Palestinians riot on Temple Mount before Rosh Hashanah
(JNS.org) Dozens of masked Palestinian youths shot fireworks at police officers at the Mughrabi Gate as the Temple Mount was opened for visitors on Wednesday morning before Rosh Hashanah,Israel Hayom reported.
The Israel Police Special Patrol Unit and Border Police rounded up the rioters in an effort to get them into the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. Besides shooting fireworks, the rioters—who had blocked the last entry gate into the mosque—threw stones at police and sprayed them with an unidentified liquid.
Security forces, working under a barrage of stones, managed to remove the blockade at the entrance to the mosque and to get all the rioters inside. Several police officers were lightly wounded from the stones and fireworks, and were treated by police paramedics on site.
The riot broke out during Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch’s visit to the Temple Mount. He was touring the area with Jerusalem District Police Commander Yossi Pariente to review security at the contentious religious landmark. The tour was stopped and then restarted once the riot was under control.
Israeli Arab convicted of fighting for Islamic State
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) An Israeli Arab man was convicted Tuesday of illegally entering Syria and training there with the Islamic State, making him the first Israeli citizen to be found guilty of joining the terrorist organization.
Umm al-Fahm resident Ahmad Shurbaji, 23, was convicted by the deputy president of the Haifa Magistrates’ Court, Judge Orit Kantor. The indictment against Shurbaji, first presented in May by Haifa District Attorney Meital Chen, said Shurbaji and three of his friends decided to leave Israel to join the Syrian rebels in their fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. They joined an armed rebel faction with connections to Islamic State and were then recruited by the group to participate in military training, which provided them with theoretical and practical knowledge in weapons and terrorist strategies.
While in Syria, Shurbaji took part in several battles, participated in military tours, and was posted at checkpoints under Islamic State control. He is one of at least 10 Israeli Arabs that Israel’s Shin Bet security agency believes have joined Islamic State.
Anti-Israel article’s authors promote video by former KKK leader David Duke
(JNS.org) The authors of a controversial anti-Israel open letter that appeared in The Lancet medical journal in July have promoted a video made by American white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader David Duke, a watchdog group says.
According to Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, Dr. Paola Manduca and Dr. Swee Ang—two of the authors of “An open letter for the people of Gaza,” which slams Israel for its conduct last summer’s Operation Protective Edge—shared an email with the subject line “CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix” that included a link to Duke’s video.
Ang wrote “this is a shocking video” and encouraged the email’s recipients to pass it on because “the whole world needs to know.” The video, which appears on Duke’s YouTube page, claims to reveal “how the Zionist Matrix of Power controls Media, Politics and Banking.”
“The Lancet’s leadership, including Richard Horton and Reed Elsevier Properties, must immediately condemn these individuals and retract their tainted letter,” Yitzhak Santis, chief programs officer at NGO Monitor, said in a statement. “There is no excuse for The Lancet to give prominence to Manduca and Ang, individuals who trade in racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.”
NGO Monitor said that it contacted Reed Elsevier Properties, the journal’s parent company, calling for the retraction of the open letter and for the company to publicly distance itself from the authors. But NGO Monitor has yet to receive a response.
Danish foreign minister calls for sanctions on Israel if talks fail
(JNS.org) Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard said Monday that if the indirect talks beginning this week between Israel and Hamas do not lead to major Israeli concessions, the European Union should consider placing economic sanctions on the Jewish state.
“If nothing happens in the peace talks this time, and if we don’t see a new pattern of response from Israel’s side, then we will need to discuss the possibility of taking new steps, including changes to our trade relations with Israel,” Lidegaard said, the Denmark-based English news site The Local reported.
“I hope that it doesn’t come to that, but I think that the EU’s policies are moving in that direction,” he said.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon responded that Lidegaard “is mistaken and does not understand the situation.”
“When he comes to visit in Israel, he will certainly understand the reality and understand that Israel is not responsible for the stalemate,” Nahshon said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
In the negotiations, Israel and Hamas will try to reach a final agreement that would solidify the cease-fire they reached in August. Hamas spokesperson Salah Bardawil has said that the talks will cover the process of reconstructing the Gaza Strip, in addition to “the issues that were postponed until the end of this month, on top of them the [demands for a] port and the airport as well as the [release of Palestinian prisoners].”
Court: Jordanian Bank finances Hamas, must compensate terror victims
(JNS.org) A Brooklyn federal court has found the Jordanian Arab Bank Plc liable for violating the Anti-Terrorism Act by financing Hamas. As many as 300 Americans who were either victims of terrorist attacks or are family members of victims of such attacks originally sued the bank in 2004.
The court ordered the bank to compensate the victims of more than 20 attacks orchestrated by Hamas in Israel, and a damages trial has been set for a later date.
The case, in which the jury deliberated for less than two days before reaching the verdict, is the first terrorism financing civil case tried in the U.S., attorneys said. Similar lawsuits are pending against the Bank of China Ltd., which has been accused of assisting the Islamic Jihad terror group, and Credit Lyonnais SA, also accused of helping Hamas. Both banks deny the allegations.
“It has been a long haul,” said plaintiff Maida Averbach, 76, whose son Steve was paralyzed from the neck down in a 2003 suicide bombing and died in 2010 from complications. “Unfortunately my Steve isn’t here,” she told Reuters.
The Jordanian Arab bank plans to appeal the decision, but Mark Werbner, the attorney for some of the plaintiffs, said the verdict shows that “when a bank opens its doors to terrorists, they’re going to be held accountable.”
Israel downs Syrian government fighter jet over Golan Heights
(JNS.org) Israel downed a Syrian government fighter jet that had penetrated Israeli airspace over the Golan Heights early Tuesday morning.
“This morning, a Syrian aircraft was identified while attempting to infiltrate Israeli airspace in the Golan Heights. The Israel Air Force retaliated by firing a Patriot anti-aircraft missile. The Syrian plane was successfully hit,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said. “This is a continuation of the growing tension this border has experienced in recent months.”
According to IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, the aircraft shot down was a Russian-made Sukhoi-24 and that the pilot and co-pilot both ejected into Syria. Lerner added that the fighter jet penetrated roughly half a mile into Israeli airspace.
A video posted on YouTube, likely by rebels on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, purportedly shows the shoot down of the aircraft.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based human rights group, said that the Syrian fighter jet was targeting rebel positions near Syrian-Israeli border town of Quneitra. Rebels, backed by the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front terror group, took control of the border crossing last month from the Syrian government and U.N. peacekeepers.
The downing of the Syrian aircraft came amid an intense night over the skies of Syria, as the United States and several Arab allies launched airstrikes on Islamic State targets in the terror group’s strongholds in northern and eastern Syria. The U.S. also separately targeted an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror group known as “Khorasan” near Aleppo.
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Several hundred protesters call for Met opera to cancel ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’
(JNS.org) Several hundred protestors gathered at New York’s Lincoln Center on Monday to protest the opening night of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s production of the anti-Israel opera The Death of Klinghoffer.
The opera depicts a 1985 cruise ship hijacking by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front and the killing on disabled Jewish-American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer. Critics of the 1991 John Adams opera say that it promotes anti-Semitism and glorifies terrorism.
At the rally, protesters held signs reading “Klinghoffer Opera: Propaganda Masquerading as Art” and “The Met Opera Glorifies Terrorism.”
High-ranking New York political leaders—including former New York governor George Pataki, former U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey, U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), and New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind—joined the protesters.
Additionally, several Jewish and Christian organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Catholic League, and the Christians’ Israel Public Action Campaign, co-sponsored and attended the rally.
The protesters read a letter denouncing the opera that was written by the father of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal journalist who was executed by terrorists in 2002. “We do not stage operas for rapists and we do not compose symphonies for penetrating the minds of ISIS (Islamic State) executioners,” the letter reads.
“This anti-Semitic opera viciously falsifies history to malign and incite hatred against Israel and the Jewish people. The opera is a disgrace and should be canceled immediately,” Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, said in a statement.
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