Thousands of people are attending Friday the funerals of the two soldiers killed in a deadly drive-by shooting in the West Bank on Thursday.
The eulogies for Sgt. Yossi Cohen are taking place in Jerusalem, where he will also be buried. Staff Sgt. Yuval Mor-Yosef is being brought to rest in the military cemetery in Ashkelon.
Cohen's stepfather, Rabbi Eliyahu Merav, who lost his son-in-law in a terrorist attack in the West Bank nine years ago, eulogized Cohen. I never believed I would reach this moment. You were totally good, completely pure. Not even 20 years old. You are one of the martyrs. I raised you for a few years, you were all giving and soul. You reached the highest places. Dear Yosef, now you see the senseless hatred that is raging here .... Pray for us from above, said Merav.
An Israeli soldier sustained serious wounds during a confrontation with a Palestinian on Friday in a military outpost near the West Bank settlement of Beit El.
According to the Israeli army, a struggle ensued between the soldier and the Palestinian after the latter crossed the West Bank barrier, reached the outpost and attacked the soldier with a rock and a knife.
After stabbing the soldier and hitting him with a rock, the Palestinian fled the scene and the soldier was evacuated to a hospital for medical care. He is currently sedated and intubated. Israeli security forces are canvassing the area for the assailant, who is also believed to have been wounded in the exchange.
SAN DIEGO A small, high cabin with three large windows stands in a green grove. On the raised platform outside the entrance, an old but clean metal pitcher is perched on a portable gas burner. Flip-flops lie in a corner. I, too remove my shoes and enter the small, 9-square-meter room. Quite a few books and four photo albums are hidden behind curtains; on the floor, a thin mattress. Hanging on the wall are three pictures of Buddhist monks, anonymous to me, and another photograph whose subjects I know very well: my parents. The monk who lives in this modest cabin in Southern California is my brother.
I'll never forget the day when Yam announced that he was leaving. He'd begun to prepare us a year in advance, and all I could think of then was that I had a year to set things right, a year in which to understand what I had done wrong as a sister and what we had done wrong as a family. The difficulty the decision entailed was still written on his face. He felt responsible, perhaps even guilty, for having ostensibly disappointed us.
Now, almost two years later, I found a tranquil, sound man. He fits in well in the commando of monks in the Metta Forest Monastery north of San Diego. Like him, the other monks excelled in whatever they did previously, but elected to switch their Western ways for the life of a Buddhist monastic. My brother was a computer programmer at the age of 19 and did his army service in an elite technological unit of the Israel Defense Forces. After his release, companies in the civilian market fought for him, and at the age of 22 he was earning as much as senior high-tech people.
In the week just passed, two major evils reappeared terror in the West Bank and the high cost of living. Two shooting incidents took the lives of three people the newborn Amiad Israel, who was delivered prematurely via an emergency operation on Sunday after his mother, Shira Ish-Ran, was seriously wounded; and two Israel Defense Forces soldiers who had been guarding a settler's hitchhiking stop north of Ramallah.
A series of hikes in the prices of such commodities as water, electricity, subsidized bread and other foods landed on Israelis, making it clear that 2019 will be a cruel year for their bank balances. At least they can commiserate with each other by means of conversations on their cellphones, whose rates remain relatively low.
A wave of terror and a wave of price hikes those are the very last things a prime minister would wish to see in headlines in advance of what is emerging as the death throes of the battle over the 20th Knesset. The deterioration of the security situation in the occupied territories does not present a real electoral threat to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party. The public is mature enough to understand that to terror attacks like those we saw this week, there is no solution. Even in any future diplomatic solution, there will be no good tidings when it comes to organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
An Israeli Arab bus driver said he was attacked by two youths on Thursday night. The man was lightly wounded and was evacuated to a hospital. Police have opened an investigation into the incident.
The driver told the Israel Police that while driving in Modi'in Ilit, his bus was blocked by a vehicle. Two young men got out of the car, recognized him as an Arab, beat him and then fled the scene.
A video which circulated on social media following the attack shows the driver sitting in his bus, bruised and bleeding from his eye as a small crowd gathers in the street.
The senior officer from Central Command who spoke to reporters Thursday morning sounded more perturbed than usual. Although the security forces chalked up two successes Wednesday night in the hunt for the perpetrators of terror attacks in the West Bank, the officer was making an obvious effort to explain the sensitive nature of the situation on the ground.
For people who have known the officer for years, since his days as an outstanding battalion commander who had many encounters with the enemy during the second intifada, it wasn't hard to discern a note of concern in his voice.
At the end of the discussion, without the words being said outright even once, the bottom line was clear: The West Bank is facing another wave of violence. The ability to stop this trend in the coming days, before it spreads, depends mainly on the forces in the field on whether a wave of copy-cat attacks will translate into another success for terror.
The most important political struggle in Israel over the past decade centers on the Jewish majority's relations with the Arab community. With the support of his alternating coalition partners, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put most of his effort into suppressing the aspirations of Israel's Arab citizens' to social equality and political freedom of speech. That is the motivation behind a series of laws that have tainted Israeli democracy with racism and exclusion, starting with the so-called Nakba Law and reaching a peak with the so-called nation-state law.
It also drives the concerted effort of right-wing politicians and media outlets, supported by centrists like Yair Lapid, who portray the Arab community's leaders as enemies. All these were preceded by the abortive attempt to reduce the Arabs' political representation by raising the electoral threshold.
Netanyahu and his partners rely on the racism that is prevalent among Israeli Jews, but instead of tempering it and encouraging civil equality and a shared Israeli identity, they foster racism and exclusion in order to perpetuate their rule. This is because the Israeli left that is, the camp that supports dividing the land will have difficulty retaking power and carrying out its goals unless they collaborate with the Arabs' elected representatives. That was the political foundation for the Oslo Accords, and the Arab voice in the Knesset has only grown since then.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he would legalize thousands of Jewish homes in the West Bank, hours after two Israeli soldiers were killed and two others were wounded in a shooting attack.
After Netanyahu's statement, Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit formally approved the so-called "market amendment," which is expected to lead to the legalization of some 2,000 housing units in the West Bank, at the pressure of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.
The amendment is based on an order pertaining to government property in the West Bank, stipulating that "a transaction made in good faith between the custodian of the government property in the territories and another person, regarding a property the custodian believed at the time of the deal to be government property" is valid, even if in fact the land did not belong to the state.
A recently filed lawsuit alleges that a major construction company deceived Arabs into believing there were no apartments available at its properties while marketing them to Jews.
Samer and Christine Damouni live in a rented house in Shfaram. Since 2012 Samer has repeatedly tried to look into new apartments built by the Sharbiv construction company in the Givat Alonim neighborhood in Kiryat Ata, but to no avail. Sales people never return his calls and when he insists on straight talk it turns out that, miraculously, there are no available apartments and that the only option is to wait for a few years.
A lawsuit demanding compensation was filed recently by the Damounis and four other Arabs who received the same answers. Testimony by a Jewish buyer who received all the information denied the Damounis raises the suspicion that marketing efforts are intended for Jewish buyers only.
After a week of meetings with government and rebel officials in Rimbo, Sweden, the special UN envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, admits that his job is no walk in the park.
Houthis don't trust the distinguished 67-year-old diplomat, who was appointed in February. As a well-connected former British diplomat, he's viewed by the rebels as someone who sells weapons to the Saudis for slaughtering them. Yemen's government, meanwhile, suspects Griffiths of being too indulgent with the Houthis and of backing their impossible demands.
All the same, he has the sides negotiating after a two-year break, and he has just pulled off a prisoner-swap deal that might be implemented within days.
Israeli troops entered the Palestine Olympic Committee's offices near Ramallah as the military conducted a major search for the perpetrator of a deadly terror attack, according to Palestinian media outlets.
Soldiers arrived just before a meeting was set to take place, the reports said.
In a video published on a Palestinian sports channel's Facebook page, Israeli soldiers are seen separating those present into adjacent rooms amid shouting and arguing.
The two soldiers killed in a West Bank terror attack Thursday have been identified as 20-year-old Staff Sgt. Yuval Mor-Yosef and 19-year-old Sgt. Yossi Cohen, both of whom were serving in the same battalion.
The funerals will be held on Friday morning: Cohen's at the Shamgar funeral home in Jerusalem, and Mor-Yosef's at the Ashkelon cemetery.
The two served in the Netzach Yehuda battalion of the Kfir infantry brigade and were killed when a gunman opened fire.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas on Thursday that Israel won't have a Gaza cease-fire if terrorism in the West Bank continues, a senior official said.
Netanyahu's comments come as the Israeli military is conducting a widescale manhunt in the West Bank for the assailants responsible for Thursday's deadly attack that left two soldiers killed and two wounded and in which the perpetrator stole a soldiers' weapon before fleeing. The military has sealed off Ramallah and set up roadblocks throughout the area. Most of the activity was centered around Ayoush Square, near the entrance to Ramallah.
Israeli defense officials increasingly believe that the Hamas cell responsible for last week's attack near the West Bank settlement of Ofra is also behind today's attack.
Relatives of a Palestinian who was shot dead in the West Bank on Thursday have said they do not believe Israel's claim that he had been attempting to run over soldiers.
The dead man has been identified as 60-year-old Hamdan al-Arda, the owner of an aluminum factory in the Jenin area. Members of his family said he suffered from hearing loss that they thought he must have failed to hear soldiers' warnings. They added that he likely veered off course when he was surprised by the soldiers' presence. According to witness, troops fired dozens of bullets at al-Arda.
Hundreds of people participated in a Fatah-organized march on Thursday evening in Araba, the town where al-Arda lived, to protest the killing. Participants condemned Israel, accusing it of killing al-Arda for no reason.
The U.S. Senate backed a resolution on Thursday to end U.S. military support for the Saudi Arabian-led war in Yemen, defying President Donald Trump with a historic vote that underscored lawmakers' anger over the murder of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The votes were largely symbolic because to become law the resolutions would have to pass the House of Representatives, whose Republican leaders have blocked any legislation intended to rebuke the Saudis. In a historic move, Senators voted 56-41 to end U.S. military support for the Saudi Arabian-led campaign in Yemen.
It was the first time either chamber of Congress had backed a move to withdraw U.S. forces from a foreign military engagement under the War Powers Act.
The suspected gunman who killed three people at a Christmas market in the French city of Strasbourg was shot dead on Thursday in a brief gun battle with police after being on the run for 48 hours, police sources said.
Cherif Chekatt, 29, was killed in the Neudorf/Meinau area of the city shortly after a big police operation was launched around 2100 hrs (2000 GMT) on Thursday about 2 kilometers from where he launched his attack on Tuesday.
Chekatt was killed after firing on police officers, who returned fire, one of the sources said.
What is the craziest thing about the Watergate scandal, over 45 years on? Is it that, seeking dirt on his opponents, U.S. President Richard Nixon approved a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in June 1972, even though he was already 19 points clear of his nearest rival?
Is it that for over two years between 1971 and 1973 Nixon made secret recordings of his White House conversations which turned out to be the petard upon which he was hoist and whose existence only came to light quite by chance at a Senate Watergate Committee hearing?
Is it that Nixon's discredited playbook waging war on the press, political rivals and the judiciary by any means necessary is now back in vogue?
The Yad Vashem museum currently has in its temporary exhibitions pavilion a fascinating exhibition titled "Flashes of Memory Photography during the Holocaust." The idea behind the exhibition is to tell the story behind the footage of the Holocaust, who stood behind the cameras and what their motives were.
In our collective historical minds, the visual images we have of the Holocaust are blurred into one continuing narrative, but their sources are disparate.
>>Secretly photographing the Holocaust: A rare exhibition of photos taken by Jews in the ghetto
Some 20% of families in Israel live in poverty, according to the alternative annual poverty report published by the food security NGO Latet Israel, released on Wednesday.
The organization publishes its poverty report as an alternative to the official report published by the National Insurance Institute.
Some 533,000 families in Israel live in poverty, which is 21% of all families in the country, reports Latet.
BROOKLYN New educational requirements issued by New York State's Education Department for nonpublic and religious schools have the local ultra-Orthodox community up in arms.
School leaders and prominent rabbis are promising resistance and war if the new rules dictating secular oversight of Haredi schools, known as yeshivas are not changed.
The new regulations, issued by the state's education department last month, require that students in religious schools be taught subjects such as math, science, English, social studies, art and music for a total of about 34 hours a week.
Israeli jazz pianist Tom Oren last week won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in Washington, D.C., the most prestigious prize for emerging jazz talent in the world.
I didn't really understand how big a thing this is until after winning, and just as well, says Oren, the first Israeli ever to win the prize. If I'd grasped it earlier I might have been stressed.
A moment before I started playing, I heard somebody cough, says Oren. I was supposed to start the piece alone, and this opening is critical it brings in the other players, it sets everything. And at that dramatic second suddenly someone coughed. I don't know if it was one of the musicians or someone in the audience. As far as I'm concerned it was a wonderful thing. Instinctively I played something like that cough. I sort of imitated it. It was funny. It was fun, and after that nothing mattered anymore. I just played.
State-run defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries said Thursday it was working with authorities to implement a government decision to issue a minority stake on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. IAI, which makes unmanned air systems, land and space systems and commercial aircraft, said in a statement there was no certainty an initial public offering will take place. Israeli media reported that the offering of a 25 percent stake would raise some 3 billion shekels ($800 million), valuing IAI at 12 billion shekels. An IAI spokeswoman declined to comment on the figures. In early 2017, IAI told Reuters it sought a share offering of 20 percent to help it finance acquisitions. At the time, IAI was valued at $3-$4 billion. (Reuters)
Benjamin Netanyahu is holding talks with Hungarian leaders on the character of the soon-to-open Hungarian Holocaust (denial) museum. The prime minister of Israel is giving his blessing once again to the design of a nationalist narrative that makes a substantive alteration of the story of the Holocaust in general, and the story of the annihilation of Hungarian Jewry specifically.
Against this background, it is worth trying to gain a better understanding of the motives driving the protagonists. Every few years there arises a new generation of similar leaders, local and global, who reflect and echo one another. Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler; Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt; Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Yitzhak Rabin; Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Menachem Begin.
>>Will Israel abet Hungary's whitewash museum? | Opinion
Protests are planned for Friday in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem against a wave of increases in the price of some food items and utilities, and the organizers of the demonstrations are calling on protesters to show up wearing yellow fluorescent traffic safety vests similar to what demonstrators in France have worn in recent weeks in their protests against the cost of living.
The time has come to learn from the French. We're done being nice, the protest organizers said in a statement. Scheduled at noon at central locations near Azrieli Center in Tel Aviv and Paris Square in Jerusalem -- the organizers said: There's been a wild response on the part of young people and college students, by adults who are concerned about the future of the country, of families facing economic difficulties.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be an art lover nobody knows but it's clear, for example, that he doesn't want Yael Bartana, a wonderful video artist, to participate in an exhibition on the subject of Jerusalem at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. As was recently reported on the German website TAZ, and has been denied since by Netanyahu, an official Israeli document was sent to the bureau of Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel, with a demand that her government stop supporting the Jewish Museum in Berlin and 12 nonprofit organizations with ties to Israel.
By what right is Israel, and its head Netanyahu, making demands of the German government concerning an art museum on its territory? It's a distorted claim based on the ultra-right strategy of Netanyahu and his government to present artists, preferably Israelis, as disloyal to the nation.
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The festive decorations adorning Ben-Gurion Boulevard outside the Haifa City Museum stand in contrast to the deep wound at the heart of the new art exhibition within. 1948 is a display of works by 42 artists that deal with Israel's War of Independence and this mixed Arab-Jewish city.
Every December the city's German Colony neighborhood decks itself out for the Holiday of Holidays celebrations, and December 1, the opening night of the exhibition, the street was full of decorations, lights, Christmas trees, crosses alongside Hanukkah menorahs and Hebrew and Arabic intertwined.
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It was astonishing to hear the baron reciting this eulogy of manual labor or rather not so astonishing, since the sacred character of manual labor is a specifically bourgeois invention.
Henri de Montherlant, The Bachelors
Progress, as everyone knows, is an excellent thing. And we, to our good fortune, live in a period of obvious progress. Rapid and dynamic, our progress extends its arms into diverse realms and gives them a good shaking up. The equipment surrounding us has greatly improved and become more efficient and convenient; impressive development has occurred in the realm of public mental life. Things are moving. The MeToo campaign can perhaps serve as a timely, agreed-upon example of that.
Israelis are supposed to be smart. We've won more than our fair share of Nobel Prizes and are home to a disproportionate number of top-ranked universities. Startup Nation is all about smarts.
Unfortunately, the only concrete evidence of Israeli mental skills that exists shows exactly the opposite namely that, compared to people in other developed countries, we lack basic literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills.
The issue of what constitutes intelligence is riddled with controversy, and even if you accept IQ as a reasonable measure, there are no international comparisons.
A STAGE COUP: Jerusalem has long been rich with English-theater companies but short on coordination between them. Enter C.B. Davies, an aspiring director from New Jersey who has built his own website, Jerusalem English Theater Community, to promote the local scene. Davies met with the various companies this year to bring them on board, so his site can include information on all shows. I want to make something more sustainable and help build the community, said Davies, who returned to Israel in 2015 after studying theater abroad. We're not amateur but we're community, and we create some amazing work with professionals, trained actors and people who haven't been trained. Davies should know he met his wife, Dena Buckman Davies, through J-Town Playhouse. He has since added volunteer staff like actress Rivka Deray as content writer and technical adviser. Check out the website for show listings and more: https://jerusalemenglishtheater.wordpress.com/
FESTIVE RECITAL: The Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing will host a festive evening at Uri Zvi Greenberg Legacy House in Jerusalem on December 23. The gathering will celebrate several of the program's most recent graduates, who are slated to read from their work. Alumni will include Joanie Elian and Nicky Blackburn, who both hail from the United Kingdom, as well as Elana Dorfman, who comes from New York. In addition, there will be a book launch for Harriet Levin Millan, the program's visiting poet, who will read from her new volume of poetry, My Oceanography. The program is open to the public and runs from 8-10 P.M. Levin, who is known for combining her writing with activism, wrote her debut novel based on the life of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, which was highlighted on National Public Radio in the United States. For more info, email: barilanwriting@gmail.com
GROWING ISRAELI CULTURE: The Israel Innovation Fund announced this week it has received a new grant from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation to support its 2018-2019 operations. The Israel Innovation Fund's stated vision is to reignite the Zionist spirit and meet the needs of Jewish civilization in the 21st century by connecting people around the world through the vibrancy and creativity of contemporary Israeli culture. Founded by serial entrepreneur Adam Scott Bellos, TIIF's current projects include raising awareness of Israeli wines, supporting young artists and promoting other cultural experiences in the country. We have managed to do amazing things in the past year doing it almost entirely on our own with a very limited budget, said Bellos, who grew up in Cincinnati. However, he noted, the new source of support will allow his organization to expand cultural efforts according to a much bigger vision of sharing Israeli culture around the world.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and another soldier and a civilian woman were seriously wounded Thursday in a shooting in the West Bank, near the settlement of Ofra.
Israeli army spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, said a man disembarked from a vehicle on Route 60, opened fire and fled the scene.
Manelis added that soldiers are canvassing the area in search of several assailants as well as setting up checkpoints, and that the army has sealed off roads leading Ramallah.
The trial of a former Nazi concentration camp guard collapsed Thursday due to questions about the 94-year-old defendant's health.
Johann Rehbogen, a former SS guard at the Stutthof concentration camp, has been hospitalized for heart and kidney issues, causing several recent hearings at the Muenster state court to be canceled.
Due to German legal regulations preventing overly long gaps in trials, the court had no choice but to end the proceedings, said court spokesman Steffen Vahlhaus.
Here's how the scare tactics work: Attack tunnels inside our territory are exposed. Great job, excellent work. Important news. We discovered them and we sealed them up. Very good. I'm not belittling the uncovering of the tunnels, not at all. The army did what an army should do. A worthy front page news item that ought to go down at the bottom next to the report on the National Insurance Institute's bankruptcy.
But that's not how the scare tactic works. The fear factor rises to the main headline, it leads off the news broadcasts, the prime minister freely employs his most authoritative baritone. Words like determination and heroism flutter about like butterflies in springtime. The television reporters don their combat Uniqlos, military correspondent Roni Daniel's thick eyebrows merge into a single forbidding line and everyone rejects the notion of any connection between the length of the tunnels and the depth of the investigations involving the prime minister.
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Nine people were killed and nearly 50 injured in Turkey when a high speed train collided with a locomotive and crashed into a station platform and overpass in an Ankara suburb early on Thursday, officials said.
Rescuers worked to free people trapped under the mangled wreckage at Marsandiz train station, 8 km (5 miles) from central Ankara. It was not clear at which speed the train and locomotive were travelling when the collision occurred. There was light snow on the tracks.
The train had been heading from Ankara to the central Turkish province of Konya and was not due to stop at Marsandiz. Ankara Governor Vasip Sahin said the locomotive, which lay battered 20 metres (22 yards) further ahead, carried out track inspections.
Dr. Ari Engelberg, from Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem, why did you choose to study Lehava, whose name is a Hebrew acronym for flame and stands for Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land?
It started as a project at Tel Aviv University. I was invited to join a research group dealing with mixed marriages of all types including Filipinos, Arabs. At first I didn't actually know how I could integrate into the project, because I am, all in all, a conservative, traditional, even religious person.
What do you mean? Your worldview doesn't jibe with marriages that are sorry, but I can't bring myself to use the word mixed, I find it appalling ...
The United Nations secretary general says Yemen's warring sides have agreed after week-long peace talks in Sweden to a province-wide cease-fire in Hodeida and a withdrawal of troops from the contested Red Sea port city.
Antonio Guterres thanked the Yemeni delegations for what he called "an important step" and "real progress toward future talks to end the conflict."
He spoke on Thursday at the closing ceremony for the talks in the Swedish town of Rimbo. A press conference is about to follow.
As U.S. President Donald Trump re-imposed harsh economic sanctions on Iran last month, hackers scrambled to break into personal emails of American officials tasked with enforcing them, The Associated Press has found another sign of how deeply cyberespionage is embedded into the fabric of U.S.-Iranian relations.
The AP drew on data gathered by the London-based cybersecurity group Certfa to track how a hacking group often nicknamed Charming Kitten spent the past month trying to break into the private emails of more than a dozen U.S. Treasury officials. Also on the hackers' hit list: high-profile defenders, detractors and enforcers of the nuclear deal struck between Washington and Tehran, as well as Arab atomic scientists, Iranian civil society figures and D.C. think tank employees.
>> Trump's sanctions against Iran threaten to mar the world order | Analysis
The Justice Ministry opposed a proposal on Wednesday to add the murder of women to a list of forms of aggravated murder, a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered to fast-track government legislation that would increase penalties against abusive men.
Courts would be mandated to sentence those convicted of aggravated murder to life sentence, according to the bill. Currently, all those convicted of murder receive life in jail, while the bill would create a new category, aggravated murder, which would be the only one to carry such a sentence. Femicide - the murder of women on account of their gender - is not considered aggravated murder under the proposed law, sponsored by the government.
On Wednesday, the bill was discussed in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee in preparation for a second and third vote - out of three - by the full Knesset. In the discussion, several lawmakers pushed for adding femicide to the aggravated murder category, while both Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked opposed. The Justice Ministry maintains that the law must apply equally to all and that aggravated murder should be reserved for murders that cause harm to some greater value beyond the murder itself, such as killings by terrorist organizations.
WASHINGTON Before a crowd of mostly right-wing Israelis and supporters of the Jewish state at the Israeli-American Council's annual conference last Sunday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Democrat of California) was asked her thoughts on the Trump administration's promise of presenting a peace plan for the Middle East. One of the principles we hope to see there is a two-state solution, she said.
Her words drew boos and cries of No way! from a number of people in the crowd, who wanted to express their opposition to this decades-old formula for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Pelosi responded to the hecklers by stating that their real source of concern shouldn't be the two-state solution, but an alternative idea that is gaining more and more support among left-wingers in America. I understand there are disagreements, she said. But you need to understand, the extreme left wants a one-state solution.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the latest round of violence in the West Bank, criticizing both militant attacks and the tough Israeli response.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and another soldier and a civilian woman were seriously wounded Thursday in a shooting in the West Bank, near the settlement of Ofra.
The deaths extend a violent week that began with a shooting outside a West Bank settlement on Sunday, resulting in the death of a baby who was delivered prematurely after the attack, and continued with the killing of two Palestinians wanted in that and another attack on Israelis in the West Bank.
Noah Klieger, a journalist for the Yedioth Ahronoth daily and an Auschwitz survivor who wrote for decades about the Holocaust, died on Thursday at the age of 92.
Born in 1926 in the French city of Strasbourg, Klieger was active during World War II in the anti-Nazi underground and helped smuggle Jews from France to Switzerland. He was ultimately arrested by the Germans and between 1942 and 1945 was interned at a number of camps Mechelin, Dora-Mittelbau and Ravensbruck, in addition to Auschwitz.
At Auschwitz, as he faced the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, who decided who would be sent to the left, to their immediate deaths, and who would be allowed to live, at least somewhat longer, Klieger saved himself.
Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman said that Israel's nation-state law is "racist" and a "mistake" that she does not agree with it in an interview she gave to London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, published Thursday.
In the interview, which marked the release of her new film, "Vox Lux," Portman explained that the law is a political decision that impacts the lives of many people, adding that she hopes to be part of the change that can improve Israel's relationship with its neighbors. Portman also criticized U.S. President Donald Trump.
Israel's controversial nation-state law, which the Knesset passed in July, states that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, which has exclusive right to self-determination in the country. It defines Hebrew as the country's sole official language, designating Arabic as a language with special status, although adding that Arabic's status would not be harmed in practice.
NATO will supply Ukraine's military with secure communication equipment this month, its head Jens Stoltenberg told President Petro Poroshenko at a meeting on Thursday called to discuss an escalation of Kiev's conflict with Moscow.
Stoltenberg praised Ukraine's "calm and restraint" after Russia seized of three its naval vessels and their crew off Crimea last month.
Part of a 40 million euros ($46 million) pledge by the Western military alliance to strengthen Ukraine's armed forces, Stoltenberg said the secure communications equipment would be delivered by the end of the year.
Two Israeli police officers are wounded after a Palestinian approached and stabbed them in a suspected terror attack in the Old City of Jerusalem early Thursday morning.
A policewoman, 19, is in moderate condition and has been taken to Hadassah Hospital in Ein Karem while the other policeman, 21, sustained minor wounds to his face and has been taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. According to reports, the assailant was shot dead at the scene by security forices.
Palestinian reports identify the attacker as Majd Matir, 26, a resident of the Qalandiyah refugee camp near Jerusalem.
Right-wing members of Austria's governing coalition are stalling a government plan to offer Austrian citizenship to the descendants of Austrian Holocaust victims, saying it would set a precedent for other foreigners. The opposition plans to introduce a similar bill on Thursday to force the government to address the delay.
The citizenship move was announced early last month by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. It is unprecedented because it would allow these children and grandchildren of Holocaust victims to hold dual citizenship, although Austrian law doesn't currently permit this. This could be significant news for Israelis of Austrian origin.
>>The Austrian embrace: How Kurz's far-right government is wooing Israel to end boycott of Freedom Party
Israeli troops shot a Palestinian man near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday as part of an ongoing manhunt for the assailants beind Sunday's drive-by shooting near an Israeli settlement. The man later died of his wounds at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.
The development came hours after the death of the baby who was delivered Sunday after his mother was seriously wounded in the attack. The baby's mother, Shira Ish-Ran, who was seven months pregnant when she was shot and seriously wounded, is in stable condition and remains hospitalized in the intensive care unit at the Shaare Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem. Her husband, Amichai, who was also wounded in the attack, is in stable condition.
Troops from Yamam, a police counter-terrorism unit, set out for the Palestinian village of Surda on Wednesday evening. Acting on intelligence leads, troops pulled their vehicle next to a parked cab where the suspect was sitting. According to police, the suspect was hiding in a mourners' tent, and was assisted by the people in it. The troops were attacked upon entering the tent, and responded with flash grenades and live gunfire. The suspect was critically wounded during the exchange.
Israeli security forces on Thursday shot and killed a Palestinian who was behind an attack that killed two Israelis, Kim Yehezkel-Levengrond and Ziv Hajbi, in an at the Barkan industrial area in the West Bank on October 7.
The Palestinian, 23-year-old Ashraf Walid Saliman Na'alwa, was killed in a joint operation between the military, the Shin Bet security service and the police after a two-month manhunt, a statement said. The Shin Bet said that Na'alwa was armed when forces arrived to the scene.
According to the Shin Bet, he was found as part of a large-scale intelligence operation. The arrest and interrogation of several suspects had helped locate Na'alwa and also revealed that he had planned to carry out another attack.
Are there almost no Israelis left with the necessary skills to ease the shortage of high-tech workers? Or did researchers who reached that conclusion make assumptions about the capabilities of minorities?
The Taub Center for Social Policy Studies released a report this week that makes the case that there aren't very many Israelis with the high levels of skills required by the tech industry who aren't already working in it.
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Income inequality in Israel is at its lowest level in 20 years, according to figures released on Wednesday by the Central Bureau of Statistics. Nevertheless, inequality here remains among the worst in the developed world.
The CBS said that Israel's Gini coefficient, a widely used measure of income inequality, had fallen to 0.351 in 2017 from 0.359 the year before. The index measures inequality on a scale of 0 to 1, with 1 being the most unequal.
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Israelis face big jumps in their electricity and water bills starting next month. In the case of electricity, it turns out that the bill could be even higher that the Electricity Authority has said it will be.
At the start of the month, the agency said energy rates would be rising a sharp 6% in January, subject to public hearings. That set off a firestorm of protests. But research by Nadav Olgan, a partner at the Tel Aviv law firm of Erdinast, Ben Nathan, Toledano & Co., showed that the authority's figure was far too modest.
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WASHINGTON There is a growing level of support among Americans for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as long as such a solution ensures equal rights and full citizenship to Palestinians, a new poll released on Tuesday suggests.
In the context of what a one-state solution would look like, a vast majority of the poll's respondents said if they had to choose between Israel remaining a Jewish state or a democratic one, they would rather see it remain democratic.
The poll, conducted by the University of Maryland, included interviews with over 2,300 Americans, who were asked about different issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Besides showing increased support for giving Palestinians full and equal rights, even if that means the end of Israel's Jewish character, it also showed a similar trend to many previous polls when it comes to how young Americans view Israel. Younger respondents were overwhelmingly less supportive of Israel than those over 35.
OrCam launches Kickstarter campaign for camera that tells you who your friends are
OrCam, a Jerusalem startup whose wearable cameras help the visually impaired, launched a crowdfunding drive Wednesday for its newest product. Called MyMe, the wearable camera uses artificial intelligence to identify people the user encounters. It's a companion, a second brain, a third eye, notifying you of the names of the people you're supposed to know. Make sure you're spending the right amounts of time with each of your circles, set goals for yourself, the company explained to potential contributors on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. People who pledge $199 (half the suggested retail price for the device) will get delivery of the camera in March. Unlike most startup crowdfunding campaigns, OrCam isn't seeking to raise the capital to manufacture the device, but to create a community of early adopters. Founded by Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram, who also started the automotive technology company Mobileye, which was sold to Intel for $15 billion, OrCam has raised $130 million. (Irad Atzmon Schmayer)
BiomX collaborating with J&J unit on inflammatory bowel disease therapies
Israel Electric near NIS 400m settlement with European firms over cartel allegations
Israel Electric Corporation is expected to receive 400 million shekels ($107 million) in a settlement arising from a lawsuit filed by the state-owned utility against Siemens, Alstom and ABB. The payment, which is subject to the approval of all the parties, would end IEC's claim that the three European companies operated a cartel that coordinated prices and prevented competitive bidding in Europe and Israel. The allegations were based on a 2007 European Commission finding that resulted in a 750.7 million euro ($803 million) fine. Israel's Antitrust Authority concluded that the cartel operated in Israel as well but IEC had trouble proving that claim and its claim that the cartel caused 3 billion shekels in damages, as the suit argued. The three companies rejected the allegations and said any damage the cartel caused were minor. In the past IEC has said that any damages it collects will be passed on to customers. (Ora Coren)
Ben-Moshe seeking another delay in completing Africa Israel deal
Last week Israeli soldiers killed Mohammed Khabali, a 22-year-old mentally disabled resident of the Tul Karm refugee camp in the West Bank. They shot him from about 80 meters away while their victim, on the advice of friends, turned around and was about to leave the street in Tul Karm where the soldiers were standing. Khabali didn't flee. He was walking slowly, as were the three soldiers, one of whom shot him.
Footage released by B'Tselem shows a quiet street when the soldiers opened fire, and calm and slow conduct by Palestinians there. From as far away as he was standing, Khabali could not have endangered them anyway.
>>The disabled Palestinian slowly walked away. Then, Israeli troops shot him in the back of the head
In the past two weeks, the Spokesperson's Unit of the Israel Defense Forces was caught in two lies. Neither led any news broadcasts. Perhaps we don't expect more from the IDF spokesperson, perhaps the lies touch on the lives and dignity of Palestinians. I'm not sure which is worse.
This week, Mohammed Husam Khabali was shot to death in Tul Karm. The IDF spokesperson said soldiers used riot-control methods and live fire to disperse a public disturbance. But security camera footage found by B'Tselem shows that Habali was shot in the head from behind, on a quiet street where there was no disturbance. Habali, 23, had physical and cognitive disabilities.
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Mohammed Khabali was killed by IDF soldiers who shot him in the back of his head. Shira Ish-Ran was seriously wounded when she was shot in the abdomen from a passing car. Khabali was a young, mentally ill man whom soldiers shot for no apparent reason from 80 meters away on his city's main street. Ish-Ran was seven months pregnant when she was shot at the entrance to the settlement of Ofra.
A mentally ill man and a pregnant woman, both helpless. Both shootings were equally criminal, there is almost no moral difference between them. The only difference is that the gunmen at Ofra had a clear motive their violent struggle against the occupation and the settlements. The soldiers' motive for killing Khabali is not clear, and it's doubtful they even had one. They were in no danger from the young man with a broomstick in his hand who was walking away from them at a time when some stone-throwing that had been going on had already stopped.
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The women's protest will continue Thursday, with its initiators calling on the public to strike at 10 A.M. for 25 minutes in honor of the 25 women murdered in Israel this year until the government approves the budget for a plan to fight domestic violence. Demonstrations are planned for Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be'er Sheva and Rishon Letzion.
Dozens of unions, schools, and businesses all over the country have announced they will participate in the protest. Every day that passes without the budgets passing is another day in which a woman could be murdered, the protest leaders said in a statement. This is a state of emergency and we won't stop until our demands are fulfilled.
>> After the national protest against femicide, women in Israel can dream | Opinion - Arab voices raised as local Israeli authorities join nation-wide women's strike to protest violence - Arab feminists in Israel refuse to let the struggle fade
After months of clashes between the Israel Defense Forces Ombudsman, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Brik, and senior officers, the Knesset has finally begun discussing Brik's allegations. And thanks to the live broadcast of Wednesday's session, online and on the Knesset Channel, the public could also weigh the arguments of both sides.
The one who finally picked up the gauntlet wasn't the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, with which Brik has maintained an intensive correspondence recently, but the chairwoman of the State Control Committee, MK Shelly Yacimovich (Zionist Union).
>> Israeli army watchdog paints gloomy picture of readiness for war | Analysis
The state was ordered by a Jerusalem Court Wednesday to pay several thousand shekels in compensation for false arrest to Issa Amro, a well-known Palestinian activist in the West Bank town of Hebron. He had sued the state after being detained in Hebron in 2015 while conducting a tour of the city.
Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Registrar Samih Saber Masarwa ruled that Amro's arrest had been unlawful and awarded him 5,500 shekels ($1,470) in damages. Amro had demanded 40,000 shekels in compensation.
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The Knesset on Sunday voted preliminary approval of a bill to extend the controversial Acceptance Committees Law to communities of up to 700 families, up from the current 400.
The bill, sponsored by MK Bezalel Smotrich, would expand the number of communities that can screen and reject potential residents who do not suit the social fabric of the community. The bill passed by a vote of 54 to 31.
>>Expanding nonacceptance of Israel's Arabs and others | Editorial
Here's the stick. The bereaved brother removes the black plastic that's wrapped around it reverently, as if it's a holy relic. It's a broomstick, stained with his brother's blood. It's the stick he was carrying under his arm as he tried to move away from Israel Defense Forces soldiers approaching him on Jaffa Road in downtown Tul Karm, a street of restaurants and cafés. He was shot from a distance of about 80 meters; the bullet slammed into his head from behind.
How can it be claimed that he endangered anyone from that far away?
The street was relatively quiet. A small number of young people winding up the night at the coffee houses and about 30 soldiers opposite them. The security camera at one of the restaurants shows 2:24 A.M. From the video provided by that camera and three others along the street, whose footage was obtained by B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, we see no stone throwing, no large groups milling around. What is seen are three soldiers moving forward, ahead of the rest of their unit. One shot is heard from a distance, and another; two soldiers apparently fired simultaneously. The person seen carrying a stick and walking on the other side of the street, away from the approaching soldiers, falls to the ground, face down. For a second he tries to lift his head before dying. Another young man is hit in the leg. The soldiers leave in a hurry.
The names of both same-sex parents must be registered on the birth certificates of babies they have adopted, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.
The court was ruling on a petition by a homosexual couple that claimed they were being discriminated against compared to heterosexual couples. When a heterosexual couple adopts a baby, the Interior Ministry gives them a birth certificate bearing the name of both adoptive parents. But it doesn't do that for homosexual couples, arguing that only one father and one mother should be listed for each baby.
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In August 2013, Jawdat Abu Ghurab, a young fisherman from the Gaza Strip, put out to sea. On his way home, about 100 meters from the shore, he saw the figure of a man lying under the water.
Abu Ghurab dived down to him, but the moment he touched the figure, he realized it was a statue. With the help of family and friends, he managed to drag the 300-kilogram statue to shore.
The statue of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun and beauty, arrived on the Gaza coast in between the Hamas-Israel wars of 2009 and 2014. It was sculpted during the Hellenistic period, more than 2,000 years ago.
British Prime Minister Theresa May won a confidence vote from her party on Wednesday but 117 of her lawmakers said she was no longer the right leader to implement Britain's exit from the European Union.
May had needed 159 votes for the simple majority to win the vote.
The vote was triggered by conservative lawmakers over May's handling of Brexit. Less than four months until the United Kingdom is due to leave on March 29, Brexit is plunged into chaos with options ranging from a potentially disorderly no-deal departure to another referendum that could reverse it.
>> UPDATE: Israeli forces fire at Palestinian suspected of involvement in West Bank terror attack
The baby who was delivered Sunday after his mother was seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting attack near a West Bank settlement was pronounced dead on Wednesday.
The baby, who was named Amiad Israel, was laid to rest in the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem later that evening.
Saudi Arabia is seeking an alliance with six countries bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a strategic area vital to global shipping and increasingly an arena of contention with regional rivals like Iran, Turkey and Qatar.
Representatives from Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Jordan gathered in Riyadh on Wednesday to discuss the initiative without reaching a final agreement. A team of experts is expected to meet "soon" in Cairo for technical talks.
Eritrea, with Red Sea islands and a mainland coastline of 1,150-kilometres (715 miles), was not present. Nor was Ethiopia, which has no access to the sea but the largest population in the Horn of Africa.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that while the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is "horrific," it does not outweigh the strategic importance of Saudi Arabia.
"What happened in Istanbul is nothing short of horrific. But it's balanced by the importance of Saudi Arabia and the role it plays in the Middle East," Netanyahu told foreign reporters at an event in Jerusalem. "Because if Saudi Arabia would be destabilized, the world, not the Middle East, will be destabilized," Netanyahu said.
Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Riyadh and a columnist for the Washington Post, disappeared on October 2 after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain marriage documents.
In the span of just a couple days, Chaim Raice went from never having been on a bobsled to being a contender to represent Israel in the 2022 Winter Olympics. And it all started with a Facebook post.
Raice, a house builder from Pomona, New York, was browsing the social media site in November when he saw a post saying that the Israeli bobsled team was in need of another athlete to compete in the North American Cup beginning that month.
He thought it was a joke, but still reached out. Though Raice, 46, had little knowledge of bobsled, he had participated in several other sports as an amateur, and his Israeli citizenship meant he qualified to compete for the country.
The Israel Police arrested on Wednesday four minors, aged 15 to 17, on suspicion that they spray painted hateful graffiti against Palestinians and punctured car tires in the northern Israeli Arab village of Yafia in October.
The suspects were released to a house arrest under limiting conditions following their interrogation.
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Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, was sentenced to a total of three years in prison on Wednesday for his role in making illegal hush-money payments to women to help Trump's 2016 election campaign and lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Russia.
U.S. District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan sentenced Cohen to 36 months for the payments, which violated campaign finance law, and to two months for the false statements to Congress. The two terms will run simultaneously. The judge set March 6 for Cohen's voluntary surrender.
Cohen pleaded guilty to the campaign finance charge in August and to making false statements in November.
Washington will push the UN Security Council to toughen its stance against Iran working on ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons and carrying out ballistic missile launches, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday.
Pompeo also said an arms embargo on Iran should not be lifted in 2020 and called on the council to establish "inspection and interdiction measures, in ports and on the high seas, to thwart Iran's continuing efforts to circumvent arms restrictions."
>> Iran confirms ballistic missile test in defiance of U.S.
Three people involved in the organization of a 2017 rave party in Israel's Negev during which a woman died were indicted for manslaughter on Tuesday.
The three, Leon Bagio, 32, Shlomo Pashral, 38 and Omri Hayun, 34, are accused in part of evacuating the woman, Tohar David, to medical treatment five hours after she collapsed. She died three days later.
The indictment claims they caused David's death knowing that as a result of their actions and lack thereof they could cause the deceased's death and therefore taking unreasonable risk that led to this result.
A 16-month-old Israeli toddler who contracted the measles was hospitalized Wednesday in serious condition at the pediatric emergency unit of the Ha'emek Medical Center in Afula.
The girl was not vaccinated against the illness and the assessment is that she caught the measles while visiting relatives in Jerusalem.
According to the Ha'emek Medical Center, the girl is also suffering from meningitis and pneumonia that she got as a result of complications caused by the measles. Some of the girl's siblings have also caught the illness, but they are not suffering from complications. The Ha'emek Medical Center has informed the Health Ministry of the girl's hospitalization.
In public, Nancy Pelosi lectured Donald Trump on the Constitution and wagged a finger at him for charachterizing her strength. In private, she questioned his manhood with her disdain for him, ironically, becoming public again.
It's like a manhood thing for him. As if manhood could ever be associated with him. This wall thing, Pelosi privately told House Democrats after a combative, on-camera Oval Office meeting with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. The account was described on condition of anonymity by an aide who was in the room but is not authorized to discuss Pelosi's remarks publicly.
In the space of a few hours Tuesday, the California Democrat, nominated for her second stint as House speaker, rolled out her approach to the Republican president as the two prepare for two years of divided government.
A striking photograph by Alexandre Guirkinger shows a large concrete cube covered with dark green moss, standing in the heart of a forest. Bunker 5 is a remnant of the Maginot Line, which in the 1930s separated France from Germany and was supposed to prevent a Nazi invasion. We know how that ended. Eighty years on, the line has undergone fascinating metamorphoses. The vegetation that covers both bunkers and memory seems wondrous. The horror has been aestheticized. The green gives rise to life after death.
A few minutes later, as I stood opposite Micha Bar-Am's marvelous photographs of the Bar-Lev Line along the Suez Canal in the early 1970s, it struck me that it's unfortunate that no documentation exists of what has survived from that famous line of outposts today. Is Budapest still there, or Purkan or Hamezah? Are they, too, covered by green moss?
Bunker 5 is one of a dozen shots taken by French photographer Guirkinger that are now on view at the Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery at Tel Aviv University, as part of an exhibition titled Defense Lines: Maginot, Bar-Lev and Beyond. The exhibition, as a close perusal reveals, allows the visitor to see life in Israel, and in general, as one long sequence of building fortifications. Some of them will turn out to be superfluous or stupid.
Nature reserves and other open spaces near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip stand to suffer irreversible damage if more fires break out in the area, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority said Tuesday.
Such blazes have been plaguing the area in recent months due to airborne firebombs being hurled into Israel from Gaza. The last of the fires was in November.
Two-thirds of the 32,000 dunams (8,000 acres) damaged by incendiary devices thrown from the Strip were in nature reserves and forests near the border, the parks authority said. The remaining third is mostly agricultural land.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley discussed the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying, I think we need to have a serious, hard talk with the Saudis to let them know we won't condone this."
Haley made the comments Wednesday during an appearance on NBC's Today Show," adding, "We won't give you a pass and don't do this again."
A UN human rights watchdog has urged Saudi authorities to free over a dozen rights activists detained in the kingdom, alleging that some had been tortured or mistreated during interrogation.
Several tombstones were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti at a Jewish cemetery near Strasbourg in eastern France.
According to CRIF, the representative organization of France's Jewish community, the graffiti was discovered on Tuesday in Herrlisheim, a northern suburb. The unidentified perpetrators wrote CRIF = ZOG and the digits 88 on the tombstones; ZOG stands for Zionist occupation government, and the number is code for Heil Hitler.
>> Strasbourg Terror Suspect Identified, Known to Be a Radicalized Islamist
Four suspects were arrested on Wednesday during a series of raids against the German chapter of a right-wing extremist group known as Blood & Honor, police and prosecutors said.
Fifteen raids were conducted across five states on the basis of a criminal investigation against 14 alleged members of the group, which has existed in Germany since 2000.
The group is accused of importing and distributing right-wing extremist music and merchandise, the Munich prosecutor's office and Lower Bavaria's police force said.
A Russian communications official has threatened to block Google in Russia unless it complies with a law banning certain websites.
The Russian government has been putting pressure on internet companies in what it has described as a campaign to block harmful content. Russia adopted a law in September requiring search engines to comply with the state registry of banned websites and omit the banned content from search results.
While the registry does contain websites promoting hate speech and self-harm it also includes a plethora of websites blacklisted for explicitly political reasons, such as a Ukrainian news website.
Al-QAIM, Iraq - From a desert hillside guarded by Iraqi Shi'ite paramilitaries, commander Qasim Muslih can spot Islamic State hideouts across the frontier in Syria. But he also keeps a wary eye on U.S. warplanes soaring overhead.
"The Americans are spying on us," he said, squinting skywards. "But we can hold the borders. We'll fight whoever lays a finger on Iraq and its holy shrines."
The fighters Muslih commands are part of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a grouping of mostly Shi'ite militias backed by Iran, which the United States regards as the biggest threat to security in the Middle East.
The U.S. military said on Tuesday it successfully tested a key missile defense system, a milestone that demonstrated U.S. capability to knock down an incoming, intermediate-range missile from countries like North Korea.
The Aegis ashore system used in the latest test was fitted with a Standard Missile 3 Block IIA (SM-3 IIA) interceptor being developed in a joint venture between Raytheon Co and Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.
Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Director Lieutenant General Sam Greaves said the successful test was significant.
For Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling elite, there's a hidden, pernicious and conspiring hand that works tirelessly against the Republic of Turkey. Were it not for the connivance of this clandestine network, Turkey would be a global power and leader of nations.
Who are these sinister conspirators who plot within the murky shadows of international corporations, governments and transnational bodies against the Turkish Republic? You guessed it: Jews. And global bogeyman George Soros is just one of them.
>> When the State Sanctions Turkey's Ugly anti-Semitism >> Textbook Regression: Turkey's anti-Semitic Onslaught Against Evolution
The army ombudsman, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Brik, reiterated his call on Wednesday to set up an independent investigative committee to look into deficiencies in the army. Speaking to a session of the State Control Committee, Brik said the defense establishment was not paying proper attention to criticism and in many instances is not acting to correct deficiencies.
According to Brik, while some parts of the report he compiled on the subject has been adopted by the military and taken care of, there is a disparity between the reality on the ground and how the senior ranks of the army present the situation to the country's political leadership.
An inferior organizational culture is the core of the problem, Brik said, adding that if it is not changed, steps taken to rectify specific problems will not work. Proper attention is not paid to oversight in the defense establishment. How are we going to win wars? he asked.
Salaries of asylum seekers who have been officially recognized as victims of trafficking and slavery are still being docked despite a waver they are entitled to.
Those who have been recognized as victims of trafficking underwent such ordeals when they were fleeing their homelands. In most cases, the abuse they suffered happened in Egypt's Sinai before they were able to seek refuge in Israel.
A controversial law requiring asylum seekers working in Israel to deposit 20 percent of their salaries into a closed account they can only access when they leave the country went into effect in May 2017. The law not only requires that a fifth of asylum seekers' salaries be set aside but also mandates that employers, mainly restaurants and hotels, allocate another 16 percent into the fund.
A tired Matteo Salvini looked as if the only thing on his mind Tuesday night was getting back to his hotel and going to sleep. The Italian deputy prime minister had already flown in from Rome earlier that day, been taken by helicopter to tour Israel's northern border, prayed at the Western Wall and had meetings with the Vatican's representative in the Holy Land. But the organizers of his whirlwind trip to Israel had also for some reason scheduled a late-night bar crawl through Jerusalem's swiftly gentrifying Mahane Yehuda market.
Read More: Splitting the EU: Israel's tightening alliance with Central Europe's nationalist leaders - After U.S. midterms, the next clash between democracy and populism will be in Europe
Yet when reporters asked Salvini (also Italy's interior minister) about the next day's schedule, he immediately perked up and an almost-dreamy look fell upon his face. He was to meet Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time in the morning, and admitted he was curious and saw the Israeli prime minister as an inspiration.
There is nothing earth-shattering about seeing Women's March leader and Arab-American activist Linda Sarsour criticized as a dangerous Islamist by the conservative right and pro-Israel advocates in the United States. But the latest attack on the activist comes from a new and somewhat surprising source: Saudi Arabia.
Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned, pan-Arab news channel closely linked to the country's royal family and widely viewed as reflecting Saudi foreign policy, published an article Sunday strongly suggesting that Sarsour and two incoming Muslim congresswomen are puppets planted by the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar to undermine the Trump administration.
The feature, which profiles Sarsour, seems to cast her as the latest proxy figure in the kingdom's bitter dispute with Qatar, and its bid to strengthen ties and curry favor with the White House.
Egypt says its security forces have killed at least 27 suspected militants in the restive northern Sinai Peninsula and along its porous border with Libya.
The military said Wednesday that forces destroyed 342 hideouts and weapons depots, dismantled 344 explosive devices and detained more than 400 suspects and around 3,000 illegal migrants, without giving a timeframe.
It says airstrikes destroyed 61 vehicles containing weapons and ammunition in the Western Desert.
At an Oval Office gathering earlier this year, U.S. President Donald Trump began touting his administration's new real estate investment program, which offers massive tax breaks to developers who invest in downtrodden American communities. He then turned to one of the plan's strongest supporters.
Ivanka, would you like to say something? Trump asked his daughter. You've been pushing this very hard.
The Opportunity Zone program promoted by Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner both senior White House advisers could also benefit them financially, an Associated Press investigation found.
OPEC on Wednesday said it replaced a drop in Iranian exports as U.S. sanctions resumed and lowered the 2019 forecast of demand for its crude, underlining its challenge to prevent a glut building even after last week's decision to trim output.
In a monthly report, OPEC said its oil output fell by only 11,000 barrels per day, month on month, to 32.97 million bpd in November, despite President DonaldTrump's reimposition of sanctions on Iran, as Saudi Arabia pumped at a record rate.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries also said 2019 demand for its crude would fall to 31.44 million bpd, 100,000 less than predicted last month, as rivals pump more and a slowing economy curbs demand growth.
Here are highlights from the Reuters interview with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
ON THE POSSIBLE EXTRADITION OF HUAWEI EXECUTIVE
"Well I think I'd want to speak to China. We've spoken to the Justice Department. You know it wasn't good what happened with the company, you understand that, in terms of what they did. And this has been a big problem that we've had in so many different ways with so many companies from China and from other places. So I want to see what China requests. So far they have not made that request."
The Israeli government will attempt to secure the release of two Palestinian residents of Israel who were arrested in the West Bank city of Ramallah by the Palestinian Authority, the Knesset's Interior and Environment Committee was told on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed the National Security Council to coordinate policy in the wake of the arrest of the two: Issam Akel, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem who also holds American citizenship, and another Palestinian identified as Nasser-a-Din.
The National Security Council is looking into ways to increase the pressure on the PA.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that U.S. authorities had "caught 10 terrorists," citing it as a reason for why the United States should build a wall on its Mexican border, but four government sources told Reuters there was no recent evidence of terrorism suspects being caught along the border.
A senior U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said: "We do not have evidence of known or suspected foreign terrorist organizations trying to infiltrate the southern U.S. border.
Three national security officials agreed with that view, saying they knew of no recent border-related arrests. The three officials also asked not to be identified.
ANTAKYA, Turkey - He is an Arab and the son of an Arab, but he doesn't speak Arabic, Sidika Sürer, 86, teases Maksut Askar, her 42-year-old grandson. The latter is the chef and proprietor of Neolokal, an Istanbul restaurant, and he's considered to be a leading representative of contemporary Turkish cuisine internationally. Smiling apologetically, Askar caresses the hand of his grandmother in the living room of the family's old house in Iskenderun, in southern Turkey, near the Syrian border. It was in this house, with its modest façade, surrounded by tangerine and lemon trees laden with fruit, that Askar spent his childhood.
I understand almost everything people say but I have a hard time conducting a conversation in Arabic, he explains in English to the guests from Israel.
It wasn't until 1939 that Hatay, the province in which Askar was born, was annexed to Turkey. The issue of whether Hatay belonged to Syria or Turkey was a subject of dispute between the two countries until the turn of the 21st century. The Arab inhabitants of the province prefer to call it Antakya (Antioch), after the name of one of the four ancient capitals of Greater Syria, rather than by the Turkish name of Hatay (which derives from the Hittite Empire, which flourished in the region thousands of years ago). Askar, like many of his generation, speaks Turkish, even though Arabic was his ancestors' native tongue and many still speak it in his hometown.
U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, reportedly advised Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on how to best survive the mounting scandal surrounding the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The New York Times reported Saturday that Kushner and the crown prince continued to chat informally after Khashoggi's killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, despite formal White House procedures for contacts with foreign leaders. The New York Times reviewed emails and text messages between the crown prince and Kushner.
Kushner went on Fox New's "Hannity" on Monday night to clear the air and vowed the U.S. would get to the bottom of who was responsible for Khashoggi's murder. Both Sean Hannity and Kushner failed to mention the evidence or the CIA report that the crown prince had a role in the killing, but Kushner insisted we're hoping to make sure that there's justice brought where that should be.
Incoming Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who recently revealed that she has Jewish ancestry, will not join other freshman members of congress on an AIPAC-affiliated trip to Israel later this year, Jewish Insider reported on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for the New York Democrat did not respond to Jewish Insider requests for comment on whether Ocasio-Cortez will join a J Street-sponsored trip or an alternative delegation to the West Bank, organized by fellow Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.
After lighting Hanukkah candles in an event hosted by a left-wing Jewish group in her home borough of Queens on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez surprised the crowd by saying members of her family were descendants of Jews who were forced to convert and flee Spain during the Inquisition in the 15th century.
Raja Zaatry, Haifa's council member-elect who has been the target of government pressures to block his appointment as deputy mayor, withdrew his candidacy Wednesday. Instead, he has offered that his party's number two assume the position.
Zaatry chief of Haifa's Hadash party branch said Wednesday that he is not sorry and will not retract his past statements against Zionism and supporting the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah, which sparked the backlash against him.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Haifa's mayor-elect, Einat Kalisch Rotem, on Sunday to request that she cancel Zaatry's appointment, but she refused, saying that she has no intention to break coalition agreements.
Eighteen Jewish groups urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to exclude Jewish artifacts when making import restriction agreements with countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
In a letter sent to Pompeo Tuesday, the organizations expressed worry that deals meant to curb looting would prevent Jews now living in the United States from retrieving personal and community belongings from their countries of origin.
Jews were forced out of countries in the Middle East and North Africa amid heavy persecution following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
Large number of US citizens demonstrated against the war in Iraq (and the possible war in Iran) during this October weekend. Massive turnout in Boston and San Fransisco, and also in Chicago, LA and DC people took to the streets. The message was: NO more war in Iraq! NO to a war with Iran!
