U.N. Security Council rejects Palestinian statehood resolution
(JNS.org) The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday rejected a Palestinian resolution that called for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank by 2017 and the establishment of a Palestinian state with borders based on the pre-1967 lines.
The United States and Australia voted against the measure, which garnered eight affirmative votes and five abstentions among the 15-member Security Council, falling short of the nine votes the resolution needed to pass.
On Monday, U.S. State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke had said America believes the resolution “fails to account for Israel’s legitimate security needs, and the satisfaction of those needs, of course, integral to a sustainable settlement.”
After the rejection of the resolution, leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization said in a statement, “We are grateful for the leadership of the United States in working against the resolution, which would have undermined the chances for peace by setting arbitrary deadlines, prejudicing final-status issues, and undermining chances for a negotiated settlement.”
Argentina, Chad, Chile, China, France, Jordan, Luxembourg, and Russia voted in favor of the Palestinian resolution.
“Those countries that genuinely seek a peaceful resolution of this conflict must impress upon the Palestinians to cease exporting and enflaming the conflict by joining new multinational bodies, beginning with the International Criminal Court, in an effort to deploy them as political weapons against Israel,” B’nai B’rith International said in a statement.
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Netanyahu’s son lightly hurt in IDF training accident
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Avner Netanyahu, the youngest son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was lightly injured on Tuesday in a military training accident in southern Israel. He was transported to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon for treatment.
While at the hospital, Avner Netanyahu was visited by his father. He was later released and sent home to recuperate. He enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces at the start of the month and joined the Combat Intelligence Collection Corps.
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Leaked recordings from Gaza rescue mission a ‘serious breach,’ IDF says
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Israel Defense Forces has launched an investigation to determine who was behind the leaking ofaudio recordings from the ill-fated attempt to rescue Lt. Hadar Goldin during Operation Protective Edge.
The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said Tuesday that the “after-action review of the incident has yet to be completed, rendering any analysis conducted on the basis of such recordings incomplete, irresponsible, and inaccurate in a way that departs from the debriefing material currently being processed. We regard this matter [the leak] as a serious breach.”
The IDF said it was unfortunate that such recordings were aired because they could hurt the families of those who died in the incident. The recordings include frantic conversations between Israeli troops as they search for Goldin, who was kidnapped when his unit was ambushed in the Rafah area. Lt. Eitan Fund, who was among the first to arrive at the scene, risked his life by entering the terror tunnel that was used by the perpetrators. By risking his life in the search, Fund was able to identify Goldin’s remains and pieces of his uniform. This allowed forensic experts to determine that Goldin had died during the ambush or shortly afterward. Two other soldiers were also killed in the attack. Fund may be awarded a distinction for his actions.
In the recordings, the commander of the Givati Brigade Reconnaissance Battalion, Lt. Col. Eli Gino, is heard ordering more troops to the area of the attack, hoping that would help Fund.
“The deputy [Fund] will rendezvous with you and will re-enter the tunnel to take the uniforms out,” Gino tells his subordinates. He then orders the troops to stop firing. “I repeat, hold your fire! You are acting like a bunch of morons! You are going to kill each other!” he shouts.
The recordings further shed light on the bombardments that followed the kidnapping, including communications over the targeting of a mosque where the terror tunnel originated.
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Netanyahu dubbed ‘tyrant’ in Islamic State magazine
(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was featured in the Islamic State’s Dabiq magazine, where the jihadist group refers to him as a “tyrant” of the Jews.
The article, titled “In the Words of the Enemy,” features a picture of Netanyahu with quotes taken from an interview he gave the CBS program Face the Nation. In that interview, the Israeli leader discusses the threat posed by Islamic State. The caption underneath the photo reads “the Taghut of the Jews,” an Arabic term meaning tyrant, heretic, or false leader.
In the November interview with Face the Nation, Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s support for American military efforts to combat Islamic State, but he also warned against the Iranian threat.
“We want them both to lose,” Netanyahu said, referring to both Islamic State and Iran. “The last thing we want is to have any one of them get weapons of mass destruction.”
Dabiq is an online magazine that Islamic State uses for propaganda and recruitment. It was first published in July 2014 in a number of languages, including English.
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Israel’s population hits 8.3 million on eve of 2015
(JNS.org) The population of Israel on the eve of 2015 stands at 8,296,000 residents, marking a two-percent increase over last year, according to the Jewish state’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
During 2014, Israel’s population grew by 162,000. Among the current population, 6,218,000 (74.9 percent) are Jews, 1,719,000 (20.7 percent) are Arabs, and 359,000 (4.2 percent) are defined as “other” by the CBS.
Last year, the Israeli population was estimated to be 8.13 million, and in 2012 it was 7.98 million. A decade ago, Israel’s population was an estimated 6.86 million.
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Hamas leader blasts expired Palestinian unity government
(JNS.org) Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh slammed the Palestinian terrorist group’s expired unity government with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah political party for failing to meet the needs of Hamas-ruled Gaza.
In early December, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri announced that the six-month unity deal had expired, and called for new negotiations between the Palestinian factions. Speaking on Monday after a delegation from the West Bank arrived in Gaza to discuss Palestinian unity, Haniyeh said the defunct pact had failed “to keep its commitments, by not carrying out reconstruction [of Gaza], nor unifying institutions under the Palestinian Authority nor organizing elections,” AFP reported.
Haniyeh said the unity government was “harmful” to Gaza’s population and that he was “not optimistic” that the arrangement could get back on track.
Despite signing the deal for a unity government last spring, Hamas and the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) have continued open hostilities. Over the summer it was revealed that Hamas plotted to assassinate PA President Mahmoud Abbas and overthrow the PA government in the West Bank. More recently, Fatah accused Hamas of launching a series of bomb attacks on Gaza-based Fatah members early November.
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