Two Israeli Arabs indicted for plans to join Islamic State
(JNS.org) Two Israeli Arabs from the Galilee region were indicted for supporting and planning to join the Islamic State terror group.
The two men, Nazareth resident Mahmoud Abed al-Fatah, 24, and Ashraf Arabi’i, 35, of Shfaram, were indicted in Nazareth District Court on Thursday.
According to the indictment against al-Fatah, he was an active supporter of the Islamic State for nearly two years until his arrest last month, where he regularly visited jihadist websites and Islamic State propaganda videos as well as made plans to join the terror group in Syria under the pretext of traveling to Turkey for his honeymoon.
Similarly, Arabi’i, who was indicted on illegal weapons possession, was also an active supporter of the Islamic State, where he had disseminated jihadist propaganda to others and was arranging to join the terror group in Syria as well.
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Palestinian doctor receives gift for saving Jewish terror victims
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Rescuers Without Borders and the Hatzalah Yehuda and Shomron emergency team of Judea and Samaria have gifted Dr. Ali Abu Sherech with a first responder bag containing over a thousand dollars’ worth of medical equipment.
The organizations decided to bestow Sherech with the first responder bag as a token of appreciation after learning how he cared for the late Rabbi Michael Mark’s wife and daughter following an attack in the South Hebron Hills two weeks ago. The Palestinian doctor was among the first to arrive on the scene after seeing an overturned car on the side of the road.
The emergency care Sherech gave Mark’s wife Hava and his daughter Tehila is believed to have saved their lives. Mark was killed in the attack.
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Israeli start-ups raise $1.7 billion during second quarter of 2016, report says
(JNS.org) Israeli start-ups raised $1.7 billion in the second quarter of 2016, which is more than half of the financing raised in the first quarter, according to an IVC Research Center and KPMG report released on Wednesday.
A company known for its hailing taxis mobile app, Gett, raised $300 million, the largest of the 187 deals made in the quarter. The average financing deal was $9.2 million, higher than the averages in the first quarter of 2016 ($6.5 million) and the second quarter of 2015 ($6.7 million).
“All indicators point to a healthy and vibrant ecosystem that continues to mature and generate new companies,” Ofer Sela, a partner at KPMG Somekh Chaikin’s Technology group said in the report.
According to Koby Simana, CEO of IVC Research Center, an Israeli company specializing in analyzing and monitoring the country’s high-tech industry, “the clear increase in large deals is driven by the enhanced activity of foreign investors – primarily corporate investors and VC funds – in growth-stage companies. However, the increase is not limited to top-tier deals.”
“We are also seeing an increase in lo to mid-range deals, with those between $5 million and $10 million jumping 50 percent, to a record $234 million. This across-the board trend lends us to believe 2016 will continue to be strong in capital raising, with a projected 20 percent year-on-year increase, or about $5.3 billion in total to be raised by the end of the year,” Simana concluded.
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Israeli volunteer group set to leave Ethiopia amid ethnic violence
(JNS.org) A group of Israeli youth volunteering in Gondar, Ethiopia have been safely moved by Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Jewish Agency to the local airport following reports of ethnic violence erupting on Tuesday between the Amhara residents and Tigray forces.
The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) entered Gondar in the middle of the night to arrest members of a committee that works with the Wolkait and Tegede people who have been asking the government to recognize them as Amharas and “abolish the Tigrayan identity imposed on them by the regime 25 years ago,” Ethiopian Satellite Television News reported.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon confirmed that the volunteers, who are part of a Jewish Agency program called Project Ten, are waiting to fly out of northern Ethiopia. Project Ten sends Israelis and Jews from around the world to work in different agricultural, educational and health projects in various countries.
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Senate report: State Department funded group that tried to oust Netanyahu
(JNS.org) A United States Senate report released this week shows that the U.S. State Department sent nearly $350,000 to OneVoice, a group that advocates for peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians but was also part of a campaign to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The group received grants from the State Department during 14-month period ending in November 2014, revealed the report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. After the grants ended, OneVoice merged with another Israeli group, Victory 15, and launched a political campaign in Israel to elect “anyone but Bibi” (referring to Netanyahu’s nickname) during the Jewish state’s election in 2015.
The report indicated that the grants from the State Department helped OneVoice build its organization and expand its social media advocacy, but there is no evidence suggesting that OneVoice used the money specifically to influence the Israeli elections. Yet the report found that “despite OneVoice’s previous political activism in the 2013 Israeli election, the [State] Department failed to take any steps to guard against the risk that OneVoice could engage in political activities using State-funded grassroots campaign infrastructure after the grant period.”
“The United States should not be engaged in that kind of activity with taxpayer dollars,” said the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, (R-Ohio), Fox News reported.
“What [the State Department funding] did, probably, was to make it even more difficult to come together after the election and continue to build on the relationship between Israel and the United States,” he said.
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Belgian noble family descended from ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ visits Israel
(JNS.org) A delegation of the descendants of a Belgian noble family whose members saved Jewish children during the Holocaust visited Israel this week and met with the descendants of the surviving Jewish children on Wednesday.
Thirty-five members of the Belgian royal House of de Ligne, led by Prince Michel, visited the Jewish state. They descend from Eugene, the 11th Prince of Ligne, and his wife Philippine. During the Holocaust, Eugene and Philippine hid hundreds of Jewish children in the family’ castle.
In 1975, after the couple died, they were recognized by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance institution as “Righteous Among the Nations,” the Israeli designation for non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust. The couple’s descendants were accompanied in Israel by six of the children saved by Eugene and Philippine.
“This is a very important day for all of us, one that has been missing in our family since our grandparents never took the opportunity to plant a tree in the forest of the Righteous Among the Nations,” said Prince Michel, who has visited Israel once before. His sister, Princess Anne de Ligne, spent a month working as a volunteer on an Israeli kibbutz when she was 20 years old.
“We were alone. We didn’t know if or when we would see out parents again, but we were in a safe and quiet place, and we thank Prince Michel for preserving the memory of our salvation. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to all those who worked towards saving our lives and providing us with a safe haven,” said one of the surviving Jewish children, Avraham Kapok, the Jerusalem Post reported.
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