Having engaged directly with former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on multiple occasions, we are stunned by the one-sidedness of his piece (Opinion, June 30).

Ban — who hails from South Korea, a democratic country under existential threat from a neighbour — shows exceptional indifference to the unenviable circumstances of another small democracy, Israel. He calls for a fresh approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but recycles blame of Israel alone for the situation.

Ban claims Israeli “apartheid” against Palestinians — but Israel is by far the most humane and pluralist country in the Middle East. Is any other regional actor so described?

Ban fails to even mention the unrelenting terrorism and threats facing Israelis. How can he cite Israel for preventing a two-state solution but not Palestinian fanatics like Hamas, openly sworn to Israel’s destruction?

At the end of his tenure, Ban finally chided the UN’s structural obsession with condemning Israel.

In fact, the U.N. targets Israel more than all other countries. Sadly, old habits die hard.

Daniel S Mariaschin 
Chief Executive, B’nai B’rith International

David J Michaels 
Director of U.N. and Intercommunal Affairs
B’nai B’rith International
Washington, DC, US

B'nai B'rith International and multinational leaders met with Pope Francis on Thursday at the Vatican.

B'nai B'rith’s was the first international Jewish audience with the pope since the Vatican announced an agreement on church issues with “the State of Palestine,” and the pope separately acknowledged non-recognition of Israel as amounting to anti-Semitism.

Before he was known around the world at Pope Francis, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio hosted B’nai B’rith’s Kristallnacht commemoration in Buenos Aires in 2012.

Learn more about the latest visit from the international media coverage recap, below:

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to greet you during your visit to the Vatican. My predecessors met with delegations of B’nai B’rith International on several occasions, and today I offer you my welcome with renewed respect and affection.

Your organization has enjoyed relations with the Holy See since the promulgation of the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate. This document constituted a milestone on the path of mutual knowledge and esteem between Jews and Catholics, based on the great spiritual patrimony that, thanks be to God, we share in common.

Looking back on these fifty years of regular dialogue between the Catholic Church and Judaism, I cannot help but thank the Lord for the great progress that has been made. Many initiatives fostering reciprocal understanding and dialogue have been undertaken; above all a sense of mutual trust and appreciation has developed. There are many areas in which we as Jews and Christians can continue to work together for the good of the peoples of our time. Respect for life and creation, human dignity, justice and solidarity unite us for the development of society and for securing a future rich in hope for generations to come. In a particular way, we are called to pray and work together for peace. Unfortunately, there are many countries and regions of the world that live in situations of conflict – I think in particular of the Holy Land and the Middle East – and that require a courageous commitment to peace, which is not only to be longed for, but sought after and built up patiently and tenaciously by everyone, especially believers.

During these moments together, I wish to recall with heartfelt gratitude all those who have fostered friendship between Jews and Catholics. I particularly want to mention Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II. Saint John saved many Jews during the Second World War, met with them numerous times, and greatly desired a conciliar document on this theme. Regarding Saint John Paul, his various historical gestures remain very much alive in our memories, such as his visit to Auschwitz and to the Great Synagogue of Rome. With the help of God, I wish to walk in their footsteps, encouraged too by the many beautiful encounters and friendships I enjoyed in Buenos Aires.

May the Almighty and Eternal One bless our dialogue abundantly, especially during this year in which we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Nostra Aetate, so that our friendship may always grow deeper and bear abundant fruit for our communities and the entire human family.

Thank you.

B'nai B'rith International joined a chorus of Jewish organizations that voiced displeasure at a recent Vatican's move on the recognition of a  "State of Palestine.”

In follow-up analysis, B'nai B'rith Director of United Nations Affairs David Michaels examined the history of the terminology, noting that the Vatican has made prior references to the "State of Palestine," and concluding that the move, while disappointing, is unlikely to affect Israelis or Palestinians.

Read media coverage from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on B'nai B'rith's statement on the Vatican:

A May 13 announcement on an agreement regarding the functioning of the church in areas under Palestinian control raised eyebrows in its reference to the “State of Palestine.”

The upset was compounded by confusion over whether Pope Francis, in a meeting over the weekend with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, praised him as an “angel of peace” or urged him to attain that vaunted status. On Tuesday, a Vatican spokesman said it was “very clear” that the pope was “encouraging a commitment to peace.”

But the Vatican’s shift from terming its Palestinian partner as the Palestine Liberation Organization — the designation Israel accepts — to calling it Palestine comports with a shift in Europe toward accommodating Palestinian statehood aspirations, the Jewish officials said.

[...]

Daniel Mariaschin, the director of B’nai B’rith International, said the recognition of Palestine raised concerns, but they must be seen in the context of an increased willingness in Europe to recognize Palestinian statehood and not of Jewish-Catholic relations.

He likened it to the French and British parliaments recent nonbinding recognition of Palestine and Sweden’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood.

“It’s important, I won’t dismiss it, but it shouldn't be seen outside that broader context,” Mariaschin said. “It raises the expectations of Palestinians to un-meetable levels and frustrates the Israelis who say we can’t get a fair deal in the international community.”

Don’t Play Politics With Genocide

At the United Nations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas asserted last month that Israel’s efforts to protect its citizens have amounted to “genocide.”

He did so, in language never remotely reciprocated by Israel, despite well knowing the nature of his current partners in Hamas, which had violently ended Abbas’s rule in Gaza, tossing his loyalists off buildings there.

In 1948, three years after the end of the Holocaust, two events represented a pivotal rejoinder to that most systematic of genocides. The State of Israel was founded – stemming a 2,000-year Jewish exile pervaded by persecution. And the U.N. General Assembly adopted its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to help ensure that no people would again be subjected to massive violence of the most unprovoked, calculated and indiscriminate kind.

The world body’s adoption of the Genocide Convention was celebrated as a deeply hopeful achievement by Jews. Yale legal scholar Raphael Lemkin – a Jewish émigré who lost nearly his entire family to the Nazi atrocities – coined the term genocide in 1943, defining it as “the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.” Later, he drafted the Genocide Convention.

While the Holocaust was a distinct event in history, the appeal “never again” must apply to other people as much as it does to Jews.

However, not every loss of life can be labeled genocide. If genocide means everything, it could, dangerously, come to mean nothing.

Some of the world’s worst violators of human rights have an interest in stripping the term genocide of its purpose and potency through misuse.

More generally, ours is an era of stridency and populism, too often lacking nuance. When it comes to the most grave of charges, though, context matters and details matter, concerning both intentions and actions.

‎Iran pledges Israel’s destruction while illicitly pursuing nuclear capabilities and sustaining the groups, including Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, responsible for perennially forcing Israeli counterterrorism. Despite this, some commentators condemn as overblown any comparison of the Tehran regime to those, historically, who made good on remarkably open threats of monumental aggression.

By contrast, the subjection of Israel to the most inflammatory of rhetoric has again over recent months been met with astounding silence.

Iran’s supposedly moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, accused Israel of a “huge genocide” in Gaza – this from the leader of a government enabling bloodshed in Syria that has claimed far more Arab life in three years than Israel has in sixty-six.

Not given pause by the absence of gas chambers or crematoria, Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Israel has “surpassed Hitler in barbarism.”

And in an interview with the BBC, Hamas’s official spokesman (who, separately, alleged that Jews use Christian blood in matzo) charged Israel with “Nazism.” The allegation was met with a bumbling response from the BBC’s normally opinionated interviewer.

All this is not without consequence. Singular abuse of Israel in international forums creates the distortion that Israel has one of the worst, not one of the best, records as a progressive society.

When 56 U.N. member states – including nearly all of the world’s foremost oil exporters – belong to the Arab and Muslim bloc, a Human Rights Council resolution on Gaza can assail Israel but not even mention Hamas.‎ And, of course, countries deemed to be perpetrating crimes like “apartheid,” genocide and Nazism – all-too-often interchanged – are expected to be dealt with accordingly.
If Israel has intended apartheid, it has proven mind-bogglingly inept, having created the freest and most pluralistic society in the Middle East in the face of relentless warfare.

And if Israel has intended genocide, it is among history’s most abysmal failures. Despite its military abilities, the population of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs has multiplied dramatically, even as the number of Jews, Christians and other minorities has tellingly plummeted elsewhere in the region.

After the genocides of the last century, there were among the victims no “victory” parades, as there were in Gaza after the latest hostilities. There was silence.

And during past genocides, there were no refusals of ceasefires by the beleaguered or pledges of new violence, as by Gaza’s factions – typically because the victims were not doing the firing.

Notably, despite the rush to equate Israel with Hamas in indiscriminate fire, males of fighting age appear to have been the most overrepresented group among recent Palestinian casualties in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of which went untargeted by Israel.

These facts, though, don’t suffice to penetrate international politics. Not in an age when a pop culture personality like Russell Brand can smugly invoke Israeli “occupation” in questioning Hamas’s categorization as a terrorist movement. No matter that Israel, which has supported a two-state peace, completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005 – and that if Jews lack even a right to exist in their historic homeland then Brand would hardly have a right to legitimately reside anywhere.

The British funnyman even likened Hamas to Gandhi – a comparison that might be worth discussing if not for Gandhi’s insistence upon non-violence, and the fact that Gandhi never aspired to the obliteration of Britain itself.

The continuing Arab-Israeli conflict has unquestionably claimed all too many lives, and those losses are heartrending. But not all loss of life constitutes murder, let alone genocide.

In the 1940s, in the face of a fascist onslaught, Britons and others responded, despite the heavy toll, not with complacency but with the necessary force.

Today, an array of countries is committed to combating such groups as Boko Haram, al-Shabab, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISIS.

As Palestinians again threaten to take Israel to the International Criminal Court over its struggle against fanatics deliberately operating among, and targeting, non-combatants, we must consider the implications of precluding counterterrorism by recklessly mislabeling it as genocide.

THE emblem of the United Nations shows the planet brought together in the embrace of two olive branches. Its charter affirms the “equal rights” of “nations large and small.” But in the “family of nations,” some members are more equal than others. No example of this inequity is starker than that of Israel.

The State of Israel was created, in the Jewish ancestral homeland, as a result of a United Nations resolution. Its 1948 proclamation of independence refers to the United Nations seven times. Israel tries to contribute to international peace in every area in which it can help, from disaster relief to medical innovation to agricultural technology. Jewish hope in the organization — created in the aftermath of the Holocaust — can be discerned in the words from Isaiah inscribed beside the Sharansky Steps, which face the United Nations headquarters in New York City: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

But over time, Israel has been a target for exceptional mistreatment at the United Nations. A pluralistic democracy facing extremists sworn to its destruction, Israel is routinely condemned by the body’s Human Rights Council, more than any other member state. Israel’s assailants at the United Nations often assert that they respect Jews and Judaism — and reserve their shrill disdain only for Israeli policies and Zionism. But the demonization of Israel calls their motives into question.

The United Nations is headquartered in the United States, the country with the most Jews outside Israel, and in New York City, which has the single largest Jewish population in the Diaspora. Judaism, of course, is an ancient, biblical religion — a precursor of the two dominant world faiths — and Jewish communities can be found in at least 120 member states.

In 1997, the General Assembly added two Muslim holidays (Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr) to the official calendar of the United Nations headquarters. Two of the 10 holidays are Christian (Good Friday and Christmas) and the other six are American federal holidays. None is Jewish.

Important United Nations events — even, sometimes, meetings related to Israel — have repeatedly been scheduled on major Jewish holidays, forcing Jewish diplomats and representatives of civil society to choose between their professional duties and their faith and families.

Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the Jewish year, unites Jews of all nationalities, political orientations and degrees of observance. The Day of Atonement, as it is known — traditionally spent in fasting, prayer and introspection — represents the universal aspiration to self-improvement and to making amends. Last month, 32 nations — including Argentina, Canada, Israel, Nigeria and the United States — declared their support for adding Yom Kippur (Oct. 3-4 this year) to the United Nations calendar. Next month, a committee will take up the matter.

In 1999, Secretary General Kofi Annan acknowledged that, to observers, “it has sometimes seemed as if the United Nations serves all the world’s peoples but one: the Jews.” In 2006, his successor, Ban Ki-moon, told our organization, B’nai B’rith, that the United Nations should always be “a place where Jews and the State of Israel can feel at home.” Recently, Mr. Ban felt compelled to condemn an “upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks.”

One way to combat bigotry is by demonstrating respect. The Yom Kippur proposal is a nonpolitical one — unrelated to Israel’s recent hostilities with Hamas — and a test of inclusiveness. All 193 United Nations members, including the 56 in the Muslim bloc, should support it.

The lumping together of "Israel, Sri Lanka and Syria" is precisely what is perverse about the record of High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay and the Human Rights Council.

Israel is condemned by the council more than all other countries.‎ Syria, though, has killed more Arabs in three years than Israel has in sixty-six.

Ms. Pillay has never criticized the council’s repressive members for a permanent agenda item singling out Israel alone for harsh scrutiny.

Irresponsibly, she ‎suggests equivalence between Israel, a democracy, and Hamas, a terrorist movement. She emphasizes Israel's "occupation," ignoring the 2005 Gaza withdrawal and Hamas’s rejection of Israel’s existence within any borders. She also rushed to claim disproportionate Palestinian civilian casualties when most Gazans recently killed appear to have been males of fighting age.

Ms. Pillay awaits Israeli countermeasures to incessant violence before sounding any alarm. ‎Her valuing of certain lives above others was made explicit when she said she opposed Palestinian attacks but "most especially" Israeli responses.

Discrimination has no place in the pursuit of human rights.

                                                                   Daniel S. Mariaschin, Executive Vice President

                                                                   David J. Michaels, Director of U.N. and Intercommunal Affairs

                                                                   B'nai B'rith International

More than 400 Jewish leaders, rabbis, and Holocaust and genocide scholars have signed a public statement denouncing accusations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

The statement was organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, based in Washington, D.C. It follows a July 9 claim by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, that Israel is "committing genocide," an August 1 assertion by Fatah foreign affairs spokesman Nabil Sha'ath that the situation in Gaza is "a Holocaust," and an August 1 accusation by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan that Israel is guilty of "Hitler-like fascism." 

"The Holocaust was the deliberate, systematic mass murder of six million innocent Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators," the statement by the 400 leaders notes. "By contrast, Israel is acting in legitimate self-defense against Hamas terrorism. Israel has no interest in harming innocent civilians, and indeed has done its utmost to avoid civilian casualties, whereas Hamas deliberately targets Israeli civilians. Any comparison between Israel and the Nazis outrageously distorts Israel's actions and trivializes the enormity and nature of the Holocaust."

The signatories include:

*  Prominent figures in the American Jewish leadership, including David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee; Michael Siegal and Jerry Silverman, the chair and president, respectively, of the Jewish Federations of North America; David J. Michaels, Director of UN and Intercommunal Affairs for B'nai B'rith International; Rabbi Dr. Yitz Greenberg and Prof. Walter Reich, past chairman and past executive director, respectively, of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; and leaders of the American Society for Yad Vashem, the Simon Wiesenthal Center; the National Council of Young Israel; the Religious Zionists of America; and the Wexner Foundation.

Fifty-six of the U.N.’s members belong to the Muslim bloc and 21 to the Arab League; nine of 12 major oil-exporting states are among these. Accordingly, Israel, a democracy facing terrorists sworn to its eradication, is routinely condemned more than all other countries combined. Israel alone is excluded from its regional group at the U.N.

Only the Palestinian nationalist movement enjoys a U.N. day of solidarity, a separate refugee agency operating under politicized terms, a human rights “special rapporteur,” a General Assembly non-member seat, and multiple bodies dedicated to promoting its political narrative and goals.

Last month’s Human Rights Council session on Gaza neglected in its adopted resolution to even mention Hamas. Those prompting the session included an array of serial rights violators, none of which have ever been the subject of a special session. No such sessions are ever convened before Israel reacts to years of grave violence.‎

Despite having made peace with every willing neighbor, Israel is subjected to scrutiny at the council under an agenda item separate from one addressing all other countries. No matter that more people have been killed in three years in Syria than in some 70 years of the Arab-Israeli conflict.‎

Here, partiality is a fact, not an allegation.  


                                                                       Daniel S. Mariaschin, Executive Vice President AND

                                                                       David J. Michaels, Director of U.N. and Intercommunal Affairs

B'nai B'rith International Director of U.N. and Intercommunal Affairs David Michaels addressed "The July 9th Symposium" at the U.S. Capitol. 

The event was organized and moderated by Honorary President Richard D. Heideman to mark the 10th anniversary of the International Court of Justice's unjust "advisory opinion" ‎on Israel's security fence, which has saved an untold number of lives from Palestinian terrorism. 

B'nai B'rith was a co-sponsor of the event, which was also addressed by Ron Dermer, ambassador of Israel to the United States; Keith Harper, new U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council; Canadian Member of Parliament Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister and attorney general; and Frederick M. Lawrence, president of Brandeis University.

Video courtesy of the Israel Forever Foundation:

During Pope Francis' historic visit to Israel and the Middle East last week, he was greeted by a delegation at the Western Wall that included B'nai B'rith International director of United Nations and Intercommunal Affairs David Michaels.

Michaels had a front-row view for many of the meetings and greetings during the two-day visit, and was a quoted source in a Q&A published in The Jewish Week after the trip.

Read an excerpt below and click through for the full story:

[...]

Also in Israel for the visit was David Michaels, director of United Nations and Intercommunal Affairs for B’nai B’rith International. He pointed out also that there was a diversity of religious leaders at the presidential residence — including Muslims who knelt in prayer.

There were leaders of the Hindu faith, Sufis among the Muslim leaders, Sikhs, Christian Orthodox leaders and many others in the audience. That to me signaled that the pope is universally admired, and that people are very hopeful that he may be able to achieve a greater level of comity among the different faiths.

Despite its charter’s solemn affirmation of “the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,” the United Nations is the home of singular mistreatment for one member state, Israel, whose commitment to equality can rival that of virtually any country in the world.

The mistreatment of Israel manifests itself in myriad ways. A permanent Human Rights Council agenda item is dedicated to singling out Israel, alone among nations,  for hostile scrutiny. 

A U.N. “special rapporteur” is dedicated to publicizing only Israel’s alleged faults. In the case of the last person to hold that position, he overtly promoted economic warfare against Israel.

At least three entire U.N. bureaucratic bodies are dedicated to the worldwide advancement of Palestinian political goals and an anti-Israel narrative that is as simplistic as it is vile.

A permanent Human Rights Council agenda item is dedicated to singling out Israel alone for hostile scrutiny.The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) routinely lambastes Israel over, for example, its stewardship of holy sites in Jerusalem (a setting, for all its challenges, of exceptional multi-religious vibrancy in the Middle East). 

At the very same time, that agency – which Palestinians exploited by pressing for status as a “member state,” in order to evade direct peace negotiations with Israel – recklessly politicizes sacred places by recasting landmarks like Rachel’s Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs as Palestinian and primarily Islamic.

Now, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is again threatening to expand his “internationalization of the conflict” with Israel by unilaterally enlarging Palestinians’ foothold in U.N. bodies that can then serve as political weapons against the Jewish state.

Although U.N. officials, like Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, should be expected to exercise principled leadership by speaking out unequivocally against all these abuses, such abuses are often driven by the U.N. voting membership, comprised in considerable part of Arab and aligned states. In the many areas where politics – not any sense of just, meaningful policymaking – carry the day, it is politics rather than rejection of discrimination that will prevail.

Sometimes, though, leaders like Ban are positioned to do more than raise objections. At times, they can, and must, implement actual changes for the sake of the U.N.’s own institutional credibility.

A case such as this is before us now, when a member of Ban’s own senior management team, Under-Secretary-General Rima Khalaf, is openly complicit not only in deplorable propagandizing against one nation in the international community, Israel, but also in demonstrating how effortlessly anti-Zionist incitement slides into anti-Jewish terrain.

In February, Khalaf, who serves as executive secretary of the U.N.’s Beirut-based Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, was in Tunisia to herald the release of a 310-page ESCWA report, “Arab Integration: A 21st Century Development Imperative.” Although the document’s name, size and official provenance would suggest a serious and forward-looking treatment of challenges in an Arab world beset by extensive political crisis and human suffering, the report represents yet one more misuse of vital resources to whitewash complexity and defer reconciliation.

It manages to invoke Israel over 150 times – yet, in decrying Israeli defense efforts and control of (some) Arab-claimed territory, there is not one mention of Hamas and Hezbollah, lethal terrorist movements that are directly responsible for these realities. 

Although Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has killed more Arab citizens in three years than any Israelis have since the development of modern Zionism well over 100 years ago, he too goes unmentioned. 

And Iran, whose war with Iraq claimed as many as one million lives and whose aggressive nuclear pursuit has (rightly) alarmed Arab leaders like little else has, gets negligible attention. 

By contrast, Israel is charged with posing a “nuclear threat” and a vague conspiracy to “divide the region into sectarian mini-States.”

Indeed, in all six instances where the grave crime of “ethnic cleansing” is alleged, it is democratic Israel – whose Muslim and Christian populations have risen continuously, in contrast to Jews and Christians elsewhere in the Middle East – that is the report’s target. And the report – which affords no attention to the dozens of countries whose state religion is, for instance, Islam – libelously claims that Israel has sought to be an “exclusive” Jewish country, thus promoting “the religious or ethnic purity of states, a concept that inflicted on humanity the worst crimes of the last century.”

As if this wasn't enough, the report also asserts that Adolf Hitler partnered with Zionism – whose supposed purpose was not to alleviate exile from a sole ancestral homeland but to “introduce an alien Jewish community in the heart of the Arab world.” 

Further adding insult to injury, Khalaf’s report mentions not once but three times Israeli aspirations to “Judaize” Jerusalem – when “Judaizing” Jerusalem,Yerushalayim, would be virtually akin to “Islamicizing” Mecca.

None of this is to say that the ESCWA report could not have made a constructive contribution – and this is precisely the point: By trafficking in slurs that are tired but still incendiary, Khalaf’s organization condemns not merely Israelis but also her own Arab constituency to a future no better than the past. In turn, she helps to mire the United Nations in a place not simply of irrelevance but of malignance.

Last November, Ban visited Auschwitz. There, he said: “Never again.… For our shared future, let us embrace our common duty as members of the human family to build a world of peace, justice, equality and human dignity for all.”

These were fitting words from the chief executive of the United Nations, which itself rose from the ashes of the Holocaust.

Increasingly, however, some in the international community have embraced denunciation of historical acts of hate while disregarding Jews’ continuing struggle to exist in the very heart of Jewish civilization across time, Israel. Palestinian leader Abbas recently conceded the enormity of the Holocaust – only to then announce partnership with Hamas, which denies both that historic genocide and Israelis’ right to live today.

While truly important, no commemoration of the Holocaust can compensate for abetting new expressions of demonization and delegitimization. The U.N. secretary-general has an opportunity to start ridding his house – our collective house – of prejudice by beginning with his own cabinet.

Derelict in upholding the founding values of the United Nations, Rima Khalaf’s role should be assumed by someone else: someone offering Arabs, as well as their neighbors, a better way forward.

David Michaels, director of intercommunal and U.N. affairs at B'nai B'rith International, speaks at the program:

El Director Internacional de Naciones Unidas y Asuntos Intercomunales de B'nai B'rith, David Michaels, asistió a un encuentro interreligioso con el nuevo jefe de la Iglesia Católica en la Sala Clementina del Vaticano. El Sumo Pontífice ofreció públicamente un saludo especial a los judíos y afirmó su compromiso con Nostra Aetate, Declaración del Concilio Vaticano II , que ha transformado las relaciones entre católicos y judíos.

"Estoy muy contento de saber que en el primer día de su pontificado, el Papa Francisco ya está retomando donde el Papa Benedicto dejó con respecto a las relaciones de la Iglesia con los judíos", dijo el presidente de B'nai B'rith Internacional, Allan J. Jacobs...more.

by Stewart Ain and Steve Lipman

A dozen Jewish leaders and other clerics were invited to meet with Pope Francis one day after his inauguration Tuesday, among them the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who said he hopes the pope will lift the “cloud” hanging over the Vatican.

Among those attending Tuesday’s inaugural Mass was David Michaels, director of inter-communal affairs at B’nai B’rith International.

“It was, as expected, a moment of celebration for Catholics — but it also further signaled the new pope’s personal commitment to the continuance of the unique and historic contemporary friendship between Catholics and Jews,” he wrote in an e-mail interview. “Immediately after his election, Pope Francis sent a personal message to this effect to the chief rabbi of Rome; today, not only did Jewish leaders enjoy a place of prominence and proximity to the pope in St. Peter’s Square, but the Jewish community was the only inter-religious partner group of the Catholic Church to be singled out for specific greeting during the pope’s public remarks.”

Michaels said he views this as “a clear continuation of the practice of Benedict XVI — and a sign of allegiance to the momentous path of John Paul II...more.

El director de Asuntos Intercomunal de B'nai B'rith Internacional, David Michaels, se reunirá mañana con el Papa Francisco I como parte de un encuentro interreligioso convocado por el Pontífice.

De acuerdo a lo informado por la institución, Michaels, quien asistió hoy a la Plaza San Pedro para la asunción de Jorge Bergoglio como el nuevo Papa, participará mañana en una audiencia de líderes de distintas religiones que se realizará en la Sala Clementina del Vaticano.

B'nai B'rith Internacional ya expresó su satisfacción por la elección de Bergoglio como el nuevo Papa en reemplazo de Benedicto XVI, el pasado 13 de marzo.

En este sentido, la organización destacó el fuerte apoyo de Bergoglio a las relaciones católico-judías en Buenos Aires, donde el nuevo Papa se desempeñó como cardenal.

En noviembre, el entonces cardenal fue el orador principal en la conmemoración Kristallnacht convocado por B'nai B'rith en Buenos Aires, donde ayudó a encender una vela en memoria de los seis millones de judíos que murieron en el Holocausto...more.
 

by Phil Jacobs

Pope Benedict XVI's resignation announcement on Monday brought reaction from many different parts of the Jewish world.

Well it should have.

Jews have every reason to be watchful and concerned by actions from the Vatican that could impact Jewish-Catholic and Israel-Vatican relations.

Benedict, 85, will step down at month's end, citing his "advanced age" and failing health. He is the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415.

"We wish Pope Benedict only good health as he steps down from his position," B'nai B'rith International President Allan J. Jacobs said. "He consistently expressed his commitment to Catholic-Jewish relations, and his accessibility to Jewish leaders was significant. We are very grateful for the opportunities we had to meet with him to further the Catholic-Jewish friendship."

B'nai B'rith leaders met with Pope Benedict, as with a line of his predecessors, on multiple occasions. In 2011, Jacobs and Daniel S. Mariaschin, B'nai B'rith International executive vice president, led a B'nai B'rith delegation to the Vatican to meet with Benedict. Jacobs and Mariaschin spoke with him about the Middle East and the challenges facing Jews and Christians in the region.

Representing the American Jewish community, David Michaels, B'nai B'rith director of United Nations and intercommunal affairs, presented a gift to Benedict from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum during the pope's 2008 visit to Washington. Michaels and Alan Schneider, B'nai B'rith World Center director, greeted the pope at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2009.

"Pope Benedict deserves appreciation for his contributions to the great cause of Catholic-Jewish engagement," said Mariaschin. "We hope that Benedict's successor will continue to build upon decades of historic progression in Catholic-Jewish relations."

by Robert Wiener

Seeking new ways to defend Israel against its detractors, some 220 people came together Sunday at the Aidekman campus in Whippany.

For four hours, speakers diagnosed attacks on Israel’s legitimacy and prescribed remedies for countering negative media coverage and hostile criticism.

The UN came under criticism during a panel discussion featuring David Michaels, director of UN and intercommunal affairs at B’nai B’rith International. “Not only does the UN insist on considering Israeli settlements the greatest obstacle to peace, it is sometimes complicit in anti-Israel incitement, with deadly results for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” he said...more

THE ISRAEL ADVOCACY Summit, a forum presenting tools to counter assaults on Israel’s legitimacy, will take place on Sunday, Feb. 3, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus, Whippany.

Panelists will include Lauren Applebaum, director of U.S. communications, The Israel Project; David Dabscheck, deputy managing director, Israel Action Network; Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious and intergroup relations, American Jewish Committee; Elliot Mathias, executive director, Hasbara Fellowships; David Michaels, director of United Nations and intercommunal affairs, B’nai B’rith International; and Steve Stotsky, senior research analyst, CAMERA...more.

German TV station BR (Bayerisches Fernsehen) aired a documentary called "Zwischen Vatikanstadt und Jerusalem" (translated as “Between the Vatican City and Jerusalem”). The documentary was about the Vatican secretary responsible for relations with Jews, Father Norbert Hofmann, and featured scenes with B’nai B’rith International’s director of U.N. and Inter-communal Affairs.

> Watch the documentary.

By David J. Michaels, Director of U.N. and Intercommunal Affairs at B’nai B’rith International

The link between hatred of Jews and of the only Jewish state often requires little conjecture. This is particularly so in the Arab world, where cultivated popular anti-Semitism has been ignored abroad as an impetus of regional conflict.

For evidence that anti-Israel sentiment in the Middle East is not merely characterized by sharp political differences, but instead mimics and is fueled by the most defamatory and dangerous of historical anti-Jewish themes, we need look no further than a widely published political cartoonist, a Jordan-based Palestinian named Emad Hajjaj. His cartoons regularly feature blatant incitement, equating Israel with the Third Reich, crudely caricaturing Jews (distinguished by religious garb and symbols) as bloodthirsty monsters, portraying menorahs as weapons and showing the “crucifixion” of Palestinians on a cross marked by a Star of David...read more.