News Brief

Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard in a personal letter urged the president of the International Olympic Committee to hold a moment of silence at the London Games in memory of the 11 Israelis killed at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

In her letter to Jacques Rogge, Gillard said a moment of silence, either at the opening ceremony on July 27 “or at an appropriate time during the Games” would allow the Olympic movement “to honor, before the world, the memory of those whose lives were lost during that horrific event.”

A Philadelphia-area synagogue will feature a Republican speaker to balance an appearance by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee.

The Florida representative is set to speak Monday at the Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, Pa., on behalf of President Obama.

The synagogue’s senior rabbi, Lance Sussman, told JTA that he is now working with the Republican Jewish Coalition to set up an alternative event.

U.S. billionaire Ronald Lauder and French millionaire Patrick Drahi are following in the footsteps of U.S. casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who is already publishing an English edition of his Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom, by extending their Israeli media companies to an international audience.

For the second year in a row, a Hebrew charter school in Bergen County, N.J., has failed to gain final state approval just weeks before its scheduled opening.

According to Teaneck Patch, Acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf wrote in a letter Monday to Shalom Academy founder Raphael Bachrach that the school cannot open because it failed to provide various required documents, including a certificate of occupancy for educational use and a “sanitary inspection report with satisfactory rating.”

As 6 million Jews were being murdered in the Holocaust, Ernst Hess may have survived due to a special reprieve from Adolf Hitler himself. 

A letter obtained by the Jewish Voice from a German newspaper shows that Hess, the decorated World War I soldier who served as Hitler’s commanding officer, received a reprieve from Hitler that protected him and his family while the Nazis persecuted other Jews around them in Germany. The reprieve was only temporary, and he was eventually sent to a concentration camp.

The Obama administration criticized an Israeli panel finding that West Bank settlements are legal under international law.

“We do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters Monday evening.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns could bring up the Levy Committee report during meetings this week in Israel, accompanying  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her visit to the region.

The Palestinian Authority is facing its “worst financial crisis” yet, according to a PA official, because of a foreign aid shortfall and the rejection of a $100 million loan by the International Monetary Fund.

Unless the PA finds a way to close its budget gap, PA Labor Minister Ahmed Majdalani said, the delay in aid from Arab donor nations will render the PA unable to pay its employees’ July salaries and its debts to private businesses, according to the French news agency AFP.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will visit Israel this summer, the New York Times reported Monday. During his trip, the former Massachusetts governor is set to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“[Romney is] a strong friend of Israel and we’ll be happy to meet with him,” Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s senior adviser, told the Times. “We value strong bipartisan support for Israel and we’re sure it will only deepen that.”

Known as one of the shapers of the “Superman” myth, bestselling Jewish author Brad Meltzer is just as impressed with the stories of people whose actions stand out in the absence of supernatural powers.

This summer’s international celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Holocaust rescuer Raoul Wallenberg (Aug. 4) began June 26 with a symposium at the Yad Vashem Holocaust center in Jerusalem.

Although Wallenberg’s life-saving activities in German-occupied Budapest in 1944-1945 have been well documented and publicized, few people realize that American rescue advocates played an indispensable role in his work.