Projections put Le Pen, Macron ahead in French presidential race

Israeli researchers say anti-Semitism on the rise on US campuses

A report released by Israeli researchers says violent attacks on Jews dropped for a second straight year in 2016, while other forms of anti-Semitism are on the rise worldwide, particularly on US campuses.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University say that assaults specifically targeting Jews, vandalism and other violent incidents fell 12 percent last year. They recorded 361 cases compared to 410 in 2015, which had already been the lowest number in a decade.

The report attributes much of the drop to increased security measures in European countries.

The numbers on violence were not mirrored by a decrease in cases of general anti-Semitism. On US university campuses, there was a 45 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents, mostly insults and harassment of Jewish students, the report says.

— AP

PM says Likud MKs wrong for berating families of fallen IDF soliders

In his first public statements on an incident that has drawn a chorus of condemnation from across the political spectrum, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expresses “regret” Sunday over Likud Knesset members who yelled at the bereaved parents of fallen IDF soldiers during a heated Knesset committee meeting last week.

“I would like to say a few words to the bereaved families,” Netanyahu says at the opening of his weekly cabinet meeting. “The entire people of Israel is united around you, who have lost what is dearer than anything for the sake of the security of Israel.”‘

Referring to the death of his brother Yoni Netanyahu, the sole Israeli soldier killed during the 1976 Entebbe raid, the prime minister says that he understood the “deep pain” that the families felt for their loved ones.

“As prime minister and the son of a bereaved family, I heard what was said last week in the Knesset in the heat of debate,” he says. “I regret that these remarks were made; an immediate apology was necessary and it is good that this was done.”

Iran’s Ahmadinejad refuses to endorse other candidates

Iran’s former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that he won’t endorse other candidates in next month’s election, after he and his deputy were barred from running.

“We clearly announce that we have not and will not support any candidate in the upcoming elections,” he says in a letter, signed by himself and his former deputy and presidential hopeful Hamid Baghaie.

Both were barred from running on Thursday by the conservative-dominated Guardian Council, which vets candidates for public elections.

Ahmadinejad’s candidacy came against the advice of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said it would “polarize” the nation.

— AFP

Liberman condemns settler rock attack on IDF soldiers

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman condemns a rock throwing attack carried out by Israeli settlers in the West Bank over the weekend in which an IDF officer was injured, calling the perpetrators of the attack “thugs.”

In a Facebook post, Liberman says that there is “zero tolerance” for violence toward soldiers and that the “thugs” responsible must be brought to justice.

“The legal authorities must judge these thugs severely in a quick and firm manner,” he says. “This is a grave problem that we cannot be forgiving toward.”

French expats cast absentee ballots in tense first-round presidential election

French-Israelis wait in long lines to cast their absentee ballots in a first-round poll for the next French president poll that is widely seen as a vote on the future of the European Union.

Polling stations at the French embassy in Tel Aviv and the consulates in Netanya and Jerusalem saw thousands of voters waiting in long lines to cast their ballots.

According to Channel 10, the voter turnout for Israeli residents who are eligible voters in the French elections stands at 28.54% as of noon, just slightly more than the 28.29% of dual French-Israeli citizens who voted in the 2012 election.

4 injured in suspected terror attack in Tel Aviv

A Palestinian man from the West Bank attacks four people in Tel Aviv at two separate hotels along the city’s beachfront promenade, police say.

The assailant attacked people at the Leonardo Hotel on Hayarkon Street and then fled to the nearby Herod’s Hotel and continued his assault.

The victims are taken to Ichilov Hospital and are being treated for light injuries, the Magen David Adom ambulance service says.

עדכון לאירוע ברחוב הירקון בתל אביב: צוותי מד"א מעניקים טיפול ומפנים לבי"ח איכילוב 4 פצועים במצב קל: 2 גברים ואישה כבני 50 וגבר כבן 70. pic.twitter.com/jk2HdGEcTf

— מגן דוד אדום (@mda_israel) April 23, 2017

Police have opened an investigation into the incident.

Palestinian attacker in custody, terrorism suspected

The 18-year-old Palestinian man who injured four people at two separate Tel Aviv hotels earlier is in the custody of the Shin Bet security service and is undergoing questioning.

Reports in Hebrew-language media say the initial investigation indicates the assault was a terror attack.

Police arrest Palestinian suspect in central tel Aviv after he injured 3 people lightly.Police investigating background if terrorist related

— Micky Rosenfeld (@MickyRosenfeld) April 23, 2017

Anti-fascists, Jews boycott Croatia memorial at WWII death camp

Croatia honors the victims of its most brutal World War II death camp, an event again snubbed by ethnic Serbs, Jews and anti-fascists who accuse authorities of tolerating a pro-Nazi ideology.

Conservative Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, several ministers and foreign diplomats attend a commemoration ceremony at the site of the Jasenovac camp which was dismantled 72 years ago.

Letters by survivors of the camp known as “Croatia’s Auschwitz” — a reference to the German Nazi death camp in Poland — were read during a ceremony that includes a multi-denominational service and laying of wreaths.

The camp, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Zagreb, was run by the country’s Nazi-allied Ustasha regime who persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Romas and anti-fascist Croatians.

But for the second consecutive year, representatives of those groups boycotted the official commemoration denouncing what they see as a resurgence of pro-Ustasha sympathies. Instead, they organized their own separate events.

— AFP

Tel Aviv attack that injured 4 is terrorism, police say

Police tell The Times of Israel the attack at two Tel Aviv hotels earlier today was a terror attack.

Four people were injured in the violent assault along the city’s promenade by an 18-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank.

The suspect was taken into custody at the scene and is undergoing questioning by Shin Bet investigators.

Rivlin thanks visiting Austrian chancellor for efforts to eradicate anti-Semitism

President Rivlin thanks the visiting Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern for his longstanding support of Israel, and thanks the European nation for its commitment to root out anti-Semitism.

“Mr. Chancellor, we are connected not only by the present and future, but also by the past: and of course the painful past of the Holocaust. This painful past, and especially the issue of Austria’s responsibility for its part in this past, have influenced our diplomatic relationship,” Rivlin says at a joint press conference in Jerusalem.

“Tonight Israel is marking its national Holocaust Memorial Day – in which we appreciate that you will take part. Israel appreciates your leadership in promoting awareness of this collective responsibility in Austria. Unfortunately, anti-Semitism and fascism have not disappeared – not in Austria, and not in Europe.”

“I would like to also express my appreciation for your strong and clear voice against such intolerance and hatred. We face challenges and we face opportunities: but we can face them together.”

On the eve of #YomHashoah I welcomed Austrian Chancellor @KernChri. We spoke of the need to stand up to anti-Semitism wherever it is found pic.twitter.com/WRkIFvnOFD

— Reuven Rivlin (@PresidentRuvi) April 23, 2017

In his remarks, Kern says: “We have come a long way from the official denial, to the acknowledgement of our responsibility for the darkest chapters of our history. It really took decades, but tonight we will honor the martyrs and the heroes of the Holocaust, hand in hand, and shoulder to shoulder.”

““Wherever anti-Semitism raises its ugly head we will stand together with our Jewish friends and fight against it. We will never rest to guarantee the integrity, dignity, and the safety of our fellow Jewish citizens,” Kern adds.

Rvilin and Kern will attend Israel’s official Holocaust memorial ceremony at the Yad Vashem memorial museum in Jerusalem this evening.

Egypt’s Sissi visits Saudi Arabia as tensions ease

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi receives a royal welcome from King Salman as he landed Sunday in Saudi Arabia for a visit to boost ties after months of tension.

Salman, surrounded by key Saudi officials, greets Sissi as he steps off the plane in the capital Riyadh and hosts him for lunch, the official Saudi Press Agency says.

The Egyptian presidency announced the visit in a statement on Friday, saying Sissi’s trip was in response to an invitation by Salman and aimed at “bolstering strategic relations between the two countries.”

Egypt president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi arrives in Riyadh for talks with Saudi King Salman —SPA pic.twitter.com/TEj5apiZBe

— Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) April 23, 2017

It said Salman and Sissi would discuss “regional and international issues of common interest,” and “the struggle against terrorism which threatens security and stability.”

— AFP

PA denies prisoners in Israeli jails quitting hunger strike

Palestinian Authority Prisoner Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe denies statements by the Israel Prisons Service that a large number of Palestinian prisoners have quit their hunger strike in recent days.

According to the IPS, 186 Palestinian prisoners ended their open-ended protest since Friday.

Qaraqe told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa in a telephone interview “that the opposite” was true — that more Palestinian prisoners were joining the strike in both the Meggido and Rimon prisons.

“If any prisoner had quit, then [the IPS] would return them back to the regular prisoners’ cells and we would hear about that,” he says.

An estimated 1,200 Palestinian prisoners, mostly from the Fatah organization and including many convicted terrorists, declared a hunger strike last week in a bid to improve their conditions in Israeli prisons.

— Dov Lieber

Ceremonies mark liberation of 2 Nazi camps 72 years ago

Holocaust survivors and officials have gathered at the memorial sites of former concentration camps Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany and Sachsenhausen near Berlin to commemorate the liberation of the camps 72 years ago.

Bergen-Belsen was liberated on April 15, 1945, by British soldiers who found some 10,000 dead bodies when they entered the Nazi camp.

Germany’s Culture Minister Monika Gruetters says, “By remembering, we want to give space in our lives for the dead and the survivors, who were disenfranchised, persecuted, tormented and murdered by the National Socialists.”

Around 200,000 people were deported to Bergen-Belsen. More than 52,000 camp inmates and 20,000 prisoners of war died there, among them the famous teenage diarist Anne Frank.

Ceremonies were also taking place at the former Sachsenhausen camp.

— AP

UN chief congratulates Assad on Syrian independence

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sends a cable to the Syrian leader Bashar Assad on the occasion of Syria’s April 17 Independence Day.

“We count on your country’s involvement and effective contribution to help build a stronger United Nations organization and move our efforts forward to ensure peace, development and human rights for all people,” the letter says, according to a copy released by Assad’s office.

Assad’s government still holds the country’s seat at the United Nations, unlike the 22-member Arab League, which suspended Syria’s membership in 2012.

— AP

At the ballot box, French Jewish voters say no good candidate for Jews, Israel

As France votes in its first-round of a tense presidential election, Jews are concerned about their future leader’s position toward Israel and Jews as they cast ballots for one of the closest presidential elections in years.

“None of them is good for Jews and for relations between Israel and France. Because, I deeply think the candidates don’t care about Israel. They just care about the votes they can gain from the Jewish voters,” 20-year-old Cindy tells The Times of Israel.

While Cindy says she won’t leave France if Le Pen wins, “it will be very difficult for me to live in a country led by a far-right president.”

“There is not even one, there is no good candidate for the Jews. The worst would be Marine Le Pen or Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” says 32-year-old Jonathan, a dual French-Israeli citizen who lives in Paris.

“If Marine Le Pen or Mélenchon is elected, I’ll pack my bags in the next six months and move to Israel,” he tells The Times of Israel.

Thirty-year-old Leslie tells The Times of Israel she supports François Fillon, but still thinks “the best candidate for the French-Israeli relationship is Macron, I think because he has already shown interest in Israel during his multiple visits.”

Roger, 55, says he fully supports Fillon. Asked if he would leave the country if Fillon loses, the businessman says “no, because the mandate only lasts 5 years so they don’t have enough power to change everything.”

— Stephanie Bitan

Son of late chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef found guilty of breach of trust

Holon Chief Rabbi Avraham Yosef, the son of late Shas party spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef, is found guilty of two counts of breach of trust by the Tel Aviv District Court.

Yosef, who has served as the coastal city’s chief rabbi since 1998, is on trial for forcefully demanding that business owners only purchase meat products with a kashrut certificate issued by Beit Yosef, a kosher food supervision service owned by his brother, Moshe.

Police opened an investigation into Yosef in 2013, and he was indicted by the Tel Aviv court in December 2015.

Israel signs deal to bring in 6,000 Chinese construction workers

Israel signs an agreement with Beijing to bring in 6,000 Chinese construction workers as the country seeks to address a housing shortage contributing to high property prices.

Reports in Hebrew-language media said Israel had acceded to Chinese demands that the laborers not work in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon confirms the deal, telling reporters the agreement “is based on the concern for the safety and security of the workers,” and says the two sides agreed on locations where the laborers will work.

The agreement is signed in Jerusalem by Housing Minister Yoav Galant and Chinese International Trade Representative and Vice Minister of Commerce Fu Ziying, a spokesman for the minister says.

Day passes for West Bank Palestinians suspended after stabbing attack

Following the stabbing attack in Tel Aviv, the Defense Ministry suspends day passes for Palestinians to enter Israel.

The Palestinian teenager apparently entered Israel with one such pass as part of a group known as “Natural Peace Tours,” which is supposed to forge relationships between Palestinians and Israelis, a defense official says.

The ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories says the one-day permits granted to various organizations and groups will be frozen until an investigation of the matter can be conducted, the official says.

— Judah Ari Gross

French voter turnout heading for around 80 percent

Turnout in the French presidential election is on track to be around 80 percent, polling groups estimate, which would put it in line with 2012 and confound fears of high abstention levels.

In the late afternoon (1500 GMT), turnout was 69.42%, according to official data, one of its highest levels in 40 years.

The figure is about one percentage point lower than at the same stage of the last election in 2012, but polling booths will stay open an hour longer outside the main cities this time, closing at 1700 GMT.

— AFP

Palestinian detained after car veers onto tram tracks in Jerusalem

A Palestinian man is detained by Israeli authorities after his car veers onto the tram tracks near Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill, police say.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri says the driver, a 30-year-old from East Jerusalem is being detained for questioning.

Samri says an investigation has been opened into the incident.

י-ם: רכב לא מזוהה התפרץ למסילות הרקל״ה בגבעת התחמושת לכיוון דרום.
כרגע חבלן בודק את הרכב. ק.מדברים תקשורת pic.twitter.com/dWOgtJ8xCw

— דסק חדשות און ליין (@yosefbadichi) April 23, 2017

Israel refuses to extradite teen JCC bomb hoaxer to US

Israel is refusing a US request to extradite an Israeli-American teenager who made hundreds of bomb threat calls to American Jewish institutions over the last several months.

According to Channel 2, Israel has denied the US Department of Justice request to return the Ashkelon teenager to the US to face charges, saying Israeli prosecutors plan to charge him on Monday.

Israeli prosecutors are expected to indict the 18-year-old with crimes involving extortion with menaces, causing panic and money laundering.

On Friday, he was charged in the US with 28 counts of making threatening calls and conveying false information to police, according to the indictment filed in federal court in Orlando. Separately, he was charged with three more counts of making threatening calls, conveying false information and cyberstalking in an indictment filed in federal court in Athens, Georgia.

Rivlin: Jews cannot remain silent in the face of atrocities

President Reuven Rivlin opens the official ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day saying that, 72 years after the Holocaust, as the number of living survivors dwindles, “so our need to deal with how we relate to the Holocaust and to Holocaust remembrance becomes ever more crucial.”

Rivlin says that Holocaust remembrance and the lessons to be learned from the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people are rooted in three central pillars: self-defense, a shared destiny, and human rights.

“Man is beloved, every man, created in God’s image. This is a sacred obligation that the Jewish people cannot and does not wish to evade. At all times. In every situation. So too, we cannot remain silent in face of the horrors being committed far away from us, and certainly those happening just across the border,” he notes in reference to the Syrian civil war that is estimated to have cost over 300,000 lives.

“Maintaining one’s humanity: this is the immense courage bequeathed to us by the victims — and by you, the survivors of the Shoah,” Rivlin says.

— with Stuart Winer

Netanyahu blames Allies for failing to save Jews in 1942

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says over 4 million Jews could have been saved if the allied powers had bombed Nazi death camps in 1942.

“The allies knew, and didn’t act,” Netanyahu says at the official ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Yad Vashem Museum.

“Since World War II, there has never again been a tragedy like Holocaust, but in many cases, the world stands by and does not prevent instances of mass murder or genocides,” he says noting the atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan and today in Syria.

Netanyahu warns against the dangers of bystanderism, and praises US President Donald Trump’s missile strike on a Syrian airbase in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed nearly 90 civilians.

“There are bright points in the darkness, one them occurred just now with Trump’s decisive response to the massacre of Syrian children.”

The prime minister goes on to say that anti-Semitism is still alive today, and often times is manifested as hatred of Israel.

“Hatred of the Jews is now directed at the Jewish state,” he says. The new anti-Semitism is prevalent in the West and in UN bodies, he adds.

Projections put Macron, Le Pen ahead in French presidential race

Polling agency projections put centrist Emmanuel Macron, far-right leader Marine Le Pen ahead in first-round French presidential vote.

French voters flocked to the polls under heavy security in the first round of a cliffhanger presidential election seen as vital for the future of the ailing European Union.

— Agencies

Macron: ‘We’re turning a page in French political history’

French centrist Emmanuel Macron welcomes projections showing him reaching the runoff of the country’s presidential election together with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

“The French have expressed their desire for change,” Macron tells AFP in a statement, adding: “We’re clearly turning a page in French political history.”

— AFP