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July 7th, 2016 
Awake Goy (JTA) — Abner Mikva, a federal judge and congressman who served as a mentor to a range of Democratic politicians from the Chicago area, died at age 90.
Mikva died Monday in Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune. His political career, spanning five decades, saw him serve in state and national office as well as all three branches of government. Among those he mentored were President Obama, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan and Rep. Jan Schakowski (D-Ill.).
In 2014, Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, to Mikva.
“When I was graduating law school, Ab encouraged me to pursue public service,” Obama said in a statement, according to the Tribune. “He saw something in me that I didn’t yet see in myself, but I know why he did it — Ab represented the best of public service himself and he believed in empowering the next generation of young people to shape our country.”
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Published time: 5 Jul, 2016 12:33
© Bernadett Szabo / Reuters
Hungary will hold a referendum on October 2 to decide if the country will further accept the EU’s mandatory migrant quota system. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who initiated the decision, earlier said a “no†vote would be in favor of Hungary’s independence.
The move was announced by the office of Hungarian President Janos Ader on Tuesday. “As president of the republic I decree that the referendum will be held on October 2,”read a statement from Ader.
The presidential office added that the people of Hungary will be asked one question at the referendum: “Do you want the European Union to prescribe the mandatory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary even without the consent of Parliament?”
Antal Rogan, head of the prime minister’s cabinet, welcomed the move.
“Hungarian citizens … can say whether they support or reject Brussels’ immigration policy,” he said. “We believe that only Hungarians, not Brussels, can decide who we want to live with in Hungary.”
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Published time: 4 Jul, 2016 18:05
© Reuters / Reuters
NATO members will agree to “further enhance military presence in the eastern part of the alliance†at the upcoming summit in Warsaw, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said, adding the alliance will see its “biggest reinforcement since the Cold War.â€
“We will deploy four robust, multinational battalions to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. I welcome Canada’s recent announcement that it will lead one of these four battalions,” Stoltenberg said at a pre-summit press event.
“We will also agree to develop a tailored presence in the southeast, based on a multinational brigade in Romania,” he added.
NATO’s collective defense will be enhanced further through the recognition of cyberspace “as an operational domain, alongside air, land and sea,” Stoltenberg said, adding that the ‘Cyber Defense Pledge’ will increase the alliance’s resilience.
A new Intelligence Division within NATO Headquarters will help to make the “right decisions at the right time” and will counter modern challenges including meeting “hybrid and terrorist threats,” Stoltenberg said.
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“We appreciate this friendship and we’re expanding it to the continent of Africa. Yesterday I had a remarkable meeting in Uganda hosted by the President of Uganda, six other African leaders including President Kenyatta. Seven leaders from seven African countries talking about how to expand Israel’s relationship with their countries but with all the countries of Africa,†he continued. “But at the heart of it, the connection with the people is a very sound idea, it’s the right idea and that’s why I am expecting you in Jerusalem.”
Netanyahu told the Christian audience of the shared heritage binding the two places together and told the story of a boat which was found in the Kinneret which was used during the time of Jesus. “I can’t tell you that Jesus was on that boat but I can tell you that that boat was in the time of Jesus.â€
NAIROBI, Kenya — Africa has no better friend than the state of Israel for the practical needs of security and development, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday on the second leg of a four-country tour to pursue better relations with the continent. He signed a trade and investment agreement with the Kenyan president.
Netanyahu is the first ruling Israeli prime minister to visit Kenya and the first to visit sub-Saharan Africa in nearly three decades. He met Tuesday with President Uhuru Kenyatta on counter-terrorism, energy and agriculture, amid tight security. Netanyahu is also visiting Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia this week.
Israel played a prominent role in assisting newly independent African countries in the 1960s, but those relations crumbled in the 1970s, when Arab countries, promising aid, pressured African nations to limit or cut ties with Israel. African states were also opposed to Israel’s close ties to South Africa’s apartheid government.
In exchange for its expertise in security and other fields, Israel now wants African states to side with it at the United Nations, where the General Assembly overwhelmingly recognized Palestine as a non-member observer state in 2012.
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The announcement is apparently a response to the recent increase in terrorist attacks last week. “The actions right now are too little and too late and won’t stop viral terrorism,” Minister of Education Naftali Bennett’s associates said Sunday, shortly before the Security Cabinet convened for a meeting, “This is a recycling of old decisions from a year and a half ago.”
In a candlelit room in a small eastern Ugandan village, Rabbi Gershom does Kiddush over wine at the beginning of Shabbat dinner as his wife, Tzieorah, removes a cloth covering the challah bread.
“Shabbat shalom!” cry the arriving guests. The scene is recognizable to every Jewish family – except the main dish is stewed goat and mashed green banana, with sweet pineapple, fresh from the garden, for pudding.Gershom is the spiritual leader of the Abayudaya, a small community of African Jews living close to the town of Mbale, where the craggy edges of Mount Elgon mark the nearby border with Kenya.
NEW YORK – Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Monday lashed out at the press for continuing to report on the fallout from a post he made to social media that included an image depicting Democratic rival Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of cash and a Star of David.
In a tweet on Monday, Trump said he had not meant the six-pointed star to refer to the Star of David, which is a symbol of Judaism. Rather, he said, the star could have referred to a sheriff’s badge, which is shaped similarly except for small circles at the ends of each of its six points, or a “plain star.”
“Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!” Trump wrote on Twitter, two days after he tweeted the original image.
His tweet came after Mic News reported on Sunday the image attacking Clinton, which included the words: “History made” and, inside the star, “most corrupt candidate ever!” had been shared on a neo-Nazi web forum called /pol/. Reuters confirmed the image was posted there on June 22 by viewing a link to an archived version of a /pol/ page, though the page has since been updated and the image removed.
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Intermarriage among British Jews in 2011 stood at 26 percent, or roughly half the rate documented among American Jews. (Flash90)
LONDON (JTA) —Â Intermarriage among British Jews in 2011 stood at 26 percent, or roughly half the rate documented among American Jews, according to a new demographic study.
The report published Tuesday by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research is based on data from the National Jewish Community Survey and the 2001 and 2011 national censuses.
Out of 123,113 Jews living in couples in 2011, only 36,711 indicated they were married (in 89 percent of the cases) or cohabiting (in the remaining 11 percent) with a non-Jewish partner.
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A street in the Ladadika neighborhood, which used to be the Jewish quarter in Thessaloniki, Greece. (Wikimedia Commons)
WASHINGTON (JTA) –  “I am proud to be a Vlach,†says Yiannis Boutaris, the mayor of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city.
Ostensibly, we’re here at the Washington Hilton to discuss Boutaris’ bid to put the Jewish back in Thessaloniki, a city — perhaps best known as Salonika —once home to the largest numbers of Jews in Greece.
But I’m the one who brought up the Vlachs, a dwindling minority of speakers of an ancient Latin dialect, scattered throughout the Balkans. When he ambles over, I greet him with the “Ci fac?†I have learned from my wife’s family. Pronounced “Tzi fatz,†it more or less means “what’s up?â€
His eyes widen a little. “Gini!†he says, he’s fine. He looks at his aide, Leonidas Makris, with a look that suggests, “I thought you told me this guy was Jewish?â€
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Jared Kushner speaking at the Bloomberg Commercial Real Estate conference in New York, Nov. 9, 2011. (Peter Foley/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Donald Trump’s Jewish son-in-law has been called out by a writer for the New York Observer, a newspaper he owns, for allowing perceived anti-Semitic messaging to be used in his father-in-law’s presidential campaign.
Observer entertainment writer Dana Schwartz published “An Open Letter to Jared Kushner, From One of Your Jewish Employees†on the paper’s website on Tuesday.
Schwartz’s piece was a response to a tweet from Trump’s official Twitter account on Saturday that juxtaposed a picture of Hillary Clinton with a six-pointed star reminiscent of a Star of David over a background of dollar bills. Trump deleted the image, but many found the image to be the latest in a series of messages from his campaign with anti-Semitic undertones.
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Donald Trump speaking at a rally in San Diego, Calif., May 27, 2016. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Donald Trump blamed the “dishonest media” for the dust-up over a tweet showing a Star of David shape and dollar bills superimposed over an image of Hillary Clinton.
On Monday, Trump made his first response to the controversy since his official account tweeted— then deleted — the image Saturday following the uproar over possible anti-Semitic connotations and a website linked to a far-right anti-Semitic movement.
“Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!” the presumptive Republican presidential candidate tweeted Monday, The Associated Press reported.
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Published time: 5 Jul, 2016 19:16
© Alex Domanski / Reuters
The construction of a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in Ukraine poses “significant safety risks for the whole of Europe†because of numerous rule and standards violations, Ukrainian environmentalists warn.
The Ukrainian Greens Association, a non-profit environmentalist organization, listed the risks in a statement released on Monday.
“We are deeply concerned about plans to build a spent nuclear fuel storage in the upper reaches of the Dnepr River close to densely populated places,” the statement said, citing a speech made by the association’s spokeswoman, Anna Rak, at the first Nuclear Energy Policy Forum in Brussels on June 30.
Rak also emphasized that the government plans “to secretly fast-track the construction of a surface dry, spent nuclear fuel storage system… close to the Dnepr river,” ignoring basic safety standards and “creating the threat of a second Chernobyl.”
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At 70th anniversary of Kielce massacre, Andrzej Duda condemns all forms of ‘prejudice, racism, xenophobia’
WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s president strongly condemned all forms of racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism as he led commemorations Monday marking the 70th anniversary of a massacre of Jews after World War II.
Andrzej Duda spoke in Kielce, where communist police and a mob killed 42 people on July 4, 1946. Coming a year after the end of World War II, the killings sent waves of fear through Poland’s Jewish community and sparked a wave of Jewish emigration from Poland.
“In a free, sovereign and independent Poland there is no room for any form of prejudice, for racism, for xenophobia, for anti-Semitism,” Duda said in a speech in Kielce, according to remarks carried by the Polish news agency PAP.
Duda and other leaders with the governing Law and Justice party, which backs Duda, have sent mixed messages on matters of prejudice since the election last year that brought them to power.
The party has taken a staunchly anti-migrant stance, with party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski accusing refugees during the election campaign last year of carrying “parasites and protozoa” to Europe.
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Tactical use of terror attacks strategic mistake: Iran’s Larijani
While offering condolences over the recent terror attacks in Saudi Arabia, Iran’s parliament speaker warned against the tactical manipulation of such incidents.
“We have on multiple occasions warned the countries in the region that the tactical use of terrorism is a strategic mistake,” said Ali Larijani (seen below) while addressing the Iranian parliament on Tuesday.
He further stressed that such policies will only create other problems in the region in the future.
Larijnai also expressed regret that the terrorist attacks were carried out next to the Prophet’s Mosque in Saudi Arabia.
Condemning the attacks, he noted that much more attention must be paid to terrorist activities in the region.
On Monday, the Saudi Arabian cites of Medina, Qatif, and Jeddah were targeted in a series of attacks. Several security guards were killed when a terrorist detonated his explosives near the security headquarters of the Prophet’s Mosque in the western city of Medina.
US reacts to ‘systematic process of land seizures’ by Israel
The United States is irked by Israel over reports that the regime is planning to build hundreds of new illegal settlement units in Palestine.
The US State Department said on Tuesday that if more settlements are to be built in the West Bank, they will serve as an obstacle to the so-called “two-state solution.”
State Department spokesman John Kirby said US officials were aware of the reports in regard to Tel Aviv’s expansionist policy.
“If true, this report would be the latest step in what seems to be a systematic process of land seizures, settlement expansions and legalizations of outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution,” Kirby said at a news briefing in Washington, DC.
Kirby’s remarks came after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the decision, saying that such activities raise “legitimate questions” over Tel Aviv’s “long-term intentions” in the West Bank.
“The Secretary-General strongly criticizes the decision by Israeli authorities to advance plans to build some 560 housing units in the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim, as well as the advancement of plans to build 240 housing units in a number of settlements in occupied East Jerusalem,” said Ban’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, in statement released on Monday.
On Sunday, an unnamed official announced that the plans had been approved by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the minister of military affairs, Avigdor Liberman.
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Source Article from http://davidduke.com/livni-says-british-police-sought-question-zio-watch-july-5-6-2016/
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