FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)Israel is looking into the possibility of adopting orphaned Haitian children.
Israel’s Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog has asked his staff to look into adopting Haitian children who lost their parents in the devastating earthquake on Jan. 12, according to reports in Israel.
“We are proud that Israel aided the horrible distress in Haiti and we have a moral obligation, as human beings, to aid these children,” Herzog told Israel Radio over the weekend.
Herzog has asked Israel’s envoy to the Dominican Republic, Amos Radian, who is also the consular official for Haiti, to submit an official request regarding the adoptions, Haaretz reported.
Israel does not have an official adoption protocol with Haiti, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Israel helps prospective adoptive families by subsidizing the cost of international adoptions. The children are converted to Judaism upon arrival.
Israel Deports Jewish-American Journalist
Israel deported a Jewish-American journalist working for a Palestinian news agency.
Jared Malsin, 26, the English-language editor of the Palestinian Ma’an news agency, was placed on a flight out of Israel Wednesday. He had spent the last week at an airport detention facility, according to Ma’an.
Malsin was detained Jan. 12 at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport following a vacation in the Czech Republic and ordered deported by the Interior Ministry after raising security suspicions.
A Tel Aviv District Court stayed the deportation the following day and sought more information on the journalist, who grew up in Hanover, N.H. and is a graduate of Yale University.
According to Ma’an, interrogation transcripts obtained by the news service show that Malsin was considered a security risk on the basis of his political beliefs, determined by his news stories that criticize the State of Israel. The transcripts also said, according to Ma’an, that security officials believe Malsin “exploited his Jewishness” to gain entry to Israel.
Ma’an, based in Bethlehem, has several radio stations and a television channel in the West Bank. The news agency also runs a Web site in English, Arabic and Hebrew.
Abbas Wants U.S. as PA Rep in Talks
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has called on the Obama administration to negotiate with Israel on his behalf.
Abbas has proposed that the United States negotiate the final borders of a Palestinian state, The Associated Press reported Wednesday, citing an unnamed Abbas aide.
Such an arrangement could help Abbas save face, since he has declared that he will not return to the peace negotiating table until Israel stops all construction in West Bank settlements, including eastern Jerusalem.
The proposal comes as U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell was scheduled to arrive Wednesday evening in Israel in another bid to bring the sides to the negotiating table.
Abbas made the proposal recently in meetings with Egyptian officials, who relayed the recommendation to U.S. officials, the AP reported.
Mitchell will meet separately with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday and Friday. Abbas is expected to discuss the idea with Mitchell.
Hier: Downscaled Jerusalem Tolerance Museum to Open
A Museum of Tolerance will open in the heart of Jerusalem within four years, though at half the size and cost previously planned.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which runs the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, as well as the proposed Jerusalem institution, said Sunday that the plan for the Jerusalem museum will be scaled down under the new plan to one large building of 120,000 square feet, at an estimated cost ranging from $80 million to a maximum of $100 million.
The downscaling of the design is due to the global economic downturn, Hier said.
Speculation about the future of the controversial project peaked last week after famed architect Frank Gehry acknowledged publicly that he was withdrawing from the enterprise.
Hier said that four Israeli architects have been invited to submit designs for the Jerusalem building, and a final selection is expected within 90 days.
There have been years of delay since the 2004 groundbreaking after Palestinian and some Israeli advocacy groups claimed that the site for the new museum is an ancient Muslim cemetery that would be desecrated by the museum’s construction.
The Israeli Supreme Court considered the legal arguments for nearly four years, finally giving the go-ahead last year to the Los Angeles-based Wiesenthal Center.
Last Nov. 5, the Wiesenthal Center board of trustees unanimously agreed on the more modest parameters of the museum. The decision was not made public, Hier said, because it was hoped to link its announcement to the appointment of a new Israeli architect.
Besieged by questions, Hier and Gehry released a joint statement last week acknowledging the “redesign” and Gehry’s withdrawal due to his commitment “to other projects around the globe.”