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Friday September 22, 2006

Shorts: World

Human rights group presses U.N. council 

new york (jta) | A leading human rights group called on the U.N. Human Rights Council to end its one-sided approach to the Middle East. In a release Monday, Sept. 18, Human Rights Watch said the recently formed council has passed three resolutions against Israel, but has ignored the actions of Hezbollah and armed Palestinian groups.

The council, which begins its second regular session Monday, should shift some of its focus away from the Middle East to human rights issues in areas such as Darfur and Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said.

The U.N. General Assembly created the council in March to replace the old Human Rights Commission, which included several nations with poor human rights records and which focused disproportionately on Israel. 

‘Shocking’ extremist gains in Germany

berlin (jta) | German Jewish leaders have called right-wing nationalist gains in state elections “alarming.”

A Sunday, Sept. 17, election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania gave the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), which openly espouses xenophobic and neo-Nazi views, 7.3 percent of the votes, more than the 5 percent necessary to earn a seat in the Parliament. The state becomes the fourth to have right-wing extremist parties in their local parliament in reunified Germany.

Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called the results “shocking, and a political statement of bankruptcy.” She urged mainstream politicians to “go on a committed offensive against increasing right-wing extremism.”

Gunshots fired at Oslo synagogue

jerusalem (jps) | A shooting at an Oslo synagogue on Sunday, Sept. 17 caused damage to the building but wounded no one. Police who arrived on the scene after the incident identified at least 10 bullet holes in the shul’s windows and exterior wall.

In the past few months, Oslo has been the scene of a number of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist incidents, including an attack on the synagogue last month, where an unknown perpetrator smashed glass windows and scrawled graffiti on the site.

The shooting came less than a week after an al Qaida plot targeting the site was uncovered.

Arrests made in bus attack on Jewish girl

london (jta) | British police detained six young suspects in connection with an attack on a Jewish girl in London last month on a bus. Four 14-year-old girls, a 10-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy were arrested recently and then released on bail, TotallyJewish.com reported.

In the attack, a member of the group allegedly approached the girl and asked if she was Jewish; she replied, “I’m English.” The four girls then reportedly pushed her to the floor, stomped on her face and repeatedly kicked her. The attack left her unconscious with a fractured eye socket.

Moscow concert helps Israeli children

moscow (jta) | A charity concert in Moscow raised about $12,000 for a kindergarten in a northern Israeli town damaged during the war against Hezbollah. The Sept. 13 concert for children in Shlomi, held in a Moscow club, attracted some 500 people — mostly members of the Jewish community and Israelis living in the Russian capital.

The event was organized by Onisraelside.ru, a Web site created last month by a group of Moscow Jews concerned by what they perceive as the biased coverage Israel’s recent war received in the Russian media.

Organizers said the sum raised at the event would only cover one-quarter of the amount needed to renovate the kindergarten. Even so, some Jewish activists praised the concert as a rare example of a successful grass roots charity initiative taken by Russian Jews.

Synagogue attacked in Tajikistan

dushanbe (jta) | For the second time in a month, vandals last week attacked the only remaining synagogue in the city of Dushanbe, capital of the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan, in what is believed to have been an attempt to set the building on fire.

“Last Wednesday, two youths approached the synagogue and hurled a Molotov cocktail into the courtyard, which burst into flames,” said David Gourevich, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s chief rabbi of Central Asia. The incident marked the second time in the past month that the synagogue has come under attack.

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