California passes anti-BDS law
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Israeli American Council marked a significant achievement this week when the California legislature passed a bill barring all state bodies, including universities, from maintaining ties with organizations that support anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions activities, Israel Hayom learned Thursday.
The bill prohibits state bodies from investing in companies “engaging in actions that are politically motivated and are intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or otherwise limit commercial relations with the State of Israel, or companies based in the State of Israel or in territories controlled by the State of Israel.”
The bill was the result of considerable lobbying efforts by the IAC, which seeks to counteract the BDS movement on legal, technological and public diplomacy levels.
Likewise, on Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed a bill banning the state’s pension fund from investing in companies that boycott Israel.
“This bill sends a significant message: The hatred the BDS movement seeks to spread will have no room in California,” Shawn Evenhaim, of the IAC-affiliated Israel American Coalition for Action, told Israel Hayom Thursday.
“This bill is important because it makes it clear that [California] taxpayers don’t have to fund boycott activities. … We’re proud of the fact we were able to spur the Israeli-American community to push for this bill, as it will now, and in the future, protect California’s diverse population from discrimination.”
Editor’s Note: The California legislaion was authored by State Sen. Marty Block (D-San Diego), who is the chair of the California Legislature’s Jewish Caucus.
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State Department paid $400 million to Iran for release of prisoners
(JNS.org) The U.S. State Department on Thursday confirmed that the $400 million payment to Iran was contingent on the release of several American prisoners in Iran last January.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said that while negotiations over returning money to Iran from the decades-old accounts were conducted separately, the U.S. withheld the delivery of the cash as leverage until U.S. citizens had left Iran, the Associated Press reported.
The confirmation by the State Department comes following a report by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that gave new details on the U.S.-Iran money exchange.
“U.S. officials wouldn’t let Iranians take control of the money until a Swiss Air Force plane carrying three freed Americans departed from Tehran on Jan. 17. Once that happened, an Iranian cargo plane was allowed to bring the cash home from a Geneva airport that day,” the WSJ report said.
Pres. Barack Obama and other top U.S. officials have repeatedly denied that the $400 million payment, which is part of a larger $1.7 billion debt from 1979 when Iran was ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was not a ransom payment to the Islamic Republic. Republican lawmakers, however, have charged that the payment equated to ransom and promised to hold hearings on the exchange when Congress returns from its summer recess.
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Hamas co-founder apologizes to Palestinians for involvement with terror group
(JNS.org) One of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, Muhammad Nazami Nasser, issued a surprisingly candid message on his Facebook account where he apologized to his fellow Palestinians for his terror activities, while calling Hamas “the devil” for bringing destruction and hatred to the Palestinian people, the Times of Israel reported.
In an emotional, incoherent and sometimes rambling Facebook post on Wednesday, Nasser apologized to dozens of Palestinian factions and leaders, including “Palestinians within and outside [of Palestine], the immortal Palestinian president Yasser Arafat,” as well as Fatah, the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, among many other groups.
Nasser went on to apologize for the “horror of hatred that lived within me toward you [the political factions],” and for his “relentless work so that you would not have a geographical or political place on the national map.”
He went further saying, “I ask God to forgive me for this [deception] from the Devil [i.e., Hamas], that this hatred would bring me to the highest height of Paradise. O God, O God, O God I have been deprived of the blessing of diversity… My homeland has been destroyed because I couldn’t comprehend the acceptance of others. And what is worse, I thought I was working with religion.”
Nasser helped to found the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and was directly involved in terror attacks against Israel, including the 1989 murder of Israelis Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon. Nasser currently lives in the Gaza Strip and is a member of a group called “Wataniyyin” that works to reconcile Palestinian factions. Nasser has never apologized to Israel for his terrorism.
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Israel imports 20 police service dogs from the Czech Republic
(JNS.org) Israel received 20 police service dogs from the Czech Republic that will be used to capture and neutralize criminal suspects and identify explosives, weapons, drugs and money, Arutz Sheva reported.
The one-year-old dogs will undergo six-month of training before being integrated with the existing 220 police service canines.
Senior dog trainers and a veterinarian from the police’s animal training unit conducted a thorough search in the Czech Republic for the highly-specialized service dogs.
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