U.S. not giving up on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, ambassador says
(JNS.org) America will not give up on the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations during the final two years of President Barack Obama’s term, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said during a speech at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies on Tuesday.
“The main reason we remain committed to achieving a two-state solution is that we see no alternative that would achieve Israelis’ and Palestinians’ legitimate goals,” Shapiro said. He said the Obama administration is “committed to keeping that hope alive” despite the results of the recent midterm elections, in which Republicans took control of the U.S. Senate from the Democrats and increased their majority in the House of Representatives.
“Israelis follow American politics closely, whether during midterm or presidential elections,” Shapiro said. “Since our midterms last month, much ink has been spilled about what the results mean for the next two years. Here is a caution, lest anyone jump to conclusions: divided government, in which one party controls Congress and the other the Executive Branch, does not necessarily mean foreign policy gridlock.”
U.S.-brokered peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians collapsed earlier this year after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party signed a unity agreement with the Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas.
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Israeli defense minister: ‘we have drawn red lines’ for various elements in Syria
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Tuesday in a possible reference to Sunday’s airstrikes in Syria, which media reports and several nations attributed to Israel, that “we have drawn red lines for the various elements operating in Syria.” The Israeli government has not officially confirmed nor denied that it was behind the airstrikes.
Speaking at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Ya’alon said, “Our enemies do not stop presenting us with challenges. Whether it’s Iran, which continues to advance its military nuclear program, or whether it’s the same Iran orchestrating terror against us while arming our enemies.”
Addressing the situation in the Gaza Strip, the defense minister said that “while Operation Protective Edge has deterred Hamas, it continues to arm itself despite the distress in the Strip, mostly for the over 100,000 civilians who lost their homes in the war.”
Hamas was also a factor in Ya’alon’s assessment of the situation in Judea and Samaria. He cited a drop in the scope of terror and incitement in the area, but said “there are no assurances this state of calm will continue.”
“There is a great deal of pressure, primarily from Hamas, to turn up the heat in Judea and Samaria,” he said. “We are continuing to operate there to dismantle terrorist infrastructure directed mainly from the outside, from the Gaza Strip and Turkey. Additionally, we are continuing to combat terrorism by lone attackers.”
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Israeli High Court justices blast Arab MK’s anti-Israel statements
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israel’s High Court of Justice on Tuesday leveled scathing criticism at Arab MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) during a hearing on a petition she filed against the Knesset Ethics Committee’s decision to suspend her from the Knesset plenum for six months.
Zoabi was suspended from the Knesset in late July following a series of anti-Israel statements that prompted multiple requests by other parliamentarians to sanction her. She stated in a radio interview that the murderers of Israeli teenagers Gilad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach, and Naftali Frenkel were “not terrorists.” Several weeks later, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, she called on the Palestinian Authority to “lay siege to Israel rather than negotiate with it.”
In her petition, Zoabi claimed that the Ethics Committee had exceeded its authority by suspending her, and that it was not within its purview to sanction MKs over their political views. She further claimed that the sanctions imposed on her were disproportionate compared to previous cases brought before the committee.
But throughout Tuesday’s hearing, High Court Justices Miriam Naor, Elyakim Rubinstein, Salim Joubran, Esther Hayut, and Hanan Melcer blasted Zoabi for repeatedly violating the Knesset’s code of conduct. Naor criticized Zoabi’s approach throughout her dealings with the Ethics Committee, saying the response offered to the panel was “vague and simplistic, not at all like the claims made here.”
Commenting on statements made by Zoabi during the Gaza campaign, Melcer said, “I have failed to find any other case where a member of parliament urged a siege on his own country.”
Speaking with reporters as she was coming out of the courtroom, Zoabi said, “What I do is every MK’s right. I hope the judges deal with the facts, because the court is the last defense of human rights.”
Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem hills vandalized
(JNS.org) A memorial to Holocaust victims located in the Jerusalem hills between Kibbutz Tzora and Moshav Eshtaol has been vandalized, and its metal plates bearing an inscription have been stolen, Israel Hayom reported.
Guides from the Shaar Hagai Field School hiking in the area discovered the vandalism. They informed the Israel Police, which began investigating the event on Tuesday. The memorial, titled the Scroll of Fire, is made of bronze. It stands 26 feet high and is sculpted in the shape of two scrolls that symbolize the Jewish people as the People of the Book. One scroll describes the Holocaust and the other the founding of the State of Israel.
The memorial was unveiled in 1972 after many years of work by artist Nathan Rapoport. Rapoport was born in Warsaw and was himself a Holocaust survivor. The images depicted on the part of the memorial devoted to the Holocaust include Janusz Korczak and the children he saved; a row of helmets that represent Nazi soldiers; and a Warsaw Ghetto partisan shown holding a grenade.
Shaar Hagai Field School director Moriah Ezra-Rosenzweig said, “The theft of part of the memorial is a blow to the values of the nation.”
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Ireland to accept opposition motion to recognize Palestinian state
(JNS.org) The Irish government will accept a motion proposed by the opposition Sinn Fein party on Tuesday that asks the country’s parliament to recognize a Palestinian state. The decision comes after the upper house of Ireland’s legislature passed a motion in October calling for such recognition.
The motion asks the government to “officially recognize the State of Palestine, on the basis of the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital, as established in UN resolutions, as a further positive contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Ireland is the latest in a string of European nations taking this step. The French National Assembly voted 339-151 in favor of urging its government to recognize a Palestinian state last week. The Danish government will also vote on the issue in early January, while similar votes took place in the parliaments of Great Britain, Ireland, and Spain. One nation, Sweden, has officially recognized Palestinian statehood, while votes by the other countries have been symbolic. A vote by the European Parliament on the recognition of a Palestinian state is expected in mid-December.
“The predominate perception in Europe still blames Israel for the lack of progress for peace, not the Palestinians,” Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS.org last week.
“They think that somehow recognizing Palestine as a state will somehow send a message to Israel [that] unless Israel does things differently there will be negative political repercussions,” he added.
Members of the lower house of the Irish parliament discussed the motion on Tuesday and Wednesday, but a spokesman said the Irish government will not be opposing the bill, the Jerusalem Post reported. That means the bill will not be voted on by the members of parliament.
“To the Palestinians such a move signals that they don’t have to make the necessary compromises in peace talks and that it is even ok to circumvent such direct talks altogether. To the Israelis, recognition suggests that Europe is not an honest broker,” Daniel Schwammenthal, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Transatlantic Institute in Brussels, recently told JNS.org.
Palestinians granted observer status at International Criminal Court
(JNS.org) The International Criminal Court (ICC) upgraded the Palestinians’ status to “non-state observer” at its summit meeting in New York on Monday.
While largely symbolic, the move gives the Palestinians the right to ratify the Rome Statue, the founding treaty of the ICC. So far, the Palestinians have not indicated that they will join the 122-member body.
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour told the Ma’an News Agency that the new status at the ICC is “another victory for Palestinians at the international level, bringing them closer to restoring their rights, and opening the door wide to drag leaders of the Israeli occupation to the dock of this court, so the souls of the victims can finally rest in peace.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has long promised to join the tribunal should negotiations with Israel fail, opening up the possibility that Israel could be tried for war crimes in the disputed territories. But by joining the ICC, the Palestinians also open themselves up to war crimes probes, which has led to speculation that joining the ICC is only a bluff on the part of Abbas.
Israeli high-tech company makes world’s smallest Christian New Testament
(JNS.org) Using nanotechnology, an Israeli high-tech company has produced the world’s smallest version of Christianity’s New Testament.
The Jerusalem Nano Bible Company said it has developed a five-by-five millimeter chip that contains the original Greek version of the New Testament and can be embedded inside of watches, jewelry, and more.
“Our aim is to be able to mass produce it and cater to really every pocket. Because this application, the smallest bible in the world, Jerusalem Nano Bible, can be applied to infinite possibilities in the jewelry industry,” said David Almog, who heads the company’s marketing department, Reuters reported.
The chip has been nominated for the Guinness Book of World Records as the World’s Smallest Bible.
“We have used 0.18 micron technology so the width of each of these letters is 0.18 micron to create the smallest printed bible in the world. In every one of these squares, which is about 1,000 of these squares on an eight inch silicone wafer, there is a little bit more than 1,000 bibles,” Russell Ellwanger from TowerJazz Semiconductor, whose company helped produce the bible, told Reuters.
The nano bible is being sold on the company’s website inside of a necklace, which it describes as the “perfect Christmas gift” for $99. The company says it is working on a version of the much longer Old Testament (Hebrew bible) next.
Israeli yeshiva student stabbed at Chabad headquarters in New York
(JNS.org) Levi Rosenblat, a 22-year-old Israeli yeshiva student, was wounded early Tuesday morning in a stabbing at Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.
Police said that 49-year-old Calvin Peters entered Chabad headquarters around 1:40 a.m. on Tuesday and stabbed Rosenblat several times in the upper body.
Rosenblat, who is from the community of Beitar Illit in Judea and Samaria, was initially reported to be seriously wounded. It was later reported that he was conscious and in stable condition.
According to reports, Rosenblat had been studying inside of the synagogue when he was attacked. Police said that Peters threatened to “kill all of you,” and witnesses heard the man saying repeatedly, “Kill the Jews.”
Police inside of the synagogue confronted the assailant and told him to put the knife down on a table. But after putting it down, Peters then grabbed the knife and lunged at one of the officers, who fired once, hitting the suspect in the torso, CBS New York reported. Peters was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
“I’m told that the attacker came earlier that evening, too,” New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said in a statement. “He was stalking the scene. Thank God he didn’t inflict more harm nor do more damage to more people.”
Reports indicate that the attack was most likely not terrorism-related. Police said that Peters was known to authorities as being an emotionally disturbed person.
“While we are very pained by everything that has unfolded, we are very grateful to the police for their quick response and are working closely with the authorities in their ongoing investigation,” said Rabbi Motti Seligson, director of media relations for Chabad.
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