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Friday June 13, 2008

Shorts: World

Hooligans arrested for anti-Semitic slogans

Police detained about 100 soccer fans June 8 for shouting anti-Semitic slogans during Germany’s European Championship match against Poland in Klagenfurt, Austria.

Police encircled the first group in downtown Klagenfurt after they began shouting slogans such as “All Poles have to wear a yellow star” — an allusion to the yellow star that Jews were forced to display in parts of Europe controlled by Nazi Germany and its allies.

Members of a second group were arrested, according to police, after they began shouting similar slogans.

The Austria Press Agency said those detained would be expelled from Austria. — ap

Reform organization almost loses U.N. status

The World Union for Progressive Judaism narrowly avoided this week losing its status as a United Nations nongovernmental organization.

A coalition of nations, including Cuba, Qatar and Egypt, sought the ouster after the WUPJ allegedly made “unfounded allegations against [U.N.] member states” at a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in January.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the WUPJ was discussing Hamas at a session strictly focusing on Israel’s “human rights abuses.”

Ultimately, the U.N. Committee of NGOs reprimanded the WUPC for “bad behavior” rather than expelling the group.

Ambassador blasts British anti-Semitism

Israel’s ambassador to London came out against what he described as widespread British bias against the Jewish state.

“Britain has become a hotbed for radical anti-Israeli views and a haven for disingenuous calls for a one-state solution, a euphemistic name for a movement advocating Israel’s destruction,” Ron Prosor wrote in a Daily Telegraph opinion piece June 10.

Prosor, who took office in November pledging to promote Israel and confront pro-Palestinian apologists, aimed special criticism at British academics who want their Israeli counterparts boycotted, and at British media coverage of the Middle East. — jta

Shanghai refugee database launched

An Israeli diplomat in China is compiling a database of Shanghai’s historic Jewish community.

The Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, a former synagogue in the Hangkou District of the city, has begun documenting the influx of tens of thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe.

Many of the refugees were Austrians who received emergency travel visas from Ho Fengshen, the Chinese consul general in Vienna in the late 1930s who ignored orders from Beijing to desist.

The database project is being led by Uri Gutman, Israel’s consul general in Shanghai, with help from survivors and descendants of the city’s Jewish community. — jta

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