IDF Ensemble to perform December 13 concert at Beth Am

SAN DIEGO–A musical ensemble of the Israel Defense Forces will perform at 7 p.m. Sunday, December 13, at Congregation Beth Am, 5050 Del Mar Heights Road, San Diego.

Theme of the performance is “Celebrate Our Soldiers and the music of Israel and  Chanukah.”
The concert also will honor Israel activists Dan and Nina Brodsky, with a 6 a.m. VIP reception preceding.

Tickets range from $10 up to donor levels for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.  More information call 858-652-0637.

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Preceding provided by Friends of the Israel Defense Forces

‘Young Girl in a Blue Dress’ returned to Holocaust victim

BRUSSELS (Press Release) – An early 20th century painting of a young girl with her pet rabbit by famous Belgian artist Antoine (Anto) Carte is back in the hands of its subject 69 years after it was stolen by the Nazis. On Dec. 1, at the Jewish Museum of Belgium, the Kingdom of Belgium and the United States government returned the painting to the owner, who does not wish to be named.

Her family commissioned her portrait by a family friend. The painting was located by the Art Loss Register, an international database of lost and stolen art, antiques and collectibles, and recovered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) New York Office of Investigations.

“Jeune Fille à la Robe Bleue” was created in 1932 and displayed at the family’s winter home in Ohain, Belgium, before being stolen by the Nazis during World War II. The child depicted in the portrait fled Brussels with her family during the Nazi Occupation and survived the war in the Belgian countryside.

The family’s abandoned apartment in Brussels was looted in 1944 and five oil paintings, including the Anto Carte portrait, disappeared. In 1946, the family filed a claim for their missing paintings at the Belgian office for looted art and the portrait was published in the “Repertoire des biens spoliés,” a listing of Belgian war losses.

The painting did not re-surface until 1990, where it was sold by Christie’s auction house in London to a buyer in the United States. In November 2008, ICE received information from the Art Loss Register that led ICE investigators and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to a Long Island art gallery owned by Andre Sakhai. Sakhai was informed that the painting had been stolen by the Nazis and that it was registered in several stolen art databases. Sakhai cooperated in forfeiting the painting, valued at about $15,000.

“ICE is committed to recovering all pieces of art and other culturally significant artifacts stolen during World War II and returning them to their rightful owners,” said Raymond R. Parmer, Jr., director of the ICE Office of International Affairs. “We work with our law enforcement partners around the world to bring these cases home.”

“The United States is extremely pleased to return this looted art six decades after it was stolen from its rightful owner in Belgium during World War II. The painting traveled the world before ICE located it earlier this year at a gallery in New York. The United States is committed to working with our foreign counterparts in joint efforts to ensure that all looted works of art are repatriated to their rightful owner. This repatriation would not have been possible if not for the outstanding collaboration between United States and Belgian authorities,” said Howard Gutman, U.S. Ambassador to Belgium.

“Over 70 years ago, the Nazis began their reign of terror which included the theft of precious artwork and cultural property throughout Europe,” said Benton J. Campbell, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “It is a privilege to play a role in returning this painting to the same family that was victimized so long ago at the hands of a brutal regime.”

ICE, the largest investigative agency of the Department of Homeland Security, has a special unit known as the Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities program, which coordinates such investigations from the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center in Virginia. The unit is part of the Department of State’s Holocaust Art Recovery Working Group.

For more about ICE’s cultural heritage investigations, please go to: http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/index.htm.

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Preceding provided by the Department of Homeland Security

Iranian terror cells reportedly infiltrating Latin America

BUENOS AIRES (wjc)–Alberto Nisman, the Argentinean prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires warned of Iran’s growing terror network in Latin America. “The Iranians are moving fast. We see a much greater penetration than we did in 1994,” Nisman told a conference of the American Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

He said that Iran, particularly through Hezbollah, now had a growing presence in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, using techniques it honed in Argentina before the country took steps against Iran.

Nisman spoke of sham operations involving taxi drivers, who conducted surveillance without arousing suspicion, fake medical school students who could stay in the country for many years without raising eyebrows, and business fronts that helped funnel cash to operatives.

Iranians cultivated ties at the local mosques to search for people who could be radicalized. Today, he said, Argentina was considered a “hostile environment” for Iran, but the Iranian terrorist groups were finding fertile ground in other Latin American countries. “The stronger element that happens today is the complicity of the government,” he said, pointing to the networks Iran develops through its embassies. “We know that [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chávez allows Hezbollah to come in.”

Nisman said there were “too many countries in Europe that continue to turn a blind eye … like with the Nazis.” He called on these countries to refuse to welcome Iranian leaders to international forums like the United Nations until they adhere to the Interpol-backed warrants and hand over the men wanted by Argentina in connection with the AMIA bombing. “Iran will not long be able to resist,” he contended. “It cannot fight against the entire world.”

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

Ivan Demjanjuk trial delayed until December 21

MUNICH (WJC)– The trial of suspected Nazi death camp guard Ivan Demjanjuk has been suspended until 21 December because the defendant is too sick to come to court, according to doctors. The 89-year-old Ukrainian is charged of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at the Sobibor death camp.

Judge Ralph Alt said in a court statement that Demjanjuk had a high fever which had continued to rise despite medication. Doctors who examined him, two hours before the court hearing in Munich was about to continue, said he had an unidentified infection and a fever.

Demjanjuk’s lawyers have repeatedly called for the trial to be abandoned because of their client’s ill health. He is believed to have a serious bone marrow disease. The trial is limited to just two 90-minute sessions a day, and Demjanjuk has spent much of the time so far under a blanket on a hospital stretcher. The trial is expected to last until May 2010.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, expressed his frustration with the delay. “He should have gone to Hollywood, not Sobibor,” he said.

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

Report that Gilad Shalit has been transferred to Egypt

KUWAIT CITY (Press release) –A Kuwaiti newspaper reports that the captive Israel soldier Gilad Shalit is already in Egypt accompanied by the head of the Hamas-led Al Qassam Brigades, in preparation for a prisoner exchange with Israel. The paper claims that Shalit was moved to Egypt several days ago and is being kept in a secret place guarded by Egyptian security men. Shalit was kidnapped on Israeli territory by Hamas operatives in June 2006.

Israel’s President Shimon Peres said that the prisoner exchange was delayed because of disagreements within Hamas. He told students at a kibbutz that “as long as Hamas is arguing within itself, there will be a problem. The price the government agreed to is high and difficult to implement. Shalit has become a symbol of the youth and the State. We should not issue statements all the time because they disrupt the negotiations. The government is working wholeheartedly and responsibly to bring him home.”

According the Palestinian newspaper ‘Al-Ayam’, a deal still hinges on the question of 15 Palestinian prisoners who Hamas wants Israel to include in the nearly 1,000 prisoners to be freed in exchange for Shalit. Among the contentious prisoners are Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Secretary-General Ahmad Saadat; the convicted killer of Israeli teenager Ofir Nahum, Amana Muna, and two other female prisoners who aided suicide bombers. The other ten controversial names are senior Hamas leaders.

Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman ruled out freeing one of the Palestinians’ most popular leaders in exchange for Shalit. “I can guarantee you that Barghouti will not be released,” Lieberman said in a radio interview. “We have no intention of releasing him because he is not just a murderer, he is a king of murderers.”

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

Anti-Semitism injected into Puerto Rican environmental battle

NEW YORK (Press Release)– Anti-Semitism has been injected into a public debate over a proposed monkey-breeding facility in Puerto Rico, with some opponents accusing “Jewish economic interests” of attempting to destroy the island’s environment.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Thursday expressed solidarity with the Jewish community of Puerto Rico, which has faced boycott and protest threats since the false allegations first surfaced in local newspapers earlier this week.

“Regardless of whether one supports or opposes plans for the primate facility in Guayama, it is simply inexcusable to attempt to use the Jewish community in Puerto Rico as a scapegoat,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “We know these views do not represent those of the vast majority of Puerto Ricans. When an entire Jewish community is blamed for something that is not of their making nor of their control, that is anti-Semitism.”

On November 30 an activist opposed to the monkey-breeding facility was prominently quoted in a local newspaper suggesting that an “Israeli company” was developing the facility as part of a campaign of “ethnic discrimination” and “genocide” aimed at the island population. The activist, Robert Brito, called on Puerto Ricans to boycott locally owned Jewish businesses and synagogues, both on the island territory and in the U.S., in an effort to stop the facility from opening. To date, no actual protests against the Jewish community have been reported.

In published articles in Primera Hora and the Daily Sun, Brito blamed “Jewish economic interests” for past environmental incidents, including a fire at a petroleum plant.  “This is a concerted action by Jewish economic interests,” he said of the proposed primate facility. “This invention of bringing a facility for wild monkeys from Israel to Guayama constitutes ethnic discrimination against Puerto Ricans who live in Guayama.”

Bioculture Ltd., with facilities at 19 sites around the world, has secured construction permits and hopes to begin operating the breeding facility next summer in Guayama. According to published reports, the company is based in the African island nation of Mauritius.

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Preceding provided by Anti-Defamation Leaague