Gavin Rabinowitz is a news editor at The Times of Israel
The Times of Israel liveblogged Thursday’s events as they unfolded.
Israeli security forces say they have arrested a terror cell operating out of the Arab Israeli town of Jaljulia who were planning to kill an Israeli officer to avenge the recent killing of a Hamas terror chief in Gaza, the Shin Bet says.
At the heart of the plot are two brothers, Adam Ismail Muhammad Faki, 25, and Faras Ismail Muhammad Faki, 27. Adam Faki was reportedly recruited into Hamas during a visit to the Gaza Strip in December 2014 for a family wedding, where he underwent training.
In recent months he was asked to plan an attack on an Israeli officer to avenge the killing of Hamas’s Mazan Faqha, who was shot in March in an assassination the Gaza terror group blamed on Israel.
Faki bought two pistols and a silencer and was planning the attack, the Shin Bet says.
In total, seven people are detained for various roles in the plot.
A 27-year-old American who joined the Islamic State group and agreed to be a suicide bomber has been convicted of helping the jihadist organization, US prosecutors say.
Mohamad Jamal Khweis had traveled in December 2015 to IS’s Syrian stronghold of Raqa after quitting his job, selling his car and closing online accounts, authorities say. His family had no idea of his plans.
During his trial, Khweis admitted he spent about two and a half months as a member of IS, taking part in religious training and staying in various safe houses.
“When Khweis joined ISIS, he agreed to be a suicide bomber,” the Department of Justice says in a statement.
He was detained by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in March 2016 in Tal Afar, Iraq.
— AFP
US first lady Melania Trump is set to finally move to the White House next week, Politico reports.
Melania and US President Donald Trump’s youngest son Barron are expected to finally make their official move to Washington on June 14, people familiar with the planning tell Politico.
Trump is the first first lady in modern history to delay her arrival, the report says.
A founder of J Street and a scion of a famed Wisconsin family is running for Congress as a Democrat in a district seen as solidly Republican.
Dan Kohl in announcing his candidacy yesterday emphasized his role in helping to start J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East lobby.
“Seeking to reground American foreign policy in the wake of the Iraq War, Dan joined J Street as Vice President of Political Affairs in 2009, and oversaw the development of the nation’s largest pro-Israel political action committee,” says the note on his biography page.
Kohl is a lawyer who has worked as an executive on the Milwaukee Bucks, the team his uncle Herb Kohl bought in 1985 to keep it from moving out of the city. The elder Kohl, who was a US Senator from 1989 to 2013 and an heir to the Kohl’s department store chain, sold the team in 2014.
Dan Kohl has also been on National Board of Governors of the American Jewish Committee, on the board of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and a chairman of the Milwaukee Jewish Day School.
— JTA
The five men who carried out twin attacks in Tehran were Iranians who joined the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria before returning last summer, the Iranian intelligence ministry says.
“The five known terrorists… after joining the Daesh (IS) terrorist group, left the country and participated in crimes carried out by this terrorist group in Mosul and Raqqa,” the ministry says in a statement.
The statement indicates only five people carried out Wednesday’s twin attacks, rather than six as originally reported.
The ministry released images and the first names of the dead attackers, who killed 17 people and wounded dozens in gun and bomb assaults on Tehran’s parliamentary complex and the shrine of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini on Wednesday.
It says the five men were part of a network that entered Iran in July-August 2016 under the leadership of “high-ranking Daesh commander” Abu Aisha and that “intended to carry out terrorist operations in religious cities.”
— AFP
The Lod District Court has convicted three Jewish Israelis of so-called “price tag” attacks against Palestinians, a human rights group that represents the victims says.
According to Yesh Din the prosecution has asked for them to receive sentences of between 42 and 75 months in prison for the “violent, racially motivated attacks against Palestinians.
“This case needs to be a wake-up call for the authorities,” says Yesh Din, also known as Volunteers for Human Rights.
They give no details on the identity of the attackers or the crimes.
Archaeologists in the city of city of Wroclaw in western Poland have found the foundations of the historic New Synagogue, which was destroyed in 1938 during Kristallnacht.
At the time the region was part of Germany and it was the second largest synagogue in pre-war Germany.
The synagogue was built in 1865 and had four towers and a seventy-yard-high dome. The synagogue served the liberal Jewish community. It was destroyed during Kristallnacht, or Night of the Broken Glass, in November 1938. At present, on the site where the synagogue sat, stands a monument.
The archaeological digs are being conducted with the financial support of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
— JTA
US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is touring Israeli villages near the Gaza Strip border.
At Kibbutz Nahal Oz residents told Haley about life on the border and living under the threat of rockets fired by the Hamas terror group.
Diana Ben David, a local teacher, thanked Haley for standing up for Israel, saying “we finally feel we have someone protecting us at the UN”
Haley was also presented with a book filled with drawings made by Israeli kindergarten children.
The ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee says former FBI director James Comey’s account of his conversations with the president about the Russia investigation are “disturbing.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia will emphasize at Thursday’s committee hearing that the American people need to realize that what happened was that a president asked an FBI director to drop an ongoing investigation into a former national security adviser.
Warner released excerpts of his opening remarks to the committee early Thursday ahead of the hearing.
Warner says that in violation of clear guidelines put in place after Watergate to prevent any whiff of political interference by the White House in FBI investigations, US President Donald Trump also called Comey twice to ask him to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation over his White House.
— AP
A Palestinian who had been released from Israeli prison following a two-month hunger strike was again arrested overnight for incitement, Israeli security forces say.
Mohammed Allan was detained for questioning “as part of the struggle against the phenomenon of Palestinian incitement in media and social media, which leads to severe attacks in Israel,” the Shin Bet says.
The 32-year-old resident of Einabus in the northern West Bank was arrested for “inciting through the media while calling for acts of terror and resistance to the ‘Zionist enemy,'” it says.
In November 2015, Allan was released from a year in jail under an Israeli measure known as administrative detention, which allows imprisonment without trial for six-month periods renewable indefinitely.
He was arrested for contacts with the Islamic Jihad with the aim of carrying out attacks.
Allan began a hunger strike in June 2015 that brought him near death and also boosted tensions in the occupied West Bank, with Israel announcing in September that it would not be extending his detention.
— AFP
Heavily armed al-Shabab extremists have stormed a military base in Somalia’s semi autonomous state of Puntland, killing close to 70 people and wounding dozens more, officials say.
Residents say civilians, including women, were beheaded during the rampage.
Officials are calling it the region’s deadliest attack in years, highlighting the twin challenges facing security forces from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab and the growing presence of fighters linked to the Islamic State group.
The attack began with a blast at the remote Af-Urur camp, roughly 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of the commercial hub of Bossaso, before the extremists overran the base and killed soldiers at close range, says Ahmed Mohamed, a senior military official.
Close to 70 people were killed, though an exact death toll was not yet available, Mohamed says.
— AP
Neo-Nazi mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, will take his case over his “inhumane” prison conditions to the European Court of Human Rights, his lawyer says, after exhausting all legal options in Norway.
Breivik, who for safety reasons has been held apart from other inmates since his arrest in 2011, has complained about his lengthy isolation. He wants the Norwegian state to be found guilty of violating the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “inhumane” and “degrading” treatment.
It comes after Norway’s highest court, the Supreme Court, today refused to hear his case.
“None of the elements in the Breivik appeal have any chance of winning,” the court said.
— AFP
Fired FBI chief James Comey takes center stage today in a dramatic day of testimony on a probe into Russian meddling in the US election that is shaking the foundations of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Setting up Comey’s hotly anticipated appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee was a statement for the record yesterday in which the lawman detailed Trump’s persistent pressure for him to show loyalty and drop a probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s Russia links.
Cable news stations have set countdown clocks to the hearing, and a number of bars in Washington are opening early, with TVs tuned to live broadcasts of the hearing — one of them offering free drinks every time Trump tweets about Comey.
On site, more than 300 people are lined up for the hearing in a room with 88 public seats.
— AFP
Qatar’s foreign minister is rejecting attempts to interfere in the country’s foreign policy and says a “military solution” to the country’s crisis with its Gulf neighbors is not an option.
“No one has the right to intervene in our foreign policy,” Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani tells AFP.
“We don’t see a military solution as an option” to the crisis, he says.
— AFP
Fired FBI director James Comey takes the stand in a crucial Senate hearing, repeating explosive allegations that US President Donald Trump badgered him over the highly sensitive investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
In a jam-packed hearing room on Capitol Hill, Comey immediately faces pressure from the Senate Intelligence Committee over whether Trump was obstructing justice in phone calls and meetings they held before the president fired him on May 9.
“The administration chose to defame me and more importantly, the FBI,” comey says. “Those were lies, plain and simple.”
— Agencies
James Comey says he decided to document his meetings with Trump because he feared Trump might “lie” about the content of their discussions.
“I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting,” Comey testifies.
“I knew there might come a day when I would need a record of what had happened,” he says, adding it was necessary to protect the “integrity” of himself and the FBI.
Comey describes as “very disturbing” requests by Trump that he drop an investigation into a former national security adviser’s ties to Russia.
“I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct. I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning,” he says before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
— AFP
Comey says he thought during a January dinner with US President Donald Trump that the president was “looking to get something” in exchange for allowing him to stay on as FBI director.
Comey is describing his views that the president was trying to create a type of “patronage relationship” at the start of the Trump administration.
The ousted FBI head is testifying that the president told him before the dinner he hoped he would stay as director.
Comey says law enforcement leaders aren’t “supposed to be peeking out to see whether your patron is pleased or not with what you’re doing.”
— AP
Asked why he thinks he was fired, Comey says he takes the president at his word.
“I don’t know for sure, I take the president at his word that it was about the Russia investigation,” Comey says.
“I don’t know the president well,” Comey says, trying to interpret Trump’s actions. “He was asking for something and I was refusing to give it,” he says, referring to a request to make a public statement that Trump was not under investigation.
Comey said he hoped that there were tapes of the meeting, as Trump tweeted, to back up his version of events.
“I’ve seen the tweet about tapes. Lordy, I hope there are tapes.”
Comey says he took “as a direction” US President Donald Trump’s remark that he hoped Comey would drop an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Republican Sen. James Risch of Idaho asked if Comey was aware of anyone being charged with obstruction of justice because they expressed hope for a certain outcome. Comey says he wasn’t.
But Comey added at his Senate hearing: “I took it as a direction,” and noted that the remark came during a one-on-one meeting with the president of the United States.
— AP
Comey says, “Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” of his conversations with Trump.
Three days after Trump fired Comey, the president tweeted that Comey should hope there are “no tapes” of their conversations.
Comey documented his conversations with Trump in memos after the encounters. During his first public appearance since he was fired, senators asked Comey about his responses to Trump.
Comey says he chose his words carefully when responding to Trump because he was “so stunned” by the conversation. Comey was recalling a February conversation in which, Comey says, Trump said he hoped Comey could let go the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn’s calls with the Russians.
— AP
US President Donald Trump has so far stayed off Twitter during former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony. But his eldest son hasn’t.
Donald Trump Jr. is posting repeatedly during the closely watched testimony Thursday.
He repeatedly defended his father and attacked Comey.
Trump Jr. in particular seized on Comey’s assertion that he interpreted the president’s statement that he “hoped” the FBI would drop its probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
So if he was a "Stronger guy" he might have actually followed procedure & the law? You were the director of the FBI, who are you kidding?
Trump Jr. tweeted “you would think a guy like Comey” would know the difference between “hoping and telling.”
He also cast doubt on all of Comey’s testimony and said he should “have actually followed procedure.”
Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric are now at the helm of their father’s New York-based business.
— AP
Comey says he leaked his personal notes on his meetings with Trump to prompt the naming of a special prosecutor to lead the Russia probe.
He said he asked a friend at Columbia Law School to share his written recollection of those conversations with a reporter after Trump fired him on May 9.
“I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons,” Comey says. “But I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel” to conduct the investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russian meddling in the 2016 election, he says.
The New York Times published a report on the Comey memo on May 16, and the following day former FBI director Robert Mueller was named special counsel to take over the investigation.
Comey says he used a friend because he did not want to create a frenzy. “It would be like feeding seagulls at the beach.”
— Agencies
US President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Marc Kasowitz plans to make a statement following the congressional testimony of former FBI director James Comey.
Trump tasked Kasowitz late last month with responding to matters arising from various probes of Russian interference in the election.
This would be the first public appearance by Kasowitz.
— AP
Comey says there should be absolutely no doubt that the Russians interfered in the US elections
“They did it with purpose, they did it with sophistication,” Comey says. “There should be no fuzz in this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in the election.”
“That’s about as un-fake as you can possibly get.”
Comey says if US President Donald Trump recorded their conversations, he hopes the president will “release all the tapes.”
Comey is being asked about the possibility that Trump may have recorded their conversations. The president alluded to that possibility in a tweet after he fired Comey in May.
Comey says in his Senate Intelligence Committee testimony that he hopes there are tapes, adding the president should “release all the tapes.” He says he’s “good with it.”
— AP
The public part of the Comey testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee has ended and adjourned for a vote on an unrelated matter and lunch.
His questioning will continue later behind closed doors where he will be talking about classified details of the investigation into Russia’s interference in the elections.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is sending Ramadan greetings to Muslims in Israel and around the world.
The video posted on YouTube highlighted the role of Muslims in all facets of Israeli society.
“We live together, we learn from one another,” Netanyahu says.
“I want to wish a Ramadan Kareem to all Israel’s Muslim citizens and to all Muslims around the world.”
A White House spokeswoman says US President Donald Trump is “not a liar.”
Former FBI director James Comey opened his Senate testimony by saying the administration had spread “lies, plain and simple” and “defamed” him and the agency.
The White House had claimed after Comey’s May 9 dismissal that he had lost the confidence of rank-and-file FBI agents.
Trump claimed separately in a television interview that the FBI was “in turmoil” and hadn’t recovered.
Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed Comey’s testimony when asked about it during an off-camera briefing at the White House, saying “I can definitely say the president’s not a liar.”
— AP
A White House spokeswoman says she doesn’t know if President Donald Trump is taping his Oval Office conversations, but will “try to look under the couch.”
Trump tweeted last month that fired FBI Director James Comey better hope there are no “tapes” of their conversations. Comey, testifying on Capitol Hill Thursday, said he indeed hoped tapes existed and called on the president to release them if they do.
The White House has refused to answer what the president was referring to in his tweet. Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that she had “no idea” about Oval Office taping.
— AP
President Donald Trump avoids directly responding to explosive accusations made by his ex-FBI director, but sought to rally supporters behind a message of defiance.
“We are going to fight and win,” Trump said, addressing supporters at a Faith and Freedom Coalition event in the capital.
— AFP
US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley has followed up her tour of the Gaza border with a briefing on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
Haley visited Kibbutz Misgav Am and was briefed by army officers and from UNIFIL forces on the Hezbollah terror group in southern Lebanon.
Earlier, she toured the Gaza border and saw the Hamas attack tunnels into southern Israel.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman tells Channel 2 news that Israel is close to a peace deal with the Palestinians.
“We are far closer to a deal than ever before,” he says. “I hope we will be able to realize this option,” he says.
How so, he is asked? “Because Trump has arrived on the scene and because, as I keep saying, the Arab countries have internalized that their problem is not Israel. Israel can be a solution to the problem.”
“If you’re asking me whether [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is making every effort,” he adds, “yes, he is. I can testify that he is making a great many efforts.”
US President Donald Trump has been pushing Israel and the Palestinians to resume peace talks.
Liberman has long said he does not believe a peace deal is achievable in the foreseeable future.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman says the opportunity for full relations with Arab states would sway the government to accept a deal with the Palestinians.
“If someone comes and puts a deal on the table that includes an agreement with all the moderate Arab states, including the opening of embassies, trade relations and direct flights, I believe that it will get an overwhelming majority in the Knesset and among the people,” he tells Channel 2.
Asked what such a scenario depends upon, he says “leave that for the next interview.”
Are things going on behind the scenes, he is asked, but refuses to elaborate.
The International Red Cross is urging the Hamas terrorist organization to clarify the fate of the five missing Israeli nationals it allegedly holds.
“The right to know the fate of missing relatives is a fundamental principle of humanitarian law,” the organization says in a statement. “Yet, recent video clips portraying the missing Israeli nationals and their families are giving rise to new speculations about their fate and adding to their families’ anguish.”
The statement came two months after Hamas’s military wing released a Hebrew-language music video that taunts the parents of two Israeli soldiers presumed killed in action in a war with the terror group, claiming the men are actually alive and captives in Gaza.
In addition, Hamas reportedly holds Israeli civilians Hisham al-Sayed and Avraham Mengistu, after they sneaked into the blockaded Palestinian enclave. Both men suffer from serious mental health issues, the HRW report said.
They are also reportedly holding a third civilian.
“Missing persons, regardless of their status – fallen or captured soldiers during fighting, or civilians taken captive by an adverse party – are protected by humanitarian law,” the ICRC says. “They and their families must be shown due regard under the law.”
Qatar-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera says it is under cyberattack on “all systems.”
The network tweeted about the attack, three days after Saudi Arabia and its allies severed ties with Qatar and cut off land, sea and air routes to the Gulf nation.
Al-Jazeera says on its website that its digital properties are under “systemic and continual hacking attempts.”
Its website appeared to be operating normally in New York.
Al-Jazeera has long angered Middle Eastern governments with its coverage of protests, opposition movements and controversial issues.
— AP
US President Donald Trump’s personal attorney says the president “never, in form or substance” directed former FBI director James Comey to stop investigating anyone. That includes former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
Marc Kasowitz is responding to Comey’s Thursday morning testimony, in which the fired FBI director said Trump urged him to drop the Flynn case.
Kasowitz says that the president is “entitled to expect loyalty” from those serving the administration. But he says Trump never told Comey, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,” in form or substance, as Comey claimed.
Trump tasked Kasowitz late last month with responding to matters arising from various probes of Russian interference in the election.
He is expected to deliver a spoken statement shortly.
— AP
President Donald Trump’s lawyer is accusing fired FBI director James Comey of “unauthorized disclosures” of “privileged communications” he had with the president.
Marc Kasowitz said there continues “to be those in government who are actively attempting to undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications.”
He says “Comey has now admitted that he is one of the leakers.”
Comey said in his testimony that he leaked his memos of his conversations with the president to a friend after a tweet by the president suggested he may have taped the conversations.
Kasowitz says Trump’s team will “leave it to the appropriate authorities” to determine whether the leak should be investigated.
— AP
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