World News in Brief

JTA

And Joel Lion, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, wrote a letter on 13 June to Oleksandr Shamota, the acting mayor of the town, demanding that the plans be abandoned. Lion noted that Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and research institution, determined the location of the mass graves based on multiple testimonies.

German anti-Semitic attacks

An orthodox rabbi and a 20-year-old man, both wearing kippahs, were subjected to anti-Semitic slurs in separate incidents in Germany earlier this week.

In Dusseldorf, Rabbi Chaim Barkahn told the German news agency DPA that he was insulted with anti-Semitic slurs and followed on the street, before ducking into a community centre.

Barkahn said it was his first such experience in a city in which he has lived and served the Jewish community for 18 years.

In Berlin, in the Prenzlauer Berg district, perpetrators allegedly tried to spit on a young man.

In Berlin, the number of anti-Semitic incidents has increased about 14% since last year. One in five reported incidents have occurred in the nation’s capital.

Kosher outlet caught selling treif

The main outlet for kosher food in Liverpool, England, has been caught selling non-kosher meat and poultry.

Rabbi Natan Fagleman of the Liverpool Kashrut Commission said in a letter to residents that “serious breaches of kashrut have taken place at Roseman’s Delicatessen”.

The letter called on the store’s patrons not to use “all utensils that have ever been used to cook meat/poultry bought at Roseman’s” and to throw out all food bearing the Liverpool Kashrut Commission symbol.

The rabbi said that synagogue and communal kitchens were being restored to kosher status, and that he would soon advise on koshering homes, including ovens.

Roseman’s reportedly denied rumours earlier this year that it was closing down.

Victory in school massacre lawsuit

The father of a victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre has won a defamation lawsuit against the authors of a book that denied the 2012 shooting took place.

Lenny Pozner, whose six-year-old son Noah was the youngest victim in the attack by a lone gunman at the Connecticut school, filed the suit against publisher Moon Rock Books and the authors of Nobody Died at Sandy Hook. The publisher said it would no longer sell the book.

A Wisconsin judge ruled on Monday that Pozner had been defamed by authors James Fetzer and Mike Palacek. A trial to decide damages has been set for October.

The book claimed that Noah’s death certificate had been faked, the child didn’t exist, and that Pozner and the parents of the other victims were “crisis actors”.

New Zealand website omits Israel

Immigration New Zealand, an official government website, published a fact sheet with a map of the Middle East that showed “Palestine”, but not Israel.

Following a barrage of complaints on social media, the web page was removed, though screenshots remain.

The Israel Institute of New Zealand called for a retraction of the map. “This is incredibly offensive, and the equivalent of New Zealand Immigration displaying a map of the United Kingdom which removes Scotland and Wales, and refers to the entirety of the British Isles as England,” said the institute’s director, Ashley Church.

The fact sheet also identified East Jerusalem as “the designated capital of the state of Palestine”.

Quebec bans kippahs, turbans, hijabs

Quebec passed a so-called secularism law on Sunday that bans certain public employees – teachers, judges and police officers, among them – from wearing religious symbols including kippahs, turbans and hijabs at work.

Critics say the real target of the legislation is the Muslim community, and that the new law abrogates Canadian human-rights charters by invoking an override clause. Defenders say the law is in keeping with the promotion of secular neutrality by the state, and will promote harmony in the province.

Some Jewish-majority municipalities have passed motions promising never to enforce the law.