Historic Aircraft Used to Rescue Iraqi Jews to be Brought to Israel

(JNS.org) After being saved from the scrap heap in Argentina, a Curtiss C-46 Commando transport aircraft used in 1947’s clandestine Operation Michaelberg will soon return to Israel. The mission rescued 100 Iraqi Jews and brought them to then-Mandate Palestine. During the mid-1940s, concerns grew for the fate of the Jews of Iraq due to increasing persecution by their Arab neighbors. The British denied the Jewish community’s petition to allow Iraqi Jews to enter Israel legally, leading to the decision to mount a clandestine rescue operation designed by the Aliyah Bet. The mission was carried out in August and September 1947. The plane is scheduled to arrive at the Atlit Detention Camp Museum in the near future.

HaMevaser Erases Women Leaders from French Unity March

Radio Free Europe reported Tuesday that the Israeli haredi newspaper, HaMevaser, founded by a scion of the Agudath Israel Porush family, has erased world leaders from the historic photograph of French Unity March held in response to the massacres in Paris. It stirred up a chillul Hashem as commentators in real time and virtual media roundly criticized such censorship. They were first called out by the Israeli news site Walla. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini, and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo were “photoshopped” out of the now ubiquitous photo. When Di Tzeitung, a Yiddish newspaper in New York, “photoshopped” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other women out of the historic photograph taken in the White House Situation Room on the day Bin Laden was hit, they later apologized.

Hamas’s grip on Gaza falters as workers riot over stalled wages

(JNS.org) Hundreds of Hamas employees who haven’t been paid in more than six months staged a sit-in demonstration outside the offices of the Palestinian government in Gaza City on Tuesday, vowing to stay they get paid. The sit-in followed a protest rally, which quickly turned into a riot during which dozens of Hamas functionaries broke into the Palestinian government’s offices, causing significant property damage. Palestinian media reported that several government vehicles parked nearby were torched. Last year, thousands of Hamas employees in Gaza were dismissed, as the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority government informed Hamas it would not pay their wages. The Hamas’coffers are nearly empty, and the financial crisis has seen it default on the severance pay owed to dismissed employees and the wages of thousands of workers.

Israel closes three Muslim charities suspected of funding terrorism

(JNS.org) Israeli authorities have closed three Muslim charities suspected of funding terrorist organizations, police said. According to the statement, the charities—Muslim Women for Al-Aqsa, The Al Aqsa Champions, and the Al-Fajr Foundation for Culture and Literature—are suspected of financing “organizations which identify with Hamas” and of “paying activists who go every day to the Temple Mount and when groups of visitors arrive they use verbal and even physical violence against them, in a manner that threatens the personal safety of the visitors and strikes at religious freedom.”