Iberia Airlines pilot announces: ‘we will be landing soon in Palestine’
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Iberia Airlines Flight 3316 from Madrid was approaching Ben-Gurion International Airport on Wednesday afternoon when passengers were shocked to hear the captain says in Spanish, “Dear passengers, we will be landing soon in Palestine.”
In his subsequent announcement in English, the captain changed the word “Palestine” to “Tel Aviv,” but he did not use the word “Israel” in either announcement.
Iberia Airlines acknowledged the incident and issued an apology. A spokesperson for the airline said an internal investigation had been launched into the incident and that the captain has been suspended from the airline’s Tel Aviv route until the investigation is complete.
The flag carrier of Spain, Iberia Airlines has operated regular flights on the Madrid-Tel Aviv route since 1983. Flying on Iberia Airlines with a stopover in Madrid is popular way to travel between Israel and North and South America.
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Arab MK Zoabi incites during Israeli Knesset meeting on Palestinian incitement
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Knesset Education Committee convened Wednesday to discuss incitement against Israel and Israelis in the Palestinian Authority (PA) education system, and eventually removed MK Hanin Zoabi (Joint Arab List) after she told the committee that “Israel has an army that hunts down Palestinian youths and kills them.”
The meeting had been called by MKs Anat Berko (Likud), Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid), and Merav Ben-Ari (Kulanu).
According to Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, at least 25 PA schools are named after terrorists. Dr. Arnon Gross, deputy director of the Voice of Israel Arabic Service, presented the committee with examples of incitement found in Palestinian textbooks.
Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Joint Arab List members for encouraging violence and undermining the state, singling out MKs Zoabi and Basel Ghattas.
“It is unbelievable that an Israeli member of parliament calls for terror attacks against Israelis. There is nothing more justified than a criminal investigation against her,” Netanyahu said of Zoabi. “Anyone who calls for murder or justifies it is not worthy of belonging to this parliament.”
Zoabi responded by saying that Netanyahu had a “distorted interpretation” of her words. Yet she has a history of harsh anti-Israel rhetoric. In June 2014, when three Israeli teens were missing and believed to be held hostage by Palestinian terrorists, she said the perpetrators should not be called “terrorists.” (It was later discovered that the teens were executed by their Hamas captors shortly after the abduction.) She also accused the Israeli government and military of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.
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Vandals spray swastikas on set of Israeli film in Poland
(JNS.org) An Israeli film crew that arrived in Lodz, Poland, to begin shooting director Avi Nesher’s movie The Sins found the set defaced by swastikas, Israel Hayom reported.
Nesher, whose films have won multiple awards in Israel and international acclaim, said that the day before his crew arrived, the crew of another movie had been involved in an incident with local residents.
“When the residents were informed that the next day an Israeli film would begin shooting, [their behavior] crossed over into violent anti-Semitism, what they called an ‘intifada,’” Nesher said.
In light of the anti-Semitic threats, Polish police decided to ramp up security on and around the set, and assign the actors bodyguards.
The Sins, set in 1977, tells the story of two sisters who are driven apart by a dark secret but are forced to work together to keep their parents from discovering it.
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Germany and Israel conduct joint army training
(JNS.org) Germany and Israel have conducted several joint exercises in urban warfare as part of the largest-ever collaborative training held between the two nations.
More than 100 German soldiers came to Israel to train at the Tze’elim army base in the south of the country, bringing with them five heavy military vehicles. The soldiers arrived several weeks ago and will stay in Israel until Friday.
“We’ve had experience in that over the past 10 years—in Afghanistan and Kosovo. The Israeli army also has experience,” said German Brig. Gen. Ernst-Peter Horn., who came with the soldiers to Israel, according to Haaretz.
The exercises are being held despite the ongoing violence in Israel. The German soldiers were also invited to Friday night Shabbat dinners with Israeli families. “I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t different from my family back home,” one soldier said.
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More terror in Israel as Kerry calls out Palestinian incitement
(JNS.org) In the latest terror attack in Israel, a 40-year-old Israeli woman was stabbed at the Gush Etzion junction on Wednesday afternoon, according to Israel’s national emergency medical response agency Magen David Adom. The terrorist was arrested.
The incident followed another attack in which a Palestinian terrorist tried to stab Israeli soldiers in Hebron. The terrorist was shot and killed.
Amid the terrorism, after initially urging Israel to take steps “that empower Palestinian leaders to improve economic opportunity and the quality of their lives on a day to day basis,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on Palestinian leaders “to cease the incitement of violence and offer something more than rhetoric.”
The Palestinians need to “propose solutions that will contribute in a real way to the improvement of life, to the reduction of violence and to the safety and security of Israelis,” Kerry said at a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.
Kerry’s comments came the same day that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on the U.N. for “protection” and said it is Israel that is “systematically violating the principles of international law.”
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U.S. upholds stance that Kuwait Airways discriminates against Israelis
(JNS.org) The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has rejected arguments by Kuwait Airways that attempted to rationalize the Arab airline’s denial of tickets to Israeli passengers. Further, DOT said the American government now has “no choice but to pursue further administrative and/or judicial action” if the airline continues its discriminatory policy.
In a letter dated Oct. 22, DOT rebutted an Oct. 13 Kuwait Airways letter that defended the airline’s denial of a ticket to Israeli citizen Eldad Gatt from New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to London Heathrow Airport (LHR).
“You assert that the Department’s [Sept. 30] decision [that Kuwait Airways discriminates against Israelis] is inconsistent with legal precedent, and that KAC (Kuwait Airways Company) cannot comply with the mandate to sell tickets to and transport Israeli citizens between the U.S. and any third country where they are allowed to disembark….Your October 13 letter adds no new information or arguments that persuade us to change our determination. Accordingly, we see no reason to reconsider this matter,” DOT wrote.
DOT had originally written to Kuwait Airways on Sept. 30, “KAC contends that its denial of transportation to Mr. Gatt from JFK to LHR is reasonable because Kuwaiti law prohibits the carrier from selling a ticket to an Israeli passport holder….This is not a proper justification for the denial of transportation as the penalties that allegedly have compelled KAC’s conduct are part of a discriminatory statutory scheme. We know of no authority that would allow an airline to discriminate based simply on penalties that might be imposed under the foreign law that is said to have mandated the discriminatory conduct.”
The latest DOT letter asserted, “In light of KAC’s refusal to comply with U.S. law, we are directing that KAC cease and desist from refusing to transport Israeli citizens between the U.S. and any third country where they are allowed to disembark based on the laws of that country. In the event that KAC fails to comply with this obligation…the Department will have no choice but to pursue further administrative and/or judicial action.”
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Palestinian Authority names street after terrorist who fatally stabbed 2 Israelis
(JNS.org) The Palestinian Authority (PA) has named a street on the outskirts of Ramallah after a Palestinian terrorist who killed two Israelis in early October.
Muhannad Halabi was a 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist who killed two Israelis, Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Bennett, in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem on Oct. 3. Halabi, who was eventually shot dead by Israeli police, also injured Bennett’s wife Adele and their 2-year-old son in the attack.
The purpose of the street naming was “to honor Halabi, who carried out a stabbing and shooting operation against settlers in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem,” the Palestinian news agency Donia Al-Watanreported.
“This is the least we can do for Martyr Halabi,” said Muhammad Hussein, mayor of Surda-Abu Qash, according to Palestinian Media Watch.
In addition to the street naming, Halabi was posthumously awarded an honorary law degree from the PA Bar Association, while a Palestinian Fatah official brought soil from the Temple Mount to his grave.
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Abbas rips Netanyahu, asks for ‘protection’ at U.N. Human Rights Council
(JNS.org) Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ripped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called for international “protection” in an address to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday.
“We want your protection. We want the protection of the world. We can no longer bear all these sanctions, all these attacks perpetrated by the settlers and the Israeli army. We need protection and we look to you, protect us, protect us, we need you,” Abbas said.
Abbas accused Israel of carrying out “extrajudicial killings” during the latest round of violence. But Abbas failed to condemn the wave of stabbing attacks carried out by Palestinian terrorists and made no mention that many of the Palestinians who have recently been killed were the ones carrying out the terror attacks.
Netanyahu has criticized Abbas for inciting the recent violence and for failing to condemn Palestinian terrorism.
At the U.N. Human Rights Council, Abbas took aim at Netanyahu’s recent remarks on former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini’s relationship with Adolf Hitler.
“He prefers to blame Palestinians for everything—even the Holocaust. You all know that this is totally false. It is untrue and baseless,” Abbas said.
Additionally, Abbas urged the U,N. Security Council to establish “a special regime for international protection for the Palestinian people.”
“I have noted over and over again that pressure will generate an explosion and that the violations committed by settlers and extremists, protected by the Israeli occupation forces against our Christian and Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, namely the plans that endanger Al-Aqsa mosque, in order to alter the pre-1967 status quo and beyond, will turn the political conflict into a religious one that will have grave consequences on all of us,” Abbas said.
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Former Iranian president admits to building nuclear weapons program
(JNS.org) Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has reportedly indirectly admitted to his country’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
In the interview with the state-run IRNA news agency, which was translated from Persian by the Iranian opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran, Rafsanjani described his country’s decision to build a nuclear weapons program amid the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
“At the time that we started, we were at war and we were looking to have this capability [the nuclear bomb] for the day that our enemy would want to resort to the nuclear bomb,” Rafsanjani reportedly said.
“Our basic doctrine was peaceful usage of the nuclear technology although we never abandoned the idea that if one day we are threatened and it is imperative, we would have the capability for going the other path [to a nuclear weapon] as well,” he added.
Rafsanjani, 80, served as president of Iran from 1989-97. While supportive of the Islamic Republic, Rafsanjani is viewed as a reformist and was barred from running for president in 2013.
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