Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
The Times of Israel liveblogged Wednesday’s events as they unfolded.
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri approves a new amendment to a law allowing Israel to deport African migrants who are in the country illegally, even if they refuse deportation, according to Hebrew media reports.
The move comes days after the High Court ruled that Israel can deport asylum-seekers to a third country but can only jail them for 60 days if they refuse to leave.
Under the old law, Israel could only send migrants to Uganda or Rwanda with their agreement.
Deri says the new clause will help Israelis “suffering under the current situation,” according to reports.
According to the Haaretz daily, the new clause has the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.
The Government Press Office says it has decided not to revoke the credentials of an Al-Jazeera reporter after summoning him for questioning about comments he made in an interview in support of Palestinian “resistance.”
Elias Karram was called in for questioning after the 2016 interview surfaced. But after a hearing, the GPO said Wednesday it had determined Karram does not consider himself part of the resistance and does not support violence.
It said it would monitor Karram’s work for the next six months.
The decision temporarily eases tensions between the Israeli government and the Arab satellite channel.
— AP
Education Minister Naftali Bennett has unveiled a NIS 70 million ($19.5 million) program to improve English proficiency across the country, saying not knowing the international lingua franca is hurting Israelis prospects to be successful in business and life.
“Not knowing English is effectively closing books in your face and shutting opportunities to interact with the world,” Bennett says at a press conference, according to a statement released by his office.
The stated goal of the program is to bring the number of high-schoolers graduating with high-level English from 61 percent to 70% within four years, but will also target elementary and middle school students and aim to raise the quality of English teachers and English resources in schools.
A Dutch judge has extended by two weeks the detention of a suspect arrested last week for alleged involvement in a threat that forced the cancellation of a concert in Rotterdam by an American rock group.
Rotterdam District Court tweeted Wednesday that an investigative judge granted prosecutors’ request to continue holding the 22-year-old suspect for a further 14 days.
The suspect, whose identity has not been released, was arrested in the town of Zevenbergen, 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of Rotterdam, hours after the concert by Los Angeles band Allah-Las was canceled. The cancellation followed a tip about a possible terror threat that was sent to Rotterdam police by authorities in Spain.
Police have not released details about the exact nature of the threat.
— AP
UN chief Antonio Guterres has been met with demonstrations while he tours the Gaza Strip.
At one protest, around 25 people hold a fake coffin with a sign that said “Welcome to the largest prison in the world.”
Dozens of people also demonstrated as Guterres’s convoy crossed the border with Israel into Gaza, calling for action in support of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. They included prisoners’ relatives.
Guterres said he had been struck by humanitarian conditions in the overcrowded and impoverished enclave, where an electricity crisis has worsened and clean water is lacking.
“I am deeply moved to be in Gaza today, unfortunately to witness one of the most dramatic humanitarian crises that I’ve seen in many years working as a humanitarian in the United Nations,” Guterres said.
— AFP
A raging brushfire is partially blocking access to Israel’s main international airport.
Police have closed off the entrance to Ben-Gurion International Airport on Highway 40 near Airport City, leaving only the larger entrance off Highway 1.
השריפה ליד נתב"ג pic.twitter.com/3lmNgaHG4Y
— ביטחון 24/7 (@YMClc4EOS1GC97N) August 30, 2017
Highway 40 is closed between the Lod and Barkan junctions.
The top US envoy for the international coalition against the Islamic State, Brett McGurk, is blasting a deal that led to the evacuation of hundreds of Islamic State group fighters and civilians from the Lebanon-Syria border to areas close to Iraq.
McGurk tweets that IS “terrorists should be killed on the battlefield, not bused across #Syria to the Iraqi border without #Iraq’s consent.”
Irreconcilable #ISIS terrorists should be killed on the battlefield, not bused across #Syria to the Iraqi border without #Iraq's consent 1/2
— Brett McGurk (@brett_mcgurk) August 30, 2017
The evacuation agreement, the first such publicized deal, had already angered many Iraqis who accused Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah of dumping the militants on the Iraqi border rather than eradicating them.
McGurk adds that the anti-IS coalition will help ensure that “these terrorists can never” enter Iraq.
Our @coalition will help ensure that these terrorists can never enter #Iraq or escape from what remains of their dwindling "caliphate." 2/2
— Brett McGurk (@brett_mcgurk) August 30, 2017
Lebanese troops launched an attack against IS on August 18 while Syrian troops and Hezbollah fighters launched a simultaneous offensive from the Syrian side of the border. Once IS extremists were squeezed over the week end in a small part of the border area they agreed to a ceasefire.
— AP
Harvey has made landfall again, this time in southwestern Louisiana. The storm is expected to move inland , bringing continued heavy rain to Louisiana, before heading north to Arkansas, Tennessee and parts of Missouri.
“Once we get this thing inland during the day, it’s the end of the beginning,” says National Hurricane Center spokesman and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen. “Texas is going to get a chance to finally dry out as this system pulls out.”
So far, the highest rains recorded are just shy of the United States record for a tropical system. The rains in Cedar Bayou, near Mont Belvieu, Texas, topped the 50-inch mark with 51.88 inches (132 centimeters) as of 3:30 p.m. CDT Tuesday. That’s a record for the continental U.S., but it doesn’t quite pass the 52 inches (133 centimeters) from tropical cyclone Hiki in Kauai, Hawaii, in 1950 (before Hawaii became a state).
More than 13,000 people have been rescued in the Houston area and other parts of Southeast Texas since Harvey inundated the region with torrential rain, according to federal and local agencies.
Meanwhile, the death toll from Harvey has increased to at least 18, according to authorities and family members. Three more deaths were confirmed late Tuesday by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
— AP
The Kremlin has confirmed that US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer reached out to them during the 2016 presidential campaign, seeking help for a business project in Russia.
In a statement to the House Intelligence committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen said Monday the president’s company pursued a project in Moscow during the Republican primary. He said the plan was abandoned for various reasons.
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, tells reporters that they received Cohen’s email, which was sent to the press office’s general email address.
Peskov says it was one of many emails that the Kremlin press office gets — since its email address is available online — and that the Kremlin did not reply to it.
— AP
A tourist has been rushed to a hospital in serious condition after nearly drowning while taking a diving course in Eilat.
The woman, reportedly 25, was pulled out of the water by police after being located near the Red Sea resort city’s port, and CPR was administered.
According to reports she had disappeared while taking a scuba diving course.
The UN human rights chief is blasting US President Donald Trump, accusing him of inciting violence against the media, and speaking out against racism and anti-Semitism on display in Virginia earlier this month.
In a broad condemnation of Trump’s conduct in office, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein says the president “is driving the bus of humanity and we are careening down a mountain pass and, in taking these measures, at least from a human rights perspective it seems to be reckless driving.”
Zeid, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, voices alarm over Trump’s verbal assaults on CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post.
“To call these news organizations ‘fake’ does tremendous damage and to refer to individual journalists in this way, I have to ask the question, is this not an incitement for others to attack journalists?”
He adds that Trump’s assault on the media has emboldened other countries to crack down on press freedoms.
“The demonization of the press is poisonous because it has consequences elsewhere,” Zeid said.
Zeid also denounces the racist and anti-Semitic actions of neo-Nazi and white supremacists demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “an abomination” and “a nightmare.”
— AFP
A top minister is calling for Israel to reprise policies that included kidnapping troops from enemy countries in order to gain the release of people and soldiers’ remains being held captive in Gaza.
Without directly calling for Israel to begin kidnapping members of Hamas, Education Minister Naftali Bennett says Israel needs to go on the offensive to get assets that the terror group will want back.
“We need to go on an operational offensive to hurt Hamas and create assets,” the head of the hawkish Jewish Home party says in an interview with Walla news. “We knew how to do it in the ’50s and kidnap Jordanians, in the ’70s the Sayeret Matkal unit kidnapped Syrian officers in Lebanon. We need to return to the spirit of those initiatives and aggressiveness.”
In 1972 Israel kidnapped five Syrian officers and traded them for the return of pilots.
Hamas is currently holding the remains of two soldiers killed in the 2014 war and three living civilians. Efforts to gain their release have broken down in recent days, and officials, including Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, have urged a retreat from the policy of releasing prisoners in swap deals.
US President Donald Trump says that “Talking is not the answer!” when it comes to North Korea.
In a tweet he says the US has paid the North Koreans what he calls “extortion money” for 25 years.
The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2017
Trump’s tweet comes on the heels of the North’s recent missile test over Japan.
The White House isn’t immediately responding to questions about the meaning of Trump’s tweet.
North Korea has in the past temporarily halted nuclear development when the US and others provided food aid or other types of compensation. But the North hasn’t been making such demands, at least publicly, since Trump took office.
— AP
Hours after being bashed by the UN’s Human Rights chief for “inciting” against the media, US President Donald Trump tweets another attack on journalists, saying all he wants to do “is MAGA!”
Trump says the “false reporting and even ferocious anger in some dying magazines” is making him wonder “WHY?”
After reading the false reporting and even ferocious anger in some dying magazines, it makes me wonder, WHY? All I want to do is #MAGA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2017
It’s not immediately clear what reporting he is referring to. MAGA stands for Make America Great Again, a Trump campaign slogan.
Earlier Wednesday, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said Trump’s repeated criticism of US news outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN was “incitement for others to attack journalists.”
— with AP
US Special Envoy Jason Greenblatt tours Israeli communities bordering the Gaza Strip, expressing hope that Hamas rule in the Palestinian enclave will soon change.
“They are killing a lot of people there, and a large majority of them are living under a non-democratic rule and hopefully that will change soon,” he says while touring Nahal Oz, according to a statement from The Israel Project advocacy group.
Greenblatt also says the residents of the area live in “under threat of rocket attacks, terror tunnels and terrorism generally.”
Greenblatt’s appearance, which coincides with a visit to Gaza by UN head Antonio Guterres, also includes a trip to the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza.
Met w/ Israelis at Kerem Shalom crossing to discuss ways to better meet humanitarian and commercial needs of residents of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/M3Muepksfq
— Jason D. Greenblatt (@jdgreenblatt45) August 30, 2017
Both Israel and the US consider Hamas, the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip, a terror group.
Police are calling on the public in the Miami-Dade area to help locate a man who threatened to shoot up a local synagogue.
Miami-Dade Police identify the man as Steven H. Brooks. A flyer distributed by police asking the public for information about his whereabouts says he “made verbal threats to shoot with an Uzi and kill everyone at the Beit David Highland Lakes Shul Synagogue.”
He last made a threat on August 14 and has been warned twice about trespassing near the synagogue.
The poster also says that “Subject Brooks stated that he only has six months to live and does not care if he gets arrested.”
The poster stresses that “no probable cause exists” for his arrest.
Despite the fact that he has not been charged with a crime, police are concerned enough to alert the community and nearby synagogues, WSVN Channel 7 news reported.
— JTA
The US-led coalition said Wednesday it is monitoring a convoy of IS fighters that evacuated the Lebanon border headed toward eastern Syria under a controversial agreement brokered by Hezbollah and may strike at them.
Coalition spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon tells The Associated Press the coalition has already struck a small bridge and punched a crater in a road to keep them from moving further east toward the border with Iraq.
“We are monitoring their location in real time,” he said, adding that the coalition “will not rule out strikes against IS fighters being moved.”
Syrian opposition activists said the convoy, which left the Lebanon-Syria border on Tuesday, is still in government-held territory in eastern Syria.
The IS militants were allowed to evacuate the area in buses following a Hezbollah-negotiated deal that allows them to go to IS-held territory near the Iraqi border.
“We are not party to any agreements that were made by the Lebanese Hezbollah and ISIS or the (Syrian) regime,” Dillon says.
— AP
A revolutionary court in Iran has sentenced six reformist social media administrators to up to five years in jail, their lawyer tells the ILNA news agency.
Ali Mojtahedzadeh says the six group admins on the Telegram messaging app who were free on bail after their arrest in March were sentenced in court, without giving the date of the verdict or the charges.
“According to the verdict by Branch 15 of the revolutionary court, Mr Nima Keshvari and Mr Ahmadnia received five years, Mr Naghdi and Mr Jamshidi four years, and Mr Sobhan Jafari received three years in prison,” he says, without giving all their first names.
Mojtahedzadeh tells the reformist labor news agency that a sixth defendant, named Bagheri, was not in court for the verdict, apparently a two-year jail term.
The lawyer says he will not be able to file an appeal until he receives a copy of the 60-page verdict.
— AFP
Egypt has put the names of more than 350 people, including prominent Muslim Brotherhood figures, on its terrorism list.
The designation, announced over two days this week in the government’s official Gazette, bans those on the list from travel, puts them on a watch list and grants authorities the right to freeze their assets.
Authorities have launched a severe crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters since former President Mohammed Morsi’s ouster in 2013 following mass protests against his divisive, one-year rule. The Sunni Islamist organization was founded in Egypt.
The decision, subject to appeal within 60 days of publication in the Gazette, includes Muslim Brotherhood financier Hassan Malik.
Earlier this year, Egypt put some 1,500 others on the list, including Morsi and retired soccer midfielder Mohammed Abu Trika.
— AP
Former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka is accusing the “liberal elements” of the American Jewish community of becoming “anti-Israeli.”
Gorka, a senior security adviser to President Donald Trump before leaving the White House last week, has told conservative radio host Michael Savage he believes the left wing has attacked him in the media because of his support for Israel.
Gorka says that liberal American Jews are “doing so much to betray [America’s] great friendship with Jerusalem.”
“This is one of the saddest phenomena of American politics now that liberal, the liberal elements of the American Jewish population, has basically become anti-Israeli. It’s the greatest saddest paradox,” he says.
Gorka notes that “some great Jewish Americans came to my defense,” naming specifically Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. In March, Klein called Gorka a “great friend of Israel.”
Gorka also complains about the Forward Jewish newspaper for writing about his alleged membership in an anti-Semitic Hungarian group, calling it a “smear campaign.”
“You know there are key people such as at the Forward, at the Forward, who are pro-BDS, who are pro-Iran deal. It’s this very tragic phenomena that the people who should be supporting Israel and US-Israel relations the most have really done so much, done so much, to betray our great friendship with Jerusalem.”
— JTA
Model Jeremy Meeks has been behind bars. Now he’ll be behind Bar.
Sunglasses fashion house Carolina Lemke is going to get a bit shadier, teaming up Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli with hottie felon Meeks, the company says.
Meeks won international fame in 2014 after his smoldering mugshot went viral following an arrest in California. Since being released from prison where he served time on a felony firearms possession charge, Meeks has become a successful model and regular tabloid presence.
מיקס כזה עוד לא היה…בר רפאלי & ג'רמי מיקס (הידוע בכינויו: "האסיר החתיך בעולם")#בקרוב#carolinalemkeberlin#carolinalemkeoptic
Posted by Carolina Lemke | קרולינה למקה on trešdiena, 2017. gada 30. Augusts
“A mix like this you haven’t seen,” the company says on Facebook.
Refaeli, a part owner of Carolina Lemke who has faced her own troubles with John Law over suspected tax evasion, has been modeling for the company since 2014.
The US-led coalition says it has struck an Islamic State convoy coming from militant-held territory in Syria to meet IS evacuees being transferred there under a controversial deal brokered by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.
US officials have criticized the transfer of hundreds of militants and civilians who are bound for an IS-held area near the Iraqi border, saying the extremists should be killed on the battlefield.
Col. Ryan Dillon says Wednesday’s airstrike hit vehicles identified as belonging to IS that were traveling from IS-held territory toward the convoy.
Coalition officials say they are not bound by the evacuation agreement and may strike the evacuees themselves. An earlier coalition airstrike destroyed a small bridge and cratered a road, hindering the movement of the evacuees.
There are about 300 militants and almost as many family members on buses being evacuated under the deal, which ended the IS presence along the Lebanon-Syria border.
–AP
Poland’s tourism minister says he has fired the head of the national tourist organization after he said he wanted to remove the Auschwitz memorial and a Jewish history museum from tours for foreign journalists.
Witold Banka says on Twitter he is firing Marek Olszewski immediately over “scandalous remarks” the head of the Polish Organization of Tourism made in the Gazeta Wyborcza daily on Wednesday.
The newspaper quoted Olszewski as saying he wanted to “promote the values of Poland’s culture” and had “no need to show places and events relating to the history of other nations.”
Gazeta said he had removed the site of the former German Nazi death camp of Auschwitz and the POLIN museum from tours for foreign journalists.
— AP
Backers of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are readying for a rally in support of the Likud leader in Airport City scheduled to begin soon.
The event is officially scheduled as a pre-holiday toast, but is expected to be much like an earlier gathering in support of Netanyahu, beset by legal troubles, during which he and others railed against the media in a Trump-style mass rally.
Read Raoul Wootliff’s account of being attacked at the first rally here.
Outside the convention hall, at least two groups of protesters are holding their own rallies against the government for failing to act on their causes.
In one group, some 15 handicapped people are protesting benefit cuts, as they have been doing by blocking roads for several months.
According to the Maariv news site, coalition whip David Bitan, one the rally’s organizers, refuses to speak to them.
Also outside the hall are several dozen settlers evacuated from the Migron outpost some five years ago, saying the prime minister has refused to make good on his promise to build a neighborhood of permanent housing for them.
“We hope the prime minister, who promised last week that there should be only building and not destruction, will keep to his promise because promises need to be kept.”
Israel has arrested a Palestinian wedding singer after he performed a song about a terrorist who fatally stabbed three people in the settlement of Halamish, the Palestinian Prisoners Club says.
The singer was among four Palestinians arrested early Wednesday, three of whom perform in a band together, a spokeswoman says.
The army confirmed it arrested one person in Beit Rima, one in Kafr Ein and another in Kobar, the hometown of stabber Omar al-Abed.
דיווח: זמר פלסטיני ביצע שיר המפאר את הפיגוע בחלמיש – ונעצר. סמי עבד אל חמיד עם הפרטים >> http://bit.ly/2wi2Wj7
Posted by חדשות 10 on trešdiena, 2017. gada 30. Augusts
Palestinian media says the band, led by singer Mohammed al-Barghouti, had been singing about Abed, who stabbed to death three members of the Solomon family last month.
A video of the band performing the song, which praises Abed, has been posted on social media.
“Hey you, who asks about real men, you will find them in Kobar… Omar al-Abed is an earthquake who took revenge on behalf of Al-Aqsa… he came from above the mountains carrying a knife on his side, and when he announced the clash, he made the Zionists lie on the ground… even if they detain my mother and my father, and demolish our home, we will never wear clothes of disgrace,” the lyrics read, according to the Ma’an news agency.
— with Judah Ari Gross and AFP
Train service between Tel Aviv and Haifa is experiencing widespread disruptions after a man was killed on the tracks near Netanya.
The disruptions have caused thousands of people to be stranded during their evening commutes. While service has since been partially returned, express trains are being forced to stop at every station, slowing them.
According to Israel Railways, a man in his 70s entered the tracks and was apparently killed by a passing train south of Beit Yehoshua.
According to the Ynet news site, travelers were promised buses, but they never showed up.
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is reportedly threatening to cut funding to UN bodies over a document being written up that singles out companies doing business with Israeli settlements.
The so-called settlement blacklist has been called “shameful” by Haley and Israeli officials have railed against its creation.
According to Israel’s Channel 2, one the bodies that may have funding cut is the UN Human Rights Council, which is drawing up the list and has been bashed by US officials for its anti-Israel bias.
Some 2,000 people are gathered at a convention center in Airport City at a rally for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is slated to speak shortly and is expected to use the pulpit to bash the media and protests that have been taking place in Petah Tikva calling for Attorney Avichai Mandelblit to push ahead with legal cases against the prime minister.
Signs at the event hall, most looking professionally made, call for the media to “beg forgiveness” and accuse opponents of attempting a “putsch.”
Speaking before Netanyahu, coalition whip and Netanyahu ally David Bitan says 2,000 more supporters are outside the hall unable to get in and calls for the media to do soul-searching, accusing opponents of “wanting to bring down the prime minister over some cigars,” a reference to a probe into suspicions Netanyahu took gifts from wealthy businessmen.
Netanyahu begins addressing rally, wishing a happy new year to “both the right and left,” and mostly avoid partisan speak.
“In democracy there are disagreements, that’s legitimate. But I want to tell you, there are also places where we agree,” he says bringing up his visit to Russian president Vladimir Putin and the support he got from the Israeli opposition chief.
The prime minister talks up his security achievements, saying the wall on the Sinai border has stopped both “infiltrators and IS.”
He also promises to bring justice in the Yemenite children affair, to mixed applause.
He calls his upcoming trip to central and South America “historic.”
“In 70 years no prime minister has visited south of America. I am changing that,” he says as the crowd breaks into supportive chants.
Netanyahu promises to “shatter the lies” being told by the media.
Upon mentioning the media, the crowd begins booing loudly.
The prime minister accuses the media of engaging in “fake news,” pointing to a story in Yedioth Ahronoth that reported his meeting with Putin failed.
Saying that the media is trying to paint an untrue picture of Israel, Netanyahu calls the situation “outrageous.”
He says “fake news” is at a peak, and protesters against him are trying to get him indicted “at any cost.”
“They think if they take down me and my wife, they will take down the Likud, they will take down you,” Netanyahu says.
He calls the investigations against him a “joke,” and points to those funding the protests against him, attacking organizers Menny Naftali and Eldad Yaniv without naming them.
Netanyahu goes after former Prime Minister Residence’s caretaker Menny Naftali, who sued him and his wife for abuse, trying to poke holes in his case, though its already been decided in court.
He accuses Naftali of ordering surplus food for his own use.
“They want to replace us outside the polling station, but will not succeed. Our support is only growing. When we are tortured, we will multiply and prosper,” the PM says.
He finishes by bringing up a meeting he had with MK Shuli Moallem, recalling the fact that his wife Sara was in touch with her when she lost her husband in the helicopter crash of 1997. “I am proud of her and I am proud of you,” he says.
He ends by saying “we will continue to lead for many more years.”
British police investigating Friday’s sword attack outside Buckingham Palace in London have released a suspect from custody, but another man is still being questioned.
“A 30-year-old man who was arrested in west London on Sunday, 27 August by detectives investigating a terrorist incident near Buckingham Palace has been released from police custody with no further action,” a police statement says.
A 26-year-old man from Luton, north of London, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of grievous bodily harm and assault on police, and counter-terrorism have until September 1 to question him.
The suspect reached for a four-foot sword after being challenged by unarmed police officers he deliberately drove at outside the royal palace, authorities say.
Police said the man had repeatedly shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) and was incapacitated with tear gas.
— AFP
US President Donald Trump has appointed a Republican operative who once drew up a list of prominent Jewish officials for Richard Nixon, to chair a government think tank.
“The President intends to appoint Frederic Malek of Virginia to be a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution and to designate him as Chair,” The White House says in a statement.
In 1971, Malek was tapped by Nixon’s chief of staff H.R. Haldeman to compile a list of important Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as part of an attempt by the president to rid the government of what he called a Jewish cabal seeking to undermine him.
Malek later apologized and has been recognized favorably by the ADL and other Jewish groups. He played a role in George Bush and John McCain’s presidential campaigns.
