Gavin Rabinowitz is a news editor at The Times of Israel
The Times of Israel liveblogged Sunday’s events as they unfolded.
A spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency is rejecting a call from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to shut it down, calling instead for a political solution to the Palestinian refugee issue.
Netanyahu’s call came after UNRWA said last week it found a Hamas terror tunnel under two of its schools in the Gaza Strip.
“UNRWA’s mandate and our position is clear and unchanged. UNRWA receives its mandate from the UN General Assembly; and only the UN General Assembly, by a majority vote, can change our mandate,” says Agency spokesman Chris Gunness, noting that the current mandate runs until December 2019.
“The situation of Palestine refugees needs to be resolved as part of a political resolution of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians,” says Gunness. “It is time for political action to resolve this longstanding crisis.”
— Dov Lieber
Israel this week will conduct an annual nationwide exercise to test its preparedness for a large-scale earthquake that would damage key infrastructure and affect cities and towns throughout the country, a military spokesperson says.
The drill, which simulates a magnitude 7.1 earthquake, kicked off today at 11:30 a.m. and will continue through Wednesday, the army says.
The exercise has a large scope, testing everything from the army’s ability to call up the necessary reserve and conscripted troops in the chaos following an earthquake, to the preparedness of schools to protect their students, the senior IDF officer says, speaking on condition of anonymity.
According to seismology experts, the fault line that runs under Israel is due for a quake sometime in the near future, as it seems to operate on a 100-year cycle and the last major earthquake took place some 90 years ago.
The IDF’s Home Front Command, Israel Police, Firefighting and Rescue Service, Magen David Adom ambulance service, National Emergency Response Authority, various government institutions, as well as 164 regional councils across the country, will take part in the exercise, the military official says.
As part of the military, the Home Front Command’s main task is preparedness for war, but the officer notes that the unit must be prepared to respond to disasters of all kinds. “It doesn’t matter what causes the house to collapse, a rocket or an earthquake, the Home Front Command dictates what to do,” she says.
During the exercise, the military will put out statements through various media outlets, through the radio, television, websites and the Home Front Command’s smartphone application. But the country’s emergency sirens will not be activated, the army says.
— Judah Ari Gross
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is denying plotting to topple Prime Minister Theresa May, who has been weakened by the Conservative Party’s disastrous election result.
But May’s hold on power remained tenuous as she tries to finalize a deal with a small Northern Irish party to prop up her minority government.
Mail on Sunday tripe – I am backing Theresa may. Let's get on with the job
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) June 10, 2017
Former Treasury chief George Osborne — who was fired by May last year — called her a “dead woman walking,” and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said he was ready to contest another election at any time.
Johnson, one of the Conservatives’ most popular politicians, tweeted that an article in the Mail on Sunday newspaper headlined “Boris set to launch bid to be PM as May clings on” was “tripe.”
“I am backing Theresa May. Let’s get on with the job,” he tweets.
— AP
US-backed Syrian fighters captured their first western district of the Islamic State group’s bastion Raqqa today, days after seizing an eastern neighborhood from the jihadists.
A statement by the Syrian Democratic Forces says their fighters “liberated the neighborhood of Al-Romaniya on the western front of Raqqa, after two days of continued clashes.”
— AFP
Fake suicide vests worn by the assailants in the London Bridge attack were made with disposable water bottles attached to leather belts, UK police say
“I have not seen this tactic in the UK before where terrorists create maximum fear by strapping fake explosives to themselves,” says police commander Dean Haydon, who is leading the investigation.
His force released photographs of the blood-smeared bottles covered in silver and black tape, through which the brown belts had been laced.
“Anyone who saw them on the night would have thought they were genuine. It is hard to speculate what the motive was for wearing the belts,” Haydon says in a statement.
“It could be that they had plans to take the attack into a siege situation or it might be that they saw it as protection from being shot themselves.”
— AFP
A key ministerial panel votes to give coalition support to a bill to deduct from Israeli funds to the Palestinian Authority the amount of money provided by the PA to convicted terrorists and their families.
The decision by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation lends government support to the proposal by Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern, which was also endorsed by coalition chair David Bitan and Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Avi Dichter, both of Likud..
The bill would see Israel cut around NIS 1 billion ($285 million) from the tax revenues it collects for the Palestinians and hands over to them — equivalent to the amount that Ramallah pays to terrorists and their families.
The proposal was expected to be brought to a preliminary vote in the Knesset plenum on Wednesday.
The ministers’ decision was hailed by the opposition Yesh Atid party.
— Marissa Newman
German police say that no explosives were found aboard a London-bound easyJet flight from Slovenia that was diverted to a west German airport after passengers overheard three men on board talking about “terrorist” activities.
The three British men, aged 31, 38 and 48, remain in police custody as police continued to question them. Authorities said none of them was previously known to security services.
The Airbus A319 flying from the Slovenian capital Ljubljana was diverted to Germany’s Cologne-Bonn airport yesterday, causing a major police operation and hours of air traffic chaos.
— AFP
The bodies of a man and a woman, said to be in their thirties, have been found in an Eilat hotel room, medics say.
Police are investigating, but say that the incident appears to be a double suicide, Ynet reports.
A woman has been detained for taking off her clothes at the Western Wall.
Channel 2 reports the woman took off her clothes and started to run toward the men’s section of the holy site.
סערה: צעירה התפשטה ברחבת הכותל המערביhttps://t.co/wUPpZVUS2f pic.twitter.com/WxEGB0bwbn
— רשת (@Reshettv) June 11, 2017
“She came in clothed and at some stage took off her clothes. She seemed to be determined, as if she wanted to cause a provocation,” a witness tells the TV station.
“People started to scream and cry and when she started moving toward the men’s section she was stopped by force,” the witness says.
There were no immediate details on the woman’s identity or her motivation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to upend a bill that calls for oversight on foreign funding to NGOs and replace it with one that would ban any funding.
Netanyahu told the meeting of coalition heads that he now wants “a blanket ban” on foreign payments to nongovernmental organizations, Hebrew media reports.
The ban is seen as an attempt to crack down on left-wing groups that are critical of Israel and the IDF.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hailing his libel victory, saying that “truth and justice won today.”
A court ordered journalist Igal Sarna to pay Netanyahu and his wife Sara NIS 100,000 over an article he wrote that alleged Sara Netanyahu forced her husband out of their car on the side of a road to berate him.
“Truth and justice won today against the never-ending persecution against me, my wife and my family that has been going on for more than 20 years,” he wrote on a Facebook post.
“If we were to sue every one who libels us we would be in court every single day,” he writes. “But I have a country to run.”
US President Donald Trump reportedly told UK Prime Minister Theresa May in a phone call that he does not want to make a state visit to Britain because he fears there will be protests against him, the Guardian reports.
According to the paper the call was made in recent weeks and effectively puts the visit on hold for the foreseeable future.
The report, quotes a Downing Street adviser who was in the room, saying May was surprised.
New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush quotes two administration officials as confirming the planned visit is off.
UK off Trump's Europe trip for now, per two senior admin officials, not quite going as far as Guardian story. Still possible etc. Story soon
— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) June 11, 2017
An IDF soldier who was wounded by a Palestinian teenager in a stabbing attack is dismissed from his elite combat unit for failing to stop his attacker, the army says.
On June 1, a Palestinian teenage girl approached the soldier, who served in the Maglan unit, as he was standing outside the Mevo Dotan settlement in the northern West Bank. She took out a knife and stabbed him, lightly wounding him.
The girl then ran from the scene, with another uniformed soldier and an off-duty soldier in pursuit.
The second uniformed soldier “eliminated the threat,” the army says, shooting the teenage assailant and fatally wounding her.
After an investigation of the incident, the commander of Maglan decided to dismiss the soldier from the unit for “not working to neutralize the terrorist as expected of him as a combat soldier in the IDF,” the army says in a statement.
— Judah Ari Gross
US President Donald Trump is calling fired FBI director James Comey’s leaks of the content of their meeting “cowardly.”
In a tweet, Trump says that he believes Comey will be found to have leaked even more things.
“I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible,” he says.
I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal? Very 'cowardly!'
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 11, 2017
A car that rammed into pedestrians outside Amsterdam Centraal train station has injured three Israelis.
Amsterdam Police say that the incident on Saturday night was not terror-related. Rather, the driver became sick at the wheel and lost control, ramming into a crowd of people and then a wall before stopping, The Independent reports.
At least five people were injured in the crash, which took place at around 9 p.m. on Saturday. Three of the injured were Israelis and one of them is still in the hospital, the Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad Jewish newspaper was able to confirm, its editor-in-chief, Esther Voet, wrote on Facebook today.
— JTA
A 75-year-old woman and her two sons arrived at a Tel Aviv police station today and handed in a stash of weapons that the family’s father had amassed over the years, police say.
The man who passed away recently had been a lieutenant colonel in the IDF had apparently enjoyed collecting souvenirs from his participation in various wars.
Among the weapons and ammunition handed in were a sniper’s rifle from 1890, two Kalashnikov rifles, two drum pistols, 5 pistols and dozens of boxes of ammunition, police say.
The family wants the guns donated to the artillery corps museum.
The collector apparently phoned his son just before his death and told him of the weapons hidden in a cache in his apartment.
— Raoul Wootliff
US forces carried out a strike Sunday against Somalia’s Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda linked group, approximately 185 miles (300 kilometers) southwest of Mogadishu, the Pentagon says.
The Pentagon says the operation occurred at approximately 0600 GMT “in coordination with regional partners as a direct response to Al-Shabaab actions, including recent attacks on Somali forces.” It provides no other details.
— AFP
Ireland is warning UK Prime Minister Theresa May that her efforts to form an alliance with a Northern Irish party could upset the province’s fragile peace.
In a phone call, Irish premier Enda Kenny told May that forming a minority government reliant on the support of the hardline Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) could pose a “challenge” to the 1998 Good Friday peace accords.
The future of the proposed alliance had already been thrown into confusion yesterday after May’s office announced that an outline agreement had been struck, only to backtrack and say that talks were still ongoing.
“The taoiseach (Kenny) indicated his concern that nothing should happen to put the Good Friday Agreement at risk and the challenge that this agreement will bring,” an Irish government spokesman says.
London’s neutrality is key to the delicate balance of power in Northern Ireland, which was once plagued by violence over Britain’s control of the province.
—AFP
Video has emerged of a woman who stripped off her clothes at the Western Wall holy site today.
In the clip posted on YouTube, the woman can be seen from behind walking calmly toward the men’s section.
Another woman runs up and tries repeatedly to cover her with a shawl, but she pushes her away, before starting to run.
She makes it into the entrance of the men’s section before she is roughly grabbed by the arms by two men who pull her up to the area where there are public bathrooms and a police station.
All the while, people can be heard yelling, “This is a modest place.”
Police later detained her and said she was taken for a psychological evaluation.
Her parents tell police that she suffered from mental health issues, Channel 2 reports.
The clip is below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMJNRWc-vjY
A swastika was painted on the welcome sign of a Jewish summer camp in Virginia.
The graffiti was discovered at Camp Hilbert in Goochland County, Virginia late last week, the Richmond, Virginia CBS affiliate, WTVR, reports.
Camp Hilbert, owned by the Weinstein JCC in Richmond, hosts children in grades k through 10 for summer camp and other programs.
Camp Director Josh Shenker tells WTVR that security would be increased at the camp this summer in response to the graffiti.
He says camp officials believe it is an isolated incident, however. Camping activities are scheduled to begin the week of June 19.
— JTA
Palestinians are criticizing an Israeli plan to withhold funds from the Palestinian Authority equivalent to the amount that the PA pays to terrorists and their families.
Palestinian Prisoner Club Chairman Qadura Fares calls the proposed Israeli bill, which passed a ministerial committee today, “piracy” and vows the payments will continue.
He brands the bill as an “Israeli attempt… to stigmatize the Palestinian struggle with terrorism and to mix the issues of the so-called war on terror with the Palestinian martyrs and prisoners who fought for freedom.”
— Dov Lieber
A Palestinian man was arrested for assaulting a police officer near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the divided West Bank city of Hebron, a border police spokesperson says.
The man, said to be in his 20s, was asked for identification. He refused and pushed an officer, the spokesperson says, noting the man was not armed.
— Jacob Magid
The head of IDF’s Northern Command dismisses a reservist company commander who refused to wake up his troops for an exercise last month on the grounds that they were not given the required amount of sleep, which he felt put them at an unnecessary risk of accidents and injury.
On May 25, Maj. Meni Eytan of the Yiftah Reserve Brigade was ordered to wake his soldiers for an exercise the night before they were to finish their reserve service.
He refused, arguing that the soldiers had not slept for the full six hours that are required by IDF protocol the day before soldiers can operate a car. Eytan was told that the soldiers would be able to make up whatever sleep they needed after the exercise was over.
However, as the exercise was due to end that day and the soldiers would likely be motivated to return to their families and civilian lives rather than stay on an army base in order to make up sleep hours, Eytan insisted on the extra sleep time before, not after, the exercise.
His commanding officers quickly called for his dismissal on the grounds of insubordination, but the move was stayed pending an investigation.
Following an investigation into the incident, the head of the Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Yoel Strick, accepted the commanding officers’ requests and dismiss Eytan from his position, ending his years-long career as a reservist company commander.
“The general noted the many years of service of the company commander,” the army says, but determined that Eytan’s refusal went against the expectations of a company commander and “harms the nature of the battalion’s belief in the fighting.”
The army adds that “lessons will be learned” from the incident for the future.
In the days following the incident, Eytan became a cause celebre, with his current and former soldiers lauding him as a dedicated commander who was looking out for their well-being. A Facebook post by Eytan’s wife in which she described him as a devoted officer and explained that her husband knew all too well about the dangers of driving while tired, as he’d lost his sister in a car accident, garnered nearly 1,500 “likes” and 1,000 “shares.”
— Judah Ari Gross
Vandals spray painted a swastika inside a Star of David on the entrance wall of a Jewish sports club located on a busy avenue in Rio de Janeiro
The Nazi symbol, drawn backwards, appeared inside the three-foot-tall Jewish symbol that identifies the Brazilian Israelite Club, a Jewish institution attended by Jews and non-Jews and whose doors commonly remain open for neighborhood events.
“The symbol of the terrible Nazi regime is offensive not only to Jews but also to gypsies, homosexuals and all groups persecuted by the Third Reich,” says Harry Rosenberg, president of the Rio Jewish Federation. “Even if the criminal drew the swastika in the reverse way, the symbol offends all humankind.”
— JTA
President Reuven Rivlin is speaking out against a proposed code of ethics for university lecturers that would bar them from expressing political opinions in lectures.
“Freedom of speech and thought should not be taken for granted,” the president says in a speech at the Knesset.
“The freedom to express a different opinion needs procedural protections and constant vigilance.”
The code has been proposed by Education Minister Naftali Bennett.
A prominent Palestinian movie theater is reportedly not going to show the new Wonder Woman movie because star Gal Gadot is an Israeli.
The local Ramallah newspaper al-Hadath reports that Palestine Towers Cinema took a decision not to show the blockbuster due to “political reasons related to the Israeli occupation and the Israeli actress starring the film.”
The report says the decision was made following similar bans by Lebanon and Tunisia.
The boycott draws an instant reaction from Israel, with Major General Yoav Mordechai, head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), telling the Palestinians they need to be able to separate art from politics.
“Apparently Palestine Towers Cinema in Ramallah fears that the audience will enjoy the excellent film Wonder Woman, and can not separate politics from an American film,” Mordechai says on a Facebook post.
“Boycotting the film shows only weakness and fear. He who is self-confident is not afraid of movies — even if it’s Wonder Woman standing before him,” he adds.
The theater’s website does not list Wonder Woman among its current shows.
— Dov Lieber
Israel’s deputy chief of staff Aviv Kohavi and the commander of the UN peace keeping force in southern Lebanon reportedly got into a heated argument while giving a tour of the tense border to visiting US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley.
According to Channel 2, Haley was being briefed on the situation there by UNIFIL commander Major-General Michael Beary, who told her the situation on the border was stable and did not require further intervention.
Beary was interrupted by Kohavi, who told Haley that UNIFIL was not doing their jobs properly and were afraid to go into the villages and cities of southern Lebanon and confront Hezbollah.
Kohavi called on Haley to help change the mandate of the international force to enable them to disarm Hezbollah, Channel 2 says.
A diplomat later apologized to Haley for the outburst, but she reportedly said it was good that she got to see the reality of the Israeli side and it would influence her work at the world body, where she has been a staunch supporter of Israel.
Britain’s embattled Prime Minister Theresa May today unveiled her full cabinet, making few changes as the premier clings to power after losing her parliamentary majority in a snap election.
May makes Damian Green, former work and pensions secretary, her deputy by naming him first secretary of state.
Treasury chief secretary David Gauke moves in to take Green’s place, while the leader of the House of Commons, David Lidington, becomes justice secretary.
Lidington’s move sees him replace Liz Truss, who has faced criticism in the justice role and has been moved by May to Gauke’s former post as treasury chief secretary.
The minor reshuffle is seen as a reflection of May’s weak position after she called a snap election, only to lose seats in Thursday’s vote in a dramatic change of fortunes.
In announcing the remainder of her cabinet , May keeps Jeremy Hunt on as health secretary despite him being vilified for his handling of the treasured National Health Service.
Liam Fox stays on as international trade secretary, a post created in the wake of Britain’s decision last year to leave the European Union as the country searches for new partners outside of the bloc.
Downing Street announced on Friday that there would be no reshuffle among the government’s top ministers, including Finance Minister Philip Hammond despite reports ahead of the election that he may be sacked.
Boris Johnson stays on as foreign minister, alongside fellow eurosceptic David Davis as Brexit minister.
May’s replacement last year as interior minister, Amber Rudd, keeps her post, as does Defence Minister Michael Fallon.
— AFP
Pollsters are projecting that French President Emmanuel Macron’s party is in position to win a crushing parliamentary majority following the first round Sunday of legislative elections marked by widespread voter apathy.
Pollsters’ project that as many as one-third of votes went to Macron’s camp in the first stage of the two-part election — putting his candidates comfortably ahead of all opponents going into the decisive second round of voting next Sunday for the 577 seats in the lower-house National Assembly.
Pollsters estimated that 400 seats or more could end up in the hands of the Macron camp — and that the opposition in parliament would be fragmented as well as small.
The record-low turnout rate, however, took some shine off the achievement for Macron’s Republic on the Move! — a fledgling party fighting its first-ever election and dedicated to providing France’s youngest-ever president with the legislative majority he needs to be effective and enact his promised program of far-reaching change for France.
Voter rejection of old-style, established politics — already seen in the May 7 presidential vote that handed power to first-time 39-year-old candidate Macron — was again felt in the legislative vote.
— AP
