Israel Newsbriefs from JNS.org

All Jewish communities beyond pre-1967 lines ‘illegitimate’

Reacting to Israel’s announcement of 1,200 new housing units in eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the U.S. “views all of the settlements as illegitimate.”

The territories acquired by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War are considered disputed and subject to final status negotiations,according to the U.S. view. In 2004, President George W. Bush wrote in a letter to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that it is “unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”

“Ever since the Six-Day War, countless presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have said that the 1967 lines were indefensible, and that there was no way that Israel should go back to the 1967 lines,” Sarah Stern, founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth, told JNS.org.

Terror group: Cloud over

Hours after a Grad rocket was intercepted by an Israeli Iron Dome battery in the southern city of Eilat for the first time, a Salafi Palestinian terror organization claimed responsibility for the attack.

“We want to emphasize that Eilat and other Jewish cities will never enjoy security, tourism or a flourishing economy. The Jews will pay for the jihadi fighters who died in Sinai. Sinai will stand strong against Israeli aggression,” the statement said.

Nazi slogans, Hitler pictures

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called for a global boycott of a company producing Italian wines whose labels sport Nazi slogans and images of Adolph Hitler.

A Norwegian couple recently discovered the wines, produced by Vina Lunardelli, in the coastal Italian town of Rimini. Last summer, American Jews Matthew and Cindy Hirsch noticed the wine labels in a supermarket in the town of Garda.

Eydie Gorme, 84

Jewish-American singer Eydie Gorme, who became famous for her popular duet performances with her husband Steve Lawrence in the 1950s, died in Las Vegas on Saturday at the age of 84.

Born Edith Gorme in the Bronx in 1932, the singer’s parents were Jews of Spanish descent who were born in Turkey and immigrated to the U.S. Her fluency in Spanish helped propel her to fame in Spanish-speaking countries as well as in the United States. Gorme and Lawrence starred in the television series “The Steve Lawrence-Eydie Gorme Show,” and won a Grammy Award in 1960 and an Emmy Award in 1979.

Iran tie to 1983 bombing

Iran’s newly appointed defense minister, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, has links to the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks terrorist attack in Beirut that killed 199 American and French servicemen, says an Israeli think tank.

According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), Dehghan, who has spent his entire military career in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, was sent to Lebanon in the early 1980s to help organize and train Shi’a militia units that would become known as Hezbollah. Part of his mission was to establish Iranian control over Hezbollah through the creation of a central command center.

‘Incitement and peace’

“Incitement and peace cannot coexist,” wrote Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday night, ahead of the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations this week.

Netanyahu’s letter, according to Israel Hayom, referred to a statement made by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas July 29 that a future Palestinian state “would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or soldier.”

Israeli drone strike in Egypt

An Israeli drone strike inside Egypt in the troubled Sinai Peninsula has killed four terrorists and destroyed a rocket launcher, two senior Egyptian security officials said, the Associated Press reported.

According to reports, two explosions were heard in el-Agra, which is south of Rafah, a city in the northern Sinai that borders the Gaza Strip. The Egyptian military said the strike was coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), AFP reported.

The strike came a day after IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz shut down the Eilat Airport for two hours amid undisclosed security concerns. But Egyptian authorities cited by Ma’an News Agency said that terrorists in the Sinai planned to target Israel with shoulder-fired missiles.

Since Egypt’s 2011 Revolution, the Sinai Peninsula has grown increasingly lawless, with several terrorist groups operating there.

Catholic Holocaust education

A group of 40 Catholic school educators traveled to Washington as part of a program to learn more about the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

Over a five-day period, the program seeks to educate participants about the history of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and recent changes in Catholic-Jewish relations.

“Bearing Witness is a unique program in its partnership between the Catholic and Jewish communities and our joint commitment to changing the dynamic between our communities so that the past does not serve as a model for our future engagement,” Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director, said.

Since 1996, ADL’s Bearing Witness program has trained more than 1,700 Catholic school educators.

Don’t make ‘bad deal’

With renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations underway, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat warned against Israeli concessions relating to his city.

“If the deal collapses because it hinges on the Jerusalem issue, so be it. It is better not to make any deal than to agree to a bad deal,” Barkat told Israel Hayom in an interview published Friday.

Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations will resume August 14 in Jerusalem.