EU Attempts to Heal Schism With Israel Over Product Labeling By JNS - BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS

European Union flags. (Wikimedia Commons)

EU Attempts to Heal Schism With Israel Over Product Labeling

By JNS February 11, 2016  BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS

“When a man’s ways please the LORD, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” (Proverbs 16:7)

Israel is discreetly holding talks with the European Union (EU) in an effort to resolve a diplomatic crisis following the EU’s recent decision to remove “Made in Israel” labels from products originating beyond Israel’s 1967 lines.

The EU and Israel are jointly working on ways to restore relations so that negotiations can resume in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Jerusalem Post reported, citing Israel Radio.

A delegation led by Helga Schmid—the EU’s deputy secretary general for the External Action Service and a senior adviser to EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini—last week secretly met with Israeli Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold, representatives of the Israeli National Security Council, and other officials in Israel, according to Haaretz.

“We told them that the decisions of the EU’s council of foreign ministers and the decision on the labeling of products [beyond the 1967 lines] were unilateral and in fact adopted the Palestinian narrative. That’s no way to conduct a respectful dialogue,” an unnamed Jerusalem official was quoted as saying.

Qatari minister says Israel is ‘offending 1.5 billion Muslims’ - II&ET

ISRAEL, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, TEMPLE MOUNTNovember 9, 2015

QATAR’S Foreign Minister rules out cooperation with Israel, says it offends Muslims with its actions on the Temple Mount

Qatar’s Foreign Minister on Wednesday ruled out the possibility that his country would cooperate with Israel, accusing the Jewish state of “offending 1.5 billion Muslims”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera and quoted by Haaretz, the minister, Khalid Al Attiyah, said, “I don’t think we are in a position to have any cooperation with Israel at this stage” in the absence of a peace process.

He proceeded to accused Israel of being provocative regarding the status of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

“You are offending 1.5 billion Muslims when you are talking about the Masjid Al Aqsa…and we have raised the flag before,” said Al Attiya, who warned that the current unrest is a “third intifada” that could become “the worst intifada” yet.

“The people who went to the street… [were] born after the Oslo Treaty and they saw there is no hope,” he claimed.

This is not the first time that the Qatari minister, whose country is known for its ties and support for the Muslim Brotherhood and for Hamas, has attacked Israel.

In August, Al Attiya blasted Israeli “occupation” when discussing the crises in the Middle East, claiming that “the Middle East is suffering from the failures of the peace process due to the Israeli occupation” of Palestinian land.

Al-Attiya accused Israel of “intransigence” in dealing with the Palestinians and said it must end its “illegal blockade of Gaza”.

There were reports several months ago that Qatar halted its financial support for Hamas in order to push the group to change its policy against Egypt, which Qatar had just reconciled with.

Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said, however, that the report was completely untrue.

Report: American Airlines Dropped Israel Due to Alliance with Arab Carriers

By JNS August 27, 2015  BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS

“And first I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double; because they have profaned My land…” (Jeremiah 16:18)

(Photo: Lasse Fuss/ Wiki Commons)

Aviation industry sources claim that the recent American Airlines decision to cease flights to Israel is the result of the US carrier’s ties with Arab airlines.

The airline had announced that it would stop its flights from Philadelphia to Tel Aviv beginning in January 2016 due to financial considerations.

Casey Norton, a spokesman for American Airlines, told Bloomberg News that the carrier has lost $20 million last year on the route alone.

But aviation sources told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the actual reason for the route’s impending closure is the airline’s participation in the OneWorld alliance, whose members include Arab airlines like Qatar Airways and Royal Jordanian as well as Malaysia Airlines (Malaysia is a Muslim-majority nation).

“Profitability wasn’t a problem. The past year hasn’t been easy for the airline industry in general, but that’s far from saying that the route wasn’t profitable. No one would have operated a money-losing route for so many years,” an anonymous industry source said, Haaretz reported.

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/47720/american-airlines-dropped-israel-alliance-arab-carriers-jerusalem/#XyawpO0BecP4j03j.99

Fleeing 'place full of death,’ Jews from eastern Ukraine weep for homeland - HAARETZ

Fleeing 'place full of death,’ Jews from eastern Ukraine weep for homeland

Hundreds of Jews have been made refugees by the fighting in the east of the country.

By JTA | Jul. 21, 2014  HAARETZ

Jewish men and boys prepare to read prayers in a synagogue in Donetsk, Ukraine, Friday, April 18, 2014.Photo by AP

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By JTA | Jul. 17, 2014 | 1:41 PM

Train with plane crash bodies leaves Ukrainian rebel town

By Dmitry Lovetsky and David Mchugh | Jul. 21, 2014 | 7:34 PM

Anatoly Lazaurenko’s face betrays no emotion as he watches footage of an old woman he used to know lying in the rubble of what once was his home in the war-torn city of Slavyansk.

Oblivious to her mangled face, Anatoly, 8, points to a corner of the computer screen to indicate the bombed-out apartment in eastern Ukraine that his family fled last month as a tense standoff between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces escalated into urban warfare.

Like many Ukrainians, the boy has become inured to disturbing sights after months of violent conflict in his country. Even after watching the video, Anatoly says he would rather be home — under fire, but with his friends and classmates. But his mother insists they are staying with relatives near Dnepropetrovsk, far from the battle zone, as long as the fighting persists.

“Every day Anatoly asks me in tears if we can go back yet,” says his mother, Ludmila.

The Lazaurenkos are among hundreds of Jews made refugees by the fighting in eastern Ukraine, part of a larger movement of tens of thousands of people who have fled since pro-Russian militias — some toting heavy caliber machine guns and mortars — took up arms against government troops in March.

Hundreds already have died in the fighting, including the 200 passengers and crew aboard a Malaysia Airlines jet shot down over eastern Ukraine on Thursday by what American and Ukrainian officials say was a Russian anti-aircraft missile fired from rebel-controlled territory.

On Friday, two Jews — Svetlana Sitnikov and her daughter, Anna — were killed in an explosion in the eastern city of Lugansk.

The Jewish refugees are surviving on assistance from local and foreign Jewish groups that in recent weeks have launched major rescue and relief operations. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and community officials are helping to provide housing, monthly stipends, food and medicine in what they describe as one of largest mobilizations in the history of Ukrainian Jewry.

“We’re talking about a multi-element package designed to improve the situation of each and every person who left the battle zone,” said Yoni Leifer, the head of operations in the Dnepropetrovsk region for JDC. A separate relief operation is being carried out by the Chabad-led Jewish community of Dnepropetrovsk.

The Lazaurenkos decided to leave Slavyansk last month after government forces began engaging the separatists. But Ludmila Lazaurenko does not blame Ukrainian troops, who launched their offensive following the standoff with the rebels.

“We were pro-Russian,” Lazaurenko said of herself and her parents, Nadezhda and Alexander Belovol, who fled with her and Anatoly. “But that changed after we saw how they fought from inside the houses of civilians, with no regard for their lives. There is no excuse for that.”

Two weeks after the family left, they learned from a television news broadcast that their house had been blown up.

“We started crying when we saw that nothing was left,” Lazaurenko said. “We have nothing now.”

For those without relatives to take them in, JDC and the Jewish community of Dnepropetrovsk have arranged rooms in the community’s various institutions. The Beit Baruch old age home reached its capacity last week after 28 people were given spots in vacant rooms.

Among them are Rosa Dvoskina and Sofia Sanina, two women in their 80s who fled Slavyansk and Lugansk, respectively, earlier this month.

“I made it out, but I can’t stop thinking about my poor friends and neighbors who are still trapped there without water or medicines in a place full of death,” said a weeping Dvoskina, who had lived in her apartment building for 40 years before having to leave.

Like most refugees, Dvoskina and Sanina say they fled out of a general concern for safety unrelated to the fact that they are Jewish. But their neighbors at Beit Baruch, an Orthodox family of seven from Donetsk who requested not to be named, said anti-Jewish graffiti began to appear in the city as the rule of law weakened.

“We started seeing swastikas painted on park benches, buildings,” the family’s grandfather said.

Amid lingering uncertainty about the future of Ukraine’s embattled eastern border cities, Dvoskina and Sanina are thinking about immigrating to Israel, though they would prefer to return to their homes. Other refugees, including Elena Libina from Donetsk, are determined to leave permanently for Israel.

Libina is staying in a community facility in Dnepropetrovsk only until her immigration application is approved. Meanwhile, the Jewish community is arranging for the rescue of her 91-year-old aunt, who remains trapped in Lugansk.

“We felt the tension rising and noticed that bus tickets out of the city were increasingly becoming more expensive,” Libina told JTA. “When they bombed the administration building, I left.”

Dnepropetrovsk is one of Ukraine’s largest Jewish communities, with 50,000 members. Several oligarchs, including the banking magnate Igor Kolomoisky, have poured millions into the community’s institutions, including several Jewish schools and the $100 million Menorah Jewish Community Center, a 450,000 square-foot facility that includes luxury mikvah baths, kosher restaurants, a Holocaust museum and a day care center.

Zelig Brez, the community’s director general and right hand of the city’s influential chief rabbi, Shmuel Kamenetsky, said organizing the rescue and relief operation isn’t merely a religious duty but part of his responsibility toward Ukraine’s smaller Jewish communities.

“It comes with the territory of being an engine of Jewish life in Ukraine,” Brez said.

The community has made wide use of its facilities to help house the refugees. Elena Konigina and her 12-year-old daughter, Ksenia, have stayed at a scenic countryside resort near the Dnepropetrovsk suburb of Pavlograd since they fled Lugansk in May.

Konigina would like to immigrate to Israel, but Ksenia is a minor and cannot exit the country without the consent of both parents. Konigina says she does not know how to reach Ksenia’s father, whom she divorced several years ago.

Even if she could go, Konigina worries that the situation in the Jewish state won’t be much better.

“I don’t know what good that will do,” Konigina said. “They are shooting there, too.”

Netanyahu blasts Presbyterian divestment as 'disgraceful'

WATCH: On 'Meet the Press,' PM suggests church members visit Israel, then go to Libya, Syria, Iraq, but 'don't say that you're Christian;' On ISIS-Iraq battle, says U.S. should weaken both sides.

By Haaretz | Jun. 22, 2014 

WATCH: On 'Meet the Press,' PM suggests church members visit Israel, then go to Libya, go to Syria, go to Iraq, see the difference." Then he advised them to "first make sure it's an armor-plated bus, and second, don't say that you're Christian."Syria, Iraq, but 'don't say that you're Christian;' On ISIS-Iraq battle, says U.S. should weaken both sides.

By Haaretz | Jun. 22, 2014 

Netanyahu on 'Meet the Press,' June 22, 2014.

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Prime Minister Benjamin NetanyahuPhoto by AP

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U.S. Presbyterians vote to divest from companies used by Israel in occupied territories

By Haaretz and The Associated Press

Jun. 21, 2014 | 9:34 AM |  52

Jewish groups anticipate rupture after Presbyterians vote to divest in protest of Israel

By JTA | Jun. 21, 2014 | 9:34 PM |  15

Abbas outstretches his hand, but Netanyahu wags his finger

By Ravit Hecht | Jun. 21, 2014 | 1:42 PM |  3

How a radical anti-Israel Jewish group colluded with the U.S. Presbyterian Church

By Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie | Jun. 23, 2014 | 9:51 PM |  31

J Street denounces Presbyterian vote to divest

By Haaretz | Jun. 23, 2014 | 7:02 PM |  14

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday's "Meet the Press" and denounced as "disgraceful" the Presbyterian Church's divestment from companies equipping Israeli activities in the West Bank and its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Asked on the NBC-TV interview program if he was "troubled" by the Presbyterian Church USA's move on Friday, when it voted to withdraw its $21 million in investments from Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, Netanyahu said, "It should trouble all people of conscience and morality because it's so disgraceful."

Seeming to address his remarks to American Christians, he went on to hold up Israel as "a beacon of civilization and moderation" that "protects Christians – Christians are persecuted throughout the Middle East," and contrasted it to the rest of Middle East, which he characterized as being riddled "by religious hatred, by savagery of unimaginable proportions."

He continued, "You know, I would suggest to this Presbyterian organization to fly to the Middle East, come and see Israel for the embattled democracy that it is, and then take a bus tour, go to Libya, go to Syria, go to Iraq, see the difference." Then he advised them to "first make sure it's an armor-plated bus, and second, don't say that you're Christian."

(On CNN, Heath Rada, the Presbyterian elder who moderated the church assembly's 310-303 vote for divestment, said the decision was "not against the Jewish people," but rather against Israeli government actions that "harm the Palestinian people.")

Brushes off Abbas statement

In other remarks, Netanyahu basically brushed off Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' striking statement in Jeddah last week about the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers. The interviewer quoted Abbas telling a gathering of top officials from Muslim states, "The missing settlers in the West Bank are human beings like us, we must return them to their families."

To this, Netanyahu said, "I think it was a good thing that he said that, and I think it would be tested now by his willingness to stop the incitement against Israel and the glorification of terrorists." The prime minister said two other tests of Abbas' intentions would be "that he helps us capture the kidnappers" – which Palestinian troops under Abbas' authority have been doing – and that he dissolve the Fatah-Hamas unity government.

Asserting that peace and Hamas do not go together, Netanyahu said Abbas had to choose, and he added, "I hope President Abbas chooses the right thing."

Asked at another point whether he thought the United States should join with Iran in stopping the Islamist State in Iraq and Syria, an Al-Qaida offshoot of militants who are threatening to take over Iraq, Netanyahu said, "When your enemies are fighting one another, don't strengthen either one. Weaken them both."

'Jewish School Sends Disciples on a Christian Mission'

Friday, April 18, 2014 |  David Lazarus  ISRAEL TODAY

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That was the headline hidden away in the archives of a 1966 edition of the popular Hebrew newspaper Haaretz. It is a fascinating inside look at what happened when an Israeli university required students to read the "dangerous" New Testament.

The full article appears in the April 2014 issue of Israel Today Magazine.

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