Palestinians want U.N., not U.S., as peace broker
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wants the U.N. to take over from the U.S. as the main peace broker between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Abbas adviser Nabil Shaath told Bloomberg News in an interview published on Tuesday.
“We are telling the U.S., your plan has not worked out,” Shaath said. “We insist that the international community looks into another plan.”
“People are totally disillusioned and disappointed about the peace process and the chaperoning by America of this peace process,” he said. “It has not produced anything.”
Shaath said Abbas, who will address the U.N. General Assembly later this month, will ask the Security Council to “intervene and take control” of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
According to Shaath, Abbas will try to “shame” Israel into pulling out of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. If Israel doesn’t do so, “we will confront Israel politically all over the universe,” he said.
“We are going to ask the world to treat Israel as it did apartheid South Africa,” added Shaath.
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Israel’s Lieberman calls for permanent U.N. anti-terror coalition
(JNS.org) Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has called on the United Nations to form a permanent global coalition to fight terrorism, and not solely to focus on the Islamic State group.
Speaking at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism’s 14th World Summit in Herzliya on Tuesday, Lieberman said Israel welcomes the formation of an international coalition led by the U.S. to fight Islamic State. He suggested that the coalition establish fixed ideals “so that [it] will not change according to the interests of countries and lead to hypocrisy and double standards.”
“If the U.N. has a role, it is firstly to organize a coalition against terrorism,” Lieberman said, according to Israel Hayom. “We need to stop letting all these countries make a profit on the side while fragmenting the united front against terrorism.”
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IDF’s first female major-general retires after 34 years
(JNS.org) Air Force General Command chief Brig. Gen. Hagai Topolansky replaced Maj. Gen. Orna Barbivai on Tuesday as head of the Israel Defense Forces’ Personnel Directorate. Barbivai, who is retiring, made history by becoming the first, and so far only, woman in the IDF to reach the rank of major-general.
Four women in the IDF currently hold the next-highest rank, brigadier-general.
“Orna is the first female major-general, but surely not the last,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said Tuesday, according to Israel Hayom. “Her abilities brought her to this, not her femininity. She has done a wonderful job for 34 years.”
Palestinian killed after throwing explosive device at IDF soldiers
(JNS.org) Israeli troops operating in the al-Almari refugee camp near Ramallah early on Wednesday shot dead a 22-year-old Palestinian man during a violent clash, Israel Hayom reported.
The IDF soldiers entered the camp to arrest a Hamas operative. The troops were attacked by a group of young Palestinians with rocks, firebombs, and burning tires. One of the Palestinians threw an explosive device at the soldiers, who returned fire, killing him.
Over the course of the night, the IDF arrested six wanted Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.
New ZOA monograph educates students, media, Congress on Hamas
(JNS.org) In the aftermath of the recent 50-day Gaza conflict, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is distributing a new monograph on the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas to college and high school students, the media, member of Congress, and others.
“The truth needs to be told about Hamas’s war crimes,” ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said in a statement. “Israel acted in an exemplary humane manner, unknown in the history of warfare, while fighting to defend innocent Israelis from Hamas’s constant bombardment. Hamas and its collaborators are especially targeting college students this fall; ZOA is and will be there, spreading the truth.”
ZOA said its monograph—titled “The Truth About Hamas’s War Against Israel”—covers Hamas’s stated goal of annihilating Israel and murdering every Jew; its targeting of innocent Israeli civilians with more than 19,000 rockets and other means; its repeated cease-fire violations; its use of civilian shields and deliberate placement of rockets and launchers in homes, schools, and elsewhere; how it inflates civilian casualty figures and stages pictures of casualties; its intimidation of journalists; its false claims that Israel targets civilians in U.N. schools, camps, and hospitals; its executions of Arab dissenters and murders of tunnel workers; and its exploitation of Arab children.
Regarding Israel, the monograph details the Jewish state’s protection of Gazan civilians and its humanitarian aid to Gaza despite continuous rocket attacks, as well as Hamas’s use of that aid to build terror tunnels.
Jerusalem’s Latin patriarch laments suffering of Mideast Christians
(JNS.org) The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem lamented the ongoing suffering of Middle East Christians during a recent visit to Italy.
Fouad Twal, the Catholic Church’s top official in the Holy Land, said during his homily at the Shrine of Our Lady of Tears in the Sicilian city of Syracuse that the uncertain future for Middle East Christians “weighs heavily on all people” and “remains a source of deep concern,” Vatican Radio reported.
Twal noted threats written on church and monastery walls throughout the region, called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a “tangled knot,” and said that “the terrorism of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria… frightens the whole world.”
While Israel has one of the few growing Christian communities in the Middle East, Christians in the Palestinian territories face an uncertain future given the threat posed by Islamic extremist groups like Hamas. Yet despite the persecution faced by Palestinian Christians as well as Christians throughout the Middle East—especially in war-torn Syria and Iraq, where jihadists from Islamic State have carried out mass executions of Christians and other minorities—some Christians have vowed to remain in the region.
“Even today there are plenty of Christians faithful to Christ in the Middle East [who] have preferred death, [or] preferred to migrate and to give away everything, but [they have] never agreed to convert to Islam in order to save their lives,” said Twal.
Video shows Islamic Jihad digging new Gaza terror tunnels
(JNS.org) The Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad is reportedly digging new tunnels on the Gaza border in order to “get ready” for the next battle with Israel.
In a video that aired on the Qatari satellite TV network Al-Jazeera, a correspondent was given access to new terror tunnels that Islamic Jihad is digging.
In the video, which was translated by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Islamic Jihad terrorists can be seen digging, as well as dragging dirt and other supplies such as concrete, to construct the new tunnels.
“What is remarkable about this tunnel is that it has been dug recently,” the Al-Jazeera reporter says. “As you can see, it is still being dug.”
One of the masked Islamic Jihad terrorists, who was interviewed while digging the tunnel, claims that the tunnel’s construction began immediately after a cease-fire with Israel was declared late last month.
The reporter, who says the tunnels are located in the “border area,” then asks the Islamic Jihad terrorist why he is building them.
“We are getting these tunnels ready for the next battle, in order to launch attacks and fire mortars and artillery. These tunnels will also have other uses, which we will not disclose,” the terrorist says.
The Al-Jazeera reporter also visits another “attack” tunnel purportedly used by terrorists to fight Israeli tanks and soldiers who enter the area.
Israel destroyed more than 30 terror tunnels dug underneath the Israel-Gaza border during its recent military campaign.
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‘Moderate’ Syrian rebels sold Steven Sotloff to Islamic State, family spokesman says
(JNS.org) So-called “moderate” Syrian rebels captured American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff and sold him to the Islamic State terror group, which eventually beheaded him, a family spokesman said.
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Sotloff family spokesman Barak Barfi said that Islamic State paid between $25,000 and $50,000 for Sotloff after the Syrian rebels set up a fake checkpoint near the Syrian border to capture him.
“Somebody at the border crossing made a phone call to ISIS, and they set up a fake checkpoint with many people,” Barfi said. “Steve and his people that he went in with could not escape.”
Barfi, who said he obtained this information from “sources on the ground in Syria,” added that the tipster was one of “the so-called moderate rebels that people want our [Obama] administration to support.”
Barfi also heavily criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough to save Sotloff and James Foley, another American journalist who was beheaded by Islamic State in August.
“We know that the intelligence community and the White House are enmeshed in a larger game of bureaucratic infighting, and Jim and Steve are pawns in that game. And that’s not fair,” Barfi said.
Jewish student at UNC Charlotte told to ‘burn in an oven’
(JNS.org) A Jewish student from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) was recently told “to go burn in an oven.”
On Sept. 4 in the school’s Student Union, a female student walking with a group of girls “looked at me with a straight face and said to ‘go burn in an oven,'” Neili Eggert told TruthRevolt.
“I didn’t know what to do or say to her, I was in complete shock… She walked away with the other girls laughing,” Eggert said.
Following the incident, Eggert has been fearful of walking around on campus. She reported the incident to the director of UNC Charlotte’s Multicultural Resource Center, the head of the school’s Religious & Spiritual Life Office, and the dean of students.
“I feel like I am being attacked because I wear my Star of David out in public, I wear shirts with the word Israel on it or shirts with Hebrew lettering, I have Israel stickers on my laptop, and I wear a hat with an Israeli flag on it,” Eggert said.
Previously, Eggert said she was “spit at by three male Muslim students on the second day of classes” on Aug. 19, in addition to other incidents.
“I have been called a terrorist, baby killer, woman killer, [told that] I use blood to make matzah and other foods, Christ killer, occupier, and much more,” she said.
Brussels Jewish museum to re-open Sept. 14
(JNS.org) The Brussels-based Jewish Museum of Belgium, where former Islamic State terrorist Mehdi Nemmouche killed four people last May, will re-open Sept. 14.
The opening will be tightly secured and will be a message of defiance against “brutes,” museum officials said.
“We should not give free rein—I dare say—to bastards,” said the museum’s secretary general, Norbert Cige. “We are continuing our educational work. In this world of brutes, it’s necessary.”
Two exhibitions that were halted because of the shooting will resume, and a new exhibition will open Nov. 13. Plans are also underway to demolish and rebuild part of the museum.
In the long run, part of the museum will be demolished and rebuilt.
“We want, with absolute determination, to retake our place in the cultural arena of Brussels,” said the museum’s president, Philippe Blondin, according to The Guardian.
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Israeli soldier wounded by errant fire from Syria
(JNS.org) An Israel Defense Forces soldier was wounded by errant fire from Syria on Monday in the latest spillover of Syrian civil war fighting into Israeli territory. Israel did not return fire and is investigating the incident.
The soldier from the the Armored Corps 7th Brigade was “lightly injured” from a bullet that hit him in the leg at an IDF outpost in the northern Golan Heights, north of Kibbutz Marom Golan. He was taken to the Rebecca Sieff Hospital in Safed, the IDF said, according to Reuters.
Last week, an Israeli Patriot missile shot down a Syrian drone, and two weeks ago an IDF officer and a civilian were also injured by errant Syrian fire.
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