Weekly roundup of world briefs

‘Fauda’ star posts photo of injuries sustained in Gaza

(JNS) — Israeli actor Idan Amedi posted on social media a photo taken soon after he was wounded while fighting against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Amedi, 35, known for his role in the Netflix hit show “Fauda,” was released from the hospital last month after an explosion left him unconscious for days, with shrapnel in his eye sockets, jaw and neck. At the time of the blast, he had been serving in a reserve combat engineering unit.

“Every now and then, I have some understanding of the miracle that happened to me, but honestly I don’t think I will ever grasp it,” Amedi wrote on Instagram. “That’s how miracles are, you have to accept them and above all don’t forget what happened.”

Amedi revealed that the injuries to his face were so severe that he was admitted to Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan as “John Doe.”

Six soldiers were killed in the incident, reportedly accidentally caused by Israeli forces.

Amedi is best known for playing agent Sagi Tzur in “Fauda,” a Netflix drama about an elite Israeli undercover unit trying to track down Palestinian terrorists. Amedi first joined the series during its second season seven years ago.

Amedi is also a popular singer and has recorded five albums. His song “A Warrior’s Pain,” about the post-traumatic experiences of a soldier returning from war, was one of Israel’s most popular hits in 2010.

Amedi, of Kurdish descent, lives in Jerusalem with his wife and two children.

Matan Meir, a key member of the “Fauda” production team, was killed along with three other reservist soldiers in northern Gaza in November.

Kraft hoping for ‘good return’ for ‘very expensive’ Super Bowl ad about hate

(JNS) — Buying a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl about combating hate was “very expensive,” Robert Kraft, the billionaire philanthropist and owner of the New England Patriots, told People magazine. “We hope it’s going to be a good return on investment.”

Kraft, 82, talked to the magazine as his Foundation to Combat Antisemitism nears its first anniversary later this month.

He told People that the “message of empathy and standing up to all hate” ought to be at the Super Bowl, given it’s “the greatest TV event in America” and “the only time that you can reach probably 200 million people, when it’s all said and done.”

The foundation, which Kraft funded with an initial $25 million, has a mission of educating the public, which too often is misled by social media, Kraft told People. “There’s so many falsehoods on social media, and it has such wide coverage,” he said.

He told the magazine he’s proud of the foundation’s work, including reaching between 130 million and 150 million adults between seven and 10 times with an ad that aired last April and May. “Our ad changed the way people thought,” he said.

But, he acknowledged, “there’s still a long way to go.”

El Al gifting IDF soldiers free tickets in show of appreciation

(JNS) — Israeli flagship carrier El Al announced on Tuesday the gifting of free airline tickets to Europe to IDF soldiers who have served in the ongoing war against Hamas.

“As a company that enlisted in the national effort at the very beginning of the war, we feel it is our obligation to give back to those who contributed to the country and defense during this period,” according to a statement by El Al.

Soldiers are eligible for the free tickets if they spent 30 or more days on active service since the Oct. 7 massacre and are existing members of or join the airline’s frequent flyer club. Those qualifying will only need to pay airport taxes.

Registration to receive the coupon code for the free flights is open until Feb. 26 or until stocks last, according to the company, and can be redeemed until Feb. 29 for flights departing Israel any time between May 5, 2024, and Feb. 17, 2025.

The possible destinations: Vienna, Austria; Thessaloniki or Athens, Greece; Sofia, Bulgaria; Paphos or Larnaca, Cyprus; Budapest, Hungary; Bucharest, Romania; or Zurich, Switzerland.

Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault, Israeli carriers, including El Al, added flights to accommodate the influx of reservists converging on the country due to the mobilization of some 360,000 troops.

One El Al plane that arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport on Oct. 24 wasn’t filled with passengers or suitcases. The charter flight—which was delivering medical supplies—placed photos of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza on the seats.

‘Who wrote this thing??’ State Department official asks

(JNS) — A U.S. State Department prospectus in February 2022 for one or two grants—each valued between $493,827 and $987,654—called for “strengthening human rights and accountability in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza.” One of the aims of the project to possibly include was the “documentation of legal or security sector violations and housing, land and property rights.”

The latter drew criticism from a State Department official, The Washington Free Beacon reported on Tuesday.

The notice “specifically says it may include documentation of violation of land property rights! (I mean, come on!) Who wrote this thing??” the official penned to colleagues, per the online publication.

The employee’s issue wasn’t that the department’s democracy, human rights and labor bureau “funds programs in European countries or other countries we are allied with,” the official wrote. “The issue is that DRL is funding a program to collect evidence of human rights abuses and atrocities in a country that is our ally.”

The official told colleagues that such department grants had only been issued previously for major human-rights violators.

“I went down a bit of a rabbit hole” on the Israel notice, “but from what I saw, I think our DRL colleagues are in a bit of denial and don’t want to see the reality,” the official wrote.

Foggy Bottom wouldn’t tell the Free Beacon if any of the grants have been issued. It said the grants were “part of internal deliberations processes.”

Senator asks Biden to clarify if US sees Jerusalem as part of ‘West Bank’

By Menachem Wecker

(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden’s Feb. 1 executive order, imposing sanctions on “persons undermining peace, security and stability in the West Bank,” runs 1,699 words. None of those words is “Jerusalem.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote to Biden on Feb. 20 asking the president to clarify whether, for purposes of the executive order, the White House considers Jerusalem to be part of the “West Bank,” which is a term the Biden administration, and some others, use for Judea and Samaria.

“Your recent executive order targets Israelis with sanctions who are ‘in the West Bank.’ Does this phrase include Jerusalem?” the Arkansas Republican wrote. “If so, what parts of Jerusalem? Where are the borders within Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, that you are using for purposes of implementing the executive order?”

Cotton asked Biden to respond within a week, by Feb. 27. “Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter,” he wrote.

“It’s a simple question that I hope the administration can answer clearly and promptly,” Cotton wrote on social media. “Does Joe Biden consider Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, to be part of the West Bank in his recent executive order?”

The Biden administration has mulled reopening a consulate for Palestinian affairs in Jerusalem. Former President Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the latter as the united capital of Israel.

The CIA World Factbook’s “West Bank” entry notes that the area is slightly smaller than Delaware and “East Jerusalem and Jerusalem No Man’s Land are also included only as a means of depicting the entire area occupied by Israel in 1967.”

Pro-Palestinian student groups, faculty at Harvard share antisemitic images

(JNS) — Harvard University has vowed to investigate after two student activist groups, as well as a faculty group, shared an image from more than 50 years ago that promoted multiple antisemitic tropes.

The image comes from a June 1967 newsletter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It shows a hand with a Star of David on it with a dollar sign in the middle, holding a rope with nooses around the necks of a black man—reportedly professional boxer Muhammad Ali—and Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former pan-Arabist president of Egypt.

The image was first shared by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, and the African and African American Resistance Organization, before being shared by Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

 “We condemn these posts in the strongest possible terms,” the university stated on Instagram.

“With professors like these, it’s easy to see why we Jewish students don’t feel safe in class,” Alexander (“Shabbi”) Kestenbaum, a Harvard Divinity School student from Riverdale, N.Y., wrote on X.

“The cartoon is despicably, inarguably antisemitic. Is there no limit?” wrote Rabbi David Wolpe, who resigned from Harvard’s anti-semitism task force in December.

The New York Post wrote in an editorial condemning how Harvard continues to fail its Jewish students by not fully complying with the House Education and the Workforce Committee’s document requests, which the school’s “nonchalance and stonewalling proves that administrators still refuse to take the scourge of antisemitism on its campus seriously—and there’s plenty of evidence they never did.”

Majority of New York Jewish voters intend to vote for Trump

By Andrew Bernard

(JNS) — A poll of registered New York voters suggests that a majority of Jews in the state intend to vote for former President Donald Trump in the presidential election in November.

New York Jews now favor Trump over U.S. President Joe Biden 53 percent to 44 percent, according to the Siena College poll. Jews in the state said that they intend to continue to back Democrats over Republicans 54 percent to 39 percent in congressional elections.

The poll has an overall margin of error of 4.2 percentage points in either direction, which means that a gap of 8.4 percentage points could potentially be dead even.

Jews made up just 8 percent of the large sample size: 806 people. That means the margin of error for the 65 Jewish respondents would be potentially much larger than 4.2 percentage points. 

Mark Mellman, president of Democratic Majority for Israel, told JNS that “the margin of error for Jews in the Sienna poll is plus or minus 13 points on each number.”

“This poll tells us very little about how New York Jews will vote,” he said.

Mellman expects Biden, who “has been uniquely supportive of Israel,” to do well with Jews, as did Democrat Tom Suozzi, who beat Mazi Philip earlier this month in a New York congressional election.

Sam Markstein, national political director at the Republican Jewish Coalition, sees things differently. Markstein wrote that the poll reflected a shift among Jewish voters.

“Jewish voters moving towards the GOP is a clear trend, long in the making,” he wrote. He cited Lee Zeldin’s comparative success attracting Jewish votes in the 2022 New York gubernatorial election.

Zeldin, who is Jewish and an RJC board member, did particularly well in New York’s Orthodox Jewish communities. 

He won Rockland County in Upstate New York, which has the largest per capita Jewish population of any U.S. county, by 12 points. He also garnered 88 percent of the vote in New York City’s 48th Assembly District, which includes the heavily Chassidic neighborhood of Borough Park in Brooklyn.

That wasn’t good enough for Zeldin to win, however, as Gov. Kathleen Hochul was re-elected by a 6 percent margin.

The Siena poll does not suggest that even an increasingly Republican-friendly Jewish community could flip the state red, as the poll has Biden beating Trump overall 48 percent to 36 percent.

UK minister apologizes for ‘unacceptable’ defacement of Israeli’s birth certificate

By Georgia L. Gilholy

(JNS) — U.K. Home Secretary James Cleverly apologized to the family of a baby whose birth certificate came back with “Israel” crossed out under “place of birth.”

“I have ordered an urgent review of a birth certificate being defaced. While we establish the facts, our commercial partner has suspended some staff,” Cleverly wrote. “The matter is totally unacceptable. We will not tolerate antisemitism.”

The nonprofit Campaign Against Antisemitism had posted an image of the defaced birth certificate, which it said belonged to a six-month-old girl.

“Today, the birth certificate was returned ripped with the word ‘Israel’ scribbled out. The parents are understandably very concerned about this incident,” the nonprofit wrote. “We are asking the Home Office to investigate how this happened. The Home Office has responsibility for law enforcement and the security of the Jewish community.”

“Confidence in the authorities is at painfully low levels and must be restored,” it added.

The baby’s father told Sky News that “the situation here is not good.”

“To be Jewish in the U.K. is very hard, and it’s not getting better. It’s getting worse and worse,” he said. “I think my daughter, in 20 years, that’s her future, because London is not London anymore, and I literally feel unsafe.”

DeSantis invite for students to transfer to Florida yields five applicants

By David Swindle

(JNS) — New data shows that an effort by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to respond to antisemitism in higher education has led to nominal results so far.

In January, DeSantis announced an “emergency measure” during Florida’s State of the State address that would allow Jewish students and others experiencing religious discrimination to potentially receive in-state tuition, with application fees waived, as part of the process. 

He said of the measure that “the pro-Hamas activities and rampant antisemitism we’ve witnessed throughout the country on these campuses has exposed the intellectual rot that has developed on so many university campuses over the years.”

At the same time, the Republican governor acknowledged in his address that those considering a move “will have a tough decision to make—pack up and leave or stay and endure continued hatred.”

According to state records, at least five individuals have expressed interest in transferring. It’s not clear if any or all are Jewish.

JNS contacted DeSantis’s office and was referred to the Florida Department of Education.

Amy Farnum-Patronis, director of the office of university communications for Florida State University in Tallahassee, confirmed that the school had one application via the executive order.

Althea Johnson, director of media relations at the University of South Florida in Tampa, said one student is going through the transfer for the summer semester.

Anti-Israel protester hits Milwaukee police officer of Palestinian descent

(JNS) — One of about 20 anti-Israel activists who protested a fundraiser held on Sunday by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) punched a Milwaukee police officer.

The protester, a woman, asked the officer about his ethnicity. When he revealed that he had a Palestinian background, she struck him and told him that he was on the wrong side, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

It wasn’t known if the assailant was arrested at the Sunday event. The paper reported that the officer was hurt but not seriously.

“Striking a police officer is never acceptable,” stated Andrew Mamo, a spokesman for the senator.

Arrow system downs Eilat-bound missile

(JNS) — Israel’s Arrow defense system intercepted a ballistic missile over the Red Sea apparently fired by Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen and bound for Eilat.

The missile did not cross into Israeli territory and did not pose a threat to civilians, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Nevertheless, sirens sound in Israel’s southernmost city, in accordance with protocol, sending tens of thousands of residents dashing for shelter.

Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, Houthis have launched several missile and drone attacks against Israel, that were thwarted by Israeli, U.S. or Saudi forces or missed their targets.

Israel has bolstered its naval presence in the Red Sea area in response to the attacks.

The Houthi’s slogan is, “Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam.”