Zionist Union plummets, Likud stays on top in Knesset poll

UN: Up to 700 refugees dead in 3 Mediterranean shipwrecks

Over 700 migrants are feared dead in three Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks south of Italy.

An estimated 100 people are missing from a smugglers’ boat that capsized Wednesday, according to Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for UNHCR.

She says about 550 other migrants and refugees are missing from a smuggling boat that capsized Thursday morning after leaving the western Libyan port of Sabratha a day earlier. Refugees who saw the boat sink told her agency that that boat, which was carrying about 670 people, didn’t have an engine and was being towed by another packed smuggling boat before it capsized.

About 25 people from the capsized boat managed to reach the first boat and survive, 79 others were rescued by international patrol boats and 15 bodies were recovered.

— AP

Australian worker killed in Golan oil well accident

An Australian foreign national working at an oil well in the Golan Heights has died after a heavy cement pipe fell on him during work on the site.

The accident took place at the Nes 2 site, next to the Meitzar kibbutz, east of the Sea of Galilee.

The 59-year old worker was employed by the Viking Drilling firm, hired by the Israeli company Afek Oil and Gas, according to Ynet.

Thousands flee IS offensive in northern Syria

Thousands of civilians are fleeing an offensive by the Islamic State group against non-jihadist rebels in northern Syria into territory controlled by a US-backed Kurdish-led alliance.

At least 29 civilians have been killed since IS launched the assault early on Friday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“More than 6,000 civilians, most of them women and children, were able to flee areas in the countryside of Aleppo province… especially from Marea town and Sheikh Issa village” to its west, the Britain-based monitoring group says.

The displaced people are arriving in areas in the west and north of Aleppo province under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters regarded bt Washington as the most effective force on the ground in Syria against the jihadists of IS.

— AFP

German nationalist slammed over black soccer player comment

A top member of a rising German nationalist party is drawing criticism for saying many people wouldn’t want Jerome Boateng, a key player on Germany’s national soccer team whose father was born in Ghana, as their neighbor.

Bayern Munich’s Jerome Boateng in Munich, Germany, July 2015. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Alexander Gauland, deputy leader of Alternative for Germany, was quoted Sunday as telling the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper: “People find him good as a footballer. But they don’t want to have a Boateng as their neighbor.”

Berlin-born Bayern Munich defender Boateng has played 57 games for Germany and was a mainstay of the 2014 World Cup-winning team.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas called Gauland’s comment “unacceptable.” He wrote on Twitter: “Anyone who talks like this unmasks himself, and not just as a bad neighbor.”

— AP

Interior minister moves to revoke citizenship of car-rammer

Interior Minister Aryeh Deri says he has filed a request with the Haifa District Court to revoke the Israeli citizenship of an Arab man who carried out a combined stabbing and car-ramming attack last October.

Alaa Raed Ahmad Ziwad was charged with four counts of attempted murder after he drove his car into an Israeli soldier, seriously injuring her, and then stepped out of his car to stab three others on October 11, 2015.

Magen David Adom paramedics at the scene of a multiple stabbing attack near Hadera, on October 11, 2015. (Assaf Brezinger/Magen David Adom)

The attack took place on Route 65 near the entrance to Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, northeast of Hadera.

“Revoking citizenship is a rare, serious step but we must respond forcefully against anyone who harms the state’s security and its residents,” Deri says a statement.

— Marissa Newman

Ex-anti-corruption police chief vows to fight fraud as member of Yesh Atid

Yoav Segalovich, former head of the Israel Police investigations and intelligence unit, says he is joining the Yesh Atid part because he thinks it is making the most effort to tackle corruption.

Yoav Segalovich, during a ceremony for outstanding officers, April 23, 2012. (Uri Lenz/FLASH90)

“Corruption is not only a list of legal clauses, it is an evil spirit. I see in Lapid a genuine effort to make a change,” Segalovich says in a joint press conference with Lapid.

Segalovich is one of the founders of the police’s Lahav 433 anti-fraud unit, responsible for leading corruption investigations against major public figures in Israel, as well as the former head of the general financial crimes unit. He spent a total of thirty years in the police force.

The announcement of the former police officer’s entrance into the opposition party, which holds 11 Knesset seats, comes amid a political crisis that has seen two ministers recently quit their positions in protest of hardliner Avigdor Libeman being named the new defense minister.

Putin agrees to return Israeli tank from 1982 Lebanon war

Russia President Putin approves the request from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to return an Israeli tank captured during the Battle of Sultan Yacoub during the 1982 Lebanon War.

Netanyahu raised the issue during meeting with Putin in the Kremlin last month, following a request by Israeli Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

The tank in currently on display at the Moscow Military Museum.

ראש הממשלה בנימין נתניהו:
אני מודה לנשיא רוסיה ולדימיר פוטין, שנענה לבקשתי להשיב לישראל את הטנק מקרב סולטן יעקב. pic.twitter.com/e3pwUivk1U

— ראש ממשלת ישראל (@IsraeliPM_heb) May 29, 2016

The tank, along with three Israeli soldiers, was captured during a battle in which thirty IDF soldiers died. Zvi Feldman, Yehuda Katz and Zachary Baumel, now defined as Missing in Action, were paraded through Damascus on top of the captured tank.

Netanyahu thanked Putin, saying, “The tank is the only evidence of the battle and is now on the way back to Israel.”

King of Jordan dissolves parliament, appoints new PM

The Jordanian King Abdullah issues a decree dissolving the current parliament, and appoints a new prime minister to ready the country for new elections.

The announcement comes at the end of the four-year term for the newly dissolved parliament. Former Jordanian prime minister Abdullah Ensour resigned from his position on Sunday, as is tradition before a new premier can be chosen to oversee elections.

The man tapped by King Abdullah as the new Jordanian prime minister is Hani Mulki, a long-time civil servant who served as the former chief commissioner of the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority.

— Dov Lieber

German, French leaders praise unity at WWI battle centenary

German and French leaders are singing the praises of European unity as they mark 100 years since the World War I Battle of Verdun, France, determined to show that, despite the bloodbath their countries’ improbable friendship is now a source of hope for today’s fractured Europe.

The 10-month battle at Verdun — the longest in World War I — killed 163,000 French and 143,000 German soldiers and wounded hundreds of thousands of others.

“Verdun is the more than the name of your town — Verdun is also one of the most terrible battles humanity has experienced,” Merkel says in a speech at city hall, calling Hollande’s invitation to join the centenary “a great honor.”

French President Francois Hollande, left, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel after laying a wreath at a German cemetery in Consenvoye, northeastern France, Sunday May 29, 2016, during a remembrance ceremony to mark the centenary of the battle of Verdun. (Jean Christophe Verhaegen/Pool via AP)

“We are all called upon to keep awake the memory (of Verdun) in the future, because only those who know the past can draw lessons from it,” the German leader says.

Hollande praised the city of Verdun as “the capital of peace.”

“Verdun is a city that represents — at the same time — the worst, where Europe got lost, and the best, a city being able to commit and unite for peace and French-German friendship,” he says.

Merkel adds the commemorations show “how good relations between Germany and France are today” and the achievements of European unity.

— AP

Netanyahu, Bennett slated to meet to smooth out beef

With tensions running high, Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett are slated to meet now at a high-level security cabinet meeting, during which they are expected to iron out differences between them and avoid a coalition crisis which could bring down the government.

Netanyahu has thus far refused to accede to Bennett’s demands that he increase information-sharing on security matters among ministers, with Bennett saying he will vote against the nomination of Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman as defense minister if his demand is not met.

The Knesset is expected to vote on the addition of Yisrael Beytenu to the coalition on Monday and if Jewish Home torpedoes the deal, their ministers will likely be fired, necessitating new elections.

Two killed in Sinai bomb

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s state news agency says a roadside bomb has killed two police and wounded three conscripts in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.

MENA quoted an Interior Ministry statement saying that the explosion happened Sunday.

Egypt has been hit with a wave of militant attacks that intensified after the military’s ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. An Islamic State affiliate based in northern Sinai has claimed most of the attacks.

— AP

Brush fire nears Jezreel Valley town

A brush fire in the Jezreel Valley is threatening to scorch the small town of Kfar Gideon, according to Ynet news.

Flames are nearing homes in the town, but no residents have yet been evacuated, according to the report.

Bahrain upholds sentences for 5 convicted of spying for Iran

A Bahraini appeals court has upheld life prison sentences against five Shiites convicted of spying for Iran as well as their citizenships being revoked, a judicial source tells AFP.

A statement by the prosecution says the court rejected the appeal by the five defendants.

The men were convicted in November of “spying for and seeking with Iran and its agents to carry out hostile acts against the kingdom,” a judicial sources said at the time.

They were found guilty of working with Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard to carry out attacks in Bahrain against public facilities and banks.

Two of them had received training in Iran on “the manufacture and use of explosives and firearms in preparation for carrying out these hostile attacks,” according to the charges.

— AFP

Israel still seeking info on soldiers captured in returned tank — PM

In a second message about the tank being returned from Russia to Israel, Netanyahu says Israel is persisting in efforts to find out the fate of the three Israeli serviceman captured with the vehicle in the battle of Sultan Yakoub.

“We are continuing all the time in different ways to find out the fate of all those missing in the battle, Zvi Feldman, Zecharia Baumel and Yehuda Katz, and we won’t rest until it’s clarified,” he says.

The three were captured while battling Syrian and Palestinian forces near the Syrian-Lebanese border on June 10, 1982, and have not been heard from since. Three others were captured and returned in a 1985 swap, including the body of one who was killed.

Baumel, originally from New York, held dual US-Israeli citizenship.

The parents of the three have campaigned for years for information about the whereabouts of their sons, and in 2004 fought an army plan to declare the three killed in action.

Hitler coding machine sold on eBay for $14

One of the machines used to send coded messages between Adolf Hitler and his generals sold for £10 on eBay after being discovered in a shed in England, the buyer says

Researchers at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park saw a “telegram machine” for sale on the auction site for £9.50 ($14), and believed it may have actually been a Lorenz machine, used by the German army to send top-secret coded messages.

“My colleague was scanning eBay and he saw a photograph of what seemed to be the teleprinter,” John Wetter, a volunteer at the museum in Buckinghamshire, south England, told the BBC.

To investigate further, Wetter traveled to the southeastern town of Southend where he found the machine, which resembles a typewriter, on the floor of a shed, covered “with rubbish.”

“We said ‘Thank you very much, how much was it again?’ She said ‘£9.50’, so we said ‘Here’s a £10 note — keep the change,” he added.

— AFP

New Turkish PM survives confidence vote

Turkey’s new government led by a staunch ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has easily passed a confidence vote in the country’s parliament.

Binali Yildirim, who replaced Ahmet Davutoglu as prime minister last week, was backed by 315 parliamentarians while 138 voted against, parliament speaker Ismail Kahraman says.

Yildirim describes his new administration as “the government of 79 million Turks” in a short speech to parliament following the vote, promising to “take democracy even further.”

— AFP

Sara Netanyahu suspected of taking from public till 3 times

Sara Netanyahu is suspected by police of fraud in three separate cases, according to media reports emerging several hours after police recommended to the state prosecutor she be charged.

According to the reports, which are not confirmed by any official source, police have evidence to prosecute her in the cases.

Two of the cases involve her using state money to order food for personal use on the public dime, and a third case involves using public funds to pay for a caretaker for her elderly father, according to Ynet.

Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing.

Reports also indicate police have decided to close a sexual harassment case against Meni Naftali, a former Prime Minister’s Residence custodian who had blown the whistle on Sara Netanyahu while alleging abuse by her.

According to Channel 2, police did not have sufficient evidence to pursue the allegations.

Netanyahu family denies wrongdoing in graft case

Benjamin Netanyahu has put out a statement denying that police said publicly they are recommending his wife be charged with fraud.

In a message posted on his Facebook page and attributed to “the Netanyahu family,” he also denies that his wife is guilty of anything.

“The police statement did not include any recommendations to put Mrs. Netanyahu on trial. As opposed to the reports, Mrs. Netanyahu did not do anything wrong,” the statement reads. “The various claims coming up in the media will turn out to be baseless, along with all the other claims against the Netanyahu family over the years.”

A police statement put out earlier in the day said an investigation into Sara Netanyahu had been passed to the state prosecutor. Several unofficial reports followed indicating that police had recommended she be charged.

Later reports indicated that police told the state prosecutor they had evidence to put her on trial for aggravated fraud regarding three incidents of taking public money earmarked for the Prime Minister’s Residence for personal use.

Syrian rebels retake two villages from IS

Activists say Syrian rebels have retaken two villages from Islamic State fighters as they fight to undo gains made by the extremist group in a surprise offensive in Syria’s north Friday that displaced over 100,000 people.

The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network inside Syria, says rebels retook the villages of Kafr Shoush and Braghida on Sunday, expanding their buffer around the rebel-held town of Azaz, home to tens of thousands of war refugees.

The IS advance threatened to swallow up the northern town, sparking alarm from leading international relief organizations.

The rebel pocket around Azaz, which connects to the Turkish border, used to form a supply corridor to opposition-held quarters in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

Aleppo-based media activist Ahmad Primo confirmed the rebel gains.

— AP

Internet puts Liberman’s feet to fire on offing Hamas leader

A tongue-in-cheek website is letting Israelis conveniently find out if their incoming defense minister has kept his promise to kill Hamas in Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh makes a speech to his supporters during a rally in the northern Gaza Strip, December 12, 2014 (AP/Adel Hana)

Avigdor Liberman promised earlier this year that he would assassinate Haniyeh within 48 hours if he became defense minister, unless Hamas returned the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza in 2014.

Has he whacked Haniyeh yet? Isismailhaniyehdeadyet.com will tell you the answer (no.)

The site was set up by Dr. Yuval Dror, dean of the communications track at the College of Management, according to Haaretz.

Ex-girlfriend of Rishon Lezion killer describes violent man

A woman who dated Jan Gavrieloff, who was killed by police Saturday night after a manhunt to find the suspected double killer, describes him as a violent man.

Tania Reichelgauss tells Channel 2 news that Gavrieloff would constantly speak abusively toward her.

“I don’t have anything to compare it to,” she says. “I think that had he beat me it would have hurt less.”

Gavrieloff is thought to have killed a former girlfriend and a man she was dating in Rishon Lezion on Wednesday. He was found by police in Lod and was shot and killed when he tried to pull a gun Saturday night.

Saudi Arabia tells Iran to quit meddling in Iraq

Saudi Arabia is accusing Iran of sowing “sedition” in Iraq, urging the Islamic Republic to “stop intervening” in the affairs of its neighbors.

“Sedition and division in Iraq are the results of sectarian policies that developed out of Iran’s policies in Iraq,” says Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in a joint press briefing with his British counterpart Philip Hammond in Jeddah.

“If Iran wants stability in Iraq, it has to stop intervening and withdraw,” he says after accusing Tehran of sending “Shiite militias” to the war-torn country.

“Iran should respect the principle of good neighborly relations, to focus on its internal situation and not intervene in the affairs of other countries in the region, mainly Iraq,” he says.

— AFP

EgyptAir black box search will need to wait 12 days

Investigators into EgyptAir’s plane crash need at least 12 days to recover its black boxes as they await a ship that can retrieve them from the bottom of the Mediterranean, investigation sources say.

The Airbus A320 plane crashed into the Mediterranean with 66 people on board during a May 19 flight from Paris to Cairo, after disappearing from radar screens.

Investigators are in a race against time to find the flight recorders, known as the black boxes, which have enough battery power to emit signals for four or five weeks.

Egypt and France have signed agreements with two French companies specializing in deep water searches, Alseamar and Deep Ocean Search (DOS).

“Those two companies have complementary roles: the first is for locating the pings of the black boxes (the signal being emitted by the black boxes’ beacon), while the second is for diving and recovering them” with the help of a robot, a source close to the investigation told AFP in Cairo, requesting anonymity.

This still image taken from video posted Saturday, May 21, 2016, on the official Facebook page of the Egyptian Armed Forces spokesman shows an Egyptian ship collecting wreckage of EgyptAir flight 804. (Egyptian Armed Forces via AP)

“But the DOS specialized ship left the Irish sea Saturday and it will reach the perceived crash site only in around 12 days, after having the Egyptian and French investigators embark in Alexandria,” the source added.

A source said that after 12 days, “there is a very good chance of recovering the flight recordings thanks to the combination of these two French companies.”

— AFP

New IDF guidelines: ‘Your son is probably among those killed’

The army has released a series of new personnel directives, including notifying families of the death of a loved one in battle before it’s confirmed, and no longer allowing parents to change their minds on an only child going into combat duty.

The changes are meant to respond to societal changes and issues that arose in the wars Israel has fought over the last 10 years.

Reacting to the fact that social media and rumors now reach people faster than official communications, the army will now quickly inform families that a loved one has “probably” been killed in order to avoid situations in which bereaved parents find out via WhatsApp or via other means, according to Walla news.

Other changes include creating a hotline for worried relatives and friends to find out if someone in combat is okay and centralizing the way the army receives donations during wartime.

The army will also no longer allow parents who gave permission for their only child to serve in combat duty to revoke that permission, after nine soldiers were pulled from battle by their parents during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, according to media reports.

Rivlin: Wider ruling coalition is better

President Reuven Rivlin is backing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to widen his coalition.

“The effort to expand the government is correct and just,” Rivlin says at an event at Hebrew University. “I believe that so long as the government acts carefully, responsibly and thoughtfully, it will be for the betterment of all of Israel’s citizens.”

French Jews choose Sephardi to lead them

France’s Jewish community, the largest in Europe, chose a Sephardi Jew as its leader Sunday for the first time in half a century.

Francis Kalifat, 63, said his priority as president of the CRIF umbrella grouping of Jewish organizations was to “fight against anti-Semitism in all its forms.”

He succeeds 79-year-old Roger Cukierman for a three-year term, breaking the dominance of Ashkenazi Jews in the organization which groups together 70 associations.

— AFP

Return of tank could lead to new approach for MIA soldiers, sister says

The sister of Yehuda Katz, one of the three soldiers missing from the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yacoub, expresses hope that the return of a tank from the battle to Israel may lead to new thinking about how to deal with getting her brother and the two other soldiers back.

“I am looking for Yehuda, not his tank.The most important thing that’s happened is this has opened… new directions to think about this,” Parchia Hyman tells Israel Radio.

She says the family have continued to lobby the government and expresses dissatisfaction with the way the army has dealt with the issue thus far, including trying to declare her brother, Zachary Baumel, and Zvi Feldman as killed in action.

“I’m definitely not satisfied, we haven’t done enough,” she says. “We can’t forget, we can’t give up.”

One lightly hurt in Jerusalem rock-throwing

One person has been treated for light injuries following a rock-throwing attack on a bus near the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev.

The incident occurred on Uzi Narkis Street, a freeway that skirts the Shuafat refugee camp on the way to Pisgat Zeev, in the city’s northeast.

The victim is treated on the scene by Magen David Adom paramedics.

Netanyahu flack on Sara flap: Allegations are absurd

A spokesperson for the prime minister’s family has lashed out at the media over its reporting on allegations surrounding Sara Netanyahu, saying the things she is accused of are small potatoes and “absurd.”

“What are we talking about? About food? About care for a few days for her father, who was laying on his deathbed and Mrs. Netanyahu paid for him from the [Prime Minister’s Residence] money?” Nir Hefetz asks rhetorically. “We know for sure that legal authorities know how to ignore the media blowing everything up, and it will come out that this is an absurdity that is nothing and even less than that.”

Vote on Liberman appointment delayed

A planned phone-in vote of ministers on whether to approve the appointment of Avigdor Liberman to defense minister has been pushed off, in a sign that a coalition crisis may persist.

According to Haaretz, a vote on Liberman, originally planned for Monday, won’t take place until Wednesday at the earliest.

Netanyahu and Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett were expected to work out a tiff holding up the appointment at a meeting earlier in the day, but the delay of the vote signals that effort has been unsuccessful.

Bennett and his Jewish Home party are threatening to vote against Liberman’s nomination unless a demand to increase information sharing among ministers on security matters is accepted.

Jewish Home have said they will torpedo the government and force new elections over the issue if need be.

Police searching for Jerusalem rock-thrower

Police say they are searching for the perpetrator who hurled a rock at a bus on Uzi Narkiss Street in Jerusalem, injuring one person.

Reports say the victim suffered shrapnel wounds, likely from broken glass, and was taken to an area hospital.

The windshield of the bus was damaged in the incident, according to police.

Poll shows Zionist Union plummeting as Likud stays on top

As rumors abound of the possibility of new elections, a poll published by ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Chai shows if a vote were held today, the ruling Likud party would maintain its hold on power, while chief rival Zionist Union would drop to a mere eight Knesset seats.

The poll, conducted by the Geocartography institute, shows Likud dropping by three seats to 27, while Yesh Atid leaps from 11 seats to 21.

Jewish Home would jump from eight seats to 14, the Joint (Arab) List would maintain its 13 and United Torah Judaism would go from six to 10 seats.

Isaac Herzog leads a Zionist Union faction meeting in the Knesset on February 22, 2016. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Zionist Union (currently with 24), Yisrael Beytenu (six) and Meretz (five) would all be tied with eight seats.

Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party would drop from 10 seats to seven and Shas would fall from seven seats to four, just squeaking into the Knesset.

The poll does not include the possibility of a challenge from a party made up of Netanyahu defectors Moshe Ya’alon and Gideon Sa’ar, which analysts say could dent Likud’s hold on power.

The station’s report on the poll does not detail when it was conducted or how many people were polled.

Restoration work begins on Holy Sepulchre tomb

A major restoration project has begun at the shrine inside Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Jesus is said to have been buried before his resurrection.

An AFP photographer visiting the church on Sunday says he saw scaffolding going up around the grotto tomb site and workers welding steel supports.

Church officials had said in March that work was to be carried out by a team of Greek specialists.

They said the project was expected to be completed in early 2017 and that the site would remain open to visitors in the meantime.

Tourists line up to enter the Tomb of Jesus as they stand under a metal scaffolding built at the entrance ahead of the restoration on May 29, 2016 at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City. (AFP/Gali Tibbon)

The shrine, several meters tall and wide and standing under the church’s dome, has for decades been held together by a metal frame.

Its marble slabs have weakened over the years, caused in part by daily visits from thousands of pilgrims and tourists.

The shrine was built in the early 19th century over the site of the cave where Jesus is believed to have been buried.

— AFP