Israeli officials reportedly meet with Egyptian counterparts in Cairo
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) A delegation of senior Israeli officials visited Cairo on Tuesday for a series of meetings and discussions with Egyptian officials, the Turkish news agency Anatolia reported.
According to the report, which was based on information from senior Egyptian sources, the Israeli delegation arrived in Cairo via a direct flight on a private plane. The delegation was reportedly headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy, Isaac Molho.
Nearly three years after Egypt had recalled its ambassador to Israel in November 2012, the Arab country in June named Hazem Khairat as its new envoy to the Jewish state. The move was seen as a sign of improving ties between the Israeli and Egyptian governments, which both view the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, as a threat.
Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979.
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Anti-Israel petition calls for arrest of Netanyahu during U.K. visit
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) As of Wednesday morning, nearly 40,000 people had signed an online petition calling for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges during his visit to the United Kingdom next month.
The petition, created on the British Parliament’s E-petitions website, says, “Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September. Under international law he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the U.K. for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014.”
According to British law, the government must respond to all petitions that get more than 10,000 signatures, while a petition that garners 100,000 will be considered for debate in the parliament.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry called the petition “a public relations stunt with no practical significance.”
“The bilateral relations between Britain and Israel are closer than ever,” the ministry said in a statement, highlighting data that shows the doubling of trade between the two countries in recent years as well as “fruitful” academic, cultural, and scientific cooperation.
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IDF issues new rules of engagement in Judea and Samaria
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israel Defense Forces GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Roni Numa on Tuesday issued a temporary directive revising the rules of engagement across Judea and Samaria, seeking to limit the number of incidents in which live fire is used against Palestinian rioters.
The directive was issued as part of the IDF’s efforts to defuse the growing tensions on the ground following the July 31 torching of homes in the Palestinian village of Duma, near Nablus, which claimed the life of 18-month-old Ali Dawabsha and his father, Saad, 31, and left his mother and 4-year-old brother in serious condition.
According to Israel’s Channel 10, the new orders bar soldiers from opening fire at Palestinian rioters hurling firebombs or stones at them, unless the troops believe they are in imminent danger. The orders specify that if a rioter who threw a stone or a firebomb is not endangering soldiers’ lives and moves away from them, the troops must not shoot toward him, but must instead try to apprehend him using other measures.
Before the new directive, the instructions were for soldiers to try to stop rioters who had hurled firebombs or stones using all reasonable measures, working under the assumption that those who threw such items once would do so again. Consequently, soldiers would pursue Palestinian rioters and begin arrest procedures, which include firing in midair and if necessary at the suspects’ legs.
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Christian-Jewish group launches massive campaign to fight Iran nuclear deal
(JNS.org) The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (known as “The Fellowship”) has launched a massive interfaith lobbying campaign to rally Christians across the U.S. to urge Congress to nix the Iran nuclear deal.
According to The Fellowship, the campaign seeks to capitalize “on the mutual understanding between Jews and Christians that Iran and its Islamic fundamentalist allies have been persecuting Christian and Jewish minorities in recent years and cannot be trusted to abide by international law.”
As part of the campaign, The Fellowship has launched a video reminiscent of the Cold War-era “Daisy” television ad that was used in the 1964 presidential campaign.
“If this agreement is ratified, Americans will—for the first time in a generation—understand what it means to have a credible threat of annihilation looming over the heads of our children and grandchildren, and in that way will understand better than ever the threat that hangs over Israelis every day,” said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of The Fellowship.
The advertising and lobbying campaign is aiming to reach millions of people through cable television, radio, and social media, in addition to the distributed of 2 million emails to The Fellowship’s Christian allies nationwide.
“Both Christians and Jews must unite in order to counter the threat of radical Islam,” Eckstein said. “We need that unity now more than ever to fight off the virulent hatred and violence threatening both our faith communities. A nuclear Iran would be a disaster of catastrophic proportions for the entire free world.”
Founded in 1983, The Fellowship promotes cooperation and understanding between Jews and Christians. The group has raised more than a billion dollars, mostly from Christian donors, to support Israel and the Jewish people.
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Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas plans first visit to Iran since 2012
(JNS.org) Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is planning a visit to Iran in November as he seeks to boost ties with the Islamic Republic, a Palestinian official announced Tuesday.
Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee member Ahmed Majdalani—who recently visited Tehran, where he met with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif—said that arrangements are being made for the visit by Abbas.
Majdalani said his talks in Iran focused on boosting bilateral relations, the Syrian civil war, and the dispute between the PA and Hamas, the Jerusalem Post reported. Majdalani added that Iran and the PA have agreed to work together on holding an international conference with the goal of bringing about the nuclear disarmament of Israel. (The Jewish state has never confirmed nor denied possessing nuclear weapons.)
Abbas last visited Iran back in 2012, when he attended a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran. The recent moves by the PA to bolster ties with Iran come as reports indicate a strain in relations between Hamas and the Islamic Republic.
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Rabbis to launch alternative conversions to Judaism in Israel
(JNS.org) Religious Zionist and progressive rabbis in Israel announced a plan to form a network of courts that will convert non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Judaism, despite the fact that Israel’s Chief Rabbinate will not recognize such conversions.
The rabbis hope that the move will spur public pressure on the Chief Rabbinate to simplify the conversion process.
The new conversion movement is being called “Giyur Kahalacha” (meaning “proper conversion” or “conversion under Jewish Law” in Hebrew). The rabbis are partnering with the ITIM association, the Triguboff Institute, and Beit Morasha, and the initiative is being supported by the Jewish Agency for Israel.
“The ingathering of the exiles and the great immigration from the former Soviet Union pose considerable challenges to the State of Israel, which require responsible and brave decisions from the people’s leaders, both on the halachic-rabbinical level and on the national level,” the Giyur Kahalacha rabbis said in a statement. “Our moral responsibility is to ensure the absorption and full integration of the immigrants, for their sake and for the continuation of the Jewish people.”
The move comes in the wake of the Israeli governing coalition’s cancellation of a proposed conversion law that would have made the process of legal conversion to Judaism in Israel easier.
“We all wish to continue the process of ingathering the exiles from throughout the world in an era of lost identities and growing assimilation,” said Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky. “In order to keep the gates of Israel open to all who wish to join our people in accordance with halacha, it is important that rabbis who have been authorized by the Chief Rabbinate to conduct conversions participate in this process, and this new initiative will enable them to do so.”
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Turkey is top destination for direct flights from Israel despite bilateral tension
(JNS.org) Turkey is the most popular destination for direct flights from Israel despite an ongoing tense relationship between the governments of those two nations in recent years.
The Israel Airports Authority (IAA) summary of the month of July, released Monday, showed that Turkey has overtaken the U.S. as the top destination for direct flights from the Jewish state, with Greece also surpassing America and rising to second place.
About 170,000 passengers traveled to Turkey from Israel during July, which is a 30-percent increase from the same month in 2014 (which came during the Israel-Hamas war). Roughly 169,000 passengers traveled from Israel to Greece last month, a 29.7-percent increase from July 2014. The U.S. came in third with about 136,000 passengers and an increase of less than 10 percent.
Germany was fourth with 135,000 passengers and a 23-percent increase, while Italy was fifth at 123,000 passengers and a 20-percent increase, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
Israel and Turkey have had a strained relationship since the May 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, in which nine Turkish citizens were killed after they attacked Israeli commandos who boarded a vessel that tried to break the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip. Current Turkish leaders, particularly President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have often engaged in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric.
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Captured Hamas fighter reveals new terror plans from Gaza
(JNS.org) A captured Hamas fighter has revealed a trove of intelligence information on the Palestinian terrorist group that includes plans for new terror tunnels and attacks.
The Hamas fighter, 21-year-old Ibrahim Adal Shahada Sha’ar of Gaza, was arrested last month by Israeli police at the Erez crossing as he attempted to enter Israel for “personal or humanitarian reasons.” Sha’ar served in the terror group’s logistics division during the Israel-Hamas war last summer and was already known to Israel’s Shin Bet security agency.
According to the Shin Bet, Sha’ar discussed plans by Hamas to use tunnels to carry out terror attacks as well as Hamas’s relationship with Iran, the Jerusalem Post reported. Additionally, he gave up details about Hamas’s battlefield strategy, the composition of its elite units, and its anti-aircraft and surveillance capabilities.
Sha’ar had allegedly been working on tunnel construction in recent months, learning of a new tunnel heading for the Kerem Shalom crossing along the Israeli border. He revealed to the Shin Bet other digging sites, tunnel openings, and routes of tunnels currently under construction. Additionally, Sha’ar said the new road built by Hamas along the border fence was installed to carry out surprise attacks using vehicles that would speed over the border into Israel.
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