Netanyahu stresses that in the battle against the threats from Iran and Islamic extremists, Israel is on the “front with Egypt and Jordan, and with many other Arab nations in the region.”

It was obvious from the start that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the opening of the winter Knesset session would focus on the terrorism raging on the streets.

Netanyahu spoke of the 16 border police units which have been mobilized to deal with the violence and the stiffer penalties his government approved for those arrested throwing rocks, firebombs and firecrackers.
He stressed once again that Israel had no intention of altering the status quo on the Temple Mount.

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Members of the Kaunas Jewish Community met October 11, 2015 to hear an accounting of the community’s activities and hold elections. At the start of the meeting chairman Gercas Žakas called for a minute of silence to remember community members lost over the last four years since the last general election meeting, most of them active members of the community. He then turned the floor over to Michailas Duškesas, who moderated the rest of the meeting. Žakas provided an overview of his activities and those of the board of the community over the last four years, achievements as well as failings, problems which arose and solutions arrived at, and discussed future plans. After statements and discussion voting on the post of chairman and members of the executive board began. In total 176 ballots were cast. Gercas Žakas received a total of 98% of votes cast for the next chairman over the coming four years. Thirteen people were elected to the executive board as well.

BNS, Vilnius, October 10–The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture has awarded the composer Anatolijus Šenderovas the medal “Carry Your Light and Believe.” Lithuanian cultural minister Šarūnas Birutis awarded the composer celebrating his 70th birthday this year the award “for significant contribution and extraordinary merit to Lithuanian culture and art, for initiatives inspiring the community to positive activities and for personal responsibility in creating the cultural and spiritual environment,” according to the ministry. The award was presented Saturday during Šenderovas’s birthday concert at the National Philharmonic in Vilnius.

Anatolijus Šenderovas is one of the best known modern Lithuanian composers. He’s participated at more than thirty international music festivals, staged the ballets “Mergaitė ir Mirtis,“ “Marija Stuart“ and “Dezdemona,” wrote music for three symphonies, two concerts for bass, a concert for guitar and chamber orchestra, and other works. In 1996 the composer received the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas and in 2006 the award the Officer’s Cross of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas “For Merit to Lithuania.” He won the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Art in 1997.

BNS

Hamas’s chief in Gaza on Friday called violence that has hit Israel and the West Bank in recent days an “intifada” and urged further unrest.

“We are calling for the strengthening and increasing of the intifada… It is the only path that will lead to liberation,” Ismail Haniyeh said during a sermon at a mosque in Gaza City.

“Gaza will fulfill its role in the Jerusalem intifada and it is more than ready for confrontation,” he added.

The Islamic terror movement Hamas rules Gaza, the Palestinian enclave squeezed between Egypt and Israel and separated from the West Bank.

Gaza has been the site of three wars with Israel since 2008, but it has remained mostly calm amid recent unrest in Israel and the West Bank.

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3 policemen injured in second terror attack in Jerusalem

Oct 09, BNS – A monument to the Jews who formerly lived in Šeduva, Lithuania, was unveiled in the town on October 9, 2015. “Šeduva can take pride in the extremely long history of the Jewish nation, which started back in 1400s. Jews lived here, worked here and engaged in commerce. The Jewish community in Šeduva has always paid a lot of attention to culture and active community life,” prime minister Algirdas Butkevicius said at the ceremony. He said the monument will not only help remember the Jews of Šeduva but will also give impetus to other cities and towns to keep up and commemorate historic sites, paying tribute to the ethnic minorities who have lived in Lithuania and benefited the country. According to a government press release, the prime minister also visited the renovated Jewish cemetery in Šeduva and monuments in a local forest to victims of mass murder.

A major Holocaust exhibition is being held to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theater in the Tokyo district of Ikebukuro from October 8 to 13. “The Courage To Remember: The Holocaust 1939-1945 — The Bravery of Anne Frank and Chiune Sugihara” was jointly organized by the Soka University and the Simon Wiesenthal Center and is based on the SWC’s educational exhibit “The Courage to Remember.” The new version of the exhibit focuses on Japanese diplomat and hero Chiune Sugihara as well as on the life of Anne Frank. It provides a compelling historical account of the Nazis’ murderous campaign in which 6 million Jews and other victims of the Nazis were targeted and killed between 1939 and 1945, according to organizers, and uses documents, photographs, items which belonged to Holocaust victims and other rare objects to tell the story.

“We have to remember the Holocaust and the suffering of millions of innocent people, to which the diary of Anne Frank testifies,” Lithuanian ambassador to Japan Egidijus Meilūnas said at the opening October 8. “We cannot change the past, but we must learn from it. The courage of noble figures such as Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara, honorary Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk and other rescuers of Jews set an inexhaustible example of humanity to future generations as well,” he continued.

Chiune Sugihara (1900–1986) was a Japanese diplomat who served as vice-consul in Lithuania during the early years of World War II. In 1940, he helped Jewish refugees desperately trying to flee persecution by the Nazis by issuing as many as 6,000 transit visas so that they could travel to Japan, though many lacked an entry visas for a third country. Honorary Dutch consul in Lithuania Jan Zwartendijk provided many of the Jews with Sugihara transit visas a final destination in the form of permission to land at the Dutch Caribbean possession the island of Curaçao, which didn’t actually require an entry visa of foreigners at that time.

At a February 3 meeting in Tokyo to launch preparation for the exhibition, Soka University President Yoshihisa Baba stated that the exhibition provides an important opportunity for human rights education, saying, “I feel today’s youth can learn crucial lessons from the tragic history of the Nazi Holocaust. Now is the time to promote tolerance education in Japan and throughout the Asia Pacific region.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, thanked embassy representatives for their support and emphasized that the recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz has brought the need to remember the horrors of the Holocaust back to public attention.

A previous version of the exhibition focusing on The Holocaust and the life of Anne Frank was shown from 1994 to 2007 throughout Japan and seen by more than two million people.

Japanese state bodies and Japanese NGOs as well as the embassies of the European Union, Lithuania, Poland, Israel, France, the Netherlands, the United States and Germany, the United Nations Information Center and the Soka Gakkai Peace Committee contributed to the exhibition jointly organized by Soka University and the SWC. The exhibition is scheduled to be shown in Hiroshima and other cities in Japan beginning in 2016.

For further information, contact:

The Courage To Remember Exhibition Steering Committee
telephone：+81-42-691-9442　
fax：+81-42-691-9300
email： publicrelation@soka.ac.jp
twittter: @soka_univ

Last Thursday, October 1, Israel’s first ambassador to Lithuania visited the Švenčionys region. Ambassador Amir Maimon with assistant Ana Maizel came at the invitation of Švenčionys regional administration board member Darius Velička.

During the official meeting regional administration director Rimantas Klipčius and the heads of administration departments presented the region and its attractiveness to foreign visitors and investors.

Ambassador Maimon expressed the hope Jewish contributions to the region’s and Lithuania’s economic development and prosperity in the pre-war period would be assessed appropriately and that the legacy of Jews who lived there before and after the Holocaust preserved. He called for following all Jewish traditions at Jewish burial sites and for better up-keep of old cemeteries and mass murder sites.

After the reception and meeting at the regional administration, ambassador Maimon and delegation visited an herbal pharmaceutical factory and the Švenčionys Zigmas Žemaitis Gymnasium before noon. In the afternoon the embassy delegation visited the Intersurgical company and the Fisheries Service at Meškerinė village.

Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė visited the Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium on International Teacher’s Day. She toured one of the newest schools in Lithuania and chatted with teachers and students. There are 352 students there from Jewish, Lithuanian, Russian, Polish and American families. The language of instruction is Lithuanian and Hebrew is taught.

“What students discover at school remains with them their entire lives,” she said. She called the school one of the best in Vilnius and Lithuania. It was originally established in 1989 at a kindergarten facility in the Viršuliškės suburb of Vilnius. In 2013 the school acquired new premises in the Žvėrynas neighborhood and was renamed the Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium.

Lithuanian Presidential Press Service