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Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Some headlines and summaries from JTA
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Activist files complaint after Palestinian forum
A Jewish Defense League activist filed a police complaint against Georgetown University after campus police ejected him from a Palestine Solidarity Movement conference.
Campus security threw Bill Maniaci of Reno, Nev., and Matthew Finberg of Boulder, Colo., out of the conference on Saturday. Erik Smulson, a spokesman for the private university in Washington, said the men had been warned three times not to disrupt the proceedings. Maniaci said he had interrupted speakers twice to urge them to answer a question on suicide bombing.
He said two campus security officers kicked or hit him in his ribs and knocked his head while dragging him out. He filed a police complaint and plans lawsuits against the university and against campus police and administrators.
Maniaci, 64, has a heart condition and said he was treated for a concussion after the incident.
Smulson said the ejection was non-violent. The university hosted the annual conference of the movement, which calls for divestment from Israel, over the weekend.
U.S. experts discuss boycott with Saudis
The United States sent experts to Saudi Arabia to review its boycott of Israel.
The Saudis are maintaining their boycott despite their long-awaited ascension last year to the World Trade Organization, which bans boycotts of member nations.
Prior to joining the WTO in September, the Saudis gave assurances they would drop the boycott, leading Israel to withdraw its power to protest its joining. But in December, the Saudis said they were maintaining the boycott. “We are sending a team of experts from the Departments of Commerce and State to work with the Saudi government on boycott issues as they affect U.S. companies,” Rob Portman, the U.S. trade representative, said in congressional testimony last week. “We have raised it with the Saudis, and they tell us they will follow through on their WTO obligations.”
Jewish teacher chains himself for peace
A Jewish teacher in California chained himself to a bench to protest the Iraq war and poverty.
Musician Hyim Jacob Ross, who teaches ethics, spirituality and interpersonal communication to teenagers at two Reform synagogues in the San Francisco Bay area, chained himself to a park bench in Oakland Monday for a five-day protest fast.
Ross wants to draw attention to massive government spending on the war in Iraq at a time when domestic poverty is still so prevalent.
"This is my tikkun olam project," says Ross, who also teaches music in a public school where most of his students are low-income. It´s important, he says, that youth "have models that are positive, non-violent, proactive and informative."
Ross unchains himself for bathroom breaks and is subsisting on water only. He is flying an American flag from his chair.
Jewish Republican heads Libby defense fund
A prominent Jewish Republican is leading a fund-raising drive for Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s legal defense.
Mel Sembler, a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition and the U.S. ambassador to Italy from 2001-2005, is spearheading the Libby Legal Defense Trust.
Sembler, a Florida shopping-mall magnate, describes Libby, the former chief adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, as “one of the unsung heroes in fighting the war on terror” on the trust’s website, www.scooterlibby.com. Libby, who is Jewish, resigned in October after his indictment on perjury charges related to his leaking the name of a CIA operative whose husband criticized the Iraq war.
Other prominent Jews on the trust’s board include Sam Fox, the chairman of the RJC; Shelly Kamins, a Washington-area real estate developer; professor Bernard Lewis, a prominent scholar of Islam; Stuart Bernstein, the former ambassador to Denmark; and Dennis Ross, the top U.S. envoy to the Middle East during the Clinton administration.
European consistency on Holocaust denial wanted
The European Jewish Congress will lobby European governments to synchronize their laws on anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.
The president of the group, Pierre Besnainou, said his group would press for the governments to adopt a similar standard in order to create a consistent response to what he views as a growing problem.
Penalties for such acts vary widely by country, from no punishment to up to 10 years in jail in Austria.
Book: Israeli Arabs poor
More than have of Israeli Arabs live in poverty, concludes a new book.
The book, published by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, uses statistical data to highlight the problems of Israeli Arabs, was launched Sunday by Israel’s president, Moshe Katsav, at his Jerusalem home.
The study — which did not include Arabs in the Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem — also concluded that the Israeli Arab population is young, with 50 percent under the age of 19, and that Arab women have lower fertility rates than they did in the 1960s — nine children on average then compared to 4.3 now.
This rate is still high compared with Jewish women, who average 2.6 children.
http://www.jta.org/
posted by Somebody @ 10:39 PM Permanent Link
 
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