Security guard critically wounded in ax attack near Jerusalem
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) A security guard in a Maaleh Adumim shopping center near Jerusalem was critically injured overnight Thursday in an apparent terrorist attack.
Israeli media reported that a knife and an ax were found at the scene. According to a preliminary investigation, the security guard, who was in his late 40s, was hit with an ax in his upper torso. He was found lying on the floor with multiple stab wounds and taken by paramedics to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. As of Friday, he was in a medically induced coma and still fighting for his life.
Immediately after the attack, the Israel Police and the Shin Bet security service launched a manhunt and helicopters began scanning the area.
“This is a serious incident, and we are doing our utmost to seize the perpetrator,” said the chief of the Israel Police Judea and Samaria District, Shlomi Michael.
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Joint U.S.-Israel air defense drill to feature missile strike simulation
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Juniper Cobra 16, a massive joint Israeli-American air defense exercise, is scheduled to culminate next week with a simulation of a wide-scale missile strike on Israel.
Israeli Air Force officials declined to elaborate on the exact nature of the scenarios included in the drill, saying only that “all relevant scenarios” were being considered.
Planned nearly 18 months in advance, Juniper Cobra 16 is the latest in the series of biennial, five-day combined air defense drills that have been held by the American and Israeli air forces since 2001.
As part of the exercise, more than 1,700 American soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines are training alongside some 1,500 Israeli Air Defense Command personnel. The drill includes Israel’s Arrow, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome defense systems, as well as several American defense systems, such as the Aegis missile system, the THAAD (terminal high altitude area defense) anti-ballistic missile system, and Patriot PAC-3 battery launchers.
U.S. 3rd Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray, who heads the U.S.-Israel Joint Task Force for Air and Missile Defense, and Commander of Israel’s Air Defense Forces Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovich briefed reporters on the drill Thursday.
“This is our nation’s premier exercise in this region. It’s EUCOM’s (U.S. European Command) highest priority exercise in 2016,” Ray said, Defense News reported.
“The purpose of this exercise is to improve interoperability of our air defense forces and our combined ability to defend against air and missile attacks. Our presence and participation here increases military readiness…and just as importantly, it signals our resolve to support Israel and strive for peace in the Middle East,” he said.
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Iran to reward Palestinian terrorists’ families a month after sanctions are lifted
(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday slammed Iran’s announcement from a day earlier that it will offer monetary rewards to the families of Palestinian terrorists killed while attacking Israelis, or those whose homes have been demolished by the Israeli government in response to such attacks.
Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad Fathali made the announcement at a news conference in Beirut on Wednesday, a month after the official lifting of international sanctions against Iran as part of the nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and world powers last summer. Iran’s sanctions relief amounts to approximately $150 billion.
“The decision firstly includes giving an amount worth $7,000 to every family of a martyr of the intifada in Jerusalem,” and secondly it includes giving “$30,000 to every family whose home the occupation (Israel) has demolished for the participation of one of its sons,” Fathali said, Reuters reported.
“This shows that Iran, even after the nuclear agreement, is continuing to aid terrorism, including Palestinian terrorism, Hezbollah terrorism, and its assistance to Hamas. This is something that the nations of the world must confront and condemn and assist Israel—and other countries, of course—in repelling,” Netanyahu said at the start of a meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov on Thursday.
A senior Hamas official in Gaza confirmed that the Iranian decision was reached several weeks ago during a Hamas-Iran meeting in Tehran.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon accused Iran of building an international terror network of “sleeper cells” that extends to the U.S. and Europe.
“The Iranian regime, through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, is building a complex terror infrastructure including sleeping cells that are stockpiling arms, intelligence, and operatives, and are ready to act on order including in Europe and America,” Ya’alon said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart, Fotis Fotiou, the Associated Press reported. He added that Iran is training, funding, and arming “emissaries” around the world, as well as creating a ”dangerous axis” that includes Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Sanaa, and other major cities in the Middle East.
7-year-old Israeli hiker discovers 3,400-year-old statuette
(JNS.org) A 7-year-old Israeli boy discovered a rare 3,400-year-old relic while on a hike with his father and some friends in the Beit She’an Valley in northern Israel this week.
While climbing a hill in the archaeological park of Tel Rehov, Uri Grinhot found a clay statuette of a nude woman.
“We explained to him that it was an antique, and that the [Israel] Antiquities Authority maintains its findings for the general public,” said Grinhot’s mother, Moriah. The family then reported the finding to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
Amichai Mazar—an emeritus professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the leader of a delegation of archaeological excavation representatives in the area—examined the statue and said he determined that “it is typical of the Canaanite culture of the 15th to 13th centuries BC. Some researchers believe the figure represents a woman of flesh and blood, and others see it as Astarte, goddess of fertility, known from Canaanite [history] and the bible.”
The IAA presented Grinhot a certificate for good citizenship for discovering and reporting the finding. Archaeologists later came to his school to discuss the statuette.
“It was an amazing occasion! The archaeologists entered the class during a Torah lesson, just when we were learning about Rahel stealing her father’s household gods (“trafim” which are mentioned in Genesis 31). I explained that the household gods were statues that were used in idol worship, and all of a sudden I realize that these very same idols are here in the classroom!” said the boy’s teacher, Esther Ledell.
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Georgetown U. expands Holocaust/Jewish studies with $10 million gift
(JNS.org) The Catholic-Jesuit institution Georgetown University is increasing its curriculum on Jewish civilization with the help of several major donations, including a newly announced $10 million gift from Miami philanthropists Norman and Irma Braman, in an effort intended to expand the school’s Holocaust research.
The Holocaust will be examined “in all its dimensions—its causes and consequences, its role in the establishment of the state of Israel, and its continuing impact on modern Judaism, which has been impacted by a rise in acts of anti-Semitism and questions of Israel’s legitimacy,” Georgetown said in a statement about the Braman family grant.
The donation is part of a larger $20 million endowment that will expand the university’s 13-year-old Jewish studies program, which is part of its renowned School of Foreign Service, beginning by formally renaming the program to the Center for Jewish Civilization next week. The new center will not only explore the Holocaust, but also explore issues of foreign policy relating to Israel, Jewish culture, literature and religion, and Jewish-Catholic relations.
One of the program’s major faculty members will be Rev. Patrick Desbois, a historian known for documenting mass graves of Holocaust victims in Eastern Europe and the author of “The Holocaust by Bullets.”
“We are pleased to make this gift to support Father Patrick Desbois’s very important research on the Holocaust and to provide it a permanent home at a distinguished American university,” Norman Braman said in a statement, according to the Washington Post. “As America’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university, Georgetown was the natural location to focus Father Debois’s unique research.”
“I have decided to make this gift, now, and to Georgetown, in part as a sign of my appreciation for the leadership of Pope Francis and the priority he so clearly attaches to fostering closer relations between Jews and Catholic,” added Braman, a billionaire auto dealer and a major supporter of GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.).
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