Despite reports that Hamas is interested in maintaining the cease-fire with Israel, military officials remain convinced that the Islamist group is working to rebuild its system of underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip.

In an interview with Israel Radio, IDF Col. Nochi Mandel, the deputy commander of the Gaza Division, said on Tuesday that Hamas is hard at work in rehabilitating its military capacity, which took a severe beating during the 50-day Operation Protective Edge.

“According to what we know, Hamas is building its forces up again,” he said. “It is training its forces and boosting the number of mortars that it manufacturers. It continues to bolster its arsenal and dig more tunnels.”

“We need to look at things realistically,” he said. “Hamas is doing what it can to improve its readiness in case of renewed hostilities.”

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The International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, as an accredited UN NGO and in continuation of its cooperation with the Commission of Inquiry, took part in the Human Rights Council session in Geneva on the Commission’ Report on the 2014 Gaza conflict and on the Council’s debate on its Agenda Item 7.

In light of the numerous slanderous statements against Israel made by numerous UN member states and NGOs, the Association’s president, Adv. Irit Kohn, set aside her prepared remarks which challenged the Commission of Inquiry’s factual and legal conclusions and commented on these statements instead.

Adv. Kohn and the Association’s Chief Executive Officer, Adv. Ronit Gidron-Zemach, met with representatives from nine diplomatic missions to the UN in order to clarify Israel’s position regarding Operation Protective Edge in light of the distorted accusation made during the session.

Below are links to the Human Rights Council session on the Commission’s report – Adv. Kohn’s complete statement is Statement 50 and begins at 2:05:32 and to Israel’s Channel 2 segment (in Hebrew) on the session.

July 6

1189: Henry II, King of England, passed away.  Compared to those who followed him to the throne, Henry’s treatment of his Jewish subjects was comparatively benign. (The emphasis is on “comparatively.”)  Henry levied two special taxes on the Jewish community designed to finance the next Crusade to the Holy Land.  The tax of 1188 included 60,000 pounds on the Jews of London, one fourth the community’s wealth.  All the Christians of England were required to cough up a mere 10,000 pounds. Much to the consternation of some Church leaders, Henry discouraged Jews from converting to Christianity.  The wealth of dead Jews became the property of the crown.  These Jewish estates could be of such value that when Aaron of Lincoln passed away, “Henry found it necessary to set up a special branch of his Exchequer, named the Scaccarium Aaronis, with no function other than processing his immense estate.”

1189:  Richard the Lionheart becomes King of England following the death of his father.  His coronation would not take place until September at which time a delegation of Jews bringing gifts for the monarch would be denied access and be beaten by English officials.  Richard did take action to protect his Jewish subjects when they were threatened. Unfortunately, Richard spent only the equivalent of one year of his ten year reign in England.  During his absence, the Jews would suffer at the hands of English leaders including Richard’s brother and successor Prince, and later King, John

1253:  Mindaugas is crowned king of Lithuania, reportedly the first ruler to hold this title. There was a Jewish presence in Lithuania at this time, since small numbers of Jewish merchants probably began arriving in Lithuania during the 12^th century. They were followed by others of their co-religionists who were fleeing persecution brought on by the Crusades and the Black Death. Large number of Jews would not begin arriving in Lithuania until the frist decades of the 13^th centuries when they were invited to settle there by Gediminas.

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Christian Bonneville’s open letter to the mayor of Vilnius

Jews now living abroad who were deported to locations within the Soviet Union are to receive financial support from the Goodwill Fund for the first time, chair of the fund’s executive board and chair of the
Lithuanian Jewish Community Faina Kukliansky announced. She and fellow executive board chair Rabbi Andrew Baker from the United States presented planned allocations from the fund to Lithuanian parliamentary speaker Loreta Graužinienė Wednesday.

“That the fund has paid out monies to people who suffered from the occupational regimes is also an important matter. Jewish deportees who live abroad have never received any payments. They have not been compensated for the time they spent in internal exile, not by the Lithuanian state, nor by Russia or the countries where they now reside. Those who suffered under Naziism receive compensation from Germany, but deportees have not received anything at all,” Faina Kukliansky pointed out to reporters at the Lithuanian parliament Wednesday after the meeting with speaker Graužinienė.

She said 869,000 euros had been scheduled for payment to approximately 1,500 people.

Further information is available in Lithuanian HERE

The Lithuanian Jewish Community proudly congratulates Robertas Lozinskis on the occasion of his being recognized as the best piano student in Great Britain!

We all wish him much creative success in his studies and in future contests!

Robertas Lozinskis from Lithuania was selected the best student pianist in an international contest held in Great Britain. University students from around the world take part in the Newbury Spring Festival and Robertas represented the Royal Scottish Conservatory, where he is working on the his master’s, at the festival.

More information in Lithuanian available HERE

by Julius Norwilla

To mark the 74th anniversary of one of the iconic events of the Lithuanian Holocaust, the infamous Lietūkis Garage Massacre of 27 June 1941, the Kaunas Jewish Community organized the annual memorial event on the site, last Friday 26 June 2015. The massacre, carried out by local Lithuanian “patriots” wearing the white armbands of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) butchered dozens of Jewish passers-by at a garage on Kaunas’s Vytautas Avenue, using a variety of execution methods, including clubbing to death with crowbars, and particularly, forcing water from high-pressure hoses into bodily orifices of the victims until they burst. A growing crowd, including women holding up their young children to get the best views, cheered them on.

The memorial event was held in the courtyard between streets entered by Miško Street 1 in Kaunas at 4:30 P.M. on Friday, June 26, 2015. The ambassador and staff of the recently established Embassy of the State of Israel came from Vilnius for the event.

On June 22 Gediminas Čepulis, the mayor of Joniškis, Lithuania, received a  party of guests: founder of the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Fund Sergėjus Kanovičius, fund director Jonas H. Dovydaitis and a group of Jews from abroad who all came to see how the Jewish heritage is being protected in Joniškis and the surrounding region, and to learn about the land where their ancestors lived.

Guests were given a tour to the Red and the White Synagogues and Joniškis Museum of History and Culture museum specialist Darius Vičas provided a brief overview of the history of the Jews in the local area. He said more than 2,200 Jews lived there before World War I. He also spoke about work to restore the two synagogues and expressed pride in the work already done to restore the Red Synagogue.

More information available in Lithuanian HERE

On the afternoon of June 25 the Lithuanian Museum of Theater, Music and Cinema opened a new exhibit of works by Marc Chagall called “Waiting for a Miracle.” The three series of lithographs by the artist will be on display until the end of July.

The series include 13 color lithographs from the Arabian Nights series (1948), 16 color lithographs from the Daphnis and Chloë series (1956-1961) and 16 color lithographs from different stages in Chagall’s artistic career.
More information in Lithuanian There