Briefs Palestinian teen convicted in murder of Israeli mother of 6 A Palestinian teenager was convicted in the murder of Dafna Meir, a mother of six, in her West Bank home. On Monday, May 2, the 16-year-old assailant was convicted of murder and illegal possession of a weapon in Judea military court, the Israel Defense Forces announced the following day. He was arrested two days after the Jan. 17 murder in Otniel and confessed to the killing during an interrogation, the Shin Bet security service said at the time of his arrest. He was indicted in February. Meir, 38, was stabbed to death at the entrance of her home while fighting off her attacker in what is believed to have been an attempt to save three of her children in the house. She was the mother of four children and a foster mother of two young children. Her 17-year-old daughter was able to give security officials a description of the assailant, who fled after he was unable to remove the knife from her body. The teen watched Palestinian television broadcasts that incited against Israel and said Israel was “killing young Palestinians” before he allegedly committed the crime, the Shin Bet said. The teen returned home after the murder and spent the evening with his family watching a movie, the indictment said. (JTA) Jewish Israeli sentenced to life plus 20 years for revenge murder of Palestinian teen The Jewish-Israeli man convicted of the revenge murder of a Palestinian teen was sentenced to life plus 20 years in jail on Tuesday, May 3. The sentence for Yosef Ben-David, 31, of Jerusalem for the kidnapping and murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir in July 2014 was handed down in Jerusalem District Court. The court also ordered Ben-David to pay the Palestinian teen’s family $39,000 in damages. Israel does not have a death penalty. “I request forgiveness from the family for what happened; it wasn’t under my control. That’s not my character and I am not that kind of man,” Ben-David said in court. He also said that he used to volunteer 4 | Jewish News | May 9, 2016 | jewishnewsva.org
for the Zaka rescue organization and took care of both Jewish and Arab bodies. “I always considered the human image and respect for the dead to be holy,” BenDavid said. He and two teenage accomplices burned Khdeir to death in the Jerusalem forest. The court in February determined that Ben-David was mentally fit to be sentenced, rejecting his insanity plea that he should not be held responsible for his actions at the time of the kidnapping and murder because of a history of mental illness. The plea noted that Ben-David was under medication for his condition. Ben David’s attorneys have said they will appeal the conviction and the sentence. The names of Ben-David’s accomplices, who were both 16 at the time of the killing, have not been released publicly. The accomplices were sentenced last month: one to life in prison, the other to 21 years. The three kidnapped Khdeir, then beat and burned him alive, soon after the bodies of three Jewish teens kidnapped and murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas were found in the West Bank. (JTA)
U.S. employs Israeli tactic in ISIS fight to reduce civilian casualties In fighting Islamic State combatants in Iraq, U.S. troops employed an Israeli tactic designed to reduce civilian casualties during bombardments. U.S. troops used “roof knocking” in Mosul, but a woman was killed in the attack, Air Force Maj.-Gen. Peter Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the U.S.-led coalition, said April 26, according to Reuters. The tactic involves hitting buildings suspected as occupied by residents with a non-lethal projectile to warn civilians shortly before an incoming bombardment. The Israeli military used roof knocks in the 2014 Gaza war on Hamas, but a United Nations commission found in 2015 that the tactic was not effective because it often caused confusion and did not give residents enough time to escape. When the U.S. used the tactic on April 5, one woman who initially did leave the targeted building, ran back inside and was killed, Gersten said in a news conference
in which he spoke remotely over a video uplink to listeners, including journalists, at the Pentagon during a Defense Department briefing. The building housed a member of Islamic State, or ISIS, in charge of distributing money to fighters, as well as being a cash storage site, he said. The United States believed the site contained about $150 million. “We’ve certainly watched and observed their procedure,” Gersten said of the Israelis, while noting the U.S. military did not coordinate with the Israelis on the strike. “As we formulated the way to get the civilians out of the house, this [technique] was brought forward from one of our experts.” The U.S.-led coalition could employ the technique again in the future, he said. The U.S. military has acknowledged killing 41 civilians in its air campaign against ISIS, which began in 2014. (JTA)
Model of Oskar Schindler’s gold ring donated by jeweler’s son A long-thought lost model used by grateful Jewish workers to create a gold ring for Oskar Schindler has been donated to the Melbourne Jewish Holocaust Centre, where it will go on display. The model was in the Melbourne workshop of ring maker Jozef Gross for more than 50 years. The ring-making was portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List as having been made from gold sourced from prisoners’ teeth, according to the Holocaust center. Schindler, the hero of Thomas Kenneally’s book Schindler’s Ark, as well as the Oscar-winning film, was a German industrialist and member of the Nazi Party who saved Jews by employing them in his factory and treating them humanely. He saved about 1,200 Jews. At the end of the war, Gross, a master jeweler, made the ring for Schindler, who lost it shortly after the war. The model came to Australia with Gross. The jeweler was a very private person and chose not to share his story with the world, telling only his family and a few others about his war experiences.
Importantly, however, Gross gave an in-depth description of the process used to make the ring to his Australian business partner. The model was discovered by Gross’ son, Louis, in a box, along with other jewelry-making paraphernalia after Gross died in 1997. The model is one of the few physical objects remaining from Schindler’s factory. (JTA)
JDC, HUC announce global Jewish leadership fellowship JDC Entwine—the initiative for young adults of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion – has established a Jewish leadership fellowship. The Weitzman-JDC Fellowship for Global Jewish Leaders was announced Monday, May 1. The graduate fellowship was founded by Jane Weitzman, a JDC board member, and her husband, shoe designer Stuart Weitzman, to provide HUC-JIR rabbinic, cantorial and Jewish education students expertise in Jewish needs around the world and in Israel, according to the announcement. “While all major U.S. universities today have top graduate programs developing the next generation of leaders to face the challenges of our changing world, there is a desperate need in the North American Jewish community to immerse our up-and-coming leaders in issues confronting Jews internationally,” Jane Weitzman, a board member of JTA’s parent organization, 70 Faces Media, said in a statement. Over the next five years, the WeitzmanJDC Fellowship at HUC-JIR will train 15 fellows, giving them a deeper understanding of global Jewish issues that they can bring to their congregations, classrooms and communities across North America. As part of the program, the fellows will travel to some of the 70 countries that JDC provides services. Weitzman-JDC Fellows will work from a special curriculum developed with HUCJIR to foster the concept of global Jewish responsibility and activism on Jewish issues among their congregants, students and the wider North American Jewish community, the statement said. (JTA)