man, Mr. Putin. Reasonable men do not engage in unwise brinkmanship. I have been restrained in my rhetoric until now, but until now the carnage in Syria has been limited to that inflicted primarily by Assad, not your forces. Now that the situation has changed for the worse, and the civilians of Aleppo are being bled to no one’s benefit, you leave me no choice but to consider implying that I might warn you against further such violence by saying such violence would incur a further warning.
German lawmaker Michaela Engelmeier has been the target of recent death threats for her work in fighting racism in Germany and her staunch opposition of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against the State of Israel.Munich’s Schmock restaurant closes due to Israel-hate
A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Engelmeier is currently in Israel on a private visit with her partner, Michael Thews, a member of the German Israel lobby. She was defiant over the weekend in the face of the online derision and threats she has received.
"They don't know who they're dealing with. No anti-Semite or Nazi will silence me," she said. "The attacks against me only encourage me and prove to me how important my mission is."
Engelmeier has been part of a public battle against German high-school teacher Christoph Glanz, an outspoken BDS supporter who in September outlined the movement's goals in a two-page article in the Oldenburg chapter's monthly magazine of the Education and Science Workers' Union, calling for a complete boycott of the State of Israel.
On his Facebook page, under the name of "Christopher Ben Kushka," Glanz agreed with another commenter that Israel should have been created in southern Germany.
Glanz also chose Holocaust Remembrance Day to tell his students that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians. As well as teaching 10th grade, Glanz also volunteers as a teacher for a "welcome course" for refugees.
The national teachers' union in Germany said its Oldenburg chapter, of which Glanz is a member, acted on its own accord by publishing his pro-BDS article, and added that it opposes boycotting Israel and rejects anti-Semitic views. The union has reportedly launched an official inquiry into the publication, and has said it will examine Glanz's continued employment. The inquiry focuses on Glanz's use, as a state employee, of a public platform to voice political views.
The Jewish owner of Munich’s Schmock Israeli restaurant announced on its website its closure after 16 years because of rising anti-Semitism in the Bavarian capital.Columbia Student Launches One-Man Counter-Demonstration Against ‘Jew-Hater, Hitler-Lover’ at Campus Entrance
Florian Gleibs pulled the plug on the restaurant last week because of the mushrooming anti-Israel agitation in the city since the IDF’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“People from the educated, well-off middle class have decided to hold me responsible as a representative of Israel, according to the motto: ‘What you people are doing is nothing different than what we Germans did back then [in the Holocaust],’” he wrote.
In response to anti-Israel tirades, he placed a large sign in the restaurant’s window reading: “We are not involved with politics.” The hostility toward him and his restaurant continued, Die Welt reported.
A Columbia University student told The Algemeiner on Friday that he launched a one-man demonstration against a “Jew-hater and Hitler-lover” parading around the campus gates on Thursday, “to show we will not stand silently for antisemitism.”Rabbinic Official: ‘Disgraceful’ That Jewish Group Would Exploit High Holiday Liturgy to Spread Antisemitism, Anti-Israel Vitriol
Rudy Rochman, a pro-Israel activist, said that he decided to take matters into his own hands when he saw the outsider with a poster reading: “Google it!!! Jews financed black slavery.” He said he held up his own banner — reading: “This is what antisemitism looks like” — until the other person left the premises.
Rochman told The Algemeiner the individual has appeared at Columbia numerous times in the past with antisemitic signs, but that, to his knowledge, this is the first time anyone has counter-protested.
According to the blog IsraellyCool, two New York Police Department officers showed up about an hour after Rochman, but did not take any action. Some time later, more police arrived and told the man to leave. After initially refusing, he eventually complied.
It is disgraceful that any group, especially a Jewish one, would use the liturgy of the high holy days for anti-Israel and antisemitic purposes, an official from a New York rabbinical organization told The Algemeiner.Aussie Radio Host Can’t Contain His Israel Hate
“We use this time to strengthen relationships with one another, not denigrate and sully the name of Jews,” said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, referring to a new Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) guide, called “Rosh Hashana 5777 Table Blessing Ritual.”
The guide’s section for blessing the wine, for example, claims the Israeli “military occupation” is responsible for repressing the Palestinian people by stealing their farmland.
In May 2014, Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio host Peter Goers wrote a shockingly ignorant and inflammatory piece in the Adelaide Sunday Mail that made it absolutely clear how much he despises Israel.Radio New Zealand Airs Unbalanced Anti-Israel Tirade
Unfortunately, Goers is back with another piece of ranting hatred in the Adelaide Sunday Mail (PDF version here) as he visits Israel to see Australian war graves and World War One battle sites around Beersheva that Australian forces participated in.
He begins:
Israel is guns and Moses. Israel is one long persecution of Palestinians. Israeli Jewish historian Ilan Pappe writes: “South Africa invented apartheid. Israel perfected it.” Also: “Jewish atheists don’t believe in God but they believe God promised them Israel.”
I’m over God. Other people go on a holiday to sit on a beach. I go to Jerusalem where three people were shot by trigger-happy Israeli soldiers in the street while I was there, including one unarmed child who raised his arms and said “Allahu Akbar”– God is great. Israel’s God is greater. His people are armed.
Ilan Pappe is a notorious anti-Zionist historian who openly acknowledges that he is not objective, cares little about factual accuracy and readily admits that ideology drives his historical writings and statements. Goers would have you believe that in this apartheid state, Israeli soldiers gun down innocent Palestinians for no reason other than malice
RNZ has once again aired a litany of unchallenged lies in a one-sided discussion of a contentious issue.Rabbi airlifted to Israel after assault in Ukraine
On October 6, the ‘Women’s Boat to Gaza’ was intercepted by the Israeli Defence Forces. This has become an annual occurrence since the first attempt by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to breach Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza, which was imposed after a particularly intense period of rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.
Israel has learned from past experience that the procedures for handling these breaches of sovereign waters are fairly standard. The IDF said in a statement:
In accordance with government directives and after exhausting all diplomatic channels, the Israeli Navy redirected the vessel in order to prevent a breach of the lawful maritime blockade … In accordance with international law, the Israeli Navy advised the vessel numerous times to change course prior to the action. Following their refusal, the Navy visited and searched the vessel in international waters in order to prevent their intended breach of the lawful maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. The visit and search of the vessel was uneventful.
Jon Bridges hosted a RNZ afternoon discussion show, The Panel, as a fill-in for the usual host, Jim Mora. Not long into the show he introduced to his guest panelists the topic of the (inevitable) interception of the Women’s Boat by Israeli forces, despite apparently having no knowledge of the facts.
A Chabad rabbi in Ukraine was airlifted to Israel for treatment on Saturday, after he was severely beaten in the western city of Zhitomir on Friday, a spokesperson for the Hasidic group said, adding it is too early to tell whether the assault was a hate crime.Payoneer’s $180m leads huge funding in Israeli startups
Rabbi Mendel Deitsch, a longtime Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in France and more recently in Israel, was assaulted at the city’s central train station early Friday morning, where he was discovered and transported to a local hospital, according to the statement on the website of the Chabad movement.
The Jewish Community of Zhitomir was alerted to the attack hours after the hospitalization of Deitsch, who is in critical condition, according to the report. The motive for the attack remains unknown, the statement also said.
Anti-Semitic assaults are rare in Ukraine, where fewer than 30 such incidents are reported annually.
Israel’s fintech arena is celebrating Payoneer‘s latest funding round — a whopping $180 million investment. The digital payments company, which is transforming the way businesses send and receive cross-border payments, announced it has completed the first closing of a significant growth equity financing led by TCV and existing investor Susquehanna Growth Equity.payoneerIsraelis help Haitians cope after devastating hurricane
Payoneer is one of Israel’s biggest fintech players. President Yuval Tal and former CTO Ben Yaniv Chechik founded the Petah Tikva-based company in 2005. It has raised $235 million to date including the latest financing round.
Payoneer said proceeds from the latest financing will be used to accelerate global growth and to enhance an already strong and debt-free balance sheet.
“Payoneer’s scale and global reach, along with its proprietary compliance infrastructure, allow it to differentiate itself in the field of international payments. We think Payoneer’s superior growth trajectory, increasing profitability and huge addressable market make it an ideal investment,” said Nari Ansari, Principal at TCV.
Israelis didn’t have far to go in the rush to get aid to the people of Haiti following Hurricane Matthew’s destructive brush with the island country. That’s because they were already there.Mizrahi History Finds Its Place in Israeli Education
A crew from the nonprofit organization IsraAID has been in Haiti for more than six years, having arrived just after the January 2010 earthquake to help in rescue and recovery operations.
“Our team is doing food and water distribution around Port-au-Prince,” IsraAID Media Director and emergency team leader Mickey Noam-Alon told ISRAEL21c over the weekend, as the number of dead in Haiti nears 900.
Hurricane Matthew’s 145-mile-per-hour winds and torrential rains destroyed houses and entire villages as well as roads, bridges and other infrastructure on October 3 and 4. Government and UN officials estimate that some 350,000 Haitians are in need of assistance.
IsraAID and local partner Prodev were the first to provide food and water for hundreds of children and their families at Cite Soleil, “a densely populated and extremely impoverished community in Port-Au-Prince,” Noam-Alon reported.
After decades of advocacy, the Mizrahi experience will now be taught in Israeli history courses.
For three horrifying days in November 1945, Libyan Jews were terrorized by local Arabs. More than 140 Jews, including 36 children, were killed, 4,000 were left homeless, approximately 1,000 homes and businesses were plundered, and nine synagogues were destroyed.
A few years earlier, Sultan Mohammed V of Morocco protected his Jewish subjects from the anti-Semitic race laws of the Vichy regime. When anti-Jewish hatred erupted across the country in 1948, Mohammed V once again came to the defense of Moroccan Jewry.
Knowledge of the Libyan pogrom is basic for understanding Libyan Jewry’s aliyah to Israel, while knowledge of Mohammed V’s protective stance is basic for understanding the affection that Moroccan Jews around the world still feel for the monarchy.
Just don’t ask your average Israeli high school graduate about these events. Why? Because odds are that he or she didn’t learn anything about them during twelve years in the Israeli school system.
