Yitzhak Shamir Remembered
1915 - 2012
Yitzhak Shamir, Israel's seventh prime minister, former Knesset speaker and foreign minister, who died at the age of 96, was laid to rest in a state funeral on Mt. Herzl on Monday.
FM Liberman: "Yitzhak Shamir was one of the outstanding leaders of the State of Israel, a man who played an important part in the establishment of the state. He served the state his whole life with loyalty and uncompromising devotion."
Read More ...
|
|
Upcoming Events:
Galilee Youth Circus
Free & open to the community:
The Galilee Youth Circus is a highly recognized interfaith dialogue organization from Israel which works to establish better communication between
the Jewish and Arab communities in the Galilee.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 18
1:30 pm American Gymnastics
506 A. Stump Road, Montgomeryville More info : 215.361.1818
THURSDAY, JULY 19 2:00 & 7:00pm Main Line Reform Temple 410 Montgomery Ave, Wynnwood. More info: 610.649.7800
FRIDAY, JULY 20 3:00-5:00pm City Camp of the Diocese of Pennsylvania 3217 W. Clearfield Street, Philadelphia More info: 215.226.1276 FRIDAY, JULY 20 8:00pm Philadelphia School of Circus Arts 5900 A Greene Street, Philadelphia More info: 215.849.1991
The Ultimate Israel Adventure
December 19-28, 2012
_________________________
|
|
For more information, or to arrange a speaker, contact
or 215-832-0549
Click HERE for our JewishPhilly
|
|
|
|
|
PRESBYTERIAN DIVESTMENT BID DEFEATED!
 By a razor-thin margin, the largest Presbyterian group in the United States rejected a proposal Thursday to divest from three companies that do business with Israel. The Presbyterian General Assembly voted 333-331, with two abstentions, to reject the divestment plan. A second vote instead affirmed a policy of investment in support of peace in Israel and the Palestinian territories. That proposal passed by a much wider margin, 369-290 with eight abstentions. The votes came after days of discussion and more than two hours of floor debate at the meeting of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Pittsburgh. Divestment advocates said the targeted companies - Caterpillar Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Motorola - profit from the occupation by providing bulldozers, surveillance technology and other products to the Israeli military. Major Jewish groups from across the political spectrum had lobbied furiously against the measure, including the groups Americans for Peace Now and J Street. Major Jewish advocacy groups were in agreement that the language being used to support the measure demonized Israel and threatened Presbyterian-Jewish relations. At the Presbyterian meeting, church members made emotional pleas both in favor and against the proposal. Nicholas Nott, a delegate from the Presbytery of Great Rivers in Peoria, Ill., home of the Caterpillar headquarters, defended the company. "You are being shown a very narrow side of Caterpillar machines," Nott said.
But Rick Ufford-Chase, who served as a General Assembly moderator, the church's highest elected office, when the divestment debate began in 2004, said he was heartbroken by the outcome Thursday.
It should be noted that the Philadelphia Presbyter not only put forward an alternative proposal, but many local leaders in the church worked tirelessly along with the local Jewish Federation and JCRC to educate their constituents about the true nature of divestment efforts. This vote never would have been defeated without their help. More coverage:
|
Morsi Wins Egyptian Election:
Muslim Brotherhood Put to the Test
Egypt's election commission announced last week that the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Mohammed Morsi, had won the country's first contested presidential election, making him the first Islamist president in the Arab world.
Mr. Morsi, 60, an American-trained engineer and former lawmaker, becomes Egypt's fifth president and the first from outside the military. But his victory, 16 months after the military took over on the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, is an ambiguous milestone in Egypt's promised transition to democracy.
Mr. Morsi's status as president-elect, however, does little to resolve the larger standoff between the generals and the Brotherhood over the institutions of government and the future constitution. Two weeks before June 30, their promised date to hand over power, the generals instead shut down the democratically elected and Islamist-led Parliament; took over its powers to make laws and set budgets; decreed an interim Constitution stripping the incoming president of most of his powers; and reimposed martial law by authorizing soldiers to arrest civilians. In the process, the generals gave themselves, in effect, a veto over provisions of a planned permanent Constitution.
In the coming months, how this relationship works itself out will determine much about the future of Egypt's role in the Middle East and of course, her relationship with Israel.
Read More ...
- ABC News
- NY Times
|
MUNICH 11 at 40:
No Memorial in Sight
 | | Ankie Spitzer and David Kirschtel, CEO of JCC Rockland in West Nyack, N.Y., stand in front of the JCC's recently installed memorial sculpture dedicated to the 11 Israelis who died at the 1972 Munich Olympics |
For the past 40 years, as each Olympics approaches, Ankie Spitzer has kept her promise to remember the Israeli delegation members who were held hostage and murdered by eight members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September during the XX Olympiad in Munich.
The terrorists murdered two Israelis, Moshe Weinberg and Yosef Romano, at the outset. They held the remaining nine bound one to another, Spitzer's husband included, for 20 hours, demanding that Israel release 234 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. The nine died in a two-hour firefight during a botched German rescue attempt at a nearby airport. And now, as the XXX Olympic Games in London approach, people are talking. That 2012 marks 40 years and the 10th Olympiad since those fateful events accounts for some of the attention. An online petition at Change.org has sparked the rest.
Spitzer's quest began almost as soon as Jim McKay, the ABC sportscaster, uttered those now famous words, "They're all gone," to an international television audience. Only 26 at the time, Spitzer was a recent immigrant to Israel, speaking limited Hebrew, with a 2-month-old daughter, Anouk. A native of Holland, she had married her fencing instructor, Andrei, 15 months earlier. She returned to Israel, along with the coffins of the athletes, filled with sorrow and hate.
Read More:
- Jewish Exponent
|
|
|
|
|
