Hamas man allegedly received $2,000 monthly salary for operating terror tunnel
(JNS.org) Suspected Hamas terrorist operative Medhat Abu Sneima was indicted in Beersheba on Sunday for crimes including plans to attack Israeli soldiers along the Gaza border. Abu Sneima, 24, from Gaza, was arrested last month. According to the indictment, which lists 18 charges, he joined Hamas in 2007.
In 2014, he allegedly paid $7,000 to become part owner of a smuggling tunnel from Egypt to Gaza. As such, he made $2,000 per month for operating the tunnel, earning a total of about $50,000—a huge sum in Gaza—during the two years the tunnel was active.
The indictment stated that when Abu Sneima became part owner, the tunnel was about 1,640 feet long, but it was later doubled in length and ran under both Egyptian and Israeli territory. Abu Sneima and his partners are suspected of smuggling some 30 rifles, 10 trunks of ammunition, and 35 pipes in order to make 110-pound rockets through the tunnel.
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Hungary arrests 2 suspects in connection with murder of Israeli man
(JNS.org) The body of a missing 40-year-old Israeli man was found in a forest in southern Hungary on Sunday. Ofir Gross, a Jerusalem native who was studying biomedical engineering in Germany, had not been heard from after last making contact with his family on April 21.
Hungarian police believe Gross was murdered, and two local men were arrested in connection with the case on Sunday. Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday confirmed the death of Gross.
According to his family, Gross was visiting Hungary and had originally been staying with a friend in the southern town of Tiszakecske. He disappeared while he was apparently looking for somewhere to stay in the eastern city of Debrecen.
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Israeli team takes second place in prestigious high school robotics contest
(JNS.org) An Israeli high school team from Binyamina, near Haifa, came in second place at the prestigious international FIRST Robotics Competition in St. Louis, Missouri, from April 27-30.
The final match—between the Orbit team of students from Binyamina’s Rothschild-Hashomron High School and an American team—ended in a 2:2 draw, but the defending American champion won due to a technicality.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) brings together more than 20,000 students from 24 countries for a sports-like tournament in which they pit their robots against one another in completing set tasks. The competition aims to turn students into the next generation of trailblazers, honing their technological and engineering skills while encouraging innovation and leadership.
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Suspect arrested in Florida synagogue bomb plot, FBI says
(JNS.org) A man suspected of planning to bomb a South Florida synagogue has been arrested, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced Monday. Sources in the bureau reported that a sting operation was orchestrated to thwart a terrorist attack at the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center on Friday.
WSVN, a Florida news outlet, quoted law enforcement sources as saying that FBI agents posing as terrorists were able to prevent the attack and apprehend the suspect, who had converted to Islam, they said. According to the report, the suspect “wanted to take some kind of explosive device and chuck it over the wall. Friday was the next-to-last day of Passover, and the center was crowded with people observing the holiday.”
The FBI stressed that the congregants were not in any danger during the sting operation or the arrest because the suspect was apprehended before having a chance to harm anyone.
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Italy arrests Islamic State suspects plotting attack on Israeli embassy and Vatican
(JNS.org) Italian police have arrested four suspects who were conspiring to join the Islamic State terror group and plotting to attack the Vatican as well as the Israeli Embassy in Rome.
The four suspects—a couple living near Lake Como, a 23-year-old Moroccan man, and a female relative of a fugitive couple—were detained by Italian police, Milan prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli said at a news conference.
Italian police also said they are seeking to arrest the aforementioned fugitive couple, another Moroccan man and his Italian wife. That couple is believed to have left Italy for Iraq and Syria last year, the prosecutor said.
Transcripts of wiretapped phone conversations among three of the four suspects who have already been arrested mentioned the possibility of attacks on the Vatican and the Israeli Embassy in Rome, Reuters reported.
“I swear I will be the first to attack them in this Italy of crusaders, I swear I’ll attack it, in the Vatican God willing,” one of the suspects allegedly said.
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U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn denies anti-Semitism crisis within his party
(JNS.org) Jeremy Corbyn, who heads the United Kingdom’s Labour Party, denied that his party has an anti-Semitism problem amid a rash of controversial statements by party members.
“There is not a problem. We are totally opposed to anti-Semitism in any form within the party,” Corbyn said, The Guardian reported. “The very small number of cases that have been brought to our attention have been dealt with swiftly and immediately, and they will be.”
Labour members have triggered outrage in the British Jewish community for their statements about Israel. Labour lawmaker Naz Shah was suspended by the party on April 27 for the revelation of how she suggested in a 2014 Facebook post that Israel should be relocated to the United States as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Following Shah’s suspension, former London mayor Ken Livingstone, another Labour member, told BBC Radio that Hitler initially “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews.” Livingstone was also suspended for his comments.
Corbyn himself has come under fire in the past for calling the Hamas and Hezbollah terror group “friends,” and for his connections to a Holocaust denier.
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Trump: Obama ‘snubbing’ Israel while courting Iran
(JNS.org) In a speech outlining his foreign policy vision, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on April 27 criticized President Barack Obama for “snubbing” Israel while cozying up to Iran.
“Israel, our great friend, and the only true democracy in the Middle East, has been snubbed and criticized by an administration that lacks moral clarity. President Obama has not been a friend to Israel. He has treated Iran with tender love and care, and made it a great power,” Trump said.
Obama negotiated a “disastrous [nuclear] deal with Iran, and then we watched them ignore its terms even before the ink was dry” at the expense of “Israel, our allies in the region, and more importantly, the United States itself,” he added.
Trump vowed that if he is elected president, Iran “will never, ever be allowed to have that nuclear weapon” under his watch.
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Israeli cookbook authors take home top honors at James Beard awards
(JNS.org) A cookbook written by an Israeli-born chef and his associate won the “International” and “Book of the Year” awards at the 2016 James Beard Foundation Book, Broadcast & Journalism Awards last week in New York City. The prestigious James Beard awards are often referred to as the “Oscars of Food.”
“Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking,” by Israeli-born chef Michael Solomonov and his associate, Steven Cook, took home the top honors at the event. Solomon is the founder and chef of Zahav, the flagship restaurant of the Philadelphia-based restaurant group CookNSolo.
Another Israeli chef, London-based Yotam Ottolenghi, and his co-author Ramael Scully won the James Beard Foundation’s “Cooking from a Professional Point of View” prize for “NOPI: The Cookbook.”
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Freedom House slammed for downgrading Israeli media to ‘partly free’
(JNS.org) Media commentators slammed the U.S.-based Freedom House NGO for downgrading its designation of the Israeli media from “free” to “partly free” in its 2016 Freedom of the Press report.
“Israel declined from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’ due to the growing impact of Israel Hayom, whose owner-subsidized business model endangered the stability of other media outlets,” the report said, noting that the newspaper “is owned and subsidized by Sheldon Adelson, a wealthy American businessman who is openly aligned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his conservative Likud Party.”
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post quoted former George W. Bush administration official Elliott Abrams as saying, “Israel Hayom was founded in 2007 to provide Israelis an alternative to the left-leaning press. It has become the widest-circulation newspaper in the country, not just because it is free, but because so many Israelis want an alternative view. To say that Israel is suddenly only ‘partly free’ because it now has a popular center-right newspaper is malicious and ignorant.”
In 2014, Israel Hayom’s business model was targeted by a proposed Knesset bill that tried to ban the distribution of free print newspapers in Israel. Had that bill succeeded, “Freedom House and other media monitors would have had good reason to question Israeli press freedom, since the bill targeting Israel Hayom would have amounted to a legislative bill of attainder that would have silenced one of the few mainstream alternatives to left-wing political orthodoxy,” wrote Commentary magazine’s Jonathan Tobin.
“But fortunately,” he wrote, “the effort failed and, after Netanyahu’s third consecutive election victory and the formation of a right-wing majority government, this genuine threat to press freedom is no longer on the table.”
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Study finds 90 species of endangered plants in Israel
(JNS.org) Ecosystems in Israel and particularly in its coastal plain have 90 species of endangered plants, 28 of them being unique to Israel or the countries that surround it, a newly released study discovered.
The Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) conducted a survey and mapping project over the last two years in order to determine whether Israel meets international standards on biodiversity protection.
The international Convention on Biological Diversity requires at least 17 percent of a country’s land mass to be protected with the highest level of biodiversity. The INPA survey found that almost 20 percent of Israel is protected, though 60 percent of those areas are concentrated in the southern Negev desert region.
In some areas with more residential development and farming, such as Israel’s coastal plains, the ecosystems are only minimally protected. Ninety species of endangered plants, such as irises, were found in areas that are inadequately protected.
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Romania set to pass Holocaust restitution bill
(JNS.org) Romania’s parliament is expected to pass a restitution bill that would ease the process for Holocaust survivors to reclaim property that was stolen from them during the war.
Jewish property confiscated in Romania during the Holocaust was seized for a second time by the Communist regime in that country, which held power for 42 years.
Ever since the Communist government fell, Holocaust restitution laws in Romania have been riddled with red tape, preventing the original owners from getting their property back from the government. Romanian lawmakers told Reuters that the parliament plans to pass the new restitution bill on May 3.
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