Captured incitement dolls to be sent to Israeli missions
(JNS.org) A recently confiscated shipment of about 4,000 dolls with mock rocks in their hands will be used to highlight Palestinian incitement against Israel, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely announced Monday. The Palestinian Authority-bound dolls were seized at the Haifa Port following an inspection of several containers from the United Arab Emirates.
“The dolls were sent to the Palestinian Authority for one clear reason—brainwashing children,” Hotovely said. “I have instructed the Foreign Ministry to send the dolls to Israeli missions abroad to have them shown to PA donor countries and prove that we cannot hold any form of meaningful dialogue with our neighbors until their school system undergoes drastic change.”
The dolls’ faces are masked and the Dome of the Rock is prominently featured on their keffiyehs, bearing the inscriptions “Jerusalem is ours” and “Jerusalem, here we come.” Their colors mirrored those of the Palestinian flag.
*
Hamas terror group marks 28th anniversary, boasts bloody history
(JNS.org) Mass rallies, speeches, and military parades are among the events planned this week by Hamas government in Gaza to mark the Islamist terror group’s 28th anniversary.
Boasting a bloody history, Hamas recently uploaded a six-minute video montage to its website, featuring the “highlights” of terrorist attacks carried out by its “military wing,” the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, and touting the group’s readiness for a fresh round of hostilities with Israel.
The terrorist group bragged that the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades’s rocket unit has fired 16,377 shells at Israel. Hamas said its rocket production capabilities have vastly improved over the years, that the majority of its projectiles are now domestically produced, and that Haifa was the northernmost Israeli city it was able to target during 2014’s summer war against Israel.
Touting other gruesome details, Hamas said that since its inception in 1987, its operatives have carried out 86 suicide attacks, 36 stabbing attacks, more than 500 border infiltrations and raids, 250 shooting attacks, the neutralization of more than 80 armored vehicles, and the abduction of 26 Israelis (dead or alive).
*
Two-thirds of Palestinians support knife attacks on Israelis, poll says
(JNS.org) Two-thirds of Palestinians support knife attacks on Israelis, a new poll has found.
According to a poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 67 percent of Palestinians support the use of knives in the current wave of terror attacks against Israelis, while 66 percent believe that “if the current confrontations develop into an armed intifada, such a development would serve Palestinian national interests in ways that negotiations could not.” The poll also found that 79 percent of Palestinians back continued attacks on Israeli soldiers.
More than 20 Israelis have been killed during the current spate of near-daily stabbing, shooting, and car-ramming attacks by Palestinian terrorists.
*
PA’s Abbas calls Palestinian terror attacks ‘justified popular uprising’
(JNS.org) Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that the ongoing wave of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel is a “justified popular uprising.”
The violence has come due to “the despair of young Palestinians over the lack of a political horizon for the two-state solution, the [Israeli] invasion of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the continuation of settlement building and military checkpoint deployment,” Abbas said in a speech in Ramallah on Monday.
Abbas’s repeated claims that Israel is seeking to change the status quo on the Temple Mount has been a major source of Palestinian rage directed at Israelis, despite statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel will not change the status quo.
*
EU doubles down on labeling of Israeli products from beyond 1967 lines
(JNS.org) Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said the EU is standing firm behind its recently implemented initiative to remove “Made in Israel” labels from Israeli products originating beyond the 1967 lines.
The EU is “united on these technical guidelines on the indication of origin, which is in no way a boycott,” Mogherini said during talks with EU foreign ministers on Monday.
Mogherini added that the EU will remain engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and in “broader bilateral relations with Israel,” despite the Israeli government’s own decision to halt the EU’s peace process involvement.
“There is full unity and solidarity among member states and among European institutions on that,” said Mogherini.
*
Palestinian car-ramming attack injures 17 in Jerusalem
(JNS.org) Seventeen people were wounded in a Palestinian car-ramming terrorist attack in Jerusalem on Monday.
A 24-year old Palestinian man from eastern Jerusalem was shot and killed at the scene, near Chords Bridge. The terrorist drove his vehicle onto the sidewalk and rammed it into pedestrians near a bus stop on Herzl Street, according to police. Police found an axe in his car.
An Israeli toddler was seriously wounded in the attack and will undergo surgery to save his leg. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the attack, “We are facing a new kind of terror, that of individuals. This presents a challenge not only to us but the entire world. I have no doubt we will overcome [the challenge].”
*
Erdogan: ‘so much the region could gain’ from Turkey-Israel normalization
(JNS.org) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that improved relations with Israel can occur once Israel compensates victims of the Gaza flotilla raid and lifts the blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, the Turkish daily newspaper Yeni Safak reported Monday.
“There is so much the region could gain from such a normalization process,” Erdogan said.
Yedioth Ahronoth reported that officials in Jerusalem responded, “The ball is in their court. We apologized [for the flotilla incident] and were ready to pay damages. He should stop talking nonsense about the removal of the Gaza blockade, because Turkey knows that there is no such thing, and we are not about to pay more for normalization.”
In May 2010, the Mavi Marmara flotilla attempted to break the naval blockade on Gaza. After Turkish militants attacked Israeli forces on board, nine Turkish citizens were killed in clashes, leading to strained Israeli-Turkish relations.
Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz on Monday said that Erdogan’s comments are related to his interest in a recent natural gas deal brokered by Israel.
*
Texas A&M to open $6 million marine research center in Israel
(JNS.org) Texas A&M University in February will open a $6 million marine research center in Israel in partnership with the University of Haifa, rather than a previously planned $200 million campus in Nazareth.
Texas A&M System Chancellor John Sharp told The Associated Press that plans changed on the Nazareth-based “peace university,” intended to help bring Arabs and Jews together, after a meeting with former Israeli president Shimon Peres revealed that elected officials in Nazareth would shift the direction of the peace campus.
“We’re not going to put our name on something we didn’t have total control over,” Sharp said.
Sharp said the University of Haifa partnership is the beginning of a relationship with Israel that he expects will “grow exponentially.”
“They don’t call it ‘start-up nation’ for nothing,” he said.
*
Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman.