Comments (0)Statesmen, Dignitaries Meet for President’s Conference
October 24, 2009Jerusalem
JTA Wire Service
Israeli and foreign statesmen and dignitaries are meeting for the second Israeli Presidential Conference.
The Facing Tomorrow conference, hosted by President Shimon Peres, begins Tuesday and will look at creating a better future for Israel, Jews around the world and the rest of the world.
Peres, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Quartet’s Mideast envoy, Tony Blair, will address the opening program.
Participants include Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Macedonia President Gjorge Ivanov; Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski; Jose María Alfredo Aznar Lopez, former prime minister of Spain; Wong Chan, Chinese minister of information; Leonid Kuchma, former president of Ukraine; Leonard Edwards, Canada’s deputy minister of foreign affairs; and Anne-Marie Idrac, France’s foreign trade minister.
Intellectuals and experts such as Baron David Mayer de Rothschild; Josh Silverman, global president of Skype; and Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, also will address the group.
Swine Flu Vaccinations Arrive in Israel
The first swine flu vaccinations arrived in Israel.
Some 350,000 doses, produced by the Swiss company Novartis, are expected to be in Israel by the end of the week, according to reports.
The vaccines must be inspected, have Hebrew stickers placed on them and be distributed before the first inoculations are given the first week in November.
Israel is supposed to receive 1.75 million vaccinations by the end of the year and 2.3 million by March, Ha’aretz reported.
Human Rights Watch to Hamas: Probe War Crimes
Human Rights Watch called on Hamas to open an investigation into alleged war crimes.
The organization sent a letter Tuesday to Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh calling on Hamas to launch a “credible investigation” into the alleged violations highlighted in the United Nations’ Goldstone report, according to reports.
Hamas replied in a statement that it would carry out the recommendations contained in the Goldstone report and added that the call by Human Rights Watch should be directed at Israel.
The report, which accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, called on both sides to investigate their actions during the Gaza war within six months.
The report was adopted last week by the Human Rights Council and sent on to the U.N. Security Council.
Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein in an opinion piece published Tuesday in The New York Times wrote that the group in recent years has focused too much on alleged Israeli violations while choosing to ignore those in neighboring countries.
“Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields,” he said.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.