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Friday, Apr. 08 '16, Adar Bet 29, 5776
HEADLINES:
1. KEY TESTIMONY SUPPORTS HEVRON SOLDIER WHO SHOT TERRORIST
2. STABBING ATTACK THWARTED IN JERUSALEM
3. PA REVEALS COVERT TALKS ON FULL IDF WITHDRAWAL
4. MIRACLE ON THE GAZA BORDER
5. LAPID: SANDERS 'QUOTED HAMAS LIES WITHOUT CHECKING'
6. 'I THOUGHT DEMOCRACY INCLUDED ME TOO, I WAS WRONG'
7. SANDERS SAYS COMMENTS ON GAZA DEATHS WERE 'DISTORTED'
8. CRUZ IN A KIPPAH: GOD BLESS NETANYAHU
1. KEY TESTIMONY SUPPORTS HEVRON SOLDIER WHO SHOT TERRORIST
by Reut Hadar
New testimony has been received in the case of the soldier who two weeks ago shot dead a wounded Arab terrorist in Hevron, minutes after the terrorist and an accomplice stabbed and wounded a soldier.
The soldier's commander, who is the Kfir Battalion Commander, gave testimony strengthening the soldier's version of events in an investigation by the army's Criminal Investigations Department (CID), reports Maariv on Friday morning.
In his defense, the soldier, who is on trial on manslaughter charges, has argued that he shot the terrorist over concerns that he was moving to detonate a hidden bomb belt thought to be under his unseasonably warm coat.
The Kfir Commander in his testimony said that if he faced a similar situation in which he was afraid a live terrorist was about to detonate a bomb belt, he would shoot the terrorist too.
Another important revelation came in the investigation from the soldier's comrade who was on the scene, identified as Corporal Tomer, who said the soldier told him the terrorist "needed to die."
Under investigation, Tomer acknowledged that "the terrorist looked suspicious, because he was wearing a coat and could have been hiding a bomb."
The platoon commander who checked the corpse of the terrorist when he arrived on the scene told the security forces that there were concerns that the terrorist had a bomb belt on him, and told them to summon a bomb sapper to the scene.
Another soldier, who guarded the wounded terrorist as seen in video of the incident filmed by the radical leftist NGO B'Tselem, said he was appointed by his commander to guard the terrorist.
He recounted that the soldier who shot the terrorist asked him, "what is this, the terrorist is alive?," at which he told him, "yes, we can't touch him. Apparently he has an explosive on him. They're waiting for a bomb sapper."
The gathering accounts strengthen the soldier's version of events, according to which he shot out of concerns the terrorist was about to detonate. They come after a Magen David Adom (MDA) investigative committee and a CID officer confirmed that concerns of a bomb belt had not been ruled out.
On Thursday it was decided to keep the soldier in detention on an open base for an additional week. Next week the military prosecutor is expected to submit an indictment against the soldier, and continues to insist on charging him with manslaughter.
2. STABBING ATTACK THWARTED IN JERUSALEM
by Arutz Sheva Staff
A stabbing attack was prevented by alert Border Police officers in Jerusalem on Friday, as they arrested an Arab terrorist on his way to the Damascus Gate of the Old City.
The terrorist, aged around 25, aroused the suspicions of the officers as he walked along Hanevi'im Street towards the Damascus Gate. The officers checked him and his belongings, and in his bag they found a large knife.
Police revealed the terrorist was a resident of Judea and Samaria who had entered sovereign Israeli territory without a permit.
He was brought in for investigation, where he admitted that he had arrived with the goal of conducting a stabbing attack and had even bought a knife for that very purpose.
The commander of the Kedem district which includes the area of the arrest praised the alert officers, noting, "the results of the operational deployment is made known in every incident."
"Identifying the anomaly and approaching to make contact prevented an attack and harm to innocents," added the commander.
3. PA REVEALS COVERT TALKS ON FULL IDF WITHDRAWAL
by Ari Yashar
Senior Palestinian Authority (PA) sources revealed on Friday that covert talks being held with Israel are not only discussing a pullout of the IDF from Ramallah and Jericho, but indeed from all Arab cities in Judea and Samaria.
Early last month, Haaretz revealed that secret contacts were being held between top IDF brass and senior PA sources about removing the IDF presence from the two cities, without government ministers or the Security Cabinet being informed.
Following outrage over the revelation, just this Wednesday the Security Cabinet was given its first official update on the talks, with a political source telling Arutz Sheva that the very fact the talks were being held was a "prize to terror," as the talks are only being held due to the pressure of the ongoing Arab terror wave.
According to the senior PA sources who spoke to Walla! on Friday, the PA rejected an Israeli proposal to withdraw the IDF from Ramallah and Jericho and then consider leaving other cities, and instead is demanding that the withdrawal include all Arab cities in the region according to a time table agreed on by both sides.
In making its demands, the PA is threatening to cut off the security cooperation of its Security Forces with the IDF, a threat frequently repeated by the PA. The PA as well as its Security Forces were created and armed in the 1994 Oslo Accords.
The PA sources said that in recent days intensive discussions are being held, although it remains to be seen how the Israeli political echelon will respond to the Palestinian demands.
A number of meetings have been held in recent weeks between senior members of the security establishment in Israel and their counterparts in the PA, with representatives of the Israeli Security Agency, IDF Central Commander Roni Numa, and Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai all taking part.
In recent days Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Secretary General Saeb Erekat issued an ultimatum, saying Israel has two weeks to respond to the Palestinian demands.
The IDF for its part has said that the security cooperation is continuing, and that the discussion is not over a complete ending of military activities because in specific instances such as "ticking time bombs" the IDF would be able to act in the cities under discussion.
Ramallah and Jericho are two cities in Area A of Judea and Samaria designated as being under the PA's administrative and security control according to the Oslo Accords. However, the IDF was forced to reenter and take back control during 2002 Operation Defensive Shield amid the Second Intifada terror war.
4. MIRACLE ON THE GAZA BORDER
by Kobi Finkler
An IDF Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer drove over an explosive planted by terrorists adjacent to the Gaza security fence Friday morning - but, miraculously, the vehicle and its occupants emerged unscathed from the blast.
The incident took place during routine operations at the fence in the Sdot Negev Regional Council area, adjacent to the northern area of Gaza. The explosive was planted just west of the security fence, in the security perimeter area where Gazans are forbidden from approaching the fence.
Even though the heavy machinery rolled directly over the explosive, no one was wounded in the incident and no damage was caused to the bulldozer by the explosion.
Gazan terrorists have often sought to booby trap the security fence area, and during campaigns inside Gaza as well they have used explosives to target Israeli tanks and heavy machinery. Those hidden explosives have often inflicted a heavy toll, making the lack of damage on Friday all the more remarkable.
Friday morning's incident comes after IDF forces overnight arrested six wanted terror suspects in Judea and Samaria.
Three of those arrested were suspected of being involved in terror activities and violent breaches of public order targeting civilians and security forces.
In Khan Abu Salman, located adjacent to Kalkilya in northeast Jerusalem, a Hamas terrorist was arrested. Four of those arrested were nabbed in Al Aroub near Bethlehem in Judea, including a Hamas terrorist. And in Saeer, near Hevron, another Hamas terrorist was arrested.
All six suspects were transferred to investigation by security forces.
5. LAPID: SANDERS 'QUOTED HAMAS LIES WITHOUT CHECKING'
by Tova Dvorin
Yesh Atid chairman and former Finance Minister MK Yair Lapid published a scathing critique of US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Friday, following Sanders's claim that Israel "killed 10,000 Palestinians" during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014.
"The problem with the claim made by the senator isn't so much the factual mistake — mistakes happen — but that it reflects everything Hamas' propaganda arm, with the support of anti-Israel BDS organizations, tried to sell to the world over the past two years," Lapid stated, in an op-ed in the New York Daily News. Sanders made the claim in an interview with the paper earlier this week.
"The truth is that Israel didn't use disproportionate force. In fact, in the history of war there was never a greater effort by a military force to avoid civilian casualties," he added, taking on another claim by the presidential candidate.
Epistemic evidence
Lapid, one of eight security cabinet members during the operation, then described the "unprecedented" measures the IDF took to prevent hurting innocent people.
"The IDF was the first military to phone ahead and inform people that an air strike was coming in their area," he noted. "Where the phone network was down, leaflets were dropped from the sky."
"We used satellites not to locate targets but to ensure areas were clear of civilian populations. Dozens of air strikes were canceled at the last moment purely because aerial images showed civilians in the vicinity," he added. "In many, infuriating, cases it allowed terrorists to escape, but we preferred that to harming civilians. That effort had a price."
By contrast, he said, Hamas continued to pummel Israeli civilians with rockets, "to kill and injure as many innocent civilians as possible." The gap in casualties, he noted, is due to the Iron Dome Missile Defense system.
"As happens in the era of modern technology, Israel faces an inherent disadvantage," Lapid concluded. "The fact that we are a democracy prevents us from countering lies with lies."
"When a Jewish candidate for President of the United States quotes the lies of Hamas without checking, we have a reason to worry."
Sanders made wild accusations against Israel on Thursday, saying, "10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?"
"I don't have it in my number … but I think it's over 10,000. My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled. Hospitals, I think, were bombed."
"So yeah, I do believe and I don't think I'm alone in believing Israel's force was more indiscriminate than it should have been," he said.
Sanders was way off on the number, however, as nearly 2,300 Palestinian Arabs were killed and another 10,000 wounded. Israeli research found that at least half of the casualties were terrorists.
The comments elicited criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, which called on Sanders to publicly correct his statement.
Despite this, Sanders's campaign denied he ever made the claim late Thursday night, saying his comments were "distorted."
6. 'I THOUGHT DEMOCRACY INCLUDED ME TOO, I WAS WRONG'
by Arutz Sheva Staff
Revital Smotrich, the wife of MK Betzalel Smotrich (Jewish Home), issued an open letter on Friday morning following the backlash she and her husband have received for calling for Jewish and Arab women to have the option of separate pregnancy wards at hospitals.
On Tuesday Smotrich said separate rooms should be an option while noting on noisy Arab post-birth parties. Later the same day he slammed Channel 10 for recording an "interview" with his wife Revital without her knowledge.
In her recorded comments, Revital Smotrich said she in the past asked an Arab doctor to leave the delivery room during her birthing, adding, "I am not comfortable staying in the same room as an Arab woman. The way I see it, we are enemies. I was never refused. It seems to me that it is a very natural and clear-cut request."
Smotrich defended his wife from the media backlash, saying that many Jewish women including his own wife "wouldn't want to lie down (in a bed) next to a woman who just gave birth to a baby who might want to murder her baby twenty years from now." In response his party chairperson Education Minister Naftali Bennett condemned him and rejected the idea of "hating Arabs."
Revital Smotrich on Friday released an open letter, in which she addressed the controversy.
"I was wrong," she began. "I was wrong when I thought you could say out loud what you think. I was wrong when I thought that the nation of Israel, which bears the flag of democracy, was able to include me too. I was wrong because I was too naive, and I thought that (journalist) Rafi Reshef, whose voice I grew up hearing, called just because he was interested how I was doing."
Taking aim at the backlash, she continued, "maybe I was also wrong when I thought that I could think differently, after my brother was wounded in a terror attack next to Kfar Darom, our good friends Menashe and Racheli Gavish lost four of their family members when a terrorist entered their house, our neighbors lost their cousins - members of the Fogel family, and my dear husband lost his good friend Shuli Har-Melekh...and the list unfortunately goes on..."
"I thought that after all that, I was allowed to give birth to new life when around me there aren't any people who remind me of death, and that isn't my fault."
"I was not wrong"
The MK's wife said, "there are those who would say I also was wrong when I chose to live in Kedumim, to suffer from the mass protests of the Arab residents of Kadum every Friday and Shabbat, to get up in the night for scared children who dream about terrorists coming into the house, to wait for my husband the MK who works around the clock, and to worry when he drives in the middle of the night through Arab villages."
"Maybe that's what caused me not to love those who don't really love me and try to disturb the routine of my life."
Smotrich took aim at the leftist protesters who demonstrated in front of her house on Wednesday, saying sarcastically, "maybe they could have arranged an apartment for me in Tel Aviv, where there are no Arabs and racists."
"I was wrong when I thought that it wasn't just clear to me that the Israeli Arabs completely identify with all that is connected to the 'Palestinian nation,' and the one who stands at their head leads both groups (i.e. those with and without Israeli citizenship - ed.) together and encourages the attacks against us."
She also criticized the press, saying she had expected to find journalists on the political right who would defend her, and "even if it was hard for them to say the truth out loud, would at least not be part of the angry mob."
Sarcastically she added, "and I was wrong when I remembered a history lesson from school where we learned that the Jews didn't try to harm the Germans and didn't even try to occupy Germany, apparently I didn't remember right, correct me if I'm wrong but please don't compare my husband to a Nazi."
Slamming the "flock of hypocrites who try to distort the war being waged here for 100 years already," she continued, "mostly I was wrong because I didn't know what the media could do to a little person like me."
"Just so as to be precise, I imagine that you were expecting more apologies...but no. I was not wrong, I still think what I said. We still are fighting, and sacrificing ourselves for our right and existence in this land, and if there is a place where I can forget about that, it's in the birthing room."
7. SANDERS SAYS COMMENTS ON GAZA DEATHS WERE 'DISTORTED'
by Ben Ariel
The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Thursday denied that he claimed Israel killed 10,000 Palestinian Arabs during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, CBS New York reported.
During an interview this week with the New York Daily News, the Jewish senator from Vermont said that "10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?"
"I don't have it in my number … but I think it's over 10,000. My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled. Hospitals, I think, were bombed. So yeah, I do believe and I don't think I'm alone in believing Israel's force was more indiscriminate than it should have been," he said.
Sanders was off on the number, however, as nearly 2,300 Palestinian Arabs were killed and another 10,000 wounded.
The comments elicited criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, who called on Sanders to publicly correct his statement.
Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan also condemned the comments, and suggested Sanders should get his facts straight before commenting on such matters.
But Sanders' campaign rejected the criticism on Thursday, saying in a statement that Sanders' position was "distorted."
"The idea that Sen. Sanders stated definitely that 10,000 Palestinians were killed is just not accurate and a distortion of that discussion," Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said, according to CBS New York.
"Bringing peace between Israel and the Palestinians will not be easy. It would help if candidates' positions on this issue are not distorted," added Briggs.
He added that there is "no candidate for president who will be a stronger supporter of Israel's right to exist in freedom, peace and security."
8. CRUZ IN A KIPPAH: GOD BLESS NETANYAHU
by Ari Yashar
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Thursday spoke before Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn shortly after baking Passover matzah, in a pledge of support for the Jewish community and a call for votes ahead of the New York caucus.
[youtube:2014294]
Cruz, who recently claimed a "turning point" in the Republican presidential elections after he soundly defeated Donald Trump in Wisconsin, was speaking at an event of the Russian American Jewish Experience (RAJE).
Sporting a stylish red kippah emblazoned with his name, he spoke about the approaching Passover holiday and "God's saving the people of Israel."
"Sometimes people ask why did this Texas Cuban Southern Baptist become one of the leading defenders of Israel in the Senate? And I think a lot of it has to do with being the son of an immigrant who fled Cuba, who was imprisoned, who was tortured," he said, relating with his largely Russian Jewish audience.
Noting on Hamas rocket attacks against Israel, he said, "let me say this as an American, God bless Prime Minister (Binyamin) Netanyahu, a voice of clarity in a time of confusion, in a time of foolishness, in a time when the United States is sending $100 billion to the Ayatollah Khamenei."
"After these seven long years of an administration that turns a blind eye and a cold shoulder to Israel, in January 2017 that will end," he promised.
Cruz also noted on Trump's comments according to which he will be "neutral" in peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.
"We are not neutral between our friends and our enemies, we are not neutral between police officers and bank robbers - well, the mayor may be," he said, in a jab at New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Cruz has promised to be a strong supporter of Israel as president. Just this Tuesday video was released of his father, Pastor Rafael Cruz, speaking at an event in February in which he declared that the very "foundation of America and the American Constitution was the Torah."
Pastor Cruz added that his son "will not fund the United Nations, until they stop supporting BDS and anti-Semitism."
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