28/08/2025

THURSDAY | AUG 28, 2025

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Row over museum using Jewish manuscript to raise funds for Gaza SARAJEVO: Bosnia’s national museum has defended a decision to donate funds from the display of a precious Jewish manuscript to the people of Gaza. It said ticket sales to see the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the most precious religious manuscripts of the Middle Ages, would be donated to “support the people of Palestine who suffer systematic, calculated and cold-blooded terror, directly by the state of Israel”. The move drew intense criticism earlier this month from Jewish organisations, with some abroad accusing the museum of antisemitism. But museum director Mirsad Sijaric, 55, stood by the decision and said he had received numerous messages of support from Jewish people around the world. “Did we choose one of the sides? Yes, we chose one of the sides,” Sijaric said. The museum’s donation will also include sales from a book about the Haggadah. Sijaric insisted the move was “absolutely not” directed against Jewish people, but was instead a message of opposition to what was happening in Gaza. “Feigning neutrality is siding with evil. In my opinion, this is pure evil, and one must oppose it.” Several Jewish organisations criticised the museum’s announcement, including the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, which labelled it a “politicisation” of a “symbol of heritage, survival, and coexistence”. Sitting in a glass cabinet in a specially designed room in the museum, the Haggadah has long been a treasured symbol of Sarajevo’s diversity. The majority-Muslim city is also home to just under a thousand Jewish people. The Haggadah’s illuminated and well preserved parchment pages narrate the creation of the world and the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. Dating back to 1350, the intricately illustrated manuscript is believed to have been written near Barcelona, and brought to Sarajevo by Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492. Jakob Finci, president of the Bosnian Jewish community, described the move as “bizarre” and “a bit offensive”. “It tarnishes Sarajevo’s reputation and that of the Sarajevo Haggadah, the book that for many years has borne witness to Sarajevo’s multiethnic character and our shared life,” Finci said. “I’ve heard a lot of criticism (of the move) ... I have not seen any praise.” Italian Egyptologist Silvia Einaudi, after viewing the manuscript said: “I think it’s a way to support the situation of the Palestinians in Gaza.” Long kept in a safe and rarely displayed, the book has been more accessible since the special room opened in 2018 after a renovation paid for by France. – AFP

Reuters, AP journalists were not a target: Israel

CAIRO: Two journalists for Reuters and the Associated Press who were killed in an Israeli attack on a Gaza hospital were not “a target of the strike”, a military spokesperson told Reuters on Tuesday, adding the army chief had ordered a further inquiry into how the o Six gunmen killed in attack, says military

have similarly targeted currency exchange offices in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967. Israeli troops or settlers in the occupied West Bank have killed at least 972 Palestinians since the beginning of the Gaza war, according to an AFP tally. In the same period, at least 36 Israelis, both civilians and security forces, have been killed in attacks or during military operations in the territory. – AFP He learnt about the video because he receives regular updates from Russian propagandists about their disinformation videos – apparently because they want him to boost their online profiles. The video appears to have had thousands of views, but Higgins said these were created artificially by bots. Asked why Moscow operatives would choose an Austen expert, Higgins said that “they’ve used various academics in the past”. – AFP down. Masri was killed in the attack. None of the five journalists were among the six alleged targets that the Israeli military named in a written statement, released on Tuesday. The statement included photos of six individuals who were killed, including alleged members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. “At the same time, the Chief of the General Staff regrets any harm caused to civilians,” the statement said, adding that the Israeli military directs its activities solely towards military targets. The written Israeli military statement identified what it called “several gaps” that Israel’s Chief of the General Staff had instructed be further examined: “Firstly, a further examination of the authorisation process before the strike, including the ammunition approved for the strike and the timing of the authorisation. “Secondly, an examination of the decision-making process in the field.” In a statement issued later on Tuesday, Hamas challenged the Israeli account of the hospital casualties, denying that any of the Palestinians killed were militants. The Hamas government media office said in a statement that one of the six Palestinians who Israel alleged were militants was killed in al-Mawasi some distance from the hospital, and another was killed elsewhere at a different time. The Hamas statement did not clarify whether the two men were civilians or fighters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Monday that Israel deeply regretted what he called a “tragic mishap”. – Reuters

Three other journalists were also killed in the strike. Using its own camera equipment, Reuters has frequently broadcast a feed from Nasser hospitalr. For the past several weeks the news agency had been delivering daily feeds from the hospital position that was hit. At the moment of the initial Israeli strike on Monday, the Reuters live video feed, which cameraman Hussam al-Masri had been operating, suddenly shut

decision to strike the hospital was made. Israeli forces struck Nasser hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 20 people including journalists who worked for Reuters, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other outlets. “We can confirm that the Reuters and AP journalists were not a target of the strike,” military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told Reuters on Tuesday.

Israeli soldiers firing teargas at journalists during a raid in the city of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, on Tuesday. – AFPPIC

US$450,000 seized in West Bank raid TEL AVIV: Israeli police said yesterday that security forces seized roughly US$450,000 (RM1.9 million) of “terror funds” during a raid in the occupied West Bank a day earlier. Israeli forces targeted a currency exchange in Ramallah on Tuesday, leaving dozens of Palestinians wounded, according to the Red Crescent. incursions into central Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, are relatively rare. A statement from a police spokesman yesterday said Israeli border police and the military “raided a money exchange business in the heart of Ramallah that was used to transfer funds to Hamas”. “Nine wanted suspects accused of involvement in terror activity were arrested and taken, together with the seized evidence, for investigation,” it added. Since the start of the Gaza war Israeli raids on Palestinian dinars, euros, and other foreign currencies,” the statement said.

population centres in the West Bank, particularly in the territory’s north, have intensified. Previous Israeli operations, earlier this year and in December 2023,

“Forces seized significant sums of money in both foreign and local currencies, with a total value of approximately US$450,000, including US dollars, Jordanian

Israel carries out frequent raids across the West Bank, where tensions have remained high throughout the Gaza war, but

Russian ‘deepfake’ falsifies British academic’s Jane Austen video LONDON: A British academic said on Tuesday she was “horrified” after a video she made about 18th-century novelist Jane Austen was used to criticise German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in a Russian “deepfake” operation. his stance on Ukraine. The manipulated video makes other fictitious claims about Austen, including that she collected tarantulas.

false claims about Austen. It adds: “I’m sure she would have sponsored an assassination attempt on German Chancellor Merz”, saying “Merz and his revanchist ideas” risk “a major war that would devastate European lands and raze Germany to the ground”. “Naturally, I am horrified,”Dow said. Higgins from Bellingcat said “it’s definitely the first time I’ve seen Jane Austen mentioned” in Russian propaganda.

be picked up by Russian media. Russia has criticised Merz for supporting Ukraine and raising the possibility of sending German troops there as part of any peace agreement. In the original video, posted in April, Dow, an associate professor of English at Southampton University, promises to share “three things you might not know about Jane Austen”, born 250 years ago. In the manipulated video, a fake voice then takes over making totally

The co-founder of Bellingcat investigative outlet, Eliot Higgins, posted it was a “Russian fake video with deep faked audio”. Kremlin propagandists sometimes take a genuine Western expert comment and manipulate the audio to falsify the message that then may

In a bizarre video posted on social media this week, Gillian Dow, a respected expert on Austen, appears to say the Pride and Prejudice author would have supported an assassination attempt on Merz over