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This Romanian party called the Holocaust a ‘minor topic.’ Israel’s envoy just met with its leader.
(JTA) — Israel’s ambassador to Romania met with the leader of a right-wing political party there that Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, has denounced over past comments about the genocide and World War II.
On Monday, Ambassador Reuven Azar met in Bucharest with George Simion, president of the AUR party, and Yossi Dagan, the chairman of the Samaria Regional Council, an organization of Israeli settler leaders.
Some of AUR’s leaders have defended the record of historical figures who served in the regime of Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu — an ally of Hitler — or were part of the fiercely antisemitic Iron Guard, a revolutionary fascist movement. Last year, the nationalist AUR party issued a statement calling Holocaust education, which had been recently mandated in Romanian high schools, a “minor topic.”
Israel’s ambassador to Romania at the time, David Saranga, argued that the statement fell under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. “We are Christians, so we can’t be antisemites,” AUR member Claudiu Tarziu wrote in response.
Since then, Israel’s government has changed. According to the Times of Israel, lawmakers in the current, historically right-wing government have expressed a desire to rekindle relations with far-right governments across Europe.
Israel’s foreign ministry told the Times of Israel that it agreed to meet with Simion only after his party agreed to four things: that Romania holds responsibility for Jews who were killed in territory it held during World War II; that all parties should adopt the IHRA antisemitism definition; that the the glorification of war criminals, including Antonescu, should be condemned; and that Holocaust education should receive robust support.
Simion issued a statement that hit on those topics but did not support the government’s current Holocaust history curriculum, according to the Times of Israel. And instead of outright condemning Antonescu and Iron Guard figures, Simion wrote, “Romanian criminal legislation punishes severely any manifestations of support … for the war criminals or the members of the Iron Guard who took part to the Holocaust, including Ion Antonescu.”
Yad Vashem did not support Monday’s meeting. “In July, we notified the Foreign Ministry that in our view, the conditions justifying a meeting with the AUR party were not met,” the museum said in a statement. “Over the past few weeks, the Foreign Ministry hasn’t asked again for our opinion and hasn’t updated us on developments.”
Simion also accepted Dagan’s invitation to visit the West Bank. Israel’s i24 news channel reported that Dagan had worked with the foreign ministry for months to arrange the meeting.
Last fall, Israel’s foreign ministry said that it did not have any relations with AUR, after a group of lawmakers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party attended a conference hosted by the political party. And earlier this month, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen — who this week was chided after disclosing a meeting with his Libyan counterpart, sparking a crisis there — said a detente with the AUR party was “fake news.”
AUR shocked analysts in a 2020 election, earning 9% of the national vote by capitalizing on anger in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns. They are expected to grow in influence. A prominent figure in the party drew outrage — and distancing from Simion — after he praised an antisemitic fascist Romanian leader from the 1930s on primetime TV last year..
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The post This Romanian party called the Holocaust a ‘minor topic.’ Israel’s envoy just met with its leader. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.