Elie Leshem is deputy editor of The Times of Israel.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Tuesday’s news as it unfolded.
Americans begin voting in what is deemed the most pivotal day in the presidential candidate nominating process, with front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hoping to wipe out their rivals.
Voters in a dozen states will take part in “Super Tuesday” — a series of primaries and caucuses in states ranging from Alaska to Virginia, with Virginia the first to open its polling stations at 6:00 a.m. (1100 GMT).
— AFP
The Defense Ministry and the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency has begun the delivery of parts for the David’s Sling missile defense system to the Israeli Air Force, the Defense Ministry says.
The medium-range missile interceptor system, also known as Magic Wand, passed a battery of tests in recent years, and was declared operational in December.
Meant to replace the Patriot missiles currently in Israel’s arsenal, the new system can also be deployed against aircraft.
— Times of Israel staff contributed
A public meeting between a Palestinian official and an Israeli politician, slated to take place Tuesday at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was canceled by the PA after the Palestinian official received death threats, the Hebrew University announces.
“The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Truman Institute for Peace has been forced to cancel the public meeting today between Dr. Mahmoud al-Habbash, a senior aide to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Member of Knesset Ofer Shelah,” a university spokesman says in a statement. “This follows notification from Palestinian Authority officials that their highest security echelons had received information about threats to Dr. al-Habbash’s life.”
The spokesman says that the Truman Institute had faced pressure over the past week to cancel the meeting, but was ready to go ahead with it until the PA prevented al-Habbash’s participation. He says the university had been prepared to provide “the highest levels” of security for the event.
“We regret that dialogue was once again prevented, and that we who are engaged in the important work of advancing peace were not able to continue and carry out this important mandate,” says Prof. Menachem Blondheim, the director of the Truman Institute.
Google-owned traffic app Waze hits back at suggestions its directions led Israeli soldiers into a Palestinian refugee camp where they were attacked, sparking bloody clashes.
Two Israeli soldiers were said to be using the app when they mistakenly drove into the Qalandiya refugee camp overnight, sparking clashes as security forces deployed to rescue them that killed one Palestinian and wounded 15 people.
Waze, the Israeli-developed navigation app acquired by Google for more than $1 billion in 2013, says the soldiers themselves were at fault.
“(Waze) includes a specific default setting that prevents routes through areas which are marked as dangerous or prohibited for Israelis to drive through,” the company says in a statement to AFP.
“In this case, the setting was disabled. In addition, the driver deviated from the suggested route and as a result, entered the prohibited area. There are also red signs on the road in question that prohibit access to Palestinian-controlled territories (for Israelis). It is the responsibility of every driver to adhere to road and traffic signs and obey local laws.
“Waze has and is continuing to work directly with the relevant authorities to decrease such mishaps from occurring, but unfortunately there is no ability to prevent them altogether as ultimately some prudence is in the driver’s hands,” the statement says.
— AFP
Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would handily beat Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, in a presidential election – 52% to 44%, and 55% to 43%, respectively – a new CNN/ORC poll says as Super Tuesday voting begins in a dozen states.
However, should Marco Rubio Trump best Trump in the Republican race, he would pose a far more formidable foe to Clinton, winning 50% of the popular vote to her 47%, the poll says.
Ted Cruz would also mount a stronger challenge to Clinton, who is predicted to win the Democratic nomination, and would edge her 49% to 48%.
But Sanders, the poll finds, would beat not only Trump but Rubio (53%-45%) and Cruz (57%-40%) as well.
In his last will and testament, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden claimed he had about $29 million in personal wealth — most of which he wanted to be used “on jihad, for the sake of Allah.”
The will is released in a batch of more than 100 documents seized in the May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The al-Qaeda leader planned to divide his fortune among his relatives, but wanted most of it spent to conduct the work of the Islamic extremist terror network behind the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The documents are declassified and made public after a lengthy review by government agencies.
— AP
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders votes in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont as Super Tuesday kicks off across 11 states.
Sanders tells reporters that if voter turnout is high “we are going to do well. If not, we’re probably going to be struggling.”
Sanders says “this is a campaign that is going to the Philadelphia convention in July.”
He jokes that “Bernie Sanders here in Vermont got at least one vote. I was working on my wife,” Jane. He says, “We’re feeling pretty good.”
— AP
A Palestinian man killed Monday in clashes with Israeli forces who had entered Qalandiya, a refugee camp near Jerusalem, to extricate two soldiers who were stranded there is laid to rest.
Iyad Omar Sajadiyya, 22, is buried in Qalandiya, with mourners on hand calling for revenge over “the Israeli occupation’s crimes against the Palestinian people,” the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports.
“My only son Iyad died a martyr in sacrifice for Palestine,” Sajadiyya’s father, Omar, is quoted as saying. “He wasn’t the first martyr, nor will he be the last.”
Two Israeli fighter jets come dangerously close to a passenger airliner.
The plane, a Ryanair flight headed from Ovda airport near Eilat to Krakow, had just taken off when the fighter jets drew near, endangering it, reports say.
The army and the Transportation Ministry say they are looking into the reports.
Donald Trump says that Marco Rubio should pull out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination should he have a poor showing on Super Tuesday.
“I think he has to get out,” Trump says in a phone interview with Fox News. “You know, he hasn’t won anything, and Ted Cruz very rightly points out, you know, Marco has not won.”
Trump is leading in polls in at least eight of the 11 Super Tuesday states.
A new CNN/ORC poll shows the billionaire expanding his lead nationally, earning a stunning 49 percent of support compared to second-place Rubio, at 16%.
Cruz of Texas is third, at 15 percent, followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 10 percent and Ohio Governor John Kasich at six percent.
— AFP contributed
A 2-year-old Arab boy was held for four hours at a police station in Jerusalem along with his parents and brother, 16, who was arrested over various suspicions, including that he had thrown rocks, Haaretz reports.
The boy, from Issawiya in the east of the city, was eventually released to his grandparents, the report says. Throughout his stay at the police station, he was barefoot and in pajamas.
“We didn’t understand what they wanted,” his mother, Tahrir, tells Haaretz of the security forces who arrived in their home at 2 a.m. Sunday to arrest the boy’s brother. “Their entire bodies were covered. We saw only their eyes. They knocked my husband to the ground and banged my 20-year-old son’s head against a door several time[s].”
Iran’s president calls for foreign partnerships to boost the country’s car industry and says the sector must be privatized to improve its competitiveness.
President Hassan Rouhani tells a car industry conference in a nationally broadcast speech that partnerships with international carmakers offer a quick way to improve the industry’s technology and safety.
“There is a shortcut … We have to start partnerships with prominent world carmakers. We will reach to the optimum point in technology, protecting the environment, saving energy and safety,” Rouhani says.
He says partnerships with foreign carmakers will serve the best interests of all sides, and increasing the competitiveness of the local market can only help strengthen the industry.
“The government will never be a good manager in industry, including the car industry. The sector should be completely privatized and competitive,” he says. “The partnership will drive us ahead.”
But he also warned that plan would mean removing government protections of the domestic car market such as prohibitions or heavy tariffs on imported vehicles. Rouhani said the days of the state-sponsored auto monopoly must end.
“To close the doors and at the same time impose the products of one or two car factories on the people, while saying these are your only choices whether you like it or not, is not an acceptable logic,” he says.
— AP
BUENOS AIRES — Former Argentinian spy chief Antonio Stiuso testifies that he believes AMIA bombing prosecutor Alberto Nisman “was killed” and that he is sure former president Cristina Kirchner “impeded” the investigation into the deadly 1994 bombing of Buenos Aires’s AMIA Jewish community center.
Stiuso aided Nisman in the AMIA bombing investigation, and in closed-door testimony given to a judge Monday he said Nisman had been murdered, local news site Infobae quots judicial sources saying.
Stiuso delivered the 16-hour testimony to Judge Fabiana Palmaghini, who declared herself unfit to continue to head the investigation immediately afterward.
With her recusal, the case will go to federal court.
Nisman was found shot dead in his apartment on January 18, 2015. Days earlier, he had accused then president Kirchner of helping Iranian officials cover up Iran’s role in the AMIA bombing, in which 85 people were killed. The case against Kirchner was later thrown out.
Nisman tried to contact Stiuso four times by telephone the day before he was found dead. Stiuso said in a statement to a prosecutor last year that he never heard the calls.
Stiuso fled Argentina shortly after that, complaining of threats on his life. He had failed to comply with a summons ordering him to testify until now.
At the time, Kirchner suggested Nisman was killed by rogue intelligence agents, though she gave no evidence. She also said that Stiuso fed false information to Nisman and even had a hand in writing the late prosecutor’s report detailing the accusations against her.
Stiuso oversaw a widespread wire-tapping operation before he was removed as head of Argentina’s spy agency in December 2014.
— Ilan Ben Zion with AP
Several hundred people, largely Ethiopian Israelis, demonstrate in Jerusalem over a decision to close the investigation against police whom they accuse of causing the death of Yosef Salamsa, a member of the community, in 2014.
The demonstrators intermittently block Route 1 in front of the Israel Police headquarters, and four are arrested.
Police say that due to the blocking of the road, cops are redirecting traffic to alternate routes.
“The police emphasizes that all protests must be conducted lawfully,” a spokesperson says. “We call on the leaders of the [Ethiopian-Israeli] community to show restraint and heed police’s instructions.”
Police officers detained Salamsa, a young Ethiopian Israeli, in Zichron Yaakov in March 2014, and tased him in the police station before letting him go. He was never investigated or charged with any crime, and after the incident, he fell into a deep depression, and his family registered a complaint with the Justice Ministry’s Police Internal Investigations Department.
In the wake of that complaint, activists say, police began to harass Salamsa, whose corpse was found in early July 2014, three days after he failed to come home from work. He had apparently fallen to his death in a quarry, although his family maintains he may have been murdered.
In closing the investigation recently, the Police Internal Investigations Department said there was no criminal aspect to the conduct of the officers involved in Salamsa’s arrest. However, it did censure them for lying about the incident after the fact.
— Renee Ghert-Zand contributed
Police now say they have arrested eight demonstrators at the Ethiopian-Israeli protest in Jerusalem.
They say the road in front of police headquarters has now been opened in both directions and the protesters have all moved to the sidewalk.
House Speaker Paul Ryan says anyone who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee must reject any racist group or individual.
Ryan makes the tacit swipe at GOP front-runner Donald Trump as voters in 11 states head to the polls on Super Tuesday. Ryan tells reporters that the GOP is the party of President Abraham Lincoln and “this party does not prey on people’s prejudices.”
He bemoans the current discourse in the GOP and says it is time to get back to focusing on how Republicans would solve the nation’s problems.
Ryan was the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2012. He says he has tried to avoid commenting on the presidential race but felt a need to speak up.
— AP
Iran boosted oil exports by 30 percent last month, Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh says, after Tehran dismisses an output freeze despite historic low prices.
Zangeneh tells the Shana news agency that exports increased to 1.75 million barrels per day during the Iranian month of Bahman, which runs from January 21 to February 19.
“This represents an increase of 400,000 barrels per day compared to the same period last year,” he says.
The production also included gas condensates.
Iran, which has the world’s second largest crude reserves, currently produces about 2.8 million bpd, but output during Bahman rose off the additional exports to 3.2 million bpd.
Tehran has come under pressure from OPEC members Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Qatar as well as Russia to follow their lead by freezing output at January levels as crude prices plumbed 13-year lows.
Zanganeh said after the nuclear deal with world powers that Tehran would “support any measure that can stabilise the market and increase prices” but stopped short of committing Iran to any curbs.
— AFP
Reports say a brawl has broken out between Jews and Arabs in Givat Ze’ev, a settlement just north of Jerusalem.
Unconfirmed reports say a man was stabbed and is being evacuated to a hospital.
The European Commission announces that it has approved a new assistance package for the Palestinians worth €252.5 million ($274.1 million).
In a press release, the Commission says it is the first part of the 2016 package, €170.5 million of which is set to be funneled directly to the Palestinian Authority, with a focus on education and health services, support for hospitals in East Jerusalem, and assistance to poor families.
The remaining €82 million will go to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Near East (UNRWA).
The statement says a second package will be announced later in the year.
“The European Union renews its concrete commitment to the Palestinians,” Federica Mogherini, the EU high representative for foreign affairs, says.
“Through this package, the EU supports the daily lives of Palestinians in the fields of education and health, protecting the poorest families and also providing the Palestinian refugees with access to essential services. These are tangible steps on the ground that can improve the lives of Palestinian people,” she adds.
Mogherini calls on the PA to “become more transparent, more accountable and more democratic” and uphold human rights, which she says are prerequisites for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian State “living side by side, in peace and security, with the State of Israel and other neighbors.”
While the press release refers to the Palestinian Authority as Palestine, it notes that the designation “shall not be construed as recognition of a State of Palestine and is without prejudice to the individual positions of the Member States on this issue.”
Israeli prosecutors indicted four Jewish youths, all 17 years old, suspected of a “racially motivated” assault on two Arab men in the coastal city of Netanya, the Justice Ministry says.
A ministry statement says the four had been drinking alcohol at a beach on February 17, when they saw the two Arabs heading toward an elevator.
They allegedly began following them and insulted the Prophet Mohammed before throwing stones and empty bottles at the pair who fled to the elevator, only to be trapped inside it where the attack continued.
One Arab was pulled from the elevator and branded a “terrorist.” He was beaten and choked until he lost his consciousness and was eventually taken to a hospital.
The four were charged with “racially motivated aggravated assault,” the ministry’s statement reads.
— AFP
Donald Trump won praise from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan for not taking Jewish money in his quest for the White House.
Farrakhan, who has made frequent anti-Semitic comments, lauded Trump during a sermon Sunday in Chicago, according to the Anti-Defamation League website the following day.
The praise from Farrakhan comes on the heels of a controversy in which the Republican presidential front-runner failed to immediately disavow the endorsement of David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader.
According to the ADL, Farrakhan said the billionaire Trump is “the only member who has stood in front of the Jewish community and said I don’t want your money. Anytime a man can say to those who control the politics of America, ‘I don’t want your money,’ that means you can’t control me. And they cannot afford to give up control of the presidents of the United States.”
Farrakhan, 82, stopped short of a full endorsement, however, stating: “Not that I’m for Mr. Trump, but I like what I’m looking at.”
The ADL says Farrakhan’s sermon also blamed Jews, to whom he referred as the “Synagogue of Satan,” for the Iraq War and 9/11 terror attacks.
— JTA
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon says that despite a ceasefire having come into effect in Syria, government forces there used chemical weapons on civilians this week.
“The Syrians used military grade chemical weapons and lately have been using materials, chlorine, against civilians, including in these very days, after the supposed ceasefire, dropping barrels of chlorine on civilians,” he says, without providing further details, according to Reuters.
A statement from Ryanair provides further details regarding an incident earlier Tuesday that saw two Israeli fighter jets come close to one of its airliners.
The statement asserts that reports that a crash was narrowly averted were exaggerated:
This flight from Krakow to Eilat Ovda (1 Mar) was cruising at 27,000 ft in Israeli airspace when two military aircraft (over 3 miles away) were noticed by the crew ascending towards the Ryanair aircraft flight path. The crew notified local ATC and the military aircraft descended away from the Ryanair jet, which continued on to Eilat Ovda and landed without incident.
These military aircraft were at all times over 3 miles away from the Ryanair aircraft, so the reports of a “nearly crash” or “evasive manoeuvres” are all false and invented. All passengers on board the Ryanair aircraft noticed nothing, since our aircraft never diverted from its cleared flight path to Ovda.
Donald Trump is criticizing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during a campaign rally in Ohio.
He’s telling a crowd of 4,000 in a hangar at Port Columbus International Airport that “Clinton does not have the strength and the stamina to be president.”
Trump also repeats his attacks against GOP rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and vows to win Ohio’s primary in two weeks over GOP rival John Kasich, the state’s governor.
Trump gets his largest response when he speaks about building a wall between the US and Mexico, protecting gun rights and “saying Merry Christmas again.”
— AP
Hillary Clinton says Republicans aren’t even talking about issues in their protracted race for the GOP presidential nomination.
She tells reporters in Minneapolis that the GOP candidates are “now running their campaigns based on insults. It’s turned into a kind of one-upmanship on insulting.”
The Democratic presidential frontrunner says she doesn’t think it’s appropriate.
She also says she is “disappointed” that Donald Trump did not disavow David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan in a weekend interview.
Clinton adds that Trump “obviously” has done very well and “could be on the path” to the GOP nomination.
— AP
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