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Israel on Wednesday afternoon ushered in the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day with an official ceremony in Yad Vashem, with speeches by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin. During his speech, Netanyahu warned that the world had not learned the lessons of the Holocaust, as evident by the emerging nuclear deal with Iran. Rivlin said the state of Israel is not compensation for the Holocaust, as claimed, but rather is the right of the Jewish people to their homeland.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday he was certain President Barack Obama will be able to finalize a deal with Tehran on its nuclear program and added it was important to do so in the coming two and a half months. He was speaking in Luebeck, Germany, where he arrived for the G7 meeting of foreign ministers.
In Israel, Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said Jerusalem was pleased with a bill giving Congress oversight of any agreement signed with Iran. The bill’s chances for approval in the American legislature improved only after several clauses, some of which were suggested by Israel, were removed.
The Times of Israel liveblogged events as they unfolded.
Finalizing Iran deal on time a ‘challenge’ – Kerry
US Secretary of State John Kerry says at the G7 meeting of foreign ministers that finalizing an agreement with Iran on the schedule agreed upon is a “challenge.”
“Looming large is the challenge of finishing the negotiation with Iran over the course of the next two and a half months,” Kerry says after arriving in Germany, according to Reuters.
“Yesterday there was a compromise reached in Washington regarding congressional input. We are confident about our ability for the president to negotiate an agreement and to do so with the ability to make the world safer,” Kerry adds.
Artist’s Union slams calls to boycott Anat Waxman
The Israel Artists’ Union strongly condemns “calls to ostracize and boycott artists only for expressing their opinion,” in response to calls to boycott theater actress Anat Waxman.
Waxman, in a Channel 2 interview, made dismissive comments against right wing voters which were widely criticized as elitist and out-of-touch. On Tuesday, Dimona Mayor Benny Biton (Likud) called on heads of other regional councils to join a boycott against Waxman for her comments.
According to Israel Radio, Biton sent mayors of other cities a letter where he said only a boycott that will hurt the financial situation of Waxman “and her ilk” will make them “repent and internalize that democracy is an equal mode of government for the residents of Herzliya and those of periphery communities. We will not be able to say it’s not our fault if the insults uttered by people like her bring a civil war,” Biton wrote.
Waxman later said she did never mentioned voters’ ethnicity and her comments were directed only against the prime minister.
‘Huge increase’ in anti-Semitism in 2014
An annual report on global anti-Semitic incidents by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, released today, says 766 violent anti-Semitic acts occurred against Jewish persons or institutions such as synagogues, community centers, schools, cemeteries and monuments as well as private property, amounting to an increase of 38% compared to 2013, in which 554 violent incidents were registered.
Moshe Kantor the president of the European Jewish Congress. (photo credit: Orel Cohen/FLASH90)
The highest number of violent cases was registered in France, “for a number of consecutive years now,” according to a press statement by the European Jewish Congress, which took part in preparing the report: 164 compared to 141 in 2013.
“Many streets in our European cities have become hunting grounds for Jews, and some Jews are now forced to avoid community institutions and synagogues as a result,” Dr. Moshe Kantor, leader of the European Jewish Congress, said. “Some are choosing to leave the continent, many are afraid to walk the streets and even more are retreating behind high walls and barbed wire. This has become the new reality of Jewish life in Europe.”
UN nuclear inspectors in Iran to try to probe suspect site
UN nuclear inspectors are in Iran on a long stalled visit meant to investigate suspicions that Tehran worked on nuclear weapons, a charge the Islamic Republic denies.
The official IRNA news agency is quoting Iranian nuclear spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi as saying that inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Tehran on Wednesday to discuss “unresolved issues” surrounding a military site in Marivan, in western Iran.
A 2011 IAEA report indicated that large-scale high-explosive experiments were conducted in Marivan, near the Iraqi border.
Talks with the IAEA are parallel to Iran’s nuclear negotiations with world powers seeking a permanent agreement on curbing the country’s nuclear activities by June 30 in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
— AP
Egypt, Saudi Arabia mull joint military drill
Egypt and Saudi Arabia are considering holding joint military maneuvers in the kingdom as the allies carry out air strikes in its neighbor Yemen, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s office says. Other Gulf Arab countries would also participate.
“It was decided to form a joint military committee to look into a large-scale strategic maneuver on Saudi territory,” says the statement issued after Sissi met Saudi Defense Minister Prince Mohamed bin Salman.
It gives no further details, but a security official says such joint maneuvers were the “highest level of training exercises.”
— AFP
Tel Aviv-Paris flight lands in Geneva for sick passenger
An Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Charles de Gaulle Airport made an emergency landing in Geneva due to the medical condition of one of the travelers.
The landing was not announced as an emergency landing. There were more than 160 people aboard the Airbus 320 plane.
Likud Mks act to prevent unity coalition
New Likud MK Dudi Amsalem and four other MKs call for an immediate Likud faction meeting to prevent the establishment of a unity government with Zionist Union, Ynet reports.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking with international media about the framework agreement and Iran’s nuclear program on April 12, 2015. (screen capture: Facebook/The Prime Minister of Israel)
Amsalem and four others turned to Likud faction chairman Ze’ev Elkin and called on him to immediately convene the Likud’s MKs. Amsalem is also working in other party institutions, especially the Likud’s Central Committee, in order to issue a concerted and clear call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to consider a unity coalition. The MKs decided to act before the prime minister makes public his decision on the issue, and reminded the prime minister that he must fulfill Likud’s pledge to the voters – a “national camp” government.
The MKs asked Netanyahu to remember that he said “there is an ideological abyss between us and them [Zionist Union],” during one of his interviews before the election.
‘Turkey should move to presidential system’
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says Turkey should change its regime to an executive presidential system.
Announcing his ruling AK Party’s manifesto for a June election, Davutoglu says that the country’s administration should be restructured toward a presidential system, a key goal of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who served as prime minister before Davutoglu, Reuters reports.
Davutoglu says the first duty of the new parliament after the June 7 election should be to draft a new constitution, which will include the shift to a presidential system.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu speaks during a press briefing in Ankara on January 14, 2015. (AFP/ADEM ALTAN)
Ehud Barak invests $1m in Israeli start-up
Former prime minister Ehud Barak invests $1 million in Israeli startup Reporty Homeland Security, Globes reports.
The company developed a platform enabling real-time video broadcast from the scene, in an effort to improve and streamline communication between citizens and rescue services or local authorities.
Reporty’s product is an app for 2-way broadcasting video and audio, including geotagging and a function of measuring the credibility of reports.
Ehud Barak speaks at the opening of the ‘Globes Business Conference’, in Tel Aviv on December 08, 2014. (Photo credit: Flash90)
The company was established in 2014 by Amir Amihai, formerly an IDF officer in an elite unit and presently the company’s CEO. Amir Buhris, who served in the past as commander of the IDF’s 8200 intelligence unit and then as director general of the Defense Ministry, serves as a director in the company, Globes reports.
Reporty is based in Tel Aviv and intends to recruit 10 additional employees, especially mobile algorithm developers, by the end of 2015.
“The solution we are developing is based on sound technology, on the side of the end user as well as on the control and monitoring end. We are excited by the vote of confidence we received from Ehud Barak, whose rich experience in the world of security will help us form a strategy and break out with our product in Israel and around the world.”
Vandals attack Christian graveyard in north
Vandals have smashed gravestones at a Maronite Christian cemetery in a village near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, Israeli police say.
Police opened an investigation after receiving a report about damage to a number of graves at a Christian cemetery in the village of Kafr Bir’im, spokeswoman Luba Samri says, indicating that the tombstones were “broken and displaced.”
Kafr Bir’im is a derelict Palestinian Arab village whose inhabitants were evicted by the Israeli army in 1948, six months after Israel was established. The village was almost totally razed by the army in 1953.
Last year, Lebanese patriarch of the Maronite church Beshara Rai paid a historic trip to the Holy Land during which he visited Kafr Bir’im, pledging to help the displaced villagers return. There are some 11,400 Maronite Catholics living in Israel.
— AFP
4 housing trailers allowed into Gaza Strip
Four housing trailers were moved from Jericho to the Gaza Strip, through the Kerem Shalom crossing, Ynet reports.
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, approved the transfer of the trailers as part of the plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip.
A hundred more trailers are expected to be transferred to Gaza in coming months.
Survivors’ kids said to be more worried by Iran
A new study in Israel shows that adult children of Holocaust survivors are more concerned about the threat of a nuclear Iran than those whose parents were not survivors.
“Transmitting the Sum of All Fears: Iranian Nuclear Threat Salience Among Offspring of Holocaust Survivors,” a Bar-Ilan University study written by Dr. Amit Shrira, was published in the journal “Psychological Trauma,” an American Psychological Association journal dedicated to the study of trauma and its aftermath.
Shrira first studied 106 people, with 63 born after World War II ended in 1945 and whose parents lived under a Nazi or pro-Nazi regime, and a comparison group of 43 also born after 1945, but whose parents, of European origin, either immigrated to Israel before the war or fled to countries that were not under Nazi occupation. An identical second sample of 450 people gave the same results.
— JTA
Bosnia arrests Syria jihad suspect
Police in Bosnia arrests a man on terrorism charges for allegedly meeting with Islamic State jihadists in Syria.
The suspect, named as Kenan Krso, is suspected of “several activities linked with terrorism,” a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office tells reporters.
“The suspect stayed for a brief period in Syria,” spokesman Boris Grubesic adds.
“He met there members of the (ultra-conservative Islamist) Wahhabi movement, who are fighting within the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and with whom he stayed in contact” after returning to Bosnia, Grubesic says.
The spokesman does not say whether the suspect himself took up arms.
Krso, 39, was already arrested in February while walking in downtown Sarajevo dressed in a T-shirt with the Islamic State insignia.
— AFP
EU statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day
The European Union Delegation issues a statement on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.
The EU Delegation to the State of Israel, together with all Embassies of EU Member States in Israel, joins people in Israel commemorating today the victims of the Shoah and the heroes of resistance. We mourn the deaths of six million Jews and millions of other victims. Innocent men, women and children were murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices, simply for being Jewish. Honoring their memory means for us to stand strong against anti-Semitism, prejudice and racial discrimination in all their forms and wherever they occur. This is true today more than ever. Seventy years after the Shoah, we still encounter anti-Semitism in Europe. There are Jewish communities in Europe that again feel insecure and we have been sadly reminded that violent anti-Semitism, intolerance and fanaticism remain a threat. As a Union built on the values of human dignity and human rights after the tragedies of two world wars and the Shoah, we will not allow the return of the demons of anti-Semitism, racism and intolerance. Never forget. Never again.
MK Ghattas calls house demolitions ‘declaration of war’
Joint (Arab) List MK Basel Ghattas strongly condemns the demolition of three uninhabited structures in the town of Lod and defines the move a “declaration of war” by the government against the Arab public. According to Ghattas, the government is demolishing homes it claims were built illegally instead of trying to solve the housing crisis in the Arab sector.
The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel intends to discuss a general strike in the Arab population in protest of the home demolitions.
Balad MK Basel Ghattas (photo credit: Elhanan Miller/Times of Israel)
Israel now a partisan issue, poll finds
Israel has become a deeply partisan issue in the United States, a Bloomberg poll published today finds.
The shift, according to Bloomberg, may carry serious implications for foreign US policy and even domestic politics after decades of general bipartisan consensus.
According to the survey, Republicans believe the US should support Israel even when its stances diverge with American interests by a ratio of more than 2-to-1. Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the US must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.
67% of Republicans say they feel more sympathetic to Prime Minister Netanyahu than to President Obama, (16% say the opposite), while among Democrats 76% are more sympathetic to Obama than to Netanyahu (9% percent).
By a nearly 3-to-1 ratio, Democrats say they are more optimistic than pessimistic that a tentative deal with Iran announced this month will contain Iran’s ability to get nuclear weapons and thus make the world safer. Republicans are more pessimistic than optimistic about the impacts of a deal by a 2-to-1 margin.
A majority of Americans from both parties say any deal with Iran should be subject to congressional approval, and that Iran is an unreliable negotiating partner because it is a religious theocracy, according to the poll.
The survey conducted April 6-8 included 1,008 adults, has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.
Read the full report here.
Iran says Zarif could hold nuclear talks in NY
Iran’s foreign minister could meet counterparts from the major powers in New York later this month to press efforts for a comprehensive nuclear agreement, his ministry says.
Mohammad Javad Zarif and the top diplomats from the six powers will be in New York to address the five-yearly review conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which opens on April 27.
“It could be possible that negotiations take place on the sidelines,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham tells a news conference.
The New York meeting will open just a week after negotiators from Iran and the powers launch talks on turning a framework agreement they reached on April 2 into a final deal.
Zarif says those talks will begin on April 21 although he did not say where.
— AFP
Iraqi army in heavy fighting against IS
The Iraqi military is conducting heavy fights with Islamic State fighter in Al Anbar province in western Iraq, Israel Radio reports. The Sunni terrorists conquered three villages near the province’s capital Ramadi, and the Iraqi army, aided by airstrikes from coalition jets, is trying to repel them.
Earlier this month Islamic State was expelled from the city of Tikrit in northern Iraq.
Kikar Hashabat cuts Kim Kardashian from photo
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish news website Kikar Hashabat cut Kim Kardashian — one of the world’s most photographed women — from a photo taken of her in Jerusalem this week.
The original photo of Kardashian, her husband Kanye West and Jerusalem’s Mayor Nir Barkat was altered to put Kardashian behind a restaurant receipt. Kardashian was blurred in another.
Nissim Ben Haim, an editor at Kikar Hashabat, says they removed Kardashian because she is a “pornographic symbol” who contradicts ultra-Orthodox values.
In an article chiding Barkat for dining with them at a nonkosher restaurant, Kardashian was referred to as “West’s wife.”
— AP
Lapid discusses Holocaust at TA high school
Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid delivered a special class today to 12th grade students at a Tel Aviv high school on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Lapid told the students the story of his father Tommy Lapid and of his personal connection to the Holocaust.
“We learned that we need to survive because no one else will protect us. My father was 13 and he did nothing to the people who wanted to murder him. They didn’t want to murder him for what he did, they wanted to murder him for what he was — which is what I am and what you are. They wanted to murder him because he was a Jew,” Lapid said.
Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid speaks to high school students in Tel Aviv on April 15, 2015. (Photo credit: Courtesy Yesh Atid)
Court hears appeal on ‘Torat Hamelech’ book
A three-justice panel at the High Court of Justice heard a petition by several organizations against a decision by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein not to indict the authors of the pamphlet “Torat Hamelech.”
The text discusses the circumstances in which Jews would be allowed by Jewish law to kill gentiles, based on a selective reading of Jewish texts. It became a controversy immediately upon publication as many saw it as justifying violence against Palestinians and Arabs.
Israeli Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran, also serving as head of the Central Elections Committee, in the Knesset, December 16, 2014. (photo credit: Isaac Harari/Flash90)
After Weinstein decided not to indict the authors of the booklet, several groups, including The Reform Judaism Center, appealed against the decision. The state claims there was not enough evidence tying the book’s teachings with cases of violence against Arabs. The appellants claimed Weinstein’s reasoning was not sound and the High Court should intervene.
During the discussion, Justice Salim Joubran, who is an Israeli Arab, asked “Does the text of Torat Hamelech also pertain to me? Do I, as a gentile, have to be killed?” According to the Haaretz daily, Joubran said “the book gives a false image of Judaism, a more correct picture must be given.”
At the end of the discussion, the justices sided with the state, saying it was not possible to prove a connection between the book and actual acts of violence. The authors were not indicted.
Apple under fire for ‘Russian Siri’ homophobia
Apple’s Russian-language version of Siri, the synthetic voice assistant which is bundled as part of the iOS operating system, is apparently not fond of gays, according to the BBC.
When asked if there are gay clubs around in the Russian version of Siri, the software answers “I would have turned red (blushed) if I could.”
Asked about registering for gay marriage in the UK, Siri either ignores the query or answers “I will pretend I haven’t heard it.”
Apple claims the evasive answers are a bug. But the company has been accused of deliberately kowtowing to Russian anti-gay laws which Western countries see as illiberal and bigoted.
Read the full story here.
Arab sector to go on one-day strike next week
The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel announces a general strike in the Arab sector next Tuesday. Schools, businesses and stores will not operate throughout Arab communities in protest of what the committee calls “the government’s policy of house demolitions,” according to Israel Radio.
The decision comes after the bulldozers demolished three illegally built homes near Lod. Earlier this week an illegally built home was demolished in Kafr Kana in the Galilee.
3 arrested for allegedly leaking Arabic matriculation exam
Three residents of Sakhnin were detained for questioning on suspicion of being involved in leaking the matriculation exam in Arabic. Ynet reports that the three were detained after police officers from the Lahav 433 cyber unit searched their homes.
Police asked the Petah Tikva Magistrate Court to extend the detention of one of the suspects who tried to interfere with the investigation into the leak. The other two were still being interrogated, Ynet reports.
UK judge upholds university’s decision to cancel anti-Israel confab
A London judge accepted the University of Southampton’s decision to cancel a conference on Israel’s right to exist over security concerns.
On Tuesday, Judge Alice Robinson of the Administrative Court in London said the April 17-19 conference was canceled “in good faith” because the university did not believe it could adequately protect its students and staff.
Robinson rejected a request by event organizers seeking a judicial review of the cancellation late last month of the conference on International Law and the State of Israel.
The university said it had been warned that there was risk of a terror attack on the campus during the conference.
“This was obviously a very difficult decision for the university,” Robinson said. “Nobody could be in any doubt that there has been very careful scrutiny of all of the issues.”
The judge said there were no “arguable grounds” for challenging the decision.
— JTA
Israel to usher in Holocaust Remembrance Day
Israel will usher in Holocaust Remembrance Day at 8 p.m. this evening. A ceremony will be held at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum, during which six survivors will speak and light torches.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin will both speak at the ceremony.
Tomorrow at 11 a.m. a one-minute siren will sound across the country. Ceremonies will be held at the Knesset and other locations. Holocaust Remembrance Day ends on Thursday evening.
Unconfirmed report of mortar explosion in Golan
The IDF is looking into unconfirmed reports that a mortar shell fell in an open area in the Golan Heights and caused a small explosion. No injuries are reported in the incident.
Channel 2 News reports that the mortar was likely misfired into Israel by forces fighting across the border in Syria.
Remembrance ceremony begins at Yad Vashem
‘Every one of us has a number on our arm’
President Reuven Rivlin addresses those gathered at the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official museum commemorating the Holocaust.
“We stand here tonight, in painful silence, in Jerusalem,” Rivlin says.
The president notes that it has been exactly 70 years since Allied soldiers entered the Bergen-Belsen camp and liberated its Jewish prisoners.
“Their families were killed…every one of the survivors was sure they were the last Jew on earth.”
The survivors had an impossible task ahead of them, to rebuild their lives after the horror they had encountered.
“I remember lone soldiers who were survivors, I remember Freddie who came from Hungary, who three days after arriving at his foster family, went to fight in the Independence War and never returned.”
“We saw the numbers on the survivors’ arms, we thought they had gone mad. But we later discovered it was the world that had gone mad.”
Rivlin says past, present threats won’t determine future
Rivlin says: “We will not bow our head in the face of the shameful statements calling for the genocide of the Jewish people.”
“The threats of the past and the threats of the future won’t determine our lives,” he says.
‘Iran proves world has not learned lessons of Holocaust’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony.
“Seventy years ago the bells of freedom rang across the world. The terrible nightmare in Europe came to an end.”
“But the day in which the Nazis were beaten was not just a day of rejoicing, it was a day of reckoning for the Jewish people. World leaders understood that they now had an opportunity to rebuild society based on freedom.”
We have learned that “democracies cannot turn their eyes away from the dictatorships of the world that seek to spread their influence.”
“Ahead of World War II, the world attempted to appease the Nazis. They wanted quiet at any price, and the terrible price did come.”
Just as the Nazis sought to destroy Europe, Netanyahu says, so does Iran seek to wreak havoc on the Middle East and destroy the Jewish state.
“It is all out in the open, but nonetheless nothing is done.”
Netanyahu says that the nuclear deal with Iran proves the world has not learned the lessons of the Holocaust.
Technical difficulties at Yad Vashem ceremony
Prime Minister Netanyahu repeats several segments of his speech after his microphone goes quiet due to technical difficulties.
‘We will maintain our right to defend ourselves’
“Iranian leaders are exporting death and destruction. The world is not listening to the calls in Iran urging death to Israel, death to America,” Prime Minister Netanyahu says at Holocaust remembrance ceremony.
“We will continue to work towards opening the eyes of the world” to the danger posed by Iran, Netanyahu says.
“Even if we will be forced to stand alone, we will not falter. We will maintain our right to defend ourselves… we will not let the State of Israel become a passing phase in the history of our nation.”
‘We will ensure no other Holocaust can take place’
Netanyahu recalls his conversation earlier today with a survivor of the Nazi death camps, who urged the Israeli leader to ensure that another Holocaust never takes place.
“That is how I see my responsibility,” Netanyahu says he responded to the survivor.
Ya’alon urges world to thwart Iranian aspirations
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon speaks at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at the Massuah Institute, urging world leaders to draw lessons from the past and not underestimate Iran’s intentions to destroy the Jewish state.
“Seventy years later, and a few thousand kilometers away from here there is a blood-thirsty state, dripping with hostility, which calls openly and without fear to wipe Israel off the map,” Ya’alon says.
“The Iranian regime, which aims to establish a new world order, never stopped attempting to develop nuclear weapons and will not hesitate to carry out its schemes if only it had the option. Seventy years later, and the world allows this regime to enter through the front door of the family of nations, instead of learning from the past and condemning it and its ways.”
“I say this to our greatest friends in the world’s as well, it is not too late to lead this regime where they will not have a choice, and will be forced to give up their plans.”
Ya’alon goes on to address the Palestinian issue, stressing that Israel is fully prepared to achieve peace with its neighbors.
“Our hands are outstretched for peace to our Palestinian neighbors and to nations in the region, and I say it loud and clear, your hand will not hang in the air as it extends for peace. But know that we will not allow anyone to deceive us and hurt us.”
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