Raoul Wootliff is a former Times of Israel political correspondent and Daily Briefing podcast producer.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Sunday’s events as they unfolded.
Brussels airport is reopening its departure hall for the first time since deadly Islamic terrorist attacks on March 22.
The airport had already resumed some flights but passengers had been using a temporary check-in tent because of extensive damage to the departure hall from the twin suicide bombings that killed 16 people.
Passengers on select flights will start using the newly repaired departure hall Sunday after a special ceremony. Extra security checks have been added before entering the terminal.
A view of bomb damage as passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after a terrorist attack in Brussels, Belgium, March 22, 2016. (Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images via JTA)
Brussels Airport Company CEO Arnaud Feist called it “an important day in the recovery” of the airport and in efforts to revive the city’s image. The March 22 attacks at the airport and Brussels’ subway killed 32 people.
Feist hoped the airport would be back at 100 percent capacity by mid-June.
— AP
Turkish police on Sunday detained four suspected Islamic State jihadists who were allegedly planning an attack on May Day celebrations in the capital Ankara, according to the state-run Anatolia news.
Initial investigations showed that the four were Syrian citizens who had been in Ankara for some time, the agency adds, without giving details on the nature of the attack.
Turkey is on high alert after a string of attacks blamed on jihadists and Kurdish militants this year. Three Israelis were killed and 11 injured in a suicide attack in Istanbul in March.
The bodies of three Israelis killed in a suicide bombing in Istanbul lie in caskets on the cargo ramp of an IDF airplane on Sunday, March 20, 2016 (Foreign Ministry)
Turkish authorities have blamed IS for the double suicide bombing on a pro-Kurdish peace rally in Ankara last October that killed 103 people, the bloodiest attack in the country’s history.
— With AFP
Iraqi officials say separate car bombings in southern Iraq have killed at least 18 people and wounded dozens.
A police official says the first explosives-laden car went off around midday Sunday near government offices in the city of Samawah, while the second exploded minutes later at an open-air bus station. The Shiite-dominated city is located some 370 kilometers (230 miles) south of the capital, Baghdad.
The official added that up to 40 people were wounded in both explosions, and he expected the death toll to rise. A medical official confirmed the causality figures.
No group yet has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which bear the hallmarks of the Islamic State group militants who control key areas in Iraq’s north and west.
— AP
Palestinian leaders are criticizing a decision by the Eurovision Song Contest preventing their flag from being flown during the event this month.
Palestinian official Saeb Erekat voiced his dismay in a letter to Jean-Paul Philippot, the head of the European Broadcasting Union which oversees the yearly contest. In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press Sunday, Erekat says the decision is “totally biased and unacceptable.” The Palestinians do not compete in the contest.
The EBU published a list of banned flags last week. Among them were the flags of Northern Cyprus, Kosovo, Spain’s Basque region and the Islamic State group’s flag.
In a Facebook post, the EBU apologized and said it removed the list of flags. An updated policy says flags of an “offensive, discriminatory, unsuitable, political or religious nature,” are banned.
Israel has appeared 38 times in the contest, and won three times, most recently in 1998, when transgender singer Dana International competed with the song “Diva.” This year’s Israeli entrant, Hovi Star, will compete in the May 12 semi for a spot in the final.
Israeli transgender singer Dana International performing at the 1999 Eurovision Song Contest held in Jerusalem. (GPO)
— With AP
A new report on anti-Semitism in Britain finds that hate crimes against Jews rose sharply in the past two years, with a 50% increase in violent crimes. The findings show 2015 as the worst year on record.
The National Antisemitic Crime Audit from the Campaign Against Antisemitism says that nearly 1,000 incidents were reported in 2015 representing a 25.7% increase in hate crimes against Jews.
During 2014 UK police forces recorded 746 anti-Semitic crimes a number that rose to 938 in 2015.
“This data should alarm those responsible for enforcing the law: they are failing British Jews badly,” the chairman of the CAA, Gideon Falter, warns.
“If the situation continues to deteriorate, the Jewish community will be faced with the kind of rampant antisemitism seen in other European countries, which has left Jews feeling fearful and abandoned, many of them convinced that they have no choice but to emigrate,” he says.
— Stuart Winer
Security forces are searching the area around the West Bank settlement of Havat Gal near Hebron for a group of settler youths who attacked an IDF officer.
Police received a report from the IDF about a number of settlers who attacked an officer from COGAT, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, who had come to inspect illegal construction at the site.
Police officers arrived at the scene of the incident and met the coordination and liaison officer, who notified them that several youths shoved him and fled.
— Ilan Ben Zion
The Director-General of Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says that the change in the Mideast security landscape brought about by the Syrian war may ultimately lead Israel to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, which was first signed 19 years ago today.
Ahmet Uzumcu, speaking on the anniversary of the signing, says the organization is attempting to bring on board four remaining countries that have not joined the treaty — Egypt, Israel, North Korea and South Sudan.
Uzumcu believes it is only a “matter of time” before South Sudan joins and says the developments in Syria may lead Israel and Egypt to join as well.
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government declared a 1,300-ton chemical weapons stockpile and 14 production facilities, triggering an unprecedented international operation to remove weapons and chemicals from the war-torn country and destroy them.
The weapons have been destroyed, as have 11 of the production plants, Uzumcu said, but member states of the OPCW have repeatedly questioned whether Assad declared everything in 2013.
“We are not yet there,” Uzumcu says. “There are still questions. I am not able to say whether Syria has declared everything or whether Syria continues to possess some chemical weapons or some munitions. I hope that we will be able to clarify the remaining questions.”
— with AP
Senior Labour Party figures are fighting back against charges there is anti-Semitism in the party’s ranks ahead of Thursday’s vote for a new mayor of London.
The British Labour Party’s candidate for mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. (public domain via Wikipedia)
Labour legislator Diane Abbott says the party is being smeared by its political enemies while union leader Len McCluskey says the controversy is being exploited by Labour’s rivals.
Labour’s mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan has conceded the anti-Semitic issue has made his election campaign more difficult in the final days before the vote.
The row intensified days ago when former London Mayor Ken Livingston was suspended from his senior Labour Party post after asserting that Adolf Hitler had been a Zionist before he launched the Holocaust. Livingstone spoke while defending a Labour Party legislator who had been suspended for anti-Semitic posts.
— AP
Suspects arrested in northern Italy on terrorism charges wanted to strike the Vatican and the Israeli Embassy in Rome, according to Italian prosecutors.
Police on Thursday arrested four people, all born in Morocco but long-term residents in Italy.
They included a Moroccan-born Italian citizen identified as a kick-boxer named Abderrahim Moutahrrick, 24, and his wife, Salma Bencharki. Police say the couple had planned to travel soon to Islamic State-held territory in Syria with their two young children.
Warrants also were issued for two other suspects, a Moroccan-born man identified as Mohamed Koraichi and his Italian wife, who are believed to have left Italy last year with their children for Islamic State territory, where Koraichi became an Islamic State fighter.
Moutahrrick is quoted in transcripts of conversations in February and March as saying he wanted to attack the Vatican and also “to hit” the Israeli Embassy in Rome, and that he had contacted an Albanian to procure a gun.
— JTA
The Anti-Defamation League calls on Donald Trump to abjure the term “America First,” noting its unsavory World War II-era association with anti-Semitism.
“The undercurrents of anti-Semitism and bigotry that characterized the America First movement – including the assumption that Jews who opposed the movement had their own agenda and were not acting in America’s best interest – is fortunately not a major concern today,” the ADL said in an April 28 statement.
Trump unveiled his foreign policy in a speech April 27 in Washington and said “America First will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.”
He referred to a policy that would not attempt to export democracy, that would avoid foreign wars, and that would require allies to pay for America’s defense or go it alone.
“For many Americans, the term ‘America First’ will always be associated with and tainted by this history,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in the statement. “In a political season that already has prompted a national conversation about civility and tolerance, choosing a call to action historically associated with incivility and intolerance seems ill-advised.”
Charles Lindbergh speaking at rally of the America First Committee in 1940. (Wikimedia Commons)
The ADL has called Trump out for his campaign rhetoric, including his broadsides against Muslims.
— JTA
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is challenging a claim by the Iranian foreign minister that Iranian government authorities had nothing to do with a Holocaust cartoon contest.
“The organizations associated with the contest are sponsored or supported by government entities, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Tehran Municipality, and the Ministry of Islamic Guidance,” the museum says in a statement.
Organizers say the competition, which focuses on Holocaust denial, is designed to highlight the world’s double standard in defending caricatures of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, whose depiction is forbidden in Islam.
“Previous contests in 2006 and 2015 have had the endorsement and support of government officials and agencies,” the museum says. “There are reports in the Iranian press that the Ministry of Culture is asserting its support for the upcoming contest.”
Javad Zarif last week told the New Yorker that his government “does not support, nor does it organize, any cartoon festival of the nature that you’re talking about.”
He said the festival was organized by a non-governmental organization “that is not controlled by the Iranian government.”
In its statement, the Holocaust museum said it “urges global leaders to hold the Iranian government to Foreign Minister Zarif’s promise to deny visas to some contest participants and that neither he nor President Rouhani would attend the contest.”
Robert Levinson’s son has traveled to Iran to seek information on his father’s whereabouts.
“In late February, I traveled to Iran’s Kish Island in the Persian Gulf, where my father was last seen,” Dan Levinson said in an op-ed published Thursday in the Washington Post.
“I delivered a letter addressed to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other officials who I believe have knowledge of his abduction,” he wrote. “I met with officials from Iran’s Foreign Ministry and listened to the denials we have grown accustomed to over the years. I was told I’d be given an official response to my letter but have yet to receive one.”
Undated photo of CIA contractor and retired FBI agent Robert Levinson (AP/Levinson Family)
Robert Levinson, who is Jewish, went missing in 2007 from Iran’s Kish Island during what has since been revealed as a rogue CIA operation.
Dan Levinson in the op-ed said the Obama administration had missed opportunities to obtain information on his father, particularly during the talks that led to the nuclear rollbacks for sanctions relief deal between Iran and six major powers.
“The Obama administration must press harder to reach those few people with the power to send my father home,” he wrote.
— JTA
Amid ongoing questions about the Labour leader’s response to response to anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements made by party members in recent weeks, Israel’s ambassador to the UK has called on Jeremy Corbyn to visit Israel.
Speaking on the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show,” Mark Regev said that the leader of the Israeli Labor party, Isaac Herzog, had invited Corbyn to Israel and that he “hopes he does so.”
Regev was addressing a rising tide of anti-Semitic outbursts by Labour party members, including most recently Ken Livingstone, who was suspended from the party on Thursday for declaring and continuing to insist that Adolf Hitler was initially a Zionist.
“I think Jeremy Corbyn, from what I’ve seen, seems to be personally proud of the fact that his parents marched against the fascists, against the anti-Semites in the famous Cable Street battle. The left does have a proud history of fighting anti-Semitism. But it doesn’t mean the left have always been immune to anti-Semitism. I think it’s crucial that leadership stands up and says ‘this is unacceptable.’” he told the program.
“Can you imagine someone in the Labour party sharing a platform with someone who is an anti-black racist?” he added. “Or someone who is homophobic and called for hatred of homosexuals?”
Corbyn called on Friday for an independent inquiry into anti-Semitism and racism within the Labour party, after initially denying there was a problem.
Members of the nationalist Alternative for Germany party have backed a political program that says Islam doesn’t belong in Germany and supports a ban against minarets, muezzin calls and headscarves for women and girls in school.
The party, also known by its acronyms AfD, has been growing in popularity and political influence as it campaigns on an anti-Islam platform. It was holding a conference on Sunday.
An estimated 16 million people — 20 percent of Germany’s population — have an immigrant background with a majority coming from Muslim countries like Turkey, Lebanon or Morocco.
Germany also saw over 1 million asylum-seekers enter last year, many from Syria.
— AP
Pope Francis decries worsening violence amid the already “desperate” humanitarian situation in Syria, particularly in the northern city of Aleppo.
During his traditional Sunday remarks to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square, Francis referred to last week’s attack on an Aleppo hospital. He laments that a “spiral of violence” is “reaping innocent victims, even among children, the sick and those who with great sacrifice are committed to helping their neighbors.”
Pope Francis waves during the Regina Coeli prayer from his studio’s window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican,May 1, 2016. (AP/Alessandra Tarantino)
Medical personnel were reported to be among the victims of that attack.
Francis says he is “exhorting all sides involved in the conflict to respect the cessation of hostilities and reinforce ongoing dialogue,” which he says is the only path that leads to peace.
— AP
The Czech Police file charges of crimes against humanity against Adam Bartos, the leader of the extremist far-right National Democracy political party.
Bartos is also being charged with defamation, incitement to hatred, and genocide denial, the police announced on Friday. If convicted, he faces up to three years in prison.
Bartos, 36, was detained on Thursday morning, when police searched his home and several other sites in the Czech capital, seizing documents and other materials. He was released on Friday after questioning.
“Police investigators concluded that Mr. Bartos committed the criminal acts between May 2013 and April 2016. He was charged mainly over the content of books he published and other documents and public speeches in which he publicly and purposefully incited hatred towards people of Jewish ethnicity and faith,” the police say in a statement.
Bartos says he considered the case “a politically motivated trial” and “another attempt to damage the only true opposition to the system.”
The Czech Republic’s Jewish community is closely following the case. “Let’s wait and see what comes out of this. He should not be allowed to assume the role of a political martyr,” Tomas Kraus, the executive director of the Federation of the Czech Jewish communities, told JTA.
“Bartos has regularly appeared in our annual reports on anti-Semitism. But he is a complicated figure: we knew him as an Israel supporter who was running about Prague waving the Israeli flag. I think he should maybe seek psychiatric assistance,” Kraus added.
— JTA
Hungarian police have arrested two people suspected of murdering Israeli tourist Ofir Gross, who was found dead overnight, according to German news agency DPA.
Gross, 40, from Jerusalem went missing in the country nearly two weeks ago. He dropped out of contact with his family on April 21.
Ofir Gross, an Israeli tourist who went missing in April 2016 in Hungary. His body was located by Hungarian authorities on May 1, 2016. (Facebook)
Family members of Gross, who was a medical engineering student in Germany, were traveling to Hungary to identify the body, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Nobel Prize winner Walter Kohn, who fled Nazi-ruled Austria one month before the start of World War II, has died at his home in Santa Barbara. He was 93.
Kohn received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he shared with British-born scientist John Pople. His research, which spanned the fields of physics and chemistry, applied quantum mechanics and advanced mathematics to explain complex chemical reactions.
In the fall of 1939, Kohn left his native Vienna on one of the last transports of children to England, where he was interned as an “enemy alien.” The following year he was shipped to Canada, where he subsequently joined the Canadian army as an infantryman. His parents, Salomon and Gittel Kohn, died in Auschwitz.
Walter Kohn (photo credit: CC-BY-SA Jtk33, Wikimedia)
Throughout his academic career, Kohn was also deeply involved in Jewish life. While teaching at the University of California, San Diego, he was instrumental in founding the school’s Jewish studies department.
In 1979, he was appointed as the first director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, where he served on the campus’ Hillel advisory board and regularly participated in faculty Torah study sessions.
Kohn is survived by his wife Mara Kohn, the daughter of famed photographer Roman Vishniac; three daughters from his first marriage; and three grandchildren.
— JTA
The Islamic State group is claiming responsibility for rare bombings in southern Iraq that killed at least 33 people on Sunday.
The terrorist group claimed in a statement posted on social media that two suicide attackers detonated car bombs targeting members of the security forces in the city of Samawa.
“The hospitals have received 33 dead,” says a senior official in the Muthanna health department, which covers Samawa. An officer in Muthanna Operations Command confirms the toll.
Iraqis look at the damage following a twin suicide bombing attack, claimed by the Islamic State group, in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah, May 1, 2016. (AFP Photo/Haidar Hamdani)
They say at least 50 people were also wounded in the blasts in Samawa, 230 kilometers (145 miles) south of Baghdad.
“Two car bombs went off in town. The first one was at around midday near a bus station in the city center,” a senior police officer in Muthanna province says.
— AFP
Islamic State has beheaded four teenagers and young men in its stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, for allegedly providing intelligence to the US-led coalition, according to The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
They were accused by the group of “photographing sites and handing information to the crusader coalition causing bombing and the death of Muslims.”
Since 2014, a US-led coalition has been targeting IS in Syria, where the jihadists have made Raqqa their de facto capital.
IS has previously carried out several beheadings in Raqqa.
An initial investigation into Palestinian siblings shot dead during an attempted assault on Israeli border guards at the West Bank Qalandiya crossing last week finds they were killed by civilian security guards and not Israeli forces.
As such, the Justice Ministry is not opening a probe into the officers stationed at the crossing.
Maram Abu Ismayil, 23, and her brother Ibrahim Salah Tahah, 16, arrived at the crossing and began walking towards the Border Police officers stationed at the checkpoint, just south of Ramallah, a police spokesperson said. After repeated calls by the officers for the pair to stop, one of them took out a knife and threw it at them.
Two knives and a Leatherman-style multi-tool that a Palestinian couple allegedly planned to use to attack Border Police officers at the Qalandiya border crossing on April 27, 2016. (Israel Police)
The investigation finds that a border officer followed procedure by firing into the air, but two civilian guards — contracted by the Defense Ministry and stationed at the checkpoint — fired on the assailants.
No Israelis were injured in the incident.
Saudi Arabia has arrested a suspect in a foiled car-bombing attempt. The selfsame suspect is also wanted in connection with attacks claimed by the Islamic State group, the interior ministry says.
Iqab Mujab al-Otaibi was with two other suspects who were killed Friday in a shootout with security forces who foiled the car-bombing attempt in the southwestern Aseer region, the ministry says in a statement.
Otaibi had managed to flee the scene of the shootout but security forces later found him, the statement says, adding that he was wearing an explosives belt and had weapons in his possession.
He was “surrounded and forced to surrender,” the ministry says.
According to the ministry, Otaibi allegedly took part in a deadly shooting at a Shiite mosque in 2014 and a bombing that targeted security forces at a mosque in Aseer last year.
Both attacks were claimed by IS.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirms Ofir Gross as the Israeli who was found dead overnight in Hungary, after his family identified the body earlier today.
Gross, 40, from Jerusalem, went missing in the country nearly two weeks ago. He dropped out of contact with his family on April 21.
The wife of former president Moshe Katsav has met twice with President Reuven Rivlin to discuss the possibility of clemency for her husband, currently serving a prison sentence for rape, according to Channel 10 news.
Rivlin agreed to meet Gila Katsav, according to the report, but made clear in the meetings that there was “very little chance” he would grant an early release to his predecessor.
Former president Moshe Katsav, left, serving a seven-year sentence for rape, seen with his wife, Gila, leaving Ma’asiyahu Prison for a furlough over the Jewish holiday of Passover, April 3, 2015. (Flash90)
On Sunday morning, Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Katsav’s attorneys intend to seek a presidential pardon for their client, weeks after a parole board rejected his bid for early release. Katsav, they apparently intend to argue, fell into a deep depression when the board rejected his request to have one-third of his seven-year sentence knocked off for good behavior.
Prison guards have not reported any deterioration in Katsav’s mental health and have not requested the intervention of a psychologist, according to Channel 2 news.
A radical Kurdish militant group is claiming a suicide bombing in Turkey’s former Ottoman capital of Bursa last week, saying the female assailant had failed to reach her intended target.
The attack on Wednesday evening near Bursa’s famed 14th-century Grand Mosque wounded 13 people but caused no fatalities other than the female suicide bomber herself.
The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) — a radical splinter group of the better-known Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) — says in a statement on its website that one of its members had carried out the attack.
It says the bomber was a 23-year-old woman named Eser Cali and said the attack was aimed at avenging the Turkish government’s current military operation in the Kurdish-dominated southeast.
But the statement adds that the bomber had detonated her charge and been killed “due an accident before she had reached the target that was to be brought to account for the massacres against our people.”
It does not give details on the nature of the intended target but denies she was planning to attack the Grand Mosque.
— AFP
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad.
Ramadan Shalah, the head of the organization, led a delegation that met with Khamenei in Tehran Sunday, thanking him for the Islamic Republic’s “firm support” for Palestine, according to the Iranian news site PressTV.
Khamenei posted a photo of the meeting on his official Twitter account.
Secretary General of Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement Mr. Ramadan Shalah met with Leader of Revolution. pic.twitter.com/MVKBmZb04u
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) May 1, 2016
Khamenei said the support for Palestine will continue.
“Since from the very beginning, the Islamic Republic of Iran considered supporting Palestine as a duty, it will continue to fulfill its obligation in the future as well,” he said, according to PressTV.
Police have arrested seven football supporters during a match between the Beitar Jerusalem and Bnei Sakhnin football teams in Jerusalem.
Firecrackers and smoke grenades were thrown onto the pitch from the East Stand in Beitar’s Teddy Stadium, an area of the stadium known for unruly behavior.
The two teams have a history of bad blood and violent clashes between supporters.
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