Showing posts with label The Times of Israel. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Mr. Putin, let us bury Raoul Wallenberg - The Times of Israel

Mr. Putin, let us bury Raoul Wallenberg

The Times of Israel

An open letter asking the Russian president to help locate the Swedish diplomat’s remains so they can be given a proper burial

BY EDUARDO EURNEKIAN AND BARUCH TENEMBAUM August 9, 2016, 2:25 pm

Open Letter

The President of the Russian Federation
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
23, Ilyinka Street,
Moscow
103132 Russia

Dear Mr. President,

We respectfully address you on behalf of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF), a global-reach NGO based in New York, with representative offices in Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires and Berlin.

In light of the recent publication of General Ivan Serov’s diaries, may we respectfully ask you to consider the possibility of allowing free and unfettered access to the KGB archives in order to try and locate the remains of Raoul Wallenberg and Vilmos Langfelder and if possible, bring them back home for proper burial.

As you probably know, Raoul’s parents and his step-father are buried in Sweden and his half-sister, Nina, is alive and deserves to be able to visit her half-brother’s grave. We also fondly remember Raoul’s half-brother, the late Professor Guy von Dardel, a great friend of our foundation; a man who devoted most of his life to bringing Raoul back home, alas, to no avail.

Following such a humane gesture, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation would offer to erect and deploy a major monument in Moscow, as a symbol of peace, solidarity and reconciliation and as a token of gratitude to Russia.

Our central mission is to preserve and spread the courageous legacy of Raoul Wallenberg and his likes, namely, women and men who reached-out to others in need, regardless of race, religion or nationality of rescuers and rescued ones alike.

Among our member are well over 300 heads of state (former and incumbent), Nobel prize laureates and distinguished personalities from all walks of life, including Pope Francis, who joined our NGO when he served as Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

Last August 6th, as we held ceremonies in Buenos Aires, Tel Aviv, New York and Budapest to commemorate Raoul Wallenberg on his 104th birthday, the international media relayed the news of the emergence of former KGB Director, Ivan Serov’s diaries. According to the latter, the Swedish diplomat was killed in the Soviet Union under orders from Joseph Stalin.

Our sole aim is to bring closure to a human tragedy.

In fact, Mr. Serov’s diaries corroborate an official written statement we received 10 years earlier (on June 15, 2006) from the then Deputy Chief of Mission of the Russian Federation in Washington DC, Mr. Alexander Darchiev (current Russian Ambassador in Ottawa). We are enclosing a copy of Mr. Darchiev’s letter in question, for your perusal. As you can see Mr. President, the high-ranking and experienced diplomat was clear and unequivocal in stating that “Mr. Wallenberg died, or most likely perished in the USSR on July 17, 1947”. He emphasized that “the death of Mr. Wallenberg lies with the USSR leadership of that time and on Stalin personally”.

Upon receipt of Mr. Darchiev’s letter we made it public and we passed it on to the media and to the Russian authorities, without any major result, but the veracity of his claims is well supported by the information being now unearthed from Mr. Serov’s diaries.

A few years ago, our NGO offered a significant financial reward of 500,000 Euros to any person or entity able to come-up with scientifically verifiable information regarding the fate and/or whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg and his chauffeur, Vilmos Langfelder (both of them apprehended by the Soviet military on January 17, 1945, never to be seen again). We are certainly not seeking an investigation into the circumstances of Wallenberg and Langfelder’s detention and disappearance. These events occurred long ago amidst a particular historical context, in the wake of humanity’s bloodiest war. Our sole aim is to bring closure to a human tragedy.

Raoul Wallenberg was one of the greatest heroes in the history of mankind. We have erected busts honoring him in Argentina (including in the Buenos Aires International Airport, where it was seen by tens of million of passengers), as well as other interfaith monuments, including the Memorial Mural at the Buenos Aires Cathedral, in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

Dear Mr. President, both the undersigned would be willing to fly specially to Moscow, at your convenience, in order to meet with you and your staff and coordinate all the necessary arrangements to facilitate Raoul Wallenberg’s return home. We strongly believe that Raoul Wallenberg deserves our recognition and that Russia, as a world leader, deserves to play a key role in this human endeavor.

Thanking you in advance for your kind attention, we remain at your disposal should you require any additional information from our end, we remain,

Most respectfully,

Eduardo Eurnekian
Chairman

Baruch Tenembaum
Founder

Letter received June, 2006 from then Deputy Chief of Mission of the Russian Federation in Washington DC, Mr. Alexander Darchiev

Thursday, May 26, 2016

For photogenic Jerusalem, a look at how locals first captured their city - THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

For photogenic Jerusalem, a look at how locals first captured their city - THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Shot from every angle since cameras were invented, the capital has usually been viewed through an outsider’s lens. A new exhibit of residents’ pictures from 1900 to 1950 takes a first shot at filling the gap
BY SUE SURKES May 26, 2016

Jerusalem has been photographed from nearly every conceivable angle, dating back to the 1830s, when the world’s first photographic images were captured on film.

That photographic heritage is the subject of a new exhibit, “The Camera Man: Women and Men Photograph Jerusalem 1900-1950,” opening Thursday, May 26, at Jerusalem’s Tower of David Museum.

It was European visitors to the ancient city who were the first to photograph Jerusalem’s ancient sites and walls, and their own agendas colored those early photos, said curator Shimon Lev.

The tourists were photographers, archaeologists and devout Christians drawn to the perceived mysteries of the Orient, often inspired by a desire to prove that the events told in the New Testament had happened, and taken place in Jerusalem.

They were followed by the period of “Zionist photography” in the 1920s and 1930s, when professional photographers found paid work through the Jewish National Fund. It was a period of political and ideological photography, depicting tanned young men with bulging muscles pushing plows and athletic young women dancing the hora.

That photography was ambivalent toward Jerusalem, which, at the time, represented many of the Jewish ills which Zionism was supposed to upend, said Lev.

Shmuel Josef Schweig. Concert by the cantor Z. Kwartin, from a Jewish National Fund album, Buki Boaz collection of Israeli photography, Mevasseret Zion

What was missing in that perspective was the photographers who lived and worked in Jerusalem, and the varied perspectives they brought to bear through the lens.

“The history of local photography in Jerusalem has never been shown as a body of work and we wanted to be the place to show it,” said Eilat Lieber, the museum’s director.

The results were culled from 18 months of intensive work, as the museum staff scoured photo archives, visited the major collectors of early Israeli photography and identified photographers — often by locating family members.

The exhibition features 120 digitized photographs and a smaller number of originals. It juxtaposes a range of styles, from formal and avant-garde, to a direct, journalistic, documentary style, creating an historic journey of the development of photography. It also casts a lens on the backgrounds of the photographers themselves, who brought their own cultures and histories to bear on their subjects and works.

A Torah lesson at the Diskin Great Orphanage in Givat Shaul in the 1920s, a digital print from glass plate negative (Courtesy Tsadok Bassan/Central Zionist Archives)

Of the 34 photographers on display –- including Jews and Arabs, women and men — Tsadok Bassan was the first Jewish photographer born in the city. A member of a third-generation, religious Jerusalem family, he created a unique photographic record of life in pre-state Jerusalem, immortalizing what went on in yeshivas, orphanages, soup kitchens, hospitals and cemeteries. Each of his pictures is meticulously composed, and natural light is a conspicuous feature.

In startling contrast, German-born Alfred Bernheim, one of the city’s foremost professional photographers, brought the style of the Weimar period and the New Vision movement to bear in his modern, angular compositions.

A rugby match between the Jerusalem Police and the Northern Police, circa 1933 (Courtesy Zvi Orushkes/Central Zionist Archives)

Zvi Oroshkes (Oron) came from Russia and, thanks to good contacts with the British, took journalistic pictures for the British Mandate administration. One shows a pair of clowns dressed up to entertain English families. Another depicts a rugby match.

While photographs of the War of Independence are relatively well-known, Lev chose a humble yet striking image taken by German-born Rudolf Jonas of a father walking with his child through an alley flanked by sandbags. Ali Zaarour, probably the first Muslim Arab photographer to work in Jerusalem, is featured with a poignant image of light streaming down on a painting of the Virgin Mary through a hole in the ceiling blasted by a shell.

A shell hole in Old City home (Courtesy Ali Zaarour/Zaarour family collection)

The 120-photograph show, organized by photographer, will be accompanied by two smartphone apps, one telling the story behind the exhibition, the other featuring locations in Jerusalem as photographed then and now. In addition, visitors will be able to don costumes and pose against a background for formal portraits in the style of the early 20th century.

The museum is also inviting visitors to create the next century’s accounting of everyday life in the city by contributing their own family photos to the museum, complete with information about the photographer, the subjects and the occasion.

As part of the museum’s effort to draw visitors to their Old City location, they are creating panels of some of the photos that will be placed outside the downtown Clal Building, next to the Mahane Yehuda market, in order to engage with Jerusalemites and tourists.

Orphans busy tailoring at the Diskin Great Orphanage in Givat Shaul (Courtesy Tsadok Bassan/Central Zionist Archives)

The idea for the exhibit came from the Tower of David’s own photographic archive that includes thousands of unsolicited photographs sent to the museum. The contents of the archive were recently digitized and uploaded onto an international online collection for museums. A Culture Ministry grant will support restoration of the collection, and the aim is to make them eventually available to the general public online.

Lieber said the largest photo archive in the city is held by the Jerusalem Municipality, and which is currently closed to museums, researchers and the public. Her hope is that the museum’s exhibition will persuade the decision-makers to open the archive, digitize it, and put it on-line.

“The Camera Man,” Tower of David Museum, May 26 — December 12, 2016.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Iowa General Assembly passes anti-BDS legislation - THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

Iowa General Assembly passes anti-BDS legislation

Approved 38-9 in state senate, bill is third in US to prohibit state investment and procurement with companies that boycott Israel

BY ERIC CORTELLESSA April 28, 2016 THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

'Boycott Israel' billboard near Chicago's Logan Airport (screen capture: CBS)

WASHINGTON — Iowa’s senate passed a measure Wednesday aimed to deter corporate entities from participating in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

The bill passed by a vote of 38-9, after advancing through the Iowa House of Representatives by a vote of 70-24 in February, and now moves to the office of Iowa’s Republican governor, Terry Branstad, who must decide whether to sign it into law.

In the last year, several states have taken up similar forms of legislation to address efforts to boycott or divest from the Jewish state, but only two others — Florida and Arizona — have gone as far as Iowa to ban both state investment and procurement in companies that engage in a politically motivated boycott of Israel.

Jacob Millner, a senior policy analyst for the advocacy group The Israel Project, said the Iowa bill enjoyed bipartisan support that ensured it made it through the partisan-divided statehouse.

“It passed a GOP-controlled House of Representatives and Democrat controlled Senate,” he told The Times of Israel.

The legislation also received criticism from opponents who called it an attempt to suppress or limit the speech rights of those critical of Israel.

Joseph Sabag, deputy director of the Israel Allies Foundation advocacy group, countered by saying the regulations wouldn’t prohibit companies from engaging in a boycott if they chose to, but enables the state to exercise its discretion in how it spends taxpayer money.

“This law does not say a group cannot boycott Israel or advocate for boycotting Israel. It does not penalize any private party’s exercise of free speech,” Sabag said in a statement. “What this law does say is that the legislature controls taxpayer money, and it decides where to invest it and where to spend it.”

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Netanyahu lauds world first in being able to detect tunnels by RAPHAEL AHREN - THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

Netanyahu lauds world first in being able to detect tunnels

After Gaza passage uncovered, prime minister says Israel has invested a ‘fortune’ in defeating Palestinian efforts to dig under border

BY RAPHAEL AHREN April 18, 2016 THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

A tunnel reaching from Gaza into Israel, seen in a picture released by the IDF on April 18, 2016. (IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday hailed the IDF for what he called a breakthrough in tunnel detection, hours after the army announced it had located a tunnel meant for attacking Israel reaching from the southern part of the Strip into Israeli territory.

Netanyahu said Israel’s tunnel-finding system was the only one of its kind in the world, though he gave no details on the technology that led to Israeli troops uncovering the passage.

“In recent days, the State of Israel has achieved a world breakthrough in its efforts to locate tunnels,” he said. “That doesn’t exist anywhere else. We checked the entire world.”

Earlier in the day, Israeli officials revealed the army had found a concrete-lined tunnel stretching hundreds of meters from Gaza into Israel, reminiscent of dozens of tunnels destroyed by the army during a 50-day war with Hamas-led fighters in 2014 launched in part to thwart the underground passages.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads the weekly cabinet meeting at the Prime Ministers Office in Jerusalem, April 3, 2016. (Ohad Zwigenberg/POOL)

Speaking to reporters in his Jerusalem office, Netanyahu warned Hamas against trying to harm Israeli citizens and vowed that Jerusalem will continue to invest heavily in mechanisms to detect tunnels dug from Gaza into Israel.

“The government is investing a fortune in thwarting the threat of tunnels. This is an ongoing effort; it does not end overnight; we are investing in it and will continue to invest steadily and firmly,” he said.

“Israel will respond forcefully to any attempt by Hamas to attack its soldiers and attack its citizens,” Netanyahu declared. “I’m sure that Hamas understands this very well.”

This February 10, 2016, file photo shows IDF soldiers keeping watch as a machine drills holes in the ground on the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip as they search for tunnels used by Palestinian terrorists planning to attack Israel. (AFP PHOTO/MENAHEM KAHANA)

The tunnel was detected about a week and a half ago and has since been “neutralized,” an army spokesperson said Monday, but would not elaborate on whether it was destroyed or merely sealed off.

Its exact location is still being under wraps by the military censor, though it does not appear that the tunnel led directly into Holit or Sufa, the Israeli communities closest to the southern Gaza Strip.

Israeli residents near Gaza had complained of hearing digging under their homes in recent months, setting off searches for the tunnels, and Netanyahu and other officials said Israel was working on a secret “solution” to the issue.

Netanyahu said Monday the IDF was acting “around the clock” to ensure their security and their ability to live a life without rocket threats, another offensive weapon employed by Hamas and other Gazan terror groups in recent years.

‘IDF not pulling out of Area A’

Netanyahu drew a direct line between the tunnels in Gaza and the quashing of the possibility that Israel would withdraw its army from the West Bank.

“Why are there no tunnels in Judea and Samaria [biblical names for the West Bank], in Qalqilya and Tulkarem? It’s not because it’s difficult to dig tunnels there, but because we’re there,” he said, referring to the fact that IDF troops occasionally conduct raids even in West Bank areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. “And that is one of our considerations when we say that in every agreement, or even without an agreement,” that Israeli troops would have to reserve full freedom of action in the West Bank.

The IDF has no interest in entering Palestinian areas with large forces, “but our principle is and will always remain to maintain the right to act according to necessity,” Netanyahu said. “Under no circumstances will we give up on our right to enter any place west of the Jordan River,” if the operational reality requires such incursions, he added.

Israel is reportedly in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority over decreasing its troop activity in Area A of the West Bank, which is under Palestinian civilian and security control under the Oslo Accords.

Security cooperation with the PA is ongoing, and in the West Bank Jerusalem in principle favors the notion of the “PA doing more and us doing less,” Netanyahu said, without elaborating.

During the briefing, the prime minister also discussed several other issues on his agenda, such as the ongoing negotiations with the United States over a memorandum of understand regulating military assistance to Israel. Netanyahu said he sincerely hoped to conclude the talks with the current administration but noted that some significant gaps were still open. “I hope we can conclude the negotiations soon,” he said, refusing to provide further details.

Sgt. Elor Azaria, the Israeli soldier who shot dead a disarmed Palestinian terrorist in Hebron last month, arrives for a court hearing at Jaffa Military Court on April 18, 2016. (Flash90)

Regarding the IDF soldier who killed a wounded and disarmed Palestinian assailant in Hebron, who was named Monday as Elor Azaria, the prime minister said that he proposed waiting for the end of his military trial before further commenting on the matter. “The ongoing talk over this is not helpful,” he said.

Netanyahu also refused to say anything about the late right-wing minister Rehavam Ze’evi, saying that he would issue a statement on the accusations leveled against him in a recent television program. On Thursday, the investigative show “Uvda” alleged he was a rapist and had contacts with the underworld.

Though hailing what he called Israel’s expanding diplomatic ties with the international community, the prime minister acknowledged that Jerusalem was still on the receiving end of much harsh criticism, especially by international organs such as the United Nations. “It will take time for that to change, until the foreign ministries of these countries [with which Israel has intensified diplomatic contacts, such as Russia, India and so on] change their voting patterns at international organizations. I ordered our Foreign Ministry to demand this change. And it will come.”

Judah Ari Gross contributed to this report.

Congressional testimony highlights ties between Hamas-linked charities, BDS - THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

Congressional testimony highlights ties between Hamas-linked charities, BDS

Terror finance expert describes ‘network’ of ex-fundraisers in organizations linked to group and key pro-boycott organization

BY REBECCA SHIMONI STOIL April 20, 2016, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

WASHINGTON — The US should boost transparency of nonprofit organizations in order to shed light on ties between a key pro-boycott organization and defunct charities that were implicated in funding Hamas, analyst Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told members of Congress during testimony Tuesday afternoon when two subcommittees of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs met to discuss current threats to Israel.

During testimony, experts including Schanzer highlighted regional nonstate actors such as Iran and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) as key threats to Israel.

The chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, Ted Poe, described the BDS movement as “a threat which seeks [Israel’s] ultimate destruction.”

Schanzer, a former terror finance analyst for the US Treasury, presented open-source research conducted by his group, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies which highlighted a network linking Hamas supporters with the leadership of the BDS movement.

The research tracked employees of three now-defunct organizations – the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, Kind Hearts Foundation for Humanitarian Development and the Islamic Association for Palestine — all of which were implicated by the federal government for terrorism finance, specifically of Hamas. A federal court found that the Holy Land Foundation had sent some $12 million to Hamas over the course of a decade

The research yielded what Schanzer described as “a troubling outcome” – with seven key employees of these organizations now associated with the Illinois-based organization American Muslims for Palestine.

Schanzer told members of Congress that the latter is “arguably the leading BDS organization in the US, a key sponsor of the anti-Israel campus network known as Students for Justice in Palestine.” The organization, he said, provides money, speakers, training and even “apartheid walls” to SJP activists on campus, for the annual Israel Apartheid Week events.

“The overlap between AMP, Holy Land, Kind Hearts and the Islamic Association for Palestine is striking,” said Schanzer, but noted that “our open source research did not indicate that AMP or any of these individuals are currently involved in any illegal activity.”

“The BDS campaign may pose a threat to Israel, but the network I describe here is decidedly an American problem,” he warned. Americans for Justice in Palestine raises money as a transparent 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit, which then provides funds for AMP which has the usually temporary designation of a corporate non-profit – a status that is usually transitional en route to a tax-exempt 501c3 organization.

“There appear to be flaws in the federal and state oversight of non-profits charities,” Schanzer complained. Although advocating for increased transparency, Schanzer said that he had a sense from talking to former colleagues that the Treasury was less invested in uncovering charities serving to fund terror networks than in the past.

“BDS advocates are free to say what they want, true or false, but tax advantaged organizations are obliged to be transparent,” Schanzer told the panel. “Americans have a right to know who is leading the BDS campaign and so do the students who may not be aware of AMP’s leaders or their goals.”

The BDS movement was not the only threat cited by the witnesses, who included former peace negotiator and Washington Institute for Near East Policy Distinguished Fellow David Makovsky, American Enterprise Institute Scholar Michael Rubin and the Brooking Institution’s Tamara Coffman Wittes.

Makovsky warned that the current stagnation of peace initiatives could feed further into BDS advances in the US.

The former negotiator warned “that the movement could metastasize beyond college campuses” if there is no peace solution on the ground – after noting that “under the current leadership” he did not envision peace efforts “succeeding in the near future.”

Makovsky said that he was “rather skeptical regarding efforts to put forward parameters at the UNSC,” warning that they “would be interpreted by both sides as an imposed solution and could serve as a baseline for defiance rather than bringing the parties closer.”

“We need to find a way to maintain the viability of a two-state outcome even if we can’t implement a two-state solution today,” he offered.

Makovsky suggested that it was not just the US but also European countries that could provide critical leverage in encouraging the Palestinians to jettison their anti-normalization policy and stop providing funds to families of jailed terrorists.

“The US needs to sensitize our European partners to these issues – given the closeness between Europeans and Palestinians, it would carry weight if the Europeans would practice the same tough love they have urged the United States to administer when it comes to Israel but they are reluctant to do when it comes to our Palestinian friends,” he said.