The Times of Israel liveblogged Thursday’s events as they happened.
The Planning and Budgets Committee of Israel’s Council for Higher Education, which oversees and accredits Israeli colleges and universities, reverses an earlier decision granting a university in the West Bank town of Ariel the right to open a medical school.
The expansion of Ariel University was a priority for Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who spent much of the past four years as the leader of the pro-settlement Jewish Home faction in the Knesset before leaving last month to found the New Right party ahead of the April 9 elections.
The committee was instructed to vote on the question again after Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit ruled that one of the members who voted the last time, council deputy chair Rivka Wadmany Shauman, an education professor, was being considered for promotion at Ariel at the time of the vote.
The Police Internal Investigations Department, an external agency housed in the Justice Ministry that investigates police officers suspected of wrongdoing, tells the Biadga family that it has completed the investigation into Yehuda Biadga’s death at the hands of a police officer, on January 18.
The 24-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli man was shot and killed on January 18 by an officer who said he acted in self-defense, accusing Biadga of charging him with a knife. The officer was responding to a call from neighbors who claimed the young man was behaving violently. Police commanders backed the officer’s version of the events and have denied Biadga’s race was a factor in the decision to open fire.
The shooting triggered mass-protests by the Ethiopian Jewish community in late January against what they said was rampant over-policing and violence by officers in their interactions with members of the community. Biadga’s supporters have insisted he did not threaten the officer when he was shot.
The officer was placed on leave for the duration of the inquiry.
The PIID does not say today whether it is recommending an indictment against the officer.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett vows to continue fighting to establish a medical school at Ariel University in the northern West Bank.
“It’s unbelievable how the university cartel sticks a wrench in the works to prevent the establishment of a medical faculty in Ariel,” Bennett says in a statement after the Council for Higher Education’s Planning and Budgets Committee votes against the move.
“Israel is desperate for doctors, and all they can do is try to stop it! We won’t give up until we establish the faculty.”
Alona Barkat, the sister-in-law of former Jerusalem mayor and soon-to-be Likud MK Nir Barkat, announces she is joining the New Right party’s Knesset list ahead of the April 9 elections.
She is a well-known businesswoman, especially in the southern city of Beersheba, where she is the owner of the city’s championship soccer club Hapoel Beersheba.
She is reportedly slated to be placed third on the list, after New Right’s founders Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s state TV says Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has pardoned a “large number” of prisoners in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.
The report today does not say how many prisoners are released, but previous reports suggested it will apply to some 50,000 prisoners, the largest number ever covered in a single pardon. Some prisoners would be released while others would have their sentences reduced.
Iran’s regime is celebrating the 1979 revolution, which toppled a Western-backed monarchy and ushered in four decades of clerical rule. Khamenei, who issued the decree, has the final say on all major policies.
Iran has some 240,000 prisoners. It is holding several dual-citizens with Western nationality on allegations of threatening national security. It is unclear whether any are included in the pardon.
— AP
Roads throughout the south are closed by police over the past hour due to fears of flash floods after intermittent rainfall through the night and into the afternoon.
Route 90 in the Jordan Valley from Ha’arava Junction in the south to Metzukay Dargot near the southern boundary of the West Bank is closed, as is Route 40 between Mitzpe Ramon Junction and Tzihor Junction.
France’s foreign ministry says it has recalled its ambassador to Rome for consultations after a series of “provocations” by Italy’s populist government.
“For several months, France has been the subject of repeated accusations, unfounded attacks and outlandish claims,” the ministry says in a statement, calling them “unprecedented” since the end of World War II.
Tensions between Paris and Rome have escalated since June when the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and far-right League party came to power in Italy in a coalition government. Senior officials in the coalition have done away with diplomatic niceties in their criticism of President Emmanuel Macron, who has made no secret of his goal to combat populist movements among EU members.
The latest spat erupted on Tuesday after Italy’s deputy prime minister and Five Star chief Luigi Di Maio said he had met with “yellow vest” anti-government protesters outside Paris. He said the aim was to prepare a common front for European Parliament elections in May, while boasting on Twitter that “the wind of change has crossed the Alps.”
“The most recent interferences constitute an additional and unacceptable provocation. They violate the respect that is owed to democratic choices made by a nation which is a friend and an ally,” the foreign ministry says.
The “yellow vest” protests against fuel taxes began in rural and small-town France in November, but have ballooned into a wider revolt against Macron’s policies and governing style.
— AFP
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court orders the release of the only suspect held in the mid-January murders of Jerusalem residents Yehuda and Tamar Kaduri, aged 71 and 68.
The suspect, employed as a cleaner near the couple’s apartment building in southern Jerusalem, has been in custody for three weeks, it has now been revealed, after the judge in the case partially lifts a gag order. The man’s identity remains gagged.
The release is subject to conditions, the court says. Police say they are appealing the release to the Jerusalem District Court.
The Kaduris were found murdered in their apartment, with stab wounds in both bodies, on January 13. Unconfirmed reports say police have no other leads in the case.
Local residents and the Kaduris’ family members say the murders were terror attacks, coming just days after a teenage girl was stabbed nearby, resulting in a minor injury.
Swastikas were spray painted on the inside and outside a suburban Atlanta public high school.
The blue swastikas were painted on the outside of the Centennial public high school in Roswell, Georgia, the Atlanta Jewish Times and other local publications report.
The vandalism was discovered by school employees when they arrived at the building on Monday morning. Swastikas were found on a bus, the main building and entrance, a trailer for band, signs, the weight room, and the stadium areas.
In a letter sent to parents, the local community and posted on social media on Tuesday, Centennial Principal Anthony Newbold wrote that “I am especially disgusted that this perpetrator or group of perpetrators painted a swastika, a historic and extreme emblem of hatred, on our school.”
He said he had already met with several rabbis in the community to formulate a “unified response” to the incident. He called on parents to talk to their children about the consequences of such behavior.
The state of Georgia requires students learn about the Holocaust, but the state does not have a hate crimes law.
— JTA
WARSAW, Poland — Leaders of four Eastern European states will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem later this month, the Czech and Slovak governments say, amid the premier’s bid for re-election in April.
The February 18-19 summit will be the first time that the Visegrad Group, comprising the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, will meet in the Middle East.
The Visegrad countries and Israel held their last annual summit in July 2017 in Budapest.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis will attend, spokeswoman Vanesa Sandova tells AFP. Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pelligrini will also attend, according to spokeswoman Patricia Macikova.
— AFP
Israeli settlers have re-established an illegal outpost south of Bethlehem, the Peace Now organization reports.
The hilltop community known as Tekoa E currently consists of two makeshift buildings built by a small group of youths over the past month, roughly two kilometers from the Tekoa settlement. It is located on what is considered to be state land, but beyond the borders of Tekoa. Israel considers such wildcat outposts to be violations of Israeli law.
The outpost was first established in the summer of August 2014 in what the Gush Etzion Regional Council called a “response” to the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli yeshiva students by Palestinians affiliated with Hamas. Several weeks later, the handful of mobile homes were evacuated after the settlers reached an agreement with the Defense Ministry to leave peacefully in exchange for the retroactive legalization of the nearby Tekoa D outpost.
“In recent years, under [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s government, we have seen intensive activity to restore the widespread phenomenon of illegal outposts deep inside the West Bank. Beyond the blatant and wholesale violation of the law, these moves to put facts on the ground seriously undermine the chances of a future [peace] agreement and must be stopped immediately,” Peace Now says.
— Jacob Magid
Gideon Sa’ar is the preferred candidate to lead Likud after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retires, especially among voters who are not members of the party, a poll finds.
Sa’ar, a former interior minister who took the fourth spot on the party’s Knesset slate in Tuesday’s primaries, won a plurality from both Likud voters and the general public in a poll published by the Walla news site today.
The poll asks respondents to choose from among the top five primary vote-getters their preferred candidate to lead Likud after Netanyahu.
Among the general public, 33 percent favor Sa’ar, followed in distant second place by Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein (who took second on the Likud Knesset slate) at 7 percent. Among Likud voters the figure is 19 percent, well ahead of second place Gilad Erdan at 12 percent.
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit issued a legal opinion that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also serves as defense minister, cannot release photographs of himself meeting IDF soldiers for the duration of the election campaign.
Campaign advertising rules forbid using uniformed soldiers in campaign materials, and it is illegal to campaign on IDF bases.
The attorney general’s opinion applies to all candidates, but affects Netanyahu’s campaign materials most significantly. Netanyahu’s office has been releasing photographs of him visiting IDF units several times a week since the Knesset voted to head to elections in December.
Mandelblit’s opinion also says Netanyahu cannot deliver political speeches during IDF base visits.
Mandelblit clarifies the restrictions only apply to publicizing the photos. There is no limit on the defense minister conducting base visits, nor do the rules apply in cases of operational need, such as a public announcement in a national-security emergency.
A yeshiva located in upstate New York is set on fire and swastikas are spray painted on the building.
The incident at the Yeshiva Deah Yoreh, located on a former farm in White Sulphur Springs occurred on January 28, but is first reported by the Rockland/Westchester Journal News on Wednesday afternoon.
Two barns on the property of the yeshiva, which combines education and farming, were damaged and numerous swastikas were painted on the walls.
The incident is being treated as a hate crime, state police spokesman Steven Nevel tells the Journal News.
— JTA
The NGO Reporters Without Borders says it has examined 1.7 million records leaked from Iran by whistle blowers and discovered that at least 860 journalists had been arrested, imprisoned or executed in the 30 years that followed the 1979 Iranian revolution, Reuters reports today.
The report is made public in a press conference today in Paris.
The leaked documents also show mass-arrests of minorities and opponents of the regime, the group says.
“After months of detailed research work on the file’s entries, RSF [Reporters Without Borders’ French acronym] is in a position to say that at least 860 journalists and citizen-journalists were arrested, imprisoned and in some cases executed by the Iranian regime between 1979 and 2009, the period on which RSF focused its research,” the group says.
One of the first polls taken after Likud’s Tuesday primary suggests the final party slate for Knesset is being well received by the party’s potential electorate.
The poll published Thursday by the Walla news site shows the ruling party winning 34 seats, four more than its current showing and five more than the same poll a week earlier, before the primaries.
As Walla political analyst Tal Shalev notes, that might not be good news for Likud’s leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who needs a Knesset majority after the election to remain premier. Likud’s rise, the poll finds, comes at the expense of two potential coalition allies, Yisrael Beytenu and Gesher, both of which fall under the 3.25-percent threshold for getting into the Knesset, losing the right to as many as half a dozen seats in the 21st Knesset.
The Names Commission in the Prime Minister’s Office, which authorizes official names of towns and cities in Israel, okays a request from the Nazareth Illit municipality to change its name.
Nazareth Illit, a northern town with a mostly Jewish population, is next to the ancient city of Nazareth, whose present-day population is almost entirely Arab.
According to Nazareth Illit Mayor Ronen Plot, who sought to change the town’s name in November, the move is necessary because of widespread confusion between his city and neighboring Nazareth.
New names under consideration for the mountaintop town include Nof Hagalil (“Galilee Landscape” or “Galilee View”) and Nofey Illit (“Upper Landscapes”).
Benny Gantz and Moshe Ya’alon announce seven new candidates who will be placed in prominent spots on their joint slate and are almost certain, based on current polls, to make it into the Knesset.
The list includes:
Orit Farkash-Hacohen – a former chair of the Israel Electric Corporation and a prominent business attorney
Hili Tropper – a high-school principal and former adviser to the education minister
Yoaz Hendel – a newspaper columnist and head of the Institute for Zionist Strategies think tank
Michael Biton – a former mayor of the southern town of Yeruham
Miki Haimovich – a former news anchor and an environmental activist
Meirav Cohen – a well-known, elderly-rights activist and former Jerusalem city council member
Zvi Hauser – a former cabinet secretary
US President Donald Trump blasts Democrats as they prepare to launch a barrage of investigations into his Russia ties, real estate business and long-hidden taxes.
Empowered by their election takeover of the House of Representatives, Democrats are to hold two hearings Thursday focused on Trump’s tax returns and his controversial policy to separate immigrant children from their parents at the US-Mexico border.
Trump’s acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Friday. The committee is threatening a subpoena if he refuses to testify and hand over communications with the president related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election meddling.
Meanwhile, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is staffing up to expand their probe into Trump’s political and business ties to Russia, with Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen scheduled to testify in late February.
“The Dems and their committees are going ‘nuts,'” Trump tweets this morning. “The Republicans never did this to President Obama, there would be no time left to run government,” he says. “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! It should never be allowed to happen again!”
— AFP
Google has decided to suspend user-tailored online ads during Israeli elections, the Globes business journal reports, as part of its bid to avoid being used for targeted advertising by parties looking to manipulate voters in elections around the world.
Israeli advertising companies were notified of the change early this week, the report says. The notice informed them that no targeted advertising would be allowed until after Israel’s election day on April 9.
The move comes amid growing anxiety worldwide over efforts by state parties to manipulate elections by distributing fake news reports that confirm biases or radicalize political debates using the targeted advertising tools of major online companies like Google and Facebook.
The company also plans to identify political ads targeting Israelis that are purchased overseas, and to make their cost and target audiences open to public scrutiny and available in an open archive for seven years.
The move leaves Facebook as the last major remaining online advertising medium that can be used for such mass-manipulation, Globes says.
A Channel 13 election poll tells us things we already knew, but adds to the collection of polls all pointing to the potentially dramatic political shift that could take place with an electoral alliance between Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience party and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid.
The poll shows each party’s support as follows, with Likud still in the lead and Gantz still a distant (but slowly rising) No. 2.
Likud 32 seats
Israel Resilience 24
Yesh Atid 10
New Right 9
Arab Joint List 7
Ta’al 6
Labor 5
Jewish Home 5
Shas 5
United Torah Judaism 5
Kulanu 4
Meretz 4
Yisrael Beytenu 4
Two parties, Orly Levy-Abecassis’s Gesher and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua, fail to make the 3.25-percent electoral threshold.
However, Channel 13 then asks how respondents would vote if Gantz and Lapid united in a joint list. The answer puts the Israel Resilience-Yesh Atid alliance ahead of Likud, at 36 to 32 out of the 120-seat Knesset.
Iran has been constructing a new missile factory in Syria after Israel bombed and destroyed a previous one, Channel 12 news reports this evening.
The report says the new factory was recently built near the northwestern city of Safita — in hopes that Israel wouldn’t discover it in that location, far from previous Iranian sites struck by Israel elsewhere in Syria.
The factory is going to focus on producing precision missiles, dramatically upgrading the threat to Israel from the vast arsenal of rockets and missiles deployed against it in southern Lebanon by Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah. To build it, Channel 12 says, Iran had to bypass international sanctions on parts for its missile program via a series of straw companies.
Israel has nevertheless discovered, tracked and uncovered the facility, the network says, as part of its effort to thwart Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria.
TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian news outlet says the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has inaugurated a surface-to-surface ballistic missile it claims has a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) range.
The report today by the semi-official Fars news agency, close to the Guard, says a ceremony marking the inauguration was held in an underground missile factory described as an “underground city.” The ceremony coincides with the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The report says the missile, dubbed Dezful, is a version of the Zolfaghar missile that has a 700-kilometer (430-mile) range and a 450-kilogram (992-pound) warhead. Iran has missile capability of up to 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), far enough to reach Israel and US military bases in the region.
Occasionally, Iran announces military achievements that cannot be independently verified.
— AP
The body of a 19-year-old woman was found in the Jerusalem forest bearing multiple stab wounds.
According to initial reports, the young woman, whose identity is not yet public, was stabbed multiple times before her lifeless body was placed in the forest.
Police are currently investigating the case as a criminal murder, and do not immediately suspect terrorism.
Israel’s UN ambassador accuses international observers in Hebron of acting as “a violent, biased” force and defends the Israeli government’s suspension of their mandate — and US support for Israel’s action.
Danny Danon says that instead of maintaining order and neutrality, the observers “used violence, created friction with the civilian population, and interfered with security forces.”
The United States on Wednesday blocked an Arab-backed Security Council statement put forward by Indonesia and Kuwait expressing regret at Israel’s action, recognizing the observer mission’s “efforts to foster calm in a highly sensitive area,” and calling for protection of Palestinian civilians.
The Temporary International Presence in Hebron or TIPH was established in 1994 following Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of 29 worshipers in the city’s Ibrahimi Mosque, a mosque at the Tomb of the Patriarchs holy site. In its latest form, Norway, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey provided unarmed observers and funded the mission.
Foreign ministers from the five countries expressed regret at Israel’s announcement in December that it would not renew TIPH’s mandate which expired on January 31, saying they “strongly object…any claim that the TIPH has acted against Israel. Such claims are unacceptable and ungrounded.”
— AP
Israel’s central bank announces an 8 percent cut to its operating budget this year, from NIS 1.3 billion ($360 million) in 2018 to NIS 1.2 billion ($330 million) in 2019.
The announcement comes as the Bank of Israel presents its 2019 working goals today, which make repeated references to “stability,” from consumer prices to the banking system.
The bank’s own announcement doesn’t round the figures. The 2018 budget was 1,298,325,000 shekels; the 2019 budget will be 1,195,044,000, it says.
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