MoscowJTA Wire Service
The Jewish community of Bishkek is helping to deliver humanitarian aid to the south of Kyrgyzstan for those who are caught up in the ethnic rioting taking place there. “We have raised money to buy 30 sacks of flour and 15 sacks of rice,” the head of the Bishkek Jewish community, Boris Shapiro, told JTA this week. “The assembly of the Peoples of Kyrgyzstan, in which our community takes part, is sending a truck with these and other sacks of food to the Fergana Valley. This aid is meant not only for Jews but for all the people suffering there.” Ethnic rioting in the country’s south between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks has led to the death of at least 170 people and 1,800 injuries, according to reports, though the death toll could be much higher. In addition, at least 100,000 people have been displaced. About 70 Jews live in four cities in the conflict area, mostly pensioners living alone. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee says it has expanded its services—including providing extra food and medicine—to the region’s Jews and continues its daily monitoring of their safety. The head of the Bishkek Chesed center, Alla Volkovich, keeps in constant contact with 20 families in the south by telephone. Volkovich says they are safe enough, though most are afraid to leave their homes. No anti-Semitic incidents have been reported since the beginning of the conflict. No Jews from the Fergana Valley have tried to escape from the conflict zone, Volkovich says, “and now it’s practically impossible.” “The border with Uzbekistan is closed, and Bishkek is 600 kilometers [about 375 miles] away. This is too far, and a dangerous road.” Hopefully the violence has peaked, Shapiro said. “I witnessed a very similar conflict in the same area 20 years ago, when I was deputy minister of public health,” he recalled. “As far as I can see, the situation is more or less under control by now.” Upheaval in Kyrgyzstan in April resulted in a new government, bringing anxiety to the 1,500-member Jewish community. The protests were accompanied by an attack on the Bishkek synagogue and the appearance of an anti-Semitic banner near the presidential palace. It was ordered to be removed by the head of the provisional government, Rosa Otunbaeva. JDC’s long-term support for the Jewish community in Kyrgyzstan, an estimated 1,300 people, includes the local Chesed welfare center in Bishkek, which provides food, medicine and home care to the community. Additionally, JDC supports a Jewish library, a program for family education, as well as other aid and Jewish renewal programs for elderly and children at risk.
Israel, Vatican Closer to Resolving Differences
Israel and the Vatican appear to have moved closer to resolving financial and other outstanding issues that have clouded bilateral relations for years. A plenary session of the Bilateral Permanent Working Commission between the two states took place Tuesday at the Vatican. A statement said the plenary “welcomed the progress” accomplished by the commission’s working committee and had “agreed on the next steps towards conclusion of the Agreement.” It said the meeting took place in “an atmosphere of mutual understanding.” Israel and the Vatican signed an agreement establishing diplomatic relations at the end of 1993, but several financial issues, including tax exemptions and property rights for the Church, have remained unresolved despite years of fitful negotiations. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon headed the Israeli delegation at Tuesday’s meeting. Ayalon arrived in Rome Monday at the start of an official visit to the Vatican, Italy and France. An Israeli Foreign Ministry statement said one of Ayalon’s aims was to appeal for the implementation of national and European sanctions against Iran. EU Asked to Intervene in Dutch Anti-Semitism
In the wake of the desecration of a 280-year-old synagogue and other recent anti-Semitic incidents in the Netherlands, a Jewish group has asked the European Union to intervene. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in a letter issued Tuesday to EU Foreign Minister Baroness Catherine Ashton, requested the EU’s “intervention to investigate the rampant epidemic in anti-Semitic incidents in the Netherlands,” due in part to the current “political vacuum in the Netherlands following General Election.” “In addition to the synagogue desecrated with red spray-paint late last month, a commemoration ceremony for the last transport of 3,000 Jewish children deported to their death was disrupted by passing bikers shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ during the mourners’ Kaddish prayer; Hyves, known as the Dutch Facebook, has postings rife with calls ‘to murder all Jews’ and for ‘Adolf Hitler to finish the job’; the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel in the Hague reported receiving phone messages calling for ‘many gas chambers to be built’; and children from the Rosh Pina Jewish elementary school were continually abused during an organized walk through south Amsterdam,” in recent weeks, according to the letter from Shimon Samuels, the center’s director for international relations. Anti-Semitic incidents in the Netherlands reportedly grew by 64 percent in 2009, the center said. Anti-Semitism increased in the year 2009 throughout the world, according to reports. The center urged Ashton “to condemn such incidents and the climate they portend, to take measures to investigate their origin and to impress upon the, as yet, unformed new Dutch government, its responsibilities to the entire European Union to contain a scourge that will not end with the Jews.”
The Jewish community of Bishkek is helping to deliver humanitarian aid to the south of Kyrgyzstan for those who are caught up in the ethnic rioting taking place there. “We have raised money to buy 30 sacks of flour and 15 sacks of rice,” the head of the Bishkek Jewish community, Boris Shapiro, told JTA this week. “The assembly of the Peoples of Kyrgyzstan, in which our community takes part, is sending a truck with these and other sacks of food to the Fergana Valley. This aid is meant not only for Jews but for all the people suffering there.” Ethnic rioting in the country’s south between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks has led to the death of at least 170 people and 1,800 injuries, according to reports, though the death toll could be much higher. In addition, at least 100,000 people have been displaced. About 70 Jews live in four cities in the conflict area, mostly pensioners living alone. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee says it has expanded its services—including providing extra food and medicine—to the region’s Jews and continues its daily monitoring of their safety. The head of the Bishkek Chesed center, Alla Volkovich, keeps in constant contact with 20 families in the south by telephone. Volkovich says they are safe enough, though most are afraid to leave their homes. No anti-Semitic incidents have been reported since the beginning of the conflict. No Jews from the Fergana Valley have tried to escape from the conflict zone, Volkovich says, “and now it’s practically impossible.” “The border with Uzbekistan is closed, and Bishkek is 600 kilometers [about 375 miles] away. This is too far, and a dangerous road.” Hopefully the violence has peaked, Shapiro said. “I witnessed a very similar conflict in the same area 20 years ago, when I was deputy minister of public health,” he recalled. “As far as I can see, the situation is more or less under control by now.” Upheaval in Kyrgyzstan in April resulted in a new government, bringing anxiety to the 1,500-member Jewish community. The protests were accompanied by an attack on the Bishkek synagogue and the appearance of an anti-Semitic banner near the presidential palace. It was ordered to be removed by the head of the provisional government, Rosa Otunbaeva. JDC’s long-term support for the Jewish community in Kyrgyzstan, an estimated 1,300 people, includes the local Chesed welfare center in Bishkek, which provides food, medicine and home care to the community. Additionally, JDC supports a Jewish library, a program for family education, as well as other aid and Jewish renewal programs for elderly and children at risk.
Israel, Vatican Closer to Resolving Differences
Israel and the Vatican appear to have moved closer to resolving financial and other outstanding issues that have clouded bilateral relations for years. A plenary session of the Bilateral Permanent Working Commission between the two states took place Tuesday at the Vatican. A statement said the plenary “welcomed the progress” accomplished by the commission’s working committee and had “agreed on the next steps towards conclusion of the Agreement.” It said the meeting took place in “an atmosphere of mutual understanding.” Israel and the Vatican signed an agreement establishing diplomatic relations at the end of 1993, but several financial issues, including tax exemptions and property rights for the Church, have remained unresolved despite years of fitful negotiations. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon headed the Israeli delegation at Tuesday’s meeting. Ayalon arrived in Rome Monday at the start of an official visit to the Vatican, Italy and France. An Israeli Foreign Ministry statement said one of Ayalon’s aims was to appeal for the implementation of national and European sanctions against Iran. EU Asked to Intervene in Dutch Anti-Semitism
In the wake of the desecration of a 280-year-old synagogue and other recent anti-Semitic incidents in the Netherlands, a Jewish group has asked the European Union to intervene. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in a letter issued Tuesday to EU Foreign Minister Baroness Catherine Ashton, requested the EU’s “intervention to investigate the rampant epidemic in anti-Semitic incidents in the Netherlands,” due in part to the current “political vacuum in the Netherlands following General Election.” “In addition to the synagogue desecrated with red spray-paint late last month, a commemoration ceremony for the last transport of 3,000 Jewish children deported to their death was disrupted by passing bikers shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ during the mourners’ Kaddish prayer; Hyves, known as the Dutch Facebook, has postings rife with calls ‘to murder all Jews’ and for ‘Adolf Hitler to finish the job’; the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel in the Hague reported receiving phone messages calling for ‘many gas chambers to be built’; and children from the Rosh Pina Jewish elementary school were continually abused during an organized walk through south Amsterdam,” in recent weeks, according to the letter from Shimon Samuels, the center’s director for international relations. Anti-Semitic incidents in the Netherlands reportedly grew by 64 percent in 2009, the center said. Anti-Semitism increased in the year 2009 throughout the world, according to reports. The center urged Ashton “to condemn such incidents and the climate they portend, to take measures to investigate their origin and to impress upon the, as yet, unformed new Dutch government, its responsibilities to the entire European Union to contain a scourge that will not end with the Jews.”
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