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Comments (0)A British journalist held in Gaza for nearly a month was released.
Paul Martin, a freelance journalist and filmmaker, was turned over to British officials on Thursday, according to the BBC.
Martin, 55, has filed freelance reports for the BBC, Al Jazeera International, CNN and Britain’s Channel 4 News.
He was arrested Feb. 14 when he arrived at a Gaza City courthouse to testify on behalf of a Hamas operative accused of collaborating with Israel who had been the subject of one of his reports. Martin was accused of breaking Palestinian law and violating Gaza security; he was never charged.
Martin was the first foreign journalist to be held in Gaza since Hamas took over three years ago, according to The Guardian.
Hamas told the Associated Press that Martin signed a pledge not to return to Gaza.
Egypt Cancels Synagogue Opening
Egypt canceled the official opening of a restored Cairo synagogue over what it called Jewish “provocative” actions.
The formal opening of the 19th century Maimonides Synagogue, which was renovated by the Egyptian government, had been scheduled for Sunday. But the event was canceled at the last minute following reports that during a Jewish community ceremony last week to mark the reopening, there was “dancing and drinking alcohol in the synagogue,” antiquities chief Zahi Hawass was quoted as saying.
The decision was also made at “a time when Muslim holy sites in occupied Palestine face assaults from Israeli occupation forces and settlers,” Hawass said, according to the French news agency AFP.
Ambassadors and rabbis were expected to attend the opening.
Vandals Deface Polish Concentration Camp Memorial
Holocaust monuments at a former Nazi concentration camp in Poland were defaced with spray-painted anti-Semitic slogans.
The vandalism at the Plaszow camp outside of Krakow, which read “Juden Raus” and “Hitler Good,” was discovered Saturday—the 67th anniversary of the Nazi liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. The Plaszow camp was featured in the movie “Schindler’s List.”
Suspected far-right vandals had defaced the former Mauthausen concentration camp with anti-Jewish and anti-Turkish graffiti eight days earlier.
“The progeny of Muslims are for us what the Jews were to our fathers. Be on your guard. A third world war—an eighth crusade,” read the graffiti, spray-painted in large letters on the outer wall of the Mauthausen camp near its entrance.
“There is an active far-right scene in Upper Austria that does not even shrink away from vandalizing a former concentration camp,” Willi Mernyi, head of the committee that oversees the Mauthausen camp, said in a statement.
Some 100,000 people died at Mauthausen.