Israel Newsbriefs from JNS.org

Swede city Mid-Easterners in anti-Jewish surge

Jews in Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city, are concerned over an increasing number of anti-Semitic incidents, many perpetuated by “young men with roots in the Middle East,” said Jehoshua Kaufman, a member of the city’s Jewish congregation.

About one-third of Malmo’s 310,000 residents were born abroad, including many in the Middle East. There are about 2,000 Jews in the city. Sixty-six anti-Semitic incidents were reported in Malmo in 2012, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. About halfway through 2013, there have been 35 reports of anti-Semitic incidents. In all of 2010 and 2011 combined, there were 44 such incidents reported. Malmo police said the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Malmo is twice that of the number in Stockholm, whose population is three times as large.

Although there are other types of right-wing extremism in Sweden besides radical Islam, in Malmo it is “the young Muslim guys that are the problem,” said Barbro Posner, a member of the city’s Jewish community, according to Israel National News.

“[Muslims behind anti-Semitic incidents in Malmo] come from countries where there are racist, anti-Semitic TV programs,” Posner said.

Judea, Samaria populations rise

The first half of 2013 was characterized by a 2.12 percent population increase in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley, according to population registry data obtained by Israel Hayom. The information suggests that the growth rate is highest in the Har Hebron Regional Council, at 4.8 percent.

“The Har Hebron communities have become a magnet for couples and families who seek value-based education, quality of life and to make a national contribution,” said Har Hebron Regional Council head Tzviki Bar-Hai.

On Sunday, the Israeli cabinet expanded its list of cities and communities eligible for government subsidies, which included a record number of Judea and Samaria communities. The decision came just days after the resumption of long-frozen Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations and drew quick Palestinian condemnation.

2 clash over Judea, Samaria

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel’s negotiator in renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict talks, abstained from a cabinet vote approving national benefits including housing subsidies and loans for more than 600 Israeli communities on the grounds that a record number of Judea and Samaria communities were included on the list.

Livni acknowledged that there is “no doubt we need to provide the citizens living in [the Judea and Samaria communities] with security — that is our responsibility,” but said she believes it is “wrong and contrary to national interests to take funds that should be going toward diminishing social gaps and using them to encourage settlement in these secluded and dangerous settlements.”

Most Israelis oppose withdrawal

Sixty-three percent of Israeli Jews oppose a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, with land swaps, as part of a permanent peace agreement with the Palestinians, the latest monthly Peace Index poll released by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University shows.

The poll found that 79 percent of Israeli Jews think the renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations with the Palestinians have a low chance of success of yielding a peace agreement, while 18 percent believe they have a high chance. Among Israeli Arabs, 41 percent think the talks have a low chance of success, while 47 percent believe there is a high chance.

Australian pol: ‘Jewish lobby’ mangles image of Nazi-era Pope

Jewish groups and Israeli leaders have criticized former Australian deputy prime minister Tim Fischer for saying that the “Jewish lobby” has unfairly treated the legacy of Pope Pius XII.

Jewish groups are known to be critical of Pope Pius XII, who was pope during the Nazi era, for not publicly condemning the atrocities that were being perpetrated by the Germans against the Jewish people.

But in his new book, “Holy See, Unholy Me: 1,000 Days in Rome,” Fischer claims that Pius “instructed Catholics to help Jews, hiding hundreds in convents, monasteries and the Vatican,” and says the tactics of the “Jewish lobby” are “about representing a cause and maintaining influence and power.”

“This is very standard anti-Semitic fare … the notion of Jews controlling the world, either through financial markets or the media, or both,” said Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, on Fischer’s book.

Latest discovery: Ancient

Jewish pottery village in Galilee

A religion professor from Alabama-based Samford University has discovered an ancient Galilean Jewish village five miles near Nazareth in a recent archeological dig.

“The site of the discovery has been abandoned, except for agriculture, ever since the mid-fourth century CE.

“The buildings came down and people used its stones in other nearby buildings, then those buildings were destroyed and the stones were re-used again,” said Professor James Riley Strange, according to Science World Report.

Archeologists discovered remnants of Jewish housing and synagogues at the site, as well as pottery and moulds that were used to make oil lamps. One piece, an oil lamp, has an engraving of a menorah and a lulav.

From the discovery, experts suspect the village was a potters’ village.

One of the earliest Jewish villages in the region during the Hasmonaean dynasty (140-63 BCE) was “Shikhin,” a potters’ village described by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and by the Talmud.

Al-Qaeda flag raised atop Egyptian Coptic church

Hundreds of supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the ousted Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt, gathered in front of St. George Church in the Upper Egyptian city of Sohag last weekend and raised the black flag of Al-Qaeda over the church.

According to Coptic Solidarity, a U.S.-based Coptic human rights organization that cited a local Egyptian report in Shorouk News, the Islamists chanted that Egypt should be an “Islamic [state] despite [the wishes of] secularists.” The church immediately closed its doors after the demonstration and prevented the entry or exit of its members.

The head of Al-Qaeda, Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a recent recorded message, said that “Crusaders and secularists and the Americanized army have converged … with Gulf money and American plotting to topple Mohamed Morsi’s government,” according to a translation by Sky News.

TV in PA prizes Israeli territory as part of ‘Palestine’

Coinciding with the restarting of Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations in Washington, D.C., Palestinian Authority TV (PA TV) offered $100 prizes in man-on-the-street interviews with Palestinians who identified Israeli territory as part of “Palestine,” Palestinian Media Watch reported.

On the July 25 program, the PA TV reporter asked a Palestinian man, “On the beach of which Palestinian village did the whale spew out the prophet Jonah? Naturally, it’s a coastal city.” The man won a $100 prize for answering “Ashdod.”

The “correct” answer on the TV program to “What is the highest mountain in Palestine?” was Mount Meron, which is located in northern Israel.

Asked by the PA TV reporter to identify which city the Palestinian writer Mustafa Dabbagh called “the city that fell from Heaven,” a Palestinian man followed up by asking the reporter whether the city was inside or outside of Palestine, and when told the city was inside Palestine, the man earned the cash prize by answering “Jaffa.”

Palestinian negotiator timetable

Although U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said last week that the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams would keep the details of their renewed talks confidential, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Saturday said Israel would release 26 Palestinian prisoners on August 13.

This will be the first phase of the four-stage prisoner release, entailing the freeing of 104 Palestinian terrorists imprisoned before the 1993 Oslo Accords, that Israel agreed to in order to restart negotiations.

Syria strike link tied to Obama

President Obama, due to his “dismay” over Israeli operations, allowed the U.S. intelligence community to leak classified information about the recent Israeli airstrike on Syria, World Tribune reported.

Last month, the Israel Air Force bombed Yakhont anti-ship missiles stored in a Hezbollah-controlled warehouse near Latakia, Syria, according to the New York Times. Some of the missiles were reportedly spared because they were moved before the Israeli airstrike.

A U.S. diplomat who declined to be identified told World Tribune that the decision to leak information about the Israeli airstrike on Syria “could come only from Obama.”

Rouhani: Israel ‘wound for years on the body of the Muslim world’

Just days before being sworn in as Iran’s next president, Hassan Rouhani reportedly called Israel an “old wound” that must be removed at a pro-Palestinian rally.

“The Zionist regime has been a wound on the body of the Islamic world for years and the wound should be removed,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by the semi-official ISNA news agency during a speech at an Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day rally, an annual Iranian celebration of support for the Palestinians.

Iranian Press TV later aired what it called a corrected version of Rouhani’s statement. “After all, in our region there has been a wound for years on the body of the Muslim world under the shadow of the occupation of the holy land of Palestine and the beloved al-Quds,” Press TV quoted Rouhani as saying.

Rouhani’s remark echoed similar threats made by previous Iranian leaders. Israeli PM Netanyahu said the remark, in its initially reported form, should serve as a “wake up” to the world about any illusions they hold on Rouhani, whom some have called a “moderate.”

“The real face of Rouhani has been exposed earlier than expected,” Netanyahu said. “This is what the man thinks and this is the Iranian regime’s operational plan.”

IDF patrol under Syrian fire

An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) patrol vehicle came under fire from across the Syrian border Thursday night, in the latest Syrian civil war spillover into Israel. No soldiers were wounded and no damage was done to the vehicle in the attack.

Israel’s Channel 2 reported that according to the IDF, the shooting was apparently not premeditated and was a result of a firefight between Syrian rebels and regime forces that spilled over into Israeli territory.

IDF Christian enlistment triples

Christian enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has nearly tripled in the past year, going from 35 to 100, with another 500 Christians doing national service, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s office.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek Orthodox priest from Nazareth and spiritual leader of a forum for the enlistment of Christian youth in the IDF, Naji Abid, leader of the Orthodox council in Yafia and Lt. (ret.) Shadi Khaloul, head of the forum.

At the meeting, Netanyahu announced the creation of a joint government-community forum to encourage Christian enlistment.