Arutz Sheva Daily Israel Report
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Sunday, Feb. 28 '16, Adar 19, 5776
HEADLINES:
1. 'INSTEAD OF CELEBRATING A BAR MITZVAH, HE'S FIGHTING FOR LIFE'
2. MA'ALE ADUMIM MALL AX TERRORIST WAS AN EMPLOYEE
3. MYSTERY GROWS OVER PALESTINIAN TERRORIST'S DEATH IN BULGARIA
4. LAND OF ISRAEL LOBBY SETS ITS SIGHTS ON EU ILLEGAL CONSTRUCTION
5. LYNCH MOB ATTACKS ARAB FOR 'DARING' TO SPEAK HEBREW IN JERUSALEM
6. SANDERS ADVISER SUGGESTS ISRAEL GASSED SYRIANS
7. IS THE UK LABOUR PARTY COVERING UP ANTI-SEMITISM?
8. 'WE CAN'T GET USED TO TERROR - THIS IS ISRAEL 2016!'
1. 'INSTEAD OF CELEBRATING A BAR MITZVAH, HE'S FIGHTING FOR LIFE'
by David Rosenberg and Yoni Kempinski
[youtube:2012948]
Moshe Cohen, the brother of security guard Tzvika Cohen who was critically injured in an Arab ax attack in Ma'ale Adumim last Thursday night, has spoken of the family's double anguish at both the attack itself, as well as the publication of disturbing footage from the incident which has since gone viral.
In an interview with Arutz Sheva, a visibly distraught Cohen said the entire family was going through "really, really tough times."
"This is the second terror attack that we've had in the family," he noted, referring to an attack in 2000 in which his other brother, Rahamim, was run over and stabbed 11 times by an Arab taxi driver.
"The whole family is here, as you can see; we're not doing well at all. Tzvika is in critical condition," he added, urging the public to pray for Tzvika ben Batya. "The family is all here praying, saying Psalms for Tzvika."
"A tragedy like this hurts. It's a feeling that crushes the whole house - the whole family, especially his wife and kids.
"He's a father to four kids, including twins, who are supposed to be celebrating the son's bar mitzvah in two weeks. But instead of celebrating a bar mitzvah, we're here praying for his survival," Cohen said.
Asked about the disturbing CCTV footage of the attack - which Arutz Sheva has chosen not to publish - Cohen described the family's horror at seeing the images, and questioned why no sensitivity was shown by whoever released it to the victim's young children.
"While the whole family is here, and the kids, someone, I don't know who, went and put out a video on social media.
"Today every kid is exposed to the internet, they all walk around with cell phones. Why does his 8-year-old son need to open his phone and see how [the terrorist] cut up his father with an ax?
"I don't know what heart the person had to do that."
2. MA'ALE ADUMIM MALL AX TERRORIST WAS AN EMPLOYEE
by Ari Soffer
Saadi Ali Abu Hamad, the 21-year-old Arab terrorist who brutally attacked a Jewish security guard in Ma'ale Adumim with an ax last week, was an employee at the mall where the attack took place, it has been revealed.
Abu Hamad was arrested after a two-day manhunt following the attack, which left 48-year-old father of four Tzvika Cohen fighting for life.
Further details of the terrorist's arrest have since emerged Sunday morning.
Security forces were able to locate the terrorists after a tip-off last night to the emergency police 100 hotline from a relative of the attacker, who said that he wanted to hand him over to authorities.
Cohen was found barely alive and with extensive injuries by a cleaner at the mall, who immediately alerted the Magen David Adom ambulance service and police. He is currently being treated at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem, where doctors have warned his condition is deteriorating.
A resident of Ma'ale Adumim, Cohen was due to celebrate his son's Bar Mitzvah in two weeks' time. His family are currently maintaining a bedside vigil in the hospital, praying for a miracle, and have appealed to the public to pray for Tzvika ben (the son of) Batya.
This is not the first time the Cohen family has been struck by brutal Arab terrorism. In 2000 Tzvikah's brother Rahamim was seriously injured when a terrorist driving a taxi rammed into him and then stabbed him repeatedly, leaving him for dead in a pool of blood.
3. MYSTERY GROWS OVER PALESTINIAN TERRORIST'S DEATH IN BULGARIA
by David Rosenberg
How did Naif Hassan Omar Zaid die?
That's the question on the minds of Bulgarian police, friends of the now-deceased PFLP terrorist, and the relatives of the man he murderer in 1986.
Zaid, a member of the radical left-wing Arab terror organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, murdered yeshiva student Eliyahu Amadi in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1986.
In 1990 while serving life sentence, Zaid initiated a hunger strike and was transferred to an Israeli hospital. He managed to escape, eventually making his way to Bulgaria, where he lived for the past 22 years.
Last Friday, Zaid was found dead in the yard of the Palestinian Authority embassy in Bulgaria.
Initial reports from prosecutors claimed that there were signs of violence on the body. The Bulgarian news service Novinite reported claims that Zaid's body was found covered in blood.
But prosecutors later retracted their initial claims, stating that there were no signs of violence on the body.
Officials in the PA and PFLP were quick to accuse Israel of being behind Zaid's death. According to the Jordanian newspaper Ma'an, PA President Mahmoud Abbas ordered an investigation into Zaid's death.
Israel has denied responsibility.
But some see the timing of Zaid's death, coming on the heels of Israeli calls for extradition, to be more than mere coincidence.
Last December, Israel demanded that Zaid surrender himself for extradition, giving him 72 hours to turn himself in to authorities.
Fearing arrest, Zaid found refuge in the PA embassy in Sofia, where he had stayed for the past two months.
Investigators now believe Zaid may have fallen to his death from an upper story in the embassy, thought they have not ruled out other possibilities.
Yaffa Pinhasi, the sister of Zaid's victim in the 1986 terror attack, believes Israel was indeed behind Zaid's death, telling Channel 1 that she praised "whoever did this".
4. LAND OF ISRAEL LOBBY SETS ITS SIGHTS ON EU ILLEGAL CONSTRUCTION
by Arutz Sheva Staff
In the wake of revelations earlier this month as to the extent of the European Union's involvement in promoting illegal Arab construction in Judea and Samaria, the Knesset's Land of Israel Lobby issued a sharp condemnation of the EU, demanding it respect Israeli law.
The lobby, which includes 20 MKs from the Likud, Jewish Home, Yisrael Beytenu, United Torah Judaism, and Kulanu parties, sent a letter to the European Union Ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, rejecting EU protests against Israeli demolitions of illegal Arab buildings.
Lobby chairmen Yoav Kish (Likud) and Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) demanded the EU halt its support for illegal Arab construction, calling the body's actions an illegitimate attempt to forcibly create borders in Judea and Samaria without negotiations, in violation of the very principles the EU has promoted in backing a negotiated settlement.
"No government entity in the world has the right to construct buildings illegally in territory under the legal control of another country," the letter reads.
"So long as the EU wants to be thought of as an honest broker in regards to conflicts in our area, it cannot participant in attempts to forcibly and unilaterally delineate borders without negotiations. That's both the goal and end result of the illegal building project that you are advancing in area C".
The lobby praised Israel for beginning to confront the phenomenon of coordinated construction of illegal structures in Judea and Samaria, and demanded that the EU itself demolish any illegal structures it funded.
5. LYNCH MOB ATTACKS ARAB FOR 'DARING' TO SPEAK HEBREW IN JERUSALEM
by David Rosenberg
An Israeli-Arab was attacked by a lynch mob on Thursday in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina. His offense? Speaking Hebrew.
Muhammad Abed Abu Rahman, a 24-year-old resident of the Israeli Arab town of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem, recalled a harrowing experience in the capital on Thursday while driving through an Arab neighborhood.
While speaking on the phone in Hebrew, locals surrounded his car and began threatening him for "daring" to speak Hebrew near the home of Abu Khder, the 16-year-old murdered in a revenge attack following the killings of three abducted Israeli teens in 2014.
"Someone came up to me, put his hand on the car keys and screamed at me", Abu Rahman told Walla! News.
He said they shouting to him: "Aren't you ashamed? How can you speak Hebrew in Abu Khder's neighborhood?"
"I thought I was in a murder situation, they really lynched me," he told the Hebrew-language news site.
About 10 young men quickly approached Abu Rahman's car brandishing knives and steel rods. Assuming he was Jewish, they stoned his car and screamed threats at him in Hebrew.
Abu Rahman quickly called the police who extricated him from the lynch mob.
6. SANDERS ADVISER SUGGESTS ISRAEL GASSED SYRIANS
by David Rosenberg
Vermont Senator and self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders has tapped retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson as a foreign policy adviser for the dark horse candidate's presidential campaign.
Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, emerged in the years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an outspoken critic of the Bush administration and the war on terror.
In 2013, Wilkerson also criticized the assumption that embattled Syrian President Bashir Assad was responsible for a deadly chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians.
In an interview with Cenk Uygur on Current TV, Wilkerson suggested that Israel was in fact responsible for the attack, part of what he suggested may have been a false-flag operation to force American intervention in Syria.
This is not his first controversial statement regarding Israel. In 2007, Wilkerson appeared in a Dutch documentary produced by VPRO investigating the influence of "the Israel lobby", suggesting that American foreign policy was dominated by American Jews.
"The connections between America and Israel are so great and so strong that geostrategy, political strategy, grand strategy is of no consequence here," he said. "America simply cannot say, 'Israel you're on your own'. It just wouldn't work. And one of the reasons it wouldn't work is because we have a very powerful Jewish lobby in America."
Wilkerson went on to cite an example of the powerful grip of the "Jewish lobby", noting he had once "received an e-mail from Dershowitz" over comments he had made regarding Israel. Wilkerson condemned Dershowitz as a "Harvard professor who protects the Jewish lobby in America like an attack dog."
In 2015, Wilkerson gave an interview to MintPress News, where he blasted Israel as "the most predatory capitalist state in the eastern Mediterranean, and that's saying something because we [the US], China, and Russia have exemplified predatory capitalism in the last 20 years, but Israel outstrips us all."
Wilkerson went on to accuse Israel of betraying the US to Russia and China.
The Sanders campaign has refused to comment.
7. IS THE UK LABOUR PARTY COVERING UP ANTI-SEMITISM?
by Ari Soffer
The UK's Labour Party is being accused of an organized cover-up of evidence of left-wing anti-Semitism at Britain's prestigious Oxford University, after an internal report into allegations has been quietly shelved.
Labour initially launched an investigation after the head of the head of Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) resigned, blaming rampant anti-Semitism within the student Left. Alex Chalmers, who is not Jewish himself, accused a large proportion of left-wing students of having "some kind of problem with Jews."
Following Chalmers' resignation, which received national press coverage and prompted several government officials to condemn the phenomenon of anti-Semitism at Oxford, numerous Jewish students spoke out about their own harrowing experiences at the hands of left-wing anti-Semites.
The findings of that investigation - conducted by Labour Students, the party's student wing - were handed to the Labour Party last week.
According to an email seen by Britain's Daily Telegraph, Labour Students national chair Michael Rubin told OULC members that the report would be released as early as February 23.
"The severity of the allegations requires a comprehensive, but swift review, so we are therefore aiming to publish the findings of our investigation on Tuesday 23rd February," the email read.
But in a surprising move, the report has never been published. Instead, the Labour Party has recommissioned yet another investigation, headed by a more senior party figure - causing many to question whether the party leadership is trying to protect several rising stars who are implicated as the organizers of anti-Semitic activity at Oxford.
In particular, the investigation is believed to have implicated two senior Labour Party activists close to party leader Jeremy Corbyn as key instigators of anti-Jewish "harassment and intimidation" at Oxford.
According to the Telegraph, the pair are Young Labour national committee member Max Shanly, 25, and 22-year-old James Elliott, who is a member of the youth section of Labour's national policy forum.
Elliott, a third-year history student at Oxford, played a prominent role in Corbyn's campaign for election as Labour Party leader last year, and even helped Corbyn write the party's "youth manifesto." He is also backed by the pro-Corbyn pressure group Momentum to become Labour's youth representative on the national executive committee.
Shanly is a close friend of the founder of Momentum, which has backed him in his campaign to stand as a national officer in Labour's youth elections next week.
Both strongly deny they are involved in any anti-Semitic activity at Oxford.
A Labour source close to the investigation told the Telegraph they feared a cover-up ahead of the elections.
"The Labour Party has had the report for a few days now. Why would they not be open and publish it if they had nothing to hide?" the source asked.
"Any serious look at this issue is good, but it looks as though [another investigation] is being launched to slow down action until after the elections.
"We know that the Labour Party want people like Elliott elected to the NEC. But shutting down a report which contains serious allegations against him indicates that this is an institutional cover-up which is more serious."
The controversy will do little to assuage British Jews' fears that the Labour Party is veering sharply to the Left - and towards virulently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments - under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who has gone on record calling Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists his "friends", and has associated in the past with known holocaust deniers and anti-Semitic preachers.
8. 'WE CAN'T GET USED TO TERROR - THIS IS ISRAEL 2016!'
by Yoni Kempinski and Ari Soffer
[youtube:2012941]
Nationalist activists have set up a protest vigil outside the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem, calling on the government to act to end the wave of deadly Arab terrorism which has swept Israel since last year.
The vigil, organized by the Women in Green grassroots activists group, will go on for 33 hours - one hour for each Israeli murdered by terrorists since Rosh Hashana (last September).
Some 300 Israelis have been wounded in Palestinian attacks during that period as well - many of them suffering permanent, life-changing injuries.
Women in Green co-director Nadia Matar told Arutz Sheva that the primary purpose of the vigil was to shake the Israeli public awake and prevent people from simply "getting used to" daily anti-Semitic attacks in the Jewish homeland.
"This cannot go on, we cannot get used to it!" Matar said. "We're not in (pre-war) Poland - we are in Israel, in sovereign Israel, in 2016!"
Matar, whose group has fronted a campaign for Israel to formally annex Judea and Samaria, insisted that tactical security measures, however effective, would not provide a decisive solution to the problem of Arab terror. Only a political program to put to rest Israel's claim and sovereignty over all of the land of Israel - including Judea and Samaria - would grant long-term stability and security to Israeli citizens, she said.
The protesters are there to "remind ourselves and him [Prime Minister Netanyahu] that as long as the question as to whom this land belongs the terror will continue," Matar added.
"The solution is not to bring another 10 soldiers here and another 10 policemen there... the solution is to apply Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria and to implement Israeli sovereignty wherever we already have sovereignty."
Matar lamented that "we are not behaving like a sovereign people," and thus communicate weakness to those who aspire to overthrow the Jewish state.
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