Israel hopes U.S. cut in Egypt aid won’t affect peace deal
(JNS.org) The U.S. on Wednesday decided to halt the transfer of $260 million in military aid to Egypt, citing democracy and human rights concerns. America will also withhold the delivery of tank parts, helicopters, anti-ship missiles, and the F-16 fighter aircraft.
“As a result of the review directed by President Obama, we have decided to maintain our relationship with the Egyptian government, while recalibrating our assistance to Egypt to best advance our interests,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.
On Thursday, Israeli Homefront Defense Minister Gilad Erdan said he hopes the aid cut won’t impact the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace deal.
“I hope this decision by the United States will not have an effect and won’t be interpreted as something that should have an effect,” Erdan said, according to Israel Hayom.
A high-ranking Israeli official told The Wall Street Journal that the aid cut “can have dismal consequences,” and called the decision “a sign to the whole Middle East that America is stepping back and is not interested anymore.”
“It’s going to affect America’s position from Morocco to Saudi Arabia,” the official said.
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Iran’s proposal to cap nuclear work ‘a joke,’ Yuval Steinitz says
(JNS.org) Officials in Jerusalem on Wednesday rejected Iran’s proposal to halt uranium enrichment to 20 percent, with one official from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office saying, “No deal is better than a bad deal.”
According to the official, the Iranians are offering to give up something that does not hurt their enrichment activities and could still bring them to being a nuclear threshold state, and no one should be tempted to accept the offer.
Israeli Strategic Affairs, Intelligence and International Relations Minister Yuval Steinitz called the Iranian gesture “a joke,” Israel Hayom reported.
“Closing the Fordo compound means that Iran, in its first year of going nuclear, would be able to make five instead of six atomic bombs,” he said. “Capping enrichment at 20 percent is less significant now that Iran has 20,000 centrifuges. Israel is ready for a real, serious diplomatic solution, meaning an Iranian nuclear program that operates similarly to Canada and Mexico’s nuclear infrastructure: Iran could generate electricity at its reactor, but would need to purchase the nuclear fuel to operate it from other countries.”
Yair Lapid criticized for saying Palestinians don’t need to recognize Israel as Jewish state
(JNS.org) Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin of the Likud Beiteinu party sharply criticized Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid on Wednesday for his comments stating that Palestinians do not need to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
In an interview with Charlie Rose on Bloomberg Television on Tuesday, Lapid said, “I don’t feel we need a declaration from the Palestinians that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state… The whole concept, to me, of the State of Israel is that we recognize ourselves, that after 2,000 years of being dependent on other people.”
But Elkin believes that the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the fact that the Palestinians do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, the same position expressed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a major address at Bar-Ilan University on Oct. 6. Until the Palestinians make this recognition, “any peace agreement will become just another step in [former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser] Arafat’s infamous staged plan to throw us in the sea,” Elkin said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Study: Most Ashkenazi Jews are European through maternal line
(JNS.org) A new paper in the journal Nature Communications claims that Ashkenazi Jews have primarily European roots via the maternal genetic line. Previous research showed that 50-80 percent of DNA from the Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which shows the male lineage, came from the Middle East.
In the new study, researchers looked at the mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through the maternal line and contained in the cytoplasm of the egg, from more than 3,500 people around the world, including Ashkenazi Jews. They found that more than 80 percent of the maternal lineages of Ashkenazi Jews can be traced to Europe.
“The simplest explanation was that it was mainly women who converted and they married with men who’d come from the Near East,” said study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield in England, LiveScience reported.
Pope Francis I reiterates desire to visit Israel
(JNS.org) Pope Francis I reiterated his desire to visit Israel next year during a visit to the Vatican by Israeli Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein on Wednesday.
During the meeting, after Edelstein urged Pope Francis to visit Israel, the pontiff emphatically replied, “I’ll come! I’ll come!” Edelstein also asked the pope to continue to combat anti-Semitism, the Jerusalem Post reported.
“There is still anti-Semitism in the world,” Edelstein said. “I ask you to use your influence to combat it.”
Earlier this year, during a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres, Pope Francis accepted an invitation by Peres to visit Israel.
Since becoming pontiff in March, Pope Francis has made Jewish-Christian relations a priority, continuing the legacy of his predecessors. Recently, Pope Francis also praised the Jewish people for “keeping their faith in God” despite centuries of persecution, and also declared in June that a true Christian “cannot be anti-Semitic.”
Syrian civil war mortar fire wounds two Israelis in Golan Heights
(JNS.org) Two mortar shells from Syria landed in the Golan Heights on Wednesday, lightly injuring two Israeli soldiers.
According to reports, the Syrian mortars came from errant fire as a result of heavy fighting in the Syrian civil war, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. One Israeli soldier was treated for shock at the scene, while the other was taken to a hospital for light shrapnel wounds.
The incident marks the first time Israeli soldiers have been injured by the fighting in Syria. The IDF said that it retaliated towards the source of the fire and lodged a complaint with the United Nations.
Heavy fighting between the Syrian government and rebel forces has been reported near the Golan Heights border over the last several days. Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, dozens of mortar shells have landed in Israel, mostly as a result of errant fire. Israel, which has largely stayed neutral in the conflict, has occasionally responded with targeted fire against the source.
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