Hadassah Hospital Facing Financial Collapse
The Forward reports that Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem is on the brink of financial collapse. The hospital is facing a $300 million deficit, including $80 million accrued in the last year, according to the newspaper. Efforts by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, to save the medical center have resulted in a break with the hospital leadership in Israel. The organization has not been able to increase its funding for daily operations of the hospital, and cash-flow problems caused hospital employees to receive only a partial salary in November. Last year, during the Hadassah organization’s 100th anniversary celebrations, the group dedicated a state-of-the-art hospital tower fully funded by the organization through a national campaign. The tower is not yet fully operational, however, requiring another $45 million to reach that level. American representatives of the organization comprise 51 percent of the hospital board and can control its decisions.
Salafis Arming Themselves
Al-Monitor reports that Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are all concerned about the changes underway in the West Bank Salafist movement, which is transforming itself from a welfare movement into an armed terrorist organization that is actively planning attacks. Three Salafist terrorists from the Hebron region were killed Nov. 26 by Israeli counterterrorism forces in the village of Yatta after plotting to launch a major attack in Israel. Overnight, the Salafists of the West Bank became known as a terrorist organization. It has a few thousand supporters, most of them in the Hebron region, who view the establishment of an Islamic caliphate as a supreme value. Animosity between the Salafists and Hamas is intense, both in the West Bank and in Gaza. The Salafists dream of establishing an Islamic caliphate without any borders, headed by an emir who inherits the role of the Prophet Muhammad and restores the Golden Age of Islam. The current emir of the Salafists is Ata Abu Rashta, a native of Hebron, whose current place of residence is kept secret.
Whodunit Surrounds Murder of Hezbollah Honcho
(TIP)—The New York Times outlined the range of motives for, and the potential cascade effects of, the overnight assassination of Haj Hassan Hilu Laqis, a top Hezbollah figure who the outlet noted was “variously described as running the group’s sophisticated telecommunications network and working to procure strategic weapons.” The Times emphasized both that Laqis’s death was a “significant loss” for the Iran-backed terror group, and that “any of the group’s primary enemies – Israel, the Syrian insurgents the group is battling, or their backers, such as Saudi Arabia or Lebanese Sunni militants – could have had reason to want him dead.” For their part Hezbollah leaders blamed Israel, threatening “all the consequences for this heinous crime.” The Christian Science Monitor reported Hezbollah has been openly preparing for war with the Jewish state, setting up camps across southern Lebanon “which include firing ranges, assault courses and urban warfare sites.” The group was described as “training thousands of new recruits to the organization.” Hezbollah has seen its decades-old brand as an anti-Israel ‘resistance’ organization shattered by its participation in the Syrian conflict, and analysts are increasingly concerned that it might seek to provoke a conflict with Jerusalem in order to halt a precipitous slide in its domestic and regional stature.
Begin Prize Awarded to NGO Monitor
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org)—The Menachem Begin Heritage Center awarded NGO Monitor the Begin Prize for “the organization’s efforts exposing the political agenda and ideological bias of humanitarian organizations that use the discourse of human rights to discredit Israel and to undermine its position among the nations of the world.” The award was also given to Abraham Foxman for his work as Anti-Defamation League director and to iconic Israeli actor Chaim Topol for founding and running the Jordan River Village camp for kids suffering from serious illnesses
French Say Arafat Was Not Poisoned
(JNS.org)—French scientists have said that former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat did not die from radioactive polonium poisoning, as was suggested by a recent Swiss report. While the official cause of Arafat’s 2004 death was a stroke, Swiss forensic experts claimed last month that samples they had tested from Arafat’s body indicated polonium poisoning, though not definitively. Arafat’s widow, Suha Arafat, said in a statement from Paris, “You can imagine how much I am shaken by the contradictions between the findings of the best experts in Europe in this domain,” according to Reuters.
Women Mashgichot are OK
(JNS.org)—Israel’s Chief Rabbinate will allow women to become Kashrut supervisors for the first time in the wake of a petition filed by the Emuhah women’s rights group to the High Court of Justice. Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau has decided to remove stipulations from the guidelines preventing women from applying for the job. Emunah, which has advocated for this change for two years, created a course to train women to work as Kashrut supervisors. “This is without doubt a historic breakthrough and achievement,” Emunah Chairwoman Liora Minke said following the announcement.
New Study on Israeli-Americans
New York—17% of the children of Israeli Jews who have lived in the United States for over a decade have married non-Jews. The number is higher than their parents’ generation, which has an intermarriage rate of 8%, according to a new study released today by the Israeli-American Council (IAC). The overall intermarriage rate of American Jews is at 58%. Among those in both groups who attend synagogue (around half of the Israeli-American community surveyed) about 44% go to Orthodox synagogues. But among others that attend non-Orthodox synagogues, 24% of those who have lived here less than ten years attend Conservative synagogues and 22% attend Reform congregations. For those who have lived in the U.S. over ten years and attend a synagogue, 33% go to Conservative synagogues and 17% attend Reform; 53% of those polled in both groups responded that they do not send any of their children to Jewish day schools or preschools. 29% of those who have been here for less than ten years do so for all their children; as do 32% percent of those who have lived in the U.S. for over a decade.
Bloomberg Will Give Genesis Prize for Israeli-Palestinian Economic Ties
New York—At a Chanukah party at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-Living Memorial to the Holocaust, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced he will use the proceeds from the first Genesis Prize, known as the Jewish Nobel Prize, to “promote commerce between the people in Palestine and the people in Israel,” the Forward reported. He repeated what he said before: He doesn’t know why they gave it to him, but in May, when he gets it, he will give it away. Bloomberg was chosen from among more than 200 nominees worldwide because of his “track record of outstanding public service and his role as one of the world’s greatest philanthropists,” according to the prize committee. The Genesis Prize Foundation was established last year by the Genesis Philanthropy Group, a consortium of philanthropist-businessmen from the former Soviet Union, the Office of the Prime Minister, and the Jewish Agency.
KO the Knockout Game
Reverend Al Sharpton, President of the National Action Network, and Marc H. Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League, have joined forces with hip-hop legend Russell Simmons and Jewish leader Rabbi Marc Schneier, Chairman and President, respectively, of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, in speaking out on knockout game violence and the targeting of Jews. Sharpton, Simmons, and Morial have each recorded messages of solidarity with the Jewish community and are encouraging people to join them through social media by spreading the following message: End the #knockoutgame #sayNO2KOjoin the _FFEUny to end the violence +bigotry. Knockout #gameover and a link to each video.
Peres OK with Same-Sex Marriage
Peres told YNetNews that “Same-sex marriage as a civil right that should not be taken away…Even a person who is a homosexual is a human being, and he has rights. We have no power to take away (their) rights. We cannot take away someone’s rights because they are different. We cannot take away their right to breathe, right to eat or right to start a family. We must allow everyone to live as is natural to them.” The Israeli parliament is in the early stages of taking up a civil partnership bill. Same-sex couples in Israel do not have the right to marry, although recent polls show the majority of citizens support the right.
Israel Wins Prize for Closing Gender Gap
The Women in Parliament Global Forum gave an award for narrowing the gender gap to Israel at the European Parliament in Brussels. Daphne Barak-Erez, 48, of Israeli Supreme Court accepted the award. The ceremony took place in the presence of 500 female lawmakers, government officials and scientists from over 100 countries. “The Israeli legal system is the arena in which the promise of gender equality is materializing,” Barak-Erez said during her address. This was “the result of legislation regarding gender equality in various areas of life as well as through judicial precedents,” she added.
Berlin Zoo Seeks Pre-War Jewish Members
AFP reports that more than 70 years after the Berlin Zoo forced Jewish shareholders out of its ranks, a Berlin historian is combing through thousands of names to identify members made to sell their shares back to the zoo at a loss under the Third Reich, and has begun tracking down their descendants ahead of publishing her findings. “Jews were very important for the zoo,” said historian Monika Schmidt, who estimates up to a quarter of the zoo’s 4,000 shareholders in the 1930s were Jewish. They did not receive dividends, but their families enjoyed free entry and the prestige of supporting an important social institution. In 1938, Jewish shareholders were forced to sell their shares back to the zoo for less than their value, according to Schmidt. The zoo re-sold the stocks to Aryanize the institution.
