Israel Update 14.2.19
TERRORIST MURDER
A Palestinian man, suspected of brutally murdering young Israeli woman Ori Ansbacher, 19, in a Jerusalem forest on Thursday, was arrested. The suspect who was in Israel illegally has reportedly confessed to the murder.
A group of Palestinian and Israeli coexistence activists paid a condolence visit to the victim’s family home “We believe that the violent path brings nothing but violence,” said Ziyad Sabatin, of the West Bank town of Husan. He said “There’s no religion in the world that supports this kind of act,”
The suspect was captured after Israeli soldiers entered a mosque and seized footage from its security camera. Following the arrest, the PA Minister of Religious Affairs ignoring the fact that a young Israeli woman had been attacked, stabbed, and murdered by a Palestinian, was quick to condemn Israelis entering the mosque to search for the terrorist as an “attack”.
Two days after the brutal murder, official Palestinian Authority TV broadcast a song celebrating the grief caused by Palestinians to Israelis.
MURDER OF ISRAELI STUDENT IN TURKEY
A 20-year-old Israeli student Siwar Keblawi killed in the Turkish city of Izmit was reportedly stalked by her own brother, who is suspected of strangling her. She had fled to Turkey where she was living with her father after being threatened in a “family dispute,” MK Aida Touma-Sliman, a leading activist in the fight against violence against women in Arab society condemned the murder.
CO-OPERATION
More than 20,000 permits were granted to Palestinians living in West Bank to enter Israel and receive treatment or support a patient who was receiving treatment in 2018, nearly 3,000 more than in 2017.The Israeli health coordinator trains Palestinian doctors in Israel, helping to improve their capacity to treat West Bank patients. These doctors are paired with Israeli professionals from Hadassah University Medical Centre in Jerusalem and they become colleagues and friends. Some 1,200 Palestinian cancer patients were treated in Israel in 2018, and more than 200 Palestinians – including 112 children – received bone marrow transplants.
GAZA BORDER
Dozens of Gazans on Monday returned to the northern Gaza Strip. In addition to burning tyres and throwing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), some of the rioters played fake red alert sirens to confuse Israeli forces and residents near the Gaza border. Several were reportedly injured after an IED exploded prematurely among rioters.
From an Israeli resident’s blog: I got a message from our security head again saying “The noise from the border are noises made to disturb the peace from the Palestinian site.. I asked my daughter her how they were, she told me that the noises were really loud and unpleasant, and that my 3 1/2 year granddaughter was very frightened, and didn’t want to leave the safe room….She’s 3 1/2. She should be frightened of bees or barking dogs, or nightmares about monsters hiding under her bed…. not about rockets. This is terrorism.
MINORITIES IN ISRAEL
The number of Arab Ph.D. candidates in Israel rose from 355 in 2008 to 759 in 2018, according to the Council for Higher Education.In the same period, the number of Israeli-Arab students in master’s degree programmes rose by 90%.Between 2010 and 2017, the number of Arab students studying for a bachelor’s degree rose from 26,000 to 47,000.
THE P.A. ADMINISTERED TERRITORIES
Israeli security forces have thwarted Jordanian weapons smugglers reportedly intending to sell weapons to Fatah officials in the West Bank. The weapons included 82 assault rifles and 80 handguns. Fatah officials are allegedly arming supporters ahead of an expected civil war over leadership when PA President Mahmoud Abbas dies.
A declassified document from the U.S. Government Accountability Office says that schools in P.A. areas run by UNRWA have an anti-Israel bias bordering on incitement to violence. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) said, “It is unacceptable that the textbooks are used to delegitimize Israel and demonize the Jewish people; it is unacceptable that this programme attempts to engrain this hatred in the hearts of children. Americans’ hard-earned money went towards its funding and it is unacceptable that the State Department lied to Congress about these very realities.”
WARSAW CONFERENCE ON MID EAST PEACE & SECURITY
U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo said in Warsaw that “pushing back” against Iran is essential to tackling other problems in the region. Israeli Pr.M. Netanyahu noted, “The Israeli prime minister and foreign ministers of leading Arab countries stood together, and spoke with unusual force, clarity and unity against the common threat of the Iranian state.”
The foreign ministers of Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Morocco are in Warsaw to take part in the U.S.-Polish sponsored meeting on Mideast peace and security. The mere fact that so many Arab states decided to attend the conference is significant because the Palestinians asked them not to come.
SIERRA LEONE
Sierra Leone diplomat Adikalie Foday Sumah visited Israel as part of a delegation of United Nations envoys and was so impressed by what he saw that he immediately afterwards founded the Sierra Leone-Israel Friendship Society, which works to change voting patterns against Israel at the UN and in Sierra Leone’s parliament, as well as to strengthen ties between the two countries.
IRAN ESCAPE
Israel’s Mossad, was involved in smuggling a 47-year-old Iranian nuclear technician, who has information about Iran’s nuclear programme out of Iran and into Turkey before he was flown to America.
KUWAIT
A group of Kuwaiti businessmen reportedly visited Israel last month in a private capacity.
VENEZUELA
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, whom many nations have recognized as the country’s rightful interim ruler, said he was working to restore ties with Israel that Caracas cut off a decade ago.
U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo confirmed in a recent interview that Hizbullah maintains “active cells” in Venezuela …Venezuela serves as Iran’s entry point into Latin America, a foothold the Iranians are unlikely to cede without putting up a fight. Moreover, Hizbullah has deep roots in Venezuela, and completely expelling the group remains unlikely.
VEGAN YOGHURT
Israeli startup Yofix Probiotics Ltd. has started sales in Israel of its first dairy-free, soy-free range of yogurt alternatives aimed at vegans and lactose-intolerant consumers. The products — whose formulation is based on the fermentation of oats, lentils, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and coconut — use no processed ingredients, have no additives, colours or flavourings. Each yogurt has 5% fat, and has the same or better nutritional value as dairy yogurt, according to the company.
EUROVISION
Eurovision winner Netta Barzilai slammed calls to boycott this year’s contest being held in Israel, saying in a BBC interview on Thursday, “When you boycott light, you spread darkness.”
Her new single Bassa Sababa was recently released:
COMMENT & OPINION
Ben Dror Yemini: We have been told that Palestinian terror will not end until Israel removes all cause for the Palestinians to resort to terrorist activity…Ori Ansbacher was killed because her murderer originates from a community where many sanctify death and hatred. She was killed because the highest religious official in the Palestinian Authority, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, regularly calls for the murder of Jews. She was killed because the environment that encourages murder is sustained by the PA’s monthly salary payments to terrorists. Ori Ansbacher’s murderer, knew that nothing would happen to him and his family following this attack, but that they would actually benefit from it. Even if his house is destroyed, it will be rebuilt within days.
James Sinkinson: Israel is the only rule-of-law democracy and Western ally in the Middle East, struggling to defend itself against a deadly array of Islamist forces – including Iran, Syria, Turkey, Hizbullah and the Palestinians – all of whom are attempting to destroy the Jewish state.
In truth, Israel is no less an underdog today than it was in 1948…. It struggles under a constant international diplomatic barrage at the UN, daily attempts to violate its borders via land and sea by designated terror groups, murderous attacks against its civilians and bellicose threats from an imperialist nation (Iran) with one of the world’s largest armies – one that’s on the threshold of acquiring nuclear arms.
Israel Kasnett: the author of a new paper titled “Is UNRWA’s hereditary refugee status for Palestinians unique said, “People have finally realized that UNRWA is a very large and important organization that is perpetuating a problem that should not have even existed after 70 years.” Another commentator pointed to what he thinks is UNRWA’s worst sin: The “conversion of the Palestinian refugee problem to a challenge locked into perpetuity. If you look at other refugee situations – Europe after World War II – all those refugees have been settled. Whereas, in the case of the Palestinian refugees who are taken care of by UNRWA, the numbers have only increased from about half a million in 1948 to what UNRWA claims is over 5 million today. That represents a total failure of UNRWA as a refugee organization.”
Bret Stephens: What’s unsettling is that the far-left’s hostility is now being mainstreamed by the not-so-far left. Anti-Zionism — that is, rejection not just of this or that Israeli policy, but also of the idea of a Jewish state itself — is becoming a respectable position among people who would never support the elimination of any other country in any other circumstance…. What it is to say is that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is far more complicated than the black-and-white picture drawn by Israel’s progressive critics. But the deeper flaw in progressive thinking on Israel — the flaw that has resulted in this efflorescence of bigotry — isn’t that it rests on a faulty factual foundation. It’s that its core intellectual assumptions are wrong and rotten. Read more here
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