Weekly roundup of world briefs

Israeli State Comptroller releases report criticizing climate change preparedness

(JNS) — Israeli State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman published a scathing report on Tuesday concerning Israel’s preparations for hazards related to climate change.

According to a report by Kan news, Englman’s report, published on the eve of the Glasgow Climate Summit, concluded that Israel has failed to limit its pollution levels and has inadequately planned for the challenges posed by long-term climate change.

“Israel is one of the few countries in the world not yet working on the issue of climate on the basis of a budgeted, approved national preparation plan,” the comptroller’s report stated. “This, despite the fact that it is in a higher risk area.”

The report noted that between 2015 and 2020, a rise in greenhouse-gas emissions was documented in Israel, adding that Israeli is ranked 10th among countries with the highest rate of emissions per capita.

Investments in infrastructure, energy efficiency and reducing emissions while increasing usage of renewable energy are between “being behind to nonexistent,” according to the report.

It was equally critical of the government’s lack of preparations for long-term climate change—a development that Englman said should be treated as a “security strategic threat.”

Due to its region, Israel could be exposed to significant climate change and environmental risks, he said, which can affect the health system, the appearance of diseases and epidemics, societal impacts, food and water security, and geostrategic affairs.

Florida halts new investments in Ben & Jerry’s parent company over West Bank sales boycott

By Ron Kampeas

(JTA) — Florida state entities will cease new investments in Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, as of Tuesday, because the ice cream maker plans to stop selling its product in the West Bank.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, in July triggered a 90-day review mandated by Florida law which mandates divestment from companies boycotting Israel. Ben & Jerry’s says it is ending its sales only in the West Bank and is seeking the means to continue sales in Israel, but Florida law does not make the distinction between Israel and the West Bank.

As of today, the 90-day review, during which companies may notify Florida of any plans to reverse course, ends. Unilever, which has disavowed the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, has previously said it has no control over Ben & Jerry’s business decisions, due to an internal agreement between the conglomerate and the ice cream manufacturer’s independent board.

The ruling over new investments does not affect the $39 million Florida already has invested in Unilever, the Florida Politics website reported.

At least eight states have initiated reviews of investments in Unilever in the wake of Ben & Jerry’s West Bank pullout.

US rejoins UN Human Rights Council 

By Gabe Friedman

JTA) — The U.S. rejoined the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, three years after former President Trump pulled out of it over what his administration deemed a “shameless” bias against Israel.

President Biden’s envoy to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, argued in a statement that the move will not mean the U.S. does not stand with Israel.

The council, which investigates alleged human rights abuses in U.N. member countries, has for decades routinely singled out Israel in reports and resolutions, particularly in the wake of the country’s many armed conflicts in Gaza.

Nikki Haley, former envoy to the U.N. under Trump, said in 2018 after the U.S.’ pullout that the council “was not worthy of its name.” Then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu applauded the decision.

The pullout split Jewish lawmakers at the time, including Democrats.

The council, formed in 2006, held an internal election name its slate of 47 countries on Thursday, as it does every three years, and several countries with controversial human rights records made the cut — including China, Russia, Cuba and Eritrea.

Hillel Neuer, the head of UN Watch, a watchdog group that often calls the council and other U.N. bodies out for its Israel critique, lamented to the AFP that so many of what he calls “oppressive regimes” were elected.

University of Haifa, UAE’s Zayed University ink cooperation deal on green issues

(JNS) — Israel’s University of Haifa and Zayed University of the United Arab Emirates have signed an academic cooperation agreement emphasizing environmental issues and encouraging joint research between faculty and students.

“In the wake of many common challenges facing humanity as we grapple with the climate crisis, this kind of academic cooperation is a way to preserve what all of us call home — the planet,” said University of Haifa President Ron Robin, according to a press statement.

Professor Robin signed the MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) in a virtual ceremony on Wednesday with the UAE’s Minister of Culture and Youth Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi.

The MoU will encourage joint research projects across a number of disciplines, including marine sciences and natural resource management. The universities will also conduct exchange programs for student and faculty for seminars, conferences and workshops.

Al Kaabi said the partnership “will create cross-border opportunities for students, faculty and the region as a whole. Together, we can lead innovation with regards to food and water security, marine sciences and environmental sustainability.”

Also present at the signing were Israel’s Ambassador to the UAE Amir Hayek and the UAE’s Ambassador to Israel Mohamed Mahmoud Al Khaja, along with other university and government officials.

Professor Robin, the release noted, was responsible for establishing New York University’s international campus in Abu Dhabi in 2010.

Negotiations around a return to the Iran nuclear deal to resume on Nov. 29

(JNS) — Talks on reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, will resume on Nov. 29 in Vienna, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator said on Wednesday, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

“We agreed to start the negotiations aiming at removal of unlawful & inhumane sanctions on 29 November in Vienna,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani, who was appointed the regime’s chief negotiator last month, posted on Twitter.

Negotiations between Iran and six powers, including the United States, wrapped up in June, and no date had been set for a seventh round of talks until now. Talks had been put on hold until after the Iranian presidential election on June 18, which ushered in hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi.

“[W]e do welcome the E.U.’s announcement that they have coordinated with all participants, and that talks on a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA will resume … we believe it remains possible to quickly reach and implement an understanding on a mutual return to compliance … by closing the relatively small number of issues that remained outstanding at the end of June, when the 6th round concluded,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in his daily briefing on Nov. 3.

“We believe that if the Iranians are serious, we can manage to do that in relatively short order,” he added.

Price’s comment comes on the heels of an Oct. 31 joint statement by the U.S., Germany, France and the U.K. calling on Iran to return to the JCPOA.

“We are convinced that it is possible to quickly reach and implement an understanding on return to full compliance and to ensure for the long term that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes,” the four nations said in the White House-issued  statement.

Israel’s coalition breathes easy as 2021 state budget clears Knesset hurdle

(Israel Hayom via JNS) The Israeli government passed the 2021 state budget bill on Thursday—the country’s first budget in more than three years—by a vote of 61-59.

Bogged down by political upheaval and successive election campaigns, Israel has been without an official budget since 2018. Under Israeli law, if a new government does not pass a budget within 100 days, a new general election is triggered. For Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the deadline was Nov. 14, meaning Thursday’s vote marked a significant achievement for the eight-party patchwork coalition.

“This is a festive day for Israel!” Bennett tweeted after the budget was passed. “After years of chaos we have formed a government, defeated the [COVID-19] Delta variant and now, we have passed a state budget. Now we can push ahead full force.”

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid tweeted, “After a long night we passed the 2021 budget in the Knesset. We still have a long day ahead of us and [passing] next year’s budget. We’re here to effect change!”

Addressing parliament ahead of the vote, Bennett said it was “the most important moment since the government was formed.”

The new budget comes “after three and a half years of chaos, failed management and paralysis, years in which the country was a tool in a personal game, years of four election campaigns one after another at a dead end,” he said.

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

Jordanian, Israeli economic ministers sign deal to boost exports to Palestinians

(JNS) — Israeli and Jordanian economy ministers signed an agreement on Wednesday in Amman to increase Jordanian exports to the Palestinian Authority.

Israel Minister of Economy Orna Barbivai and General Secretary of Minister of Industry, Trade and Supply Yousef Al-Shamali met to discuss ways to augment economic ties between the two countries, announced Israel’s Ministry of Economy on Facebook.

Shamali said the agreement includes a list of Jordanian products that will get preferential access to the Palestinian market, reported Jordan News Agency-Petra.

The list includes 425 Jordanian products to be offered duty-free to the Palestinian territories. Another 329 products will also be exempt from customs if they meet Israeli technical requirements.

The deal was part of a water agreement signed in mid-October between Jerusalem and Amman, as well as a warming of ties. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid met in July with his Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi, at the King Hussein Bridge, where they announced new agreements on water and trade.

The trade deal increases Jordanian exports to Palestinian areas of the West Bank from $160 million to $700 million, but must first be agreed to and signed by the Palestinian Authority.

Shamali also emphasized the strengthening of economic ties between the private sectors of Jordan and the P.A.

Berlin police chief condemns officers doing push-ups on Holocaust memorial

(JNS) — The chief of police in Berlin criticized the actions of several officers who were photographed doing push-ups on the German capital’s Holocaust memorial.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in central Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate, opened in 2005 and is comprised of 2,711 gray concrete slabs of different heights located above an underground information center.

Pictures recently published by the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung showed police officers leaning on one of the slabs at the memorial and practicing push-ups. The pictures were reportedly stills from a video taken by the officers in May when they were stationed in the area.

“The colleagues’ behavior disrespects what this memorial stands for and also offends the memory of those who were murdered,” Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik said in a statement on Monday. She added that her department will do an internal investigation into the incident.

The GdP, Germany’s police union, also condemned the incident, calling it “tasteless” and saying there should be “consequences” for the officers involved.

The police union said: “The Holocaust memorial is not an adventure playground. This inexplicable action mocks the genocide of millions of people and tramples on the values that our Berlin police.”

Booker Prize goes to novel about a South African Jewish mother’s dying wish

By Andrew Silow-Carroll

(JTA) — The prestigious Booker Prize for fiction has gone to a South African’s novel about a Jewish woman’s dying wish.

Author Damon Galgut picked up the £50,000 ($68,000) prize at a ceremony on Wednesday in London. “The Promise” spans 40 years of recent South African history, and kicks off when the mother of a white farm-owning clan insists that the family’s Black maid inherit the house she lives in — despite apartheid laws preventing Blacks from owning property.

The mother in the novel returns to her Jewish roots after converting to her husband’s evangelical Christian faith. In a review of “The Promise,” the Jewish Chronicle noted that “Galgut’s descriptions of Jewish observance are impressively detailed, and Judaism comes off well compared with other religious and spiritual traditions that feature in the novel.”

“The Promise” is the ninth book by Galgut, 57. The chair of the judging committee, Maya Jasanoff, described it as “a tour de force.” The Booker Prize is awarded annually to the best novel written in English and published in Britain or Ireland.

After Josh Hawley’s holdup, Senate confirms Tom Nides to be ambassador to Israel

By Ron Kampeas

WASHINGTON (JTA) — After Sen. Josh Hawley briefly held up the appointment, the U.S. Senate confirmed Tom Nides, a businessman and a former deputy secretary of state, to be U.S. ambassador to Israel on Wednesday night.

Jewish Insider reported the confirmation.

It was never clear what objection Hawley, a Republican of Missouri, had to Nides, but he said represented a number of Republicans in advancing the hold on Nides and seven other ambassador nominees this week.

The Biden administration pressed for the Nides confirmation by noting a number of sensitive issues in play in the Middle East, including: the resumption soon of talks for the United States to reenter the Iran nuclear deal; efforts by the United States and Israel to expand the Abraham Accords normalizing relations with Arab countries; and U.S. objections to Israeli settlement expansion.

Nides, a banker, was the deputy secretary of state for management and resources from 2011 to 2013 and had good relations with Israeli diplomats. He was involved in the Obama administration’s loan extension to Israel worth billions of dollars, according to The Times of Israel.

Nides also notably ran former Sen. Joe Lieberman’s vice presidential campaign in 2000.

Austin fire department releases photo of man who set fire to Texas synagogue

(JNS) — The Austin Fire Department’s Arson Division has issued a photograph of the man they say set fire to the exterior of a synagogue on Sunday night. It is the latest in a string of anti-Semitic incidents in the Texas capital.

According to the alert, the suspect was seen on video camera driving a dark-colored “later-model SUV-style vehicle” into the parking lot of Congregation Beth Israel on Oct. 31.

It continues: “He approaches the synagogue carrying a 5-gallon, olive-green jerry-can-style container. He is then seen leaving the scene carrying the container.”

The suspect is described as thin with brown hair and was wearing a face covering.

The arson, which caused some damage, was extinguished by the Austin Fire Department relatively quickly. No injuries were reported.

It came just days after anti-Semitic graffiti was spray-painted outside a local high school and after two instances of the virulent anti-Semitic group, Goyim Defense League, hanging banners on a highway overpass saying “Vax the Jews.”