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Thursday, Apr. 07 '16, Adar Bet 28, 5776
HEADLINES:
1. TERRORIST PLANNED SHOOTING ATTACK AT JERUSALEM'S MALHA MALL
2. HAMAS' ARMY OF TUNNEL DIGGERS KEEPS GAZA TERRORISM ALIVE
3. REPORT: US ARMY BUILDING SECRET MISSILE-PROOF BASE IN ISRAEL
4. WHO IS DONALD TRUMP'S JEWISH SON-IN-LAW, JARED KUSHNER?
5. JEWS DEFY ARAB RIOTERS, MAKE MASS PILGRIMAGE TO JOSEPH'S TOMB
6. RANDI ZUCKERBERG'S BUSINESS ADVICE: KEEP SHABBAT
7. WATCH: 'MA NISHTANA' NEVER SOUNDED SO COOL
8. WATCH: ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVISTS SHOUT DOWN JERUSALEM MAYOR IN US
1. TERRORIST PLANNED SHOOTING ATTACK AT JERUSALEM'S MALHA MALL
by Shlomo Piotrokovski
A Palestinian Arab from a village north of Jerusalem was indicted Thursday morning at Jerusalem District Court, for planning a shooting attack at the capital's popular Malha Mall.
Abed Al-Muatay Abu-Sneineh, a 22-year-old resident of Kfar Akib, contrived to carry out an attack while serving time at Ktziot Prison in southern Israel last July, together with fellow inmate Ihab Sheikh Subah.
According to the indictment Subah, who was released last September, told Abu-Sneineh that he intended to carry out a terror attack, and asked him to act as his accomplice. Abu-Sneineh agreed, and the pair determined to resume contact once both were released from prison.
Abu Snieneh was released in January of this year, and the next month met Subah in a cafe in Ramallah, during which the latter disclosed his plans to conduct a shooting attack against Israeli security forces stationed near Malha Mall on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem. He said he planned to strike on a Thursday afternoon, when a high concentration of soldiers would be waiting at the nearby bus stations on their way home from base for the weekend.
Subah revealed he had already gained possession of several guns and a stock of ammunition, and that he planned to wear an IDF soldier's uniform during the attack, in order to enable him to draw as close as possible to the group of soldiers and cause maximum casualties.
He told his accomplice Abu-Sneineh to conduct reconnaissance of the mall, including recording extensive video footage of the comings and goings of local public transportation, concentrations of soldiers, and access points to the site.
Abu-Sneineh agreed, but was arrested by police as soon as he finished filming.
The indictment against Abu-Sneineh includes charges of conspiracy to carry out an act of terror. Prosecutors have requested he be held in custody until the end of proceedings against him.
2. HAMAS' ARMY OF TUNNEL DIGGERS KEEPS GAZA TERRORISM ALIVE
by Arutz Sheva Staff
While Hamas claims the Gaza Strip suffers from unbearable levels of poverty, the terror organization spends hundreds of thousands of dollars every month to build and maintain its massive terror tunnel network.
With operations along the Israeli and Egyptian borders, the Hamas tunnel system employs a veritable army of over 1,000 regular diggers.
According to a report on Israel Radio, these diggers are paid $300-400 a month.
Aside from the diggers themselves, maintaining and expanding the tunnels requires large-scale smuggling by Hamas, which invests heavily in efforts to bring electric drilling equipment, raw materials, and building materials like cement in from Israel and Egypt.
Beyond enabling smuggling into the Gaza Strip, the tunnels are used by Hamas' elite combat unit, Al Nukhbeh, which is trained to operate in the expansive tunnel network dug near the border with Israel, in anticipation of future terror attacks on Israel
Several Al Nukhbeh fighters were recently killed when a tunnel they were operating in collapsed.
Speaking on Israel Radio, one Israeli official noted that the amount of money Hamas has invested in building and maintaining its tunnel network would have been sufficient to build entire residential neighborhoods in the Gaza strip.
3. REPORT: US ARMY BUILDING SECRET MISSILE-PROOF BASE IN ISRAEL
by David Rosenberg
Iran's recent ballistic missiles tests, which have led to concern and consternation in Israel, apparently have the United States military worried as well.
In late February the US military took part in a five day joint military exercise with Israel code named "Juniper Cobra".
The central focus of the exercise was coordinating responses to a potential ballistic missile attack.
Since then, however, security officials have revealed that the US military has serious concerns about the possibility of missile attacks by Iran, Hezbollah, or Hamas, and is taking additional precautions to protect American assets in Israel.
Speaking to Walla News, these officials said the US is constructing a secret army base in central Israel.
The new base, which is being built in response to the Iranian missile threat, is reportedly designed to withstand ballistic missile attacks.
According to the report the base, which is already in advanced stages of construction, will be fully manned at all times and prepared for emergency situations.
The base is linked to the US army's radar facility in Dimona.
In March Iran conducted a series of ballistic missile tests, the first since October 2015.
Iran's ballistic missiles, which are capable of reaching Israel and can be fitting with nuclear warheads, have prompted partial American sanctions, with some American lawmakers calling for harsher measures to punish the Iranian regime.
4. WHO IS DONALD TRUMP'S JEWISH SON-IN-LAW, JARED KUSHNER?
by Uriel Heilman
NEW YORK (JTA) – Jared Kushner has many claims to fame.
He's married to Ivanka Trump, daughter of the Republican presidential front-runner. He's the scion of a philanthropy-minded Jewish family from New Jersey that is one of the biggest names in New York real estate. He's the owner and publisher of a storied weekly, the New York Observer.
But Kushner's celebrity may be taking a quantum leap now that he's becoming more involved in his father-in-law's White House bid.
Kushner, 35, is no mere footnote to the Donald Trump campaign. He played a key role writing the pro-Israel speech that Trump delivered last month to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual policy conference. Kushner helped plan a trip to Israel for Trump last December, which the candidate abruptly canceled after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Trump's proposal to block Muslims from immigrating to the United States.
"This was all your idea!" Trump reportedly scolded his son-in-law, according to a source quoted in a New York Magazine story that appeared Sunday. (The Trump campaign told JTA the story was false). More often, Trump is pleased with Kushner. He often refers to his "fantastic" son-in-law when touting his pro-Israel bona fides.
"I am a great friend of Israel," Trump said at a February town hall meeting in Las Vegas. "I was the grand marshal of the Israeli Day Parade. … My son-in-law is Jewish, and he's fantastic — a very successful guy in the New York real estate."
Kushner's name may carry as much renown in Jewish circles as it does in the world of real estate, where he has helped grow his family's extensive fortune. The family foundation named for his parents, the Seryl and Charles Kushner Family Foundation, gives away more than $2 million a year, and a significant chunk goes to Jewish causes. An Orthodox Jewish elementary school and high school in New Jersey carry the Kushner family name, the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy and the Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School, both in Livingston and named for Jared's Holocaust survivor grandparents.
The family foundation distributed about $2.4 million in 2011, $3.9 million in 2012 and $2.4 million in 2013, the latest year for which data is publicly available. Kushner, who is involved in the foundation, also briefly served as a board member for the Jewish Telegraph Agency(JTA, now under the umbrella of 70 Faces Media, is a not-for-profit).
Kushner himself attended high school at the Frisch School, a modern Orthodox yeshiva in Paramus, New Jersey. He later went to Harvard and earned his law degree at New York University.
One of four siblings, Kushner now lives in a stylish apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, belongs to the Orthodox Kehilath Jeshurun synagogue and is Sabbath observant. His wife underwent an Orthodox conversion to Judaism before the couple wed in October 2009, studying Judaism with Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of Kehilath Jeshurun and the Ramaz School. Ivanka Trump told Vogue magazine last year that the family keeps kosher and Shabbat – "We're pretty observant," she said – and Kushner noted that his wife often whips up Shabbat dinner.
"She said, 'If we're going to do Shabbos, I'm going to cook.' She never cooked before in her life and became a great cook," Kushner told Vogue. "So for Friday, she'll make dinner for just the two of us, and we turn our phones off for 25 hours."
Ivanka Trump said of her conversion to Judaism, "It's been such a great life decision for me. I am very modern, but I'm also a very traditional person, and I think that's an interesting juxtaposition in how I was raised as well. I really find that with Judaism, it creates an amazing blueprint for family connectivity."
The couple just had their third child, a boy, Theodore James Kushner, adding to a family that already included Arabella Rose, 4, and Joseph Frederick, 2. The bris was held last Sunday, but Trump skipped the circumcision ceremony to campaign in Wisconsin, where he ultimately lost in Tuesday's primary by 13 points to Ted Cruz.
Kushner ended up in some hot water the day after the bris when New York Magazine reported that Observer editor Ken Kurson read and provided input on Trump's AIPAC speech. Although Kurson suggested his "input" amounted to reading a draft of the speech and discussing it with Kushner, the Observer's senior political editor, Jillian Jorgensen, said that would not happen again. Jorgensen wrote that the paper was reviewing its policies on covering the Trump campaign and would begin to cover Trump as it does every other presidential candidate.
"Going forward, there will be no input whatsoever on the campaign from Mr. Kurson or anyone on the editorial side of the Observer," Jorgensen said.
The flap is unlikely to faze Kushner, who has had to develop a thick skin over the years.
His family weathered a public scandal in 2004 when Kushner's father, Charles, was arrested on charges of tax evasion, illegal campaign donations and witness tampering. Among other things, Charles Kushner had hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law into a tryst that the elder Kushner secretly had taped and mailed to his sister. The setup, part of a long-running family feud, sent Charles Kushner to jail for 16 months.
Jared Kushner, who is said to be fiercely devoted to his father, did not shy away from the spotlight. A student at the time in NYU's MBA-law program, Kushner accelerated his involvement in his father's real estate empire, Kushner Companies.
In 2006, when he was just 25, Kushner bought the Observer for about $10 million. In 2007, the year after his father got out of prison, Kushner bought a 41-story office building on Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion – the most expensive office building sale in U.S. history up to that point. In 2008, Kushner became CEO of his father's company.
By all accounts, Kushner is a savvy real estate man. In 2014, Kushner Companies completed more than $2 billion in transactions, including buying 2,000 multifamily apartments on the East Coast, according to Fortune magazine. In 2015, Kushner scored spot No. 25 on Fortune's 40 under 40 list ranking the most influential young people in business.
"Real estate's today where I spend most of my time, but I also am very active outside our real estate business in other holdings," Kushner said in a Fortune video. "The most important thing is working with the right people, people who you trust, people who are talented."
Now that Kushner's father-in-law is running for president as a Republican, Kushner has had to switch his political allegiances.
Until very recently, he mostly supported Democrats. Kushner's Observer endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008. He has made more than $100,000 in donations to Democratic committees and candidates, according to widely cited Federal Election Commission records, including a total of $6,000 in donations to Hillary Clinton in 2000 and 2003. Kushner sent $10,000 to the New Jersey Democratic State Committee and $10,000 to the New York State Democratic Committee in 2014, and $20,800 to Cory Booker's 2013 U.S. Senate campaign in New Jersey. He also made contributions to two other Democratic senators, Charles Schumer of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey.
5. JEWS DEFY ARAB RIOTERS, MAKE MASS PILGRIMAGE TO JOSEPH'S TOMB
by Shlomo Piotrokovski
Muslim rioters attacked a group of dozens of Jewish worshipers at the tomb of the Biblical Jewish patriarch Joseph in Shechem, during a pilgrimage to the site.
Israeli Border Police forces and IDF Kfir Brigade soldiers accompanied 20 busloads of Jewish worshipers to the holy site last night. Under the Oslo Accords and other agreements with the PA Israeli Jews should be granted free access to all Jewish religious sites under PA control; in practice however, they are only able to do so under heavy armed guard as PA security forces make no effort to stop local Arab Muslims from attacking them.
During last night's pilgrimage, Arab rioters hurled rocks and firebombs at the Israeli convoy, and at worshipers as the entered the tomb. Security forces however dispersed the rioters, and no Israelis were injured.
Speaking to Arutz Sheva at the site, acting Samaria Regional Council head Davidi Ben-Tzion noted that the approaching Hebrew month of Nisan is said to be a "month of redemption."
"'In Nisan we were redeemed [from Egypt - ed.] and in Nisan we will be redeemed in the future,'" he said, quoting the Talmud.
"The nation of Israel has, unfortunately, been through many periods in which 'they came upon us to destroy us'," he continued, citing the passage from the Passover haggadah. "This visit to Joseph's Tomb during the current period as well represents the spirit of the nation of Israel, which is not broken and stands by its right to pray at its holy places even as our enemies attempt to threaten us."
In other security developments last night, IDF and counterterrorism police forces completed a comprehensive two-day mission in the Arab village of El-Khader near Bethlehem, to crack down on Arab terrorists from the village who had been attacking Israeli traffic along Route 60 south of Jerusalem.
During the operation two terror suspects were arrested in connection to the recent spate of attacks.
Further north, in the PA city of Jenin in Samaria, Maglan special forces seized a stash of illegal makeshift guns.
6. RANDI ZUCKERBERG'S BUSINESS ADVICE: KEEP SHABBAT
by JTA
In a talk to hundreds of philanthropists and foundation representatives, former Facebook spokesperson and marketing director Randi Zuckerberg credited Shabbat and other Jewish concepts for some of her main pieces of business advice.
Zuckerberg told the crowd that she was bemused by those who viewed her emphasis on life balance as an innovative idea.
"People were like 'Wow, new concept.' No, Shabbat," Zuckerberg said in her talk Tuesday at the closing plenary of this year's annual Jewish Funders Network conference, which was held at a hotel in the hilly seaside La Jolla section of San Diego.
Zuckerberg, who has launched her own consultancy and produced digital media content since leaving Facebook in 2011, stressed the need for businesses and organizations to be open to sudden and dramatic changes. At the same time, she added, too often in the high-tech world people are only thinking about what comes next and not where they are coming from.
"Something that is so beautiful to me about my own Jewish journey," Zuckerberg said, "is that in studying with [the Wexner Foundation adult education program], in studying the Torah, in studying in history, it's really taught me that in life, to know where you are going, you need to know where you came from."
Zuckerberg plugged her new reality show, "Quit Your Day Job," which she called "'Shark Tank' for women." She also played up her unrealized dream of becoming a cantor and spoke proudly of her much-publicized singing of the late Naomi Shemer's "Yeushalayim Shel Zahav" to former Israel President Shimon Peres at a Shabbat dinner at the Davos World Economic Summit in 2014.
Recalling the attention -- positive and negative -- inspired by the incident, Zuckerberg said she realized that "young leaders don't get the benefit of separating your personal and professional life anymore." The audience applauded strongly when she added: "So in that one moment I made Judaism a huge part of my personal identity."
Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, acknowledged being disturbed by the negative reactions -- so much so that she passed up an opportunity for an encore performance the next year. She added that she was "embarrassed" and "heartbroken" by her decision to decline.
This year's JFN conference drew a record 450 individual philanthropists and foundation representatives, 180 of whom were attending for the first time. Preceding Zuckerberg's remarks, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat made a pitch for continued philanthropic investment in his city and its innovation sector.
On Sunday, the conference's opening plenary focused on the topic of how philanthropists and foundations could play a role in reducing incivility in the Jewish world and avoid using their funding as a tool for intimidating recipients over disagreements that might come up.
Another of the conference's plenary sessions featured Jake Porway, founder and executive director of DataKind, a not-for-profit organization that provides pro bono services to other not-for-profits with the aim of improving their collection and use of data to increase their impact. The Monday session also included remarks from Lisa Eisen, vice president of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, who called on funders to use their influence and resources to incentivize organizations to enhance their use of data and to share their data.
The annual JJ Greenberg Memorial Award, which honors a foundation professional under 40 who has demonstrated extraordinary leadership in Jewish philanthropy, was awarded to Lesley Matsa, a program officer at Crown Family Philanthropies in Chicago. The Shahaf Foundation in Israel was awarded the biennial Shapiro Prize for Excellence in Philanthropic Collaboration.
7. WATCH: 'MA NISHTANA' NEVER SOUNDED SO COOL
by Ari Soffer
[youtube:2014241]
The haredi rap band Shtar, which is taking the Jewish music world by storm, has offered a fresh take on the traditional "Ma Nishtana" song recited during the Pesach Seder.
The new single, released on Wednesday, is sung to the tune of "See You Again" by US rap star Wiz Kahlifa ft. Charlie Puth.
It may not be singable for all but the most musically-gifted Jewish children at the Seder table, but it is arguably more... tuneful than the classic version.
8. WATCH: ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVISTS SHOUT DOWN JERUSALEM MAYOR IN US
by David Rosenberg
[youtube:2014258]
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat received a rude reception on Wednesday, when anti-Israel activists crashed his public appearance at a California university.
Barkat was scheduled to speak on Wednesday afternoon at San Francisco State University's Seven Hills Conference Center about his background in the high-tech sector and how those experiences have helped him as mayor of Israel's largest and most diverse city.
The venue for the talk was chosen because of its proximity to the Silicon Valley, an area known for its high concentration of high-tech firms.
Only minutes into his speech, however, anti-Israel activists aligned with the Students for Justice in Palestine movement entered the conference hall, chanting slogans and shouting down Barkat.
[youtube:2014257]
ampus and city police were called, yet they stood idly by, allowing the unruly protesters to drown out the mayor's address.
As can be seen in the video, audience members began clearing the hall, leaving it largely empty. Barkat eventually left the podium to sit amongst those few who remained.
SJP activists waving the PLO flag cheered on the current wave of terrorism against Israelis, chanting "long live the Intifada". Other slogans included "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", a thinly veiled call for the destruction of Israel.
Barkat speaks at SFSU Jerusalem City Spokesperson
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