Palestinians suspected of beating Israeli Jewish farmer to death
(JNS.org) David Ben-Kafra, a 70-year-old Jewish farmer from Rehovot, was beaten to death on Wednesday in an orchard near Moshav Pedaya in central Israel. Several Palestinians are suspected of committing the murder.
Ben-Kafra, who was found alive but critically wounded, was hospitalized at Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, where he later died from his injuries. The police were not ruling out nationalistic motivations for the attack, although other avenues are also being investigated.
Ben-Kafra’s son, Daniel Bar, is a spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Religious Services and is also the interim spokesman for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Bar told reporters on Wednesday that “we are waiting for information from the police and are certain it will do its job faithfully.”
Another family member told Israel Hayom, “We have no doubt that the murderer is either an illegal or legal Palestinian resident. He was a person who was loved by everyone, who never had problems with anyone. The police’s questions are irrelevant. This is a nationalistic matter, he has no enemies. He’s a farmer, a father of five, grandfather to 14 grandchildren.”
A large Israel Police and Border Police force arrived at the scene of the attack. When it became apparent that the attackers were Palestinian, it was decided to involve investigators from another security agency. According to initial police information, the attackers are Palestinians illegally residing in Israel. Police units conducted a search of the area, although no arrests had been made as of Thursday.
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German Bundestag president: ‘we must be resolute’ in curbing anti-Semitism
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) As part of the ongoing 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany, Norbert Lammert, the president of Germany’s Bundestag legislature, gave a speech at the Israeli Knesset on Wednesday. He said, “We must be resolute in curbing anti-Semitism in Europe.”
Opening his speech with a few lines in Hebrew, Lammert said, “Thank you for your kind invitation and warm welcome.” Switching to German, he called it “a great privilege, and also a pleasure, to speak to the representatives of Israel, home to Jews from all over the world, here in the Knesset, the beating heart of a strong democratic state, an open and free society, and the only functioning democracy in the Middle East.”
Regarding the close ties that have developed between Israel and Germany over the decades, Lammert said, “The intensity of the friendly relations between our two countries is indeed one of history’s miracles.”
Speaking about Germany’s Jewish community, Lammert said, “We are especially grateful, too, that after the traumatic experiences of National Socialist dictatorship and the Holocaust, Jewish life has once again resumed in Germany.” He announced that the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism would be holding a conference in Berlin next year.
“We recognize that nowhere in the world has anti-Semitism [that] had more devastating consequences than in Germany,” Lammert said.
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Flotilla set to sail from Greece to Gaza
(JNS.org) The latest flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip has arrived in Greece and was expected to set sail for Gaza on Thursday.
Speaking to Israel Hayom, Palestinian sources involved in the preparations for the flotilla claimed Israeli security and intelligence entities were working relentlessly to prevent the departure of the flotilla from Greece.
The flotilla has been the source of heated debate in the Israeli Knesset this week, particularly due to Joint Arab List MK Basel Ghattas’s announcement that he would take part in it. Speaking in the Knesset on Wednesday, Joint Arab List MK Hanin Zoabi called the flotilla’s upcoming attempt to reach Gaza “a human and moral struggle of the highest importance.” In response, Likud MK Oren Hazan shouted at Zoabi, “Do you even know what morality is? You’ve been given everything, yet you choose to engage in terrorism.”
Zoabi yelled back at Hazan, “Go to a casino!”—a reference to the scandal the freshman Knesset member has found himself embroiled in.
The new flotilla evokes memories of the May 2010 incident in which Israeli soldiers were attacked by Turkish militants when they boarded a vessel that sought to break the blockade of Gaza, resulting in clashes that killed nine Turks and led to the collapse of Israeli-Turkish relations.
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Turkey confirms negotiations on reconciliation with Israel
(JNS.org) Turkey on Wednesday confirmed that it is negotiating a reconciliation deal with Israel that would reboot the former allies’ relationship, which has deteriorated since the May 2010 Gaza flotilla incident.
“It’s quite normal for the two countries to talk for the normalization of the ties. How can reconciliation be achieved without holding any meetings?” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara, AFP reported.
“These meetings are not new. Expert-level talks have been held between the two countries for a while,” he added.
Cavusoglu stressed that “the ball is in the court” of Israel regarding two Turkish demands—the lifting of the maritime blockade on Gaza and financial compensation for families of the nine Turks who were killed on the flotilla. In the incident, Turkish militants had initiated clashes by attacking Israeli soldiers who boarded the Mavi Marmara vessel, which was attempting to breach the Gaza blockade.
“We are waiting for an answer from [Israel]. An agreement could perhaps have been reached much earlier, but the process has been delayed because of the domestic balances of Israel,”Cavusoglu said.
The confirmation of reconciliation talks comes just weeks after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, who are known for their hostility toward Israel, lost a majority in the Turkish parliament. The electoral setback for Erdogan likely thwarted his ambition of amending Turkey’s constitution to give the presidency more executive power.
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Though relatively low overall, traffic to BDS websites rises
(JNS.org) A poll for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth conducted by SimilarWeb shows a 33-percent increase in Web traffic to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement websites over the last year, though the overall traffic is still considered relatively low.
The poll collected data from websites such as bdsmovement.net that express support for and actively promote petitions to boycott Israel, in addition to posting updates on BDS efforts. These websites had 285,000 entries from users around the world in the first quarter of this year, compared to 214,000 entries in the first quarter of 2014.
SimilarWeb reports that 47 percent of users visiting BDS websites were from the U.S., as well as 14 percent from the U.K., 8.3 percent from Canada, 2.8 percent from Ireland, 2.47 percent from Germany, and 1.86 percent from Israel.
Overall, despite the rise in traffic, the number of visitors to these websites is considered low. But during last year’s Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, a large spike in such traffic was recorded—about 2 million entries during the 50-day conflict.
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Obama admin. says U.N. Gaza report biased against Israel, but won’t rebut it
(JNS.org) The Obama administration said it opposes any further international consideration of the recently released United Nations report on last year’s Gaza war, but will not issue a rebuttal.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the U.S. will review the report by a U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) commission that accused both Israel and Hamas of engaging in war crimes during the conflict in Gaza, but that America questions the report’s legitimacy given the “very clear bias against Israel” found in the UNHRC.
“We challenge the very mechanism which created [the report],” Kirby said. “And so we’re not going to have a readout of this. We’re not going to have a rebuttal to it. We’re certainly going to read it, as we read all U.N. reports. But we challenge the very foundation upon which this report was written, and we don’t believe that there’s a call or a need for any further Security Council work on this.”
While the comments by Kirby suggest that the U.S. would veto any action against Israel in the Security Council, the report can still be considered for legal action by the International Criminal Court, a body in which both the U.S. and Israel are not members.
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Israel cancels entry permits for Gazans following rocket attack
(JNS.org) Israel has cancelled entry permits for Gazans seeking to travel to Jerusalem for Ramadan due to unsafe conditions following a rocket attack on Tuesday.
The spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), IDF Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, said that the 500 men and women scheduled to leave Gaza on Thursday and Friday will not be able to cross into Israel because “the security conditions around the crossing aren’t stable,” the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported.
The rocket on Tuesday evening landed near the Erez border crossing between Israel and Gaza. A Salafi jihadist group called the “Omar Brigades” that is sympathetic to the Islamic State terrorist organization claimed responsibility for the attack. Over the last few months, Hamas has been battling with Gaza-based Salafi jihadist groups, who have been behind a number of recent rocket attacks on Israel. But Israel still holds Hamas, which governs Gaza, responsible for all rocket fire from the area.
“Hamas is responsible for depriving worshipers of prayer in Al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan,” Mordechai said. “I am not saying that Hamas fired the missile, but Hamas is responsible because it controls the Gaza Strip.”
Before Tuesday’s Salafi rocket attack as well as two recent Palestinian terror attacks inside of Israel, the Jewish state had made the goodwill gesture of easing restrictions on Palestinian travel from Gaza or the West Bank to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount for prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
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Israelis show steep decline in confidence in Obama, Pew poll says
(JNS.org) Israelis are showing a steep decline in their confidence in U.S. President Barack Obama’s handling of world affairs, according to a new Pew Research Center survey on global attitudes.
In a survey of 1,000 people in dozens of countries during April and May, Pew asked, “How much confidence do you have in U.S. President Barack Obama to do the right thing regarding world affairs?” Only 49 percent of Israeli respondents said they have “confidence” in the American leader, while 50 percent of Israelis answered that they have “no confidence.”
This marks a steep drop in support from 2014, when 71 percent of Israelis expressed confidence in Obama. But Israel was still one of the most Obama-supportive countries in the Middle East, with only 45 percent of respondents in Turkey, 36 percent in Lebanon, 15 percent of Palestinians, and 14 percent in Jordan saying that they have confidence in Obama’s handling of world affairs. Additionally, most Israelis overwhelmingly disapprove of how Obama is dealing with the Iranian nuclear program.
Not surprisingly, Israel was also the most supportive country polled (84 percent) when it came support for U.S. military actions against the Islamic State terror group in Syria and Iraq, ranking even higher than American public support (80 percent) for those actions. Israelis also had overwhelmingly favorable views of the U.S. in general, at 81 percent.
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Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman.