World News in Brief

JTA

It is one of the first and largest early Bronze Age settlements excavated in Israel, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which announced the discovery on Sunday.

“This is the early Bronze Age New York of our region; a cosmopolitan and planned city where thousands of inhabitants lived,” said Itai Elad, Yitzhak Paz, and Dina Shalem, the directors of the excavation.

The excavations have been in progress for 2.5 years. Deeper excavations found that the ancient city was built over an even more ancient 7 000-year-old settlement.

Hundreds of etrogs detained at UK airport

Hundreds of etrogs, the citron fruit used for the holiday of Sukkot, were seized at an airport in England.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency held up the shipment at Manchester Airport at the end of last month under new and stricter regulations on the import of citrus fruit. Etrog importers were unaware of the new rules, the London-based Jewish Chronicle reported.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews worked with the department for the environment, food and rural affairs to have the 600 etrogs taken to a Manchester synagogue where the stalks could be trimmed to meet the stricter rules, the board reported.

Board President Marie van der Zyl said the board’s “timely intervention” had “potentially saved Sukkot”.

Golda Meir’s Yom Kippur letter discovered

A letter of condolence to bereaved Israeli families written by then Prime Minister Golda Meir on the eve of the Yom Kippur War has been discovered, and will be auctioned in Jerusalem in December.

On the eve of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, she sent a letter, dated October 5, to bereaved families in which she wrote, “Your pain is the pain of the entire nation … Our main concern is achieving peace for Israel. The memory of our loved ones motivates us to do anything in our power so that there be no more casualties, and we know no more bereavement.”

A day later, the Yom Kippur War broke out, claiming the lives of 2 500 Israeli soldiers.

Maron Aran, an owner of Kedem, said the letter “evokes, more than anything else could, the tragedy that the state of Israel suffered 46 years ago”.

Sister of slain Ethiopian teen makes aliyah

The sister of Solomon Tekah, the Ethiopian-Israeli teenager shot in July by an off-duty police officer, has immigrated to Israel.

Masrat Warika and her two young children landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday evening. About 8000 Ethiopian Jews are waiting to be brought to Israel.

Her arrival was arranged in part by Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, who told Israeli media that he began working to bring her to Israel after he visited the Tekah shiva home and learned of her plight.

Her arrival came hours after Haaretz reported that the police officer who shot the 19-year-old Tekah in a suburban Haifa park will probably be indicted for negligent homicide. He could face up to three years in prison.

Palestinian Authority censures Israel in textbooks

The Palestinian Authority has removed information about agreements signed with Israel from its textbooks, according to Israeli nongovernmental organisation IMPACT-se (the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education).

The only signed agreement still mentioned in books studied by students in the West Bank and Gaza from first grade through high school is the 1993 Oslo Accords.

The 2019 textbooks do not include the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s call for “coexistence”, “peace” and nonviolence with Israel, which appeared in the old version of the curriculum.

The new curriculum also removes a substantial amount of information formerly provided to Palestinian students about the ancient Jewish history of “Palestine” and the Jewish presence and connection to Jerusalem.