2 Arab educators in eastern Jerusalem fired over incitement against IDF
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) A principal and a teacher at an Arab elementary school in eastern Jerusalem were fired this week for allegedly inciting and encouraging violence against Israeli soldiers.
Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who has summoned the pair for a hearing, said Wednesday that “incitement to violence is not education, and anyone found to be inciting will not be part of the [education] system.”
On Tuesday, Education Ministry Director General Michal Cohen reprimanded the Dar al-Hahmah school’s board of directors, threatening to revoke the school’s license should the incitement recur. The representatives apologized and condemned the specific educators’ behavior.
The Education Ministry is looking into allegations that the school engages in unlawful political propaganda, incites to violence and adversely influences the students. The ministry’s investigation revealed that the school recently staged a play in which a student portrayed an Israeli soldier shooting a Palestinian child. The students also sang songs praising terrorists who killed Jews and waved photos of them.
Following the initial investigation, Bennett said, “We have talked enough about incitement. It is time to take action. The appalling activity at this school is the fuel of the terrorism machine, and the furthest possible thing from education. I pity the parents who applaud their children as they simulate an execution, but the educators who permitted this play to go on will be punished without leniency.”
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EU labels push part of larger economic war against Israel, NGO watchdog says
(JNS.org) The push for the European Union to label all Israeli products made in Judea and Samaria is part of a larger economic war by NGOs against the Jewish state, the Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor said.
“The European Union’s decision to label Israeli-made products from beyond the Green Line is another act in the ongoing NGO campaign to delegitimize Israel,” said Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the head of NGO Monitor. “This strategy is also the driving force of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaigns, and it is led by EU-funded NGOs that are detrimental to a peaceful, negotiated solution.”
In fact, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, according to NGO Monitor, considers the product labeling initiative “insufficient for fulfilling European states’ legal obligations under international law.”
Labeling is only one warfare tactic in the anti-Israel camp. The “Trading Away Peace: How Europe Helps Sustain Illegal Israeli Settlements” of 2012, authored by 22 NGOs, stated that the NGOs’ goal is to begin with “correct consumer labeling of all settlement products,” followed by EU and national governments eventually banning “imports of settlement products,” excluding “settlement products and companies from public procurement tenders,” and preventing “financial transactions to settlements and related activities.”
The recent creation of a new ministry in the Israeli government that is specifically designed to handle tactics of the BDS movement reveals that the BDS threat to Israel’s economy is serious, Israeli affairs analyst Anton Shalhat said Tuesday.
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EU ambassador to Israel: products made beyond 1967 lines not ‘made in Israel’
(JNS.org) European Union Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen said on Wednesday that products produced over the pre-1967 lines should not be labeled as “made in Israel.”
Faaborg-Andersen, who will be speaking at the fourth Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference in Jerusalem on Nov. 18, made the statement to the Jerusalem Post in defense of new guidelines for EU members on placing labels on products produced beyond the so-called Green Line.
“The EU position is that we do not recognize Israeli authority beyond the Green Line. It is not part of Israel. It is not part of what we understand to be Israel’s international recognized borders,” said Faaborg-Andersen. “For that reason we cannot agree that products that come from settlements beyond the Green Line are labeled ‘made in Israel.’”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, who is set to travel to Europe to campaign against such labeling of products beyond the Green Line, said that “boycotting products from Judea and Samaria is a boycott against Israel” and “a delegitimization of the state of Israel.”
In addition, because many Palestinians work side by side with Jews to produce products across the Green Line, “when you impose labeling, you harm 10,000 Palestinian families,” said Hotovely, who recently visited a factory in which 60 percent of the employees were Palestinians.
Israeli opposition leader MK Isaac Herzog of the Zionist Union party said labeling products “won’t contribute to the end of the conflict and will only inflict serious economic harm on tens of thousands Palestinians whose work in factories in Judea and Samaria enables them to support their families.”
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Palestinian attacks on Israelis continue near Hebron
(JNS.org) In yet another Palestinian terror attack on Wednesday, an Israeli border police officer was shot and injured near Hebron. The attacker, who was driving a vehicle, was then shot by security forces.
The wounded officer was transported to the Hadassah Medical Center with serious injuries after Magen David Adom paramedics treated him on the scene.
Not far away from the scene of this attack, three other border police officers were injured in a suspected car-ramming attack after a Palestinian driver struck them on Highway 60 outside Hebron, the Jerusalem Post reported. Several recent attacks have been concentrated around Highway 60.
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Rep. Scott Garrett leads Israel trip, vouches for U.S. embassy in Jerusalem
(JNS.org) U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), who recently led a bipartisan Congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission to Israel, said each of the last two presidential administrations (George W. Bush and Barack Obama) have taken the “wrong view” by refusing to move America’s Israeli embassy to the capital of Jerusalem.
Garrett, who is Christian, represents a majority-Jewish population in his district and has a strong pro-Israel record in Congress. He was on the Iran sanctions committee of 2010 and in 2013 introduced a bill to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
In a radio interview on the “Yishai Fleisher Show,” Garrett said, “Ever since I’ve been in Congress I’ve supported the Israeli position on where their capital should be. I believe any sovereign nation has the right to make that determination.”
Garrett also slammed the Obama administration-brokered Iran nuclear deal, saying it “facilitates the undoing of what [Congress] was trying to do back in 2010” through sanctions.
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FIFA reverses decision mandating Saudis play soccer match in Ramallah
(JNS.org) FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, has reversed its decision mandating that Saudi Arabia play its World Cup qualifying match in Ramallah against the Palestinians and ordered that the match be played in neutral territory.
The decision came after objections by Saudi Arabia against playing the match with the Palestinian national team in Ramallah. Saudi officials had cited security concerns for their refusal. FIFA also ordered a Palestinian home game against Malaysia to be played elsewhere.
FIFA said the decision “followed a meeting held in Palestine yesterday (Tuesday) between FIFA’s security officer and local authorities, after which the Palestinian government confirmed that it could no longer guarantee the safety and security around the matches in question,” Reuters reported.
“In view of this, the Emergency Bureau for the FIFA World Cup Qualifiers has confirmed that the security guarantees cannot be compromised and that both matches need to be played on neutral ground,” added FIFA.
Although Saudi officials have said that their refusal to play is due to security concerns, there may be another reason for their decision—that a match in Ramallah would be normalizing ties with Israel.
“We refuse to pass through Israeli crossings and play against Palestine,” said the official spokesperson for the Saudi Football Association in a meeting on Oct. 19.
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Palestinian soccer tournament named for terrorist who killed 2 Israelis
(JNS.org) Palestinian terrorist Muhannad Halabi, who murdered two Israelis and wounded two others last month, had a football (soccer) tournament named after him by the Yasser Arafat Youth Center in Jenin, Palestinian Media Watch reported Nov. 4 via the official Palestinian Authority (PA) newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.
Deemed a martyr for his murder of Israeli civilians, the 19-year-old Halabi has also been honored in other ways, including the Palestinian Authority (PA) naming street after him, Abbas’s Fatah movement bringing soil from the Al-Asqa mosque to Halabi’s grave (so he could “hug the soil for which he died”), and the PA Bar Association awarding him an honorary law degree.
Palestinian Media Watch regularly documents how Palestinian Fatah and PA institutions openly glorify terrorists.
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