ROUNDUP

Jew On Fatah Council
Jerusalem/JTA — A former Israeli Jew was
elected to the Palestinian Fatah Party's
governing body. Uri Davis, 66, a sociology
professor at Al-Quds University in eastern
Jerusalem, is the first Jew ever to become
a member of the Revolutionary Council.
Elections were held last week during
Fatah's sixth party congress, its first in 20
years. The official list of winners of elec-
tions to the Revolutionary Council was
published Saturday.
Davis was among more than 600 candi-
dates for 80 open spots on the 128-mem-
ber governing body. At least 70 of the seats
were taken by new members; 20 come
from Gaza, 11 are women and four are
Christians.
Davis received Palestinian citizenship
after waiving his Israeli citizenship in the
1980s in protest over Israel's policies in
Gaza and the West Bank.

Ancient Temple's Remains
Istanbul/JTA — The remains of a cen-
turies-old Jewish temple were found on
the southern coast of Turkey. Excavations
have revealed the first evidence of a
Jewish presence in the ancient port city
of Andriake in Lycia, now located in
southern Turkey, the Turkish daily Zaman
reported on Aug. 11.
The find was unexpected and has cre-
ated a buzz in the archaeology commu-
nity."To encounter remnants of Jewish
culture for the first time has caused great
excitement:' said site chief Nevzat Cevik,
an archaeology professor at Akdeniz
University. "We're adding another layer to
what we know of Lycian culture. Now that
we know that there was a Jewish presence
in Lycia as well we can follow this path
and better understand other finds."

Affair With Madoff?
New York/JTA — A former chief financial
officer at Hadassah is claiming that she
had an affair with Bernard Madoff. Sheryl
Weinstein reportedly makes the claim
in her book Madoff's Other Secret: Love,
Money, Bernie, and Me, which is set to be
published Aug. 25 by St. Martin's Press.
Weinstein, an accountant, has said pre-
viously that she lost her family's savings
by investing with Madoff and claimed
to have first met the confessed swindler
when working at Hadassah. The Jewish
women's organization has said that it
invested $40 million with Madoff from
1988 to 1997. By the time federal authori-
ties exposed the Ponzi scheme last year,
Hadassah believed the value of the portfo-
lio had grown to $90 million, not includ-
ing $130 million that it had pulled out
over the years.
Both Weinstein and Hadassah have said

that the first $7 million the organization
invested with Madoff in 1988 came from a
donor who insisted the money be handled
that way. Hadassah invested another $33
million with Madoff by 1996, the year
before Weinstein left the organization.
Hadassah continued to maintain a port-
folio with Madoff after Weinstein's depar-
ture, but never put additional money into
the account, according to the organization.
Weinstein served on the Hadassah corn-
mittee that decided to invest with Madoff,
but a spokesperson for the organization
said she was one of many members on the
committee. According to the spokesper-
son, the organization did not know of the
alleged affair during Weinstein's tenure at
the organization, and her departure was
unrelated to Madoff. Hadassah is "mov-
ing on" from Madoff, the spokesperson
said, noting that the organization recently
received a $1 million gift and is close to
securing two more.

Warning: Leave Sinai
Jerusalem/JTA — Israel warned its
citizens to leave the Sinai Peninsula. The
Counter-Terrorism Bureau in the Prime
Minister's Office also warned Israelis to
cancel travel to Jordan. The warnings
are for now as well as the High Holidays
in September, when many Israelis travel
to Red Sea resorts and other regional
destinations. The bureau is concerned
that Hezbollah will try to kidnap Israelis
visiting the Sinai, or traveling anywhere in
the world, in retaliation for the February
2008 assassination of security chief Imad
Mughniyeh, which it blames on Israel.
Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and
Jordan.
The advisory also warned of a very seri-
ous concrete threat in Iran, Iraq, Sudan,
Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen and
Afghanistan. The bureau warned against
travel to Kenya and Morocco. Countries
considered a serious concrete threat
include Algeria, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia,
Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan.

Nazi Sentenced
Berlin/JTA — A former Nazi lieutenant
was sentenced to life in prison for order-
ing the murder of Italian civilians in
June 1944. Josef Scheungraber was found
guilty on Aug. 11 by a Munich court of
10 of the 14 murders for which he had
been charged. The 90-year-old former
Wehrmacht lieutenant had been living for
decades in a town outside Munich, where
he served on the town council.
The trial was one of several recent cases
in which German courts are trying to
bring to justice aging perpetrators.
Preparations also are under way to
try alleged Nazi war criminals John

Demjanjuk and Heinrich Boere. Both
elderly men reportedly will require the
presence of doctors in the courtroom.
Scheungraber, already sentenced in
absentia to life in prison in Italy in 2006,
was found guilty of ordering that villagers
from Falzano, Tuscany, be murdered after
partisans killed two of his men. Three
civilians, including an elderly woman,
were shot in the street, and all but one of
the others was burned alive when explo-
sives were set off in a barn.
The sole survivor, Gino Massetti, then
15, testified at the trial.

Annotated Mein Kampf

Berlin/JTA — A German Jewish leader
has endorsed publication of an annotated
edition of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf The
Institute for Contemporary History in
Munich applied for permission to reprint
the work, which institute director Horst
Moller once called an "effective piece of
drivel."
Hitler had left the printing rights to
the state of Bavaria, where he wrote Mein
Kampf while in prison in 1924. Bavaria
has banned its publication in Germany
and prevented the work elsewhere. The
copyright expires in 2015, 70 years after
Hitler's death.
Bavarian authorities said they would
not lift the ban out of concern that right-
wingers could legally use the work. Horst
Wolf, spokesman for the state's Ministry of
Finance, told reporters that the "prohibi-
tion is recognized and highly regarded
by Jewish groups, and we mean to keep it
that way."
But Stephan Kramer, general secretary
of the Central Council of Jews in Germany,
told ZDF television on Aug. 5 that it made
sense to publish the book, "to prevent
neo-Nazis from profiting from it" and
to "remove many of its false, persistent
myths."
The argument has surfaced frequently
of late. In June, the Bavarian minister of
science and research said he favored a
"decently prepared and well-grounded
critical edition" lest "charlatans and neo-
Nazis could seize this disgraceful work
when Bavaria's rights run out." In 2004,
German Jewish author Rafael Seligmann
said readers in Germany should see for
themselves the seeds of Hitler's genocidal
plans.
In 2008, Kramer said the Central
Council would gladly help prepare an
annotated edition, including for an autho-
rized Internet publication. Unauthorized
versions are available now on far-right and
Islamic extremist Web sites based outside
Germany. Germany bans the public dis-
play of Nazi symbols and hate material,
including on the Internet.

Beach Beating Death

Tel Aviv/JTA — Ten people were arrested
in the beating death of a man on a north
Tel Aviv beach.
Eight of the alleged assailants are Israeli
Arabs from Jaljulya and two are Jewish
women, including a 19-year old soldier
who reportedly spent the evening with the
men. Several of the suspects are minors.
Aryeh Karp, 59, was with his wife
and 24-year old daughter on a bench at
the beach Friday night when they were
surrounded and attacked. The women
escaped. The attackers allegedly threw an
unconscious Karp into the sea.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and Public Security Minister Yitzhak
Aharonovitch agreed "to strengthen
municipal policing and the local police
because the ability to perpetrate these
crimes against Israeli citizens will decline
dramatically if more police are deployed on
the ground."

Holocaust Extent Hidden?
Rome/JTA — The United States and
British governments suppressed informa-
tion about the extent of the Holocaust, the
Vatican's official newspaper charged.
The newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano,
also slammed Allied governments in
World War II for deliberately failing to act
to stop the systematic killing of Europe's
Jews despite having detailed informa-
tion about the Nazi plans to exterminate
European Jewry, according to a lengthy
article published Aug. 13.
The article quoted a 1948 essay pub-
lished in the Italian Jewish journal
Rassegna Mensile d'Israel that was based
on the diary of Henry Morgenthau Jr., the
U.S. treasury secretary. Morgenthau wrote,
according to the article, that "the incapac-
ity, indolence and bureaucratic delays of
America impeded saving thousands of
Hitler's victims." He added that the British
foreign minister "was more concerned
about politics than of human charity."
Morgenthau was quoted as writing that
"we in Washington" knew that the Nazis
"had planned to exterminate all the Jews
of Europe" since August 1942, but added,
"for about 18 months from receiving the
first reports of this horrible Nazi plan, the
State Department did practically nothing."
Instead, Morgenthau wrote, its officials
"dodged their grim responsibility, pro-
crastinated when concrete rescue schemes
were placed before them, and even sup-
pressed information about atrocities."
The American Gathering of Jewish
Holocaust Survivors and Their
Descendants called the article a "distor-
tion of history" and said it was part of a
"shameless campaign" to justify sainthood
for Pius.

August 20 • 2009 21