Weekly roundup of world briefs

Alta Fixsler, a 2-year-old Jewish girl, taken off life support in UK despite parents’ wishes

By Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — A 2-year-old Jewish girl died in the United Kingdom Monday after she was taken off life support despite her parents’ objections.

Alta Fixsler of Manchester, England, had serious natal complications that made her dependent on life support from birth. When medical authorities at the hospital where she was treated wanted to take her off life support, her parents, both haredi Orthodox Jews, took the medical authorities to court, claiming that taking the child off life support would violate their religious principles.

Chaya and Abraham Fixsler said that taking their daughter off life support would contradict their Jewish faith. Judaism commands the preservation of human life and generally forbids actions to end it, though rabbis, including Orthodox ones, have diverging opinions  taking patients with incurable ailments off life support.

The High Court of London ruled in May that ending Alta’s life would be in her best interest, as medical experts said she felt discomfort but could not recover or feel pleasure, the BBC reported. A British judge rejected a petition by the girl’s parents to have her moved to a hospital in Jerusalem. Attempts to make Alta a U.S. citizen did not succeed in time to prevent her death.

Sky News quoted a spokesperson for the family who announced Alta’s death Monday evening: “Sad news, little Alta Fixsler’s life support was turned off this afternoon and she died at the hospice with her parents by her side.”

Portuguese diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust receives posthumous honor

By Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — The government of Portugal honored the memory of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, at a ceremony in Lisbon Tuesday.

President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was among the many dignitaries who attended the ceremony at the National Pantheon, a former church in Lisbon where national heroes are commemorated.

The parliament at the National Assembly in Portugal’s capital decreed the honor unanimously last year, voting to add a monument honoring de Sousa Mendes to the statues already on display there.

“Aristides de Sousa Mendes changed Portuguese history in that tragic moment,” Rebelo de Sousa, the president, said during the ceremony, according to the SAPO public broadcaster which aired the ceremony live. Portugal is “eternally grateful to him,” the president said.

In 1940, de Sousa Mendes served as consul in Bordeaux, France, where he granted visas to refugees fleeing the Nazi advance. He is estimated to have saved 30,000 people, including 10,000 Jews.

Mendes was eventually suspended and fired from Portugal’s diplomatic service for his actions in Bordeaux under the dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. However, he was posthumously vindicated and recognized in 1966 as a Righteous Among the Nations, a title conferred on behalf of the State of Israel by the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Mendes, who died in 1954, was the first diplomat to be recognized with the title.

He has received several honors in his native Portugal, including by the national airline TAP, which named an airplane for him in 2014.

Jewish serial sperm donor Ari Nagel nears 100 children after a prolific pandemic

By Shira Hanau

(JTA) — While others were perfecting their sourdough bread-baking or watching the entire catalogue of Netflix, Ari Nagel spent the past 20 months of the pandemic doing what he does best: donating sperm. He now has nearly 100 children to show for it.

Nagel, whom the New York Post once dubbed “Sperminator,” grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Monsey, New York, before becoming a college math teacher and eventually a serial sperm donor. In a profile published Wednesday in Esquire, Nagel said he fathered 21 children in 2020 and expected another 30 babies in 2021, bringing him to a total of almost 100 babies.

“I wasn’t meant to have 90 kids. You have to make it happen,” Nagel says in the Esquire story.

Nagel has donated sperm in Target restrooms, the American Museum of Natural History and countless hotel rooms. He’s traveled the world to do so, including during the pandemic. At one point, he even snagged his brother’s passport to travel to Israel after the country banned him from donating sperm there.

Nagel’s accelerated donations come at a time when donor sperm is under short supply worldwide. He says he is driven to donate because he wants to help women, especially those in same-sex relationships, and he frequently stays in touch with the families he helps to grow. He also has children from his own marriages.

Over lunch on Tisha B’av, the Jewish day of mourning that this year fell in mid-July, Nagel told Esquire that his parents didn’t understand his life choices and that his mother believes he brings shame on the family. Nagel took a different view.

“I hope I’m a better grandparent to my kids’ children than they are to mine,” Nagel told the magazine.

United Arab Emirates to join Israel in moon shot

By Ron Kampeas

(JTA) — The next time Israel tries to land a spacecraft on the moon, it will have some neighborly help.

United Arab Emirates and Israel plan to land Israel’s un-crewed Beresheet craft on the moon in 2024 in a joint space exploration deal, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.

Israel’s first attempt to land a lunar module on the moon failed in 2019 when it crashed.

The Beresheet 2 effort will be part of an agreement slated to be signed between Israel and the UAE to develop space technologies. The craft will collect soil samples and conduct experiments.

Israel and the UAE are accelerating their cooperation under the Abraham Accords normalization deal brokered last year by the Trump administration. Last week, their foreign ministers met in Washington with their U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to sign trilateral agreements on advancing religious freedoms and collaborating on climate change.

Rachel Levine is named an admiral, becoming the most senior transgender person in the uniformed services

By Ron Kampeas

WASHINGTON (JTA) –Rachel Levine made history in March when she assumed the role of assistant secretary for health, becoming the first known transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate.

Now Levine, who is Jewish, is the most senior transgender person in the uniformed services, after she was sworn in on Tuesday as the admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, one of two nonmilitary U.S. uniformed services. The other is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps.

The swearing-in also makes Levine the first known transgender four-star officer in U.S. history.

The public health corps, established more than 200 years ago and numbering 6,000 workers, is deployed to assist in national health emergencies, most recently in helping to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Levine, in her previous position as the health secretary in Pennsylvania, earned accolades for stemming the spread of the virus in that state.

Levine told The Washington Post that she plans to wear the uniform immediately.

“This is a momentous occasion and I am honored to take this role for the impact that I can make and for the historic nature of what it symbolizes,” she said in a video message after the swearing-in. “I stand on the shoulders of those LGBTQ+ individuals who came before me, both those known and unknown.”

Levine, 63, was born and raised in Massachusetts. Speaking to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle upon becoming Pennsylvania’ physician general in 2015, Levine noted that though she grew up attending a Conservative synagogue, she became more inclined to Reform Judaism as an adult, in part because of the movement’s embrace of transgender people.

Turkey arrests 15 on suspicion of spying for Israel

(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Turkish media outlets on Thursday reported that 15 individuals had been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel, following a large-scale operation by local security forces. According to local reports, 200 members of the Turkish security forces took part in the series of arrests.

While Turkish media outlets did not reveal the alleged spies’ country of origin, they did note their Middle Eastern appearance. According to the reports, the agents transferred confidential information and classified documents to the Mossad intelligence agency.

The agents were spying on senior Hamas officials, according to the reports.

Last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government bolstered its already warm relationship with the Hamas terrorist group by granting Turkish citizenship to senior Hamas members, U.K. newspaper The Telegraph reported. The move would allow them to travel freely and enable them to plot terrorist attacks on Israelis across the globe.

According to the report, seven of 12 Hamas operatives who use Turkey as their base of operations have received Turkish citizenship, as well as passports, while another five are in the process of receiving them. In some cases, the Hamas terrorists are living under Turkish aliases.

“These are not foot soldiers but the most senior Hamas operatives outside of Gaza. [They] are actively raising funds and directing operatives to carry out attacks in the present day,” a senior source in the region told The Telegraph.

“The Turkish government gave in to pressure by Hamas to grant citizenship to its operatives, thereby allowing them to travel more freely, endangering other countries that have listed Hamas as a terror group,” the source added.

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

Bennett, Indian external affairs minister meet in Jerusalem

(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met in Jerusalem on Wednesday with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

The two discussed “strengthening the strategic alliance, expanding bilateral ties and deepening the warm friendship between Israel and India,” according to an official statement. On behalf of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jaishankar also extended an invitation for Bennett to make his first official visit to India.

Bennett thanked Jaishankar and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for their commitment to the partnership between the two countries, a partnership he said Israel was eager to expand.

“I speak on behalf of Israelis: We love India. We view India as a huge friend and we’re looking forward to expanding our relationship in all fields and all dimensions. I look forward to a very productive meeting,” he said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Jaishankar also held a diplomatic working meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Herzog, too, extended his gratitude to Jaishankar and Modi for their role in promoting and strengthening Israel-India ties.

Noting that 2022 would see the thirtieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and India next year, Herzog vowed to personally assist in promoting ties between the two countries.

Israel to allow 3,000 more work permits for Palestinians from Gaza Strip

(JNS) — Israel announced on Wednesday that it is issuing work permits for 3,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to enter the country, bringing the total to 10,000.

COGAT, the Israeli defense body that controls Palestinian civil affairs, said the decision was “conditional upon the continued preservation of the region’s security stability for the long term,” AP reported.

Palestinians come to Israel mainly for employment in the fields of construction, agriculture and manufacturing.

Israel has also relaxed other restrictions since the 11-day conflict in May with Hamas and other terror factions in Gaza with concessions meant to solidify the ceasefire.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank work in Israel, according to the report.

In related news, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz directed Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alyan, the Israel Defense Forces’ Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), to approve the registration of some 4,000 Palestinians to the Palestinian Population Registry on Tuesday.

An appearance in the registry is necessary for West Bank Palestinians to receive Palestinian ID cards and passports. The Palestinian Authority manages the Palestinian Population Registry in coordination with Israel.

Israeli interior minister opposes ‘anti-Netanyahu law’

(JNS) — Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked announced on Wednesday that she opposes newly proposed legislation that would prevent those under indictment from serving as prime minister.

“I don’t think that the attorney-general should determine who is prime minister,” said Shaked, according to Channel 12.

Shaked’s comments came in the wake of Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s publication on Tuesday night of a memorandum of the bill in question, dubbed by opposition politicians the “Netanyahu law,” referring to opposition leader and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The memorandum proposes an amendment to Israel’s Basic Law: The Government, which would prohibit a criminal defendant from being given the mandate to form a government.

Netanyahu, head of the Likud Party and opposition in the Knesset, is currently on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Speaking at a conference in Modi’in, Shaked said that the coalition government had “agreed not to deal with this issue until after the budget is passed.”

When it is, her party, Yamina, “will have a faction meeting and make a decision,” she said, according to Channel 12.

A poll conducted by Channel 12 last week showed that if elections were held today, a Netanyahu-led Likud would garner 34 Knesset seats, far more than any other single party.

At 95, Mel Brooks will finally deliver ‘History of the World: Part II’

By Ron Kampeas

(JTA) — You couldn’t Torquemada it: Mel Brooks is making a sequel to “History of the World: Part I,” the 1981 revue that delighted and/or appalled Jews with, among other segments, a cheery musical take on the Spanish Inquisition.

The original was a feature film; the sequel on Hulu will be a variety series, Variety reported on Monday. Brooks, who is 95, will executive-produce and write; joining him will be professional funny people Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes, Ike Barinholtz, David Stassen and Kevin Salter. Production is set to begin in 2022.

Most of the original film’s cast, including Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLuise, Gregory Hines, Cloris Leachman and Sid Caesar, have died in the 40 years since it was released.

“I can’t wait to once more tell the real truth about all the phony baloney stories the world has been conned into believing are History!” Brooks told Variety.

Brooks played a number of roles in the original “History,” including the Spanish inquisitor Torquemada in the Inquisition skit — a tough competition for the most joyfully tasteless segment. “We have a mission to convert the Jews,” Brooks sings as Torquemada, after sliding down a bannister, Broadway-style, to greet his prisoners in the torture chamber.

“Jew, Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jews!” the chorus of monks replies. “We’re going to help them see the light and make an offer that they can’t refuse,” Brooks sings. “That the Jews just can’t refuse!” say the monks.

Other sketches covered cavemen, Moses, the Last Supper, the Roman era and the French Revolution, in which Brooks, as King Louis XVI, uttered the immortal catchphrase, “It’s good to be the king.”

The new series finally fulfills the teaser at the end of “Part I,” which promised a sequel that would cover “Hitler on Ice” and “Jews in Space.”