Arutz Sheva Daily Israel Report
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Tuesday, Feb. 23 '16, Adar 14, 5776
HEADLINES:
1. US SPIED ON BIBI ASKING ITALIAN PM TO INTERVENE WITH OBAMA
2. ERDAN: IDF PLAN TO BEAT TERROR WITH PEACE TALKS IS 'INFURIATING'
3. WATCH: IDF OPERATION NABS WEAPONS STASHES IN ARAB VILLAGES
4. IDF DEMOLISHES TWO TERRORISTS' HOMES
5. END OF SYRIAN CIVIL WAR? ASSAD ACCEPTS CEASEFIRE
6. DEAD SEA SCROLL RESEARCH ENTERS THE DIGITAL ERA
7. TRAGEDY IN TERMINAL 3
8. ARAB HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST 'TERRIFIED' BY BDS DEATH THREATS
1. US SPIED ON BIBI ASKING ITALIAN PM TO INTERVENE WITH OBAMA
by David Rosenberg
Obama's NSA spy network tapped into phone calls between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and European leaders, Wikileaks reported on Tuesday.
A newly released batch of NSA reports uncovered by Wikileaks has revealed that Netanyahu appealed to Europe to intervene with President Barack Obama during their public 2010 spat over a Jerusalem building project.
The NSA caught wind of Netanyahu's efforts when it intercepted a phone call between the Israeli Prime Minister and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 2010.
Netanyahu asked the Italian leader to reason with President Obama, noting that the construction project in Jerusalem was consistent with long-standing Israeli policy since the 1960s.
At the heart of the dispute was a planned housing project for 1,600 units in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo.
According to the NSA report, Israeli officials were skeptical of Europe's ability to affect a rapprochement, arguing that the Obama administration represented "the lowest point in US- Israeli relations in memory", and that Obama's ire towards Israel goes "far beyond merely the question of the construction plans".
The Wikileaks document is only the latest example of Obama's clandestine surveillance operations monitoring the Israeli Prime Minister. Last December it was reported that the NSA had continued spying on Netanyahu despite a pledge by President Obama to halt wiretaps on friendly heads of state.
2. ERDAN: IDF PLAN TO BEAT TERROR WITH PEACE TALKS IS 'INFURIATING'
by Ido Ben-Porat
Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) on Tuesday denied that IDF Intelligence Corps head Maj. Gen. Herzl (Herzi) Halevi told the Security Cabinet the Arab terror wave will expand if peace talks aren't launched with the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Halevi appeared at the Security Cabinet on January 24 together with other senior Intelligence Corps officials to deliver the annual intelligence appraisal for 2016, before delivering it again Tuesday to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, according to Channel 10 reports on Monday night.
The report alleged that Halevi told the Cabinet a "diplomatic process" with the PA is the only way to stop the terror wave, as he claims the military has largely done all it can. If peace talks are not advanced, he stated additional forces will join the terror wave, including the Tanzim terror group, which is the "armed wing" of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction.
"I sat in many meetings that he (Halevi) took part in. I never heard him say something like that," Erdan told Army Radio on Tuesday, denying the reports.
"If something like that was said in a briefing for military correspondents, I think that's an infuriating statement because we remember the days of a diplomatic process, in which the attacks and the terror were much stronger."
Erdan's statement would appear to be a reference to the 1994 Oslo Accords, in which Israel supplied the newly created PA and its Security Forces with weapons. The Accords led to the 2000 Second Intifada or Oslo War, in which over 1,000 Israelis were murdered; PA officials later bragged that 70% of the attacks were conducted by PA Security Force members.
In the current wave as well a number of the terrorist attackers have been identified as PA policemen.
Erdan also spoke about returning the bodies of terrorists, a move he has generally opposed as a deterrence factor so as to avoid massive funerals encouraging more attacks.
"Since our last talk I think one or two bodies were returned. The reason no one heard about it is because the families agreed to cooperate with the police and hold a respectable funeral...not one with incitement or support for the act of terror that the terrorist conducted," he said.
"We have no interest in holding these bodies, rather (we do it) simply because we are in a wave of terror in which the glorification of the 'martyr' and the imitation by his friends is an integral part. We are not prepared for things like this to happen in funerals and possibly even bring about additional attacks."
3. WATCH: IDF OPERATION NABS WEAPONS STASHES IN ARAB VILLAGES
by Arutz Sheva Staff
[video:2012804]
While most Israelis slept, IDF forces were hard at work last night in the hills of Samaria, locating illegal weapons hidden in Palestinian Arab villages.
Such raids are mounted on a daily basis, as part of security forces' efforts to stem the tide of terror attacks.
During the operation, soldiers seized a number of weapons including M-16 assault rifles, pistols, bullets, magazines, night-vision goggles, binoculars and other military equipment used in the preparation of terror attacks, as well as drugs.
Further south, in Judea, IDF forces demolished the homes of two terrorists who murdered five people on the same day.
The overnight demolitions west of Hevron targeted the homes of two men said behind November 19 knife and car-ramming attacks in Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv and at the Gush Etzion Junction south of Jerusalem.
Mohammed al-Harub opened fire at the junction, then rammed his car into a group of pedestrians. /News/News.aspx/203655Two Israelis and one Palestinian bystander were killed.
The same day, Raid Masalmeh stabbed two Israelis to death outside a synagogue in a Tel Aviv office block.
It was one of the deadliest days for Israelis since a wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks erupted in October.
Harub's home was in Dayr Samet while Masalmeh's was in Dura, both west of Hevron. Both men were apprehended and arrested shortly after their attacks.
AFP contributed to this report.
4. IDF DEMOLISHES TWO TERRORISTS' HOMES
by Ben Ariel
IDF engineering forces in cooperation with the Border Police on Tuesday morning demolished the homes of two terrorists who carried out attacks against Israelis on November 19.
The homes demolished were that of the terrorist who carried out the stabbing attack at the Panorama Building in Tel Aviv, and the home of the terrorist who carried out a shooting attack at the Gush Etzion junction.
Rabbi Yaakov Don, Ezra Schwartz, and Shadi Arfa were murdered and seven other were injured in the Gush Etzion junction attack.
Yisayev Aharon and Reuven Aviram were murdered in the stabbing attack in Tel Aviv.
The demolitions were made possible after the High Court last week refused the appeal of family members of the two terrorists.
The family of the Gush Etzion terrorist had pleaded that the terrorist did not live on the entire floor that the IDF wished to demolish, but rather only part of it.
The family of the second terrorist claimed that the act was not committed due to nationalistic reasons, but rather due to the mental health of the terrorist. Therefore the home of the terrorist should not be destroyed.
The judges refuted this claim and determined "from the evidence presented by the Israel Prison Services, there is no record of an active or effective psychiatric condition. There is enough administrative evidence to establish that his actions, of murdering two people and injuring one were nationalistically driven."
5. END OF SYRIAN CIVIL WAR? ASSAD ACCEPTS CEASEFIRE
by David Rosenberg
The Syrian Foreign Ministry has signaled on Tuesday its government's acceptance of the ceasefire declared by the United States and Russia on Monday night.
According to a Foreign Minister statement seen by AFP, Syria will participate in the ceasefire recently negotiated by Russia and the United States in an effort to halt the humanitarian crisis plaguing the war-torn country.
The ceasefire, which is scheduled to go into effect on Saturday, would cover only parties to the agreement, including the Syrian government and some rebel groups.
Other key players, including terrorist groups like ISIS and the al-Nusra Front will remain fair game for Syria, Russia, and the United States.
While the US and Russia are hopeful the ceasefire will mark the beginning of the end of nearly five years of devastating civil war, others are skeptical.
Some analysts say that given the facts on the ground -- in particular the complex make-up of rebel forces and frequently shifting frontlines -- the ceasefire may already be doomed to fail.
AFP contributed to this report
6. DEAD SEA SCROLL RESEARCH ENTERS THE DIGITAL ERA
by Raphael Poch
70 years after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the entire corpus of ancient work, including all of the minute fragments, will be available to researchers as well as the public via the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scroll Digital Library under a new joint project that is being carried out by antiquities researchers and computer science technicians.
The new project, which reportedly cost 1.6 million Euro to set up, is being conducted by Haifa University, Tel Aviv University, the University of Goettingen in Germany and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The funding for the project is being provided by the German-Israeli Project Cooperation Foundation (DIP), which is managed by the German National Foundation for Research (DFG).
The Conservation laboratory for the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem houses thousands of scrolls and scroll fragments, and due to technological advances in recent years, all of these fragments have been made available online since the Leon Levy Library first began in 2012.
According to the IAA website, these advancements will now allow a new style of collaborative analysis involving researchers from all over the world to simultaneously study the fragments and collaborate on research. Among the research initiatives expected to arise out of the new integrated online system are new analytical editions of the scrolls and collaborative publications. These initiatives will be made easier with the new online research tools which the project will be making available including a comprehensive dictionary for the language of the scrolls and a paleographic writing analyzer, as well as a database of similar texts found in Second Temple era literature.
Another new development of the project will be new suggestions regarding how to put the pieces of the scrolls together, in a much faster and easier format online than would ever be possible by hand. The new "puzzle" feature will also be available to researchers in an effort to help them find new possible ways to put the pieces of the scrolls together.
7. TRAGEDY IN TERMINAL 3
by Arutz Sheva Staff
A haredi Jewish family from Manchester, England was on its way to leave Israel and head back home on Monday after a week-long trip in the Jewish homeland, when tragedy struck suddenly causing them to delay their return.
The family was at Ben-Gurion International Airport just about to board a plane taking them back home to Manchester, when the father of the family, aged in his 50s, suddenly collapsed apparently due to a heart attack.
ZAKA emergency rescue volunteers led by Mandy Haviv tried to save the man through resuscitation efforts, but the attempts were not successful, and a doctor was forced to determine his death.
Shmulik Segel, the ZAKA commander in Modi'in Illit who was at the scene, spoke about the tragic death.
"We received a call about someone who collapsed in Terminal 3 on their way to board a plane, when we arrived I saw worried family members, and while conducting resuscitation on the father we tried to calm the family members who were in a panic," said Segel.
ZAKA volunteers remained with the bereaved wife and children, and will accompany them throughout the process while providing professional support in light of their tragic loss.
8. ARAB HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST 'TERRIFIED' BY BDS DEATH THREATS
by David Rosenberg
A prominent Palestinian Arab human rights activist received death threats from radical BDS protestors during a lecture at Chicago University last Thursday.
While Israelis speaking abroad at universities have frequently been targeted by anti-Israel movements and campus groups in the past, now even pro-Palestinian human rights organizations are feeling the heat.
Bassem Eid is the head of the Palestininian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG), an organization and a former member of the far-left wing Israeli group B'Tselem.
While Eid would appear to be an unlikely target for anti-Israel smear groups, BDS demonstrators nevertheless showed up to disrupt his lecture at the University of Chicago last week. The anti-Israel activists, incensed that Eid had leveled criticisms against Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for human rights violations, attempted to shout him down.
Eventually, demonstrators began to hurl expletives at Eid and threatened to murder him. The disruptions forced an early end to the lecture as BDS activists pledged to "kill this motherf---er".
Demonstrators also threatened in Arabic to bomb the university hall and pledged to pursue Eid after the lecture.
Shaken by the incident, Eid said he was "terrified" by the demonstrators and noted that the police were called to help him "escape" from the lecture hall.
[youtube:2012802]
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