Teacher Remanded
SYDNEY, Australia — A former Jewish studies teacher was remanded to custody to await sentencing on Dec. 22 for his part in a global child porn ring. Paul Benjamin, 41, a one-time deputy principal of Jewish studies at the Emanuel School, appeared in a Sydney court Dec. 4. Benjamin was one of 22 men arrested last December in a bust of a child porn ring involving people in more than 50 countries. He pleaded guilty. He resigned from the school after his arrest and is not believed to have been involved in illegal activity while there.
Carter Adviser Dies
LOS ANGELES — Edward Sanders, who played a key role in the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty as senior Middle East adviser to U.S. president Jimmy Carter, died Dec. 7 at 87 of cancer. Sanders, a successful attorney, led the National Conference of Christians and Jews, American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
Activist Slurs Jews
SAN JUAN — An activist in Puerto Rico called for a boycott of local Jewish businesses, saying a primate-breeding facility approved for construction there is one of many “Jewish economic interests.” Bioculture Ltd., a firm based in Mauritius, in Africa, with monkey-breeding facilities at 19 sites worldwide, has secured permits for a facility in the southeastern town of Guayama. It expects to start operating next summer. Activist Robert Brito was quoted in local newspapers blaming Jews for past environmental offences and erroneously calling Bioculture an “Israeli company” and that “bringing a facility for wild monkeys from Israel to Guayama constitutes ethnic discrimination against Puerto Ricans who live in Guayama.”
Goldstone Frustration
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Goldstone report drove Israelis and Palestinians apart, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State P.J. Crowley said. The aside in a Dec. 8 briefing for reporters was the clearest signal of U.S. frustration with the UN Human Rights Council report into last winter’s Gaza war, authored by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, which urged war crimes charges against Israel and Hamas.
Grocer Sues ‘Bruno’
NEW YORK —A Palestinian grocer is suing actor Sacha Baron Cohen for $115 million (US) over his portrayal in Bruno. Ayman Abu Aita filed the lawsuit in the United States against the film’s producers and Cohen. In Bruno, Ayman Abu Aita, a Christian peace activist, escorted Cohen’s alter-ego Bruno, a gay fashion journalist, to a Lebanese refugee camp. Abu Aita was identified as “terrorist group leader, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.” Abu Aita says he has received death threats over the movie, adding he didn’t realize Cohen was an actor filming a comedy and that he misled him, saying the film would help the Palestinians. Aita was in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades from 2000 to 2003, then spent two years in an Israeli jail for shooting at Israeli soldiers. He now represents the Fatah party in the West Bank town of Beit Sahor.
Oren Raps J Street
NEW YORK — Israel’s U.S. ambassador blasted J Street, saying the pro-Israel left-wing group is “fooling around with the lives of seven million people.” Michael Oren, responding to a question at a Dec. 7 appearance at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s biennial convention, said the group is “a unique problem in that it not only opposes one policy of one Israeli government, it opposes all policies of all Israeli governments. It’s significantly out of the mainstream,” the Forward reported. Among the issues he cited were J Street’s criticism of Israel’s attack on Gaza last winter, its refusal to reject the Goldstone report and its failure to back more sanctions on Iran. The same day, J Street said it now backs sanctions by Congress.
Politician Helped Draft Slave Labour Deal
BERLIN — Otto Graf Lambsdorff, a key architect of Germany’s landmark slave labour compensation deal, died Dec. 5 at a hospital in Bonn at age 82.
In 1999, then-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder tapped Lambsdorff to head the German delegation in slave-labour compensation talks. In 1988, he had been named chair of the liberal Free Democratic Party, his reputation rehabilitated one year after being convicted in a bribery scandal. He served as economics minister from 1977 to 1984.
“Lambsdorff was instrumental in bringing to culmination a German federal law that [since its enactment in 2000] has… ensured compensation for 1,660,000 survivors of the Nazi regime’s brutal slave and forced labour programs,” the American Jewish Committee said in a statement honouring him. It called him “one of Germany’s most outstanding politicians of the post-World War II era.”