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