A daily news bulletin based on the news service of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was formally launched here last Friday.
It will be published by Agence de Presse Europeenne Juive (European Jewish News Agency), which has been set up to serve the Belgian Jewish community but also to inform the general press on the European Community’s relations with Israel and the Jewish world.
APEJ is a non-profit organization, backed by most Jewish organizations in Belgium. It will publish a four-page bulletin in French five days per week and plans in the near future to issue a Flemish edition.
It also plans to serve the small but active Jewish community in Zaire, a former Belgian colony. A member of the Kinshasa Jewish community, Jacques Levy, is a member of the board.
The president of the five-member board of directors is Bob Lebacq, Belgium’s former ambassador to Israel and a known backer of Israeli and Jewish causes. Markus Pardes, a past president of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium, is the vice president.
At a ceremony launching the publication Friday, Lebacq said that Belgium’s Jews have long felt the need for a local Jewish daily publication that could give an objective view of developments in Israel and the Middle East.
The agency’s editor, Yossi Lempkowicz, who is also JTA’s correspondent in Brussels and a veteran news editor with the Belgian news agency Belga, stressed that his organization is completely independent, not linked to any existing body.
Its aim, he said, is to provide comprehensive and objective coverage of local and foreign developments, with particular stress on European Community developments as they affect Israel and the various Jewish communities.
Mark Seal, JTA’s executive vice president, welcomed the new publication on behalf of JTA’s board of directors in New York and said that it fits in with JTA’s policy of encouraging new Jewish publications and the dissemination of JTA’s news service to all Jewish communities, large and small.
The ceremony also was attended by the current president of the Belgian Coordinating Committee, Lazard Perez, who replaced Dr. Jacques Wybran, murdered last year by what are believed to have been Arab terrorists.
Others attending included Jacques Lipsyc, president of the local equivalent of the United Jewish Appeal; Zvi Nadav, the local representative of the Jewish Agency; the Israeli ambassador to Belgium; a personal representative of the American ambassador here; and representatives of most other major local Jewish organizations.
APEJ is the second daily news bulletin based on JTA’s news wire to be published in Europe. Jour J, a private enterprise, has been appearing for the last two years in Paris.
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