Jewish news briefs: August 13, 2015

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Hamas claims it is making use of crashed Israeli drone
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Hamas terrorist group’s “military wing” on Wednesday claimed that it has rebuilt and is making use of an Israeli Skylark drone that crashed in the Gaza Strip last month.

“The Zionist enemy must know we are lying in wait and we will surprise it every day with a new achievement,” a Hamas statement said, adding, “A special unit of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades took control of a drone of the Zionist enemy and managed to make its services operational.”

Skylarks, which are manufactured by Elbit Systems, weigh only 15 pounds and are hand-launched by Israeli soldiers in the field. The drones are able to “see” as far as nine miles and can remain airborne for about two and a half hours.
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Senior official of Hamas terrorist group receives medical care in Israel
(JNS.org) Nayef Rajoub, a senior member of the Hamas terrorist group and the brother of senior Palestinian Authority (PA) figure Jibril Rajoub, is currently recuperating in a private hospital in Tel Aviv after apparently having undergone spine surgery, Israel Hayom reported.

Nayef Rajoub, 57, is expected to stay in the Assuta Medical Center’s Ramat Hahayal hospital for the next few days and has been assigned a security detail. The hospital said it could not confirm or deny the reports on Rajoub’s hospitalization, citing privacy concerns.

Rajoub has had multiple run-ins with Israeli security forces. He was first arrested in 1989 and was subsequently convicted of several terrorism-related charges, among them being a member of Hamas. In 1992, he was among the hundreds of Hamas terrorists who were deported to Lebanon after the organization killed an Israeli police officer. While in Lebanon, Rajoub began climbing the rungs of the organization until he attained a leadership position. In 2006, he was elected to the Palestinian parliament as a Hamas candidate and then tapped to serve as religious affairs minister. Several months later, after Hamas captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid, Israel put Rajoub in administrative detention along with other senior Hamas officials. He was released four years later, several months before the prisoner swap that freed Shalit.

In the summer of 2014, following Hamas’s abduction and murder of three Jewish teens, Rajoub was arrested during an Israeli sweep in Judea and Samaria. He was released a year later.

This is not the first time Israeli hospitals have treated or operated on a high-ranking Palestinian official. PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s wife, Amina Abbas, underwent an operation in Assuta Medical Center in June 2014. In February 2015, a Fatah official was treated at the Rabin Medical Center. In 2013, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s granddaughter was treated for a rare disease at the Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Israel.
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Winners of Chinese science contest choose Israel visit as prize
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Nineteen Chinese teenagers who won a prestigious science competition are scheduled to visit Israel next week as their prize. The winning group was given its choice of travel destinations and opted to attend a special 10-day workshop hosted by Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science.

The teenagers will be accompanied by teachers, journalists, and Beijing government officials. They will attend the Smart-Up Science Youth Camp, a collaboration between the Weizmann Institute’s Davidson Institute of Science Education and Shirat Enterprises, which promotes joint high-tech ventures between Israeli and Chinese companies. A similar science summer camp was held in 2014.

The program includes nationwide activities involving science and technology sites, such as the Israel National Museum of Science, Technology and Space in Haifa. One of the workshop’s highlights will be a meeting with the 2009 Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry, Professor Ada Yonath.

China is one of Israel’s primary target markets in terms of developing trade ties and boosting bilateral economic activity. The Smart-Up Science Youth Camp “not only strengthens Israel, but it also produces future Chinese ‘ambassadors,’” said Eliezer Manor, founder and president of Shirat Enterprises.
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Framework deal gives Israel’s natural gas industry an energy boost
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Israeli government and the energy companies involved in the country’s emerging natural gas industry have reached an agreement that will allow the continuous development of major gas fields off Israel’s shores, the Jewish state’s National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources Ministry announced Wednesday.

Negotiations with the energy companies—Texas-based Noble Energy and Delek Group, which together control the Leviathan, Tamar, Tanin, and Karish offshore gas fields—hit an impasse earlier this week. But according to a ministry statement, “Discussions on the framework were renewed on Wednesday afternoon, and a satisfactory agreement was reached later that night.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the deal, telling reporters on Thursday, “This framework focuses on Israel’s best interests. I would like to thank [Energy] Minister [Yuval] Steinitz and the team the headed the negotiations for reaching a deal that would see hundreds of billions of shekels find their way to the public in the coming years. The gas harvested, being an alternative energy source, will reduce the high cost of living. [Revenues] will be used for health care, education, and welfare.”
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Switzerland becomes first nation to lift Iran sanctions after nuclear deal
(JNS.org) The government of Switzerland became the first country to officially lift its sanctions against Iran in the wake of last month’s nuclear deal.

The decision, which takes effect Thursday, will remove a ban on precious metal transitions with Iranian state bodies, as well as requirements to report the trade and transport of Iranian petrochemical products, crude oil, and petroleum, a Swiss government statement said.

Switzerland is home to large oil trading companies such as Vitol Group, Glencore, and Trafigura Beheer BV. Ever since the U.S. and Iran broke off diplomatic relations following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Switzerland has been functioning as a mediator between the two nations.

“This agreement opens up new political and economic prospects with Iran, including bilateral relations,” and emphasizes Switzerland’s “support for the ongoing process to implement the nuclear agreement, and its confidence in the constructive intentions of the negotiating parties,” the Swiss government said.
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Obama administration asks for lower appeal bond in Palestinian terror case
(JNS.org) The Obama administration has intervened in a case involving a lawsuit brought by relatives of victims of Palestinian terrorism against the Palestinian Authority (PA), asking a New York City judge not to issue a high appeal bond that could destabilize the PA.

The jury in the trial awarded $218.5 million to American victims of the Palestinian terror attacks, an amount that is automatically tripled under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act. While the case is being appealed, the plaintiffs have asked the PA to deposit a bond of $30 million per month until the appeal is resolved.

The Obama administration argued that the large bond could weaken the power of the PA and undermine U.S. foreign policy, including the prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Senior U.S. officials have made clear to other governments that if the PA were to collapse, we would be faced with a crisis that would not only impact the security of Israelis and Palestinians, but would potentially have ripple effects elsewhere in the region,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a five-page sworn declaration filed Monday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The weakening of the PA could “fuel anger and frustration” and lead to violence, he added.

Kent Yalowitz, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement, “We are gratified that the Department of Justice supports the rights of survivors of international terrorism to enforce their rights and collect the judgment, but disappointed that the State Department failed to take any stand against the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and PA’s policy of putting convicted terrorists on their payroll as soon as they are jailed.”

“If the PA has enough money to pay convicted terrorists, it has enough to pay the judgment in this case,” he added, the Associated Press reported.
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‘Jewish Schindler’ saves more than 120 Iraqi Christian and Yazidi girls
(JNS.org) A Canadian Jewish businessman who was inspired by the work of Oskar Schindler during the Holocaust has rescued more than 120 Iraqi Christian and Yazidi girls from the Islamic State terror group.

Steve Maman, 42, founded the group Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI) after the jihadist group conquered northern Iraq last year, displacing more than 120,000 people while forcing many non-Muslims they captured to either convert or die. Many women and children were also taken as sex slaves by the Islamic State fighters.

“We liberate children from their captors through the use of on-the-ground brokers,” Maman told the U.K. Catholic newspaper The Tablet.

According to Maman, many of the girls who were kidnapped, some as young as 8, were used as sex slaves and raped as many as 30-40 times a day.

Maman said the money he has raised has come from many of his Jewish business associates, which he called “very generous.” But those associates, he said, have failed to generate support from Christians in Canada.

“This is a finite problem that can be solved with money,” Maman said. “We need Christians to open up at the same rate as my Jewish friends have.”

Maman has also launched a GoFundMe crowdfunding webpage that has raised $267,214 as of Wednesday, with a goal of $2 million. According to Maman, the freed girls are escorted to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they are given short-term shelter, food, and medical care, with additional assistance to help them relocate and rebuild their lives.

“The price of a child’s life to remove them from the hands of ISIS is between $1,000-$3,000,” Maman said on his fundraising page. “We, as avid consumers, spend that money on gadgets and tools. Why not spend that money to SAVE A LIFE?”
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Sinai-based Islamic State affiliate beheads Croatian man
(JNS.org) The Islamic State terror group’s affiliate in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has claimed to be behind the beheading of a Croatian hostage, reports indicate.

According to the SITE intelligence group, which tracks online activity of terrorist organizations, Tomislav Salopek of Croatia, who worked for the French geoscience firm CGG and was kidnapped July 22 near Cairo, was seen beheaded in an image posted by the Sinai Province, a terror group affiliated with Islamic State.

On Aug. 5, the Sinai terror group released a video online that threatened to kill Salopek if Egypt didn’t release prisoners within 48 hours.

While Egyptian and Croatian officials have not confirmed Salopek’s death, the beheading would be the first by the Sinai terror group.

The terror group, which was formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, has been behind a powerful insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula over the past few years. In July, it launched a series of deadly attacks that killed 17 Egyptian soldiers.

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