Weekly roundup of world briefs

Herzog: ‘We are utterly grateful to the United States of America’

(JNS) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog met on Wednesday with a bipartisan delegation of members of the United States Congress, led by Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

“I say repeatedly, we are utterly grateful to the United States of America for standing with us in this war. And I’m very grateful to the president of the United States for being here at the beginning of the war and sending a clear message on behalf of the American people,” said Herzog.

“And we also respect tremendously the bipartisan support that crosses all divides and conflicts within American society. We are fighting here the battle of the free world against the Empire of Evil. That’s why together we must stay together. And if we have anything to discuss, it should be discussed quietly,” he added.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment on reports that a high-level meeting with U.S. officials was canceled after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the Biden administration for withholding arms from the Jewish state.

According to Axios, the White House informed Israel on Tuesday that the scheduled “strategic dialogue” in Washington would not take place. The outlet cited two U.S. officials who claimed the move came in response to Netanyahu’s public criticism of the administration over its “inconceivable” arms embargo.

Bomb threats target more than 50 synagogues in Florida

(JNS) — More than 50 synagogues in Florida were targeted with bomb threats on Tuesday, WPLG reported.

The Coral Gables Police Department determined that the emailed threats were not credible, according to the ABC affiliate in Miami.

“Another sad day in America for the Jewish community. This new normal is disgusting and one that we, Jews, will refuse to accept,” wrote Bryan Leib, a Republican who is running against Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) in Florida’s 25th congressional district.

“We will not back down,” Leib wrote. “We will not be afraid.”

JNS sought comment from the Coral Gables Police Department.

Turning Point USA turns away Nick Fuentes at Michigan convention

(JNS) — A leading conservative student group ejected a leading Gen Z antisemite from a conference.

At Turning Point USA’s The People Convention on June 14 in Detroit, security officers removed Nick Fuentes, the self-avowed antisemite and Holocaust-denying podcaster.

In videos on social media of the encounter, wearing sunglasses, Fuentes walked toward the building’s exit as a group gathered around him with people holding up phones to film the encounter. A bearded security guard ordered him to leave as the crowd booed.

When a second security guard, identified later in the video as “Brian,” enters, a follower demands to know what Fuentes did to get the boot. 

Fuentes said, “they didn’t give a reason.”

He turned to the crowd and said it was because “Israel controls this event.” The group cheered. He then stated: “This is America first, not Israel first!”

The guard guided Fuentes out of the building as the crowd chanted “America first! America first!”

Outside, one of Fuentes’ followers wearing a backwards baseball cap said to Brian: “I’m America first, not Israel first. I love my country; you do not love your country. We f**king love our country, and you don’t.”

Fuentes said to Brian, “I know it’s a formal trespass, we’ve done this before, you and me,” alluding that he tried the same antic in Miami, before shaking his hand.

Florida man arrested for threatening to kill Jews

By David Swindle

(JNS) — The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department arrested Paul Thomas Morris, 26, on June 14 in Boca Raton, Fla., after two of his friends reported social-media threats to law enforcement.

When Detective C. Wells arrived at Morris’s residence, he spoke with the suspect’s roommate, who showed him socia-media postings of Morris’s that included vowing to attack a synagogue and murder all the Jews, according to a probable cause affidavit that the sheriff’s office shared with JNS.

Morris allegedly wrote on Instagram: “I want Hitler to come back to kill all the Jews.”

He allegedly added on Discord, another social-media platform, that “I’m shooting up a synagogue, yes all Jews,” and “If anyone is concerned about my well-being, this is where I am at: I want to scream ‘Kill all Jews’ at anyone I have ever known.” 

The suspect’s roommate told the detective that Morris suffers from mental-health issues but had never before threatened violence, per the affidavit.

When Wells confronted Morris, the suspect said he knew why the detective was there and acknowledged that the two accounts in question belonged to him. He also conceded that the statements could be seen as threatening, according to the affidavit. 

Morris reportedly described his psychological problems as “major depression.”

On June 15, a judge set Morris’s bail at $25,000, though he remained in jail on Monday, per WPTV.

Israeli book publication in 2023 down by 10% due to Gaza war

(JNS) — The Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and subsequent war in Gaza led to a 10 percent drop in Israeli book publication last year, an annual survey released Tuesday found.

Six thousand thirty-seven books were published in Israel in 2023, a significant decrease from the previous year, when 6,791 books were published, the National Library of Israel report revealed.

According to the survey, the marked decrease in printed books, particularly in the genre of Jewish studies, is partly attributed to “changes made by publishers due to the war.”

At the same time, there was a 40 percent increase in the publication of digital books, including electronic versions of hard-copy books published in previous years, the survey stated.

One hundred and eight comic books and graphic novels were published in 2023, a rise of 35 percent for this genre, as compared with 2022, according to the annual report.

About 10 percent of books released in Israel were self-published and author-financed, the survey found.

In the eight and a half months since Oct. 7, more than 80 books have already been written about the attack, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were murdered and some 250 others were abducted to Gaza, triggering the Swords of Iron war.

The findings in this annual report are based on data drawn from an Israeli law requiring that two copies of any book published with more than 50 copies be deposited with the National Library of Israel.

Israel reportedly upgrading nuclear reactor site at Dimona

(JNS) — Israel is improving its main nuclear site in the southern Negev, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s annual armaments assessment, released on Monday.

“Israel—which does not publicly acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons—is also believed to be modernizing its nuclear arsenal and appears to be upgrading its plutonium production reactor site at Dimona,” the group said in its SIPRI Yearbook 2024. 

The upgrade was part of a general trend, with all nine nuclear-armed states continuing to modernize their arsenals and several deploying “new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023,” the report stated.

“[T]he number and types of nuclear weapons in development have increased as states deepen their reliance on nuclear deterrence,” it added.

SIPRI estimates that Israel has 90 nuclear warheads, placing it second-to-last in terms of quantity among the nine nuclear-armed states: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).

However, according to SIPRI North Korea possesses fewer warheads (an estimated 50). “Countries are ordered by date of first known nuclear test; however, there is no conclusive open-source evidence that Israel has tested its nuclear weapons,” SIPRI explained.

There are 12,121 warheads in the total global inventory as of January 2024, of which 9,585 were in military stockpiles for potential use. Of those, an estimated 3,904 are deployed with missiles and aircraft and the rest are in storage. 

Around 2,100 warheads are in a “state of high operational alert” on ballistic missiles. Virtually all those warheads belong to Russia or the United States, “but for the first time China is believed to have some warheads on high operational alert,” according to the report.

Three boys indicted for antisemitic rape of 12-year-old girl in Paris

(JNS) — Three boys were indicted on Tuesday for the rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl a few days earlier in an incident that has shocked France’s Jewish community. 

The teenagers, two aged 13 and one 12, were indicted for gang rape, death threats, anti-Semitic violence, attempted extortion, invasion of privacy, violence and insults, Le Figaro reported.

On Saturday afternoon, the girl, who had spent the afternoon with friends, was crossing Henri Regnault Park in Courbevoie, a Paris suburb, when she came across two boys, one of whom she vaguely knew. 

They blocked her way and forced her to follow them to an abandoned daycare center. A third boy joined them and started insulting the girl as a “dirty Jew,” the teenagers told police. 

One of the attackers held a lighter next to her face and threatened to burn her. They forced her to perform vaginal, anal and oral sex on them, and threatened to kill her if she told anyone, Le Figaro reported. 

Afterwards, the girl made her way home and told her parents what had happened. A friend who was with her when the boys took her was able to give a detailed description of the suspects, who police confirmed were at the crime scene through images from security cameras.

House Ed panel asks Columbia to turn over texts ‘downplaying antisemitism’

(JNS) — Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, demanded  that Columbia University turn over text messages that administrators at the Ivy League school in New York City sent “downplaying antisemitism.”

“As part of Columbia University’s recent reunion weekend, members of the university’s Jewish community discussed antisemitism in a panel on Jewish life on campus, during which university administrators reportedly exchanged disparaging text messages downplaying antisemitism,” Foxx’s office stated.

The Washington Free Beacon was the first to report on the text messages.

Foxx asked for the texts by June 26.

“I was appalled, but sadly not surprised, to learn Columbia administrators exchanged disparaging text messages during a panel that discussed antisemitism at the university,” she stated. “Dean [of Columbia College] Josef Sorrett’s weak private ‘apology’ to the college’s Board of Visitors shows that the school doesn’t get it.”

“Columbia’s Jewish community deserves better than this,” Foxx added.

When one of the panelists broke down crying over her daughter’s experiences with antisemitism at Columbia this year, Susan Chang-Kim, vice dean and chief administrative officer of Columbia College, shared “nauseous” and “vomiting” emojis with fellow administrators, the Free Beacon reported.

Nearly 15% of Arab Israelis want Hamas to govern Gaza

(JNS) — Some 14.7 percent of Arab Israelis believe the Hamas terrorist group should govern Gaza after the war, in direct opposition to one of Jerusalem’s key war aims, according to a study the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University presented on Wednesday.

That represents approximately 308,700 Israeli citizens out of an Arab Israeli population of around 2.1 million.

In contrast, some 8.4 percent of Arab Israelis say that Israel should govern the Gaza Strip after the war, which entered its 257th day on Wednesday.

The majority of respondents, 58.5 percent, felt that other Palestinian groups should govern Gaza. Broken down, about 24.4 percent believe that local bodies should be in charge, and 19.4 percent think that the Palestinian Authority should govern there, followed by Hamas at 14.7 percent.

Some 34.4 percent of respondents said that an external, non-Palestinian body should govern Gaza after the war. An international force is the preferred option with 19.4 percent support, while 8.4 percent chose Israel and 6.5 percent Arab states.

Other key findings include that nearly three-quarters of Arab Israelis reported a low sense of personal safety during the war. More than half the Arab-Israeli public—51.6 percent —say that there is a shared sense of destiny that has been created by the Israel-Hamas war.

The sense of a shared destiny shows a majority among members of all religions: 51.4 percent of Muslims, 62.5 percent of Druze and 61.2 percent of Christians.

Violence and crime are the No. 1 issues for Arab Israelis, the survey found.

A large majority (68.6 percent) support an Arab political party joining a governing coalition established after the next election.

A total of 502 citizens over the age of 18—a representative sample of the adult Arab population—were polled for the survey.

Seattle tech conference faces backlash for linking Israel to ‘genocide’

By Erez Linn

(Israel Hayom via JNS) — An annual tech conference in Seattle has found itself at the center of a heated controversy after a prominent researcher condemned one of the presentations for accusing Israel of genocide.

The Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference calls itself “the premier annual computer vision event” and includes “several co-located workshops and short courses” in addition to the main conference. Held in Seattle this year, it started on Monday and continues through Friday.

Yitzhak Ben-Shabat, a well-known Israeli figure in the field of computer vision, noticed a slide in one of the presentations during the Workshop on Responsible Data, had the headline “How has CPR research contributed to genocide in Palestine.”

The slide also listed Israeli and international companies, including Elbit Systems, Palantir and Lockheed Martin, as supposedly being embroiled in this “genocide.”

“I was deeply offended by a slide in a recent talk at #CVPR2024 that falsely accused my country of genocide. Such baseless political statements have no place in our scientific community. Let’s keep our focus on advancing science and leave politics at the door. @CVPR,” he tweeted. 

The thread prompted a major backlash online, with pro-Israel users attacking the conference for allowing the slide to appear. There was no information on who presented it or whether it was cleared with the event organizers, who have yet to respond to the allegations.

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

In first, Arab swimmer to represent Israel at Olympic Games

By Etgar Lefkovits

(JNS) — Adam Maraana will become the first Israeli Arab swimmer to represent the Jewish state at next month’s Olympic Games.

Maraana, a resident of the northern port city of Haifa, is the third Arab citizen to represent Israel in the world’s top sports competition.

The 20-year-old athlete, who won bronze in the 2023 European Under-23 Championship in Dublin in the 50m backstroke, qualified for the Israeli Olympic swim team after tying the national record in the 100-meter backstroke in a competition held at the Wingate Institute in Netanya.

The swimmer, the son of a Muslim Arab father and Russian mother, voiced the hope that he will be a goodwill ambassador for Israel at a time when the eight-month-old war against Hamas in Gaza has spurred anti-Israel protests across the globe.

He will be the first Arab citizen to represent Israel at the Olympics in nearly half a century. Weightlifter Eduard Meron represented Israel in Rome in 1960 and footballer Rifaat Turk in Montreal in 1976.

The 2024 Summer Olympics will run from July 26 to Aug. 11 in Paris.

Jeffries: Congress to make sure ‘Israel has space to decisively defeat Hamas’

(JNS) — Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the Democratic Party’s leader in the House of Representatives, spoke out in defense of the Jewish state’s mission to destroy Hamas after attending the Nova music festival exhibition in New York City.

“Having the opportunity to visit the exhibit really brings home, how violent, how brutal and how inhumane that attack was on 10/7,” Jeffries said.

He vowed that “we’re going to continue to do everything that we can to make sure that we bring all of the hostages home, that Israel has the space to decisively defeat Hamas so something like 10/7 can never happen again.”

Labeling Hamas “the obstacle to peace,” Jeffries stated, “I think it’s important for all of us to continue to articulate that loudly, publicly and forcefully.”