Israel, a new year: 7 things to know for April 20

1. Amid barbecue smoke and aerobatic flyover performances by army jets, the Jewish state is officially 70 years old, and the coverage from Israel’s major media outlets reflects the strange mixture of heartwarming, complicated and noxious news which make the country what it is today.

• Israel Hayom zooms in on the state’s official Independence Day ceremony, and particularly on Miriam Peretz’s speech after being awarded the 2018 Israel prize for Lifetime Achievement and Special Contribution to Society for her work in education.
• Peretz, 65, lost two of her sons in combat. In 1998, her eldest, Uriel, was killed in Lebanon at 22. Eliraz Peretz, who served in the elite Sayeret Golani unit like his brother, was killed in 2010 near the border with Gaza.
• “When one’s heart is full of faith it can stand in the face of adversity and create great creations,” Peretz said. “Among those who have received this prize are some who have encountered loss and nevertheless their spirit has not been broken, they continue to work in society, each in their own way, to make it better, and there are others who act not only for themselves but for the State of Israel.”

2. The Israel Prize — in the categories of literature, sciences and the arts — is awarded each spring on the day of the Jewish state’s independence.

• This year’s award ceremony, which brought Israel’s 70th Independence Day festivities to a close, was attended by President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, High Court President Esther Hayut and Education Minister Naftali Bennett.
• Aside from Peretz, 15 other individuals were awarded the prize this year, including Jewish Agency chief Nathan Sharansky, veteran former lawmaker and minister David Levy, and author David Grossman, who angered government officials on Tuesday by speaking at a joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony in Tel Aviv.

3. The official Independence Day torch-lighting ceremony that took place on Wednesday night was overshadowed by the political squabble between Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and Culture Minister Miri Regev, both members of the ruling Likud party, over Netanyahu’s determination to attend the event and address the invited guests. The Knesset speaker is traditionally the most senior official to speak at the event, which is supposed to be kept free of politics.

• Edelstein had initially threatened to boycott the event over the demand by Regev, whose ministry is responsible for producing it, to allow Netanyahu to deliver a speech. The Knesset speaker claimed the prime minister’s unexpected inclusion in the official 70th Independence Day festivities amounted to “politicizing” the event. The sides reached a compromise deal allowing Netanyahu to light a torch and make a short speech no more than five minutes in length and limited in scope to the Declaration of Independence.
• After the event, Edelstein asserted that the prime minister’s credibility had been hurt after the premier spoke for nearly three times the length he had agreed to. He also dismissed claims by Regev that he had spoken to her threateningly in a private meeting. “I remember what I responded to her because it was very brief. I told her I was done with her nonsense and that if she continues in that path it would be a very serious political mistake,” he said.
• Responding to the Knesset speaker’s words, Regev tweeted that the message was “full of lies and half-truths, if not completely false. Edelstein continues to harm Likud, the prime minister, and me, and to behave in a manner that is as far as possible from dignified.”

4. Some 200,000 Israelis visited the country’s national parks to celebrate Independence Day, with 48,000 visiting the Banias Nature Reserve in the Golan Heights and 18,000 camping around the Sea of the Galilee, according to the parks authority.

• More than 20,000 Israelis attended an open house day at a national training facility for police officers, hosted by the Public Security Ministry. Police said around 3 p.m. that all parking spots allocated to visitors had filled up and asked the public not to near the area.

5. Hours after the prime minister announced that at least six countries were “seriously” discussing with Israel relocating their embassies to Jerusalem, Romania indicated that it may become the first European Union member state to actually do so.

• Officials in Bucharest said Thursday that the government has taken steps to advance the relocation, but the move needs to be formally confirmed by the Romanian cabinet. Sources in Jerusalem assess that there is a good chance that Romania may vote in favor of the move.
• Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă, a Social Democrat, on Wednesday proposed the move, and while many members of the ruling party appear in favor of relocating the embassy, the final say on the matter lies with President Klaus Iohannis, a right-leaning independent.
• So far, the US and Guatemala are the only two countries to have formally announced they will move their embassies to Jerusalem.

6. In the West Bank town of Burqa, near Ramallah, vandals spray-painted a building with the words, “Supporters of terror, expel or kill,” and Palestinians also said that the tires of some 40 cars were slashed.

• The incident marks the fourth suspected hate attack by far-right wing Israelis over the past week. On Wednesday vandals cut down more than two dozen olive trees and spray-painted walls in the Palestinian village of Urif outside of Nablus with the words, “Death to Arabs.” The previous day, car tires were deflated and messages including “Expel or kill” and “Enough with administrative orders” were scrawled on walls in the villages of Luban a-Sharqiya in the West Bank and Issawiya in East Jerusalem. Several days beforehand, vandals torched a mosque in the northern West Bank village of Aqraba before dawn.
• Israeli officials suspect that the acts are meant to protest administrative detention orders issued to several far-right Jewish activists in the West Bank. Administrative orders, when used to prevent settler violence, can include detention, bans from entering the entire West Bank, and bans on contacting certain individuals, as well as nightly curfews.
• Administrative detention is also widely used against Palestinians and has been criticized by many rights groups as it allows Israel to hold detainees for long periods of time without trial, access to a lawyer or information on accusations against them.

7. The Genesis Prize announced it was canceling its prize ceremony in Israel in June after 2018 recipient Natalie Portman said she would not come to Israel to take part in light of “recent events.”

• Portman did not specify which events caused her distress, although the United Nations and the European Union recently called for investigations into the use of live ammunition by Israel’s military following clashes along the border with Gaza that have left dozens of Palestinians dead and hundreds wounded.
• Culture Minister Regev, meanwhile, said Portman had “fallen into the hands” of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that aims to isolate the Jewish state. “Natalie, a Jewish actress who was born in Israel, joins those who relate to the story of the success and the wondrous rebirth of Israel as a story of darkness.”
• In 2009, Portman joined other Hollywood stars in protesting calls for a boycott against the Toronto International Film Festival for its staging of a Tel Aviv-themed event. She also directed and starred in a Hebrew-language adaptation of Israeli novelist Amos Oz’s memoir, “A Tale of Love and Darkness.” In a statement following the Genesis Prize announcement in November, Portman said she was “proud of my Israeli roots and Jewish heritage.”

Times of Israel staff and JTA contributed to this post.