Weekly roundup of world briefs

Congress members join global task force to combat online anti-Semitism

By Marcy Oster

(JTA) — Several U.S. Congress members are part of a new task force of international lawmakers trying to combat online anti-Semitism.

Members of the national legislatures of Australia, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States are part of the panel, according to an announcement from Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., a members of the Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Anti-Semitism.

The lawmakers decided to ban together since “social media posts do not stop at international borders,” the statement said. The task force will work to protect all minority groups from online hate.

Its goals include establishing consistent messaging and policy from parliaments and legislatures around the world in order to hold social media platforms accountable; the adoption and publication of transparent policies related to hate speech; and raising awareness about ant-Ssemitism on social media platforms and its consequences.

Other U.S. lawmakers on the panel include Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.; Chris Smith, R-N.J.; and Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla. Knesset member Michal Cotler-Wunsh of Israel’s Blue and White party, daughter of former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, also is a member.

“It has never been easier than now for anti-Semites to connect and spread hateful propaganda using social media,” Deutch said in a statement. “These platforms have a responsibility to ensure that they are not being used freely by purveyors of hate. Online anti-Semitism is a global problem.”

Norway will extradite suspect in deadly 1982 bombing of Paris Jewish restaurant to France

By Marcy Oster

(JTA) — A suspect in the deadly 1982 bombing of a Jewish-owned restaurant in Paris will be extradited to France from Norway.

A Norwegian court ruled that Walid Abdurahman Abu Zayed, who was arrested in Norway earlier this month, will be returned to France, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Abu Zayed can make a last resort appeal to Norway’s Justice and Public Security Minister.

The attack on the Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant in the heavily Jewish Marais district killed six and wounded 22. Five attackers threw a grenade into the restaurant in August 1982 before opening fire on some 30 diners and passersby. The restaurant closed in 2006.

Abu Zayed is believed to have been a part of the Palestinian terror cell associated with the Abu Nidal organization that carried out the attack.

Sweden allocates $1.1 million to start work on its first Holocaust museum

BY Josefin Dolsten

(JTA) — Sweden has allocated $1.1 million to prepare for the opening of the country’s first Holocaust museum.

The Ministry of Culture said last week that the government was giving the money to the Living History Forum, a Stockholm-based government agency that educates about the Holocaust, human rights and tolerance. The money will go toward collecting documents and interviewing Holocaust survivors to make up the museum’s exhibits.

In 2018, Sweden said it was planning to build a Holocaust museum with a focus on survivors from the Scandinavian country and a center devoted to Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.

Many of the details of the museum, including when it will open, its location and whether it will operate as an independent government agency, are still undecided. Lawmakers are debating whether the museum should be located in the capital, Stockholm, or in Malmö, a city that has seen intense anti-Semitism in recent years.

“The Holocaust is a crime against humanity that is unparalleled in our history,” the Culture Ministry said in its statement. “Its memory and lessons must continue to be preserved and communicated about. Never again must something similar to this happen.”

Far-right activists stage anti-Semitic hate speech incidents in Scandinavia on Yom Kippur

By Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — Several incidents involving anti-Semitic hate speech occurred in Scandinavia in what the World Jewish Congress said was a coordinated campaign by neo-Nazis on Yom Kippur.

Most of the incidents recorded on Sunday and Monday in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland involved the circulation of anti-Semitic pamphlets, sometimes in the form of small posters near Jewish community buildings. There was no violence in any of the incidents.

In Norrköping, a city located about 70 miles southwest of the Swedish capital of Stockholm, a handful of men from the Nordic Resistance Movement stood outside the local synagogue on Monday, which was Yom Kippur, with flags of their movement, the Jewish Central Council wrote in a statement. The synagogue was empty at the time.

“The Jews circumcise their babies so rabbis can suck blood from the penises of newborns and according to the Talmud they may have sex with children from the age of 3,” one of the posters seen at that demonstration said.

The World Jewish Congress in a statement saying the effort was “a string of coordinated actions on Yom Kippur targeting Jews” called on the nations to follow Finland’s example from earlier this year “and move swiftly to ban the Nordic Resistance Movement and rid its violent propaganda from our streets.”

Israel rolls out super-fast 5G network

(JNS) — Israeli Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel announced on Tuesday that three Israeli telecommunications companies had been awarded licenses to operate Fifth Generation communications networks in the country.

“As of today, there is 5G in Israel. I have just completed the licensing ceremony,” said Hendel in a statement.

According to Israeli business daily Globes, the three companies are Partner Communications Ltd., Pelephone and Hot Mobile.

“For a decade, the State of Israel has lagged behind in the field of infrastructure. I am committed to quickly reducing the gap and returning to leadership in the field of communications. The State of Israel and the whole world are going through difficult days and it is good that there are some bright spots for the encouragement and growth of the economy,” said Hendel.

5G networks can support a large number of connections and devices, and transmit copious amounts of information at high speeds. According to the Communications Ministry, these networks are characterized by low latency (almost real-time response), greater bandwidth and extreme reliability, and can be divided into different layers with different user characteristics (so that different layers of the network can be dedicated to different purposes).

The technology will enable “remote operation of devices, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, gaming, real time big data analysis, smart city, smart medicine, distance learning, innovative agriculture applications” and more, according to the ministry.

Pelephone CEO Ran Guron said that his company’s subscribers would be able to receive 5G services immediately in 150 towns and cities across Israel, according to Globes. Partner CEO Itzik Benbenishti said that today’s announcement was very significant news for all Partner’s subscribers, while Hot Mobile CEO Ilan Brook said that his company was very excited, and that from today the company’s subscribers, both business and private, would be able to benefit from 5G services, according to the report.

Qatar, Turkey push for Fatah-Hamas coalition

(JNS) — Qatar, with the encouragement of Turkey, has proposed to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas that he establish a joint partnership with Hamas, Channel 12 reported on Tuesday. According to the proposal, Abbas’s Fatah party is to establish a joint list with Hamas for the 132-seat Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), to be followed immediately by a national-unity coalition.

According to Channel 12‘s Arab-affairs expert Ehud Ya’ari, the proposal was presented to Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub and former PLC speaker Rawhi Fattouh, who had been conducting negotiations with Hamas in Istanbul.

Meanwhile, the report noted, Abbas wants to pamend Palestinian election law to enable Hamas candidates not to have to sign on to the principles of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence. He also intends to call for Legislative Council elections—but not for the presidency—to be held sometime between the end of January and mid-February.

One upshot of the talks in Istanbul, according to the report, was that the P.A. agreed to take on the administration of the Gaza Strip, without Hamas having to forfeit its armed forces.

Since taking control of Gaza by a violent coup in 2007, Hamas has signed several agreements with Fatah, but none have been honored or implemented.

In an interview with Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen TV on Sept. 7, Hamas deputy political chief Saleh al-Arouri said that due to recent events in the region, it had agreed to join forces with its longtime rival, Fatah, in order to confront Israel.

Among these “recent events,” which he called “betrayals,” Arouri cited U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan and the normalization treaty then about to be signed between the United Arab Emirates and Israel.

In light of the “dangers strangling the Palestinian cause,” said Arouri, the Palestinian people no longer had the option of accepting the split between Fatah and Hamas.

Helen Reddy, who sang the feminist anthem ‘I Am Woman,’ dies at 78

By Marcy Oster

(JTA) — Singer Helen Reddy, a Grammy Award winner for the feminist anthem “I Am Woman” that soared to No. 1 in the early ’70s, has died.

Reddy, who converted to Judaism before marrying her second husband, died Tuesday at the age of 78. She was diagnosed in 2017 with dementia, and since then had lived at the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s Samuel Goldwyn Center for Behavioral Health in Woodland Hills, California. Her children confirmed her death in a post on Facebook.

Reddy was born in Melbourne, Australia, to performer parents, who took her on the road at the age of 4, and later out of boarding school and on the road in her teens.

She converted to Judaism prior to marrying her manager, Jeff Wald, in 1968 after moving to the United States, according to IMDb.

Her first hit was a version of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from the Broadway rock musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

“I Am Woman” reached the top of the Billboard charts at the end of 1972, which led to the Grammy for best female pop vocal performance.

Five years later, Reddy starred in the Disney children’s film “Pete’s Dragon.” She made guest appearances on several television shows and in the 1980s on stage.

In 2002 she retired from show business and returned to her native Australia to work as a practicing hypnotherapist and motivational speaker. She made a brief comeback in 2012, performing in several concerts, and sang “I Am Woman” in 2017 at the Los Angeles Women’s March.

In December 2000, at the release of her album titled “The Best Christmas Ever,” Reddy told the St. Louis Disptach that she had honored her Judaism by making sure that none of the songs mentioned Jesus.

Marilee Shapiro Asher, artist who survived global pandemics a century apart, dies at 107

By Ben Harris

(JTA) — Marilee Shapiro Asher, an acclaimed artist who survived both the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and COVID-19, has died.

Asher died on Sept. 11 at her home in Washington, D.C., according to a statement from her family. She was 107.

Asher made national headlines in May when news broke that she had survived COVID-19, despite doctors telling her family that she had mere hours to live. Asher wound up returning home after five days in the hospital.

Her recovery came more than a century after she survived the Spanish flu, the 1918 pandemic that claimed more than 50 million lives worldwide.

Born in Chicago in 1912, Asher began studying sculpture in 1936. She took up painting a few years after she moved to Washington, in 1943, with her first husband, Bernard Shapiro. Her first solo exhibition was held at American University in 1947.

In 1993, she married Robert Asher, who died in 2008.

Asher remained a working artist until she took ill from the coronavirus, with a solo exhibition scheduled for May at a Washington gallery that was canceled due to the pandemic. In 2015, she published a memoir, “Dancing in the Wonder for 102 Years.”

Asher is survived by a daughter, Joan, of Washington, and a son, Harvey, of Florida. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Capital Caring Health Hospice in Washington, D.C., or the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

Jewish high school students in Northern California ask district to take action against anti-Semitism

By Marcy Oster

(JTA) — Jewish students and their supporters have called on school officials in Northern California’s Marin County to take action against anti-Semitism at a local high school.

More than 5,600 people have signed the Change.org petition addressed to the Tamalpais Union High School District and its superintendent, Tara Taupier.

Last month, an Instagram account associated with the Redwood High School in the city of Larkspur, 13 miles north of San Francisco, called on followers to identify Jewish high school students in Marin County. School officials later said that they believed they had identified the student running the Instagram account and provided the information to local law enforcement. The account was removed.

“Our safety is threatened by the list and the pictures posted by the student,” reads the petition signed by Redwood students. “The list of Jewish students paired with the image of the swastika and the bullet produces an uncanny resemblance to the use of lists during the Nazi Regime. The idea of going back to school with a student whose beliefs align with those of Nazis is inconceivable.

“We believe the ‘action’ taken thus far by the administration has done nothing to make us feel secure and safe. This student has gotten away with offensive behavior for far too long and this recent escalation is a direct result of the lack of attention given by the district.”

The action taken so far, according to the petition, was an email from the district that “focused too much on the history of anti-Semitism and the actions of the community rather than the action plan of the district.”

Israel delivers first Iron Dome defense system to the US Army

By Marcy Oster

(JTA) — Israel delivered the first of two Iron Dome missile defense system batteries to the U.S. Army.

The U.S. and Israel signed an agreement for the purchase of two batteries a year ago from its developer, the Haifa-based firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.

The batteries will be employed in the defense of U.S. troops against ballistic and aerial threats, Israel’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday in a statement.

On Wednesday, Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited Rafael’s Leshem Institute for an event marking the delivery of the first Iron Dome missile to the U.S.

In March, the Army canceled plans to purchase more of the batteries because of difficulties integrating them into its existing air defense systems.

Congress has given Israel more than $1.5 billion to produce Iron Dome batteries. In 2014, the U.S. and Israel signed a co-production agreement that would allow parts of the Iron Dome system to be produced in the United States.

Since it was deployed in 2011, Iron Dome has intercepted over 2,400 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza. Along with Iron Dome, Israel employs several other defense systems, including David’s Sling, Arrow-2 and Arrow-3.