US Jews mull Sudan boycott

An American Jewish organization will debate the merits of a divestment campaign from Sudan, due to the ongoing genocide taking place there, New York's Jewish Week reported this Friday.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs will meet next week to decide whether to back divestment "from companies with business ties to the Sudanese government," the Jewish Week said, adding: "Ethnic cleansing in Darfur, a region of the Sudan, enters its fourth year. The slaughter, considered genocide by the US government and much of the international community, has killed at least 400,000 civilians and displaced as many as 2.5 million."

The resolution has gained much support, but also faces criticism, as some Jewish organizations "fear that an economic boycott of any country could be used against Israel, itself the target of divestment efforts," the Jewish Week said.

But the resolution's supporters say "circumstances in Darfur are so extraordinary and so dire that such a step is more than warranted," the report added.

More Iranian Jews in LA than Iran 

"There is no demographic study of the Iranian Jewish community in Los Angeles, although its size is generally given as 30,000, including the American-born children of the original immigrants," a feature in the LA Jewish Journal said.

"This figure is well below the 100,000 in Israel but ahead of New York City's 12,000 - the only other large concentration in the United States - and bigger than the some 25,000 Jews remaining in Iran itself," the report said.

The feature looked into how members of LA's ethnically Ashkenazi Jewish population learned to integrate with their Persian counterparts, overcoming cultural differences.

One example of such differences became apparent when "Ashkenazi old-timers started grumbling about 'free rides' for the (Iranian) newcomers, quite unaware that to the Iranians, paying membership dues to a synagogue was a foreign concept, and that it was considered a blessing for guests to take home some cookies and candy after a bar mitzvah or wedding. "

"Eventually, cooler and more perceptive heads prevailed as both sides came to understand each other's background and customs," the report added.

'Big assault against Israel on Canadian campuses' 

A week of anti-Israel activities, in which Israel was compared to apartheid-era South Africa, has been held across Canadian campuses, the Canadian Jewish News (CJN) reported.

"The organizers of the event Feb. 12 to 17, including the Arab Students' Collective, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid – which is not a campus group – held lectures at universities in Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal, New York, Oxford, Cambridge and London," the CJN said.

"They had one speaker talking about the native apartheid… one person talked about South Africa and one person talked about the Palestinians," the CJN quoted a Jewish student pro-Israel activist as saying.

"They are also stepping up the language, saying that Israel is ethnically cleansing the West Bank and Gaza. The community and students need a wake-up call that there is a big assault on Israel," he added.