ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 369
The Times of Israel liveblogged Tuesday’s events as they happened.
Blocked from serving as a minister due to a graft indictment, Likud MK David Bitan is demanding a senior parliamentary post in the next Knesset, with a preference for the speakership, the Kan public broadcaster reports.
The report says Bitan hasn’t made an ultimatum to Netanyahu and that the demand was raised in talks with associates.
Four Lithuanian families were posthumously awarded the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center yesterday for saving Jews during the Holocaust, the museum says.
The medals and certificates were presented to the descendants of Juozapas and Marijona Bagurskas; Aksentij, Martriona, and their daughter Zinaida Burlakova; Kazimieras and Marcijona Ruzgys; and Jonas and Ona Žvinklevičius, who were all determined to have risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust for altruistic reasons.
The awards were presented by Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan, who was in Lithuania this week on an official visit. Israeli Ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein and Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė attended the event, as did Maksim Broer, who was rescued by the Bagurskas family and traveled back to Lithuania to participate in the ceremony.
Another Holocaust survivor, Chaya Landau, who was rescued by the Ruzgys, sent a video statement that was shown at the event at the Government Palace in Vilnius.
“The world has never found a vaccination against antisemitism, which once again seems to be a pandemic,” Landau said in her remarks. “However, the Ruzgys family, and few others like them, were naturally immune to this horrible disease… they had the sense of nobility and courage to confront evil and were a beacon of light in humanity’s darkest hour.”
Dayan says he was “uplifted” by his visit to Lithuania, both because of the ceremony and because of his meetings with Lithuanian officials.
“In my words at events and meetings, I emphasized the importance of historical accuracy and made reference to the part that Lithuanians themselves played in the persecution and murder of the Jews during the Holocaust,” says Dayan.
State Attorney Amit Aisman comes out against an effort to curb the powers of his office, which has been heavily criticized in recent years by allies of Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu for indicting him in a trio of graft cases.
“Weakening the State Attorney’s Office and hurting our public legitimacy will inevitably lead to harm to the rule of law, and as a result harm Israeli democracy,” Aisman says at a Justice Ministry event in Eilat, according to the Walla news site.
He says the State Attorney’s Office needs to be better at acknowledging mistakes and willing to accept “justified” criticism.
Outgoing Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s National Unity party says it won’t recommend any candidate for prime minister when it meets tomorrow with President Isaac Herzog for consultations on who should form the next government.
A statement from National Unity says the move is due to “the election results,” without further elaborating.
Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman Yisrael’s Beytenu also says it doesn’t intend to recommend anyone, according to Hebrew media reports.
The Labor party is expected to recommend Prime Minister Yair Lapid, as is the premier’s own Yesh Atid party.
All three factions are members of the coalition that collapsed in June, triggering last week’s election, though National Unity had said before the votes that it would recommend Gantz for premier instead of Lapid.
Herzog is expected to give Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu the nod to form the next government, after his right-religious bloc won a majority in the election.
The funeral has begun for Shalom Sofer, 63, who died today after being wounded in a terror stabbing in the West Bank two weeks ago.
Hundreds of people are in attendance at the Petah Tikva cemetery.
שלום סופר ז"ל, שנרצח בפיגוע בכפר פונדוק בשומרון לפני כשבועיים, מובא כעת למנוחות בבית העלמין סגולה בפתח תקווה@milleryuval_ pic.twitter.com/VjHXsNnJzF
— גלצ (@GLZRadio) November 8, 2022
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara seems to push back against calls among members of the likely new right-religious ruling coalition for legislation that would allow the Knesset to override Supreme Court rulings.
“No authority or person is above the law,” she says at a Justice Ministry event in Eilat, according to Channel 13 news. “Separation of powers, equality for all, governmental decency and looking out for minority rights — those are the foundations of the system.”
“Democracy and the independence of the law enforcement and judicial systems are inseparable. Without one, the other does not exist.”
She also stresses it will be business as usual with the new government, which is expected to be led by Likud chief Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The definition of our positions and the manner they are performed do not depend on the identity of the political leadership or that of the legal system at a given time,” Baharav-Miara adds.
Final voting begins without major hitches in US midterm elections under intense scrutiny after two years of false claims and conspiracy theories about how ballots are cast and counted.
With polls open across most of the country, no big problems are reported early in the day, though there were hiccups in some places, which is typical on any Election Day. For example, vote tabulators were not working in a county in New Jersey and one in Arizona — potentially requiring hand-counting instead — and some voting sites in Pennsylvania were delayed in opening because workers showed up late.
“These are things we see in every election cycle,” says Susannah Goodman, director of election security at Common Cause, a group that advocates for voting access. “There’s nothing majorly concerning this morning.”
Since the last nationwide election in 2020, former US president Donald Trump and his allies have succeeded in sowing wide distrust about voting by promoting false claims of extensive fraud. The effort has eroded public confidence in elections and democracy, led to restrictions on mail voting and new ID requirements in some GOP-led states and prompted death threats against election officials.
Election Day this year is marked by concerns about further harassment and the potential for disruptions at polling places and at election offices where ballots will be tallied. Election officials say they are prepared to handle any issues that arise, urging voters not to be deterred.
BAGHDAD — An American aid worker fatally shot in central Baghdad has been identified as 45-year-old Stephen Edward Troell, the US Embassy based in Baghdad says today.
Troell, a native of Tennessee, was killed by unknown assailants in his car as he pulled up to the street where he lived with his family in Baghdad’s central Karrada district. It was a rare killing of a foreigner in Iraq, where security conditions have improved in recent years, even opening the door for tourism.
The embassy is closely monitoring an investigation begun by Iraqi authorities, but declines to comment further out of respect for his mourning family, the embassy statement says.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered an investigation in the hours after Troell was killed. Troell’s body had already arrived at Baghdad’s Sheikh Zayed hospital.
The circumstances surrounding Troell’s death and his activities in Iraq are shrouded in mystery. No group has claimed responsibility for the killing. Security officials dismissed the possibility it was a kidnapping gone wrong.
Security officials said as Troell drove through his street toward his home in Karrada’s Wahda area on Monday, a car cut him off and assailants in another vehicle then shot him dead. The officials also said his wife was in the car with him but had not been hurt. Her whereabouts and that of their children are not known.
A lawmaker in outgoing Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party claims Likud chief Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to part with his far-right allies as he puts together a new government.
“Bibi wants a full right-wing government so bad that he is trying to part from Ben Gvir and Smotrich,” MK Yulia Malinovsky tweets, using Netanyahu’s nickname.
“He is sending emissaries to Lapid, Gantz and us so we can get him out of the hole he got himself into. I have news for you: It simply won’t happen,” she adds.
MK Avi Maoz says he believes his anti-LGBT Noam party will be part of the right-religious coalition expected to be formed by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
After meeting Netanyahu, Maoz says he presented Noam’s views to the former prime minister on “the need to immediately remove anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish material that have infiltrated the education system from school curriculums, and the need to strengthen the country’s Jewish identity.”
PARIS — Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have arrested prominent lawyer Mostafa Nili, one of more than a dozen rounded up amid a crackdown on protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death, his sister says.
Guards intelligence agents detained Nili at Tehran’s Mehrabad international airport last night before raiding his mother’s house and taking him into custody, Fatemeh Nili tweets.
Another prominent lawyer, Saeid Dehghan, who is believed to be abroad, confirms his arrest in a post on Twitter.
Nili was one of the “few hopes for citizens against a political system that is the enemy of lawyers” as well as against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who “consider themselves the law,” Dehghan says.
Security forces have waged a campaign of mass arrests that has netted artists, dissidents, journalists and lawyers since protests broke out over Amini’s death on September 16.
Amini, 22, died three days after falling into a coma when she was arrested by the notorious morality police in Tehran for allegedly flouting Iran’s strict dress code for women based on Islamic sharia law.
Security forces, including the Guards, have killed at least 186 people during the crackdown on the women-led protest movement, the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights says.
At least another 118 people have lost their lives in distinct protests since September 30 in Sistan-Baluchistan, a mainly Sunni Muslim province on Iran’s southeastern border with Pakistan.
Thousands of people have been arrested in the crackdown, including more than a dozen lawyers who had been working to defend those taken in before being detained themselves.
After blistering criticism, Goethe-Institut Israel postpones it upcoming event, “Grasping the Pain of the Others – Panel discussion on the Holocaust, Nakba and German Remembrance Culture,” which was set to take place tomorrow on the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
“The remembrance of the Shoah and the commemoration of the victims is a major concern of the Goethe-Institut, to which we devote ourselves in numerous projects,” says the institute in a German-language statement. “We regret that the choice of date for a panel discussion has currently caused irritation.”
The new date for the event in Tel Aviv is Sunday, November 13.
“The Goethe-Institut stands for understanding and dialogue,” the statement continues. “That is what the planned discussion is about.”
While delaying the event, the Goethe-Institut addressed only one component of the program for which it was panned. The Foreign Ministry and others blasted “the blatant cheapening of Holocaust and the cynical and manipulative attempt to create a linkage whose entire purpose is to defame Israel,” by discussing the Shoah and the Nakba — the Palestinians’ term for their defeat in 1948 during Israel’s War of independence — in the same breath.
Israel’s environmental protection minister attended a regional meeting today alongside Iraqi and Lebanese leaders at the global climate conference taking place in Egypt, the minister’s office says, where the group pledged to work together to tackle climate change.
Israel is still officially at war with Lebanon, fighting a war against the Shiite Hezbollah terror group in 2006, and Israel and Iraq have no diplomatic relations and a history of hostilities.
While Lebanon and Israel recently signed a landmark, US-brokered maritime agreement, any hint that the two states are open to cooperate even as part of a regional setting would be meaningful. Lebanon bans its citizens from having any contact with Israelis and the sea deal was negotiated through American shuttle diplomacy, with no Israeli or Lebanese officials ever publicly meeting.
According to a statement from Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg, the meeting took place as part of a regional forum of eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries.
בדיון אזורי משותף למדינות המזה״ת על התמודדות עם משבר האקלים, בהובלת נשיאי מצרים וקפריסין ובהשתתפות יוון, ירדן, עירק, לבנון, הרשות הפלסטינית, בחריין ועומאן. אנו מדינות האזור חולקות את המדבר, הים, ההתחממות וההתייבשות. אם אנו חולקות את הבעיות, אנחנו יכולות וצריכות לחלוק את הפתרונות pic.twitter.com/pCv8GE7dZd
— תמר זנדברג ???? (@tamarzandberg) November 8, 2022
The agreement by the member countries says the parties will work to “strengthen regional cooperation” and “act in a coordinated way” on climate change.
“The countries of the region share the warming and drying climate and just as they share the problems they can and must share the solutions. No country can stand alone in the face of the climate crisis,” Zandberg says in the statement.
In photos provided by her office, she is seen seated behind a small Israeli flag. Two seats away from her is Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid and across the room is Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, each behind their countries’ flags.
Mikati’s office plays down the incident, saying it was being overblown in Israeli media.
BERLIN — An ambassador for the World Cup in Qatar has described homosexuality as a “damage in the mind” in an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF only two weeks before the opening of the soccer tournament in the Gulf state, highlighting concerns about the conservative country’s treatment of gays and lesbians.
Former Qatari national team player Khalid Salman told a German reporter in an interview that being gay is “haram,” or forbidden in Arabic, and that he has a problem with children seeing gay people.
Excerpts of the television interview were shown yesterday on the ZDF news program Heute Journal. The full interview, which is part of a documentary, will be shown today on ZDF.
Germany’s interior minister condemns Salman’s remarks.
“Of course such comments are terrible, and that is the reason why we are working on things in Qatar hopefully improving,” Nancy Faeser says.
About 1.2 million international visitors are expected in Qatar for the tournament, which has faced criticism and skepticism ever since the gas-rich emirate was selected as host by FIFA in December 2010. Concerns about LGBTQ tourists attending the World Cup have also been expressed for a long time.
In the interview, Salman also said that homosexuality “is a spiritual harm.”
“During the World Cup, many things will come here to the country. Let’s talk about gays,” Salman said in English, which is simultaneously dubbed into German in the TV segment. “The most important thing is, everybody will accept that they come here. But they will have to accept our rules.”
The interview was cut short by a media officer of the World Cup organizing committee after Salman expressed his views on homosexuals, ZDF reports.
Representatives from the far-right Religious Zionism alliance’s three constituent parties will meet separately with President Isaac Herzog as part of official consultations on who should assemble the next government.
Starting tomorrow, Herzog will begin meeting with members of all the parties in the next Knesset, in size order from largest to smallest. Religious Zionism received 14 seats, the third most of any electoral slate, but the meetings with the president will be scheduled in accordance with each subfaction’s size.
Religious Zionism is part of Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-religious bloc, which also includes the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties. Together, the bloc received 64 seats — enough for a majority in the 120-member Knesset — and is expected to form the new government.
President Isaac Herzog will bestow the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor on his Cypriot counterpart Nicos Anastasiades tomorrow at his official residence in Jerusalem, his office announces.
The announcement calls Anastasiades “a loyal partner to Israel, among other things in the intimate cooperation, the closeness and deep respect between the countries.”
Herzog announces five other recipients as well, including poet Rachel Shapira, IDF BG (res.) Pinchas Bukhris, Arab educational entrepreneur Dalia Fadila, youth educator Haim Perry, and US Jewish leader Michael Siegal.
The award, bestowed on 28 people thus far, was initiated by then-president Shimon Peres in 2012. Based on the French Legion of Honor, it was last given in 2014 before Herzog gave it to US President Joe Biden and Czech President Miloš Zeman earlier this year.
Herzog reconstituted the Medal of Honor advisory committee upon taking office, under retired Supreme Court Justice Yoram Danziger.
The Foreign Ministry blasts the Goethe-Institut Israel for its upcoming event, “Grasping the Pain of the Others – Panel discussion on the Holocaust, Nakba and German Remembrance Culture,” set to take place on the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
“The Foreign Ministry expresses shock and disgust in the face of the blatant cheapening of Holocaust and the cynical and manipulative attempt to create a linkage whose entire purpose is to defame Israel,” reads the ministry’s statement.
The ministry also calls on the organizers to cancel the “outrageous” event.
“We must not allow foreign cultural and educational policies to support attempts to link commemoration of the Holocaust and the Nakba,” tweets German lawmaker Frank Muller-Rosentritt. “That this is planned by @goetheinstitut in Israel on November 9 of all days is a scandal.”
The panel, organized in conjunction with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Israel office, features Israeli academics and German journalist Charlotte Wiedemann.
Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, took place on November 9, 1938, when Nazi forces and German civilians attacked synagogues and Jewish business, likely killing hundreds.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has charged two women journalists with propaganda against the state, the judiciary says, as it presses a crackdown on protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.
The clerical state has been rocked by a protest movement that erupted on September 16 when Amini, 22, died after her arrest for allegedly breaking Iran’s strict hijab dress rules for women.
Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, who have both already spent more than a month in detention, “have been remanded in custody for propaganda against the system and conspiring against national security,” judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi tells a weekly briefing in Tehran.
Hamedi, 30, a journalist for the reformist Shargh newspaper, was arrested on September 20, after she visited the hospital where Amini spent three days in her coma before her death.
Mohammadi, 35, a reporter for the Ham Mihan newspaper, was arrested on September 29 after she traveled to Amini’s hometown of Saqez in Kurdistan province to cover her funeral.
The reformist newspaper Sazandegi reported late last month that more than 20 journalists remained in custody for their reporting of Amini’s death or the subsequent unrest. It said several others had been summoned by the authorities.
On October 30, more than 300 journalists issued a joint statement criticizing the detention of their colleagues and the denial of their rights, including access to a lawyer.
Dozens of people, most of them demonstrators, have been killed in the protests over Amini’s death. Hundreds more have been arrested.
After footage of President Isaac Herzog chatting amicably with Tunisia’s Prime Minister Najla Bouden during the world leaders’ photograph at the COP27 in Egypt made the rounds on social media yesterday, Herzog’s office issues a clarification.
“The president turned to the leaders standing next to him and introduced himself, as manners dictate,” the President’s Residence says.
“As for the prime minister of Tunisia and prime minister of Lebanon, who were standing nearby, when the leaders introduced themselves to each other, it was understood among them that they could not speak,” the statement continues. “That was the entire conversation between the three leaders.”
The short clip shows Herzog turning around to exchange pleasantries with Bouden, who was standing a row behind him.
???????????????????????? Nice to see #Tunisia's prime minister, Mrs. Najla Bouden, exchange smiles and words with #Israel's president Mr. Isaac Herzog at the #COP27 in Egypt. And #Sweden's prime minister Mr. Ulf Kristersson right beside the two of them. pic.twitter.com/EHksxfWuJE
— Inte_Resting (@Inte_Resting) November 7, 2022
Though both countries opened official “interest sections” – a de facto consulate – in the 1990s, ties were severed with the outbreak of the Second Intifada and have not been restored. Israelis participated in the annual pilgrimage to the El-Ghriba synagogue in Djerba. Bouden was criticized in May for taking photographs with Jewish pilgrims there
Likud chief Benjamin Netanyahu meets with MK Avi Maoz, head of the anti-LGBT Noam party, as part of initial coalition talks with faction leaders in his right-religious bloc.
The meeting, which is also attended by Likud No. 2 Yariv Levin and Noam director-general Elkana Babad, is taking place at Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Maoz had threatened to boycott the expected next coalition unless separate talks were held with Noam, which ran as part of the far-right Religious Zionism slate. Noam is the smallest of the three factions that make up the electoral alliance, with only one of Religious Zionism’s 14 seats going to it.
BRUSSELS — The European Parliament’s inquiry committee investigating the use of surveillance spyware by the bloc’s governments says the EU’s executive arm and member countries are failing to properly tackle a surveillance scandal that has targeted opposition politicians and journalists.
In a draft report published today, the committee investigating Pegasus says the European Council and national governments “are practicing omertà” — or a code of silence — and regrets that the European Commission only shared “reluctantly and piecemeal” information concerning spyware attacks on its own employees.
A spokesman for the Commission responds that any attempt from national security services to illegally access data of citizens “is unacceptable” and insists it has already started taking action to protect journalists from the use of spyware.
The Parliament committee has been investigating the use by governments of Israel’s Pegasus spyware and other invasive surveillance tools, viewing such technology as a threat to democracy in the 27-nation bloc.
Pegasus was developed by Israel’s NSO Group and is designed to breach mobile phones and extract vast amounts of information from them, including text messages, passwords, locations and microphone and camera recordings.
The company markets the technology as a tool to target criminals, but many cases have been discovered worldwide of governments using it against dissidents, journalists and political opponents.
According to EU lawmakers, the NSO Group has sold its products in at least 14 EU countries.
MILAN — Italian soccer authorities are investigating alleged antisemitic chanting from Lazio fans during the weekend’s Rome derby, Serie A announces today.
In a statement, Italy’s top flight says that a “follow-up investigation” will be carried out to verify the number of supporters making the offensive chants, videos of which circulated on social media after Lazio’s 1-0 win over Roma on Sunday.
Serie A says the “boorish, outrageous and religiously discriminatory” chants were aimed at Roma fans “several times before the match and once during the game itself.”
Yesterday, Lazio condemned “expressions of antisemitism and racism which happen in almost every match at every stadium in Italy.”
“They’re not part of our culture and don’t represent our fans,” the club added in a statement.
Fascist fan groups are common across Italy, including at Roma, but Lazio’s hardcore supporters have a connection to the extreme right which stretches back to at least the 1970s.
Lazio’s historic ultras group, the “Irriducibili,” had friendly relations with their equally right-wing counterparts at Inter Milan and Verona.
Last season the handler of Lazio’s eagle mascot praised dictators Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco after being suspended by the club for performing a fascist salute at the end of a match.
Mussolini’s great-grandson Romano Floriani plays for Lazio, although he is yet to feature in a first-team match and claims to have no interest in politics.
The 19-year-old’s mother is former right-wing politician Alessandra Mussolini, who was once a member of neo-Fascist party Italian Social Movement.
Close to nine percent of votes in last week’s election went to parties that didn’t clear the minimum threshold to enter the Knesset, the highest percentage since at least 1988, a new analysis says.
According to Israel Democracy Institute research fellow Ofer Kenig, 8.7% of total ballots cast — amounting to some 410,000 votes — went to factions that will not be in the new parliament, most notably the left-wing Meretz and Arab nationalist Balad. Together, the parties received around 300,000 votes.
The election with the second highest number of so-called wasted ballots in the analysis, which went back to 1988, was in April 2019, when 8.5% of votes went to parties that did not get enough support to enter the Knesset.
In the three other elections between the April 2019 vote and this most recent one, the percentages were 2.9%, 0.8% and 1.5%, respectively.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urges the United States to remain united, as questions hover over American support for his country following midterm elections to determine control of the US Congress.
“I call on you to maintain unwavering unity, as it is now, until that very day when we all hear those important words we have been dreaming of … Until we hear that peace has finally been restored. Democracies must not stop on their way to the victory,” he says in a recorded address, receiving the US Liberty Medal.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has denounced a skater after she attended a competition in Turkey without wearing an Islamic headscarf, local media announces today, amid protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.
The Islamic Republic has been rocked by nearly two months of protests since the death of Amini, after her arrest by the morality police for allegedly breaking the nation’s strict dress code for women.
Niloufar Mardani, a member of Iran’s national speed skating team for more than a decade, on Sunday received an award at a race in Istanbul without a head covering and wearing black clothing featuring the word “Iran,” media outlets report.
“Mardani took part in a skating competition in Turkey without authorization,” the sports ministry says, quoted by Iran’s Fars news agency.
In Turkey, “this athlete was not wearing the outfit approved by the ministry and she has not been a member of the national team since last month,” the statement adds.
The ministry says Mardani had taken part in a “personal” capacity in the Istanbul competition, an event in which the Iranian national team did not participate.
Iranian skater Niloufar Mardani competed at Istanbul Marathon without a headscarf, defying the Islamic Republic's hijab restrictions.
Iran's Sports Ministry immediately announced she's no longer a member of national team, hadn't obtained a permission and was on a personal trip. pic.twitter.com/9RoQb8vxSO— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) November 8, 2022
Iranian sportswomen are obliged to compete with headscarves, even while during events held abroad.
In October, Iran’s Elnaz Rekabi took part in a climbing competition in Seoul wearing only a bandana on her head, causing a sensation.
On her return to Iran she apologized and said the hijab had fallen off by accident. But others suggested her gesture was deliberate.
WASHINGTON — Americans begin voting in midterm elections, with Republicans chasing a congressional majority that would paralyze US President Joe Biden’s agenda for the next two years and could pave the way for Donald Trump to return to the White House.
Polling stations on the East Coast started opening at 6 a.m. With control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate up for grabs, more than 40 million people have already cast their ballots in pre-election day voting across the country.
