Battalion commander, subordinate officer suspended for ‘unbecoming conduct’

Sara Netanyahu appeals court ruling in favor of ex-employee

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara Netanyahu, appeals to the National Labor Court in Jerusalem over the decision to compensate her former housekeeper Menny Naftali with a sum of NIS 170,000 (about $43,735).

Two weeks ago, the court ruled in favor of Naftali, saying he had endured years of mistreatment while working at the Prime Minister’s Residence, and also ruled he had been misled over his terms of employment at the residence.

The court ruled that “numerous testimonies presented to the court point to an atmosphere of harmful work conditions at the residence due to the behavior of Mrs. Netanyahu and her attitude toward the workers. These included irrational demands, insults, humiliation and outbursts of rage.”

After studying the verdict, Sara Netanyahu’s lawyers recommended that the prime minister’s wife appeal, giving her a chance to present her own documents and witnesses regarding the affair.

Boy finds 3,400-year-old figurine in Beit She’an Valley

A 7-year-old boy uncovers a 3,400-year-old figurine during a family trip to the Beit She’an Valley.

Uri Grinhot and his family hand it over to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which awards him a prize for good citizenship.

The rare clay figurine is of a naked woman, most probably prepared by pressing the soft clay material into a mold.

Amichai Mazar, a professor emeritus at Hebrew University, tells the Walla news site that the figurine is typical of Canaanite culture of 15th to 13th centuries BC.

Activist Yehudah Glick acquitted of all charges

The Magistrate’s Court in Jerusalem acquits Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick of all charges stemming from a purported attack on a woman in 2014 at the Jerusalem site, after police decided to retract their indictment against him.

In its announcement, the State Prosecutor’s Office says it discovered “difficulties arising from the testimony of the complainant and a witness.”

In a separate incident on October 29, 2014, Glick was shot by a Palestinian terrorist outside the Begin Center in Jerusalem. The gunman, Mutaz Hijazi, approached Glick on a motorcycle, called him an “enemy of al-Aqsa” and shot him four times at point-blank range. Glick had just concluded a talk on “the importance of maintaining a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount,” according to a press release by the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation, which he founded.

Glick, 49, is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, though he is not a Knesset Member.

PM calls on world to condemn Iran financing of terrorists’ families

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urges the international community to condemn Iran’s financing of Palestinian terrorists’ families.

“Our fight against terrorism… does not exist in a vacuum,” Netanyahu says at the start of his meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov. “Yesterday Iran announced that it will finance the families of the terrorists and murderers; this shows that Iran, even after the nuclear agreement, is continuing to aid terrorism, including Palestinian terrorism, Hezbollah terrorism and its assistance to Hamas. This is something that the nations of the world must confront and condemn and assist Israel – and other countries, of course – in repelling.”

“Second, the terrorism by those wielding knives, the Palestinian children, also does not exist in a vacuum. It comes from the Palestinian education system, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Yesterday Eliav Gelman lost his life in another terrorist attack, not by the students of terrorism, but by those who teach terrorism, a Palestinian teacher. Therefore, the world needs to stand with Israel against this incitement, which is the number one cause of terrorism.”

Syrian army retakes town near Aleppo from IS

Syrian government troops backed by Russian airstrikes recapture a town in Aleppo province from the Islamic State group in a key advance just two days ahead of a US and Russia-engineered ceasefire that is to take effect in Syria.

The town of Khanaser was seized earlier this week by the extremist Islamic State group, cutting government military access to the provincial capital, also called Aleppo, said the Syrian government and the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group.

SANA says the army took Khanaser, around 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Aleppo city, after three days of heavy battles and that heavy fighting was still underway to reopen the road. On Tuesday, IS seized Khanaser and surrounding hills, severing the government’s main land route to the city.

In the push on Khanaser, the Syrian army and pro-government Shiite militias were backed by Russian airstrikes, The Observatory says.

The advance comes ahead of a ceasefire meant to start on midnight Friday. The Islamic State group and al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, however, are not included in the truce proposed by the United States and Russia.

The ceasefire is aimed at achieving a temporary “cessation of hostilities” that would bring back the Syrian government and its opponents to the negotiating table in Geneva.

The Syrian opposition has agreed to abide by the truce but expressed major concerns and reservations about what it said were ambiguities and the lack of any clear mechanism to implement the agreement.

— AP

French teacher to face trial for ‘lying’ over IS attack

A Jewish teacher in France is to face trial in April for allegedly lying to police by claiming he was attacked by three Islamic State jihadists, a prosecutor says.

The teacher, Tsion Sylvain Saadoun, is charged with “false accusation of an imaginary crime,” says Brice Robin, prosecutor in the southern city of Marseille.

In November, just days after a devastating IS attack in Paris that left 130 people dead, Saadoun invited press to his home in Marseille, claiming he had been attacked with a knife by three men who said they were tied to IS.

“After a particularly thorough investigation, it emerged that the statements of the so-called victim of an attempted murder were neither backed up by emergency services who intervened, nor by forensic experts,” Robin says.

He says any injuries were believed to be due to “self-mutilation.”

However Saadoun maintains he is telling the truth.

— AFP

Rivlin to meet Putin for talks on Mideast

President Reuven Rivlin is set to visit Russia for high-level talks with President Vladimir Putin in March.

Rivlin cancels a scheduled visit to Australia in order to make room for the meeting with the Russian president.

The two will discuss regional developments related to the events in the Middle East, the President’s Office says.

Egypt sentences 4 Coptic teenagers for contempt of Islam

An Egyptian court convicts four Coptic Christian teenagers for contempt of Islam, after they appeared in a video mocking Muslim prayers, sentencing three of them to five years in prison and referring a fourth, who is under 18, to a juvenile detention facility.

The harsh ruling — which has followed a surge of blasphemy cases in Egyptian courts — underscores a culture of intolerance within the country’s judicial system at a time when the Egyptian president is seeking to position himself as an advocate for religious reform.

The teenagers’ lawyer, Maher Naguib, says his clients, who are high school students in the southern province of Minya, haven’t been detained and didn’t appear in court for the trial.

He describes the ruling as “unbelievable” and says the judge should have just punished the teenagers with a fine.

The video was filmed by the students’ teacher, who is also a Christian, and who was sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Islam in a separate trial.

The 30-second video showed the students pretending to pray, with one kneeling on the floor while reciting verses and two others standing behind him and laughing. One waved his hand under a second’s neck in a sign of beheading.

— AP

Argentine prosecutor affirms Nisman ‘was murdered’

Argentinian Prosecutor Ricardo Sáenz tells judges at the Criminal Court that special prosecutor Alberto Nisman was murdered.

Nisman was investigating the 1994 AMIA bombing that left 85 dead and a Jewish community traumatized. He had identified the Hezbollah suicide bomber and traced the AMIA bombing to Iran, and was due to testify over then-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s alleged coverup of Iranian responsibility. A day before his scheduled testimony, Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment.

Nisman’s lawsuit accused the government of establishing a “parallel communication channel” with Iran in order to “transmit and implement the orders established by the President (Kirchner) and, in that way, reach the illicit objectives,” including establishing trade relations.

His death was discovered just hours before he was to present the evidence to Argentine lawmakers at the National Parliament. He was found dead in his apartment, a .22 pistol by his side, and associates of Kirchner said his death was a suicide.

Hamas top official says group doesn’t want war with Israel

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, says his group is not seeking war with Israel, and insists that the tunnels being dug by his organization beneath the Palestinian enclave are for defensive purposes only.

“I think nobody here in the region is looking for a war,” Zahar says, according to Reuters.

“We are not looking for any confrontation with Israel, but if they are going to launch an aggression we have to defend ourselves.”

Nisman’s daughters’ attorney praises announcement

Special prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s daughters’ attorney praises an announcement by Argentinian prosecutor Ricardo Sáenz, saying that until now there hadn’t been a single judicial official who stood by the hypothesis that Nisman had been murdered, the Infobae news site reports.

Saenz said Nisman had been murdered, and called for the incident to be investigated by federal authorities.

Nisman was investigating the 1994 AMIA bombing that left 85 dead and a Jewish community traumatized. He had identified the Hezbollah suicide bomber and traced the AMIA bombing to Iran, and was due to testify over then-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s alleged coverup of Iranian responsibility. A day before his scheduled testimony, Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment.

Nisman’s lawsuit accused the government of establishing a “parallel communication channel” with Iran in order to “transmit and implement the orders established by the President (Kirchner) and, in that way, reach the illicit objectives,” including establishing trade relations.

His death was discovered just hours before he was to present the evidence to Argentine lawmakers at the National Parliament. He was found dead in his apartment, a .22 pistol by his side, and associates of Kirchner said his death was a suicide.

ADL’s Abraham Foxman awarded Germany’s highest civilian honor

Abraham Foxman receives Germany’s highest civilian honor.

Foxman, the national director emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League, was presented with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit earlier this week by German Ambassador to the United States Peter Wittig, at the German Ambassador’s residence in Washington DC.

“Your voice has been a voice of tolerance and against hate, a voice for responsibility and against discrimination,” Wittig said. He called Foxman a “tireless and committed fighter” against bigotry in all forms, and praised his work in promoting reconciliation between Germany and the Jewish community in the United States.

Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, said in accepting the honor: “I never would have believed that I would one day accept and take great pride in accepting an honor like this from the government of Germany.”

He also said: “Germany has shown that it is willing to be a leader in standing up against intolerance. Wherever things go, that instinctive reaction is to be commended.

“The moral lesson of the Holocaust has been well-learned,” he concluded.

— JTA

Brazil opens first Jewish immigration museum

Several Jewish and non-Jewish officials attend the inauguration ceremony for Brazil’s first museum dedicated to Jewish immigration.

The five-story Jewish Immigration Memorial dedicated on Tuesday gathers some 1,000 historic articles including documents, objects, clothes, and books narrating the history of the Jewish community of South America’s largest country. The building is located at the Kehilat Israel synagogue, the oldest Jewish house of worship in Sao Paulo, founded by Bessarabian immigrants in 1912.

“We have created the memorial to fill in the blank of our people’s immigration history. Brazil has always been a tolerant country that welcomed Jewish immigrants with open arms. Other groups such as Italians and Japanese already had centers to remember their historic path to Brazil. We, Jews, did not have anything like that until now,” said Breno Krasilchik, the memorial council’s president.

Built in the city’s historically Jewish-populated neighborhood of Bom Retiro, the building also features a center for study and research on Jewish immigration to serve the whole Brazilian society.

“This is a new institution to play a distinguished role at the city’s and the country’s historic and cultural background,” the memorial’s coordinator, Rabbi Toive Weitman, told JTA.

Israeli Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger joined the ceremony to lay the cornerstone in early 2013.

Brazil is home to some 120,000 Jews, including 60,000 in Sao Paulo and 40,000 in Rio. Recife, in the northeast, hosts the very first synagogue in the Americas, the Kahal Zur Israel, opened in 1636.

— JTA

Parents of 2-year-old who suffered head injury arrested

Police arrest the parents of a 2-year-old girl who suffered severe head injuries yesterday.

The toddler is hospitalized at the Schneider Children’s Hospital in Petah Tikva in critical condition.

Police are trying to find out what caused that injury and suspect the parents of negligence.

The parents, residents of a city in central Israel, say that did not harm the child.

Palestinians criticize Kenyan leader’s trip to Israel

The Palestinians are criticizing the Kenyan president’s visit to the region, saying his stops in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are akin to accepting Israel’s control of the West Bank.

During his first official visit to Israel this week, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta met with Kenyan students in a West Bank settlement and visited the Western Wall, a Jewish holy site, in east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want the West Bank and east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as part of their hoped-for state.

The Palestinians are also upset Kenyatta has not visited any Palestinian city.

Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi says the Palestinians plan to complain to regional organizations, including the African Union, about the visit.

Israel and Kenya have strong security and agricultural ties.

— AP

Ten days to save EU migration system – commissioner

The EU has until a March 7 summit with Turkey to curb the number of migrants coming to Europe or else the bloc’s migration system might “completely break down,” migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos says.

“In the next 10 days, we need tangible and clear results on the ground. Otherwise there is a risk that the whole system will completely break down,” Avramopoulos tells a press conference after interior ministers dealing with the crisis met in Brussels.

The EU official also warns of an imminent humanitarian crisis in Greece, the main arrival point for migrants in Europe, or on the western Balkans route most take to richer northern European countries.

“The situation is very critical. The possibility of a humanitarian crisis is very real and very near,” Avramopoulos says.

The EU-Turkey summit promises to be crucial, both for the deal that Brussels and Ankara signed in November to cut migrant flows, and for the unity of the European Union on coping with the biggest such crisis in its history.

Avramopoulos urges EU states to work together and avoid “unilateral actions,” such as the border controls that several countries have reintroduced and caps on asylum seeker numbers brought in by Austria which have left thousands of refugees stranded between member states.

The border controls threaten Europe’s Schengen free travel area that spans 26 countries.

“We cannot continue to deal through unilateral, bilateral or trilateral actions; the first negative effects and impacts are already visible,” Avramopoulos says.

“We have a shared responsibility –- all of us -– towards our neighboring states, both EU and non-EU, but also towards those desperate people.”

— AFP

Kerry: Iran has withdrawn Guards from Syria

Iran has withdrawn a “significant number” of its Revolutionary Guards troops from the Syrian battlefield, US Secretary of State John Kerry says.

Iran is an ally of Syria’s President Bashar Assad and has sent members of the elite force to act as “advisers” to his forces and to organize militia units with volunteers from Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tehran also arms and supports Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, which has itself dispatched forces to shore up the Syrian regime against local rebel forces.

But Kerry, speaking two days before a tentative ceasefire is due due to take effect in the long-running civil war, tells a congressional committee that Tehran’s direct involvement had been reduced.

“The IRGC has actually pulled its troops back from Syria. Ayatollah Khamenei pulled a significant number of troops out. Their presence is actually reduced in Syria,” Kerry tells US lawmakers, referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“That doesn’t mean that they’re still not engaged and active in the flow of weapons from Syria through Damascus to Lebanon. We’re concerned about that and there’s an ongoing concern.”

Kerry does not give the source of his information in the open hearing, but he invites the lawmakers “to get the intel briefing.”

Tehran has never released official figures for the number of its troops present in Syria, but since October last year more than 100 Iranians have been killed there, including some senior Guards commanders, according to an AFP tally.

— AFP

US: Rebel forces to move against IS headquarters in Syria

Top US defense officials say Syrian rebel forces are preparing to go after the Islamic State group’s de facto headquarters of Raqqa after retaking the key eastern town of Shaddadeh.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tells a House appropriations subcommittee that the rebels funded by the US got off to a slow start. But Gen. Joseph Dunford says they’re “going down to now isolate” Raqqa and have successfully cut the insurgent group’s communication between Iraq and Syria.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter says the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic forces circled Shaddadeh and want to sever the northern artery between Raqqa and Mosul in Iraq.

The rebel gains against Islamic State come as the group continues to lose ground in recent battles with the Syrian regime.

— AP

Dead pig found at German mosque building site

Police say a dead pig with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s name daubed on it has been found at a construction site where a mosque is being built in the eastern German city of Leipzig.

The animal’s corpse had the words “Mutti Merkel” written on it in red letters. “Mutti,” or “mom,” has become a common nickname for the German leader over the years.

Police spokesman Uwe Voigt said that “in view of the circumstances it appears likely that this is a xenophobic act,” news agency dpa reported. Authorities are investigating.

Leipzig Mayor Burkhard Jung condemns the incident.

In a 2013 incident after plans for the mosque became known, pigs’ heads were found at the same site. Police say no perpetrator has ever been found.

— AFP

State of emergency declared at Ben Gurion Airport

A state of emergency is declared at the Ben Gurion Airport as a light aircraft announces wheel failure ahead of its scheduled landing.

Eight people are aboard the craft.

The craft makes a safe landing.

Netanyahu hits back at Cameron’s East Jerusalem comments

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back at British Prime Minister Cameron who criticized conditions in East Jerusalem.

“My friend David Cameron, who is undoubtedly a friend of Israel, seems to have forgotten some basic facts about Jerusalem,” Netanyahu says. “Only Israeli sovereignty prevents the Islamic State and Hamas from igniting the holy sites, as they do throughout the Middle East. Only Israeli sovereignty over the city’s Arab residents promises roads, clinics, places of employment and all other means they would not benefit from their brethren throughout the Middle East. Only Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem preserves the rule of law for everyone, something that did not exist in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and large parts of the Arab world, including the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip. Only Israeli sovereignty ensures all this and it is important for friends in Europe and to remember this simple fact.”

Cameron on Wednesday called Israeli construction in East Jerusalem “genuinely shocking” during a discussion at the British Parliament, even as he insisted that he was a “great friend of Israel” and defined Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“I am well known for being a strong friend of Israel, but I have to say the first time I visited Jerusalem and had a proper tour around that wonderful city and saw what had happened with the effective encirclement of East Jerusalem, occupied East Jerusalem, it is genuinely shocking,” Cameron said during a weekly question-answer session.

Police arrest Palestinian suspected of throwing rocks

Police arrest a Palestinian man they believe threw rocks and a glass bottle filled with paint at the Jerusalem light rail near the Shuafat neighborhood, a spokesperson says.

No one was injured, but the train was damaged in the incident, police say.

Southern Command general suspends senior officer for ‘abuse of power’

The head of the Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Eyal Zamir suspends a male battalion commander and female subordinate officer for conducting unbecoming and abuse of power, in light of a Military Police investigation.

The two suspended officers — a lieutenant colonel and captain, respectively — are believed to have had an inappropriate relationship.

Though the investigation is ongoing, there was enough evidence and suspicion to warrant the disciplinary measure.

— Judah Ari Gross