Weekly roundup of world briefs

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Jewish AG, declares candidacy for governor

(JTA) — Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general who made national headlines last year pushing back against attempts to reverse Joe Biden’s win in the state, is running for governor of the state.

Shapiro, a Democrat who has deep roots in the Jewish community, made the long-expected announcement on Monday, The Associated Press reported. The incumbent governor, Tom Wolf, who cannot run for a third term, said as long ago as 2019 that he favored Shapiro to succeed him.

Shapiro, 48, last year rose to prominence resisting efforts by former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in the state to stop the vote count or reverse it; Trump, who won Pennsylvania in 2016, lost it in 2020, but mounted a court battle over the vote count.

Shapiro also joined at least 40 lawsuits by Democratic attorneys general against Trump administration policy, more often than not winning. He led a 2018 investigation into child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in his state that led to major reforms.

Shapiro is not likely to face any Democratic challengers, and no major Republicans have yet to settle on a front-runner for their ticket. The only Republican to announce their candidacy to date is retired heart surgeon Dr. Nche Zama.

Shapiro fought close races in 2016 and 2020 for attorney general, and will likely face a tough gubernatorial race. Republicans have said they will target him for rising crime rates in Philadelphia, among other issues.

Shapiro attended a Jewish day school. “There, I was raised with the values of tikkun olam that continue into my career today,” he told a reporter for Fresh Ink for Teens last year. He sends his children to a Jewish day school.

Jewish teacher accused of forcibly removing a student’s hijab at NJ school

By Shira Hanau

(JTA) — A Jewish teacher at a New Jersey public school was accused of pulling a hijab off of a 7-year-old girl.

The teacher, who was named in social media posts as Tamar Herman, allegedly told the girl, who is Muslim, to take off her hijab in front of her class at the Seth Boyden Elementary school in Maplewood. When the girl refused, the teacher allegedly removed the hijab herself, according to an account provided to local media by a lawyer for the girl’s family.

Herman has also taught at Congregation Oheb Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in South Orange, New Jersey.

A lawyer representing Herman disputed the account provided by the girl’s lawyer, saying Herman asked the student, who was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, to take off her hood because it was blocking her eyes. When Herman realized the student was wearing the hood as a hijab, the lawyer said, she told the student she did not need to remove it.

The South Orange-Maplewood school district said it is investigating the matter in a statement issued Thursday. The school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the teacher’s actions and called for her removal.

“Forcefully stripping off the religious headscarf of a Muslim girl is not only exceptionally disrespectful behavior, but also a humiliating and traumatic experience,” they wrote in a series of tweets.

The South Orange-Maplewood school district has seen instances of antisemitism and racism in recent years, with racist graffiti found in bathrooms and reports of students chanting Hitler’s name, all within a few weeks in 2017.

First Jewish wedding held in Bahrain in 52 years

By Shira Hanau

(JTA) — For the first time in more than half a century, a Jewish couple was married in Bahrain on Sunday.

The wedding, which was held at the Ritz Carlton in Manama and certified kosher with help from the Orthodox Union, was a milestone for the Jewish community in the Gulf nation, which opened diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 and has recently made an effort to build a relationship with the American Jewish community.

Houda Nonoo, Bahrain’s former ambassador to the United States and the first Jewish Bahraini to hold the position of ambassador, shared the news of her son’s wedding on Twitter.

“While I know that every mother thinks their child’s wedding is monumental, this one truly was!” she wrote in a tweet.

Bahrain has been home to a Jewish community for more than 140 years, but many of its younger members have chosen to leave the country to study, often remaining abroad permanently. Leaders of the community hailed the wedding as a sign of the community’s resurgence and expressed hope that more young people would raise families there.

“This wedding was an important moment for our family, the community here in Bahrain, and more broadly, for the Jewish community in the region,” Ebrahim Dawood Nonoo, a cousin of Nonoo and president of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities, said in a statement. “The atmosphere was euphoric as we sat around the Chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy) which symbolizes the new home being built by the couple, it was also symbolic of the opportunity to further grow Jewish life in the region.”

Israeli-American Joshua Angrist shares Nobel Prize in economics

By Shira Hanau

(JTA) — Professor Joshua Angrist, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with dual Israeli-American citizenship, was named one of three winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on how public policy developments impact society.

Angrist and Stanford University’s Guido W. Imbens shared half of the roughly $1 million in prize money for their joint work on these so-called “natural experiments,” and University of California, Berkeley professor David Card received the other half. Natural experiments, which track societal cause and effect, are far more difficult to conceptualize than scientific ones, which compare physical outcomes in highly controlled settings.

For example, Angrist and Imbens have recently studied the sociological effects of mask mandates and other COVID-19 public health measures, according to NPR.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Angrist earned his master’s degree and doctorate from Princeton before living in Israel for a few years in the 1980s. Angrist then taught at Hebrew University from 1991 to 1996 before becoming a professor in the economics department at MIT.

He has written several papers about labor conditions in Gaza and the West Bank and served as a member of Israel’s Finance Ministry Working Group on Israeli-Palestinian Labor Market Relations in 1994.

Israeli AI chipmaker Hailo raises $136 million in funding

(JNS) — Israeli artificial-intelligence chipmaker Hailo announced on Tuesday that it raised $136 million in private funding led by Poalim Equity and Gil Agmon.

A source said the financing was done based on a valuation of $1 billion, reported Reuters.

The company said its investors already include Israeli businessman and Hailo chairman Zohar Zisapel, Swiss-based ABB Technology Ventures, London’s Latitude Ventures, Israel’s OurCrowd, in addition to others.

According to the report, former senior vice president at Intel Corp, Mooly Eden, will join its board of directors.

Hailo said the money would be used to develop new products and expand its markets.

Netflix defends Dave Chappelle’s comedy special featuring ‘Space Jews’ joke

(JNS) — Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the streaming service will not remove Dave Chappelle’s new comedy special “The Closer,” which has faced a backlash for featuring controversial comments, including an anti-Semitic joke.

After “The Closer” premiered last week, Chappelle was criticized by the LGBTQ+ community for poking fun at trans people and gender identity. The comedian was also denounced for making an anti-Semitic joke about “Space Jews” seeking world domination, which plays into a common anti-Semitic trope.

In a memo sent on Friday, Sarandos told senior staff members that “some talent may join third parties in asking us to remove the show in the coming days, which we are not going to do.”

“Chappelle is one of the most popular stand-up comedians today, and we have a long-standing deal with him,” he wrote. “As with our other talent, we work hard to support their creative freedom, even though this means there will always be content on Netflix some people believe is harmful.”

Sarandos noted as an example the reality series “My Unorthodox Life,” about a fashion executive who left the ultra-Orthodox Jewish faith. He then explained that the streaming giant does not allow titles “designed to incite hate or violence, and we don’t believe ‘The Closer’ crosses that line.”

He added, “I recognize, however, that distinguishing between commentary and harm is hard, especially with stand-up comedy, which exists to push boundaries. Some people find the art of stand-up to be mean-spirited but our members enjoy it, and it’s an important part of our content offering.”

Former Mossad chief: Iran ‘not even close to acquiring nuclear weapon’

(JNS) — Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen said last Tuesday that Iran’s position is weaker than it has been in the past.

“I think that Iran, to this day, is not even close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. … This is due to longstanding efforts by some forces in the world,” he said at The Jerusalem Post Conference.

Speaking to the news publication, he noted that there is more opposition to Iran’s nuclear program now than in the past, as there is “less foreign support” for its activities.

If Iran were to develop nuclear weapons, Cohen asserted that Israel must stop it on its own.

“They should not sleep quietly in Iran,” he said, according to the report.

Regarding the 2015 nuclear deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the United States left in May 2018 and which Biden administration have been involved in indirect talks to re-enter an agreement—Cohen said “it is not comprehensive; it has to be comprehensive.”

He added that the deal needs to be redone to be effective.

The former Mossad chief now serves as head of SoftBank’s investment operations in Israel.

Poll: 86 percent of Likud voters support Netanyahu over Edelstein as party leader

(Israel Hayom and JNS staff via JNS) — Some 86 percent of Likud voters prefer to see former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the party’s leader over former Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, who announced on Monday that he plans to challenge Netanyahu for the role, a Channel 12 news survey revealed on Tuesday.

Edelstein’s bid for the Likud chairmanship is theoretical at this point, however, as MK Haim Katz, who — as head of the Likud Central Committee — has the power to call for primaries, said that he has no intention of doing so in the foreseeable future.

“There’s no reason to hold primaries at this time. We had them before the [March] elections and people voted for Netanyahu,” Katz told Army Radio.

He was referring to Netanyahu’s landslide victory over challenger Gidon Sa’ar in the Likud primaries that were held in Dec. 2019. Sa’ar eventually left to form his own party, New Hope, which is part of the current coalition. Sa’ar now serves as justice minister.

According to the [Likud] bylaws, primaries will be called six months before the next Knesset elections,” said Katz. “We are a democratic movement; we have bylaws in place; so there’s no point in wasting time on this. I don’t understand what Edelstein is doing.”

Prominent Italian politician calls for embassy move to Jerusalem

By Ariel Kahana

(Israel Hayom via JNS) — One of the most prominent politicians in Italy has called for the relocation of the Italian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Addressing a “Breakfast for Jerusalem” event on Wednesday at the Italian Senate—attended by coalition and opposition leaders, senators and Israelis Ambassador to Italy Dror Eydar—Senator Matteo Salvini declared: “The Jewish people and Jerusalem are one and the same, and therefore the relocation of the Italian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would be the moral, cultural and politically obvious thing to do.”

After eliciting loud applause and even the support of a few other senators for his remarks, Salvini, who formerly served as Italy’s deputy prime minister, said he was speaking from the heart, and added, “The new, cowardly shape of anti-Semitism is no longer just the hatred of Jews, but towards Israel, and they are the same, as far as I am concerned.”

Eydar said, “Italy’s historic mission, which began at the San Remo conference, on the right of the Jewish people to their land, has not been completed. The Italian embassy in Israel is not located in its capital, in its natural place. I have a dream, and is it shared by many: to see the Italian flag waving in the eternal city.”

“The relocation of the Italian embassy to Jerusalem would be a closing of two circles, both in terms of modern Italy and in terms of this place, Rome, from which the Roman Empire’s troops set out to sack Jerusalem. After 1,900 years, recognition of Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel will come from here,” added Eydar.

Syria reports one dead, three wounded in Israeli strike near Palmyra

(JNS) — A Syrian soldier was killed and three other people were wounded on Wednesday night in an Israeli airstrike in the area of Palmyra in Homs Governorate, according to official Syrian media.

A Syrian military source told the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) that the strike had occurred just before midnight, and had been launched from the direction of Al-Tanf on the Syria-Iraq border.

The strike had targeted a communications tower and some adjacent positions, causing material damage in addition to the casualties, according to SANA.

According to the report, the strike was the second by Israel in as many weeks, following a “missile aggression” on Oct. 8 that targeted the Tiyas Military Airbase, also known as the T-4 Airbase. The T-4 base, the largest airbase in Syria, is also located in Homs Governorate, to the west of Palmyra.

U.K.-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has informants on the ground in Syria, reported on Thursday that four Syrian nationals were killed and seven wounded in the strike. The four who were killed had been working for Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran-affiliated militias, and the communications tower and other facilities targeted in the strike had belonged to the militias and were totally destroyed, according to the report.

The monitor group further reported that a member of the Syrian military had died of injuries sustained in the Oct. 8 strike, bringing the casualty figure for that incident to three, the other two having been militiamen. That strike, according to SOHR, had targeted a drone training facility.

Israeli Border Police officer wounded in suspected terror attack near Qalandiya

(JNS) — A Israeli Border Police officer was seriously wounded on Wednesday night in what police are calling a terrorist attack at the Qalandia checkpoint near Jerusalem.

“During a Border Police night operation at Qalandiya, a suspicious individual approached the officers in a vehicle, accelerated toward them and hit one of the officers,” police said in a statement.

Other members of the unit opened fire at the vehicle as the suspect attempted to escape, causing it to crash against a barrier. The driver, a 22-year-old resident of Qalqilya, was taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in fair condition to be treated for a head injury, according to Ynet. He was then handed over to the Israel Security Agency for questioning, police said.

“This attack is another reminder of the threats that exist in every operational activity and in every space in which we operate,” Jerusalem District Police Commander Doron Turgeman said, according to Ynet.

“The quick response and operational deployment of the officers in the field prevented additional injury to additional officers and led to a speedy end to the incident and the neutralization of the terrorist,” he added.

The wounded officer was treated on the scene by members of his unit, before being stabilized and evacuated to hospital by Magen David Adom paramedics.