German automotive giant Daimler to open R&D center in Israel
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The German multinational automotive corporation Daimler AG, Mercedes-Benz’s parent company, Monday announced plans to set up a new research and development center in Israel.
The center, which will be built in Tel Aviv, joins the conglomerate’s R&D network, which includes sites in the U.S., Germany, India, and China.
Adi Ofek, a longtime executive with Daimler, will head the Israeli center. The Tel Aviv center will focus on “car mobility and information services, in addition to the development and testing of various projects and user interfaces,” the company said.
Daimler board member Professor Thomas Weber, who also heads the conglomerate’s research and development ventures for cars, said the new technology center “seeks to boost the global R&D outline with the help of Israel, the high-tech nation…so that we will continue to be the automotive industry’s technological leader in terms of efficient, technologically advanced, safe cars.”
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Israel foils Palestinian attempt to join Interpol police cooperation organization
(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin announced Tuesday that Israel has successfully foiled a Palestinian attempt to join Interpol, an intergovernmental organization that facilitates international police cooperation.
“This morning we foiled an attempt by the Palestinians to join Interpol,” Netanyahu said in a speech inaugurating a new railway system in the Jezreel Valley. “This would have constituted a change in Israel’s international status. The matter was achieved through intensive work by [Israeli] Foreign Office officials and the National Security Council, and I am grateful to them for their efforts.”
The bid to join Interpol is the latest attempt by the Palestinians to seek international support for their statehood bid. Interpol was set to vote on Palestinian membership at its upcoming general assembly in Bali, Indonesia. Israeli officials feared that sensitive information could be leaked to terrorists if the Palestinians join Interpol.
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Palestinians set to open museum dedicated to late leader Yasser Arafat
(JNS.org) The Palestinians are set to open a museum Wednesday dedicated to their late leader Yasser Arafat.
The museum, which cost about $7 million to build, is located near Arafat’s gravesite in Ramallah and is the first venue of its kind dedicated to the late Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader.
On display across the museum’s two floors are a variety of the former Palestinian leader’s possessions, including the famous sunglasses he wore during his 1974 “gun and olive branch” speech to the United Nations and the Nobel Peace Prize he won in 1993. The museum also features videos and photographs of some of the key moments in Arafat’s life, including some from his personal collection.
The museum’s final exhibit includes the room where Arafat was holed up after being besieged by Israeli tanks during the Palestinians’ Second Intifada (violent uprising).
“[Arafat’s] legacy is in many ways too big for a single museum to hold,” said Mohammad Halayqa, the museum’s director, The Guardian reported. “He was a symbol of unity for the Palestinian people, a national leader, a freedom fighter and a father.”
Arafat was the longtime leader of the PLO and its subsidiary political party, Fatah, as well as the president of the Palestinian Authority. For years, Arafat waged conflict with Israel and orchestrated numerous terrorist attacks while operating from several Arab countries, including Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. Despite signing the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993, Arafat never fully renounced terrorism and was blamed for igniting the bloody Second Intifada in 2000. He died in 2004.
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Trump, on final day before election, says Obama was a ‘disaster’ for Israel
(JNS.org) Speaking in the pivotal swing state of Florida on the final day before the general election, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called President Barack Obama’s policies on Israel a “disaster.”
“We will stand strong, we have to stand strong with the state of Israel in their fight against Islamic terrorists,” Trump told a cheering crowd in Sarasota, Fla.
“Barack Obama was the worst thing that ever happened to Israel…Barack Obama was a disaster for Israel,” he said.
Referring to Israel’s ongoing opposition to the Obama administration-brokered Iran nuclear deal, Trump said, “Believe me, the Iran deal, where we made [the Iranians] rich, we also gave them a direct path to nuclear weapons, but we’ll be working with Israel closely, very closely.”
Florida is home to the third-largest Jewish population in the U.S.
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Palestinians demand ‘return’ of Dead Sea Scrolls
(JNS.org) The Palestinian Authority is reportedly preparing to demand that United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) force Israel to “return” the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Palestinians.
During a meeting convened by the U.N.’s cultural body last month, Eitan Klein, who serves as the deputy director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, was told that the Palestinians had informally raised the issue of Israel returning the Dead Sea Scrolls, and that they were likely to make an official request to that end, the Times of Israel reported.
“This is another instance of provocation and the ‘chutzpah’ of the Palestinians trying to rewrite history and erase our connection to our land,” said Israeli Ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama-Hacohen.
“The fragments of the scrolls are proof and a weighty archaeological evidence of the historical connection of the Jewish People to the land of Israel,” added Shama-Hacohen.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, one of Israel’s most treasured archaeological possessions, were found in caves in Qumran in the Judean Desert in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd boy. Currently housed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the scrolls include some of the earliest copies of the Hebrew Bible ever found.
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Israel will not attend French-led Mideast peace conference
(JNS.org) Israeli officials on Monday told France that Israel would not participate in a French-led international conference aimed at restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Jacob Nagel, the head of Israel’s national security council, and Isaac Molcho, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy, met with France’s Mideast peace special envoy Pierre Vimont on Monday in Jerusalem. At the meeting, the Israeli officials reiterated the Jewish state’s opposition to a peace conference that does not directly involve the two parties to the conflict.
“Nagel and Molcho clarified unequivocally that promoting a real peace process that leads to an agreement will only be resulted through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and that any other initiative pushes peace further away,” a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said.
France has led efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. In June, France hosted a one-day peace summit that excluded Israeli and Palestinian representatives. The conference ended with a vague statement condemning violence and Israeli settlement activity. Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been stalled since 2014.
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Palestinian teen jailed over Jerusalem attack is terror wave’s youngest convict
(JNS.org) An Israeli court on Monday sentenced Palestinian teenager Ahmed Manasra to 12 years in prison for carrying out a stabbing terror attack on two Israelis in 2015. Manasra, 14, is the youngest Palestinian to be convicted for a terror attack committed during the wave of violence that started last year.
Manasra was found guilty for the attempted murder of a 20-year-old man and a 12-year-old boy in the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood of Jerusalem last October.
Manasra, who was 13 at the time, carried out the stabbing attack with his 15-year-old cousin, who was shot dead by security forces as the attackers attempted to flee. The terror attack drew widespread headlines at the time due to the young age of the terrorists.
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Police: spike in crimes against Israeli shoppers in Judea and Samaria’s Area B
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israelis who travel to Judea and Samaria’s Area B with the hope of saving money on routine errands often end up mugged, the Israel Police said Sunday.
Area B, which contains about 440 Palestinian villages, has been under Palestinian civil control and shared Israeli-Palestinian security control since the 1993 Oslo Accords. Israelis have been frequenting Palestinian villages in that area for years because its dozens of auto repair shops, car wash facilities, nurseries, and florists offer considerably lower prices than their Israeli counterparts.
While Israelis are barred from entering Area A, which is under full Palestinian control, there are no travel restrictions regarding Area B. Nevertheless, a police source urged Israelis “to exercise discretion and refrain from traveling to the area unnecessarily.”
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Israel’s Technion students win iGem biology competition gold medal
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) A team of students from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology won a gold medal at the iGEM international synthetic biology competition, hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Jewish Business News reported Friday. This was the third consecutive gold medal for a Technion team.
The International Genetically Engineered Machine Foundation sponsors the annual competition, in which multidisciplinary teams work to build genetically-engineered systems using standard biological parts, called Biobricks. Competitors include undergraduate university students, as well as high school and graduate students.
Technion’s team invented a “Flash Lab”—an innovative chip for fast, accurate and simple detection of various substances. The chip is based on chemotaxis, a natural biological process where bacteria responds to the presence of a specific substance by moving toward or away from it, creating clusters of visible bacteria, the report said.
The students based their Flash Lab on E. coli bacteria, loaded onto the chip, that reacts to the presence or absence of a particular substance, such as pollutants or heavy metals.
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FIDF raises record $38 million at LA gala
(JNS.org) The Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) raised a record $38 million at a celebrity gala Thursday at The Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.
The event was chaired by businessman and media mogul Haim Saban and his wife Cheryl and included a number of prominent Jewish names including Serge Azria, Robert Book, Robert Kraft, Maurice and Paul Marciano and Casey Wasserman. Other celebrity guests in attendance included Julie Bowen, Gerard Butler, Robert De Niro, Joanna Krupa and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“We are gratified to see that the FIDF’s important mission—to provide wellbeing and educational programs for the heroic men and women of the IDF—continues to resonate with the Los Angeles community,” Saban said.
Founded in 1981, the FIDF provides educational, cultural, recreational, and social programs and facilities to Israeli soldiers as well as supporting families of fallen soldiers and wounded veterans.
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and head of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, made the single largest contribution of the night of $6 million.
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Japan awards two Israelis Order of the Rising Sun decoration
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Two Israelis are among the among the 96 recipients of the prestigious Order of the Rising Sun decoration for 2016, the Japanese government announced Thursday.
Professor Meron Medzini of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and architect Arie Kutz of Tel Aviv University received the prestigious award.
The Japanese government awards the decoration, which includes a medal and certificate of honor, every year to people who contributed to Japan’s international relationships and promoted its culture globally. The award ceremony will be held at the home of the Japanese ambassador in Israel at a future date.
Kutz, 63, Friendship Society chairman at the Israel-Japan Chamber of Commerce, was granted the award for his work in advancing relations and mutual understanding between the two countries. Kutz is a lecturer on Japanese architectural history at Tel Aviv University’s East Asia Studies Department.
Medzini, 84, who teaches modern Japanese history at Hebrew University’s Asian studies department, won the prize for his contributions to advancing Japanese studies and fostering a deeper understanding of Japan in Israel.
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Iran commands 25,000 Shi’a fighters in Syria, Israeli official says
(JNS.org) Iran commands a force of up to 25,000 Shi’a Muslim fighters in Syria, an Israeli official said in a briefing Nov. 2.
“This is a foreign legion of some 25,000 militants, most of whom have come from Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Avi Dichter, a former director of Shin Bet and chair of Israel’s foreign affairs and defense committee, told a delegation from the Swiss Parliament, the Jerusalem Post reported. “They are fighting in Syria only against the rebels and not against ISIS.”
Ditcher also said Iran has used Hezbollah forces to lead the fight against other terror groups in Syria.
“The Iranians enlisted Hezbollah…to fight in Syria because the Iranian army is better suited to fight as an army against another army, while the Hezbollah militants are adept at fighting against terror groups,” he said.
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Federal judge calls out Obama administration over lack of Christian refugees
(JNS.org) A federal judge has questioned the Obama administration over how few Syrian Christian refugees have been admitted to the United States.
“It is well documented that refugees to the United States are not representative of that war-torn area of the world,” Circuit Judge Daniel Manion wrote. “Perhaps 10 percent of the population of Syria is Christian, and yet less than one-half of 1 percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian.”
Of the roughly 11,000 refugees brought here through mid-September, only 56 were Christian, according to data from the Refugee Processing Center.
“To date, there has not been a good explanation for this perplexing discrepancy,” Manion said.
Manion issued his remarks in a concurring opinion in a decision on a case filed by the Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Heartland organization was seeking the identities of government designated terror groups, which is not made public. The government argued they don’t have good intelligence on these groups “making it essential that DHS obtain information about them during screening interviews.”
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