Weekly roundup of world briefs

At Yeshiva U, ‘accelerated transfer’ for students who feel threatened

(JNS) — Yeshiva University has reopened its admissions cycle for undergraduate applicants who feel threatened on other American campuses, including for its honors program. Those applicants have until May 31 to apply.

The admissions cycle “has seen students choosing YU over other elite institutions. This trend is expected to continue among transfers,” Yeshiva stated. 

It added that it is creating new faculty positions to accommodate that growth and is “in active discussions with professors who seek to be part of an institution whose core values align with their own.”

“We have all watched with great shock and sadness the public protests laced with antisemitism on college campuses throughout the United States, including in our neighboring campuses of Columbia and NYU,” stated Rabbi Ari Berman, president of YU. 

“Ultimately, these are issues that need to be addressed by these respective universities. It is not good for America or for the Jewish people for any campus to be unsafe for Jewish students or students of any minority or vulnerable population,” Berman said. “We extend our hand to be of any assistance in supporting efforts by these universities to protect their students from threats to their safety.”

“We cannot ignore the profound distress we have been witnessing. No Jewish student should have to face the threats and intimidation that has sadly been taking place,” he added. “While our enrollments are already full for the coming year, we at the flagship Jewish university will not turn our backs on these students.”

Yeshiva is also accepting transfers for students who want to study in Israel in YU’s program with Tel Aviv University and with Bar-Ilan University.

JNS sought comment from Yeshiva about how much interest the university has seen in its pitch to transfer students.

Earlier this year, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor cited Jew-hatred in his decision to leave his “dream job” to come to Yeshiva.

Jewish businessman killed in Egypt, case construed as murder

(JNS) — A Jewish businessman with triple Israeli, Canadian and Russian citizenship was killed in Alexandria, Egypt, on Tuesday.

Local authorities were investigating the incident as a case of murder. In addition, the Israeli Foreign Ministry was looking into the incident. A terrorist motive is suspected.

The slain businessman, identified as Ziv Kipper, reportedly owned a vegetable processing factory in Egypt for nearly 10 years and entered the country using his Canadian passport.

Kipper was the CEO of O.K Group LLC, one of the largest Egyptian exporters of frozen vegetables, citrus, other fruits and vegetables, “with the head office in Alexandria, Egypt, and offices in Ukraine and Israel,” according to his LinkedIn page.

On Oct. 8, the day after Hamas launched its latest war against Israel, two Israelis were killed and another was moderately injured in a shooting attack directed at a group of tourists also in the Egyptian port city.

The terrorist was an Egyptian police officer. Local security forces apprehended the attacker.

Knesset committee warned: US campus riots ‘direct threat to Israel’ 

(JNS) — Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, warned a Knesset committee on Tuesday that anti-Israel protests on American college campuses pose a “direct threat to the existence of the State of Israel.”

Diker made his remarks during an emergency meeting of the Immigration and Absorption Committee of the Knesset convened to discuss the antisemitic calls on U.S. campuses. Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli also participated as well as organizations leading the fight against antisemitism.

“Israel must be vigilant and keep its eyes open. We cannot accept statements like ‘Israel is an apartheid state’ or ‘Israel is an occupying state,’ which have persisted since [PLO Chairman Yasser] Arafat’s speech in 1974 at the U.N. General Assembly,” said Diker, who has published a series of books on the danger of campus antisemitism and BDS organizations.

He said that Israel must work closely with Jewish organizations in the free world, especially within faculties of Middle Eastern studies departments that have become radicalized.

He suggested that the National Security Council lead the fight against antisemitism and treat it as a security threat, not only to Jews worldwide but also to Israel’s security and existence.

Residents of Gaza border towns to return home in ‘two to three’ years

(JNS) — Residents of Be’eri, Nir Oz and Kfar Aza will only be able to return home in two to three years, Brig. Gen. Moshe Edri, the head of the government body overseeing the rehabilitation of the Gaza border region, said on Tuesday.

Tekuma Authority chief Edri said that residents of these communities would be set up in temporary housing until then, according to Israel’s Channel 12.

In December, Israel’s Cabinet approved the outline for a strategic multi-year plan to rehabilitate and develop the Gaza Strip-adjacent “Tekuma” region and its population.

The plan comprises a broad budgetary framework for five years (2024-2028) of up to 18 billion shekels ($4.9 billion) intended to lead to the rehabilitation of the towns and villages destroyed by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday barred farming activities within four kilometers (2.5 miles) of the Gaza border, following a new assessment amid an uptick in rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave.

Farming in fields beyond four kilometers of the frontier will require special approval by the military.

Four IDF soldiers were killed and at least 10 others were wounded on Sunday when Hamas terrorists fired more than a dozen mortar shells from the Rafah area of southern Gaza at Kibbutz Kerem Shalom.

The attack comes as the military prepares for an offensive in the last Hamas bastion along the Egyptian border should the terrorist organization reject Jerusalem’s latest truce offer, described by U.S. mediators as the most generous yet from the Israeli side.

Israeli woman dies in Brazil under murky circumstances

(JNS) — An Israeli woman in her 20s died in Rio de Janeiro on Monday under circumstances that remain unclear.

“This is a sad and difficult case where a young Israeli woman was killed as a result of a fall from height in Rio de Janeiro,” the ministry said on Tuesday night.

The Foreign Ministry’s Department for Israelis Abroad and the Israeli consulate in Brasilia, along with the Jewish Agency office in Rio de Janeiro, are “assisting the family during this difficult time and with the transfer of her body for burial in Israel,” the ministry statement added.

Alma Bohadana, from Kibbutz Yasur in the Western Galilee, died after falling 50 feet in a forest. Authorities are investigating whether she may have been fleeing a robbery attempt.

The investigation is being handled by a police station that handles murder cases in the Brazilian city. “Further steps are being taken to examine the circumstances surrounding her death,” the Homicide Office of the Capital said in a statement.

According to the Daily Mail, Bohadana had been traveling alone in Brazil for three months. A witness with Israeli citizenship was questioned three times and provided inconsistent explanations of the circumstances of her fall.

Also this week, a Jewish businessman with triple Israeli, Canadian and Russian citizenship was killed in Alexandria, Egypt. Authorities were investigating the incident as a case of murder. The Israeli Foreign Ministry was also looking into the incident.

Netanyahu talks hostage negotiations with visiting CIA chief

(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosted CIA Director William Burns at his office in Jerusalem on Wednesday afternoon for talks on the ongoing indirect hostage negotiations with Hamas.

Burns first held a private discussion with Mossad head David Barnea before they both joined the meeting with Netanyahu.

Israel sees no signs of a breakthrough in Egyptian-mediated negotiations on a hostages-for-ceasefire-and-terrorists-release deal, a source in Jerusalem told Reuters earlier on Wednesday.

However, the official said the mid-level delegation dispatched by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday will stay in Cairo for now.

The Israel Defense Forces launched a limited military operation in eastern Rafah on Monday night, shortly after Hamas claimed it had accepted a ceasefire deal proposed by mediators, in what Israeli officials described as “an exercise by Hamas meant to present Israel as the refuser.”

Netanyahu reiterated on Tuesday that the terms proposed by Hamas, which Egypt and Qatar devised without consulting with Jerusalem, are still “very far” from what his War Cabinet deems acceptable.

The United States did not inform Jerusalem in advance of Hamas’s “acceptance” of the hostage deal proposed by Cairo and Doha, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing three Israeli officials.

Upon reading the Hamas statement, Israeli officials reportedly were surprised to see “many new elements” that were not contained in the proposal to which Israel had agreed and which was presented to Hamas by the American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators 10 days earlier.

According to one source, Burns and other Biden administration officials knew about the changes to the proposal but didn’t inform Israel. The new text was finalized at Doha on Monday morning with Washington’s knowledge.

Christian Zionist group prompts investigation into K-12 school curriculum

(JNS) — Laurie Cardoza Moore, president of the evangelical Christian Zionist group Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, called on the House Education and Workforce Committee to push for all state governors to initiate “an emergency review of all K-12 curriculum, including textbooks, instructional materials and library books.”

Moore said in a statement that the nation’s schools need to “ensure that we are not inciting the multiple antisemitic attacks on K-12 and higher-ed campuses across the U.S.”

PJTN has made the threat of antisemitic propaganda in school settings one of its top issues since 2012 when it began challenging a Pearson Publishers geography textbook the group says “legitimized Palestinians blowing themselves up in a Jerusalem restaurant because they were waging a war against Israeli government policies and army actions.”

Moore named the four largest shareholders of the publisher now based in the United Kingdom, pointing the finger at the “Islamist governments of Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Libya” for supporting the anti-Israel school curriculum.”

At the invitation of Rep. ​​Mary Miller (R-Ill.), the House Education and Workforce Committee has scheduled Moore to present PJTN’s findings during a hearing.

Sanders shoots down Scott’s resolution on campus antisemitism 

(JNS) — Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) put forward a resolution condemning the rise in antisemitic acts and speech at colleges across the United States, calling for passage of the resolution by Unanimous Consent on Tuesday.

The resolution calls on “the Department of Education to take necessary actions to ensure that institutions of higher education are complying with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

It was blocked by Senate Democrats, primarily derailed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Scott said on the Senate floor that the campus hate “threatens the very safety of our Jewish students,” and “there can be no equivocating when it comes to the issue of antisemitic violence or hatred.” He added that “the American people, and especially our Jewish brothers and sisters, deserve our moral clarity on this issue.”

Sanders responded to Scott’s resolution with his own, adding other forms of bigotry like “Islamophobia” and racism, as well as defended the anti-Israel protests, calling them protected under the First Amendment.

“I wonder in the 1960s, when we were black students, what did they want then?” Scott said in a rebuttal to Sanders’ resolution. “It wasn’t a resolution condemning all hate when they were the only target of the hate. It was support for those who were being victimized in the moment. Not a resolution that muddies the water.”

The Bahamas recognizes Palestinian state

(JNS) — The Bahamas, a former British colony in the Caribbean region with a population of some 400,000, formally recognized a Palestinian state, the government in Nassau announced on Tuesday.

“The Bahamas became an independent nation in 1973 as an act of self-determination. Therefore, the Bahamas supports the legal right of the Palestinian people of self-determination,” the announcement read.

It noted the Bahamas has “endorsed the two-state solution as clearly articulated in the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) on a Peaceful and Accepted Settlement of the Middle East Situation.

“The Bahamas joins the Caribbean Community’s consensus on this matter,” concluded the statement, alluding to previous recognitions of “Palestine” by Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

The Palestinian Authority applauded the move, with Ramallah saying Nassau was “contributing to the consolidation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination on its land and for taking practical steps to support the implementation of the two-state solution.”

The U.N. General Assembly is slated to vote on a resolution that would grant the Palestinians additional perks, following the Security Council’s rejection of their full membership.

An annex to the resolution, which could be revised ahead of Friday’s vote, would grant unprecedented rights to a non-member observer state, which has been the Palestinians’ status for the past 12 years.

Those benefits would include the right to be elected to committees, to submit proposals and amendments, to raise procedural motions and to be seated among member states in alphabetical order—all privileges not granted to the institution’s other non-member observer state, the Holy See, or to the European Union, which holds the same status.

At 76, Israel’s population stands at 9.9 million

(JNS) — Israel’s population has reached 9.9 million, an increase of 189,000 (1.9 percent) over 2023, according to data the Central Bureau of Statistics released ahead of the country’s 76th Independence Day.

The population will hit the 10-million mark by the end of the year.

Some 7.427 million Israelis are Jewish (73.2 percent), 2.089 million are Arab (21.1 percent) and the remaining 564,000 (5.7 percent) are categorized as “other.” About 80 percent of Jewish Israelis were born in the Jewish state.

Since last year, some 196,000 babies were born in Israel, 60,000 people died and 37,000 immigrated to the country.

Twenty-eight percent of Israelis are aged 0-14, while 12 percent are 65 and over.

At the time of the state’s establishment, Israel’s population numbered 806,000.

By 2030, the population is expected to reach 11.1 million, and by 2040 13.2 million. In the state’s centenary year of 2048, the population is predicted to hit 15.2 million.

Since its rebirth in 1948, more than 3.3 million people made aliyah to Israel, of whom about 1.6 million (47.1 percent) arrived as of 1990.

The Jewish state will begin marking Memorial Day on Sunday night, and then 24 hours later immediately usher in its 76th Independence Day.

Israeli tank crushes ‘I heart Gaza’ sign at Rafah Crossing

(JNS) — Footage taken by Israel Defense Forces troops during Tuesday morning’s capture of Gaza’s Rafah Crossing with Egypt shows a tank crushing an “I heart Gaza sign” before raising the flag of the Jewish state.

The IDF took control of the Gaza side of the crossing as tanks from the 401st Armored Brigade of the 162nd Division rolled right up to the site.

Other clips shared by IDF soldiers show tanks ramming into a “Gaza” sign at the crossing and raising a large Israeli flag along the Philadelphi Corridor, the 8.7-mile-long border area between Gaza and Egypt.

In his first official comments on the operation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night noted that, “within hours, our forces raised Israeli flags at the Rafah Crossing and took down the Hamas banners.”

“Seizing the Rafah Crossing is a very significant step towards destroying the remaining military capabilities of Hamas, including the elimination of the four terrorist battalions in Rafah, and an important step to damage the governmental capabilities of Hamas,” added the premier.