Comments (0)Hamas Invited to E.U. Headquarters
November 6, 2008Jerusalem
JTA Wire Service
European Union officials invited Palestinian lawmakers, including members of Hamas, to visit its Brussels headquarters next spring. The parliamentary group issued the invitation on Monday during a visit to the Gaza Strip. The European Union, like the United States, considers Hamas a terrorist organization and boycotts the group because of its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel. After winning parliamentary elections in 2006, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after routing secular Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Kyriacos Triantaphyllides, the head of the European delegation, said all Palestinian lawmakers are welcome. “We don’t care who they are as long as they are members of the Legislative Council,” he said. The gesture is being seen as mostly symbolic since most Hamas members are not permitted to leave the region.
Jewish Agency to Cut $45 Million from Budget
The Jewish Agency for Israel will slash its budget by $45 million for 2009. Some $12.5 million in cuts will come from organizational restructuring and cutting management costs. The agency also will make significant cuts in traditional grants given to other institutions in Israel as well as a $13 million reduction in actual programming. But it will not limit any of its core initiatives, the agency said. The group already has slashed 20 percent of its workforce since 2003, but more staff layoffs are in the offing. The agency’s budget deficit was the result of the drop in the dollar’s value vis-a-vis the shekel—a trend that has reversed itself in recent weeks—and inflation.
Jerusalem Tolerance Museum Gets Go-Ahead
The Simon Wiesenthal Center can build its long-planned Center for Human Dignity-Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem. On Wednesday, the Israeli Supreme Court gave its approval eight years after the initial announcement that famed architect Frank Gehry would design the landmark museum and four years after a groundbreaking ceremony attended by Israeli and California dignitaries was held. In the meantime, the estimated cost of the project has soared from $120 million to $250 million. Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center, announced that construction would resume immediately. In praising the court’s ruling, he said, “All citizens of Israel, Jews and non-Jews, are the real beneficiaries of this decision.” Hier estimated that the museum in the middle of Jerusalem would open in about 3 1/2 years. The new complex will consist of a regular museum, children’s museum, theater, conference center, library, gallery and lecture halls, with the mission to promote civility and respect among all segments of the Jewish community and between people of all faiths. The museum site, adjoining Independence Park, served as Jerusalem’s main Muslim cemetery until 1948. Muslim authorities appealed to the Supreme Court that museum construction would desecrate the cemetery, which allegedly contained the bones of Muslims killed during the Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries. Attorneys for the Wiesenthal Center countered that the site housed a four-story underground garage for three decades, and before that the old Palace Hotel, and that Muslim religious authorities had ruled earlier that the location had lost its sacred character. In an 85-page decision, a three-judge panel of the Supreme Court agreed with the Wiesenthal Center argument. Other objections had been raised by some Israeli politicians and initially by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Memorial Holocaust Authority. Hier assured Yad Vashem that the new museum would not deal with the history of the Holocaust. The Supreme Court decision drew immediate criticism from Gershon Baskin, a longtime opponent of the Jerusalem project. Baskin, co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, called for letters of protest from all “Jerusalemites, rabbis, Israelis, Palestinians, Jews and citizens of the world.” Throughout the proceedings, the project has received the support of Ehud Olmert as mayor of Jerusalem and later prime minister of Israel.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.