Large medical associations in Sweden and Denmark recommended banning non-medical circumcision of boys. In Sweden, the recommendation came in a resolution that was unanimously adopted last week by the ethics council of the Sweden Medical Association – a union whose members constitute 85 percent of the country’s physicians, the Svenska Dagbladet daily reported on Saturday….
The Obama administration named a special envoy to the Holocaust survivor community. Aviva Sufian, a staff member at the Health Department’s Administration for Community Living, will be the “Special Envoy for U.S. Holocaust Survivor Services,” a White House announcement said Friday. “Her work as Special Envoy will focus on those survivors currently living in poverty,…
Boxes containing the head of a pig were sent to Rome’s main synagogue, the Israeli embassy in Rome and a museum showing an exhibition on the Holocaust. The packages, sent via a courier service, were delivered Friday, just days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day. All three packages were turned over to Italy’s special terrorism and…
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio reportedly praised Israel at a private gala event hosted by the pro-Israel group AIPAC in Manhattan. The new mayor, who took swept into office in a November landslide, told the group that “part of his job description is to defend Israel” and that it is “elemental to being an…
Scarlett Johansson has defended her decision to represent SodaStream, an Israeli company that operates in the occupied West Bank. The Hollywood starlet, who will appear in a Super Bowl ad for the controversial home beverage company, released a statement to the Huffington Post after coming under fire for speaking on behalf of the company. “While…
Brandeis University disclosed that it paid former university president Jehuda Reinharz $811,000 for accumulated sabbatical leave that he never took during his 17-year presidency. The payment was part of a $4.9 million lump sum payment Reinharz received Jan. 2 as deferred compensation, according to a statement issued by Brandeis. The amounts paid were set aside…
Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli minister and leader of the left wing Meretz party, died. Aloni died Friday at the age of 86. She will be buried Sunday in Kfar Shmaryahu near the northern Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya, Israel’s Army Radio reported. A veteran of Israel’s War of Independence War and a product of…
The report of a Polish non-Jew who escaped Auschwitz to deliver first-hand testimony of the Holocaust was for the first time translated into Mandarin. The account of Witold Pilecki, a Polish army captain escaped the death camp in 1943, appeared earlier this week in Taiwan, according to a report by Polskie Radio. The work in…
A French billboard advertiser scaled back a campaign for the Jewish dating site JDate after its billboards were vandalized. Thierry Courrault, a regional director for the JC Decaux billboard giant, said his company decided to pull 18 billboards out of 100 advertising JDate and which carried the site’s Star of David-shaped logo. The reason was…
Two Jerusalem girls died after inhaling the fumes of a powerful pesticide. Avigayil and Yael Gross, two and four years old respectively, died Wednesday from breathing in the fumes of a pesticide which an exterminator had left inside a room in their home. The room was supposed to be sealed but fumes may have leaked,…
Oxfam has distanced itself from Scarlett Johansson over the Hollywood superstar’s decision to represent SodaStream, the Israeli company that operates in the occupied West Bank. The international aid and development group said on its web site that it was “engaged in a dialogue” with Johansson, who is one of its “global ambassadors” over her relationship…
