Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s events as they unfolded.
Health Minister Yuli Edelstein has presented fellow ministers with a poll he says shows that nearly 80 percent of the public support increasing enforcement of distancing and hygiene rules, according to Hebrew media reports.
Edelstein cautions during the meeting of the so-called coronavirus cabinet that 800 new cases were identified in the past week. Only about 300 infections had been confirmed in the preceding two weeks combined.
“We can’t stay complacent in the face of this number,” Edelstein tells the forum, composed of relevant ministers tasked with combating the outbreak.
Germany will not respond harshly to Israel’s planned unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank, a diplomatic official in Jerusalem claims.
While annexation would likely cause a certain degree of damage to bilateral ties, Berlin has made plain that it does plan to enact sanctions against the Jewish state or recognize a Palestinian state, the official says.
“Germany will not go off the deep end,” he adds, speaking to Israeli reporters on conditions of anonymity. “The Germans are not in favor of sanctions, and will not recognize a Palestinian state. They are pragmatic. Their main goal is to guarantee [regional] stability. They don’t want to cause a major upset. Rather, they are going to look for ways to encourage us and the Palestinians to return to talks.”
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is due in Israel on Wednesday for a meeting with his counterpart Gabi Ashkenazi. Berlin is staunchly opposed to annexation and has made its view unmistakably clear.
— Raphael Ahren
LONDON — UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson says anti-racism demonstrations have been “subverted by thuggery” after protesters tore down a statue of a slave trader in the city of Bristol and scrawled graffiti on a statue of Winston Churchill in London.
London’s Metropolitan police say a dozen people were arrested and eight officers injured after demonstrators clashed Sunday with police in central London.
Johnson says while people have a right to peacefully protest, they have no right to attack the police. He says “these demonstrations have been subverted by thuggery — and they are a betrayal of the cause they purport to serve.’’
Crime, Policing and Justice Minister Kit Malthouse calls for those responsible for toppling the bronze memorial to slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol to be prosecuted.
But Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees told the BBC that while he doesn’t condone criminal damage, he felt no “sense of loss” for the statue.
Elan Carr, the US State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, tells a Jerusalem conference that only Israelis can put the brakes on plans to annex parts of the West Bank, indicating that the Trump administration will not stand in its way.
“One thing could push it off and this is a decision by Israeli leaders. This is a decision by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his partner Gantz,” he says.
One of Copenhagen Zoo’s giant pandas has been returned after escaping from its enclosure early today and roaming the park before staff were able to sedate it and bring it back.
Xing Er, a 7-year-old male who arrived at the zoo last year, was seen on surveillance video breaking out of the newly built, 160 million-kroner ($24.2 million) Panda House that also houses female panda Mao Sun.
Zoo spokesman Bengt Holst says that on the video staff could see how “the male panda crawls up a metal pole, which is studded with three rows of electrical wires … and then crawls out into the garden.”
He said the park is now looking at making changes to security around the enclosure “to ensure that it does not happen again. ”
Zoo staff reacted “quickly and efficiently,” and the animal was cornered and sedated with a dart without being harmed, he said. Monday’s incident happened before the animal park opened to the public.
“It doesn’t change the fact that we want to avoid that kind of situation in the future,” Holst says.
— AP
Ministers in the so-called coronavirus cabinet are expected to approve a delay on lifting most restrictions that had been set to expire on June 14, the Ynet news site reports.
This would include theaters and other cultural venues. Event halls will be okayed to reopen, but events will be capped at 250 attendees, according to the report.
A planned reopening of the trains on Monday has already been delayed, amid a resurgence in virus cases over the last 10 days.
Iranian media say lawmakers in parliament chanted “Death to America” during a session the previous day, allegedly in a show of support for protesters in the US over the killing of George Floyd.
The report on Monday says the chants followed a request by lawmaker Ahmad Naderi for a moment of silence over deaths of protesters.
Iran makes a point of daily criticizing Washington in the wake of the ongoing turmoil in America and protests over police killings of African Americans.
State television in Iran, which in November put down nationwide demonstrations by killing hundreds, arresting thousands and disrupting internet access to the outside world, has repeatedly aired images of the US unrest.
— AP
Acting Police Commissioner Moti Cohen is promising to crack down on crime in Ramle, a mixed Jewish-Arab working class town in central Israel where a deadly suspected gangland war has broken into the open.
On Saturday, three men from the city were gunned down in a drive-by shooting, and on Sunday a police patrol car was shot up in al-Jawarish, a poor, mostly Arab, neighborhood in the city. Nobody was injured, according to a police statement, and on Monday morning seven people were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the drive-by shooting.
“Fire directed at the police is most severe and crosses a line,” Cohen says while in Ramle, according to Walla news. “Any incident like this or others are severe and justice will be served to the last of the criminals. Police will deploy here and take forceful action in the coming days to return order.”
Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid tells his Yesh Atid faction that the government will take advantage of emergency virus regulations to run roughshod over Israeli democracy.
Lapid charges that the law will give Netanyahu the authority to put in place any measures he pleases.
“This law gives a criminal suspect total authority over the police. The ability to go into peoples’ homes is in this law. It’s a fable that they took it out. He can prohibit people from protesting against him,” he says.
“The greatest threat to Israel is not the coronavirus. The greatest threat on the state of Israel is that we are ceasing to be a democracy.”
Channel 13 news reports that US Ambassador David Friedman took part in discussions Sunday night between prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi.
The foursome were said to have discussed plans to annex parts of the West Bank. No official statement from Israel or the US has been made about the meeting.
The government has decided to freeze parliamentary work on a law that would allow the police and Shin Bet to use phone tracking for coronavirus contact tracing, according to media reports.
The move comes after ministers failed to agree on a version of the bill to pursue, and a subcommittee gave the government an extra 48 hours to propose the legislation.
The law was needed after a court said Israel could not continue to okay surveillance on an ad hoc basis without a law in place.
According to Haaretz, the Health Ministry said it made only one request to the Shin Bet to use its tracking powers over the last two weeks.
The German government is calling on people attending anti-racism protests to stick to coronavirus distancing rules.
At least 15,000 people demonstrated in Berlin and 25,000 protested in Munich on Saturday, and there were protests in other German cities as part of the global demonstrations against racism and police brutality that have followed the May 25 death of American George Floyd.
In some cases, protesters were closely packed together despite German requirements for people to stay 1.5 meters (5 feet) apart.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, says “it is good if people take to the streets in Germany as well with a clear statement against racism.”
But he adds: “the pictures that in some cases emerged over the weekend were not good. Both things must be possible: to demonstrate peacefully, which is a fundamental right, and keep to the [social distancing] rules.”
He says many demonstrators “created a big risk for themselves and others.”
Germany has been widely praised for its adroit handling of the pandemic.
— AP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told his cabinet that he fears Israel is headed toward snapping back restrictions, which will happen if its number of cases doubles within 10 days.
“It could be that we are already in this 10-day infection doubling rate. I very much hope not,” he says, according to the Ynet news website.
He defends the decision to delay reopenings of most venues and other places not yet reopened by a week. “What we decided to do was first of all put on the handbrake. We stopped the easements. We’ll check it in the next week.”
Argentina says it has ratified the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism, which considers some anti-Israel language as anti-Jewish.
The decision Monday comes days after Argentina’s new ambassador Sergio Daniel Urribarri arrived in Israel.
In a statement, the government says the decision “represents a new chapter in the history of Argentina’s commitment in the global fight against antisemitism.”
“The aim of the decision to adopt IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism is to continue developing Holocaust remembrance as an official Argentine State policy”, Urribarri says in the statement. “our minister of foreign affairs made it clear in his resolution that its goal is to contribute to the fight against antisemitism in all its forms, collaborate in the building of a culture where hostility and violence have no place, and promote education for pluralism, as well as to encourage the remembrance and research of the Holocaust.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian says he and his family have recovered from the coronavirus.
Pashinian says on Facebook that he and his family members tested negative Monday for a second time in as many days.
Pashinian announced that he was infected a week ago, adding that he probably contracted the virus from a waiter who brought him a glass a water at a meeting without wearing gloves and later tested positive for the virus.
Armenia has so far reported over 13,000 infections, including 211 deaths, among its population of nearly 3 million.
— AP
The Minneapolis police officer charged with second-degree murder in George Floyd’s death is scheduled to make his first court appearance today.
Derek Chauvin, 44, is also charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s May 25 death. Floyd, a handcuffed black man, died after the white police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes even after Floyd stopped moving and pleading for air.
Floyd’s death set off protests, some violent, in Minneapolis that swiftly spread to cities around the US and the globe. Chauvin and three other officers on the scene were fired the day after Floyd’s death.
Chauvin is being held at a state prison in Oakdale. The other three officers — J. Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao — are charged with aiding and abetting. They remain in the Hennepin County jail on $750,000 bond.
Floyd’s death has ignited calls to reform the Minneapolis Police Department, which community activists have long accused of entrenched racial discrimination and brutality. A majority of Minneapolis City Council members said Sunday that they favor disbanding the department entirely, though they have yet to offer concrete plans for what would replace it.
“Nobody is saying we want to abolish health or safety,” Council Member Alondra Cano tells WCCO-AM. “What we are saying is we have a broken system that is not producing the outcomes we want.”
The state last week launched a civil rights investigation of the department. On Friday, the council approved a stipulated agreement that immediately banned the use of chokeholds and neck restraints and included several other changes. That investigation is ongoing.
— AP
House and Senate Democrats hold a moment of silence at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, reading the names of George Floyd and others killed.
They then kneel for 8 minutes and 46 seconds — now a symbol of police brutality and violence — the length of time prosecutors say Floyd was pinned under a white police officer’s knee before he died.
“We’re here to observe that pain,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, drawing on the nation’s founding with slavery.
“We’re here to respect the actions of the American people to speak out against that,” she says, before kneeling on one knee. “We are here to honor George Floyd.”
House and Senate Democrats observe a moment of silence for all of the Black lives we have lost in America due to police brutality and for those who have also suffered physical and emotional abuse. It is time for a change. Enough is enough. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/bz6rCUCCND
— The Black Caucus (@TheBlackCaucus) June 8, 2020
— AP
Sixty-three schools that had been shut because of students or staff who contracted the coronavirus will reopen this week, the Health Ministry says, according to Hebrew media reports.
According to Ynet, 135 schools are currently closed, due to infections found in some 350 students and staff.
At least 10 workers at Eilat’s Club Hotel have tested positive for the coronavirus, the Ynet news site reports.
The workers have been sent to an isolation hotel in Ashkelon, according to the report.
The hotel appears to continue to be operating and taking reservations.
The body of George Floyd has arrived at a church in Houston for a final public memorial for the man whose death at the hands of police in Minneapolis sparked protests around the world and calls to reform policing in America.
His body arrives in a gold-colored casket that is escorted to The Fountain of Praise church by Houston police. A six-hour viewing that is open to the public is scheduled to begin in the afternoon.
Floyd’s funeral and burial will be Tuesday.
Previous memorials were held for Floyd in Minneapolis and Raeford, North Carolina, near where he was born.
Floyd was raised in Houston’s Third Ward and was a well-known former high school football player who rapped with local legend DJ Screw. He moved to Minneapolis several years ago to seek work and a fresh start.
— AP
A federal appeals court on Monday ordered a lower court to dismiss legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s three-year-old ban on travelers from predominantly Muslim countries, finding that a judge misinterpreted a Supreme Court ruling.
The ban, put in place just a week after Trump took office in January 2017, sparked an international outcry from Muslim advocates and others who said it was rooted in religious bias.
A three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a federal judge in Maryland made a mistake when he refused to dismiss three lawsuits, after the Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2018 in a separate case filed in Hawaii.
“We conclude that the district court misunderstood the import of the Supreme Court’s decision in Hawaii and the legal principles it applied,” Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote in the unanimous decision.
The Supreme Court ruling had found that the ban has a “legitimate grounding in national security concerns.”
During a hearing in January, Mark Mosier, an attorney representing US citizens and permanent residents whose relatives have been unable to enter the US because of the ban, asked the court to allow the legal challenges to proceed.
— AP
Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official and close adviser to PA head Mahmoud Abbas, says that the Palestinians will not continue to provide civil services in the West Bank if annexation plans move ahead.
Either they backtrack on annexation and things go back to how they were, or they follow through with annexation and they go back to being the occupying power in the whole West Bank,” he tells The New York Times.
“I will not accept that my role is a service provider,” he adds. “I’m not a municipality or a charity.”
According to the paper, the PA has already begun curbing its cooperation with Israel, which includes facilitating permits for Palestinians to receive medical treatment at Israel’s better equipped facilities or enter Israel for other reasons.
Al-Sheikh also tells the paper that the PA will not longer turn over Israelis caught in the West Bank and accused of crimes. Several Israeli Arabs are being held by the PA, it says.
“Every day, I’ll be retreating from my responsibilities,” al-Sheikh says. “I am telling the Israelis, if this situation continues, you will have to take full responsibility as an occupying power. It could go back to like it was before Oslo.”
IDF chief Aviv Kohavi is warning against complacency despite the relative calm in the region, in the apparent first volley in an expected coming war over the defense budget.
“This is the ‘security paradox’ — so long as there is calm and security stability, we are inclined to forget how complicated it is to achieve. As long as there is security stability, a misleading feeling develops that the threats have diminished and a feeling develops that we can scale back our security needs,” Kohavi says in a speech.
In light of the coronavirus pandemic and its disastrous effects on the world economy, the Israeli government is expected to make significant cuts to the country’s budget, including to the military. Such a reduction would make it difficult for the Israel Defense Forces to fully implement its proposed “Momentum Plan” to make the military more effective and deadly.
“We are working and continuing with Momentum, and are rolling out the multi-year Momentum Plan. The Momentum Plan is the answer to the gaps that we need to close and is the advantage that we need to develop over our enemies,” Kohavi says.
The army chief’s remarks are made at a ceremony marking the efforts of the military during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
MK Oded Forer of the opposition Yisrael Beytenu party has been tapped to lead the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of Women in Society, drawing protests over the choice.
The Kulan-Together feminist group calls Forer’s appointment “a joke.”
“If the sub-representation of women in the Knesset and this inflated government is not enough, now they’ve recommended an MK with no special experience about advancing equality to head the panel that will decide about how to advance rights for women,” says Hagit Parr, the head of the Na’amat women’s group.
Speaking to Kan, Forer tried to defend himself, but seemingly digs a bigger hole: “I’m someone for whom equality is important, I don’t know what a feminist is. I’m for sectoral equality.”
The Health Ministry says there have been 169 new coronavirus infections over the last 24 hours, marking an alarming spike in daily cases.
The tally brings the total number of cases since the pandemic began to 18,032.
The figures mark the highest daily toll since April 28, when 193 cases were recorded.
The ministry says there have been no new deaths over the last day, with the toll remaining at 298.
The number of people on ventilators is at 23, out of 29 serious cases.
Over 15,120 people have recovered.
Channel 12 news reports that Health Ministry officials are warning that a second wave could hit Israel like a ton of bricks, leaving the country gasping for air and some 5,000 people on ventilators overwhelming the health system.
The channel quotes an unnamed minister pushing back at the ministry for what they claim is fear-mongering, noting similar predictions made as the pandemic began to ramp up in March and April.
“This is an unending campaign of fear. There’s no need to go to extremes to show that we need to prepare,” the minister is quoted saying.
A poll published by Channel 12, which maybe has a fourth election on its mind, finds continuing sky-high support for Likud and Blue and White still managing to garner a significant amount of votes despite party leader Benny Gantz breaking ranks to join up with Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to the poll, if elections were held today, Likud would gain 40 seats, while the Joint List, with 15 seats would be the next largest party.
Yesh Atid would manage 14 seats and former partner Blue and White would drop to 12 seats.
Shas and Yisrael Beytenu would get nine seats each, followed by Yamina with eight, UTJ with seven and Meretz with six.
The Labor party would remain well below the entrance threshold, with only 1.9 percent of votes, barely more than half the number needed to enter the Knesset.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz will meet tomorrow with settler leaders to discuss the government’s looming annexation plans.
All Israeli mayors in the West Bank received an invitation to the meeting. They include a plurality of the 24 council chairmen who have spoken out against the Trump plan, a slightly smaller group of supporters and a handful of mayors who have refrained from taking a stance either way.
All settler leaders campaigned aggressively against Gantz’s Blue and White party in each of the last three elections, warning that he would endanger the settlement movement.
— Jacob Magid
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s statement that the Oslo Accords are no longer valid due to Israeli threats of annexation does not change her view that the “State of Palestine” can transfer criminal jurisdiction over its territory to The Hague.
In a written statement, Fatou Bensouda says that Abbas’s speech has no bearing “on the status of Palestine as a State Party to the Rome Statute and on the exercise of the court’s jurisdiction in the situation in Palestine.”
Last month, Abbas said during speech in Ramallah that Palestine is not bound by any agreements with Israel. After the ICC asked for clarifications regarding the status of the Oslo Accords, the PA said that all agreements will be considered null and void if Israel goes ahead with its annexation plans.
She reiterates her concern over Jerusalem’s stated intention to annex parts of the West Bank, but adds that any such move “has no legal validity and the law of occupation continues to apply.”
It is now up to a pre-trial chamber with three judges to rule whether the court has or does not have jurisdiction to proceed with an investigation into war crimes committed in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
— Raphael Ahren
Numbers put out by the Prime Minister’s Office show a total of 18,049 virus cases, adding 17 new cases to the Health Ministry tally.
The figures mean the last day has seen 186 new infections, a steep rise.
There are initial reports of a police officer injured in a hit and run accident in northern Jerusalem.
Some reports suggest suspicions that the incident may have been terror related.
According to Channel 12 news, police believe that the incident was not related to terror.
The officer is said to suffer only light injuries.
Israel has reportedly informed German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas that if he visits Ramallah on a trip to the region this week, he will not be allowed into Israel without going into quarantine for 14 days first.
Maas will not need to observe any quarantine period after arriving from Germany, raising questions about Israel’s intentions.
According to Haaretz, Maas will be forced to hold only video consultations with Palestinians to avoid two weeks in an Israeli coronavirus hotel.
Israel last month hosted US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for a lightning trip in which he did not need to observe any quarantine period.
Most visitors to Israel need to spend 14 days in quarantine upon arrival in the country, though the directive does not apply to Palestinian territories.
In 2017, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scotched a meeting with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel over the latter’s meeting with dovish group Breaking the Silence.
The Magen David Adom rescue service confirms that two people with light injuries were taken to a local hospital following an apparent hit and run in the capital’s Pisgat Zeev neighborhood.
A police statement says the driver hit one officer who was carrying out “enforcement duties.”
It says the driver managed to escape the scene and an investigation has been launched.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh tells the foreign press that if Israel goes ahead with annexation, Ramallah will declare a Palestinian state.
Shtayyeh says the Palestinians will establish a “foundational council” so they can transition from “a temporary authority” to “the establishment of a state on the ground.”
The Palestinians have declared statehood numerous times since 1988, consider themselves a state on official communiques and have pushed for international recognition of the basis of statehood, making Shtayyeh’s threat somewhat perplexing, and casting doubt on whether the Palestinians themselves actually believe they are a state.
The threat of creating a state, with all its trappings, also seemingly runs counter to a claim made to the New York Times by Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official and close adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, that said the Palestinian Authority will stop providing civil services to Palestinians in the case of annexation.
During that interview al-Sheikh also hinted that the PA does not consider Israel to be an occupying power in some of the West Bank.
“Either they backtrack on annexation and things go back to how they were, or they follow through with annexation and they go back to being the occupying power in the whole West Bank,” he said.
