The Times of Israel liveblogged Tuesday’s events as they unfolded.
In the discussion preceding the preliminary reading of a bill to establish an independent minister in charge of West Bank building policy within the defense ministry — slated to go to the ultranationalist Religious Zionism party — outgoing Defense Minister Benny Gantz charges that the incoming coalition is trying to create a parallel defense ministry.
Rather than creating a minister within a ministry, Gantz says that the coalition agreements indicate that the bill is trying to create a second Defense Ministry in charge of the West Bank.
Coupled with expanded powers promised to expected national security minister and Otzma Yehudit party chief Itamar Ben Gvir, which are slated to include moving the West Bank’s Border Police division from the IDF’s command to the police, Gantz says the parceling off of defense ministry responsibilities to different chains of command will hurt security.
He claimed the incoming coalition was putting national security at risk in order to please the far-right parties needed to form a government.
The bill passed its preliminary reading 61 to 51 and will move to a committee for its next legislative steps.
A bill to expand the authority of the national security minister police minister — set to be Otzma Yehudit head Itamar Ben Gvir — over the police force passes its preliminary reading in the Knesset.
Outgoing minister Omer Barlev, says in the discussion preceding the vote that broadening the minister’s powers would threaten turning Israel into a “police state.”
Barlev says that while the bill is meant to create a command relationship between police minister and police commissioner akin to the IDF chief of staff’s subordination to the defense minister, the comparison is inappropriate. While the IDF operates against external threats, the police deals with Israeli citizens, and the primacy of Israeli law versus minister directive should be unchallenged.
Ben Gvir countered that Barlev had chaffed against the limits of his power, and that “suddenly when we suggest it, it’s not democratic and hurts human rights?”
The bill passes with 61 votes for and 53 against. It now goes to committees in preparation for its next vote this evening.
The World Cup semifinal match between Argentina and Croatia has started at Lusail Stadium.
The winner will face either defending champion France or Morocco on Sunday in the final.
Lionel Messi ties the record for most appearances at the World Cup when he now plays for the 25th time for Argentina at soccer’s biggest tournament.
Lothar Matthäus of Germany previously held the record outright.
Messi is playing in his fifth and likely final World Cup. He will have a chance to break the record because Argentina will play in either the final on Sunday or the third-place playoff on Saturday.
US prosecutors slap disgraced cryptocurrency tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried with multiple criminal charges for massive fraud as he built his FTX crypto empire.
The charge sheet lands as Bankman-Fried appears in a Bahamas court and indicates that he will fight an extradition request by the United States and asks to be released on bail pending a hearing.
The founder of the FTX platform, who was arrested in the Bahamas yesterday at the request of the United States, is facing a raft of accusations, including from US market regulators who say that the investor knowingly built a fraudulent house of cards.
In their indictment, US prosecutors say Bankman Fried also carried out money laundering, violated campaign finance laws and committed wire fraud since the start of his company in 2019.
Bankman-Fried “was orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customer funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire,” prosecutors say.
A bill to change Israel’s Basic Law to clear a path for a party leader serving a suspended sentence — Shas’s Aryeh Deri — to become a minister passes its preliminary reading in the Knesset, the incoming coalition’s first bill to come to a vote in the 25th Knesset.
With 62 votes in favor and 53 against, the amendment states that only a person handed a custodial sentence is blocked from being a minister.
The three other bills are slated to come for rapid vote in quick succession, and then all four will be sent onwards to committees in preparation for their next vote, technically called a first reading.
After that first reading, the bills return to committee to be readied for their second and third readings, often conducted together. If passed on their third reading, the bills become law. Basic Laws require the vote of 61 MKs to pass on their third reading.
Military prosecutors file an indictment against Younis Hilan, a Palestinian man who allegedly stabbed and killed an Israeli man in a West Bank village in October.
Shalom Sofer was stabbed on October 25 as he exited a store in al-Funduq, a Palestinian village near Kedumim. He was hospitalized and later released home, where he died around two weeks later.
Hilan was arrested several hours after the stabbing.
The Israel Defense Forces says Hilan is charged with intentionally causing the death of Sofer — the military court’s equivalent of murder — and other security offenses.
He is to remain held until the end of legal proceedings, the IDF says.
Sofer’s family has been updated on the developments, the IDF adds.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky features in a new episode of David Letterman’s interview series on Netflix, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.”
In it, the Jewish Ukrainian leader tells a joke about the state of Russia’s military, to laughs from the audience and host.
“Two Jewish guys from Odesa meet up,” Zelensky says. “One asks the other: ‘So what’s the situation? What are people saying?'”
“And he goes, ‘What are people saying? They are saying it’s a war.'”
“What kind of war?”
“Russia is fighting NATO.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, yes! Russia is fighting NATO.”
“So how’s it going?”
“Well, 70,000 Russian soldiers are dead. The missile stockpile has almost been depleted. A lot of equipment is damaged, blown up.”
“And what about NATO?”
“What about NATO? NATO hasn’t even arrived yet.”
The Knesset’s Arrangements Committee agrees to fast-track four bills politically required to form Israel’s next government under prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, enabling them to move up for their first votes on the Knesset floor this evening.
Demanded by far-right and ultra-Orthodox partners as a precondition to forming the government, three of the bills will augment key roles and powers, including expanding the authority of the national security minister — set to be Otzma Yehudit head Itamar Ben Gvir — over the police force; clearing a path for a party leader serving a suspended sentence — Shas’s Aryeh Deri — to helm three ministries; and enabling a member of the Religious Zionism party, likely party leader Bezalel Smotrich, to become an independent minister in the Defense Ministry in control of West Bank building. The fourth will make it harder for rebel MKs to peel off from their parliamentary factions without sanction, and is a bill specifically desired by Likud.
Parties from the incoming opposition dragged the debate on bills out for almost nine hours, utilizing parliamentary tools to delay the vote in an effort to pressure the time-strapped incoming government, which has until December 21 to announce its formation.
A French court orders prison terms for eight suspects charged in the harrowing 2016 terror attack in Nice, where a suspected Islamist attacker plowed his truck into a crowd celebrating the July 14 national holiday.
Two men are given the most severe sentences of 18 years behind bars for helping Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian resident, prepare an attack that killed 86 people and injured over 450 in a four-minute rampage on a seaside embankment in the southern city before being shot dead by police.
New Zealand passes into law a unique plan to phase out tobacco smoking by imposing a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes.
The law states that tobacco can’t ever be sold to anybody born on or after January 1, 2009.
It means the minimum age for buying cigarettes will keep going up and up. In theory, somebody trying to buy a pack of cigarettes 50 years from now would need ID to show they were at least 63 years old.
But health authorities hope smoking will fade away well before then. They have a stated goal of making New Zealand smoke-free by 2025.
“There is no good reason to allow a product to be sold that kills half the people that use it,” Associate Minister of Health Dr. Ayesha Verrall tells lawmakers in Parliament. “And I can tell you that we will end this in the future, as we pass this legislation.”
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is given a briefing by senior military and Mossad spy agency officials, a spokesman says.
The committee is temporarily chaired by Likud MK Yoav Galant, a former general expected to be tapped as defense minister.
A Knesset spokesman says the briefing to the members of the committee focused on Israel’s northern frontier, including intelligence about current events in Syria and Lebanon, and preparations for a potential escalation.
“The members of the committee received a comprehensive overview of the political, social, and economic situation in both countries,” the spokesman says.
He adds that the members were also briefed on the Syrian army, the Lebanese Hezbollah terror group, and Iran’s involvement in both countries.
The world union of professional soccer players FIFPRO says it is “shocked and sickened” by the risk of Iranian soccer player Amir Nasr-Azadani being sentenced to death in connection with protests which have shaken the country for three months.
Nasr-Azadani was arrested in the city of Isfahan two days after allegedly taking part in an “armed riot” in which three security agents were killed on September 16, Isfahan’s judiciary chief Abdullah Jafari has said, quoted by Iran’s ISNA news agency.
Jafari says the 26-year-old had been accused of “rebellion, membership in illegal gangs, collusion to undermine security” and therefore assisting in “enmity against God” — a capital crime in the Islamic Republic.
“FIFPRO is shocked and sickened by reports that professional footballer Amir Nasr-Azadani faces execution in Iran after campaigning for women’s rights and basic freedom in his country,” the union writes on its Twitter page.
The sound of a dust devil on Mars was recorded for the first time as the eye of the whirlwind swept over the top of NASA’s Perseverance rover, a new study says.
“We hit the jackpot” when the rover’s microphone picked up the noise made by the dust devil overhead, says the study’s lead author Naomi Murdoch, a planetary researcher at France’s ISAE-SUPAERO space research institute.
The researchers hope the recording will help to better understand the weather and climate on Mars, including how its arid surface and thin atmosphere may once have supported life.
The Israel Defense Forces and police foiled an attempt to smuggle 20 handguns into Israel from Lebanon earlier this morning, arresting four suspects, authorities say.
According to police, soldiers operating surveillance cameras identified several suspects close to the border, and officers were dispatched to the scene.
The four men, all from the northern Arab town of Tuba-Zangariyye, were arrested.
According to police, two were arrested at the scene and the third, in a getaway vehicle, was caught following a brief chase.
The fourth man, who police say is the ringleader, was arrested at Ben Gurion Airport while attempting to flee to Turkey.
Pro-settlement lawmakers have reignited their fight to legalize Jewish presence on West Bank land vacated by Israel’s 2005 unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip and parts of the northern West Bank.
A new bill proposes to repeal sections 23 to 30(b) of 2005’s Disengagement Plan Implementation Law, sections that prohibit Jewish entry to and settlement of areas vacated under the plan.
The bill, submitted by Likud MK Yuli Edelstein and Religious Zionism lawmaker Orit Strock, is identical to a version submitted in the prior Knesset that did not advance.
Edelstein is a longtime activist against the disengagement and Strock is a leader of the Jewish community in Hebron. Edelstein has pledged to nullify the 2004 law enabling the disengagement.
US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announces a “major scientific breakthrough” in the decades-long quest to harness fusion, the energy that powers the sun and stars.
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, something called net energy gain, the Energy Department says.
The achievement will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power, officials say.
“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality, and this milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery,” Granholm says in a statement.
Outgoing Public Security Minister Omer Barlev says the bill to expand the portfolio’s powers under incoming minister Itamar Ben Gvir “is unwarranted and will destroy the Israel Police.”
Speaking at a Labor party conference, Barlev says the bill that will make the police chief fully subordinate to the minister “will shatter the independence of police” and “make it entirely controlled by politicians, leaving police a puppet on a string.”
Shares of Merck and Moderna have jumped after the drugmakers say a potential skin cancer vaccine they are developing using the same technology behind COVID-19 preventive shots has fared well in a small study.
The drugmakers say a combination of the vaccine and Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda led to a statistically significant improvement in recurrence-free survival time in patients with phase three or four melanoma who had tumors removed in surgery.
The patient group that took the potential vaccine and Keytruda saw a 44% reduction in the risk of death or the cancer returning, the companies say.
Merck and Moderna expect to start a phase 3 study of the combination next year, and the companies say they intend to “rapidly expand” their approach to other tumor types. Phase 3 is generally the last and largest clinical study before a drug is submitted to regulators for approval.
The Energy Ministry announces the fourth competition in six years for licenses to explore for gas off Israel’s Mediterranean coast.
The parcels will be at least 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the shore, in line with an environmental assessment the ministry says it has carried out.
Licenses will be conditioned on respect for natural habitats in the area. Activities such as drilling will require an environmental survey, a marine emissions permit, a toxins permit and approval of an emergency plan for marine spills, a ministry statement says.
It explains that additional discoveries of natural gas will lead to more competition and the lowering of electricity prices while enabling sales to customers such as the European Union, which is suffering supply problems because of the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel calls the move “delusional and disconnected from reality,” saying that most of the world is trying to wean itself off of fossil fuels and move to renewable energy sources that are safer and better for the climate, the environment, and national security.
Following three hours of heated discussion, the Knesset Arrangements Committee grants an exemption from a waiting period to legislation meant to expand the incoming national security minister’s powers over the police.
New bills must pass a 45-day waiting period between being formally submitted and being brought for a preliminary vote, unless granted a special exemption.
The first of four bills in a suite of legislation demanded by Likud and its partners in the incoming government, the bill will make the police commissioner “subordinate” to far-right Otzma Yehudit leader and expected police minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
The other three bills will clear a path for a party leader serving a suspended sentence — Aryeh Deri — to helm a ministry; enable a member of the Religious Zionism party — likely party leader Bezalel Smotrich — to become an independent minister in the Defense Ministry in control of West Bank construction; and make it harder for any potential rebel MKs to peel off from their parliamentary factions without sanction, a bill specifically desired by Likud.
All four are expected to be discussed today, as they are being rushed through the committee in order to bring them to a preliminary vote this evening.
Incoming opposition members have been wielding parliamentary tools to jam up the Likud-led legislative agenda, including demanding a revote on the exemption granted to the Ben Gvir bill.
The Arrangements Committee, which started its sitting shortly after 11 a.m., has yet to vote on the remaining three bills, in addition to the re-vote on the police bill.
In a dramatic breakthrough with the potential to avoid destroying 7 billion unwanted male chicks globally each year, a gaggle of Israeli hens all called Golda become the first in the world to lay eggs that only produce females.
The technology has been in development for seven years. Embryology expert Yuval Cinnamon headed a team at the Israeli Agricultural Research Organization Volcani Center, in partnership with Poultry by Huminn, a company that provides technological solutions to the poultry industry.
Roosters carry the Z chromosome while hens carry Z for males and W for females. The coupling of two Zs leads to a male chick being born. If the mother supplies the W chromosome to the father’s Z, a female chick will emerge. The research team discovered a way to genetically edit the hen’s Z chromosome so that eggs carrying male embryos will stop developing at an early stage and will not hatch.
The discovery has the potential to prevent hatching and elimination of male chicks by unsavory methods that range from suffocation and gassing to being ground up while still alive.
Cinnamon tells The Times of Israel that the European Union has already confirmed that the hens and table eggs can be marketed without any regulatory change. He adds that the US FDA is currently evaluating the research and that he hopes it, and Israel’s Agriculture Ministry, will approve the tech too.
US President Joe Biden is inviting thousands to celebrate at the White House today as he signs into law gay marriage legislation before a bipartisan crowd that reflects growing acceptance of same-sex unions.
Lawmakers from both parties will be there, as will first lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. The White House promised musical performances but is trying to maintain suspense about the headliners.
The triumphant mood will play out against the backdrop of a right-wing backlash over gender issues, which has alarmed gay and transgender people and their advocates.
The American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, an organization that represents the American-Jewish legal community, says it is “concerned about recent attempts to limit the independence of the Israeli judiciary,” in reference to the incoming government’s plan for judicial reform that could include legislation to bypass Supreme Court rulings.
“An independent judiciary is the core of any informed and robust democracy,” the organization says.
“Attempts to reduce judicial independence and to enable the Knesset to override decisions of the Supreme Court relating to human rights and equality provided by Israel’s Basic Laws by a simple majority vote risks endangering public trust in the legal system and in Israel’s robust democracy.”
The UN’s Mideast peace envoy Tor Wennesland meets with Hussein Alsheikh, secretary general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
“Discussed the political situation in Palestinian and Israel,” Wennesland tweets. “Reiterated that UN will remain actively engaged with the parties to counter negative trends & bring them back on a political path that will end the occupation & realize a 2-state solution based on 67 lines.”
Met with SG of PLO's EC @HusseinSheikhpl. Discussed the political situation in 🇵🇸 & 🇮🇱. Reiterated that UN will remain actively engaged w/ the parties to counter negative trends & bring them back on a political path that will end the occupation & realize a 2-SS based on 67 lines. pic.twitter.com/HrOcDt3CFD
— Tor Wennesland (@TWennesland) December 13, 2022
Labor leader Merav Michaeli says the incoming government’s desire to change the Law of Return to eliminate the so-called grandchild clause “will deal a fatal blow to the Jewish people.”
The clause allows anyone with a Jewish grandparent to immigrate to Israel, even without being themselves considered Jewish according to halacha, or Jewish law.
“The Law of Return is the gatekeeper of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. It is the door,” Michaeli said. “Why on earth does someone want to come and lock this door to half of the Jewish people? And along the way to also create a wedge that will be impossible to remove between the State of Israel and the global Jewish community, wherever they are. Why on earth would someone want to do this terrible injustice to both the Jewish people and the State of Israel?”
The Kremlin says there can be no progress in resolving the Ukraine conflict unless Kyiv recognizes occupied territories as Russian.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s spokesman also brushes off Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposal that Russia begin pulling out troops this Christmas.
“The Ukrainian side needs to take into account the realities that have developed on the ground,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells reporters.
“These realities show that the Russian Federation has new territories,” he adds. “Without taking into account these realities, any progress is impossible.”
A witness in Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial says she underwent “amateurish, negligent and biased” interrogation by police that included “creating fear and dread in unacceptable, inhumane conditions.”
Yifat Ben Hai Segev, the former head of the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council, claims her deposition “will include statements that are the result of misdirection and matters taken out of context.”
Judges refuse a request by prosecutors to declare Segev a hostile witness, but will allow them to cross-examine her.
