News in brief: Talansky requests rejected; OU, Agudah stimulus complaints; UN reform

Issue of Feb. 20, 2009 / 26 Shevat 5769

Talansky requests rejected

Israel’s state prosecutor has rejected a request by Five Towns businessman Moshe Talansky to testify in a closed courtroom.

Lawyers for Talansky, the key witness in a fraud investigation against Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, had requested that Talansky’s testimony resume in Israel behind closed doors and under a gag order. The prosecutor’s office did agree to consider holding parts of the hearing behind closed doors and to place some material under a gag order.

Olmert is accused of accepting envelopes cash from Talansky in the amount of about $150,000 for more than a decade. (JTA)

O.U., Agudah: Stimulus bill excludes us

The Orthodox Union and Agudath Israel of America both criticized the final version of the economic stimulus bill for excluding non-public schools from obtaining funds for “green” modernization of their facilities.

The legislation allows states to use a portion of the “state stabilization fund” for such school projects, but specifically states that religious and other non-public schools cannot receive federal dollars for similar construction projects.

“We are greatly disappointed that in these early days of the new Congress and Obama Administration, a choice has been made to ignore the tradition of including non-public schools in federal education programs on an equitable basis,” said O.U. public policy director Nathan Diament in a statement. “This decision is at odds with the fine outreach to faith communities Democrats have engaged in of late, and with President Obama’s call that the stimulus legislation shouldn’t be shaped by ideological factors, but by ‘what works.’”

Agudath Israel of America also was disappointed that non-public elementary and secondary schools could not receive funding for “green” construction in the legislation but said post-high school yeshivot may be able to benefit from the program because language prohibiting “schools of divinity” was eliminated from the bill. (JTA)

UN reform bill gathers support

Legislation promoting United Nations reform, which could require withholding U.S. contributions to UN relief agency assisting Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has 39 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.

The United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act would require that the United States withhold U.S. contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency unless certification could be provided that nobody associated with, or received money from, the agency associated with terror.

UNRWA has said it doesn’t have the resources to check the background of everyone affiliated with the group, but it does run the names of some employees by Israeli intelligence services. A recent report released by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy found that very few of the agency’s 15,000 employees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are affiliated with terror groups, but said that the agency has allowed itself to become politicized.

The legislation would also require an audit of five other U.N. entities devoted to West Bank and Gaza Arabs as well as any other entity that “results in duplicative efforts or fails to ensure balance” in its approach to Israeli-Arab issues, and would require the U.S. to withhold from its regular contributions to the world body the amount of money usually expended.

Another provision of the bill states that the U.S. must press the U.N. Secretary General to issue a directive requiring all U.N. employees and employees of U.N. agencies to officially and publicly condemn anti-Semitic statements made in U.N.-affiliated forums, and would require any of those employees to be subject to punitive actions for making any anti-Semitic statements or references. (JTA)