Giuliani 'tough on Saudis'

Republican presidential candidate's advisor: Rudy has different attitude than Bush

Yaakov Lappin|Published: 07.29.07 , 12:30

US Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani would take a dramatically different approach to Saudi Arabia to that taken by President Bush, a senior advisor to Giuliani was quoted by the New York Jewish News as saying last week.

Norman Podhoretz, described by the Jewish News as Giuliani's "most prominent foreign policy adviser," said: "Any president would have to hesitate before risking the kind of economic dislocation that would be caused by tangling with the Saudis. But I think that Rudy does actually have a different attitude (than Bush) and might very well try to change our policy."

"Because the Saudis are alarmed over the Iranian threat, we have a very good chance of persuading them that it is in their own interest to cease financing jihadist agitation," Podhoretz told the Jewish News. "Following the terror attacks of 9/11, Giuliani returned a check to Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal intended to aid victims' families after the prince cited US policy toward Israel as a cause of the attack," the Jewish News recalled.

ADL: Pope's 'conversion edict' not cause for alarm

Pope Benedict XVI's reinstatement of a Latin prayer calling on Jews to convert to Catholicism is a cause for concern, but not alarm, a representative of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) told Boston's Jewish Advocate last week.

Andy Tarsy, Regional Director of the ADL in New England, was quoted by the Advocate as saying: "It's for challenging times that we have relationships. We're currently the beneficiaries of that relationship because we can have deep and meaningful conversations with Catholic friends and that's what we're doing."

Padraic O'Hare, Director of the Center for Study of Jewish-Christian Relations at Merrimack College, told the Jewish Advocate he was "appalled" by the Pope's inclusion of the prayer. "The Mass rite made it easier for a larger number of people to participate in it. It contains a repugnant view of the Jewish people to be converted to Jesus Christ," he was quoted as saying.

New TV film released on world's most famous Nazi hunter

A new feature-length documentary, "I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, is a welcome and powerful addition to the wide collection of films on the Holocaust," the Australian Jewish News (AJN) said in a review on Friday.

"With narration by the well-known voice of Nicole Kidman, the film on the famed Nazi hunter will be assured a reasonably wide audience," the report said.

"Wiesenthal's life is one not only of survival, but of triumph and the full embodiment of 'never forgetting,' symbolized in the title of this documentary," it added.

The report recounted how Wiesenthal was barely alive when he was liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp by the American army. He went on to start the Jewish Documentation Center in Austria, and began attracting widespread attention of Israel captured senior Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.

"Simon Wiesenthal passed away in 2005 at the age of 96, professionally active until almost his last breath, outliving virtually all of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as a final metaphorical thumbing of his nose at them.

His was an amazing life, and this film - despite some minor flaws - gives the full scope of his history in glorious detail," the review said.