Global Briefs February 5

Prosecutor: Only Nisman DNA found at scene of his death

Only the DNA of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found at the site of his shooting death. On Jan. 30, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation into Nisman’s death revealed the information.

“It can categorically be reported that chemical testing of shirt, shorts, gun, pistol magazine, bullets and shell casing has found a single genetic profile that matches without a doubt the genetic profile of the deceased,” Viviana Fein said.

The death of Nisman, who was heading the probe into the bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in 1994, remains unexplained two weeks after his body was found in his Buenos Aires apartment.

Nisman, 51, was found dead on Jan. 18 hours before he was to present evidence to Argentine lawmakers that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner covered up Iran’s role in the attack.

Fernandez said his death was a deliberate “operation against the government” after originally calling it a suicide.

In addition, the security camera in the apartment building’s service elevator was not working and there were no cameras in the building’s stairwell, a specialized group of the Federal Police discovered after analyzing the security cameras in Nisman’s apartment building, Le Parc.

“As a magistrate, I have to apologize because I am part of this state branch that is not doing its best to figure out what brought you to this end,” Sandra Arroyo Salgado, Nisman’s ex-wife and current federal judge, said at his Jan. 29 funeral. “Now you are in peace, and we’ll search for the truth because none of us believe that you were the maker of this end. We are certain that it was the work of another person. We do not know who.”

Nisman was laid to rest in a Buenos Aires Jewish cemetery where the victims of the AMIA bombing are buried.

At Cal Davis, swastikas at Jewish frat house follow BDS resolution

Two swastikas were spray-painted on a Jewish fraternity’s house at the University of California, Davis, two days after the student senate passed a divestment resolution targeting Israel.

The swastikas were painted on the off-campus house of Alpha Epsilon Pi sometime early Saturday morning.

“I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that this happened right after divestment,” AEPi vice president Nathaniel Bernhard told the “California Aggie” student newspaper.

The nonbinding advisory resolution was passed Jan. 29 by the Associated Students of U.C. Davis by an 8-2 vote with two abstentions. It calls on the University of California system to divest from “corporations that aid in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and illegal settlements in Palestinian territories,” the Aggie reported.

In separate statements, U.C. Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi said the university opposed divestment and condemned the anti-Semitic graffiti.

“Nothing rivals a swastika as a more potent or offensive symbol of hatred and violence toward our Jewish community members,” Katehi said.

Davis now joins several schools in the University of California system — at Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Irvine and Riverside — in passing resolutions supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. A similar resolution had failed to pass the student senate at U.C. Davis last May.

The U.C. Board of Regents, which controls the university system’s investment portfolio, has said repeatedly that it does not intend to divest from companies doing business with Israel.

B’nai Brith Canada’s weekly to suspend print edition

One of Canada’s two Jewish weekly newspapers announced it was temporarily ceasing publication of its print edition. The Jewish Tribune, which is published by B’nai Brith Canada, made the announcement on Jan. 29.

The suspension of the paper’s print edition for 13 weeks “will provide an opportunity to rethink and refocus ways the Tribune can best serve and inform the community in a dynamic and responsive way,” the paper stated. “We will update you as future decisions are made for the print edition.”

The paper’s website, jewishtribune.ca, “will continue to offer relevant and newsworthy content.”

In April 2013, the Tribune’s main competitor, the Canadian Jewish News, announced that it was ceasing publication after 53 years. But a public outcry and renewed funding rescued the CJN’s print and Web editions.

If permanent, the Tribune’s departure would leave the CJN as Canada’s sole national Jewish newspaper. It has hewed largely to a centrist editorial stance, while the Tribune had leaned unmistakably to the right and was a vocal booster of Canada’s pro-Israel Conservative government.

The Tribune is described by its staff as the country’s “largest independently operated Jewish newspaper by circulation.”

A B’nai Brith spokesman said the decision to suspend publication was taken “to re-examine the best ways the print edition can service the community” and was made “by the Tribune management, with the best interest of the paper in mind.”