JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Updated 01/07/09 @ 05:12PM EST

• President Bush's national security adviser suggested that President-elect Barack Obama maintain consistency on Israeli-Palestinian peace.
• The Orthodox Union is considering creating an emergency fund to help cash-strapped day schools and yeshivas.
• A foreign policy expert touted as President-elect Barack Obama's Middle East peace envoy advocates low-level outreach to Hamas under cease-fire conditions.
• About a thousand people packed a Washington synagogue for a community pro-Israel rally.
• A senior Vatican official said the conditions in Gaza "resembled ever more a big concentration camp."

• A Jewish girl was beaten in a northern Paris suburb by schoolmates who claimed revenge for Israel's offensive in Gaza.
• A German-Jewish journalist can describe anti-Israel statements by the daughter of a former German-Jewish leader as anti-Semitic, a German court ruled.
• Two synagogues within a mile of each other in Tennessee were vandalized.
• A warning that Jews should be vigilant about attacks in New York on Jan. 7 is a hoax, the New York Police Department said.
• The Catholic priest who vandalized a memorial to slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in New Zealand has rejected calls for a “full and unqualified apology.”

• Scheduled tours to Israel during China's heaviest travel season were canceled.
• A South African-born Jewish soldier serving in the Australian army was killed in Afghanistan.
• Anti-Semitic incidents in Belgium have surged in the wake of Israel's operation in the Gaza Strip.
• One of three Arab countries that maintain full diplomatic relations with Israel recalled its ambassador.
• Israel and the Palestinian Authority have accepted a truce plan for Gaza, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced.

• The Israel Defense Forces opened a Humanitarian Affairs Coordination Center in Tel Aviv.
• Britain has seen a sharp rise in attacks on Jews since the start of Israel’s military operation in Gaza.
• A Ukrainian ombudsman has accused Israel of violating international law.
• Some 50 previously unseen drawings and paintings by Marc Chagall will be auctioned.
• Nearly two dozen Jewish members of Congress celebrated the swearing-in of the 111th Congress.

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