Daily Archives: August 31, 2005

Police arrest three in Kiev beating

Three people were arrested Tuesday night in connection with the brutal Sunday beating of two yeshiva students in downtown Kiev, Army Radio reported.

One of two young Jewish men beaten in downtown Kiev on Sunday evening was reportedly in “very serious condition” on Monday, the latest victim of anti-Semitism in Ukraine.

The man was identified in an Israel Radio report as 28-year-old yeshiva student Mordechai Ben-Avraham and by Interfax as Mordekhay Molozhenov. According to one report, he and/or his colleague is an Israeli citizen.

American immigrant sets himself on fire in Jerusalem

A 30-year-old American immigrant set himself on fire outside his Jerusalem ulpan Wednesday, critically injuring himself, in protest over Israel’s pullout from Gaza, police and rescue officials said.

The single Jewish man, who moved to Israel last year and was studying Hebrew at the city’s popular ‘Ulpan Etzion,’ was gravely injured in the afternoon incident, suffering from first-degree burns on 70 percent of his body.

Communities open doors to New Orleans Jews

Adam Bronstone barely slept last night.

After evacuating New Orleans and heading west to Houston on Saturday to avoid Hurricane Katrina, he had a lot on his mind.

“You’re worried about where it’s going to hit,” said Bronstone, director of communications for the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. “You’re worried about the place you live in; the place you work; the synagogue I go to, which is near the lake; the federation office, which is on a beautiful campus that’s only three years old and is also near the lake. I worry about where I’m going to be next week.”

Jewish cemetery in Berlin decayed

Berlin officials have backed a movement to have the city`s Jewish cemetery declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The 104-acre Weissensee cemetery has become so overgrown with ivy that many areas are difficult to get to, Deutsche Welle reports. Gravestones have fallen over, and inscriptions are almost illegible from weathering on many of them.

Iraqi Jews to demand compensation for lost assets

Leaders of the Iraqi Jewish community from around the world are to meet soon in London to plan a strategy to demand compensation for lost assets, potentially in the billions of dollars, from the Iraqi government, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Two meetings have been scheduled for September 18 and 19 to discuss the demands of the Jews from Arab countries and to bring to the forefront a political swap.

Iraqi-born Jew Mordechai Ben-Porat, chairman of Israel’s Center for the Heritage of Babylonian Jewry, organized the first meeting.

Committee hears from evacuees in Jerusalem

The State Comptroller’s Committee is asking the government and the Disengagement Authority to improve its treatment of the Gaza Strip evacuees.

“There’s a long list of problems, some of them grave, that need immediate attention,” said committee chairman MK Meli Polishook-Bloch (Shinui).

From the family that had to wait for more than four hours – in the middle of the night – for a key to their hotel room, to the family that didn’t know when their son’s remains would be dug up from the Neveh Dekalim graveyard, committee members on Tuesday heard an array of complaints from the evacuees.