Jewish & World News

High-ranking Israeli officials met with security officials in India and notified them that Israeli diplomats may be a target for Iranian terror operatives on February 13, the anniversary of the 2012 attack on an Israeli diplomat in New Delhi, The Times of India reported Thursday. The meeting took place on the backdrop of reports about an alleged Israeli Air Force strike in Syria. Iran threatened before that it would view an attack on Syria as an attack on Tehran.

The owner of an Indian store called "Hitler" has agreed to drop the Nazi dictator's name and re-brand his shop following protests from the Jewish community and the government. The shop, which sells Western menswear, opened in Ahmedabad city in the western state of Gujarat last month with "Hitler" spelled out in large white letters above the storefront, complete with a Swastika as the dot on the "i".

More than 200 people were bitten by dogs every day last year in India's commercial capital Mumbai, up 50 percent in four years due to a surging population of strays, a report said Monday. The number of bites recorded since 2001 is 650,000, and last year's average of 221 a day up was up by 50 percent from 2007, according to data from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), published in the Mumbai Mirror.

A clothing outlet named "Hitler" located in Ahmedabad, India has upset the local Jewish population, according to a report Monday by The Times of India. According to the Times, Hitler was the nickname given to the grandfather of shop owner Rajeh Shah's business partner due to his strict nature.

Two Indian investigators have gone to Tehran to question Iranian suspects who they believe were involved in a bomb attack that wounded an Israeli diplomat’s wife in New Delhi in February, police said Monday. The investigators left for the Iranian capital last week after authorities there agreed to the Indian request to pursue the case, a police officer familiar with the case said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Hitler is considered historically heinous by most of humanity, but in the last few years India has been witness to the advent in his popularity. Last month, Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi, an Assistant Professor at the Department of History & Civilization at Gautam Buddha University in India, and scholar of the history of the Jewish communities in India, concluded a lecture tour in Israel. During the trip, he gave a talk titled “The Rise of Hitler’s Popularity in India” at Tel Aviv University. He notes that “India is the only country in the world where Jews have lived with their non-Jewish neighbours in complete harmony for more than two millennia. Jews are India’s smallest religious minority and Muslims its biggest, and the two have produced beautiful examples of amity, unlike anywhere else in the world.”

A growing number of countries are flocking to Israel to study border security as the Defense Ministry works to complete the construction of a physical and technological barrier along the Egyptian border. In August, a delegation from India will arrive to study the various technologies used by the IDF to secure the borders with the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Egypt, and which could be implemented as part of India’s own fence with Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Delhi Police believe that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Crop (IRGC) was responsible for a terrorist attack targeting Israelis in India, the Times of India reported Sunday citing the results of a police investigation. On February 13, terrorists operating in India bombed an Israeli embassy car injuring Tal Yehoshua Koren, wife of the Israeli defense attaché, and her driver.

Syed Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, a suspected key handler of the 26/11 attacks, now claims that he was only in-charge of instructing the team of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorists who made their way into Chabad House, popularly known as Nariman House, in Colaba market. Jundal says he had not orchestrated the entire operation — attacks at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, The Oberoi Trident, Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, Leopold Café, Cama Hospital, Chabad House, Metro Cinema, and a lane behind a daily’s building — and that he had only been given the task of instructing the team at Nariman House.

An Israeli tourist was killed on Tuesday in a rockslide in the Dharamsala region in northern India. Her family has been notified. Israelis currently in the area said that she was travelling with her friends and was hit by a large rock which fell on her leg. She most likely suffered major blood loss.

India banned all cotton exports on Monday, causing U.S. cotton futures to surge and igniting fears of another jump in prices for cotton goods. India decided to immediately impose the ban because it's worried about a possible supply crunch in the country. One reason: India's cotton exports may have overshot government targets last year, its Directorate General of Foreign Trade said in a statement.

The Jewish quarters of Mattancherry, the area around the Paradesi Synagogue (1568) was once the centre of the White Jews or Cochin Jews, who are said to have settled here after fleeing persecution. Today, there are just nine surviving members of the community, all of them over the age of 75, except one. Jew Town once flourished with trade, Hebrew culture and prayer. Today, it has given way to a row of antique shops and a thriving spice market. As a quorum of 10 male members is required for prayer service at the synagogue, the dwindling community had to acquire the services of a rabbi from Israel. Most of them have relatives in Israel.

Mossad chief Tamir Pardo visited New Delhi just days before an attack on Israeli officials in the Indian capital this week, Indian media reported on Thursday, highlighting the extent to which Israeli intelligence was in the dark regarding possibility of a terror attack taking place in the country. On Monday, the wife of an Israeli diplomat was moderately wounded when a car bomb exploded outside of Israel's embassy in New Delhi.

Investigation into the the explosion outside the Israeli embassy in Delhi's high-security area that left four people including a diplomat's wife injured, is on. Sources have told CNN-IBN that an incendiary explosive device was used in the attack. That is a device that can itself start a fire. Police said that such a sticking bomb has never been used in any terror attack in the country in the recent past. They said that it was definitely the first time such a bomb has been used in Delhi.

Israel is not expected to respond harshly to on Monday's twin attacks on Israeli representatives in India and Georgia, Israeli sources said Monday night. In one attack, the wife of Israel's defense attache in India was moderately wounded in a car bombing outside the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi. In the other, a bomb attached to a car belonging to the Israeli embassy in the Georgian capital Tbilisi was discovered before anyone was hurt.

Heroism in face of terror: An Israeli diplomat's wife wounded in Monday's blast in New Delhi apparently spotted the terrorist moments before the attack, managed to get out of her car, and evacuated herself to hospital despite her injury. Tal Yehoshua Koren, the wife of an Israeli Defense Ministry representative to India, was taken to hospital by rickshaw where she is in mild to moderate condition following surgery. She suffered shrapnel wounds after a terrorist attached an explosive device to the car she was traveling in, wounding four people.

India - A group of Bnei Menashe (Mizo Jews) from the northeastern states of Mizoram and Manipur are expected to migrate to Israel, the 'Promised Land' for the Jewish community this year. Jeremiah L Hnamte, a Bnei Menashe leader hoped that at least a few hundreds, if not all, would be able to 'go home' this year from Mizoram. He said the Israeli government had agreed to the migration of 7,232 Bnei Menashe members to the 'Holy Land' last year, but a number of obstacles had prevented them from leaving India. "Some of the community members are extremely poor. So, the Israeli government will have to provide financial assistance and bear the travel expenses of the families," Hnamte said. One leader of the Bnei Menashes, however, attributed the delay in the migration of the Mizo Jews to the decision of the Israeli government to first take back the Ethiopian Jews before concentrating on the Jews living in India.

Construction on a new Mikvah in New Delhi, India has been completed last week. Due to the fact that the rain season will only start in a few months, the local Shliach Rabbi Shmuel Scharf consulted with Chief Rabbi of Bnei Brak Moshe Landau and with a member of the Crown Heights Beis Din Rabbi Yaakov Schwei and it has been decided to fill the Mikvah with industrial ice and let it melt, and then to replace it with rain water in a few months.

India will deport an Israeli couple which arrived at the city of Kochi in March 2010 for "suspicious activities," The Times of India reported Tuesday. According to the report, Shneor Zalman and Yaffa Shenoi arrived on a multiple-entry visa and rented a house on Rose Street in the city. "Central intelligence got an alert about a covert operation being carried out by suspected Israeli agents after the 26/11 terror attacks in which south Mumbai's Chabad House came under attack and six Jews, including a rabbi and his pregnant wife, were killed," a local intelligence officer was quoted by The Times of India as saying.

The sole surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai ( Bombay ) attacks has launched an appeal against his death sentence in India 's Supreme Court. Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, 24, said he had been denied a fair trial and that the prosecution had failed to prove its case. Qasab was convicted of murder and other crimes in May 2010 and his first appeal was rejected in February 2011. The Mumbai attacks claimed 165 lives. Nine gunmen were also killed. Qasab was found guilty in Mumbai on 3 May 2010 of murder, terrorist acts and waging war on India and was sentenced to death. In the Supreme Court in the capital Delhi on Tuesday, the court-appointed lawyer for Qasab, Raju Ramachandran, read out a statement on behalf of his client. "I have been wrongly held guilty because I was denied a fair trial. I was denied a counsel," the statement read. "The prosecution has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against me. "I may be guilty of killing people and...