From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Nisman had planned to seek Argentina president’s arrest over AMIA bombing
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — Argentine special prosecutor Alberto Nisman considered asking for the arrest of the country’s president, according to a draft warrant found at his apartment.
In the legal complaint found by police in a trash can at Nisman’s Buenos Aires apartment following his unexplained death two weeks ago, Nisman called for the arrest of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, who is Jewish.
Had the warrants been issued, “it would have provoked a crisis without precedents in Argentina,” a political analyst, Sergio Berensztein, said in The New York Times.
Nisman seems to have ultimately decided to denounce Kirchner and her government but not seek her immediate arrest.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Debbie Wasserman Schultz takes back critique of intermarriage
NEW YORK (JTA) — U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz rescinded comments she made about the problems that intermarriage poses for the Jewish community.
“I do not oppose intermarriage; in fact, members of my family, including my husband, are a product of it,” Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the head of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement issued Tuesday, according to NBC News.
Last month, she told a South Florida Jewish federation group that intermarriage is a “problem,” the Daily Caller reported.
“We have the problem of assimilation. We have the problem of intermarriage,” Wasserman Schultz said. “We have the problem that too many generations of Jews don’t realize the importance of our institutions strengthening our community — particularly with the rise of anti-Semitism and global intolerance.”
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From PressTV
Hamas accuses Egypt of firing at Gaza outposts
The Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, has accused Egypt’s army soldiers of opening fire at the Palestinian security outposts in the besieged Gaza Strip.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Gaza’s Interior Ministry said the Egyptian military fired at Gazan security outposts in an area, which borders Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula, according to the Gazan ministry.
The ministry condemned “the Egyptian army for firing this morning directly at two positions along the southern Gaza border,” adding, “It was without justification, and there had been no incursion from the Palestinian side.”
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From PressTV
Israel to keep freeze on Palestinian tax revenue in place
Israel has reportedly decided to continue its freeze on the Palestinian Authority’s tax revenues as a punitive measure over its attempts to join the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave orders to withhold some USD100 million the PA was supposed to receive in tax revenues for January, the Israeli daily, Hayom reported.
Tel Aviv has prevented the transfer of Palestinian tax incomes since last December in response to the PA’s application to join the ICC. The halt involves 127 million dollars worth of value-added tax (VAT) and customs duties on Palestinian goods that pass through Israel.
The paper added that Tel Aviv would continue the sanctions until the “completion” of Israel’s punitive procedures against the Palestinians’ ICC push.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed the request to join the ICC after the United Nations Security Council rejected a Palestinian proposal for statehood on December 30, 2014. The Palestinians have requested to join the Hague-based court in order to bring war crime charges against Israel.
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From PressTV
Israelis, Palestinians clash during Israeli president visit to al-Khalil
Scuffles have broken out between Israeli forces and Palestinians protesting Israeli President Reuven Rivlin’s visit to the southern city al-Khalil (Hebron) in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians and foreign activists held a rally on Monday at a checkpoint dividing the city’s sectors.
Rivlin was in al-Khalil to inaugurate a museum at an illegal Israeli settlement.
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From Ynet News
Revenge sought in killing of Jordanian pilot
King Abdullah calls killing of pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh by Islamic State act of ‘cowardly terror,’ as Jordan announces it will execute Iraqi prisoner ‘within hours.’
The Jordanian authorities will execute “within hours” an Iraqi woman the government had sought to exchange for slain pilot al-Kasaesbeh a Jordanian security source said on Tuesday. The announcement came shortly after the images of the pilot’s brutal killing spread on the internet.
Jordan’s King Abdullah said on Tuesday the killing of pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh by Islamic State militants was an act of cowardly terror by a group that had nothing to do with Islam.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Study: Seattle’s Jewish population soared 70 percent since 2001
(JTA) — A study found that Seattle’s Jewish population has increased by 70 percent since 2001.
The newly released Greater Seattle Jewish Community Study, which was conducted by a research team from Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Jewish Studies, tallied the region’s Jewish population at 63,400. It also found that 89 percent of Jews in the area are college graduates.
“Given how Seattle has developed economically, it makes sense,” Leonard Saxe, one of the study’s authors and a Brandeis professor, told The Seattle Times.
Saxe said that the region’s advances in the technology, science and engineering fields has fueled the rapid growth. The study found that more than half of Seattle’s Jews have an advanced degree.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Soldiers protecting French Jewish center knifed
(JTA) — Three French soldiers protecting a Jewish community center in the southern French city of Nice were attacked by a knife-wielding man.
One soldier was stabbed in his arm and another was cut on his face in the Tuesday afternoon attack, the French news agency AFP reported. The soldiers were on anti-terror patrol outside the JCC, which is located in the center of the city.
Police detained the attacker, but two alleged accomplices fled after the stabbing, according to France 24.
Jewish institutions, mosques and heavily trafficked areas throughout France have been under military protection by more than 10,000 soldiers since last month’s attacks by Islamic extremists, including on a kosher supermarket in Paris, left 17 dead.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Ex-N.Y. Jewish day school teacher busted on child porn charges
NEW YORK (JTA) — A rabbi and former Judaic studies teacher in suburban New York was arrested and charged with receiving and possessing child pornography.
Lyle Kamlet, 62, is alleged to have purchased illegal DVDs over the Internet and had them mailed to the Westchester Day School, a coed modern Orthodox school in Mamaroneck, where he worked for some three decades.
Kamlet resigned his post at the Westchester County school, which runs from preschool to middle school, in February 2012.
On Monday, Head of School Joshua Lookstein, together with the board’s president and chairman, emailed parents to inform them of Kamlet’s arrest.
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From PressTV
Tel Aviv urges end to UN probe into 2014 Gaza war
Israel has called for the termination of a UN inquiry into its summer 2014 war on Gaza, in the wake of the resignation of the investigation committee’s head.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the shelving of the investigation on Tuesday, after William Schabas, the head of the UN inquiry committee, resigned a day before.
“After the resignation of the committee chairman who was biased against Israel, the report that was written at the behest of the UN Human Rights Council — an anti-Israel body, the decisions of which prove it has nothing to do with human rights — needs to be shelved,” Netanyahu said.
In August 2014, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Schabas, a Canadian academic, to lead a group examining war crimes committed by Israel during its military aggression against Gaza.
Schabas’ appointment had angered Israel from the beginning as he has been a strong critic of the Tel Aviv regime.
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