From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Italy’s Parliament approves bill criminalizing Holocaust denial
(JTA) — Italy’s Parliament approved a bill making spreading Holocaust denial illegal.
The bill, which adds to an existing anti-racism bill, was approved Wednesday evening by the lower assembly of the Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, by a vote of 237-5, with 102 abstentions.
The new law would go after those who deny genocide or crimes against humanity, using the definition by the International Court of Justice, the German news agency DPA reported. Those convicted could face prison terms of two to six years.
The measure punishes ideas “based entirely or partly” on negationist ideology only when “there is a real danger of their dissemination,” according to DPA.
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Canada’s high court refuses to hear neo-Nazi case
Neo-Nazis marching to commemorate the Allied bombing of the city of Magdeburg during World War II in Magdeburg, Germany, January 18, 2014. (Jens Schlueter/Getty Images)
OTTAWA, Canada (JTA) — Canada’s Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal in the case of a man whose will was overturned because he bequeathed his estate to a U.S. neo-Nazi group.
On Thursday, the country’s highest court without explanation chose not to review two lower court rulings that blocked the transfer of Robert McCorkill’s estate, estimated at $250,000, to the National Alliance.
The appeal was filed by the Canadian Association for Free Expression.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Canada’s post office halts delivery of Toronto-area anti-Semitic newspaper
TORONTO (JTA) — Canada’s post office says it will no longer deliver a Toronto-area newspaper described as openly anti-Semitic.
Judy Foote, the federal minister responsible for Canada Post, issued an order on June 6 against the future delivery of Your Ward News, a free, low-budget newspaper sent to homes in the east end of Toronto.
The publication has been the subject of complaints for years, the Canadian Jewish News reported. It has railed against “cultural Marxism” and lashed out at Zionists, Jewish communal leaders, feminism and welfare recipients, and has mocked the Holocaust. The newspaper has defended itself as satire protected by free speech.
B’nai Brith Canada said it has received “literally hundreds of phone calls and emails from people who have felt victimized by the content in this publication.”
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Analysis
‘America First’: Trump doubles down on a term that makes many Jews queasy
Charles Lindbergh, wearing a helmet with goggles up, in the cockpit of an airplane at Lambert Field in St Louis, Mo., 1923. (Underwood Archives/Getty Images)
Donald Trump is doubling down on “America First.”
After Trump used the term “America First” in late April to describe his policies, the Anti-Defamation League sent him a letter urging him to drop the historically tainted slogan — speaking for Jews and others who remember it as the name of the isolationist movement championed by a notorious anti-Semite to keep the United States out of World War II.
But in a speech Tuesday night following his victories in the last six state primaries, the presumptive Republican nominee for president made clear he’s not about to take the ADL’s advice and abandon the slogan.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
French official sues Jewish group accused of calling for killing Arabs after Sarona attack
(JTA) — A French official responsible for fighting anti-Semitism vowed legal action against a Jewish group suspected of calling for killing Arabs on Twitter, and against a pro-Palestinian activist who allegedly celebrated the murder of four Jews in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv.
The official Twitter account of the France branch of Betar, a right-wing youth movement, on June 8 featured a transliteration of Hebrew words that mean “death to the Arabs,” preceded by the statement: “In the Arab villages of Gaza and Hebron, the ‘Palestinian’ Nazi-Islamists celebrate the killers of Jews this evening with fireworks.”
Gilles Clavreul, France’s inter-ministerial delegate for the fight against anti-Semitism, said on Twitter: “A call to murder Arabs by Betar France. Unjustifiable. I have referred to the prosecutor’s office.”
Clavreul also said he will pursue legal action against a Twitter user from France who congratulated the terrorists who gunned down four people in Tel Aviv Wednesday, Le Figaro daily reported.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Pope Francis to visit Auschwitz
Pope Francis before meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro in Vatican City, Vatican on May 10, 2015. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Pope Francis will visit Auschwitz during a trip to Poland, the Vatican announced.
The pope is scheduled to visit the Nazi death camp on July 29 as part of a five-day trip. He will deliver an address at the site.
His immediate two predecessors – Benedict and John Paul II – also visited Auschwitz during their tenures.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Liberman pledges response to Tel Aviv terror attack as Palestinian travel permits rescinded
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman drinking coffee at the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv, a day after a deadly attack at the pedestrian mall, June 9, 2016. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Israeli government’s security Cabinet met Thursday to discuss the previous evening’s terror attack at a popular central Tel Aviv site that left four dead.
Earlier Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman visited the Sarona Market, the site of the shootings by two Palestinian assailants, and asserted that Israel would respond.
“I don’t plan on detailing the steps we’ll be taking, but I certainly have no intentions of settling for lip service,” said Liberman, who assumed the post late last month.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NY Times editor leaves Twitter over anti-Semitic tweets
Jonathan Weisman probably wasn’t ready for all of the anti-Semitic tweets that came his way. (Screenshot from YouTube)
(JTA) — A New York Times editor has left Twitter after receiving a large number of anti-Semitic tweets.
Jonathan Weisman, deputy Washington editor of the newspaper, announced in a tweet Wednesday that he “will be moving to Facebook where at least people need to use their real names and can’t hide behind fakery to spread their hate.”
Weisman was sent tweets calling him a “kike” and threatening to put him “in the oven,” and asked Twitter to suspend the users. In response, the company said the examples did not violate its rules and the users would not be suspended, Weisman tweeted. By late Wednesday morning, however, two of the users were suspended.
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From Russia Today
Israel closes border for all Palestinians after Tel Aviv shooting
Published time: 10 Jun, 2016 12:27
Israeli border police officers stand guard as Palestinians wait to cross through the Qalandia checkpoint to make their way to attend the first Friday prayer of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, near the West Bank city of Ramallah June 10, 2016 © Mohamad Torokman / Reuters
The Israeli Army has barred all Palestinians from entering Israel, except for “medical and humanitarian cases.” It comes after strict measures were already taken following a fatal Tel Aviv attack.
An army spokeswoman told AFP that the border closure will last until midnight Sunday.
The UN has stated that the Israel’s step may amount to collective punishment, which is prohibited under international law, and will “only increase the sense of injustice and frustration felt by Palestinians,” spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a news briefing, as quoted by Reuters.
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From The Times of Israel
Jewish group to mark ’64 Mississippi murders with call against Trump
Bend the Arc to remember Ku Klaz Klan homicides of civil rights worker by targeting presumptive Republican nominee
WASHINGTON — A liberal Jewish political action committee is to mark the anniversary of the murders of three civil rights workers with a call to action against Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Vigils will be held in four cities on June 21, the 52nd anniversary of the 1964 murders in Mississippi of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, Bend the Arc-Jewish Action announced Monday. The cities are New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, Texas.
Additionally, those wishing to participate may order yahrzeit, or Jewish memorial candles, and signs saying “Jews Against Trump” and “#WeveSeenThisBefore” from the PAC’s website, and will be encouraged to post selfies online and organize vigils in their hometowns.
“We are doing this both as commemoration and in memory of the values that they held and the legacy that they had fighting for democracy and fighting for a country that was free of political danger,” Stosh Cotler, the CEO of the PAC’s affiliated advocacy nonprofit, Bend the Arc, told JTA.
The FBI poster circulated before the bodies of murdered civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner were found in 1964. (Wikimedia Commons)
From The Times of Israel
Israeli poll shows little support for Trump in Arab world
IDC survey finds just 3.8% of Egyptians, 6% of Saudis favor presumed GOP nominee, who wants ban on Muslims entering US
AP — An opinion poll of attitudes inside Egypt and Saudi Arabia conducted by Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center found virtually no support for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the two Arab countries.
The survey could signal trouble for Trump if he wins the November election and sets out to devise a Mideast policy. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are two of America’s most powerful and important allies in the Arab world.
When asked who their preferred candidate was, just 3.8 percent of Egyptian respondents chose Trump. In Saudi Arabia, only 6% favored Trump.
The presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, did better, though support was far from overwhelming. In Egypt, 35.7% of respondents chose Clinton, while in Saudi Arabia that number was 30.2%.
Then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talking with Saudi and Kuwaiti officials in Riyadh in March 2012. (AP/Brendan Smialowski)
From PressTV
Syrians cut off main Daesh road to Turkey
An alliance of Syrian Kurdish and Arab forces has managed to cut off the Daesh terror group’s main supply route to Turkey after encircling the Syrian border town of Manbij.
The Syrian Democrati Forces (SDF), a coalition of Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, and Turkmen fighters, backed by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), surrounded Manbij on Friday, said the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The SDF also blocked the road south of the town, which heads to Raqqah. The strategic city of Manbij, located in Syria’s Aleppo Province, is a key point along Daesh’s main supply line from the Turkish frontier to Raqqah.
Raqqa, on the northern bank of the Euphrates River, about 160 kilometers east of Aleppo, was overrun by Takfiri terrorists in March 2013, and in 2014 was proclaimed the center for most of the terrorists’ administrative and control tasks.
Syrian forces are now engaged in a military offensive to liberate the strategic town.
Daesh, however, still controls territory along the Turkish border with secondary roads to the frontier, but these are more dangerous and difficult to access, according to Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
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From The Independent
Tony Blair responds to war criminal claims with astonishing attack on Jeremy Corbyn
Mr Blair accuses the Labour leader of only being interested in the politics of protest
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Watch
Obama endorses Hillary Clinton for president
Clinton’s campaign posted Obama’s 3-minute endorsement video on her Twitter feed just after Obama and Sanders met Thursday afternoon at the White House.
“I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office,” Obama said of Clinton, who ran against him in 2008 and served as his first secretary of state. “She’s got the courage, the compassion and the heart to get the job done.”
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Bernie Sanders meets with Obama, pledges to help defeat Trump
Sen. Bernie Sanders walking with President Barack Obama through the Colonnade as he arrives at the White House for an Oval Office meeting, June 9, 2016. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Bernie Sanders said after meeting Thursday with President Barack Obama that he looked forward to working with Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump, but stopped short of quitting the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“Donald Trump would clearly to my mind and a majority of Americans would be a disaster,” Sanders said, speaking outside the White House following an hourlong meeting with Obama. “It is unbelievable to me that the Republican Party would have a candidate for president who makes bigotry or discrimination a cornerstone of his campaign.”
Clinton claimed the Democratic nomination on Tuesday after winning California and other state primaries, but Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont and the first Jewish candidate to win major nominating contests, has yet to concede. Obama has also recognized Clinton as the nominee, and met with Sanders at the candidate’s request.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Orthodox Jewish woman suing former employer for Passover sanctions
(JTA) — An Orthodox Jewish woman has gone to a federal appeals court in her lawsuit against a former employer with claims she was punished for taking off time for the Passover holiday.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the American Jewish Committee each filed a friend of the court brief on Tuesday with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, on behalf of Susan Abeles, who retired involuntarily in 2013 after working for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority for 26 years. She was accused of being absent without leave on the last two days of Passover that year and suspended for five days without pay.
A federal district court in Virginia ruled against Abeles on April 1 on her lawsuit filed in May 2015.
In the suit, Abeles says she requested and received time off each year to observe Passover in accordance with her Orthodox Jewish beliefs and that in 2013, like every other year, she followed proper procedure, including giving ample notice and several reminders.
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From Russia Today
Canada’s top court rules all non-penetrative sex acts involving animals are legal
Published time: 9 Jun, 2016 22:54
A view shows the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa. © Chris Wattie / Reuters
Canada’s Supreme Court has acquitted a British Columbia man of bestiality charges as under the country’s laws a sexual act with an animal can be found unlawful only in the case of it involving penetration.
The man, known only by initials DLW convicted of 13 counts of sexually assaulting his two stepdaughters over a 10-year period has successfully challenged a separate count of bestiality which, as it turns out, requires penetration for it to have been illegal.
The decision that was supported by all but one of the justices acquitted the man of forcing the family dog to take part in the sexual abuse of his stepdaughters, Reuters reported.
“Although bestiality was often subsumed in terms such as sodomy or buggery, penetration was the essence – ‘the defining act’ – of the offence,” the court said, according to the Independent.
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From The Times of Israel
Trump son-in-law Kushner emerges as quiet force in campaign
35-year-old said to be deeply involved in Republican presidential candidate’s election drive — including vetting running mates
NEW YORK (AP) — A new power player has emerged among the feuding factions behind Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, one that through the bonds of marriage enjoys a direct line to the Republican billionaire.
Despite limited political experience and some family baggage, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is playing an active role in virtually every aspect of the New York real estate magnate’s presidential bid. And empowered through his marriage to Trump’s trusted daughter Ivanka Trump, the 35-year-old Kushner operates with an extraordinary level of autonomy within an organization now struggling to shift its focus toward the general election.
Kushner’s growing influence in recent weeks, as described by several people with direct knowledge of his role, has included the selection and vetting of potential running mates, planning for his father-in-law’s transition to the White House, the campaign’s nascent push to incorporate voter data into its strategy, fundraising, and the development of major policies. He also played a hand in writing Trump’s closely watched speech, delivered with the aid of a teleprompter, on Tuesday night meant to reassure jittery Republicans after the candidate’s attacks on a federal judge. Those confidants were not authorized to speak publicly.
The young businessman’s rise adds a new complication to an intense internal power struggle.
Kushner’s background has little to do with politics or public policy, as noted by internal campaign critics who worry he has too much power. Others described Kushner, while inexperienced, as a mild-mannered and valuable presence with helpful connections in the media world and across the Jewish community.
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From The Times of Israel
Winning California, Clinton caps historic race to become first woman nominee
Despite all but losing his chance to vie against Trump, Sanders pledges to ‘continue the fight’ all the way to the convention
NEW YORK (AP) — Powered by a solid triumph in California, Hillary Clinton declared victory in her yearlong battle for the heart of the Democratic party, seizing her place in history and setting out on the difficult task of fusing a fractured party to confront Donald Trump.
Clinton cruised to easy victories in four of the six state contests on Tuesday. With each win she further solidified Sen. Bernie Sanders’ defeat and dashed his already slim chances of using the last night of state contests to refuel his flagging bid.
The much-needed winning streak allowed Clinton to celebrate her long-sought “milestone” — the first woman poised to lead a major political party’s presidential ticket. Standing before a flag-waving crowd in Brooklyn, the former secretary of state soaked up the cheers and beamed.
“Barriers can come down. Justice and equality can win,” she said. “This campaign is about making sure there are no ceilings, no limits on any of us. This is our moment to come together.”
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets supporters as she arrives to speak during a presidential primary election rally, Tuesday, June 7, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
