world
5773 continued from page 93
Over the course of months, the change in
status in the United Nations proves largely
irrelevant.
DECEMBER 2012
After months of occasional cross-border
fire on the Golan Heights, including errant
Syrian and rebel shells landing in Israel,
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says
the Syrian government is violating a 1974
disengagement agreement with Israel by
deploying military equipment and troops
over the cease-fire line.
Ahmed Ferhani, 27, an Algerian immi-
grant living in New York, pleads guilty to
planning to blow up synagogues in New
York City.
In a case that ignites passions in the
Orthodox community in Brooklyn, Satmar
chasid Nechemya Weberman, an unli-
censed therapist, is found guilty on 59
counts of sexual abuse. Days later, a cha-
sidic assailant throws bleach in the face of
a community rabbi, Nuchem Rosenberg,
who advocates for victims of sex abuse. In
January, Weberman is sentenced to 103
years in prison.
German lawmakers pass a bill enshrin-
ing the right to ritual circumcision but
regulating how circumcisions are to be
conducted. The law displaces a ban on
Jewish ritual circumcision imposed by a
court in Cologne in June.
Yeshiva University President Richard
Joel apologizes for alleged instances of
sexual misconduct and harassment by two
former faculty members — Rabbis George
Finkelstein and Macy Gordon — at the
university's high school more than two
decades earlier.
Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the leader of
one of London's largest congregations and
a former chief rabbi of Ireland, is named
Britain's chief rabbi-designate. This fall he
is to succeed Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who
has served in the post since 1991.
Numerous Jewish groups call for stricter
gun control regulations after a gunman
kills 20 first-graders and six adults in
Newtown, Conn. The youngest victim is a
6-year-old Jewish boy, Noah Pozner.
New York businessman Jacob Ostreicher,
who has been jailed in Bolivia without
charges for 18 months, is released on bail
but still barred from leaving the country. A
Orthodox father of five and grandfather of
11 from Brooklyn, Ostreicher was arrested
in June 2011 by Bolivian police over alle-
gations that he did business with drug
traffickers and money launderers.
A Paris court orders Twitter to monitor
and disclose the identities of users from
France who posted anti-Semitic com-
ments online, including Holocaust denials.
Twitter later appeals the decision but loses,
and the U.S.-based company complies with
the demand in July.
NOVEMBER
Clockwhite from top left:
The Iron Dome defense
system firing missiles to
intercept incoming rockets
from Gaza in the port town
of Ashdod, Nov. 15, 2012.
Moscow's Jewish Museum
and Tolerance Center
Delmon Young
Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas
addressing the U.N. General
Assembly, Sept. 25, 2012.
Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu show-
ing a cartoonish diagram
of a bomb during his
address to the U.N. General
Assembly, Sept. 27, 2012.
Palestinians celebrating
in the West Bank city of
Ramallah after the U.N.
General Assembly voted
to recognize Palestine as
a non-member observer
state, November 2012.
Palestinian boys walk-
ing through the rubble of
destroyed buildings follow-
ing Israeli airstrikes on the
southern Gaza Strip town
of Rafah, Nov. 18, 2012.
A ZAKA volunteer going
FINAL STAG
2" STAGE
STAGE
through the wrecked apart-
70%
ment in Kiryat Malachi of
the three people killed by
a rocket fired by terrorists
from the Gaza Strip, Nov.
15, 2012.
94 August 29 • 2013