Red Lines Follow-Up: Meeting with Iceland’s Ambassador to the EU

January 10, 2019

Eja chairman Rabbi Margolin met this morning with Iceland’s new ambassador to the EU, Benelux countries and San Marino, HIs Excellency Mr Gunnar Palsson. In a friendly get to know you discussion, His Excellency offered to report back to his government on our Jewish Red Lines, and expressed his support and desire for greater co-operation and ties between the Icelandic Government and the small but significant Icelandic Jewish Community. The EJA very much looks forward to continuing this dialogue and co-operation with His Excellency. 

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Official Reply from Danish Minister for Health on the issue of the circumcision initiative

EJA is happy that common sense won and the Danish parliament stepped back from what could have been discriminatory legislation affecting the Jewish community in Denmark, thank you Minister of Health! 


Reply from the Minister for Health

The delegation of Jewish leaders of EJA

The delegation of Jewish leaders of EJA was excited to meet today as part of the solidarity visit to Israel Shira and Moshe, the parents of the late hero Aner Shapira, who on October 7 pushed 7 grenades thrown by Hamas terrorists into the bunker where they were hiding near Kibbutz Reim, calmly commanded the event and saved 11 Israelis. The leaders also met Jacob, Elkana’s brother who was kidnapped to Gaza and since then the family has had no information about him. The head of the delegation, the president of the Consistory in Paris Dr. Yoel Margi and the chairman of EJA, Rabbi Menachem Margolin announced a grant to support the family of abductees and gave to the new rehabilitation center of The Hadassah Mount Scopus is a hydraulic medical accessory that will speed up the healing procedures of the patients.

Bulgarian Synagogue and Halle Memorial Targeted in Anti-Semitic Attacks in Europe

Vandals struck a synagogue gate in Bulgaria and a monument to the victims of the shooting attack last Yom Kippur near a synagogue in Halle, Germany, in a spate of unrelated incidents last week in Europe, the JTA reported.
In Bulgaria, the words “Free Palestine Israel=Nazis Antifa Bulgaria” were spray-painted Wednesday on the gate to the synagogue of Plovdiv, a city situated about 100 miles southeast of the capital Sofia.
While in Germany, in Halle, a plexiglas panel on the monument of the shooting was smashed. The vandals also tried to set fire to a flag of Israel under the Plexiglas, the Jewish Community of Halle wrote Tuesday on their social media page.
Also in Germany, in a third incident, a structure inside the Jewish cemetery of the town of Krumbach, in southern Germany, was damaged. Police are treating the vandalism as an anti-Semitic case because earlier this year, a nearby picnic table was dismantled and the wooden polls comprising it rearranged on the floor in the shape of a swastika, the website AllgaeuRechtsaussen reported Monday.
Also Monday, metal thieves removed dozens of fences and railings from around tombstones at the Jewish cemetery of Babruysk in Belarus, the news Bobruisk.ru reported.
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Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a delegation of 50 parliamentarians will commemorate Babyn Yar massacre

The delegation is organized by the European Jewish Association (EJA) in partnership with the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine.

Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a delegation of around 100 people, including fifty members of Parliaments from several countries across Europe, will gather on Monday in Kiev, Ukraine, where one of the first and largest massacres occurred during World War II: the Babyn Yar massacre.
Also known as the ‘’Holocaust by Bullets’’, Babyn Yar, a location near Kiev where the Nazis shot around 100,000 people in plain sight, including almost the entire Jewish population of Kiev in the space of just two days on September 29-30, 1941.
The delegation is organized by the European Jewish Association (EJA) in partnership with the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine.
The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center is currently being built in order to immortalize the stories of the 2.5 million Jews of Eastern Europe, including 1.5 million in Ukraine alone, murdered and buried in mass graves near their homes during the Holocaust. Over the past year, a number of memorials have been erected at the site of the Holocaust-era massacre as part of the establishment of an innovative and expansive museum complex across the whole of the Babi Yar area. The establishment of the new center is being guided by public figures and leaders from around the world, chiefly Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.
‘’The delegation we bring to Babyn Yar will commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day by also introduced to aspects of the Holocaust that often go overlooked or whose memory has been suppressed,’’ said Alex Benjamin, Director of the European Jewish Association.
‘’Nazi forces and their collaborators attempted to cover every trace of the massacre. Soviet, and until recently post-Soviet authorities attempted to suppress any memorialization thereof,’’ noted Benjamin.
On Monday, a symposium will be used as an incubator for presenting, discovering, developing and establishing new and effective tools for sustained Holocaust education.
Delegation participants, especially parliamentarians, will be asked to adopt political action and take home best practices shared during the Kiev trip, and to advance public measures that will lead to effective Holocaust remembrance education and criminal prosecution mechanisms against Holocaust denial,
On Tuesday, the participants will visit the site of Babyn Yar where they will be introduced to the Babyn Yar Memorial Center, listen the testimony of a survivor and participate in a memorial ceremony.
The parliamentarian delegation comes at a time of growing tension between Ukraine and Russia.
https://ejpress.org/ahead-of-international-holocaust-remembrance-day-a-delegation-of-around-100-people-will-visit-babyn-yar/

Additional Communities
United Kingdom
Ukraine
Turkey
Schweiz
Switzerland
Sweden
Spain
Slovenia
Slovakia
Serbia
Russia