Jerusalem News (25 January, 2015, 5 Shevet, 5775)
Contents:
1. Parents of Eddie Chumnie Found Murdered
2. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. Crusading for Israel in a Way Some Say Is Misguided
3. Dunk 'N Jump: New 'Mikveh-Gyms' Promote Physical Fitness by Hillel Fendel
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1. Parents of Eddie Chumnie Found Murdered
(a) Doyle & Lilian Chumney: Strasburg couple found dead in car were abducted, sheriff says
Family released statement to newsnet5
http://www.newsnet5.com/web/newsnet5/news/local-news/oh-tuscarawas/doyle-lilian-chumney-strasburg-couple-found-dead-in-car-was-abducted-sheriff-says
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(b)Â Authorities investigating after bodies of missing elderly couple found in car
BAKERSVILLE, Ohio- Police confirmed the bodies of a missing elderly couple were found Thursday inside their burned-out car about 15-20 miles from their home in Tuscarawas County. The car belonging to Doyle and Lillian Chumney was located earlier Thursday on County Road 244 in Bakersville. The car was found about a half-mile up the desolate dirt road.
http://fox8.com/2015/01/22/police-sources-missing-elderly-couples-car-found-in-coshocton-county/
The Tuscarawas County Sheriff's Office said Doyle, 88, and Lillian, 79, were last heard from at about 11 p.m. Tuesday. The couple was supposed to pick up their son to take him to the airport on Wednesday, but never showed.
Strasburg Police Chief Robert Kutcher said the Chumneys' daughter went to their house in Strasburg at about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday to find the door open and the place ransacked and their car gone.
Local, county and state authorities, along with BCI agents, are investigating.
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2. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. Crusading for Israel in a Way Some Say Is Misguided
By JODI RUDOREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/middleeast/crusading-for-israel-in-a-way-some-say-is-misguided.html?_r=1
Extracts:
JERUSALEM. SHE is a crusading lawyer who serially sues rogue nations, terror groups and international banks to show, as she put it, 'there is a price to Jewish blood.' Â She is a mother of six who, while seven months pregnant with triplets, astonished an Israeli court with a motion requesting a hearing be moved to her home. (It was denied.).
Her arguments are regularly rejected by courts. About 90 percent of the $1.6 billion in default judgments against no-show defendants including Iran, Syria, North Korea and the militant Palestinian group Hamas have not been paid. Attacks continue, and she continues to file complaints (and news bulletins).
'What happens in the end doesn't affect your mission,' she said. 'If we win the money, it will be great, but this is not the reason we're going to court.'
THIS month, the first jury trial by relatives of victims against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority opened in federal court in Manhattan, a case seeking $1 billion that Ms. Darshan-Leitner helped start 11 years ago.
At the same time, her organization in Ramat Gan, Israel, has filed a series of war-crime charges against Palestinian officials in the International Criminal Court at The Hague, complaints she does not expect to see prosecuted but hopes will deter the Palestinians from pursuing parallel claims against Israelis.
Critics call it 'lawfare,' abusing the courts to score political points. Some on the left have refused to face off with Ms. Darshan-Leitner on Israeli talk shows after she made what they saw as ridiculous statements, like suggesting that Israel drop a nuclear bomb on Tehran.
'She's definitely a nuisance,' said Jonathan Arnon, an Israeli lawyer who has represented the Palestinian Authority opposite her. 'She has a lot of resources. She tries and finds every niche and note and every possible argument whether it is relevant or not, to make fatigue.'
Even American lawyers who work on the same side have clashed with Ms. Darshan-Leitner over costs, and say she is a tangential part of the process.
But Robert J. Tolchin, a New York lawyer who collaborates with Ms. Darshan-Leitner, called her a 'visionary' unafraid to pursue 'guerrilla litigation.'
Like when she tried (unsuccessfully) to compel Israel to rescue Palestinians in the Gaza Strip facing execution for collaboration. Or when she pressed (unsuccessfully) to retain roadblocks preventing Palestinians from driving on Road 443 in Israel years after a series of deadly shootings there.
'NITSANA looks at situations and sees arguments and issues that most lawyers don't see,' said Mr. Tolchin, whose law school roommate is the brother of Ms. Darshan-Leitner's husband. 'The idea of litigation as sending a message is a very valid one. It's part of our democratic system.'
Alan Bauer, an American-Israeli plaintiff in the current New York case as well as several others, described her as 'tireless' and 'fearless.'
'We have nobody going to bat for us, and here comes this woman with her six children and she says, 'O.K., I'm in your corner and we're going to fight this,' Â said Mr. Bauer, a biochemist injured in a 2002 suicide-bombing in Jerusalem along with his son, Yehonatan, who was then 7. 'It did not make Yehonatan walk straighter and it did not make my arm work better, but it did give us hope for justice.'
Ms. Darshan-Leitner, the daughter of a retired dressmaker and teacher who were born in Iran, found her calling while studying law at Bar Ilan University (she also has an M.B.A. from the University of Manchester in England). Fellow students chose her to argue their petition in the Israeli Supreme Court aiming to block the mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship from entering the country. They lost.
'I understood that I can come on behalf of terror victims, give them a voice, and get my day in a court,' she recalled. 'It doesn't matter what the decision is.'
Her organization, Shurat HaDin, Hebrew for letter of the law, was founded in 2003, and in 2012, the latest year financial reports were available publicly, had 11 employees three with salaries topping $100,000. It retains not one but two public relations firms, in Israel and New York, pitching Ms. Darshan-Leitner's perspective on the news. She said the annual budget was $2.5 million, but declined to name her donors, citing security concerns.
She claims to have collected $150 million from the various court victories but would not specify which clients got what, citing security again. And she asked that the West Bank settlement where she and her American-born husband, also a lawyer, built a large, immaculate home, not be named, for fear of reprisal.
THE successes Shurat HaDin lists on its website, all argued by other firms in American courts, include a $378 million default judgment against North Korea for the 1972 killing of Christian pilgrims at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv by members of the Japanese Red Army; $338 million against Syria for a 1991 kidnapping of archaeologists in Turkey; $156 million against Islamic charities; and $70 million from Iran. The Palestinian Authority, the site says, 'quietly' paid at least two confidential settlements. Still pending is a huge case against the Bank of China in which Israel has been fighting to keep Israeli officials having from testifying.
A suit in 2011 claiming that former President Jimmy Carter defrauded consumers with his book 'Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid' has gone nowhere and a 2010 claim against Al Jazeera for broadcasting locations of where Hezbollah rockets hit Israel was dismissed.
In Israel, her efforts to prosecute the Islamic Waqf in the destruction of Jewish artifacts at an holy site in Jerusalem's Old City failed. So did her efforts to stop the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a kidnapped Israeli soldier, to block Egypt from adding troops in the Sinai Desert and to expel Hamas lawmakers from Jerusalem.
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3. Dunk 'N Jump: New 'Mikveh-Gyms' Promote Physical Fitness
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/190446#.VMTZrJtd4dU
By Hillel Fendel
Extracts:
Rabbis have long pushed for it: Physical health must be tended to parallel with spiritual health. As of last week, these two ideals can be nurtured almost simultaneously, in Vienna, Austria. The old mikveh on the bottom floor of the Ohel Moshe Synagogue was renovated over the last several months, and a fitness training room-gym was built in rooms alongside it.
The mikveh-gym, sponsored by donations of local community members, includes two spacious mikvaot, walking machines, bench-press lifts, weights, and the like.
The city of Beitar Illit in western Gush Etzion has also announced plans for a gym alongside a men's mivkeh.
According to Maimonides in his Guide to the Perplexed, "Those who do acts of exercising their body for the purpose of good health, such as playing ball, wrestling, hand-stretching and holding one's breath, are engaged in frivolous actions according to the ignorant; but they are not frivolous according to the wise."
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, first Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land until his death in 1935, wrote in very flowering terms regarding "the exercise in which the Jewish youth engage in the Land of Israel, Â This holy service elevates G-d's Presence, just as it is elevated via the songs and praises of King David in his Psalms."
Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the Mussar (Jewish ethics) Movement, was known to exercise "religiously." This was attested to by his doctor, who said that Rabbi Salanter strictly followed the regimen he advised, including playing ball every day for a certain amount of time, Â even when he was already 60 years old.
The Jewish Community in Vienna was several ravaged by the Holocaust, losing more than a third of its 185,000 members. It is now on the rebound, numbering 12,000 Jews, of whom some 7,000 members are active participants.