ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 472
The Times of Israel liveblogged Wednesday’s events as they happened.
Israel’s Under-21 soccer team pulls off a shock win over the Czech Republic to qualify for the European Championship quarter-finals.
Israel went into the evening bottom of its group that included favorites England and defending champions Germany. Israel had to beat the Czechs and hope that England, who had already qualified, would defeat Germany.
Israel’s Omri Gandelman scored in the 82nd minute to give Israel a 1-0 win. England also beat Germany 2-0 to see the Israelis leapfrog into second place and qualify for the last eight where they will meet Georgia.
In their previous two games, Israel had lost to England and drawn with Germany.
The win continues an impressive summer for Israeli soccer following the heroics of the Under-20 team at the World Cup in Argentina, where they took the bronze medal.
Full time!!
🇮🇱1-0🇨🇿
Israel have advanced to the QF of the Under-21 European Championship.
Needing a win + German loss, Israel scored in the 81’ while Germany fell 2-0 to England.
The journey continues! pic.twitter.com/7AuhbccezY
— Israel Football (@Israel_Footy) June 28, 2023
Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai will end his term in January and not seek an additional year, according to a joint statement from Shabtai and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Tensions have been high between the two as the far-right minister sought to exert more influence over the police.
During a meeting tonight, the two also agreed on a series of high-profile appointments in the police.
Among them is the replacement of Tel Aviv District Commander Amichai Eshed. Ben Gvir had previously tried and failed to fire Eshed over his supposedly gentle handling of anti-government protests.
Eshed will be replaced by Commander Pretz Amar.
They also agreed on the appointment of Commander Amir Cohen to head the southern district and Commander Yoram Sofer will be appointed to head the fight against crime in the Arab community.
Senior security officials have warned settler leaders that continued rampages by Jewish extremists through Palestinian towns and villages could spark another intifada, Channel 12 reports.
According to the report, the officials warned that mounting Palestinian anger over the riots, in which dozens of homes and cars have been set on fire, could lead to “a lynching, a kidnapping or a fresh intifada,” or uprising.
They called on settler leaders to restrain more volatile elements of the community.
TV footage shows several members of a crowd turning their back on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he addressed a cadets graduation ceremony at the IDF’s officers school in southern Israel.
The act is an apparent protest against the government’s controversial judicial overhaul program and comes amid renewed calls among IDF reservists to refuse to serve due to the government’s legislative efforts.
Those calls have again increased in recent days as the government has resumed moving ahead in the Knesset with certain elements of the plan, after largely pausing the legislation several months ago.
Netanyahu also noted the threats by reservists to refuse to show up for duty in his speech.
“We must all come together to defend our country. There is and will be no room for refusal, neither on this side nor on any other side,” he said.
Iran has dragged Canada to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for allegedly breaching Tehran’s state immunity by designating it a sponsor of terrorism, the UN’s top court says.
Tehran accuses Ottawa of “alleged violations of its immunities” through a series of legal, political and diplomatic measures stemming from the 2012 terror listing, the Hague-based tribunal says in a statement.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that unrest in the West Bank, including settlement construction and attacks by settlers on Palestinian villages, makes it much harder for the US to broker a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations event in New York, Blinken says that: “Both Saudi Arabia and Israel of course are interested in the prospect of normalization.”
“It is incredibly challenging, hard, not something that can happen overnight, but it’s also a real prospect and one that we’re working on,” he says.
But he warns that the situation in the West Bank is complicating issues.
“We’ve told our friends and allies in Israel that if there’s a fire burning in their backyard, it’s going to be a lot tougher, if not impossible, to actually both deepen the existing agreements, as well as to expand them to include potentially Saudi Arabia.”
Blinken adds that he has spoken about the issue with Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Tuesday.
“It’s also, at least in our judgment as Israel’s closest friend and ally, profoundly not in Israel’s interest for this to happen — both because of the added degree of difficulty that this presents for pursuing normalization agreements, or deepening them, but also because of the practical consequences,” he says.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that no new nuclear agreement was on the table with Iran, after quiet new diplomacy between the adversaries.
“There is no agreement in the offing, even as we continue to be willing to explore diplomatic paths,” Blinken says at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
“We’ll see by their actions,” Blinken says of the future relationship, calling on Iran to choose to “not take actions that further escalate the tensions” with the United States and in the Middle East.
A diplomat familiar with the matter tells The Times of Israel that the indirect talks with Iran have centered around the release of American detainees held by Tehran, not nuclear enrichment. The US is prepared to allow Iran to access several billion dollars in funds currently held by countries abroad for humanitarian purposes and to pay off debts on a case-by-case basis.
Jacob Magid contributed to this report
Police say a 12-year-old Palestinian who approached a checkpoint outside the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem while brandishing a knife has been detained.
Border Police forces operating at the checkpoint identified the minor walking toward them on foot with the knife in his hand.
The officers called to the suspect to halt, and he threw the knife to the side, a police spokeswoman says.
He was then detained. No gunfire was used during the incident, the spokeswoman adds.
Palestinian gunmen opened fire at the Jalamah checkpoint in the northern West Bank, the Defense Ministry says.
According to the ministry, the gunfire came from the Jenin area. There are no injuries.
The crossing has been temporarily closed as troops conduct searches in the area.
The checkpoint has come under numerous shooting attacks in recent months.
Military chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi says officers must intervene in violence by Israeli civilians against Palestinians in the West Bank, following a recent string of settler attacks on Palestinian towns and villages.
“An officer who sees an Israeli citizen intending to throw a Molotov cocktail into a Palestinian house and stands by, cannot be an officer,” Halevi says at a cadets graduation ceremony at the Israel Defense Forces’ officers school in southern Israel, known as Bahad 1.
“This is our way, this is our strength here compared to the complex region in which we live, and we must not erode it,” he says.
Halevi tells the new officers that while they will deal with protecting Israel’s borders, foiling Palestinian terror, and fighting in wars, they will “also encounter complex challenges” of settler violence.
“Terrorism and its severe consequences lead some people to commit morally and legally prohibited acts,” Halevi says. “Whoever berates the IDF, should remember that even an apology after the fact does not cancel the great damage caused,” he says, in remarks aimed at far-right minister Orit Strock, who on Monday compared Halevi and other security chiefs to Russia’s mutinous Wagner group, after they issued a joint statement condemning the settler rampages as “terrorism.”
She later apologized.
“The IDF acts solely for the security of the citizens. The tongue-lashing of those who dedicate their lives to defend harms the security of the citizens,” Halevi adds.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant slams renewed threats by reservists to refuse to show up for duty over the government’s plans to advance the judicial overhaul.
“We must not allow anyone to use the IDF as a tool in political campaigns or as part of inflammatory statements by anonymous people. The calls for refusal and the threats to stop volunteering undermine the basic values of the IDF as the people’s army, and endanger its competence,” says Gallant at a cadets graduation ceremony at the IDF’s officers school in southern Israel.
“Anyone who calls for refusal is not acting as part of a legitimate protest, by calling he is harming the most important thing we have, the security of the State of Israel,” he says.
“We must all, and especially the elected officials, coalition and opposition alike, denounce and condemn the phenomenon of refusal. It is our duty as a society that desires life, to keep the IDF above and outside of any dispute, we have no other army. The IDF belongs to all of us,” Gallant adds.
US President Joe Biden says “there’s great concern about the situation in Israel” during a campaign fundraiser in Chevy Chase, Maryland last night.
Biden appears to have chosen to started off his remarks talking about Israel because he was speaking at the home of Susie Gelman, a prominent Democratic donor and former chair of the Israel Policy Forum board.
He does not elaborate on what concerned him about the situation in Israel. Instead, Biden went on to stress that he’s “an incredibly strong supporter of the State of Israel.”
As he often does in speeches to Jewish groups, Biden then talks about how he’s taken his children and grandchildren to see the Nazi concentration camps.
“I wanted them to see those beautiful homes along the fence line [of the camps] with the beautiful roofs and lovely homes. [Those people living there] pretend they didn’t know [what was happening in the concentration camps]. But they knew. And I wanted my kids to understand how that happened,” Biden says.
He then quickly cuts back to talk about Israel. “But the point I’m trying to make is: There’s been an unbreakable bond we’ve had with Israel. Our relationship is defined by a genuine friendship. It’s defined by a shared interest and shared democratic values,” he says in a possible reference to Washington’s concerns over the Israeli government’s effort to overhaul the judiciary.
At a second fundraiser later that night, Biden hailed his administration’s new strategy to combat antisemitism.
“The rise of antisemitism in America is out of whack, way out of whack,” Biden says.
A man set fire to several pages of the Quran outside Stockholm’s main mosque, after Swedish police granted a permit for the protest that coincided with the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha.
The police said in its written decision that the security risks associated with the burning “were not of a nature that could justify, under current laws, a decision to reject the request.”
The protest unfolds calmly.
Salwan Momika, 37, who fled from Iraq to Sweden several years ago, had asked police for permission to burn the Muslim holy book “to express my opinion about the Quran.”
Ahead of the protest, Momika tells news agency TT he also wanted to highlight the importance of freedom of speech.
“This is democracy. It is in danger if they tell us we can’t do this,” Momika says.
Under a heavy police presence and with around a dozen opponents shouting at him in Arabic, Momika, dressed in beige trousers and a shirt, addresses the crowd of several dozen through a megaphone.
At various times, he stomps on the Quran, put strips of bacon in it, lit a few pages on fire before slamming it shut, and kicked it like a football, while waving Swedish flags, AFP correspondents at the scene report.
Police had cordoned off an area in a park next to the mosque separating Momika and a co-protester from the crowd.
President Isaac Herzog calls on the government and the opposition to return to talks on the judicial overhaul “before it’s too late.”
Herzog makes his comments in a speech after receiving a briefing from the IDF’s Northern Command.
“We have to do everything to maintain our ability to talk to each other, to have deep conversations and reach understandings within ourselves — because a few kilometers from here there are those who want to destroy everything we have here,” Herzog says in an apparent reference to Iran-backed terror groups in Syria and Lebanon.
“Sometimes we forget to keep in perspective what is important to us in life and what huge challenges we face,” he says.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotric slams the administrative detention orders issued against four Israelis for their role in attacking Palestinians.
“The use of administrative arrests against settlers is anti-democratic and morally wrong,” tweets Smotrich, who heads the far-right Religious Zionism party.
“When its purpose is not to prevent future risks, but to settle accounts with the detainees due to past acts attributed to them, it is also completely illegal,” he says.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin justifies the coalition foiling a law aimed at protecting journalists from physical assault by saying that reporters in Israel are “propagandists.”
The bill, sponsored by the Yesh Atid party, would have increased penalties for assaulting a journalist.
Levin singles out employees of Channel 12 and 13, the country’s two main private channels, saying that they have “long stopped being journalists” and are propagandists, with no connection between their work and journalism.
The Journalists Union slams Levin, saying that he is “laying the groundwork for the next attack on a journalist.”
The newly created Public Diplomacy Ministry puts out an English-language video on social media warning people not to trust the foreign media.
“Fight the fake: A quick guide in reading the news about Israel” cites several leading international news agencies, newspapers and networks, accusing them of bias against Israel.
It gives examples of several instances, mostly from CNN, in which terror attacks on Israelis were inaccurately described.
The video then recommends that if people want to know “what’s really going on,” they should follow the social media accounts of the ministry.
Fight the fake: a quick guide in reading the news about Israel. pic.twitter.com/qFcRosVE0N
— משרד ההסברה – Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy (@ILPubDiplo) June 27, 2023
Israeli authorities are probing the mysterious deaths in recent days of about 1,000 endangered tern chicks, the Society for the Protection of Nature and the Nature and Parks Authority say in a joint statement.
“About a thousand tern chicks have died in the last few days, from a cause that is not yet identified,” the statement says.
The chicks were in a nesting colony in the northern Atlit region, the only one of its kind in Israel.
Many of the chicks belong to the rare pygmy species.
“This sudden death means the elimination of the nesting season for the two species of tern, which are in danger of extinction in Israel,” the statement says.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant signs an administrative detention order for four Jewish extremists involved in recent attacks against Palestinians following recommendations from the Shin Bet security service.
The move comes amid mounting pressure on Israel to curb the spate of vigilante attacks on Palestinian villages following a deadly Palestinian terror attack last week.
“The four detainees have been involved for years in violent incidents, both open and secret,” a senior security official says.
“In the past, they were detained and restraining orders were issued, but despite this, they have continued their actions,” the official says, adding that they were behind the torching of several Palestinian homes and vehicles last week.
Administrative detention is a controversial practice whereby individuals can be held without charge practically indefinitely, and are not granted access to the evidence against them.
While it is rarely used against Jewish suspects, nearly 1,000 Palestinians are currently held in custody under the practice.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicts Israel could be among the top ten global economies.
“We have a knowledge-intensive economy — we now get 20% of startups in AI, and a slightly larger number in cybernetics,” he tells a meeting of Finance Ministry officials.
“The US is in first place in the world, we are in second place, and we are a thousandth of the world’s population,” he says. “We can easily be among the top 10 economies in the world.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and congratulates him on his “decisive victory” in this week’s elections.
The two agreed to hold the planned Israel-Greece-Cyprus trilateral meeting as soon as possible and emphasized that it will deal, among other things, with the issue of energy, a statement from Netanyahu’s office says.
They also agreed to strengthen cooperation in a number of fields, including technology, and artificial intelligence, it says.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently told a closed-door meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that he welcomes China’s growing involvement in the region, the Walla news site reports.
The report, citing two participants in the meeting held two weeks ago, says that the prime minister told participants that Beijing’s growing clout in the Middle East is good for Israel because it will force the US — Israel’s main ally — to remain engaged in the region.
The report comes a day after Netanyahu confirmed that he had been invited to visit China.
China recently brokered a deal between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran to renew diplomatic ties.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant speaks to his Moroccan counterpart Abdellatif Loudiyi about growing defense ties between the countries.
“We discussed the defense ties between our countries, which are critical to regional security and stability, and emphasized the need to further deepen cooperation,” Gallant says.
“On the occasion of the holiday of Eid al-Adha, I conveyed my blessings to the minister and his loved ones, the Moroccan nation, and His Majesty King Mohammed VI. May this holiday be a time of peace and joy,” he says.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defense team releases the first-ever letter he wrote upon being elected to his first term in 2009, which was to Holywood mogul Arnon Milchan.
The letter is intended to show the close friendship between the two and comes as Milchan testifies in Netanyahu’s corruption trial about the thousands of dollars’ worth of champagne and cigars he supplied the Netanyahus.
The letter is written in English and Netanyahu calls Milchan his “brother” and says he will always be grateful for his help.
My dear brother
I write this first letter as Prime Minister to you, Arnon. How does one express gratitude for boundless friendship? For me, my family, and our country you were like a rock in a storm, nothing flustered you, nothing stood in your way.
Your wise counsel and warmth helped steer me through turbulent times. You tied loose ends and gave creative advice at the most critical moments. You did all this with humor and a discerning heart, with steely determination and a twinkle in your eyes.
Throughout my time in this office and for the rest of my life, I will never forget what you did for me.
Your friend always.
Benjamin Netanyahu
Two men are shot and killed in the northern Arab town of Shfaram — the fourth and fifth homicides in the Arab community within 24 hours, one of which took place in the same town.
Magen David Adom emergency service medics pronounced one man, 26, dead at the scene.
Another man, 61, was seriously injured in the shooting. He was taken to Rambam hospital in Haifa, but doctors were forced to declare him dead.
Israel Police said the shooting was related to feuding crime groups.
שפרעם
לפני זמן קצר, דווח על פצוע ירי במצב קשה, מטופל כעת בשטח ויפונה לבית חולים רמב״ם בחיפה.
משטרה נמצאת בזירה.
הירי בוצע כנראה בעסק לשטיפת מכוניות. pic.twitter.com/YfqnBHekrb— Asslan Khalil (@KhalilAsslan) June 28, 2023
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with visiting Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.
Reynolds signs a declaration of support for the State of Israel, on the occasion of 75 years of independence, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office.
The two also discuss economic cooperation, with an emphasis on agricultural technology
Swedish police say they have granted a permit for a protest where the organizer plans to burn a Quran outside Stockholm’s main mosque on Wednesday, the start of the three-day Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.
The police say in the written decision that the security risks associated with the burning “were not of a nature that could justify, under current laws, a decision to reject the request.”
The green light came two weeks after a Swedish appeals court rejected the police’s decision to deny permits for two demonstrations in Stockholm which were to include Quran burnings.
Police had at the time cited security concerns, following a burning of the Muslim holy book outside Turkey’s embassy in January which led to weeks of protests, calls for a boycott of Swedish goods and further stalled Sweden’s NATO membership bid.
Muslims are outraged by the destruction of their holy text and similar acts have in the past sparked violent protests.
Hollywood media mogul Arnon Milchan and Sara Netanyahu kiss, embrace and talk briefly in a hotel conference room of the Old Ship Hotel in Brighton where Milchan has been testifying in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption for the last few days.
Their interaction comes despite a warning to Milchan from the State Attorney’s Office and the judges presiding over the case not to have contact with Sara Netanyahu.
During today’s hearing, in which Milchan was being cross-examined by Netanyahu’s defense attorney Amit Hadad, Milchan was questioned about the Tata initiative, a proposal to create a free-trade zone between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority in cooperation with Indian businessman and then chairman of the Tata Group Ratan Tata, where it was proposed to build a car factory to produce cheap cars.
Netanyahu’s indictment says that Milchan asked the prime minister in 2010 to help him advance the project and that he had a financial interest in the initiative which required legislation to advance but was ultimately not implemented.
In his cross-examination of Milchan, Hadad tries to demonstrate that the contacts between Netanyahu and Tata through Milchan were not designed to benefit the Hollywood producer and businessman but rather to improve the Palestinian economy and ameliorate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Milchan denies that he had an economic interest in the project or that he spoke with Netanyahu about such financial interests in the proposed free-trade zone, insisting that the idea was purely designed to improve Israel-Palestinian relations and help bring about peace.
