Many Jewish schools in the UK will be forced to tear up their entry rules after the admissions policy of the largest school, JFS, was today ruled racially discriminatory. Sir Philip in TV deal with Cowell Conservative leader David Cameron wooed the Jewish community in four separate encounters this week. Iran’s regime has chosen to shamelessly fix the elections. Of all the women you might pick to star in a sensitive film about the Holocaust, Britney Spears is unlikely to top the list. But the controversial singer, whose private life is frequently all over the tabloids, is rumoured to have been offered the leading role in a new Holocaust film. Reports in the US suggest she will appear in The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton, which may start filming in North America later this year. Britney’s character, Sophia, builds a time machine and travels back to the Second World War, where she meets Eton, a Jewish prisoner of a death camp. Sarah Jessica Parker, aka Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, and her actor husband Matthew Broderick have twin daughters via a surrogate mother, the couple’s publicists have announced. Parker, 44, and Broderick, 47, who already have a six-year-old son, James Wilkie, have named their daughters Marion Loretta Elwell and Tabitha Hodge. The babies were born on Monday in Ohio, home state of the surrogate mother. "The babies are doing beautifully and the entire family is over the moon," the couple said in a statement. WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, launched a Hebrew website this week, in order to “present Israelis with another view of what is happening on the other side.” WAFA is based in the PA offices in Ramallah but Faiz Abbas, an Israeli who resigned from Yediot in 2006, edits the website from his home in the Galilee. Ma’an, the independent Palestinian news agency, set up a Hebrew website in 2005 but failed to attract many readers. Editor Abbas believes that his new website will be more successful. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is confirmed as the next Iranian president despite the protests against the regime this week, analysts predict even more strident policies towards Israel and the wider region than had he won straight. “If the regime wins, it will be more self-confident, more defiant,” said Tel Aviv University Iran specialist Meir Litvak. “It would mean a further boost to radical forces in the region.” He noted that the leaders of Hamas and Hizbollah were among the first to congratulate Mr Ahmadinejad when his victory was declared. As increasing numbers of Americans choose cremation, a national organisation of liberal burial societies is trying to promote burial among the non-Orthodox. “We’re going on the positive offensive rather than the negative ‘don’t get cremated’ route,” said Rabbi Stuart Kelman, president of Kavod v’Nichum, a North American consortium of burial societies. The prospect of civil marriage in Israel is receding, but civil burial became easier with the opening of the country’s second state civil cemetery. Administered by a non-governmental organisation called Menucha Nechona (Proper Rest), the new facility, in Kfar Saba, will accommodate people of all religions and none. Burial rituals will be a matter of personal choice, as will be the style of burial. Coffins, though unusual in Israel, may be used. There is only one other state civil cemetery; in Be’er Sheba in the Negev. Could Barack Obama’s election to the presidency be behind a rise in anti-Jewish activity in the US? This is the theory being advanced by experts on extremism, who say that membership of anti-Jewish groups has grown since he became the country’s first African-American president. Members of these groups seem to believe that the Jews are behind his election, and that Mr Obama and the Jews are plotting to destroy white people. Two men who were refused political asylum in America after being convicted in Britain of publishing racially inflammatory material on the internet appeared at Leeds Crown Court on Wednesday afternoon. Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle fled to California. They were sent home on Tuesday, 11 months after jumping bail while the jury in their trial were part-way through returning their verdicts. A Charedi rabbi is considering whether to take his fight against extradition to America to the House of Lords after a legal defeat on Wednesday. Avrum Friesel, 56, moved to Stamford Hill in 1999. He had been wanted in America on fraud charges allegedly committed in the late 1980s and early 1990s when he was town clerk of the New Square Town in New York, a Chasidic community belonging to the Skverer sect. War on Want has been accused of inciting hatred by planning an event presenting Israel as an apartheid state. Pro-Israel groups have attacked the anti-poverty charity’s “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide” evening taking place in Tower Hamlets, east London, on July 9. It is to feature a question-and-answer session with Ben White, a freelance writer and author of a book of the same title.
BREAKING NEWS
Jewish school entry policies are unlawful, court rules
Cameron: I’ll defend you from hatred
Now Iran will get more aggressive abroad
Britney Spears to star in Holocaust film
Surrogate baby joy for Sarah Jessica Parker
PA starts site in Ivrit
Israel fears an even more radical Iran
Rabbis fight cremations in US
More Israelis can opt for civil burials
Museum shooting blamed on... Obama
Racist duo are sent back to UK
Rabbi faces extradition over ‘fraud’
Charity plans ‘Apartheid Israel’ forum
Thursday, 25 June 2009
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