News Brief

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JTA has upgraded its Rich Site Summary (RSS) feed service.The upgrade is an effort to provide superior quality syndication feeds to our Internet readers.Those now using JTA’s RSS feed service should update their feed URLs to the following locations: Breaking News: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jta/breaking-news North America: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jta/north-america Middle East: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jta/middle-east Europe/FSU: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jta/europe-fsu Politics: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jta/politics Jewish Life: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jta/jewish-life Arts & Culture: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jta/arts-culture For those who would like to learn more about RSS feeds and how to use them to keep up-to-date with JTA’s latest headlines, visit http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/feed101.

Swastikas were among the anti-Semitic vandalism scrawled in a Brooklyn spree. Vandals in the New York City borough hit two synagogues, three private homes and two cars in Brooklyn Heights. The graffiti were found Monday night, two nights before the start of the Sukkot holiday. Police had not identified any suspects. A police task force is investigating the vandalism as a possible hate crime, the New York Sun reported.

President Bush called on the United Nations to uphold the fight for freedom and decried “brutal regimes” such as Syria and Iran.

Bush also said in his address Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly that mainstream Palestinian leaders are working to fight terror, enforce the rule of law and assist their people, and should be supported to “advance the vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security”.

The president also announced U.S .sanctions against Myanmar, formerly Burma, and called on the United Nations to send troops to the Darfur region of Sudan.

Though he noted Iran as a brutal regime, Bush made scant mention of that country or the war in Iraq.

Bush expressed his “disappointment” with the U.N. Human Rights Council, which he said ignored real human rights abuses in other countries “while focusing its criticism excessively on Israel.”

The United Nations should reform the structure of the Security Council, he said, and expand its membership to countries such as Japan.

The Cuban delegation walked out when Bush called for the end of the reign of “cruel dictators”.

One of Israel’s largest banks cut off business ties with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Bank Hapoalim announced Tuesday it is no longer doing business in Gaza, which the Olmert government branded a “hostile territory” last week, triggering economic sanctions.

Hapoalim was one of two Israeli banks handling transactions for Palestinians in Gaza. The cutoff brings many of the territory’s 1.5 million residents closer to insolvency, though Israel has vowed to ensure that humanitarian services are not impacted by the sanctions.

The second Israeli bank with ties to Gaza, Israel Discount Bank, has yet to issue a decision.

Israel’s sanctions are part of an escalated response to persistent cross-border rocket salvos from Gaza, which the Hamas administration has either abetted or ignored.

A protest against the Iraq war in Prague’s Jewish Quarter is really a neo-Nazi march, a Czech group says.

The planned march by the Young National Democrats is really a front for the extreme right National Resistance, which got municipal approval for a demonstration on Nov. 10, the 69th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Tolerance and Civil Society group has told the Czech press.

The group said the march is being led by one of the country’s most active neo-Nazis.

The march organizers told city hall they expected some 150 participants. Counter-demonstrators in Prague for such events typically far outnumber nationals and extremists.

A new Holocaust monument was unveiled Tuesday in Ukraine.

The monument is located in the village of Loev in western Ukraine, where the Nazis and local collaborators killed more than 2,000 Jews in September 1941.

Its construction was initiated and funded by parliament member Aleksandr Feldman, president of the Jewish Foundation of Ukraine, with the assistance of the local administration.

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Syria reportedly intends to stay away from the U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace conference.

The Bush administration said Sunday that it would invite Syrian and other Arab representatives to the parley on Palestinian statehood expected in November. That raised the prospect of Israeli-Syrian talks being held, albeit indirectly, under Washington’s aegis.

But Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday that Syria will likely shun the event given suspicions in Damascus that Israel and the United States do not seek substantive diplomatic progress. The Arabs want Israel to make concrete concessions to the Palestinians, while Israel wants a more general declaration of principles for peace.

“Syria attaches more importance to the content than the formalities,” a senior Syrian official told the daily. “We have no interest in going just to have our photos taken.”

Marwan Barghouti is the next leader of the Palestinian people, a senior Israeli official said.

National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said Tuesday that Israel, which jailed Barghouti, a charismatic Fatah lawmaker and terrorist, for life in 2003, should now consider freeing him as means of offsetting the influence of Islamist Hamas.

“Anyone who has the safety of life in Israel in mind knows there is no alternative to releasing Marwan Barghouti because he is the strongest party on the Palestinian side,” Ben-Eliezer told Army Radio.

“In my humble opinion, this man will be the next leader of the Palestinians,” he added. “For us he is a murderer, but Arafat was no less a murderer than he, and yet Rabin extended his hand to him. We have to think differently and make an effort in this direction.”

Ben-Eliezer said any clemency for Barghouti should be conditioned on the release by Hamas of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held hostage in the Gaza Strip since June 2006.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ruled out releasing Barghouti. But political sources recently revealed that his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, proposed letting the Fatah leader go in exchange for the United States granting an early release to jailed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. Washington rebuffed that idea.

A protest against the Iraq war in Prague’s Jewish Quarter is really a neo-Nazi march, a Czech group says.

The planned march by the Young National Democrats on Nov. 10, the 69th anniversary of Kristallnacht, is a front for the extreme right National Resistance, the Tolerance and Civil Society group told the Czech press. Municipal officials have approved the demonstration.

The Tolerance and Civil Society group said the march is being led by one of the country’s most active neo-Nazis.

March organizers told city hall they expected some 150 participants. Counter-demonstrators in Prague for such events typically far outnumber nationals and extremists.

A finalist in Israel’s version of “American Idol” could be court-martialed for using drugs during his military service.

Shlomi Barel, who finished third in the most recent season of the hit television show “A Star is Born,” was arrested by military police this week on suspicion of drug use. Military officials said he is under investigation ahead of a possible court-martial.

Viewers had praised Barel, 20, for being among the relatively few contestants not to have secured exemption from mandatory national service. His commanders allowed him to go on an extended furlough during the show’s taping.

Representatives of Barel and the television franchise behind “A Star is Born” had no immediate comment on the arrest.

President Bush reaffirmed his commitment to seeing a peaceful Palestinian state established.

Bush met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in New York on Monday, ahead of the United Nations summit.

“I strongly support the creation of a Palestinian state,” Bush said after the talks. “We will work as hard as we possibly can to achieve the vision.”

He further praised Abbas, who has shunned Hamas since the Islamist group seized control of the Gaza Strip in June, for “fighting the extremists who don’t share the same kind of view” on coexistence with Israel.

Bush intends to convene Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and representatives of major Arab powers at a November conference on Palestinian statehood. Some Arab leaders have voiced doubt that the parley will yield results, but Abbas said he was hopeful progress would be made.

“We truly believe very strongly in the peace process, and we believe very strongly in your vision of establishing a Palestinian, independent, viable state that lives side by side with the State of Israel,” he told Bush.

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Marceau recalled for artistry, evacuating orphans

Candidates rip Ahmadinejad invitation

Plenty of theater, but nuclear issue still unresolved

Marceau recalled for mime artistry,

helping orphans during WWII PARIS (JTA) — In 1944, the French Jewish Resistance decided to evacuate the Jewish children hidden in a orphanage west of Paris and transport them by train to Switzerland.

Resistance commander George Loinger called on his young cousin, Marcel Mangel, to help him organize the dangerous train ride. Mangel, originally from Strasbourg, on the border with Germany, was a monitor at the Sevres home and was himself in hiding.

After the war he changed his name and became Marcel Marceau, the world-famous mime artist.

On Sept. 22, Marceau died in Paris at the age of 84.

“The kids loved Marcel and felt safe with him,” said Loinger, Marceau’s first cousin, now a spry 97 years old. “He had already begun doing performances in the home, where he had met a mime instructor earlier on.

“The kids had to appear like they were simply going on vacation to a home near the Swiss border, and Marcel really put them at ease.”

Loinger, who has written a book in French on the Jewish components of the Resistance movement during World War II in France, says media reports on Marceau this week were incorrect.

“Marcel was never a member of the Resistance,” he said. “Let’s say that he performed a few acts of resistance to the Vichy government and the Nazis, but he was never in the Resistance.”

Marceau joined the Free French Forces of Charles de Gaulle, in a unit led by Gen. Lattre de Tassigny.

“He and several other French soldiers were in the field in Germany, though I don’t remember where,” when a group of 30 German soldiers led by an officer surrendered to him,” Loinger recalls. “He brought them all back to his base as prisoners. Marcel always said that was his greatest exploit as a soldier.”

Loinger, who remains active in Jewish communal affairs as the secretary-general of the Shoah Memorial in central Paris, thinks otherwise.

“I believe his greatest exploit was to survive the war,” he said, “because so many others did not.”

Loinger points to Marceau’s father, Charles Mangel, a native of Poland who came to Strasbourg, France, where both Marceau and Loinger were born.

Tall and handsome with a great tenor voice, Mangel ran a kosher butcher shop there and wore the yellow star on his jacket.

“By 1944 as a Resistance commander, I knew about the death camps and the deportations,” Loinger said. “I went to my uncle and told him ‘get out now, you are in great danger. ‘ He simply refused to believe me. Then the Vichy police came and deported him to Auchwitz, where he died.”

Loinger said Marceau was an artist who felt the pain of the world.

“You see the pain and the sadness in his mime skits,” he said. “The origin of that pain was the deportation of his father.”

Marceau is perhaps best known for his 1947 creation Bip the clown, signifying the fragility of life in his striped pullover and battered silk hat, much like the Little Tramp, the alter-ego created by Charlie Chaplin.

Marceau, who according to Loinger chose the name after a general in Napolean’s army who hailed from the Alsace region, was never very active in the Jewish community but continued visiting Jewish children’s orphanages after the war.

Philip Kauffmann, 87, was a Resistance member in the Eclaireur Israelite movement, the Jewish Scouts, and founded a home in Jouy-en-Joisas near Paris after the war where 120 Jewish orphans lived.

“Marcel came several times to perform for the kids in the home,” Kauffmann recalls. “It was the beginning of his career. He came because it was a home for Jewish kids. He wanted to make them happy after the pain of losing their parents in the deportations.”

Loinger, who was instrumental in helping survivors head for the newly declared State of Israel after the war, said Marceau performed many times in Israel, but “he was first and foremost an artist.”

Loinger organized Marceau’s funeral, which was scheduled to be held Wednesday in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. Chief Rabbi Rene Sirat was to preside over the ceremony.