Arab party’s former MK faces jail time over 2007 Syria visit
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Former Member of Knesset Said Nafa, who served for the Arab party Balad from 2007-13, was sentenced on Thursday by the Nazareth District Court to one year in prison after being convicted in April for visiting an enemy state and contacting a foreign agent.
In 2007, Nafa visited Syria, even though the Israeli Interior Ministry had not approved the trip. In Syria, he met with Talal Naji, the deputy secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command terror group.
Nafa, 61, is from the Druze village of Beit Jann in northern Israel.
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Israelis waving terrorist groups’ flags may face prosecution
(JNS.org) Israeli Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein on Wednesday instructed law enforcement agencies in Israel to file criminal charges against individuals waving terrorist groups’ flags in public.
The directive applies to flags representing Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic State, among other groups, but it does not apply to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) flag.
The latter distinction was made in a memorandum sent by Deputy Attorney-General for Criminal Affairs Raz Nizri to Knesset Internal Affairs Committee Chairwoman MK Miri Regev (Likud), according to Israel Hayom.
“The Palestine Liberation Organization was designated as a terrorist group many years ago, and since its status has never been revised waving PLO flags in public constitutes an alleged criminal offense. However, given the change in the [diplomatic] relations between the State of Israel and the PLO, the Attorney-General’s Office had, years ago, issued a directives by which individuals waving PLO flags under the appropriate circumstances will not face criminal charges,” Nizri wrote.
The situation “is different when it comes to the flags of other organizations that have been designated as terrorist groups,” such as Hamas and Hezbollah, Nizri explained.
“Such cases are not characterized by the same diplomatic complexities attributed to the PLO flag, and therefore the policy in such cases is to have the flags removed, and when the circumstances so warrant, pursue a criminal indictment,” wrote Nizri.
Netanyahu orders halt to Temple Mount bridge construction
(JNS.org) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the halting of construction work on a new bridge connecting the Western Wall plaza to the Temple Mount’s Mughrabi Gate, Israel Hayom reported.
The Mughrabi Gate is the only entrance to the Temple Mount that non-Muslims are permitted to use.
A decade ago, an earthen ramp that led to the Mughrabi Gate partially collapsed. It was never repaired, due to Jordanian and Turkish concerns that Israel was trying to change the status quo on the Temple Mount. Instead, a temporary wooden bridge was built.
Over the past five years, Netanyahu has delayed renovation of the temporary bridge. But two weeks ago, construction work on a new bridge began “without coordination with or approval from the prime minister, and therefore it was stopped,” officials in the Prime Minister’s Office said.
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Amnesty International: Islamic State turns Iraq into ‘blood-soaked killing fields’
(JNS.org) The human rights group Amnesty International said in a new report that the Islamic State terror group has transformed northern Iraq into “blood-soaked killing fields” since conquering the region in June.
The report—titled “Ethnic cleansing on historic scale: the Islamic State’s systematic targeting of minorities in northern Iraq”—documents evidence of several mass killings that took place in Iraq’s Sinjar province, in the villages of Qiniyeh on Aug. 3 and Kocho on Aug. 15. The victims of the attacks were shot by Islamic State jihadists and buried in mass graves.
Amnesty International accused Islamic State of carrying out “war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions” against ethnic and religious minorities such as Assyrian Christians, Turkmen Shi’a, Shabak Shi’a, Yazidis, Kakai, and Sabean Mandaeans.
“The massacres and abductions being carried out by the Islamic State provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq,” Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser, said in a statement.
“The Islamic State is carrying out despicable crimes and has transformed rural areas of Sinjar into blood-soaked killing fields in its brutal campaign to obliterate all trace of non-Arabs and non-Sunni Muslims,” added Rovera.
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Islamic State terrorists torture and kill Christian man for refusing to convert
(JNS.org) An Assyrian Christian man from the Iraqi Christian village of Bartalah, which was conquered by Islamic State jihadists in early August, was reportedly tortured and then killed for refusing to convert to Christianity after hiding in his home for several weeks.
According to a relative, Salem Matty Georgis, 43, was suffering from heart disease and could not leave the town with his family when Islamic State terrorists invaded. Georgis hid inside his home for more than three weeks since Islamic State’s occupation of the area began on Aug. 7.
The relative said that Georgis was forced to leave the house on Monday, when he ran out of food and eventually encountered an Islamic State patrol near the town’s church.
“The patrol arrests him and tried to force him to convert to Islam, but he completely refused,” the relative said, the Assyrian Christian news site Ankawa reported. “Thus, the militants beat him and tortured him until he died in their hands. The militants dumped his body in the same place and went away.”
Since taking over Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh plains region, Islamic State jihadists have forced tens of thousands of Christians and other minorities to flee.
Similar stories of Christians refusing to convert have emerged. Last week, it was reported that a group of 11 elderly Christians, including an 80-year-old woman with cancer named Ghazala, were released and ordered to leave their village by Islamic State fighters after telling the terrorists that they would rather die than convert to Islam.
Pope Francis told Iraqi Christian pilgrims visiting the Vatican on Wednesday that he is proud of them for standing up for their beliefs.
“The church suffers with you and is proud of you, proud to have children like you,” Francis said.
Shanghai unveils memorial for WWII Jewish refugees
(JNS.org) The Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum unveiled a memorial dedicated to the 13,732 Jewish refugees who fled to the Chinese city during World War II.
A depiction of six Jewish people, the statue symbolizes the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, said its creator, Chinese-American artist He Ning. The statue is etched into a wall with the names of all the Jews known to have taken refuge in Shanghai during the war.
“The list is particularly meaningful. All of [the refugees] survived harsh days in the war and sheltered in Shanghai,” said 75-year-old Sonja Muehlberger, German activist who was born into a Jewish family in Shanghai in 1939, Xinhua reported.
“Shanghai was the only place in the world open to Jewish refugees. We will never forget the city,” Sonja added.
The Shanghai museum was built on the grounds of the former Ohel Moshe Synagogue in 2007. Thousands of European Jews, either by steamship or rail, fled to Shanghai during the Holocaust. The occupying Japanese authorities forced these Jews into the poorest and most densely crowded area of the city in what became known as the “Shanghai Ghetto,” where the Jews lived in terrible conditions until being liberated by Chinese nationalist forces in 1945.
Israel becomes Jordan’s chief gas supplier in new deal
(JNS.org) Israel has signed a memorandum of understanding with Jordan that will make the Jewish state Jordan’s chief natural gas supplier.
Although a final agreement still needs to be approved by Israeli Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom, Israel has informally agreed to supply the Hashemite Kingdom with $15 billion worth of natural gas over the next 15 years from its Leviathan offshore gas field. Shalom is expected to approve the deal.
Among those present in Jordan at the negotiations over the deal were Amos Hochstein, the State Department’s special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, and representatives of Leviathan field partners Delek Group (based in Israel) and Noble Energy (based on Houston), Globes reported.
In February, Israel signed a deal to supply Jordan with $500 million worth of gas from its Tamar offshore field.
The new deal is “a historic act that will strengthen the economic and diplomatic ties between Israel and Jordan,” Shalom said in a statement.
“At this time, Israel is becoming an energy superpower, which will supply the energy needs of its neighbors and strengthen its standing as a central source of energy supply in the region, and I welcome it,” he said.
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