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 י"ד באלול תשע"ז / Tuesday, Sep. 05 '17 Subscribe to this Daily Israel Report -http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Subscribe Headlines
1. 'B'Tselem Executive Director spits on Supreme Court'by Mordechai Sones In a letter sent by the Executive Director of the pro-Palestinian state B'Tselem organization, it was implicitly threatened that the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers and the IDF Chief of Staff would "bear personal responsibility for this" were Israel to enforce the law against illegal Palestinian outposts in the Susiya and Ma'aleh Adumim areas. A letter from Executive Director Hagai Elad implicitly suggests that the hierarchy of senior officials may be personally charged at the International Court of Justice in The Hague for war crimes. The letter was sent against the background of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman's statement last week that his ministry will be prepared within a few months to evacuate the two outposts following Defense Ministry staff work to enforce the law, in accordance with the High Court's instructions. The outpost is located near the settlement of Susya in the southern Hevron hills, which the High Court has ordered evacuated several times. In 2001, the High Court ruled that the area did not belong to the squatters, and in 2013 prohibited continued construction in the area following a petition by the Regavim pro-Land of Israel organization. In 2014 the court ordered to demolish the structures erected due to the clear prohibition. In May 2015, the High Court rejected the petitioners' request for a temporary injunction preventing enforcement against them, on the grounds that they repeatedly took the law into their own hands. In the case of the adjacent outpost of Khan al-Ahmar near Ma'aleh Adumim, which the Regavim movement petitioned against in 2009 and which in recent years has become the focus of activity by foreign elements, the state has committed itself in several High Court proceedings to demolish the illegal structures. מנכ"ל "בצלם" חגי אלעד במשרדי הארגון צילום: רויטרס Elad argued that enforcing the law against Palestinian construction criminals is ostensibly tantamount to a "forced transfer", and is therefore prohibited by international law. "The responsibility for destruction of Palestinian communities will be borne, among others, by the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, the Justice Minister, and their ministerial colleagues, the Chief of Staff and other senior IDF officers, and the head of the Civil Administration, acting on the instructions of the government. We repeat to you that this is a war crime, and if it is carried out under your direction and responsibility, you will be personally responsible for this." In his letter, Elad also slammed the Supreme Court, accusing it of "complicity in the crime," since it approved the demolition orders. "These decisions do not make these illegal acts legal, but on the contrary: they only turn those who received them into accomplices to the crime." Regev's legal advisor, Boaz Arazi, categorically rejects claims that Israel violates international law: "In all, this is a group of criminal builders and the claim 'forcible transfer of a protected population' is ridiculous and disconnected from reality under international law. It is Israel's duty to enforce the internal law in Judea and Samaria vis-à-vis the population living in the area," Arazi said. "In addition, the Oslo Accords, which have international validity, state that Israel is solely responsible for all civilian and security aspects of Area C. Therefore, the claims in B'Tselem's letter are detached from reality and deliberately distort international law and the reality on the ground." Meir Deutsch, Policy Department Director at the Regavim movement, sharply attacks Elad's letter. "B'Tselem has created legal terrorism that seeks to harm the State of Israel in any way, with a distorted presentation of reality and a false interpretation of the law. To this day, we have known this behavior toward IDF soldiers, the settlements, and the Israeli government. Today Elad spits on the High Court, and prefers to be the hangman from the Hague." 2. Watch: NY Assemblyman Mike Simanowitz rememberedby Yoni Kempisnki [youtube:2032454] New York State Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz of Queens was laid to rest Monday in Israel. Assemblyman Simanowitz, 45, passed away Saturday after struggling with an illness for several years. He was known by his community as a powerful voice for the Jewish people. The assemblyman's son, Josh Simanowitz, told Arutz Sheva: "I sit here now, and I try to contemplate what's gonna be now? Who's going to take over? There's no one who can. There really isn't." Simanowitz was "a proud Jew," according to Simanowitz's brother Barry. "Someone who was really proud to be a Jew. He wore his Judaism everywhere he went, from the halls of Albany to the streets of New York." Simanowitz's other brother, Barry, said: "It was said on one of the news stations in America that one of the politicians in the US called Michael 'the gold standard for leadership.'" "Michael is an example of what it really is to be a Jew who is involved in the community for no other reason than just to give," Barry said. 3. North Korea: We have 'more gift packages' for USby Tal Polon North Korea continued its rhetoric against the US today, Tuesday, warning that it would send “more gift packages” to the US should it continue to put pressure on Pyongyang. Speaking at the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament, North Korean Ambassador to the UN Han Tae Song said that "The recent self-defense measures by my country, DPRK, are a gift package addressed to none other than the US.” "The US will receive more gift packages from my country as long as its relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK," he added. The statements come two days after North Korea confirmed a successful hydrogen bomb test, the regime’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date and the first since US President Donald Trump took office. On Sunday, Trump addressed the latest North Korean test, hinting that a military strike against North Korea was on the table. On Monday, Trump tweeted that an "interesting week lies ahead." On Monday, US to the UN Nikki Haley said that North Korea is "begging for war". Speaking at an emergency session of the UN Security Council, Haley listed off the actions the UN has taken to contain North Korea's reckless and destabilizing behavior, before declaring, "Enough is enough." Similarly, the White House said on Monday that, during a call between President Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-In, Trump had given “his in-principle approval to South Korea’s initiative to lift restrictions on their missile payload capabilities.” “President Trump also provided his conceptual approval for the purchase of many billions of dollars’ worth of military weapons and equipment from the United States by South Korea," it added. 4. British couple pleads guilty to anti-Semitic attack at weddingby JTA A British couple pleaded guilty in court to launching an anti-Semitic attack outside a London synagogue during a wedding. Ineta Winiarski, 33, and her partner, Kasimiersz Winiarski, 62, from Hackney, a borough of London, pleaded guilty in Thames magistrates’ court to racially aggravated assault and assault, respectively, The Times reported. The couple attacked guests outside of the Clapton Common Synagogue Kehal Yetev Lev in east London on July 3. They pushed and struck guests and whipped them with a dog leash, the prosecution told the court, according to The Times. Ineta Winiarski shouted anti-Semitic epithets while striking guests. They are set to be sentenced on Tuesday. Magistrate Caroline Dillon allowed the two to remain out on bail until the sentencing. She said she did not sentence them immediately “because we need to find out more about your behavior before sentencing,” the London-based Jewish Chronicle reported. 5. Gush Etzion Council head: The State is criminalby Eliran Aharon Shlomo Ne'eman, the head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, toured the town of Sde Boaz in light of the Supreme Court's decision to demolish four structures in the town. "The party which is criminal here is the Civil Administration. It is the State. It cannot be that there is a situation in which there is a national asset, 100% state land, and there is no survey...what is there [instead]? The criteria for determining what is state land changes every two months," Ne'eman said. According to Ne'eman, Civil Administration officials and Defense Ministry employees do not act against the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria because they are left-wing. "It's not a left-wing official with an agenda. It's that [the official] is afraid to make a decision with regards to Judea and Samaria which would embarrass him in front of the legal advisors, because the criteria will change within three months. No one knows what the law is. No one decides what the law is here and who owns the land. It changes every other day because the State does not decide that there are laws here." "In this reality, it is the duty of the State to take its state land and manage it, just as it monitors to ensure that there will not be any pedophiles serving as kindergarten teachers and that quacks won't serve as doctors in hospitals. The State is criminal in its abandonment of state property It abandons state land to rioters." 6. Report: Nazi Mengele slipped through Israeli fingers twiceby AFP Israel's Mossad missed at least two chances to capture Nazi fugitive Dr Josef Mengele, who sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death at Auschwitz, a former agent said Tuesday. Rafi Eitan, who commanded the audacious capture in 1960 of top Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, said that during the hunt he and his team discovered Mengele's hideout. "At the same time as we caught Eichmann, Mengele was living in Buenos Aires. We found his apartment and kept it under observation," he told Israeli public radio as the spy agency declassified its file on operations against the man known to prisoners as the "Angel of Death". Eitan, 90, said that while the Mossad had Eichmann in a safe house ahead of smuggling him out of Buenos Aires in an El Al plane, the agency's chief, Isser Harel, wanted them to move against Mengele as well, but he argued against the plan. "I didn't want to carry out two operations at the same time because we had one successful operation in the bag, and in my experience if you try to carry out another one you put them both at risk," Eitan said. As a compromise he stayed on in Argentina to keep tabs on Mengele, while his teammates took Eichmann, as the main architect of the Nazi Holocaust, back to Israel, where he was later tried and hanged. "Mengele wasn't at home and the neighbors said he would be back in a week," Eitan continued. "We waited a week but in the meantime his (Eichmann's) capture was announced to the world and Mengele never returned to his apartment in Buenos Aires." The Mossad team missed him again when he was spotted in Brazil, Eitan added. "At the end of 1962 Mengele was positively identified at a farm near Sao Paulo." But Mossad chief Isser Harel resigned early the next year and his successors did not approve an operation against Mengele as they had other priorities around the world, he said. Yediot Ahronot's Ronen Bergman told Israeli army radio in an interview that the Mossad files revealed some embarrassing slips, such operatives looking for Mengele "for a large part of the time in Paraguay when in fact he wasn't there," but actually in Brazil. He wrote in the paper that there was also a costly 1983 operation in West Berlin to bug and follow Mendel's son Rolf in the hope that he would lead agents to his father. The Mossad also deployed an "intelligent and attractive" female agent posing as a private secretary to try and get close to Rolf and pry information from him, he wrote, but without success. He quoted the Mossad archive as listing another plan, not implemented, where a caller claiming to be a close friend of Mengele would call Rolf and tell him that his father was gravely ill and he should go to him at once. Unknown to the Mossad, Josef Mengele had died in a drowning accident in Brazil in 1979. His death was only confirmed in 1985, after his body was exhumed. 7. Esther Hayut chosen as Israel's new Supreme Court chief justiceby David Rosenberg The Judicial Selection Committee has chosen Esther Hayut to replace Miriam Naor as chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court during a meeting Tuesday morning. Hayut, who has served as an associate justice since 2003, will be sworn in as chief justice later this month. Hayut will serve as chief justice for a six-year term. The 63-year-old justice was selected by the committee on the basis of its seniority policy, whereby the outgoing chief justice is replaced with the next most senior member of the Supreme Court. In addition, the Judicial Selection Committee selected associate justice Hanan Melcer to serve as Hayut’s deputy on the court. Committee member MK Nurit Koren (Likud) abstained from Tuesday’s vote after she objected to the selection of chief justice solely on the basis of seniority. The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel lauded Koren’s abstention. “We support Knesset Member Koren’s decision not to waste her precious time participating in the vote for Hayut as the next chief justice based on the seniority policy. The selection of Justice Hayut was obvious and could have been confirmed by phoning [the committee members].” 8. 'The Jews have returned - stones and knives won't stop us'by Hezki Baruch Sixty-nine years ago, the Hubara family, a Jewish family living in the heart of Jerusalem, was expelled from their home in the Shimon Hatzaddik neighborhood by British and Arab forces as the Jordanian army invaded and occupied the city during the early stages of Israel’s War of Independence. The homes in the neighborhood had been purchased by the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities in 1876. Called ‘Sheikh Jarrah’ by the city’s Arab population, Shimon Hatzaddik was emptied of its Jewish population, who became refugees before any Palestinian Arabs did, and whose homes were then seized by local Arabs. When Israel liberated Shimon Hatzaddik in 1967, the Hubara family found their home was occupied, like so many other Jewish-owned properties in eastern Jerusalem. For the next 38 years, the Hubara family’s home in Shimon Hatzaddik remained in Arab hands, with the family unwilling to endure the lengthy legal battles required to redeem the property. In February 2005, tragedy struck. Shimon and Dalia Hubara’s 26-year-old daughter, Odelia, was murdered near a Tel Aviv beachfront in a suicide bombing attack carried out by the Islamic Jihad terror group. Following their daughter’s tragic death, the Hubaras decided to take back what is rightfully theirs, turning to the Israel Land Fund for assistance. Twelve years later, following a court order against the Arab squatters for their refusal to pay rent or repair damage they had caused to the property, police returned the Hubara home to its legal owners. During Tuesday’s eviction, Arab squatters, aided by far-left activists, protested the eviction and threw cinder blocks at police. Local Jewish activists say they aren’t intimidated by the protesters, or the harassment Jewish residents of Shimon Hatzaddik face from some local Arabs or foreign activists. One of the activists, Yoni Yosef, the grandson of the late Chief Rabbi and Shas party spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef, told Arutz Sheva that the Hubara home would not be the last to be redeemed. As demonstrators continued to hurl cement blocks at police and Jewish activists reclaiming the Hubara home, Yosef seemed unfazed. “We’ll take these blocks and use them to build even more homes in eastern Jerusalem and elsewhere across the Land of Israel. The Jewish people has returned to its land, despite the stones and knives. We’re here to stay, and we won’t be deterred by [Arab] harassment.” The house, which was has fallen into disrepair and was damaged by Arab squatters over the years, will be undergo extensive renovations before new tenants are brought in. “The house needs some serious repairs. There are still no mezuzot, and it lacks the most basic things, except for light and water. God willing, [after the renovations], we'll offer the house to a Jewish family, who will move in and strengthen the Jewish presence in the neighborhood. The Jewish people has returned to its land and to Jerusalem.” [album:open [video:2032468] Subscribe to this Daily Israel Report - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Subscribe | |
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