Saturday, April 29, 2023

04/29 Links: How a UN definition threatens Israel; The Sbarro bomber's extradition: Where does the State Department actually stand? Guardian Draws Outrage with ‘Blatantly Antisemitic’ Cartoon

From Ian:

How a UN definition threatens Israel
A Palestinian refugee is given different conditions according to UNRWA. The definition begins with a typical classification, "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict." In addition to this, any descendants of male refugees can also be classified as a refugee. Refugee status is passed through paternal lineage, if a person's father was a refugee, they are considered one as well even if that person has never stepped foot in the land of Israel. This unique classification, which is not present in any other definition of a refugee, has led to the significant number of Palestinian refugees.

The UNRWA definition of a Palestinian refugee has been the topic of much controversy within the Middle East. This definition is not recognized by Israel as they do not consider it to be an accurate classification. At present, Israel has been condemned significantly more times by the UN than any other country. Although Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, they have been the target of more condemnations than Russia, which is currently in a decade-long war with Ukraine, North Korea, a dictatorship, and many other countries with poor human rights. Since its creation, the UN has targeted Israel and continues to do so by creating a distinct regiment for Palestinian refugees.

Due to the generational component of the refugee status, the right to return would provide Palestinians with a large enough population to become the majority in Israel. It would seem that creating the state of Palestine is the ultimate goal of the UN through its numerous condemnations and legislations. UNRWA provides additional aid to Palestinian refugees notably in terms of education, healthcare and social services. In place of finding a permanent solution to the problem, the UN perpetuates the issue by providing benefits to the refugee status. There is no foundation behind the distinct ability of the Palestinian refugee status to be inherited. It is for that reason that a disproportionate number of Palestinian refugees exist and will continue to increase over time.

A change in definition would be beneficial to maintain a standard definition of a refugee and provide services to those who have been personally displaced. It seems the main motivation in allowing such a large number of individuals to claim Palestinian refugee status is to denigrate Israel and its public image. This double standard is arbitrary and should no longer continue to exist.


Jonathan Tobin: Tucker Carlson’s fall isn’t as good for the Jews as the ADL thinks
That’s why the arguments about him are not as simple as people like Greenblatt, who want to dismiss him as a hatemonger, would have the public believe.

To say that is not to ignore Carlson’s failings.

Carlson’s neo-isolationism extended from positions opposing American involvement in unnecessary wars or for spreading democracy, which are now largely shared by most Republicans, to indifference about the threat that a nuclear Iran posed to the West. But as I have noted on many occasions, his unsupportive attitude towards the fight to defend Israel and the threat from Iran made him a rarity on the contemporary political right.

Moreover, he tended to regard antisemitism as not being a disqualifying trait when it came to guests on his show.

He hosted BDS advocate and rabid antisemite Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame on his show. Though in a sign that Carlson knew that platforming hate for Israel would go over poorly with a conservative audience that loves the Jewish state, the two managed not to mention it in that interview.

Far worse, was his bizarre defense of rap star/fashion mogul Kanye West, now known as “Ye.” Carlson devoted an entire hour to an interview with West but then deceptively edited out some of that disturbed figure’s anti-Jewish rants so as to make him appear more reasonable.

It’s also true that Carlson’s penchant for satirizing his foes could cross over into unacceptable language—for example, criticism of a Tennessee state legislator that had helped incite demonstrations at the state capitol in Nashville and disrupted the work of a democratic body was valid. But saying that this individual “spoke like a sharecropper” went way over the line.

That doesn’t mean that all of the accusations hurled at Carlson by Greenblatt were correct. In particular, the ADL argument that in speaking of the impact of illegal immigration on American democracy, Carlson was advocating for a “great replacement theory” was disingenuous.
The Sbarro bomber's thwarted extradition from Jordan: Where does the State Department actually stand?
And finally the 2021 report. It's the last one to have appeared so far and was published just a month ago on February 27, 2023. True, the mandated deadline was April 30, 2022, but the 10 month delay for an annual report doesn't seem to have troubled anyone. Its full text is downloadable here; the Jordan chapter is here.

Following the now-customary formulation that
Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2021. As a regional leader etc.

it goes on to say this about Tamimi and her scandalous freedom:
The United States has emphasized to the Jordanian government the importance of holding Ahlam al-Tamimi accountable in a U.S. court for her admitted role in a 2001 bombing in Jerusalem that included two Americans among the 15 victims. She had been serving a prison sentence in Israel for a terrorism conviction related to the bombing before she was released by Israel as part of a prisoner exchange.

It's fair to say the cold disdain to which we, the parents of one of Tamimi's victims, have been treated at the hands of State Department officials in all the years since Tamimi's indictment, ought to have prepared us for this. But it didn't and we were stunned.

Note what's said and what isn't:
As with the report covering 2020, the cornerstone 1995 Jordan/US extradition treaty gets no mention here at all.
In fact, the word ‘extradition’ doesn't even appear.
The Jordanian court decision invalidating it in 2017 gets no mention either.
Nor do the grounds on which the invalidation was based by the Jordanian judges.
Nothing is said about the nature of the flaw alleged by the Jordanian court six years ago. Even if it is real and even if it has legal consequences (both very unlikely), this is a self-inflicted Jordanian flaw.


UK’s Guardian Draws Outrage with ‘Blatantly Antisemitic’ Cartoon
British daily The Guardian on Saturday apologized for a caricature of an outgoing BBC boss that was accused of trafficking in antisemitic stereotypes.

Richard Sharp announced his resignation as BBC chairman on Friday after his involvement in a loan for then British prime minister Boris Johnson raised questions about the broadcaster’s impartiality.

Martin Rowson’s drawing pictured a grinning caricature of Sharp, who is Jewish, with an enlarged hooked nose; Sharp is seen carrying a Goldman Sachs office box, stuffed with gold and squid tentacles.

Banking and investment giant Goldman Sachs is Sharp’s former employer. The multinational figures prominently in antisemitically-tinged rhetoric on world domination by financial capital. Notably, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi described it as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Following widespread outrage, The Guardian issued an apology and removed Rowson’s drawing from its website as it “did not meet our editorial standards.” Rowson too issued an apology, saying he “screwed up pretty badly.”

The Guardian, Britain’s left-wing broadsheet, is embroiled in Britain’s latest antisemitism scandal days after its sister newspaper published a letter by far-left Labour parliamentarian Dianne Abbott claiming that Jews have not experienced racism, but mere “prejudice.”


Palestinians blast European Commission president for saying Israel ‘made desert bloom’
Palestinians from across the political spectrum condemned European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over the weekend for saying that Israel has “made the desert bloom.”

Her statement was included in a special message posted on Twitter by the European Union Delegation to Israel to celebrate 75 years of Israel’s independence and friendship with Europe.

“Today, we celebrate 75 years of vibrant democracy in the heart of the Middle East,” she said. “Seventy-five years of dynamism, ingenuity, and groundbreaking innovations. You have literally made the desert bloom.”

The PA denounced von der Leyen
The Palestinian Authority denounced the remarks as “racist” and demanded that the European Commission president apologize to both European citizens and the Palestinian people.

“The State of Palestine rejects the inappropriate, false, and discriminatory remarks by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, particularly the ‘made the desert bloom’ anti-Palestinian racist trope,” the Palestinian Foreign Affairs Ministry said. “Such propagandist discourse dehumanizes and erases the Palestinian people and falsifies their rich history and civilization.”

According to the ministry, “such a narrative perpetuates the continued and racist denial of the Nakba (catastrophe – reference to the establishment of Israel) and whitewashes Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid regime.”

The ministry warned that “such adoption of anti-Palestinian rhetoric undermines the European Union’s standing and casts serious doubts on its declared commitment to international law and human rights.”


Pro-overhaul protest showed the right’s strengths — and the government’s weakness
At first glance, the Netanyahu government seems very stable — that special sort of stability enjoyed by coalition governments with low polling numbers, propped up by the simple calculus that no member of the coalition wants to face the voters at their angriest.

One Thursday poll for the Maariv news site found Netanyahu’s coalition down 14 seats from its current 64, with Likud itself responsible for nine of those lost seats, dropping from 32 to 23.

No poll is really trustworthy in this political moment. The usual caveats are in force: Different methodologies, pollsters’ prejudices and so on. But it’s also not clear what voters actually mean when they tell a pollster they’ve changed their minds. If the Maariv poll is to be believed, nearly a third of Likud’s voters in the last election appear to have shifted their votes to Benny Gantz’s National Unity, which swelled to six seats more than Likud itself. Even if the numbers are right and the polling methods accurate, do those answers signify a real and resilient shift or a momentary explosion of frustration that won’t survive till Election Day?

These are important questions, but they don’t help Netanyahu. His problem is not one poll but all of them, including those by right-wing pollsters identified with Likud. For example, a mid-April poll by one-time Netanyahu confidant Shlomo Filber gave the coalition seven more seats than Maariv, or 57. But that’s still seven below the current Knesset. And Filber found Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit faction hovering perilously close to the 3.25 percent vote threshold for falling out of the Knesset altogether.

In other words, the decline is real.

And numerous polls offer insight into its reasons. Half the electorate is angry at the government over its judicial shakeup plans. But what’s driving anywhere from seven to 14 Knesset seats’ worth of voters away from Likud and other coalition parties? What’s driving right-wing voters to join the center-left in polls showing the government’s unfavorability rating reaching into the high sixties? An aerial photo of the pro-judicial overhaul rally in Jerusalem on April 27, 2023. (Flash90)

“What do you think should be the priority of the government?” a Channel 12 poll asked last week. It asked respondents to choose between just two options: The looming “economic crisis” — rising food and gas prices, inflation, etc. — and the “judicial reform.”

Nearly three-quarters, 74%, said the economy and just 19% wanted the judicial reform — a whopping 55-point gap.

And when Likud voters were pulled from the larger sample, the gap was almost as huge: 69% economy, 27% judicial reform — a 42-point gap.
150,000 protest against judicial reform, Spanish PM voices support
The Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez spoke out in support of the judicial reform protests in a video that was screened at the anti-judicial reform demonstrations in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.

Sanchez's speech was published as the protesters gathered for the 17th week in a row, in 150 different locations around the country.

"Dear Israeli friends, we as Socialist International have always fought for freedom, equality, justice and democracy," Sanchez started. "Yet, as many of you already know, these are values that we cannot take for granted, and that we have to promote and defend on a daily basis.

"As such, now as always, the Socialist International stands in solidarity with the people of Israel. Dear friends, you will always find us in the fight for democracy," he concluded.

Sanchez has served as the Prime Minister of Spain since June 2018 and is the head of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party.

In response to the Spanish Prime Minister's remarks, Israel's Foreign Minister Eli Cohen took to Twitter to criticize the video.

"For the opponents of the reforms, there are no red lines, including the attempt to harm [Israel's] international status," he wrote. "No foreign entity will decide for the Israeli public, and I'm sure that Sanchez had no such intention. As someone who supports the reform, I have no doubt that it will strengthen democracy and balance out authority."
Hezbollah Behind Roadside Bomb in Israel Last Month, Israeli Official Says
Lebanon’s Hezbollah was behind a rare roadside bomb attack last month that wounded a motorist in northern Israel, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said on Friday.

Israel’s military said that security forces had killed a man carrying an explosive belt after he apparently crossed from Lebanon into Israel and detonated a bomb on March 13 near Megiddo junction in northern Israel.

A possible link to Iran-backed Hezbollah was being investigated, officials said at the time.

Asked on Channel 12 television whether a political crisis in Israel regarding the government’s plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary has emboldened Israel’s enemies, Hanegbi said: “We estimate that for now it may lead to operations that were not considered in the past.”

“We saw operations like that by Hezbollah, for example the attack in Megiddo, which failed, but it was a kind of opposition we were not used to,” he said.


Hamas leader accepts invitation to visit Iran
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is expected to visit Iran soon to discuss “political and field developments,” Hamas announced on Friday.

The planned visit is seen by Palestinians as another sign of improved relations between Hamas and Iran after the tensions that erupted between the two sides over the civil war in Syria.

Relations between Hamas and Iran were strained when the Palestinian group refused to come out in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a key ally of the Iranian regime in the Middle East.

Hamas leaders have recently sought to restore their ties with the Syrian government.

Hamas leader based outside of Palestinian territories
Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, received a phone call from Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who invited him to visit Tehran and meet with the Iranian leadership to discuss more details and current developments, Hamas said in a statement.
Syria says Israeli strikes hit Homs area, damage reported
Suspected Israeli airstrikes targeted the Syrian province of Homs early Saturday, state media reported. Syria's state news agency, SANA, citing military officials, said that three civilians were wounded in the strike and that a civilian fuel station caught fire, resulting in a number of fuel tankers and trucks being burned. It reported that Syrian air defenses responded to the alleged Israeli missiles in the sky over Homs and shot down some of them.

The pro-government Sham FM radio said fires broke out south of the city of Homs as a result of the strikes and "successive explosions" sounded from the area. The Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israeli missiles had destroyed an ammunition depot belonging to the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah at a military airport in the countryside of Homs.

The observatory said it was the second time Israel targeted the site in a month. On April 2, state media reported that Israeli airstrikes hit several sites in Homs, wounding five soldiers. The observatory said two Hezbollah members were killed by the earlier attack. There was no immediate statement from Israeli authorities on the strikes,

Israel, which has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment next door, has reportedly carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of neighboring Syria in recent years but rarely acknowledges them. Earlier this year, suspected Israeli strikes in Syria intensified, culminating in an exchange on the border April 8, when the Israeli military said its forces attacked targets in Syria after six rockets were launched from southern Syria toward the Golan Heights.

On Monday, Syrian pro-government media said Israel shelled targets in southern Syria near the Golan Heights, causing unspecified material damage.


Sarah Idan: Why Saudi Arabia’s Detente With Iran Isn’t A Good Thing
Not all Iraqis share Tehran’s genocidal anti-Israel views: Iraq’s Islamic Fatwa Council recently issued a religious edict condemning Hamas’ oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and calling on the terrorist group to make peace with Israel, noting that Hamas was responsible for racketeering, extortion, the use of child soldiers and falsely accusing Palestinians of treason.

In Lebanon, Iran is the longtime sponsor of the Hezbollah terror organization, which holds the state hostage. In Syria, Iran intervened to support the brutal Ba’athist regime of Bashar Assad, who has slaughtered over 300,000 of his own people in the ongoing Syrian Civil War.

In Yemen, Iran has supported an attempted takeover by a like-minded theocracy which has rained down Iranian-supplied missiles on Saudi Arabia and launched drones against the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.). In the Palestinian Territories, Iran is the prime sponsor of the theocratic terrorist regimes, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which terrorize the Palestinian people and are an obstacle to peace.

To counter Iran’s ugly plans, a strong alliance will be needed, backed by vigorous American support. Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy, has begun making peace with old foes to gather an opposing coalition through the Abraham Accords, which have led to normalized relations with the U.A.E., Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. Israel had hoped to add peace and friendship with Saudi Arabia, the so-called “Dead of the Century,” but Iranian-Saudi rapprochement renders this less likely.

Instead, the Chinese-brokered truce undermines American prestige in the region, already severely shattered after the Biden administration chose to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban.

The Biden administration has pursued an Iran policy that makes no sense, waffling between restoring the failed Obama-era deal that would enable Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and a tepid push for “stability” that has driven Saudi Arabia right into China’s arms.

It’s time for America to remember what it is and what all people around the world who love freedom are looking for it to be: the champion of liberty in a hostile world. Like its partners, Russia and China, Iran is attempting to overturn the American-led world order and impose a darker vision on humanity. America must not let that happen.
‘One American in Iraq is too much’: Iran’s leaders assail US presence in Middle East
Iran’s supreme leader and president both slammed the United States’ presence in the Middle East, as Tehran hosted the president of neighboring Iraq for wide-ranging talks on Saturday.

Decades-old arch-enemies, the US and Iran have vied for influence in Iraq since the 2003 American invasion toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

Both helped Iraq to defeat the Islamic State group, and the US still has 2,500 non-combat troops in the country to provide it with advice and training.

Some 900 US troops remain in Syria, most in the Kurdish-administered northeast, as part of a US-led coalition battling remnants of IS.

And the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain, across the Gulf from Iran.

“Americans are not friends with anyone and are not even loyal to their European friends,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said at his meeting with Iraq’s President Abdul Latif Rashid, the supreme leader’s website said.

“Even the presence of one American in Iraq is too much.”

Earlier, Rashid met President Ebrahim Raisi and held a joint news conference.

“We do not consider the presence of foreign forces and foreigners in the region to be useful,” Raisi told reporters.

“The presence of the US disturbs the security of the region,” said the Iranian president.
Iranian Al-Quds Day exhibit urges a ‘nuclear extinction’ of Israel
The Islamic Republic of Iran organized an exhibition in Afghanistan’s third-largest city of Herat that advocated the “nuclear extinction” of Israel in April as part of the month-long Al-Quds Day celebrations.

“This exhibition is an example of the Iranian regime's exporting of its antisemitic ideology. There is a permissive environment in Afghanistan for the Iranian system to do so now, especially with the Taliban in charge, and there are natural linkages to the Hazara community, which have a significant presence in Herat," Jason Brodsky, policy director for the US-based United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told the Jerusalem Post.

"These Cultural Centers are not spreading the views of the Iranian people, but of the Islamic Republic, and it is part of a drive for recruitment, incitement, and influence.“

The Hazara are a largely a Shi'ite Muslim ethnic group. Nearly almost all of Iran’s over 87 million Muslims are Shi'ite.

The Cultural Center of the Consulate General of Iran organized the anti-Israel exhibition in Herat, Afghanistani news outlet Watan24.com reported three weeks ago. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated the report into English.

Exhibit falling on Al-Quds Day
The Herat exhibit that urged the nuclear obliteration of the Jewish state coincided with the antisemitic Al-Quds Day event. The founder of the Islamic Republic leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini created Al-Quds Day after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israel and the Western powers have accused Iran's regime of building nuclear weapons. Tehran denies that it seeks to construct an atomic bomb.

MEMRI wrote that Al-Quds Day "is celebrated generally on the last Friday of Ramadan, which this year was on April 21, to emphasize the call for the liberation of Jerusalem. However, Al-Quds Day was marked this year on both April 14 and April 21, the former perhaps in expectation that it might have been the last Friday of Ramadan. In South Asian countries, Eid Al-Fitr was celebrated on April 21 and April 22, 2023.”


Unhelpful background in BBC report on Jerusalem terror attack
On the afternoon of April 24th the BBC News website published a report by Raffi Berg on a terror attack which had taken place earlier near the Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem.

Originally titled “Jerusalem: Five injured in car ramming attack near market”, the report’s headline was amended some half an hour later to read “Jerusalem: Five injured in Palestinian car ramming attack”.

While the account of the attack presented to BBC audiences is reasonable, the second half of the report, which purports to provide background to the story, displays some notable omissions.

Relating to the fact that the attack took place as Memorial Day was about to begin, Berg tells readers that:
“Israel was on heightened alert ahead of Memorial Day, which commemorates soldiers and civilians who have been killed in conflict and attacks since 1860.

The sombre occasion leads into Independence Day on Tuesday night and Wednesday. The day is celebrated with patriotic events, with this year marking Israel’s 75th anniversary.

Palestinians, however, consider Israel’s formation in 1948 as a catastrophe which led to the displacement of up to 750,000 of their people in the Arab-Israeli war that followed.”

Notably Berg makes no mention of the fact that around half of the Palestinians who fled did so before Israel declared independence in May 1948, in many cases on the advice of their leaders. His account omits the violent response of local Arabs and the Arab Liberation Army to the 1947 UN Partition Plan proposal as well as the fact that the armies of five neighbouring Arab states invaded Israel the day after independence was declared.

In other words, Berg’s portrayal of the “catastrophe” of displacement distorts history by portraying Palestinians as completely passive and entirely erasing the actions of their leaders and their Arab allies from the picture presented to BBC audiences.
Auschwitz Museum Grants Holocaust Survivor First Access to Block Where He Was Imprisoned as Child
A Holocaust survivor recently became the first member of the public granted access by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum to enter the former Nazi concentration camp’s “Block 8,” a typically private section of the museum, so he could see once again where he was imprisoned for three years, The Algemeiner has learned.

David Shechter, 94, of Miami, Florida, made the emotional return to Auschwitz as part of the “Holocaust to Independence” nine-day mission through Poland and Israel hosted by Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) from April 19 until 27. The trip took place during Israel’s 75th Independence Day and more than 80 years after Shechter escaped death as a prisoner in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. During the three years he was imprisoned in Block 8 as a child, Shechter was starved, tortured and the witness to thousands of murders, including those of his family members, according to the FIDF.

“Having to walk through Cell 8 was choking,” he said of the visit in a statement, released by the FIDF. “While I was prepared for the trauma, I almost fainted. I don’t know how in G-d’s name I came out of the Holocaust alive. What gave me strength was having IDF commanders by my side, as well as FIDF supporters who saw first-hand some of the horrors of what we experienced during the most horrendous time in history.”

Shechter is one of the founders of the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach and The March of the Living. The film A Call to Remember: The David Shechter Story was produced in 2018 about his life and a testimony about his experiences during the Holocaust will be featured in an interactive exhibit expected to open in a museum in Boston in 2025, the FIDF said.

A delegation of 120 people took part in the Holocaust to Independence mission, including IDF soldiers, Holocaust survivor Ben Midler and FIDF supporters from across the US. The mission is part of FIDF’s Witnesses in Uniform Program, which gives IDF soldiers a first-hand look at the atrocities that unfolded during the Holocaust to help them have a new-found understanding of their Jewish identity.
Dutch archives on accused Nazi collaborators to open to the public in 2025
The Dutch government is planning to throw open information about 300,000 people investigated for their collaboration with the Nazis, in a move that could accelerate a reckoning with the Netherlands’ Holocaust record.

For the past seven decades, only researchers and relatives of those accused of collaborating with the Nazis could access the information held by the Dutch archives. But a law guarding the data is set to expire in 2025.

In February, The War in Court, a Dutch consortium devoted to preserving history, announced that it would make the records available online when the privacy law expires. The effort drew additional attention this week when a New York Times article explored concerns the hopes and concerns held by people in the Netherlands who have an idea of what lies within the sweeping repository.

“It’s a sensitive archive,” Edwin Klijn, project leader of The War in Cort, told the Times.

“For years, the whole theme of collaboration has been a kind of taboo,” he added. “We don’t talk about collaboration that much but we’re now 80 years further and it’s time for us to face this dark part of the war.”

The Netherlands has world’s second-highest number of documented saviors of Jews, but it also had many collaborators who, aided by the topography and Holland’s proximity to Germany, helped the Nazis achieve the highest death rate there among Jews anywhere in Nazi-occupied Western Europe. Of 140,000 Dutch Jews, more than 100,000 were murdered. As is presumed to have happened with the most famous victim of the Nazis in the Netherlands, the teenaged diarist Anne Frank, many were given up by their neighbors and acquaintances.

The Dutch government investigated 300,000 people for collaborating with the Nazis and more than 65,000 of them stood trial in a special court system in the years after World War II. But it was only in 2020 that the Dutch government apologized for failing to protect Jews during the Holocaust, long after other European leaders and after local Jews had requested an apology; a town square was named for a mayor who handed Jews to the Nazis until last year.
How Bulgarian citizens rescued 50,000 Jews in 1943
Among all the tales of heroism and death during the Holocaust, how many of us are aware of the rescue of nearly 50,000 Jews by the citizens of Bulgaria? In 1943, despite the planned and already commenced deportation of Bulgarian Jews to the Nazi death camps, thousands were released from the trains bound for Auschwitz and allowed to go home.

The newly released Acts of Resistance by Dominic Carrillo is a fictionalized account of the actions of Bulgarian citizens that succeeded in stopping the deportations. The novel’s narrative is based on memoirs written soon after World War II and the published words of church leaders and politicians. Three teenaged characters tell the interwoven stories of their actions from March 1943 until September 1944, when Russian forces liberated Bulgaria from the Nazis. The novel is a page-turner, each day fraught with suspense and danger. The book is exciting, inspiring and smart.

Misho, a fictional Jewish boy, is protected by the Archbishop (Metropolitan) Stefan who helps to conceal the youngster’s identity by hiring him to be his driver. Misho becomes the eye-witness to the Archbishop’s struggle to save Bulgarian Jewry—to his selfless bravery and determination to prevent Bulgaria from committing the crime of allowing its Jews to be killed.

Peter is a fictionalized gentile whose best friend is Jewish. Peter’s horror at learning that the government is cooperating with the Nazis to exterminate the Jews leads him to travel to Sofia to lobby his town’s member of Parliament and later to join the Communist partisans.
The cycling hero who saved Italian Jews from the Holocaust
In the 1940s, the cyclist Gino Bartali was probably the second most famous person in Italy. The most famous was, of course, the country’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.

Ethically, the two men could not have been more different.

While Mussolini passed anti-Jewish racial laws that, following the Nazi occupation of Rome, Naples and northern Italy in 1943, led to Jews being sent to the death camps, Bartali cycled thousands of miles across Italy to save his fellow countrymen.

For two years, the twice Tour de France and three times Giro d’Italia winner rode back and forth across the golden hills of Tuscany with counterfeit identity documents stashed inside the frame of his bicycle, delivering them to Jews hiding in churches, convents and orphanages so they could escape Il Duce’s Italy.

“His cycling career was the perfect cover,” says playwright and composer Victoria Buchholz, whose musical Glory Ride about Bartali’s wartime heroism, co-written with her father, the novelist Todd Buchholz, has just opened in London’s West End.

“Every morning he’d leave his house in Florence in biking shorts and a top with his name emblazoned on the back, dressed on the face of it for the training rides for which he was so famous.

"Because of who he was, Bartali was essentially above suspicion, and so rarely stopped on his cycling trips. On the occasions when he was searched by Mussolini’s henchmen, he’d ask that his bike not be touched, saying its various parts were carefully calibrated to achieve maximum speed,” she says.
Jewish story ‘woven into the fabric’ of nation, says Biden, proclaiming Jewish American Heritage Month
Jewish American “values, culture and contributions have shaped our character as a nation,” U.S. President Joe Biden wrote on Friday in a proclamation ahead of Jewish American Heritage Month, which begins Monday on May 1.

The president described how Jewish refugees, for centuries, have come to America fleeing global antisemitism.

“Early on, they fought for religious freedom, helping define one of the bedrock principles upon which America was built,” he stated. “Union soldiers celebrated Passover in the midst of the Civil War. Jewish suffragists fought to expand freedom and justice. And Jewish faith leaders linked arms with giants of the Civil Rights Movement to demand equal rights for all.”

“Jewish Americans continue to enrich every part of American life as educators and entrepreneurs, athletes and artists, scientists and entertainers, public officials and activists, labor and community leaders, diplomats and military service members, public health heroes and more,” said the president.

“In my own life, the Jewish community has been a tremendous source of friendship, guidance and strength through seasons of pain and seasons of joy,” he added.

He noted the continuing threat of antisemitism, which he called “unconscionable and despicable,” with “terrifying echoes of the worst chapters in human history.”
Congress members hold DC launch event for Golda Meir coin project
Usually, there are 50-50 odds of winning a coin flip, but the chances of success for those pushing for a coin honoring Golda Meir are more complicated.

Twenty members of Congress, foreign ambassadors and others lunched on April 27 at the U.S. Capitol, in part to celebrate 75 years of the U.S.-Israel relationship and partly to launch a bipartisan congressional effort for the U.S. Mint to strike a coin commemorating Israel’s fourth prime minister, who grew up in Milwaukee.

Bobby Rechnitz, a real estate developer, is chairing the initiative, which would require the support of two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and Senate. Ezra Friedlander, CEO of the Friedlander Group, also played an important role.

Rechnitz previously lobbied for Iron Dome funding and pushed for a congressional gold medal for former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in 2014 to honor his 90th birthday.

There could be no better time than the present—with the United States and Israel somewhat divided right now—for a unifying project, like honoring Meir, Rechnitz told JNS ahead of the event. “Especially when we’re talking about an American-Israeli woman, who became a prime minister of Israel and one of the first female leaders in the world,” he said.

Meir’s family (she was born Golda Mabovitch) left Ukraine for Milwaukee when she was 8 years old. In 1921, she and her husband, Morris Meyerson (she shortened her surname after moving to Israel), immigrated to British Mandatory Palestine, later serving as a delegate to the Zionist Organization and working as chief liaison to the British government during World War II.

She signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948 and was elected to the Knesset, before serving as labor minister, foreign affairs minister, and finally, as prime minister from 1969 to 1974.

Meir graced the cover of Time magazine in 1969, and U.S. voters named her Gallup’s “most admired woman” in 1971, 1973 and 1974.
Scientists grow tomatoes that thrive in drought conditions
Two of Israel’s most famous inventions are the commercialized cherry tomato and drip irrigation, so it makes perfect sense that another tomato/water innovation would arise here.

This time around, scientists developed tomatoes that are not only drought-tolerant, but whose yield actually increases in extreme weather conditions.

In a study recently published in the journal PNAS, researchers from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem crossbred two types of tomato species – a wild tomato from the deserts of western Peru and the cultivated tomato – with the aim of identifying which regions of the genome affect agricultural traits such as yields.

In the course of their research, which included DNA sequencing and data analysis of 1,400 plants, they identified interactions between two regions of the tomato genome that lead to increased yield. The new tomatoes are prolific despite consuming less water.

“Studies of complex traits in plants, such as yield and resistance to drought conditions, have been based on significantly smaller populations of around 200 species,” explains doctoral student Shai Torgeman, who conducted the research with Prof. Dani Zamir.

“This makes it impossible to identify all the interactions (epistasis) between the genes, as well as their influence on important agricultural traits,” Torgeman said.
Technion to honor alumnus, NASA scientist Eliad Peretz at Smithsonian
As a child growing up in Israel, Eliad Peretz was fascinated by space and the night sky. His goal, which he laid out in a five-year plan that he wrote as a fifth-grader, was to work for the organization whose mission was to address the big questions he wanted to pursue: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“I’m living my dream,” Peretz, who currently works at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told JNS in a phone interview.

On May 1, the American Technion Society will celebrate Peretz, a graduate of the Technion’s aerospace engineering faculty and a recipient of NASA’s exceptional achievement medal in a ceremony at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Israeli native Eliad Peretz at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Credit: Courtesy.

Speakers at the event, which is pegged both to Israel’s 75th anniversary and to the Technion’s upcoming centennial next year, include Peretz Lavie, a former Technion president and chairman of the Israeli Friends of Technion; as well as Technion and NASA colleagues, including John Mather, a senior NASA astrophysicist and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics.

Ahead of the event, Peretz told JNS about his current NASA job, where he works in the division of heliophysics, the science of the sun.
Top 5 Israeli inventions of past year



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