Comments (0)Elderly Jewish Man’s Killer Gets Maximum Sentence
March 5, 2010JTA Wire Service
A man convicted of robbing and murdering an 81-year-old Orthodox Jewish man received the maximum prison term.
William Hill, 28, was sentenced Monday to 25 years to life in the murder of Jacob Gerstle, who was a great-grandfather when he was killed in 2006.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Bruce Allen called the attack “one of the most brutal crimes I’ve had to face.”
Hill beat up Gerstle in the elevator of the elderly man’s Washington Heights apartment, as Gerstle returned from synagogue, according to the New York Daily News. The thief then forced his way into Gerstle’s apartment and stole $250 and his cell phone.
Gerstle fell into a coma and died two days later.
Shake-Up at Top of Jewish Agency Continues
The Jewish Agency for Israel continued the shake-up of its top professionals with the naming of a new director-general.
Alan Hoffman, director-general of the agency’s education department since 2000, will become the first non-Israel native to become the director-general, according to a Jewish Agency news release.
He takes over as the agency’s second-in-command for Moshe Vigdor, who announced in December that he was resigning to become the director-general of Israel’s Council for Higher Education.
Hoffman, who moved to Israel from South Africa in 1967, oversaw the Jewish Agency’s operations in the former Soviet Union and helped develop its MASA program.
He essentially will serve as the first lieutenant to former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, who took over last summer as the chairman of the agency’s executive. Sharansky is the organization’s face and thought leader; Hoffman will run the organization’s day-to-day operations.
As Hoffman comes in, the organization is losing one its top financial officers. Chief fund-raiser Jeff Kaye is leaving to become the chief development officer for World ORT.
Both moves follow the forced resignation of Maxyne Finkelstein, the head of JAFI North America. Finkelstein is being replaced by Misha Galperin, the current CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.
The moves follow Sharansky’s recent announcement that he would be shifting the focus of the organization away from spurring immigration to Israel and more toward global Jewish identity building.
Farrakhan Blames Obama Woes on Jews, Whites
Louis Farrakhan blamed the Jews, among others, for President Obama’s difficulties.
In a 3 1/2-hour speech marking Saviours’ Day, a Nation of Islam holiday, the movement’s leader told 20,000 followers in Chicago’s United Center that Obama’s political difficulties came after he stood up to the Jewish lobby at an Oval Office meeting.
“When they left the White House, his problems began,” the Chicago Sun-Times quoted Farrakhan as saying.
Obama’s meeting last summer with leaders of Jewish groups was mostly friendly, but there were differences over his administration’s tone in dealing with Israel’s Netanyahu government. All sides since then—the White House, the organized Jewish leadership and the Israeli government—have tried to tamp down public criticism.
“The Zionists are in control of Congress,” Farrakhan said Sunday as he listed off a slew of Jewish economic advisers, adding that the “bloodsuckers of the poor” were rewarded with a bailout.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, responded to Farrakhan’s inflammatory remarks.
“It’s the same Farrakhan: ugly and anti-Semitic,” Foxman said. “With age he doesn’t get milder, he gets uglier.”
In the same speech, Farrakhan said “the white right is trying to set Barack up to be assassinated,” and reiterated his conviction that 9/11 was an “inside job.”
During the presidential campaign, Obama distanced himself from Farrakhan for his history of anti-Semitism.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.