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WORLD NEWS BRIEFS

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By JTA News Service

World News Briefs from our July 22,2005 issue

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AMIA bombing marked

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) - Hundreds of people gathered Monday morning in front of the main Jewish institution in Buenos Aires to mark the 11th anniversary of the 1994 terrorist attack on the center. At 9:53 a.m., the moment of the bombing, a siren was sounded at the AMIA Jewish community center. The names of the 85 people killed in the attack were read aloud and 85 candles were lit. An additional candle then was lit by the British ambassador to Argentina, in memory of the victims of this month’s London terror attacks. Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and his wife, Senator Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, attended, as did government ministers. Kirchner recently said that the state must take responsibility for the failure to solve the case, adding that previous Argentine governments had covered up evidence. But AMIA’s new president, Luis Grynwald, told Kirchner at the memorial, "It’s not enough that the Argentine state says it’s guilty of not solving the case." Grynwald said he couldn’t face the victims’ relatives, or even his own sons, as long as he couldn’t offer an explanation of what exactly happened on that fateful 1994 day. Representing the victims’ relatives, Sergio Burstein demanded that Kirchner show progress toward solving the case.

United Nations defends itself

NEW YORK (JTA) - A United Nations spokesman defended a pro-Palestinian meeting that drew the ire of Jewish groups. Both B’nai B’rith and the Anti-Defamation League objected to the recent Paris-based International Conference of Civil Society, sponsored by the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, said the committee is biased against Israel and that Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has pledged to lessen antagonism to Israel at the world body, should not have sent representatives. Edward Mortimer, Annan’s communications director, wrote to Foxman on Friday that Annan had sent a message of reconciliation. Though the views expressed at such meetings do not reflect the official stance of the United Nations, Mortimer said, Israel and its supporters should have more representation there to combat anti-Israel bias. After the conference called for boycotts and sanctions against Israel, the ADL and B’nai B’rith called on Annan to abolish the committee. Annan’s office has yet to respond.

Skinhead gathering disrupted

PRAGUE (JTA) - Czech police on Sunday broke up a meeting of some 200 skinheads who were gathering to attend a concert. Members of a Ukrainian band, who were scheduled to perform at the concert and who were known to sing songs with racist and anti-Semitic slogans, were detained by the police but released after an interrogation.

Argentine bank goes kosher

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) - A municipally owned bank in Buenos Aires has opened a credit line service for small- and mid-sized food companies to finance kosher certification for their products. Banco Ciudad’s move is part of a push among food-export firms to obtain kosher certification to broaden their market appeal. Big Argentine wine and meat exporters already have started using kosher certification in the past few years, and the Banco Ciudad proposal intends to open up the same possibilities for small- and mid-sized firms. After the economic debacle of 2001, Argentina has rebounded with three straight years of 8 percent to 9 percent economic growth, fueled mainly by food exports.

‘Hitler hotel’ officially opens

BERLIN (JTA) - A luxury hotel near the site of Hitler’s "Eagle’s Nest" getaway had its grand opening. In ceremonies Friday at the new Intercontinental Resort Berchtesgaden, Bavarian Finance Minister Kurt Faltlhauser noted that it was "a place burdened by history." But he added that the area "traditionally has always been a place of stunning natural splendor and health and recreation. It is in that tradition that this new hotel opens." The choice of the site had drawn criticism from Jewish groups. In response, the state of Bavaria opened a museum there in 1999 dealing with the location’s Nazi past. In addition, it was determined that the hotel would cater to high-income guests, in hopes of making it inhospitable for neo-Nazis. The German government destroyed the remaining original buildings in 1952 to discourage pro-Hitler pilgrimages to the site. Berchtesgaden later was used by the U.S. military as a resort. The hotel has been open to guests since March.

French deportations marked

PARIS (JTA) - France’s prime minister was overcome by emotion Sunday as he presided over a ceremony commemorating the World War II-era deportation of Jews from Paris. In the largest roundup, on July 16 and 17, 1942, 12,884 Jewish men and women, including more than 4,000 children, were rounded up by French police and held in the Velodrome d’Hiver, an old bicycle stadium, before being sent on to containment camps in Drancy, Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers, with Auschwitz their final destination. For the past 10 years, an annual ceremony has been held in Paris on the site where the stadium once stood. Sunday’s ceremony paid homage not only to the Jewish victims but to the citizens who saved two-thirds of French Jewry. Prime Minister Dominique De Villepin spoke somberly of France’s nefarious role in the deportations, when, he said, "France overrode her most essential values to make herself the executioner’s accomplice.’’ Reading from a letter scrawled on a train ticket and thrown from the window of one of the convoys by an 11-year-old boy, De Villepin was overcome by emotion and paused for a moment to regain his composure, before continuing to read in a trembling voice.

London bomber visited Israel

JERUSALEM (JTA) - The suspected ringleader of the July 7 London suicide bombers visited Israel for a day in 2003. Citing an Israeli official, Reuters reported Monday that Mohammad Sidique Khan arrived in Israel on Feb. 19, 2003, and left the next day. The revelation gave weight to speculation that Khan may have helped to plan an April 30, 2003, suicide bombing by two fellow British Muslims at a Tel Aviv beachfront bar, which killed three Israelis. British police believe Khan blew himself up aboard an underground train in London on July 7, one in a series of deadly attacks that killed 55 people and injured 700.


Posted by JTA News Service on 07/22 at 02:00 AM • Hits: 769



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