Netanyahu: bill to ban free newspapers ‘shames the Knesset’
(JNS.org) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted legislation seeking to outlaw free newspapers in Israel, walking out of Wednesday’s preliminary vote on the bill.
The Israeli Knesset came out in favor of a bill intended to shut down the free newspaper Israel Hayom. Netanyahu said the 43-23 vote (with nine abstentions) “shames the Knesset,” according to footage by Knesset Channel television cameras.
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz told the Knesset, “Those who today support the closing of a newspaper are causing fundamental harm to Israeli democracy.”
The bill, proposed by MK Eitan Cabel (Labor), would ban daily newspapers in Israel whose business model includes free distribution to the general public. That is the model behind the success of Israel Hayom, the country’s most widely read daily newspaper.
According to market research by the Target Group Index (TGI), Israel Hayom has been the top-read daily newspaper in Israel for more than four years. The latest TGI survey on the subject, released in July, said Israel Hayom has a 39.8-percent market share—more than five percentage points higher than the next-highest-read print newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. Arnon (Noni) Mozes, the publisher of Yedioth Ahronoth, is rumored to be behind the anti-Israel Hayom bill.
“It should be obvious to anyone who reads about this that the amount of power Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Noni Mozes has is unspeakable. He can tailor a bill just so he can eliminate competition,” Sheldon Adelson, the owner of Israel Hayom, said in an interview with his newspaper earlier this year.
Wounded Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick’s condition improves
(JNS.org) Rabbi Yehudah Glick, a promoter of Jewish access to the Temple Mount who has been in the hospital since he was shot by an Arab terrorist on Oct. 29, has started to breathe on his own and is able to interact with his environment, marking a significant improvement in his condition.
Glick, who is hospitalized at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, felt well enough to speak on the telephone with Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein. The two have a close relationship, formed when Edelstein was Israel’s immigrant absorption minister and Glick was the ministry’s spokesman.
On Tuesday, Edelstein paused the Knesset plenum to tell those present about Glick’s improving condition.
“You are the first people with which I would like to share my joy,” Edelstein told the Knesset. “A moment ago, I stepped out to speak to Yehudah Glick, who has been breathing on his own for the last two hours. … Many of those who have spoken here (in the Knesset) in recent days have wished him a complete recovery. … Your wishes helped.”
Iron Dome battery deployed in northern Israel
(JNS.org) Amid concerns of a possible escalation of hostilities along Israel’s northern border, an Iron Dome anti-missile system battery has been deployed in the area.
The battery was positioned near Haifa to defend against possible threats from Lebanon and Syria, Israel’s Channel 2 reported Tuesday. According the IDF Spokesperson’s Office, “The system is deployed in accordance with situational assessments and need.”
A senior Israeli defense official recently warned that the Iron Dome system would be unable to fully protect Israel against a massive rocket attack by the Hezbollah terrorist organization, which is based in southern Lebanon.
“Ben-Gurion International Airport would have to be shut down from early on in the fighting against Hezbollah. Iron Dome won’t be able to duplicate its interception rate from Operation Protective Edge,” the official said, according to Israel Hayom.
The Iron Dome was designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 2.5 to 43 miles. Hezbollah’s arsenal is believed to number some 100,000 missiles, including surface-to-air and surface-to-sea missiles, whose range could cover all of Israel.
50 Indian Jews from ‘lost tribe’ move to Israel
(JNS.org) A group of around 50 Bnei Menashe Jews from India immigrated to Israel on Tuesday, Israel Hayom reported. The new Israelis, said to descend from one of the 10 “lost tribes,” were greeted at Ben-Gurion International Airport by Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver.
The group’s move to Israel was facilitated by the Shavei Israel organization. The Bnei Menashe, who are from northeastern India, say they are descended from Jews banished from ancient Israel to India in the 8th century BCE.
In 2005, then-Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar recognized the Bnei Menashe as a lost tribe, and about 1,700 moved to Israel before the Israeli government stopped giving them visas. The government later reversed that policy, allowing Bnei Menashe immigration to resume. In 2014, around 500 Bnei Menashe Jews have moved to Israel.
Netanyahu introduces new measures to combat Palestinian terrorism and riots
(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for inciting violence against Israelis amid the recent spate of terror attacks in the Jewish state.
“Instead of telling the truth, [Abbas] is spreading lies as if we are attempting to change the status of holy sites. Instead of educating his people on peace, he is teaching them terror,” Netanyahu said after a three-hour security cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
The prime minister also announced new sweeping measures set to combat the growing riots and terror attacks, including more security forces on the ground, demolition of terrorists’ homes, and an “iron fist” policy against stone and Molotov cocktail throwers. The prime minister also blasted the international community’s double standard when it comes to Israel.
“The international community, which condemns every balcony we build here, refuses to speak out against Abbas,” he said.
Israel set to send equipment and medical supplies to Ebola-stricken West Africa
(JNS.org) The Israeli government is in the final stages of preparing to send much-needed equipment and medical supplies to the West African nations stricken by Ebola.
The shipment, which is leaving from the Israeli port city of Ashdod to the countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, includes six cargo containers full of special equipment used to set up portable field hospitals.
“Each clinic consists of 20 beds and it’s a fully equipped clinic with beds, and with carts and treatment carts and oxygen and certain medications and protection gear,” Gil Heskel, the head of Mashav, Israel’s Agency for International Aid and Development, told Reuters.
Currently, the Israeli humanitarian group IsraAID is the only organization from the Jewish state operating in West Africa, where it provides training to healthcare workers to address the psycho-social impact of Ebola.
The Israeli government will put the West African countries in touch with Israeli aid groups in order to send more volunteers, doctors, and other medical staff from Israel. Aid will also be distributed to Cameroon and the Ivory Coast to prevent the disease from spreading there. The total cost of the assistance is approximately $314,000.
Anti-Semitism up 35 percent in Australia over past year
(JNS.org) Anti-Semitism has increased by 35 percent over the past year in Australia, according to a new report by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ). There were 312 incidents of anti-Semitism recorded in the country during that time.
The report cited the anti-Israel protests and rhetoric related to last summer’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza as part of the reason for the spike in Australian anti-Semitism.
“The Israel-Gaza war produced mass protests in Australia, and the world, condemning Israel. There is a correlation between the intensity of conflict involving Israel and the level of anti-Semitism recorded in the western world, of which Australia is part,” said ECAJ.
Among the incidents documented in the report was the attack on five Jewish people in Bondi as they were walking home from a Shabbat dinner, a rabbi who was threatened by a gang in Perth, and students who were threatened on a bus in Sydney by a gang of drunken teenagers.
The report also cited an “escalating use of anti-Semitism motifs” in the Australian media as part of the increase in anti-Semitism incidents. It specifically mentioned claims by former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr, who said that Australian politics suffered from a “very unhealthy influence” by the pro-Israel lobby, as well as a cartoon in the Sydney Morning Herald last July that “unambiguously portrayed an ugly stereotype of a Jew.”
Iran leader’s call to destroy Israel not ‘mere words,’ Netanyahu tells Jewish Federations
(JNS.org) Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s recent tweeting of a 9-point plan to destroy Israel is more than “mere words,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamina Netanyahu told the 2014 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in a live video address on Tuesday.
“These aren’t mere words… the regime of Iran’s wild rhetoric is also back by murderous action,” Netanyahu said, citing Iran’s funding of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
“That’s apparently the Iranian regime’s idea of modernity—tweeting about the annihilation of Israel,” added Netanyahu.
The international community’s goal “must not be merely to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons today, we must also prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons tomorrow,” the prime minister said.
“This is how Iran acts without nuclear weapons,” he said. “Now imagine how Iran will act with a deal that leaves it as a threshold nuclear power.”
Yet instead of “holding firm” in nuclear negotiations with Iran, which have a Nov. 24 deadline for an agreement, world powers are reportedly willing to leave the Iranian nuclear program “largely intact” and rely on inspectors to prevent weaponization, Netanyahu said. He said that instead, the world must “recognize the limitations of our own intelligence-gathering capabilities,” given the previous failure of any country’s intelligence to discover Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz and Qom.
Iran should also not be treated as an ally in the fight against the Islamic State terror group in the Middle East, Netanyahu said.
“To defeat ISIS (Islamic State) and allow Iran to be a threshold nuclear power would be to win the battle and lose the war,” he said. Iran “should be treated as an enemy” by America, said Netanyahu, hinting at but not directly referencing the recent report that President Barack Obama wrote a letter to Khamenei in mid-October regarding the Islamic State threat.
Amid the recent surge in Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis, particularly in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said he regrets that “the Palestinian Authority (PA), which should also be working to calm tensions, has joined Hamas and radical Islamists in fanning the flames.” PA President Mahmoud Abbas publicly praised the Islamic Jihad terrorist who tried to kill Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick and accused Jews of “contaminating” the Temple Mount, Netanyahu noted, adding that the Facebook page of Abbas’s Fatah party denies that the Jewish people have any connection to the Temple Mount or that there was ever a Jewish Temple to begin with.
“These distortions and this incitement are so corrosive to the effort to reach a genuine peace,” Netanyahu said.
Palestinian convicted of U.S. immigration fraud over hidden terror conviction
(JNS.org) A Palestinian activist was convicted Monday of immigration fraud in Detroit for failing to disclose to U.S. immigration authorities a past conviction in Israel for a 1969 supermarket bombing in which two people were killed.
Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, 67, was tried last week in federal court and convicted of unlawful procurement of naturalization, said a spokesman for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Odeh could be sentenced to 10 years in prison and will likely lose her U.S. citizenship.
Odeh immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. While in the U.S. she has worked as the associate director of the Arab American Action Network, a community organization in Chicago. Prior to immigrating to the U.S., Odeh, along with members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, were convicted in Israel for the supermarket bombing and for placing another bomb at the British Consulate in Jerusalem.
U.S. federal prosecutors accused Odeh of failing to disclose her past criminal history when she arrived in the U.S. from Jordan and when she became an American citizen in 2004.
When she testified at her trial, she claimed that she was not aware of having to disclose any criminal history relating to her life prior to arriving in the U.S. Jennifer Williams, the immigration officer who had interviewed Odeh, testified that she always clearly tells immigration applicants that criminal history applies to “anywhere in the world.”
“I think your verdict is a fair and reasonable one based on the evidence that came in,” U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain told the jury after the verdict was announced, the Associated Press reported.
Israel allows Gaza fishermen to export to West Bank
(JNS.org) The Israeli government has allowed Gaza fishermen to export their catch to Palestinians in the West Bank for the first time in seven years.
Israel eased the export restrictions it imposed on Gaza since Hamas took over governance of the coastal enclave in 2007, allowing a shipment of more than 730 kilograms.
The allowance was adopted despite the recent spate of Palestinian stabbing and vehicular terror attacks against Israelis.
Last Thursday, Israel also allowed the export of 6 tons of cucumbers from Gaza, reported i24news.
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