Haaretz cartoon depicts Netanyahu flying plane into World Trade Center
(JNS.org) The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is drawing condemnation for publishing a cartoon depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flying a plane marked “Israel” into a building that resembles a World Trade Center tower.
Underneath artist Amos Biderman’s cartoon, Haaretz provides a link to a story on U.S.-Israel tensions headlined, “The crisis with Washington is here to stay.”
“Haaretz has crossed all lines of reasoned discourse by publishing a cartoon which apparently seeks to compare Prime Minister Netanyahu’s policies—such as approving construction of homes in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem over the green line, a move criticized by the U.S. government—to the 9/11 massacre of thousands of Americans,” Tamar Sternthal, director of the Israel office of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, told The Blaze.
The Zionist Organization of America’s national chairman, Dr. Michael Goldblatt, said it is “impossible to believe that the editors of Haaretz responsible for the decision to publish this malicious cartoon could not have known that hate-mongers across the world claim Israel engineered the 9/11 attacks, and promote other vicious anti-Israel lies.”
“Given this, it was unconscionable for an Israeli paper, no less, to play any role in demonizing Israel with falsehoods,” said Goldblatt.
Roman Gertsberg, whose 25-year-old daughter Marina was killed in the World Trade Center attack, told The Algemeiner, “Nobody in their right mind should associate Israel with flying a plane into the WTC . It it very offensive to 9/11 families to distort the historical events of that tragic day in order to bring attention to one political statement or another.
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Iron Dome won’t fully protect Israel from Hezbollah, official says
(JNS.org) The Iron Dome missile defense system would be unable to fully protect Israel against a massive missile attack by Hezbollah, a senior defense official warned Thursday.
“Ben-Gurion International Airport would have to be shut down from early on in the fighting against Hezbollah,” the official told Israel Hayom. “Iron Dome won’t be able to duplicate its interception rate from Operation Protective Edge.”
The Iron Dome was designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 2.5 to 43 miles. Hezbollah’s arsenal is believed to contain 100,000 missiles, including surface-to-air and surface-to-sea missiles whose range could cover all of Israel.
The defense official said that while Hezbollah is currently “knee-deep in the fighting in Syria, it would be wrong to say that it was struggling.” Despite the fact that the Syrian civil war has “blurred the borders between Syria and Lebanon, we haven’t seen the massive transfer of weapons to Lebanon,” he said.
Hezbollah operative held in Peru over suspected planning of terror attack
(JNS.org) A Hezbollah operative was arrested in Peru earlier this week over suspicion that he was planning a terror attack.
According to the Peruvian Interior Ministry, Lebanese citizen Mohammed Hamden was in possession of explosives and other materials when he was arrested. Police found traces of TNT, detonators, and other explosive devices in his apartment, Haaretz reported.
Reports indicate that the suspect may have been looking to carry out an attack on targets identified with Israelis or Jews. South America is a popular destination for Israeli tourists, many of whom backpack through the region following their military service.
Abbas’s Fatah movement declares Friday ‘day of rage’ in Jerusalem
(JNS.org) Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement declared that this Friday will be a “day of rage” in Jerusalem, calling on Palestinian “fighters” to defend the Al-Aqsa mosque amid growing tensions between Jewish and Muslim residents of Israel’s capital.
“Fatah calls to its fighters and to the masses of the Palestinian people to aid the Al-Aqsa mosque and occupied Jerusalem,” the official PA news agency WAFA reported, according to a Palestinian Media Watch translation.
Fatah also called on Palestinians to consider “the desecration of Al-Aqsa as a declaration of a religious war against the Palestinian people and the Arab Islamic nations.”
The call followed Israel’s decision to close the Temple Mount to Jewish and Muslim worshippers after an Arab man’s attempted assassination of activist Yehuda Glick, a promoter of Jewish access to the Temple Mount. The move also comes against the backdrop of weeks of increased Muslim riots and assaults on Jewish residents, including the recent terror attack on a Jerusalem light rail station that killed two people. Yet the Israeli police decided to re-open the Temple Mount after pressure from the U.S. and Muslim leaders.
Jerusalem church under siege from local Arabs
(JNS.org) An eastern Jerusalem church has come under siege from local Arab residents as a property dispute has devolved into repeated bouts of harassment, theft, and physical violence against church employees and property.
“When we said we would not sell [the church], they decided to take it by force,” Pastor Karen Dunham of the Living Bread International Church told the Jerusalem Post.
Located near the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City, Living Bread is a non-denominational church with offices in Israel, Gaza, and Jericho that seeks to reach out with “humanitarian aid to the poor and the refugees with aid and education,” its website says.
According to Dunham, the church has been attacked with knives, clubs, pepper spray, and gas by local Arab men. The men have destroyed the church’s security cameras and a metal security fence, in addition to threatening to “cut the heads off” two orphans with disabilities.
Dunham has appealed to local police for protection and the arrest of suspects behind the threats and attacks.
“The last couple of weeks is when most of the violence has happened, and now they are not allowing our staff to walk in the street to get to and from work,” she said.
The attacks on the church come amid broader tensions between Jewish and Muslim residents in Jerusalem. Last week, a Palestinian terrorist drove a car into a crowded light rail platform, killing two people (including an infant). In the days following that attack, Arab residents clashed with the Israeli police, which beefed up its presence in the capital.
Jewish polio vaccine inventor Jonas Salk gets Google Doodle for 100th birthday
(JNS.org) The late Jewish American researcher Jonas Salk, who discovered the polio vaccine, was honored Oct. 28 with a “Google Doodle” for what would have been his 100th birthday. Before the polio vaccine was introduced in 1957, many children became paralyzed as a result of the illness.
Google is known for creatively revising its search engine doodle to match current events. In the Salk image, the researcher is seen surrounded by happy children holding a poster with the wording “Thank you, Dr. Salk!”
Salk famously chose not to patent his vaccine, saying, “Could you patent the sun?” Before he died in 1995 at the age of 80, he had been working on a cure for HIV.
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