Former New York mayor flies to Tel Aviv in response to FAA ban
(JNS.org) Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg flew to Tel Aviv on Tuesday night in response to the Federal Aviation Authority’s (FAA) ban on U.S. flights to Israel.
The FAA suspension came after a rocket landed near Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. All three U.S. airlines providing service to Israel—Delta, U.S. Airways, and United—were forced to cancel flights to the Jewish state, but the Israeli airline El Al continued service.
“This evening I will be flying on El Al to Tel Aviv to show solidarity with the Israeli people and to demonstrate that it is safe to fly in and out of Israel,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “Ben Gurion is the best protected airport in the world and El Al flights have been regularly flying in and out of it safely. The flight restrictions are a mistake that hands Hamas an undeserved victory and should be lifted immediately. I strongly urge the FAA to reverse course and permit U.S. airlines to fly to Israel.”
European airlines also suspended all flights to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport after a rocket landed about one mile from the airport.
Air France said it had suspended all flights due to “security reasons linked to the evolution of the local situation,” an Air France official said, Reuters reported.
Lufthansa, Swiss Air, and KLM also suspended service to Israel.
Israeli Transportation Minister Israel Katz insisted that it is safe to land at Ben Gurion Airport.
“There is no reason for the American companies to stop their flight and give a prize to terror,” Katz said.
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, which protects Ben Gurion Airport and Tel Aviv, has taken down nearly 90 percent of the rockets it has targeted during the current conflict with Hamas. The FAA’s move appears to be influenced by last week’s downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 by pro-Russian separatists, forcing airlines and the FAA to take greater precautions.
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Thousands mourn soldiers killed in battle as IDF death toll rises to 29
(JNS.org) Armored Corps officers Capt. Dmitri Levitas, 26, from, Jerusalem, and Lt. Natan Cohen, 23, from Modiin, were killed Tuesday in Gaza, bringing the Israeli death toll in Operation Protective Edge to 29, the Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday.
Twenty soldiers were wounded on Tuesday, and three of them are in serious condition.
Thirteen soldiers who were killed on Monday and Tuesday in clashes with terrorists in southern Israel and Gaza were laid to rest Tuesday. Lt. Col. Dolev Kedar, 38, commander of the Gefen Battalion of the IDF’s Bahad 1 officers’ training base, who was killed Monday as he and his troops thwarted a terrorist infiltration near Kibbutz Nir Am in southern Israel, was laid to rest in the military cemetery of his hometown, Modiin. Thousands attended the funeral.
“It’s not fair that the love of my life loved this country and the military so much, and it’s not fair that you always wanted to be the one in the lead,” Kedar’s wife Michal said in her eulogy, according to Israel Hayom.
Golani Brigade Staff Sgt. Oren Noach, 22, from Hoshaya, in Israel’s north, was buried in the community’s military cemetery. Noach was killed Sunday in a clash with terrorists in the Gaza neighborhood of Shujaiyya. Hundreds attended his funeral.
“I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to you properly. If only I had known we would never see each other again,” Noach’s father, Yigal, said in a broken voice over the grave.
Golani Brigade Sgt. Shon Mondshine, 19, from Tel Aviv, who was killed in the Shujaiyya incident, was laid to rest in the military plot of the Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery in Givatayim.
“It is inconceivable to me that you’re gone, that you’ve somehow just faded away,” Mondshine’s mother cried.
U.S. Supreme Court receives briefs for ‘born in Jerusalem’ passport case
(JNS.org) The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (LDB) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) have separately filed amicus curiae briefs in support of Menachem B. Zivotofsky, the petitioner in Zivotofsky v. Secretary of State, which has become known as “born in Jerusalem” passport case.
Menachem was born in Jerusalem in 2002 after Congress passed a law ordering the U.S. State Department to “record the place of birth as Israel” in passports of American children born in Jerusalem if their parents make that request. Former U.S. President George W. Bush signed the law, but like U.S. President Barack Obama after him waived the statute on the grounds that it would force the State Department to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, an issue that the Bush and Obama administrations have said should be resolved directly through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Menachem’s case in the fall. In an earlier decision, an Appellate Court ruled that only the president has the constitutional authority to make the passport determination, an assertion that is disputed by both AJC and LDB.
“The central issue is whether Congress or the president has a role to play in recognition of foreign governments and who has the constitutional prerogative to determine rules on issuing passports,” said AJC General Counsel Marc D. Stern. “The historical record is crystal clear that Congress has an important role to play in determining America’s decision on recognition of foreign governments and in setting passport policy.”
The brief submitted by LDB, co-signd by leading scholars such as constitutional law expert Erwin Chemerinsky and prominent conservative law professor John C. Eastman, argues that the Jerusalem passport case “lends itself to a much simpler resolution than would a true dispute between the president and Congress regarding the powers to recognize the legal status of states and foreign sovereigns.” Congress’s authority to make such determinations on foreign territory “is a function necessary and proper to the exercise of its assigned powers,” states the brief.
“It is both astonishing and infuriating that federal litigation is required to convince the U.S. Department of State to recognize the quintessentially obvious fact that Jerusalem is in Israel,” LDB President Kenneth L. Marcus said.
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High Israeli support for Gaza incursion, survey shows
(JNS.org) Support for Operation Protective Edge among the Israeli Jewish public remains strong, and a majority of Israelis say their country has been more successful than Hamas since the beginning of the military campaign, a poll conducted by Israel Hayom and the New Wave Research firm shows.
When asked if they supported or opposed Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza, 80 percent of respondents replied that they supported it. When asked if Israel should expand its current ground operation, 71 percent of respondents said yes.
An overwhelming 94 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with the Israel Defense Forces’ performance thus far in the operation. 65 percent of people polled replied yes to the question, “Should Israel make toppling the Hamas regime in Gaza a goal of Operation Protective Edge?”
Most respondents were also opposed to a cease-fire. More than three-quarters (77 percent) of those polled said Israel should not agree to a cease-fire with the situation as it currently stands.
But optimism about the operation’s ability to bring an end to rocket attacks from Gaza was low. Nearly half (49 percent) of people polled said they believed there was a “slight chance” rocket fire would stop as a result of the operation.
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