Adiv Sterman is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Thursday’s developments as they unfolded.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatens to send the millions of refugees in Turkey to European Union member states, as he slams the bloc’s behavior in the migrant crisis.
In a speech that stepped up his denunciations of Western policy in the refugee crisis, Erdogan confirms he had threatened EU leaders at a summit meeting in November that Turkey could say “goodbye” to the refugees.
“We do not have the word ‘idiot’ written on our foreheads. We will be patient but we will do what we have to. Don’t think that the planes and the buses are there for nothing. We will do the necessary,” Erdogan tells a business forum in Ankara.
Greek website euro2day.gr had earlier this week reported that at the G20 summit in Antalya in November Erdogan had angrily threatened to EU Commission president Jean Claude Juncker that Turkey could send the refugees to Europe.
The website had quoted Erdogan as telling Juncker: “We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and put the refugees on buses.”
“I am proud of what I said. We have defended the rights of Turkey and the refugees. And we told them (the Europeans): ‘sorry, we will open the doors and say ‘goodbye’ to the migrants’,” Erdogan says.
He also lashes out at UN calls on Turkey to take in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing regime advances in the Aleppo region, saying the United Nations has spent less than half a billion dollars in the crisis.
“Shame on you! Shame on you!” says Erdogan, adding that instead the United Nations could pressure its members to take in more refugees.
“The United Nations should give advice to other countries. And then we can send the refugees to these countries,” he says.
Turkey is already hosting 2.5 million refugees from Syria’s civil war and hundreds of thousands from Iraq and is increasingly bitter it has been left to shoulder the burden.
— AFP
NATO is sending a naval group “without delay” to help stop people smugglers in the Aegean Sea, following a request from Germany, Greece and Turkey, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg says.
NATO “is now directing the standing maritime group to move into the Aegean without delay and start maritime surveillance activities”, Stoltenberg tells a press conference after alliance defense ministers backed the move.
He says the migrant crisis, driven by conflict and turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa, was the worst since World War II and posed a major security threat to the 28-nation alliance.
Refugees and migrants arrive at the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey on October 1, 2015. (AFP PHOTO/ARIS MESSINIS)
NATO Standing Maritime Group 2, currently under German command, comprises three ships and allies had promised more so it can carry out “reconnaissance, monitoring and surveillance in the Aegean Sea,” he says.
“This is not about stopping and pushing back (refugees)… but about critical surveillance to help counter human trafficking and criminal networks,” he says.
NATO would work closely with the European Union and its border control agency Frontex, he adds.
— AFP
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter says he expects a gathering of more than two dozen countries contributing to the war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to endorse a US plan for accelerating the campaign.
“That will be new, for there to be a plan that everyone sees, which is a concrete military campaign plan and an opportunity to do what the United States has been doing for some months now, which is accelerating its own contributions,” Carter tells reporters in advance of convening an anti-IS meeting of some two dozen defense ministers.
US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter speaks during a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
Speaking at NATO headquarters, Carter says he would lay out details of the campaign plan in an afternoon meeting with allies and non-NATO partners such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq. In doing so, he will ask the others to find ways to increase or broaden their contributions — either militarily or in other ways such as financial contributions.
Carter says the US is determined to accelerate the war campaign and recapture as soon as possible the Islamic State’s main strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
— AP
A delegation of members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group representing dozens of US Jewish NGOs, meets with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.
According to those present at the meeting, Sissi reiterated his commitment to continued cooperation between Israel and Egypt, the Walla news site reports.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi answers questions during an interview, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015, in New York. (AP/Julie Jacobson)
The meeting comes two days after Malcolm Hoenlein, the vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and a close associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arrived at Ankara for a discussion with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a move that signaled a readiness on behalf of Turkey to mend ties with Israel after years of disconnect.
Veteran actor Moshe Ivgy announces that he is taking a “time out” in light of accusations he had sexually harassed several women over the past few years.
A police source quoted by Channel 2 news yesterday says it is “only a matter of time” before a criminal investigation is opened against Ivgy after one women came forward and lodged an official complaint against the actor.
According to the report, one or two more women will likely file complaints as well, paving the way for the current unofficial probe to be upgraded to a full-fledged investigation.
Actor Moshe Ivgy delivers a statement regarding sexual harassment allegations against him, at the end of a theater show in Tel Aviv on Sunday, February 7, 2016 (Flash90)
Ivgy, one of Israel’s most recognizable stage and screen actors, has rejected the allegations against him, saying he never intended to “deliberately” harm anyone.
Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi visits Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qiq, who has been on hunger strike for 79 days to protest his detention by Israel.
Tibi says Qiq is in “poor health” and calls for his release.
Qiq, a 33-year-old father of two and a correspondent for Saudi Arabia’s Almajd TV network, was arrested on November 21 at his home in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
He is being held under Israel’s controversial administrative detention law, which allows the state to hold suspects for renewable six-month periods without trial.
He has been refusing food since November 25 in protest against the “torture and ill treatment that he was subjected to during interrogation,” according to Addameer, a Palestinian human rights organization.
Qiq was jailed for a month in 2003 and then for 13 months in 2004 for Hamas-related activities.
In 2008, he was sentenced to 16 months on charges linked to his activities on the student council at the West Bank’s Birzeit University.
Palestinian prisoner Mohammed Allan, 31, ended a two-month hunger strike in August last year after his detention was suspended.
An 87-year-old grandmother convicted for Holocaust denial seeks to attend the trial of a former SS guard in Auschwitz, Reinhold Hanning, who is charged with at least 170,000 counts of accessory to murder, but the elderly lady is taken away by police after she comes under attack, national news agency DPA reports.
Police officers shield Ursula Haverbeck from physical harassment, and she eventually leaves the site in a car, DPA reports without giving further details.
Haverbeck is a notorious extremist who was once chairwoman of a far-right training center shut down in 2008 for spreading Nazi propaganda.
She was sentenced in November to 10 months in jail for Holocaust denial after a trial in which she insisted that Auschwitz was “not historically proven” to be a death camp.
That is “only a belief,” said Haverbeck, dubbed Nazi-Oma (Nazi grandma) by the media.
She had also gone on television to declare that “the Holocaust is the biggest and most sustainable lie in history.”
Some 1.1 million people, most of them European Jews, perished between 1940 and 1945 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp before it was liberated by Soviet forces.
— AFP
Israeli and American Reform Jews will boycott Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, after Levin made disparaging comments about the Reform Movement.
During a cabinet meeting last month on a proposed expansion to the non-Orthodox section of the Western Wall, Levin called Reform Judaism a “dying world” that has succumbed to assimilation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the statement.
In response, Israeli Reform Movement CEO Rabbi Gilad Kariv called on his American counterparts to shun Levin. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the American Union for Reform Judaism, accepts the call.
A meeting between Levin and Reform leaders in the United States next week has been canceled.
Tourism Minister Yariv Levin in the Knesset on July 13, 2015 (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
“As long as he (Levin) doesn’t think that Diaspora Jews have no right to voice opinions on matters such as the [Western Wall], there’s no reason to give him a platform in Jewish communities and organizations in the United States,” Jacobs tells Army Radio. “Minister Levin will not teach us what support for Israel is.”
— JTA
The Meretz party petitions to the Supreme Court demanding that the state immediately begin constructing a barrier against attack tunnels purportedly being built beneath the Gaza Strip security fence.
The Israeli border fence with Gaza (David Buimovitch/Flash90)
The petition states that the court should order the prime minister and the defense minister to build the barrier at once since its absence endangers human life.
State television in Saudi Arabia says a teacher has shot dead six colleagues in the kingdom’s south.
The station reports the shooting in a post on Twitter. It posts a still photograph that showed ambulances gathered outside of a building in Jazan province.
It does not offer a motive for the shooting.
Mass shootings are rare in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia has faced a series of recent attacks by Islamic State fighters.
— AP
Four Palestinian human rights organizations file official documents to the International Criminal Court in The Hague along with evidence detailing alleged Israeli war crimes that took place during the 2014 Gaza war, Walla reports.
The attorney for Yosef Haim Ben-David, 31, who is said to have led the attack on Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir, says his client suffers from a mental illness and was not responsible for his actions at the time.
Yosef Haim Ben-David, the main suspect in the murder of Muhammed Abu Khdeir, in the Disctrict Court in Jerusalem (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The attorney’s comments come before a hearing in which Ben-David’s psychiatric state is set to be evaluated.
The military prosecution files an indictment against a Palestinian who is suspected of sending death threats to Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman.
Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman speaks during a party meeting at the Knesset on June 29, 2015. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
The threats, sent on Facebook, also expressed the suspect’s intention to carry out terrorist attacks.
The Palestinian was arrested at the Allenby Bridge between the West Bank and Jordan two and a half weeks ago.
International superstar Beyoncé Knowles will most definitely arrive in Israel this summer for two performances in early August, Ynet reports.
The shows will take place at Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park.
Beyonce and JAY Z perform on the On The Run Tour at the Great American Ball Park on Saturday, June 28, 2014, in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Robin Harper/Parkwood Entertainment/AP Images)
Rumors started spreading over the past weeks about the possibility of a Bruce Springsteen concert in late July. There’s also talk of Madonna and Britney Spears shows over the course of summer 2016.
US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov open talks to try and reconcile deep differences over a proposed ceasefire for the Syrian civil war. They meet as other US and Russian officials trad allegations over bombing of civilian areas in the besieged city of Aleppo.
Russia has proposed a March 1 ceasefire, but Washington believes that will only give Moscow and the Syrian government three weeks to crush moderate rebel groups. The US has countered with a demand for an immediate truce.
As the meeting begins at a Munich hotel, Kerry declines to speculate on whether an agreement could be reached.
“We’re going to have a serious conversation about all aspects about what’s happening in Syria,” he says. “Obviously, at some point in time, we want to make progress on the issues of humanitarian access and cease-fire. We will talk about all aspects of the conflict.”
Lavrov says that Russia had already submitted a “quite specific” proposal, and “we will wait for the American response before we take it to the ISSG.” The ISSG is the International Syria Support Group, a collection of about 20 countries with interests in the conflict, that was due to meet later Thursday in Munich.
The talk of new cease-fire plans comes as the US, Russia and more than a dozen other countries meet to try to halt five years of civil war. The conflict has killed more than a quarter-million people, created Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II and allowed the Islamic State to carve out its own territory across parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.
— AP
A 58-year-old Palestinian resident of the West Bank city of Nablus in the northern West Bank dies due to complications resulting from swine flu.
Four people in the West Bank have died of swine flu complications since the beginning of the winter season.
Actress Sarit Vino Elad says in an interview with Army Radio that Moshe Ivgy attempted to sexually harass her, but she stopped him.
Ivgy announced earlier today that he is taking a “time out” in light of accusations he had sexually harassed several women over the past few years.
A police source quoted by Channel 2 news yesterday says it is “only a matter of time” before a criminal investigation is opened against Ivgy after one women came forward and lodged an official complaint against the actor.
According to the report, one or two more women will likely file complaints as well, paving the way for the current unofficial probe to be upgraded to a full-fledged investigation.
In a landmark discovery for physics and astronomy, international scientists say they have glimpsed the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time, which Albert Einstein predicted a century ago.
When two black holes collided some 1.3 billion years ago, the joining of those two great masses sent forth a wobble that hurtled through space and arrived at Earth on September 14, 2015, when it was picked up by sophisticated instruments, researchers announce.
“Like Galileo first pointing his telescope upward, this new view of the sky will deepen our understanding of the cosmos, and lead to unexpected discoveries,” says France Cordova, director of the US National Science Foundation, which funded the work.
The phenomenon was observed by two US-based underground detectors, designed to spot tiny vibrations from passing gravitational waves, a project known as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO.
It took scientists months to verify their data and put it through a process of peer-review before announcing it, marking the culmination of decades of efforts by teams around the world.
Israeli Doctor Roni Grosz, head of The Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, shows the original document (R) written by Albert Einstein related to Albert Einstein’s prediction of the existence of gravitational waves, on February 11, 2016 in Jerusalem. (THOMAS COEX / AFP)
“LIGO has ushered in the birth of an entirely new field of astrophysics,” says Cordova.
Gravitational waves are a measure of strain in space, an effect of the motion of large masses that stretches the fabric of space-time — a way of viewing space and time as a single, interweaved continuum.
They travel at the speed of light and cannot be stopped or blocked by anything.
Einstein said space-time could be compared to a net, bowing under the weight of an object. Gravitational waves would be like ripples that emanate from a pebble thrown in a pond.
While scientists have previously been able to calculate gravitational waves, they had never before seen one directly.
— AFP
French President Francois Hollande has chosen former prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to take over as foreign minister, several sources say.
In a minor government shake-up, Hollande also named a member of the French Greens Party (EELV), Emmanuelle Cosse, as housing minister, part of an attempt to widen his political base as he bids for re-election in 2017.
— AFP
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon calls on Turkey to end its relationship with Hamas, if it wants to normalize ties with Israel, during a press conference on his official visit to Switzerland.
But even then, Ya’alon is “not sure” if a political settlement will be reached.
“We are ready to settle this problem, but we have our own conditions. Turkey is hosting the Hamas external headquarters for terror in Istanbul. We can’t accept this. Turkey is supporting Hamas, generally speaking. This should be, of course, discussed.”
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon speaks at the INSS conference on January 19, 2015 (Youtube screenshot)
Ya’alon blames the breakdown in ties between the two countries on Turkey and its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“We didn’t initiate a deterioration in the relationship. It was a Turkish initiative, Erdogan’s initiative to deteriorate the relationship. Since the Mavi Marmara flotille, we’ve tried hard to settle it. We failed. We try again and again,” Ya’alon tells journalists
“It’s been renewed recently. Is it because of the conflict between Turkey and Russia? Maybe,” he says. “I’m not sure that we’re going to reach settlement — it may be — but they have to address our conditions for any political settlement.”
— Judah Ari Gross
Representatives of Sara Netanyahu announce that they will appeal to the Jerusalem Labor Court over its decision to award Menny Naftali damages over claims of verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife.
Yesterday, the court awarded Naftali, NIS 170,000 compensation (about $43,735) for the years of mistreatment while working as caretaker of the Prime Minister’s residence. The court also ruled Naftali had been misled over his terms of employment at the residence.
Menny Naftali, the former caretaker at the Prime Minister’s Residence, at the Jerusalem District Labor Court, March 25, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Naftali had sued the state, the Netanyahus, and the deputy director of the Prime Minister’s Office for NIS 1 million ($258,000) in 2014.
A UN human rights investigator urges Israel to investigate what he called excessive force used by Israel against Palestinians.
Makarim Wibisono, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, also calls on Israel to charge, or release, all Palestinian prisoners being held under administrative detention, including children, Reuters reports.
“The upsurge in violence is a grim reminder of the unsustainable human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the volatile environment it engenders,” he says, according to Reuters.
Deputy head of the Shin Bet Nadav Argaman will replace Yoram Cohen as the organization’s head, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announces.
Argaman, 55, joined an elite IDF unit in 1978, and five years later joined the Shin Bet security service.
In 2003-2007 he served as head of operations for the Shin Bet, and then served for four years as a representative of the organization in the US.
Incoming Shin Bet head Nadav Argaman (Shin Bet)
He was later appointed deputy head of the Shin Bet security service, and after three years, in September 2014, served on the Atomic Energy Commission. In September 2015 he returned to the position of deputy head of the service at the request of Cohen.
Leading poverty scholar Anthony Atkinson is among the winners of this year’s Dan David Prize for scientific, technological and cultural accomplishments.
Atkinson is being honored for developing public policy in Britain and Europe on poverty. Francois Bourguignon, former World Bank chief economist, and Nobel laureate James Heckman are also being honored for work impacting poverty studies.
The Dan David Foundation awards three $1 million prizes annually in three categories: past, present and future.
The prize is named after the late philanthropist Dan David and administered by Tel Aviv University.
Other recipients this year are historians Inga Clendinnen, Catherine Hall, and Arlette Farge, and scientists Paul Alivisatos, Chad Mirkin and John Pendry.
Previous recipients include former US Vice President Al Gore and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Shin Bet head Yoram Cohen welcomes the appointment of Nadav Argaman, who is set to assume the position of leader of the organization.
“I welcome the appointment and am convinced that Nadav will meet the challenges that the service requires,” he says.
President Reuven Rivlin congratulates incoming Shin Bet head Nadav Argaman, who the Israeli leader says is the “right man at the right time.”
“I am confident that due to your many years of professional service and your intelligence, which I was exposed to during my visits to the Shin Bet, you will allow Israeli citizens as much as possible to live their daily lives even in the difficult times that befall us,” Rivlin says.
The kosher certification of the cafeteria at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s humanities department at Mount Scopus is removed.
The university does not provide an explanation for the move.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warns that if Arab forces enter the Syrian war, they could spark a “new world war” and urges ceasefire talks instead.
“The Americans and our Arabic partners must think hard about this: do they want a permanent war?” he is quoted as telling the German Handelsblatt business daily. “Do they really think they would win such a war very quickly?”
He adds: “All sides must be forced to the negotiating table instead of sparking a new world war.”
Yair Lapid cancels the Yesh Atid party primaries.
Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid in Jerusalem on January 25, 2016 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Lapid will also choose the candidates for the next Knesset list on his own, Channel 10 reports.
A United Nations official says the Islamic terrorist group Hamas has prevented a senior employee of the international organization from leaving the Gaza Strip.
The official says Mahmoud Daher, the Palestinian head of the World Health Organization’s Gaza office, was barred from leaving. The official speaks on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident.
The official says Hamas announced two weeks ago that international organizations would need a Hamas-issued exit permit when leaving the territory into Israel. The organization had previously been exempt from acquiring the permit. The UN asked for a month to study the request.
The move appears to be an attempt by Hamas to exert its influence on the UN, which provides assistance to hundreds of thousands of impoverished Gazans.
A State Department official says the US does not know the precise location of tons of low-enriched uranium shipped out of Iran on a Russian vessel under the landmark nuclear agreement.
Testifying, Ambassador Stephen Mull tells the House Foreign Affairs Committee the stockpile is a Russian custody issue.
Critics of the nuclear deal seized on the shipment’s status to show the agreement’s flaws. Republican congressman Chris Smith says it’s “outrageous and unbelievable” that Russia is being trusted to be the repository for such sensitive material. Russia is a close ally of Iran.
The low-enriched uranium is suitable mainly for generating nuclear power and needs substantial further enrichment for use in the core of a nuclear warhead.
Mull says he’s confident the material will be controlled properly
— AP
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