2 — THE BULLETIN — Thursday. August 11.1994
NEW YORK (JTA) — The United Jewish Appeal is now booking trips to Jordan.
The addition to the U J A's long roster of destinations around the world comes at the request of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, Virginia.
Members of the Virginia federation will be heading to the Arab country this October, in conjunction with a visit to Israel.
"This is not a tourist trip to Jordan; it is a trip of Jews trying to get a sense of the geopolitical field in which Israel is playing,'* said Mark Goldstein, federation's executive vice-president.
After getting initial information about tours to Jordan and contacting a group of Reform rabbis who visited earlier this year, Goldstein passed the information on to the UJA missions office in New York.
Nechemia Dagan, executive director of UJA Overseas Program, notified federation campaign directors that the organization has contracted land agents in Jordan who are capable of arranging pre-missions there.
Dagan said UJA has current prices for mission services to Jordan and that they run slightly cheaper than services in Israel.
While Israel is at the centre of UJA missions, there is often an optional "pre-mission" to other countries. Such visits are generally to countries where UJA,
through the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, aids the local Jewish community.
Past pre-missions have included Berlin, and, prior to the recent rise of fundamentalist attacks against foreign tourists, Egypt.
Among other groups now planning a UJA-arranged visit to Jordan this fall is the leadership of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.
The American Jewish Congress also plans to add Jordan to its travel program and, according to AJCon-gress officials, has received assurances the Jordanians will allow tourists with Israeli stamps on their passports to enter the country.
UJA itself is considering sending a mission of its top donors to Jordan and Morocco, long a UJA destination.
Dagan cautioned, however, that "because of the sensitivity of the political situation in the Middle East, I do not recommend considering Jordan as a standard mission destination.
"We will look into it as a mission option on a case by case basis," he said.
A sample itinerary for Jordan drawn up by UJA includes a visit to Mount Nebo, believed to be the site where Moses died; meetings with members of Parliament and businesspeople; and a tour of Petra, the ancient city carved from stone which is one of Jordan's major tourist attractions.
TEL AVIV (JTA) — At a time when many of the world's airlines are reporting losses, El Al Airlines has reported a profit for the eighth year in a row,
Rafi Harlev, president of Israel's national airline, reported that in 1993 El Al had a profit of $9.9 million on revenues of $947.1 million.
He said the number of passengers carried by El Al last year increased by 10 percent over the previous year, to a total of 2,145,000 passengers. The company also carried 185,000 tons of cargo last year.
In June, the government's privatization committee approved the sale of 51 percent of El Al Airlines to the general public, paving the way for privatization of the national carrier.
The actual sale of shares is expected to take place in October, when the once-ailing airline is to be taken out of the 13-year-long receivership under which it has been operating.
In the days of the USSR:
It's 3 a.m. Suddenly, there's a ferocious knocking on the door of Abraham Rabinovich.
"Who's there?"
"It's the mailman."
Rabinovich opens the door. A mean-looking, trenchco-ated "mailman" stands before him. "We hear you want to leave for Israel," the "mailman" glowers. "Is life so bad for you here?"
"Life here's OK, comrade," Rabinovich answers. "So why do you want to emigrate?" the "mailman" bellows.
"Because in Israel they don't deliver the mail at 3 a.m."
Israel Sun
PRESIDENT EZER WEIZMA^S (centre), also a pilot, Is given a tour of the Israeli Airfforce museum by Chief of the Airfforce Herzl Bodinger (lef t) and Ya'akov Turner, founder of the museum. Behind them Is a Messersehmidt, the first fighter aircraft to be used by lAF during War of Independence.
By LISA GLAZER
MOSCOW (JTA) — Security forces here recently arrested members of a gang of Russian neo-Nazis who aimed to burn down Moscow cinemas screening Schindler's List, the Oscar-winning film about a German Nazi industrialist who saved 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust.
The gang, which called itself Werewolf, also planned a terror campaign against "those belonging to other ideologies — democrats, Communists and Jews," according to a document seized by the Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service.
Alexander Zdanovich, a spokesman for the counterintelligence service, said security agents confiscated a large number of arms from the commercial firm where the gang secretly operated.
He added that the gang's leader, who oversaw security for the firm, had an office decorated with portraits of Adolf Hitler, Nazi emblems and swastikas.
Werewolf was the code name for a secret Nazi operation to help top officers go underground at the end of World War II.
Schindler's List was meant to open in Russia with a personal visit from producer/ -director Steven Spielberg, However, the premiere was postponed when Spielberg cancelled his visit because of other work commitments.
The organizers say they now hope the film will premiere in September.
Nazi
By IGAL AVIDAN
BERLIN (JTA) — Groundbreaking ceremonies were held here recently for the construction of a memorial to the writers, many of them Jewish, whose books were burned by the Nazis.
Israeli sculptor Micha Ullman, whose proposal for the memorial won first prize in an international competition, helped lay the comer-stone at the ceremony.
The memorial, which will serve as an underground library, is scheduled to be completed in 1995.
The library will display books by such writers as Heinrich Heine and Thomas Mann.
Heine was Jewish. Mann, a non-Jew, married a Jew and introduced Jewish characters into his work in a positive light, spoke out against the Nazis, went into voluntary exile from Germany and was stripped of his German citizenship by the Nazis.
At the ceremony, which was held at a site in Berlin where book-burnings took place. Construction Senator Wolfgang Nagel reminded the audience of the importance of the monument at "a time when ultraright ideas (have) become acceptable in
solid middle-class circles.
Nagel called on Germans to reject intolerance, vio-^lence and "any form of anti-Semitism."
Ullman's parents escaped from Germany in 1933. His grandparents were detained in a concentration camp.
teacher at the Art Academy in the eastern German city of Stuttgart, Ullman said he had been planning the monument for 10 years. He added that the memorial was being built at "the right place at the right moment."
JERUSALEM
The
Israel Sun
country's two far-right parties, Moledet and Techiya, have decided to merge. Moledet leaders ratified the decision during a rally in Netzarim, the Gaza settlement whose continued existence has recently been called into question for security reasons by Prime Minister Rabin. Techiya ratified the merger some weeks ago. Official name of the new party is Moledet, "Movement of the Faithful of Eretz Yisrael." It is expected to be referred to most often as Moledet.
JERUSALEM — The Knesset took a first step toward passage of a bill that will bring procedures for adopting children from abroad into line with accepted international conventions. In Israel, the number of local children available for adoption has become increasingly smaller. Many couples have been adopting children from South American countries and also from Romania. While most of these adoptions posed only minimal legal problems, some have resulted in international legal battles and human tragedies. The proposed legislation seeks to remedy this by making Israeli adoptions conform with international norms.
NEW YORK - In the face of substantial international criticism, a Japanese publisher has recalled a book released recently that extols Adolf Hitler's political methods.
The publisher of the book. Hitler Election Strategy: A Bible for Certain Victory in Modern Elections, also said he* is retiring.
Eiichi Niimura, the publisher, told The New York Times, "I am 76 years old. This incident has made me think my judgment has declined."
, on
their iA;oy from HbI^b to hmd, toking e breather in T@8 Aviv.
The
shocking statistic that one in five Americans believes the Holocaust may not have occurred has been retested, and officially refuted in a new poll.
A new survey commissioned by the American Jewish Committee and conducted by Roper Starch Worldwide Inc. found that just over one percent of respondents deny that the Holocaust, occurred, contradicting the group's disputed 1992 poll which had put denial at more than 20 percent.