From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Donald Trump disavows David Duke’s praise
Donald Trump addressing the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., March 21, 2016. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Donald Trump “totally” disavowed an anti-Jewish tirade on his behalf by white supremacist David Duke and said there was no place for anti-Semitism in society.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the real estate magnate “totally disavows” the former Ku Klux Klan leader’s remarks.
“Anti-Semitism has no place in our society, which needs to be united, not divided,” Trump told the newspaper.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
David Duke: Trump victory wrests control of country from ‘Jewish extremists’
David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, during a debate with Joe Hicks at Cal State University, Sept. 25, 1996. (Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
(JTA) — Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke praised Donald Trump’s Indiana primary victory, which makes him the presumptive GOP candidate, and said it has wrested control of the country from “Jewish extremists.”
Duke made the statements Wednesday on his radio program, a day after the primary win and the same day Trump’s two Republican rivals, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, quit the race. The remarks were first reported by the watchdog group Right Wing Watch.
“(T)hese Jewish supremacists who control our country are the real problem, and the reason why America is not great,” Duke said during the six-minute rant. “Jewish chutzpah knows no bounds.”
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Donald Trump: No message for followers who flooded reporter with anti-Semitic abuse
Donald Trump speaking to supporters and the media at Trump Tower in New York City following his victory in the Indiana Republican primary, May 3, 2016. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Donald Trump said he had no message for supporters who deluged a reporter with anti-Semitic comments after she wrote a critical profile of his wife.
“You’ll have to talk to them about it,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said Wednesday on CNN when told of the abusive phone calls, emails and social media posts received by Julia Ioffe after her story appeared in GQ.
“I don’t have a message to the fans, a woman wrote an article that was inaccurate,” he said.
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From Russia Today
‘Resurgent Russia’: New hardline NATO Europe commander raises hackles in Moscow
Published time: 5 May, 2016 10:30
United Nations Commander Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti. © Jeon Heon-kyun / Reuters
NATO’s new chief military commander in Europe, Curtis Scaparrotti, vowed to continue his predecessor’s policy of opposing Russia. In Moscow he is seen as an even bigger warmonger by some officials.
US Army General Scaparrotti assumed command of the NATO Allied Command Operations from Air Force General Philip M. Breedlove, who is retiring after a 39-year military career.
Speaking at a ceremony at NATO’s HQ in Brussels, Scaparrotti praised his predecessor’s vision and leadership for the alliance.
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From Russia Today
Islam does not belong in Germany, 60% agree with AfD
Published time: 5 May, 2016 06:35
© Jean-Paul Pelissier / Reuters
Political rivals may brand the right-wing German party AfD xenophobic for claiming that there is “no place for Islam in Germany” in its political program, but 60 percent of the country’s citizens agree with the idea, according to a new poll.
Conducted by the newspaper Bild together with research institute INSA, the poll showed a dramatic change in the attitude of the German population to Islam over the past year. In January 2015, 37 percent of people said that Islam had a place in Germany, but the figure in the latest poll dropped by 15 percentage points to just 22 percent.
The suspicion towards Islam is overwhelming among AfD voters, 92 percent of whom supported their party’s stance, but was spread among members of other parties as well. Only supporters of the Green party were more in favor of Islam than against it (42 percent vs 39 percent).
The negative attitude toward the religion does not directly translate into mistrust toward those adhering to it however. Less than 30 percent said they would not like to live alongside Muslim people, while almost half said they were fine with it.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Ex-London mayor Ken Livingstone: Creation of Israel ‘a great catastrophe’
Former mayor of London Ken Livingstone at the 2013 Asia Pacific Cities Summit in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. (Flickr Commons)
(JTA) — Former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who was suspended from the Labour Party for saying Adolf Hitler was a Zionist, called the creation of Israel “a great catastrophe.”
Livingstone said the existence of Israel in the Middle East could lead to nuclear war and advocated an international boycott on Israeli products during an interview Wednesday with the London-based Arabic-language television station Al-Ghad Al-Arabi. The interview, which was dubbed over in Arabic, was translated by the MEMRI watchdog group and posted on its website.
“The creation of the state of Israel was fundamentally wrong because there had been a Palestinian community there for 2,000 years,” Livingstone said in the interview.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Anti-Semitism charges suggest a rout for Labour among London’s Jews
A voter in London’s mayoral election outside a synagogue serving as a polling station in the British capital, May 5, 2015. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
LONDON (JTA) — The British capital’s local elections should have been a walk in the park for Andrew Dismore.
A Labour City Council member representing the heavily Jewish boroughs of Barnet and Camden, he has exceptional credentials with the Jewish community, including the establishment of a national memorial day for the Holocaust in Britain in 1999, when he was a lawmaker in Parliament for Hendon, a London suburb with many Jews.
A staunch supporter of Israel who has visited Auschwitz several times, Dismore, who is not Jewish, has organized rallies against far-right politicians and actions against Islamist extremists as part of his fight against anti-Semitism.
But Thursday’s mayoral and London Assembly elections are overshadowed by a spiraling scandal within Labour over allegations of anti-Semitism, exposing even politicians like Dismore to punishment in the ballot box by voters they have successfully represented for decades.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Israeli troops near Gaza come under mortar fire, 2 rockets fired into Israel
Israeli soldiers patrolling at the Anzac Memorial just outside the central Gaza strip in southern Israel, on April 13, 2016. (Corinna Kern/Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli troops stationed on the border with Gaza came under mortar fire Thursday as two rockets fired from Gaza struck southern Israel.
The afternoon attack, the sixth in three days, came shortly after the Israel Defense Forces said it had discovered a Hamas-dug terror tunnel running from the southern Gaza Strip to inside Israel. The mortars reportedly were fired at the closed military zone set up in southern Israel around the opening to the tunnel.
The IDF said it responded with tank fire toward the area from where the mortars were fired.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Sympathy for Palestinians over Israel up sharply among younger Americans, Pew study finds
An Israeli border policeman speaking to a Palestinian man next to a stabbing scene in Jerusalem’s Old City, October 7, 2015. (Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) – Democrats are more than four times as likely as Republicans to say they sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel, according to a survey published Thursday, and sympathy for the Palestinians among Americans overall is growing.
Sympathy for the Palestinians is up most sharply among the youngest American adults, growing threefold over the last decade, the new survey by the Pew Research Center shows. Some 27 percent of millennials say they are more sympathetic to the Palestinians than Israel; in 2006 the figure was 9 percent. The share of those favoring Israel has held steady at about 43 percent.
On Israel, the survey also shows one of the widest-ever gaps between the two main political parties.
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From PressTV
Gaza under fresh Israeli attacks, woman killed
A Palestinian woman has been killed when the Gaza Strip came under fire by the Israeli military in yet another act of aggression against the blockaded coastal enclave.
According to reports, the Israeli military’s artillery targeted a checkpoint belonging to al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement, in the eastern part of the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
The Health Ministry in Gaza confirmed that a 54-year-old woman, identified as ana Aytah al-Amur, had lost her life in the Israeli tank fire east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
According to health officials, a Palestinian woman, identified as 21-year-old Khazima al-Farra, was also wounded in an Israeli aerial assault in the al-Rayyan area in eastern Rafah.
The regime’s warplanes also carried out fresh strikes on farmlands east of Rafah. The Israeli military says eight alleged position of Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas has been targeted in the airstrikes since Wednesday.
The Israeli military said in a statement that Tel Aviv’s forces and fighters of resistance movement Hamas have engaged in direct clashes in southern Gaza, in the first such fighting since Israel’s 2014 war on the Plaestinian strip.
Meanwhile, Israeli sources said three rockets fired from Gaza have targeted the regime’s armored vehicles stationed east of Gaza’s Rafah border city.
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From PressTV
Israeli warplanes pound Gaza Strip, injure four
At least four people have been injured in Israeli airstrikes against the Gaza Strip in new acts of aggression against the blockaded coastal territory.
Palestinian sources said the first airstrike struck a metal workshop in the southeastern Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City on Thursday morning, injuring a 65-year-old man, Ma’an news agency reported.
Three other children also sustained injuries after being hit by flying debris in the targeted area.
The second aerial attack targeted a site belonging to the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas in the city of Beit Lahia, completely destroying the building and sending a massive plume of smoke into the air above the area.
Israeli military aircraft also struck Mount Sourani, which lies east of Gaza City.
There were no immediate reports about possible casualties from the two latter attacks.
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From Ynet News
Anti-Semitic violence dropped, defamation rose
An annual report found a 46% decrease in violent anti-Semitic incidents, while also emphasizing an increase in institutionalized anti-Semitic acts in Europe, such as offensive visuals and verbal comments.
According to a study published on Wednesday by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the European Jewish Congress, 2015 saw a substantial decrease in outright violence against Jews, registering 410 incidents as opposed to 766 in 2014.
European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor stated that one possible reason for the lower rate of anti-Semitic violence is the heightened security surrounding Jewish institutions following the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January 2015. As evidence, Kantor pointed out that, in Jewish sites that were not heavily secured, such as cemeteries and synagogues, there was no significant decrease in violent acts.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
US envoy Power at Nuremberg event: World must not look on during genocide
Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked addressing a symposium on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day in Krakow, Poland, May 4, 2016. (Courtesy of the symposium)
(JTA) — “The world looked on during the rise of the Nazis, and cannot do so again,” Samantha Power, the United States’ envoy to the United Nations, warned attendees at a symposium in Krakow held on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“We can’t allow ourselves to be bystanders when we see early warning signs of mass atrocities,” she said Wednesday via video feed during the program marking the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Race Laws and the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. “Genocides don’t arise spontaneously – their masterminds telegraph them, systematically laying the foundation for their murderous ends. That is the lesson of the deplorable race laws adopted in Nuremberg in 1935, of Kristallnacht in 1938, and of so many of the other steps the Nazis took that signaled their horrific intent. Yet the world looked on. We must not allow ourselves to do the same.”
The anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws institutionalized Nazi racial theories and, along with other laws, prevented marriage or other relationships between Jews and Germans and stripped Jews of their German citizenship. The Nuremberg Trials brought 13 Nazi war criminals to justice in the years immediately after World War II.
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From PressTV
Turkey opposition dubs PM resignation ‘palace coup’
Leader of Turkey’s main opposition has slammed the ouster of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as a “palace coup” aimed at consolidating the president’s power.
“Davutoglu’s resignation should not be perceived as an internal party issue, all democracy supporters must resist this palace coup,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who heads the Republican People’s Party (CHP), said at a Thursday presser.
Earlier, Davutolgu said at a news conference that he would not seek a new term as prime minister and head of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The announcement came after a gathering of the party’s central executive committee amid months-long rumors of tensions between Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The premier, however, stopped short of criticizing the Turkish president and stressed his loyalty to Erdogan, who is the AKP’s founding father and most influential figure.
He also ruled out the rumors of uneasy relations with the president and pledged to remain an AKP lawmaker.
Davutoglu added that he would step down after an extraordinary meeting of party leaders, which is expected to be held on May 22.
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From Russia Today
Israeli general slammed for implying Israel – Nazi Germany similarities
Published time: 5 May, 2016 13:15
Yair Golan. © Wikipedia
An IDF general has come under fire after his remarks suggested a parallel between Nazi Germany and present day Israel in his Holocaust Remembrance speech. The controversial comments fueled heated discussion among politicians and on social media.
“It’s scary to see horrifying developments that took place in Europe begin to unfold here,” Israel Defense Forces Major General Yair Golan said, addressing an audience at Tel Yitzhak in central Israel.
On Wednesday, Israel along with Jewish communities around the globe marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The general added that “the Holocaust should bring us to ponder our public lives and, furthermore, it must lead anyone who is capable of taking public responsibility to do so.”
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