IDF raids Palestinian TV station over incitement
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) An Islamic Jihad-affiliated television station urging Palestinians to carry out terrorist attacks has been taken off the air, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said Friday.
The order to shut down Ramallah-based Falastin al-Yom, which maintains a television station as well as Facebook and Twitter accounts, followed an Israeli diplomatic-security cabinet decision to enforce counterterrorism measures against Palestinian media outlets that incite violence.
The TV station’s offices were raided by the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet on Friday. The troops confiscated its equipment, and its manager, Faruk Aliat, 34, was arrested and taken in for questioning. Aliat is a known member of the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad terror group.
Falastin al-Yom, the Shin Bet said, “urged Palestinian to carry out of terrorist attacks against the State of Israel and its citizens. Its messages of incitement were broadcast through the television channel and the Internet.”
An IDF official said that taking the channel off the air “illustrated the considerable efforts the military invests in disrupting and thwarting Palestinian incitement, which fuels terrorism across Judea and Samaria and in Israel.”
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Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas rejects Joe Biden’s peace initiative
(JNS.org) Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday rejected a peace initiative that was proposed by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden during their two-hour meeting in Ramallah, according to the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds.
The initiative was described as having four main stipulations: requiring that eastern Jerusalem be the Palestinian capital, an end to Israeli settlement construction in Judea and Samaria as well as eastern Jerusalem, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, and the Palestinians forfeiting their refugees’ so-called “right of return.”
In the Western push to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, the Obama administration has been exploring possible alternatives to France’s recent proposal of a conference among Arab countries on that topic, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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British security company G4S leaving Israel, cites ‘entirely’ commercial motive
(JNS.org) The London-based G4S security firm on Wednesday announced that it will be selling its business in Israel within the next two years.
G4S included the announcement in its 2015 Full Year Results report, saying that it expects the sale of its Israeli business and others to increase profits and improve the company’s “strategic focus.”
The announcement did not make any mention of G4S being targeted by the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. But last month, 500 pro-BDS advertisements were put up without permission in London’s underground public train system, accusing G4S of “security Israeli apartheid.”
G4S provides security equipment for Israel and holds commercial and government contracts there, including for Israel’s prison system. The company, which has 8,000 employees in Israel, had already partially divested from from the Jewish state in 2013 following BDS pressure.
G4S spokesman Nigel Fairbrass said Thursday that the company’s decision was made “entirely” for commercial reasons, the Associated Press reported.
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Florida, Virginia pass latest U.S. state-level measures against BDS movement
(JNS.org) The Florida Senate and the Virginia General Assembly this week passed resolutions condemning and taking action against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, joining a growing trend of U.S. states disavowing BDS.
The Florida Senate adjusted an earlier Florida House version of the state’s measure, adding a call for the withdrawal of a United States Customs and Border Protection policy, “West Bank Country of Origin Marking Requirements,” which currently prevents West Bank products from being labeled as “Made in Israel.”
On Wednesday, the Virginia House passed a resolution condemning the BDS movement and opposing “all attempts to economically and politically isolate Israel within the international arena, including promotion of economic, cultural, and academic boycotts, and all efforts to assault the legitimacy of the State of Israel as the sovereign homeland of the Jewish people.”
Proclaiming Justice to The Nations (PJTN), a Christian Zionist organization, said it engaged in “months of campaigning efforts” for the Florida resolution. PJTN has been pushing for similar anti-BDS measures around the country.
“We will not stop until every single U.S. state comes out publicly condemning the anti-Semitic BDS movement,” said Laurie Cardoza-Moore, Founder and President of PJTN. “In Nazi Germany, Hitler and his minions painted the Star of David on Jewish businesses. Today, world leaders are targeting the Jewish state. We call upon Christians, Jews, and people of conscience across America to join us in pushing for similar resolutions in their home states.”
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Egyptian IT expert claims Jewish-owned Uber is a national security threat
(JNS.org) An Egyptian information technology expert said that Uber, because it is Jewish-owned, is a major threat to Egyptian national security.
The ride-service app began operating in Egypt several weeks ago and has angered many taxi drivers in Cairo who resent their fast-growing competitor. Taxi drivers held a major demonstration against Uber on Wednesday.
“Uber Company, which is owned by Jews, and other similar foreign companies, pose a threat to Egypt’s national security,” Sameh Abou Arayes, president of the Arab Society of Technical Analysts, wrote on Facebook last weekend. He also called Uber “the first espionage network in Egypt,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
“It is not only the fact that 20 percent of the money you pay to these company are dollars that flow out from Egypt and go to Jews—what poses greater danger is that they collect information on your movements, your name and your family and save them in their records. It might make it easier for Zionist espionage networks to operate in Egypt,” he wrote.
Uber was founded by Jewish-American entrepreneur Travis Kalanick.
“Let’s establish national Egyptian companies under state inspection instead of handing the Zionists our details about ourselves and our movements and giving them our money,” Arayes added.
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Father of American business student killed in Israel: ‘He lived really large’
(JNS.org) American business school student and U.S. army veteran Taylor Force, 29, who was killed in Tuesday’s Palestinian stabbing rampage in Jaffa, “wanted to further his education and explore more of the civilian side of life,” said his father, Stuart Force, in an interview with the Associated Press.
Force served in the U.S. Army from 2009-2014. After taking a year off following his time in the military, he enrolled in Vanderbilt University’s graduate school for business. He was visiting Israel this week on a school-sponsored trip to learn about start-up companies.
“He really fit it all in. He lived really large,” Stuart Force said, expressing pride of his son, who was also an avid skier and guitar player.
“This horrific act of violence has robbed our Vanderbilt family of a young hopeful life and all of the bright promise that he held for bettering our greater world,” said Vanderbilt Chancellor Nicholas Zeppos.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who arrived in Israel on the same day Force was killed, and was situated just a mile away from the attack site while stabbing spree was taking place, criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders for not condemning such Palestinian terror against Israelis. Biden’s comments came in the wake of Abbas’s Fatah faction posting online that the terrorist who carried out the attack was a hero and a “martyr.” The Fatah statement also said that such attacks would continue “so long as Israel does not believe in the two-state solution and ending its occupation.”
“The kind of violence we saw yesterday, the failure to condemn it, the rhetoric that incites that violence, the retribution that it generates, has to stop,” Biden told reporters on Wednesday.
“We’re committed to making sure that Israel can defend itself against all serious threats, maintain its qualitative edge with a quantity sufficient to maintain that,” Biden said after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in reference to current U.S. military funding for Israel that amounts to $3 billion annually. The U.S. and Israel are currently negotiating to extend the American military aid package past 2018.
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