Arab Knesset members under fire for meeting with terrorists’ families
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said Thursday that they plan to file personal complaints with the Knesset’s Ethics Committee against Arab MKs Hanin Zoabi, Jamal Zahalka, and Basel Ghattas, who met with the families of late Palestinian terrorists earlier this week.
The lawmakers, who are from the Balad faction of the Knesset’s Joint Arab List party, met with the terrorists’ relatives on Feb. 2, one day before Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held a similar meeting in Ramallah.
The Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported that the meeting “observed a moment of silence in the memory of the shahids (martyrs)…and it was positive and relaxed,” adding that the main issue discussed was the families’ demand that Israel return the remains of 11 Palestinian terrorists killed during the current surge of violence.
“Israeli MKs who visit the families of terrorists who murdered Jews are not worthy of their Knesset seat. I have asked the Knesset speaker to see what actions can be taken against them over this disgrace,” Netanyahu said Thursday.
Edelstein said the meeting constituted “outright incitement and encouragement to commit murder. This meeting was a gross infringement against the Knesset and the State of Israel.”
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As terror rages in Israel, hundreds of ex-combat troops get gun licenses
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Israeli Public Security Ministry on Thursday issued 304 firearm licenses to former members of the IDF’s anti-terrorist unit, Duvdevan. The decision was made in light of the dramatic rise in terrorism across Israel in recent months, and as part of Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan’s stated policy of easing the criteria for carrying a firearm.
“Issuing gun licenses to former Duvdevan members is a sensible step due to the security realities, and it will enhance our response capabilities in cases of possible terrorist attacks,” Erdan said.
“There is a pressing need for far more trained civilians in the streets, who can save lives,” he added.
Duvdevan representatives who met with Erdan and employees of the ministry’s firearms department thanked them for expediting the licensing process. One former Duvdevan member said after the meeting, “We have a background in fighting terror, and we want to take part and contribute to the security of the state as caring citizens.”
Since the beginning of October 2015, more than 15,000 civilians have submitted requests for firearm licenses, compared to 3,000 in the same time period last year.
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Iran’s missile program will become stronger, army chief says
(JNS.org) Iran plans to continue developing its missile program, but only the Islamic Republic’s “enemies” should feel threatened, the commander-in-chief of the Iranian Army said.
“Our missile program is not a threat against our friends, but it is a threat against our enemies. Israel should understand what it means,” Maj. Gen. Ataollah Salehi said, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported Thursday.
Although last summer’s nuclear deal did not lift sanctions against Iran’s missile program, Salehi said the program “will become stronger. We do not pay attention and do not implement resolutions against Iran, and this is not a violation of the nuclear deal.”
Most international sanctions on Iran were lifted by the nuclear deal, but a United Nations Security Council resolution barred the country from working on ballistic missiles for eight years. Ballistic missiles are a delivery mechanism for nuclear weapons. Iran, however, already violated the U.N. resolution by conducting a missile test last October.
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Palestinian Fatah on Facebook: killers of Israeli policewoman are ‘role models’
(JNS.org) The Palestinian Fatah faction, which is led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, posted on its official Facebook page that the three late terrorists who killed Israeli border policewoman Hadar Cohen and wounded others are “role models.”
“Those who carried out the self-sacrifice operation in occupied Jerusalem are Ahmad Abu Al-Rub, Ahmad Zakarneh, and Muhammad Kmeil from the village of Qabatiya in the Jenin district. They were three men who competed with each other for [martyrdom] death. Their feet were raised above the hangman’s neck. They became role models. Across the length and breadth of the homeland,” stated the Fatah Facebook page, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported Thursday, a day after the Palestinian terror attack at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate.
Additionally, according to PMW, the father of one of the Palestinian terrorists said on official Palestinian Authority television, “We received the news with joy, a martyr, our Lord chose him from among the people to be a martyr, Allah will pardon him, and we hope he will be among the people of paradise, Allah willing. Praise Allah in any case.”
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British judge quits following investigation over anti-Semitic comments
(JNS.org) A British judge in northern London resigned prior to his impending removal over anti-Semitic comments he made on Facebook, the U.K.-based Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) grassroots group announced Thursday.
Following an official year-long investigation into the matter, CAA cited the British Judicial Conduct Investigations Office as saying that magistrate Abul “Abz” Hussain “has resigned from judicial office following an investigation into an allegation that he had posted racist and anti-Semitic comments on social media. A disciplinary panel recommended that Mr. Hussain be removed from the judiciary, but he resigned before the disciplinary process had been formally concluded. His resignation took effect from 26 August 2015. Had he not resigned, the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice would have removed him from judicial office.”
Hussain’s anti-Semitic Facebook posts included “u know the worlds coming to an end when a jew accuses another of being his kind!” and “jews like u are boring so find everything lame, here’s a penny go put it in the bank and u just might get a pound after ten years interest!”
In 2010, Hussain was expelled from the U.K.’s Respect political party—which is led by outspoken anti-Israel lawmaker George Galloway—over his anti-Semitic views. The U.K.’s Sunday Telegraph published an exposé in December 2014 that found Hussain was still an active judge in the British court system despite the knowledge of his publicly expressed anti-Semitism.
“We commend the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office for its ruling that anti-Semitism must be treated with zero tolerance, our only regret being the protracted nature of this investigation,” Jonathan Sacerdoti, CAA’s director of communications, said Thursday.
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14 Holocaust survivors sue Hungary in U.S. court
(JNS.org) Fourteen Hungarian Holocaust survivors have filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. against the Hungarian government and its national train company for cooperation with the Nazis, complicity in the deportation of more than 500,000 Hungarian Jews, and confiscation of property.
Currently, Hungary does not compensate Holocaust survivors or their heirs, nor has the country ever been prosecuted for collaborating with Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.
Six of the plaintiffs currently live in Israel, while the others live in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. The federal court initially rejected the lawsuit, but that ruling was overruled last week on appeal, sending the lawsuit back to the U.S. court.
“We did not establish a sum, but in actuality it will amount to billions of dollars. This is basically a class action lawsuit. If we win, a fund under the court’s supervision with a mechanism that will inform every Holocaust survivor and their families will be established, and then the court will make sure the money is distributed according to a formula that it will determine,” said Israeli-American lawyer Marc Zell, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs and is also a relative of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
“This is a large and important lawsuit that arrives 71 years after the war. A relatively large amount of Hungarian Holocaust survivors and their descendants live in Israel. There were attempts in the past to get reparations from Nazi criminals in Hungary, but this case is unique because this is the first time the Hungarian government is being sued. Usually the Nazi crimes occurred in areas where there was no independent regime, such as Poland. There, the Nazis established their own regime and they are the ones who committed the crimes, as well as Poles who cooperated with them,” explained the lawyer.
Zell described the Hungarian government as “anti-Semitic from the start” during the Holocaust.
“In our lawsuit, we also mentioned the Hungarians’ activities in 1941—before the big deportation,” he said. “They expelled 20,000 Jews from Hungary proper into the hands of the Nazis, and all of them were shot to death in Ukraine. They initiated this, without the Germans asking them to do it. The Hungarians wanted to get rid of the Jews. In 1944, the remaining Jews were deported by the Hungarians to Auschwitz and Mauthausen in trains, and basically they were sent to their deaths.”
The lawsuit was filed in America, said Zell, “because the U.S. has a law that gives the option for individuals to file a claim for damage caused to them by a foreign government or a foreign government’s company.”|
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Jewish teens convicted of murdering Arab teen receive prison sentences
(JNS.org) Two out of the three Jewish teenagers convicted of the burning 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir to death in July 2014 received prison sentences on Thursday in a Jerusalem court.
One of the murderers, 17, was given a life sentence. A second murderer, 16, was sentenced to 21 years in prison. The third convicted teenager is attempting to plead insanity and has not yet been sentenced. The names of all three Jewish teenagers remain under gag order.
Abu Khdeir, an Arab boy from Shuafat in eastern Jerusalem, was kidnapped and burned to death while waiting to enter a mosque, an attack carried out in retaliation for Hamas terrorists’ kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teenagers in Gush Etzion in June 2014.
In addition to the prison sentences, the Jewish minor who received a life sentence was ordered to pay NIS 30,000 (about $7,700) to the family of Abu Khdeir and NIS 5,000 (about $1,300) to the family of another Arab teenager who the group had attempted to kidnap. The other sentenced murderer was also ordered to pay NIS 30,000 to the family of Abu Khdeir.
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Pro-Palestinian groups claim responsibility for New York Times ‘parody’
(JNS.org) The New York City chapter of the pro-Palestinian organization Jewish Voice for Peace and another New York-based pro-Palestinian group—called “Jews Say No!”—claimed responsibility for a fake edition of the New York Times distributed around the city on Feb. 2 that included satirical commentary on news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The two groups called the fake issue a “parody.” In addition to distributing print copies, they set up a fake Twitter account and a website that mimicked the New York Times design. Both the Twitter page and the website have since been suspended.
The fake newspaper was intended to “point out how biased current reporting is on Israel and Palestine and to show what a paper that was fair and accurate could look like,” one of the fake paper’s writers said in a statement, the Forward reported.
The New York Times said that it shut down the online version of the paper because it was “deliberately designed to trade on our name and mislead users.”
“We are extremely protective of our brand and other intellectual property and object to these two groups—or any other groups—attempting to cloak their political views under the banner of the New York Times,” said Eileen Murphy, a spokesperson for the newspaper. “It is our firm belief that those advocating for political positions are best served by speaking openly, in their own voice.”
One of the articles in the fake paper announced a “new editorial policy” towards covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We are aware that a disproportionate number of our news stories in the past year and a half have focused on Israeli government statements and positions or the views of Israeli Jewish citizens; only a small fraction have featured Palestinian speakers, whether officials and advocates or residents who experience the effects of Israeli policies in everyday life,” the fake editorial stated.
Ironically, in its real-life coverage, the New York Times has frequently been accused of disproportionately relying on Palestinian sources and presenting stories from the Palestinian perspective. For instance, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) media watchdog—a longtime critic of the New York Times—recently prompted the newspaper to issue a correction regarding pro-Palestinian bias in an article about Palestinians facing eviction from Jerusalem’s Old City.
The New York Times correction stated, “The Jerusalem Journal article on Jan. 15 about Palestinian residents of Jerusalem’s Old City who face eviction by Israeli organizations gave an incomplete description of the legal disputes in several cases. The descriptions were based on the [Palestinian] tenants’ accounts; the article should have included additional information from court documents or from the [Israeli] landlords. (The landlords are organizations that have reclaimed properties owned by Jews before Israel was established in 1948.)”
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Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman.