Palestinian terrorist kills 13-year-old Israeli girl in her bedroom
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) A Palestinian terrorist murdered a 13-year-old Israeli girl in her bedroom on Thursday after infiltrating the Jewish community of Kiryat Arba in Samaria.
The terrorist broke into the home of Hallel Yaffa Ariel and stabbed her, wounding her critically. She was taken to hospital but succumbed to her wounds and was pronounced dead in the hospital. The terrorist, identified by the Palestinian Health Ministry as Mohammed Tarayreh, 17, from the nearby Bani Naim village, was shot dead by Kiryat Arba security personnel.
One security officer who rushed to the scene was also shot and seriously wounded. The wounded security officer, a Kiryat Arba resident in his 30s, was transported to Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem with multiple gunshot wounds. His wife, an emergency medical volunteer, was on the team of emergency responders who treated him at the scene.
Kiryat Arba Mayor Malachi Levinger told Army Radio that a Palestinian had climbed a security fence and entered a family home, where he attacked the girl.
“Two members of a response team exchanged fire with him,” Levinger said. “One of them was wounded and the terrorist was killed.”
David Edrai, a volunteer with the Israeli ZAKA emergency response group in Kiryat Arba, said, “As we were working at the scene, we received the news that the young girl died from her wounds. To our great sadness, we find ourselves time after time treating people from our own community, people we know—and it breaks our heart. We carry out our sacred work with enormous pain and difficulties.”
Following the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security consultation with Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
“The horrific murder of an innocent girl in her bed demonstrates the bloodlust and inhumanity of the incitement fueled terrorists we are facing,” Netanyahu said. “The entire nation deeply identifies with the family and says to the murderers—you will not break us. We will continue to act with determination and resoluteness against terrorism anywhere and anytime….The whole world must condemn this murder, just as it condemned the attacks in Orlando and Brussels. I expect the Palestinian leadership to unequivocally condemn this brutal murder and take immediate action to end incitement.”
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Moroccan official denies trade with Israel after BDS pressure on ‘Zionist’ dates
(JNS.org) In response to a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement campaign in Morocco during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a Moroccan government minister has denied that his country has any trade relations with Israel. The BDS campaign calls on merchants to boycott “Zionist” dates.
“The government has never granted any license for anyone to import dates or any other Israeli products,” Mohammad Abu, Morocco’s minister of foreign trade, said during a parliamentary session in response to a question about the popularity of Israeli dates in Moroccan markets during Ramadan. Dates are one of the traditional foods Muslims eat for Ramadan.
Abu added that official data indicates Morocco “has no commercial relations” with Israel and that the country’s government is fighting “the entry of all Israeli goods to Morocco,” the Moroccan news website Akhbar Alyaoum reported.
Moroccan lawmaker MP Mehdi Mazari said in a statement that the current value of Israeli products in Morocco totals $50 million, and that “all these products could not have entered the kingdom through smuggling.”
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Turkey mediating Hamas-Israel prisoner swap, senior Hamas official claims
(JNS.org) On the heels of the newly approved reconciliation deal between Israel and Turkey, a senior Hamas official on Wednesday said that Turkey has started mediating a prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The prisoner swap would involve the return to Israel of the bodies of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, two Israeli soldiers who were killed during the 2014 Gaza war.
“An important meeting between a big delegation of Hamas and Turkish intelligence took place in Turkey a few weeks ago to discuss a number of Palestinian issues related to the Gaza Strip, among them a possible prisoner swap,” the anonymous Hamas official said in an interview with the Saudi news websiteal-Khaleej Online.
“Turkey is currently acting as a mediator to conclude a prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel. It is making important moves and holding important talks, and it went to great lengths in order to reach a good launch point that will enable the parties to conclude a deal,” said the official.
The Gaza-ruling Palestinian terror group’s official added, “Many obstacles prevent the parties from reaching an agreement, mainly Israel’s foot-dragging on giving Turkey official assurances regarding the prisoner swap.”
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Arab Knesset member calls IDF soldiers ‘murderers,’ now faces impeachment
(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said he will examine the possibility of having Arab Member of Knesset Haneen Zoabi impeached following a speech in which she called Israel Defense Forces soldiers “murderers.”
Netanyahu spoke to Israel’s attorney general “to examine the process of ousting Zoabi from the Knesset,” the prime minister wrote on Twitter.
“In her actions and her lies, [Zoabi] crossed every line and there is no room for her in the Knesset,” wrote Netanyahu.
Zoabi, a member of the Joint Arab List political party, also demanded that Israel apologize to “political activists” who participated in the 2010 Gaza flotilla that was intercepted by the Israeli Navy while it attempted to breach the Gaza blockade. Nine Turkish militants were killed in clashes after the Israeli commandos who boarded the flotilla. The newly reached Israel-Turkey reconciliation deal includes $20 million in Israeli compensation for the families of the Gaza flotilla casualties.
Herself a passenger on the flotilla in 2010, Zoabi claimed that Israel agreed to compensate the families because the nine Turks were “murdered.” She also said the reconciliation deal is an admission of guilt by Israel with regards to the flotilla incident.
A shouting match ensued between Zoabi and a number of Knesset members. Zoabi was removed from the stage and three complaints were filed against her with the Knesset’s Ethics Committee.
Zoabi has been previously suspended from the Knesset for four months over meeting with terrorists’ families. She is planning to participate in a women’s flotilla to Gaza in September.
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Israeli leaders condemn Istanbul airport terror attack
(JNS.org) Israeli leaders have expressed their condolences to Turkey a day after Tuesday’s bombing terror attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, in which at least 41 people were killed and scores of others were injured. The Islamic State terror group is suspected to have carried out the attack.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on “civilized nations” to fight against “the scourge of terrorism,” and President Reuven Rivlin called the attack a “cowardly, murderous act.” The attack came amid the Israeli diplomatic-security cabinet’s approval of the recently struck reconciliation agreement between Israel and Turkey.
The attack “is an example of the most vitriolic hatred the like of which we are sadly seeing across our region and the entire world today,” Rivlin wrote in a letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“I take this opportunity to welcome the chance to renew our good relationship especially because our strengthened dialogue will greatly aid in our joint efforts against this threat,” Rivlin added.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres said, “Those who stand up to terror must know that there are difficult consequences.”
All Israelis who are currently in Turkey are reportedly safe following the airport attack. Initially, a number of those Israelis did not make contact with authorities after the attack. Israel was particularly concerned about the safety of Israelis living in Turkey because three Israeli tourists were targeted and killed in a suicide bombing in the March 2016 suicide bombing in Istanbul.
Turkey’s Jewish community is “on edge” after the airport attack, Turkish Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Haliva told the Jerusalem Post, although he added that the community is being “protected under the defense of the Turkish state.”
“Security officials are doing their job well,” he said.
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Muslim, Christian, Jewish leaders plan interfaith worship center in Jerusalem
(JNS.org) Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders are planning to open an interfaith place of worship in Jerusalem for one week in September, The Media Line reported.
From Sept. 5-11, a Jerusalem structure currently known as the Alpert Youth Music Center will become “AMEN,” a place of worship for the three Abrahamic faiths sharing “a passion for Jerusalem in which they will co-exist temporarily under the wings of the Almighty.”
The worship center is being created as part of the annual Mekudeshet (“Blessed”) festival, which is part of Jerusalem’s Season of Culture initiative.
Tamar Elad-Appelbaum, the religious leader and founder of the Zion synagogue community in Jerusalem, said that this type of joint worship “is very natural for an entire sector of the public. You pray together. It goes back to the most ancient ways people here in this city prayed, and prayed communally, so communicated. Today we live in categories that, frankly, we could do without.”
Sheikh Ihab Balha of the Islamic College in Baqa al-Gharbiyye, who represents the Sufi Muslim community in Jaffa, said that “our reality is that in the State of Israel and with the Palestinians we live in a reality of war and with media that harm people left and right and maximize cleavages and estrangement, and we have leaders that maintain this attitude—it’s clear as light. So we intend creating something religious and true against the lie that everything is a lie and only war exists.”
“We people of faith believe that the distance of politicians and leaders from the world of religious life and we have come to see that it is specifically religion that can bring peace, not contentious negotiations,” he added.
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Israel Antiquities Authority discovers Holocaust-era escape tunnel discovered in Lithuania
(JNS.org) A team of researchers has discovered a tunnel in Lithuania that was used by Jews to escape the Nazis during the Holocaust, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
As many as 70,000 Jews were massacred and thrown into pits in the Ponar forest near the Lithuanian capital during the Holocaust. When the Germans began to retreat in response to the advance of the Red Army, Jewish prisoners were forced to cover up these murders by hiding the corpses. Some of the Jewish prisoners began secretly digging an escape tunnel and attempted to flee on April 15, 1944. Most of the prisoners were discovered by the German guards and were shot, but 15 of them escaped and 12 ultimately survived the war.
The location of the tunnel had been lost for many years. Through the joint work of Dr. Jon Seligman of the IAA, Prof. Richard Freund of the University of Hartford, Paul Bauman of Advisian of Calgary in Canada, and the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, the tunnel was found using electrical resistivity tomography.
“As an Israeli whose family originated in Lithuania, I was reduced to tears on the discovery of the escape tunnel at Ponar. This discovery is a heartwarming witness to the victory of hope over desperation. The exposure of the tunnel enables us to present, not only the horrors of the Holocaust, but also the yearning for life,” said Seligman.
The excavation of the tunnel will be followed by the PBS television science series “NOVA,” which will produce a film about the tunnel to premiere in 2017.
“I congratulate the Israel Antiquities Authority on its participation in this international effort that turns history to reality. The exciting and important discovery of the prisoners escape tunnel at Ponar is yet more proof negating the lies of the Holocaust deniers. The success of modern technological developments, that have aided the Jewish people to reveal another heroic story the Nazis attempted to hide, profits all humanity,” said Israeli Minister of Culture Miri Regev.
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