ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 60
The Times of Israel liveblogged Sunday’s events as they happened.
Lawmakers from the outgoing coalition are deploring a deal between presumed prime minister-to-be Benjamin Netanyahu and Avi Maoz of the Noam party, which gives the hardline anti-LGBT lawmaker control of a body on “Jewish identity” and Nativ, which manages immigration from the former Soviet Union.
“From now on, according to Netanyahu and Avi Maoz, there are Class A Jews and Class B Jews,” Yesh Atid says in a statement.
Labor MK Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi, calls the appointment a “slap in the face” to secular people, traditionalist Jews, women, and gays.
“MK Maoz will find that the majority of the public will stand up to his party’s attempts to proselytize and sow hatred,” Kariv tweets.
The Reform movement in Israel comes out strongly against the coalition agreement between Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu and the head of the homophobic Noam party Avi Maoz, which will give the latter control of a to-be-formed “Jewish identity authority” in the Prime Minister’s Office.
“We remind the presumed head of the [Jewish identity] authority that there is more than one way to be a Jew or Jewess. Avi Maoz, who got a job with excessive funding, from the [presumed] prime minister-elect will not decide for millions of Jews and Jewesses in Israel and the Diaspora what those ways are,” the movement says in a statement.
Weeks after giving Donald Trump a major award, the Zionist Organization of America says it “deplores” his meeting with antisemites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes.
The organization quotes Trump’s State of the Union Address from 2019, in which he said, “We must never ignore the vile poison of antisemitism, or those who spread its venomous creed.”
“The Zionist Organization of America calls upon President Trump to live up to his own powerful words, to condemn in the strongest possible terms Jew-hater Kanye West and avowed Holocaust-denying, white supremacist, Jew-hater Nick Fuentes,” the organization’s president Morton Klein says in a statement.
Trump hosted West at his Mar-a-Lago estate last week, and the rapper brought Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and Holocaust denier to the meal. Trump praised West, but claimed he did not know Fuentes, though reports indicated the two got along well. The dinner has fueled condemnation of Trump, including from many allies.
“ZOA deplores the fact that President Trump had a friendly dinner with such vile antisemites. His dining with Jew-haters helps legitimize and mainstream antisemitism and must be condemned by everyone,” Klein says.
Two weeks ago, ZOA presented Trump with its Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion in recognition of his support for Israel and Jews.
Klein said at the time that the organization rarely grants the award, reserving it for “world leaders and dignitaries” such as Lord Arthur Balfour, former British prime minister Winston Churchill, former US president Harry Truman, Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion, and former prime minister Golda Meir.
In his acceptance speech, Trump criticized Jews he deemed disloyal, saying, “You do have people in this country that happen to be Jewish that are not doing the right thing for Israel. Too many.”
A shooting in the northern city of Tirat Carmel has left a man in critical condition.
The victim, 37, is reported in Hebrew media to be linked to organized crime or related to an underworld boss.
In Haifa, an elderly woman is lightly wounded from what appears to be a stray bullet.
A soldier has been sentenced to remain on base for 28 days for an incident in which he cursed a left-wing activist in Hebron earlier this month, the military says.
In a video, the soldier was heard hurling a stream of invectives at an activist for Breaking the Silence, which leads tours in the flashpoint West Bank city.
“You’re a traitor to the country and you’re son of a whore, son of a bitch. I wish you get cancer all over your body,” the soldier is heard saying.
“Come on, get away from my post, fuck off,” he adds.
The military says in a statement that the “soldier’s behavior seen in the video is unwarranted and the opposite of what is expected from an IDF troop.”
— An earlier version of this post misidentified the incident that led to the punishment.
Likud has signed a coalition agreement that will give the far-right, anti-LGBT Noam party control of a governmental body responsible for Jewish immigration, at at the time when some Jewish nationalists are pushing to rewrite the rules of who can become an Israeli citizen.
The deal with Noam is the second of five such expected agreements on the way to forming Israel’s most right-wing and religious government to date.
According to details released by a Likud party spokesperson, the parties agreed to Noam’s demand to form an authority within the Prime Minister’s Office to focus on national Jewish identity.
The authority will be headed by Noam’s sole lawmaker, Avi Maoz, who will be named a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office.
In his role, Maoz will also take control of additional bodies, including Nativ, which manages immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union.
Religious parties have pushed to tighten eligibility under the Law of Return that governs Jewish immigration rights, specifically campaigning to close the so-called grandfather clause that enables the non-Jewish grandchildren of Jews to obtain citizenship.
They have also advocated stripping eligibility for citizenship under the Law of Return from Reform converts to Judaism.
The United States will provide Jordan with more than $845 million in annual financial support, officials in Amman said Sunday, as the country remains heavily dependent on foreign aid.
Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawneh was present at the signing ceremony of the “agreement with the United States for the allocation of annual financial support of $845.1 million,” a Jordanian government statement said.
Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Zeina Toukan and USAID official Margaret Spears signed the accord in Amman, it added.
The Hashemite kingdom is a key Western ally in the Middle East.
“Jordan is very grateful for the support, which demonstrates that the United States understands the challenges” the country faces, Khasawneh said.
Washington will provide the aid by the end of the month, Toukan said, adding that the funds would go towards “financing development projects and implementing economic reforms in different sectors.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams will travel this week to Athens, Greece, for the 2022 Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism.
The Wednesday summit comes after New York police thwarted an attempted attack on synagogues last weekend, and in light of near-daily attacks and harassment against Jews in the city.
“As the mayor of the largest Jewish community in the United States, it is my sacred duty to protect Jewish New Yorkers and this entire community from antisemitism and bigotry,” he said after last week’s attempted attack by an armed man with a Nazi armband.
New York has increased police presence at synagogues at least through Hanukkah following the threat.
After Greece, Adams will travel to Doha, Qatar, as it hosts the World Cup.
He will meet with government leaders and security officials during the trip to prepare for New York and New Jersey hosting the games in 2026, his office says in a statement.
Police have sealed off parts of the center of Brussels, deployed water cannons and fired tear gas to disperse crowds following violence during and after Morocco’s 2-0 upset win over Belgium at the World Cup.
Dozens of rioters set steps on fire and pelt cars with bricks. Police moved in after one person suffered facial injuries, says Brussels police spokeswoman Ilse Van de Keere.
Brussels mayor Philippe Close urges soccer fans to stay away from the city center and says authorities are doing their utmost to keep order in the streets. Even subway and tram traffic was interrupted on police orders.
Morocco’s victory was a major upset at the World Cup and was enthusiastically celebrated by fans with Moroccan immigrant roots in many Belgian cities.
It is not immediately clear how many people are detained during the disturbances.
Police say the suspect in a road rage killing last week that has sparked widespread anger admitted to the deed, according to Hebrew media reports.
Adi Mizrahi, 23, is expected to face a murder charge for the Wednesday slaying of Yuri Volkov, 52, during an argument in a Holon crosswalk.
Volkov had been crossing the street with his wife when a person on a motorbike made a dangerous maneuver and she snapped a picture of him. Volkov and the driver exchanged words before the motorist pulled out a knife and stabbed him. Volkov died a short time later and was buried earlier Sunday.
Mizrahi was arrested Thursday at a home in Holon. Reports over the weekend indicated that police were having trouble finding evidence to corroborate suspicions against him.
A police official is quoted telling Ynet that officers investigating the case still have their work cut out for them, and have been unable to locate Mizrahi’s cell phone.
An official statement from police says only that a gag order on the case has been lifted.
The Volkov family says Mizrahi’s reported confession “is the only thing that can make us somehow a tiny bit happy.”
“We hope he goes to prison the rest of his life and rots there,” the family says.
Thousands of Kurds in the Syrian city of Qamishli are protesting against days of deadly Turkish cross-border strikes targeting Kurdish groups in the country’s northeast.
Turkey announced last Sunday it had carried out airstrikes against semi-autonomous Kurdish zones in north and northeastern Syria, and across the border in Iraq. It has also threatened a ground offensive in those areas of Syria.
Demonstrators in Kurdish-controlled Qamishli, in Hasakeh province, brandish photos of people killed during recent strikes in the semi-autonomous region, an AFP correspondent says. They also chant in favor of the resistance in “Rojava” — the name Kurds in Syria give to the area they administer.
Some protesters carry Kurdish flags alongside photos of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan — jailed in Turkey since 1999 — and shout slogans against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
“Only the will of the Kurdish people remains,” says protester Siham Sleiman, 49. “It will not be broken and we remain ready. We will not leave our historic land.”
After a three-day lull, Turkish fighter jets heavily bombed Kurdish-controlled areas north of Aleppo early today, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor.
A separate Turkish drone strike killed five Syrian government soldiers near Tal Rifaat, also north of Aleppo, the Observatory adds, reporting an exchange of shelling between Kurdish combatants and Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies.
A video published online shows a fight between motorists on a major central-Israel highway, with one driver using a knife to puncture the tires of a second driver and then threatening to use the knife on him as well.
The fight on Route 431 occurred two weeks ago, but the video gets posted on Twitter today, hours after a funeral for a Holon man who was stabbed to death during a road rage incident last week.
הסתפק בשתי דקירות בצמיגים תודה לאל היום נגמר בנס pic.twitter.com/kI4lJN11U5
— לירי בורק שביט (@lirishavit) November 27, 2022
In the video shared by several Hebrew media outlets, a man, reportedly from Bat Yam, is seen approaching another driver standing next to his car and arguing with him. After the second driver shoves the approaching man away repeatedly, he pulls out a knife and slashes two of the car’s tires.
As the knifeman walks away, the second driver runs after him and raises his fists as if to punch him, before the knifeman threateningly raises the weapon, causing the second man, apparently from the nearby city of Rehovot, to back away.
The Bat Yam man was detained by police following the incident but released after questioning, according to reports.
The Health Ministry says it is calling off a search for the biological parents of a baby whose embryo was mistakenly implanted in the wrong mother.
The ministry also says it has decided not to close the fertility ward at Assuta Medical Center in Rishon Lezion, where the mistake occurred, but will demand it trim its operations by 50 percent.
“We considered closing fertility treatments at Assuta Rishon Lezion, but won’t do so,” ministry chief Nachman Ash says. “The price that would be borne by the many people receiving treatment there would be too high.”
The infant was born last month, after the mix-up became a local media sensation. A search for the actual parents netted a likely match and briefly sparked a legal battle over the yet-unborn baby that was swiftly quashed when a genetic test revealed the matched couple to not be the genetic parents.
Assuta says it accepts the ministry’s ruling and has already instituted improvements to the ward. It says technological solutions will soon take any guesswork out of identifying embryos’ parents.
A group that says it represents people who were treated at Assuta and are unhappy with the level of care slams the ministry for “giving full backing to a hospital that seemingly acts with shocking negligence.”
“We demand that the Health Ministry stops its deafening silence. Speak to us and explain to us what is happening, give us answers for all the tough questions for which we still haven’t received a reply,” the group says in a statement carried by Channel 12 news.
The Moroccan soccer team has won only its third-ever World Cup match, beating Belgium 2-0 in the latest upset of a soccer powerhouse in a tournament that has been chock full of them so far.
Second-half goals from Abdelhamid Sabiri and Zakaria Aboukhlal send Morocco to the top of Group F with four points, one ahead of Belgium. Canada plays 2018 runner-up Croatia later in the group’s other game.
Iranian authorities have arrested a niece of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after she recorded a video describing the authorities led by her uncle as a “murderous and child-killing regime.”
Farideh Moradkhani comes from a branch of the family that has a record of opposition to Iran’s clerical leadership and has herself been jailed previously in the country.
Her brother Mahmoud Moradkhani wrote on Twitter that she was arrested on Wednesday after going to the office of the prosecutor following a summons.
Then on Saturday her brother posted a video on YouTube, with the link shared on Twitter, where she condemned the “clear and obvious oppression” Iranians have been subjected to, and criticized the international community’s inaction.
“Free people, be with us! Tell your governments to stop supporting this murderous and child-killing regime,” she said.
“This regime is not loyal to any of its religious principles and does not know any law or rule except force and maintaining its power in any way possible.”
NEWS
Farideh Moradkhani, the niece of Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, calls on international community to support Iranians.
She compares her uncle to Hitler and Mussolini.
She says Iranians will overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Her uncle has had her arrested in the past. pic.twitter.com/htjyBsnMc7
— Yashar Ali 🐘 یاشار (@yashar) November 27, 2022
It was not clear when the video had been recorded.
Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said her arrest last Wednesday was to begin serving an existing 15-year sentence.
The charges were not immediately clear.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights around 14,000 people have been arrested over the protests that began after the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by the morality police.
At least 416, people including 51 children, have been killed in the crackdown, according to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR).
Protesters pushed to the brink by China’s strict COVID measures in Shanghai are calling for the removal of the country’s all-powerful leader and clashing with police in several cities in an astounding challenge to the government.
Police forcibly cleared the demonstrators in China’s financial capital who called for Xi Jinping’s resignation and the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule — but hours later people rallied again in the same spot.
成都 补充视频
街头聚集大量民众 要求取消核酸，过程中警察突然进来抓人引发骚乱，在视频中民众一直在提醒大家相互帮助 pic.twitter.com/mmoY8C9HkW— 李老师不是你老师 (@whyyoutouzhele) November 27, 2022
Social media reports indicate protests have also spread to at least seven other cities, including the capital of Beijing, and dozens of university campuses.
NOW – People tear down barricades in #Wuhan. Anti-lockdown protests are spreading to more and more cities in China.@disclosetv pic.twitter.com/Wq6tUZr85M
— chimeg. (@HowertnB) November 27, 2022
Largescale protests are exceedingly rare in China, where public expressions of dissent are routinely stifled — but a direct rebuke of Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, is extraordinary.
Three years after the virus first emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of COVID-19 — a “zero COVID” policy that regularly sees millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time and requires near-constant testing. The measures were originally widely accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating wavs of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.
On Friday, 10 people died in a fire in an apartment building, and many believe their rescue was delayed because of excessive lockdown measures. That sparked a weekend of protests, as the Chinese public’s ability to tolerate the harsh measures has apparently reached breaking point.
‘We want freedom!’ pic.twitter.com/yoTeYaFJAx
— Eva Rammeloo (@eefjerammeloo) November 26, 2022
Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu will sit down with Religious Zionism head Bezalel Smotrich this evening as the two attempt to put contentious coalition negotiations to bed, the Ynet news site reports.
Smotrich tells a educational conference that he is completely sure that “with God’s help, a truly right-wing government will be created in the coming days,” according to a statement from his spokesperson.
The report of renewed talks come after Netanyahu managed to nail down an agreement with Smotrich’s running mate, Itamar Ben Gvir of the Otzma Yehudit party, on Friday.
Coalition negotiations between Likud and allied right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties have dragged on since Netanyahu was given a 28-day mandate earlier this month to form a government., with the sides scrapping over appointments and legislative priorities. The mandate expires December 11, but can be extended for two weeks.
The Likud leader has made progress in talks with ultra-Orthodox Shas and UTJ parties, but Religious Zionism has proved a tougher nut to crack.
Talks with Smotrich have been mired in mutual accusations, with Religious Zionism claiming Netanyahu had gone back on promises, and Likud accusing the far-right party of making exaggerated demands in exchange for joining the coalition.
The meeting is planned for 9 p.m., Ynet reports.
Pope Francis says he is concerned with an uptick in violence between Israel and Palestinians, noting last week’s “cowardly” bombings in Jerusalem, which left two Israelis dead, and clashes in the West Bank in which a Palestinian teen was killed.
“Violence kills the future, shattering the lives of the young and weakening hopes for peace,” he says from Saint Peter’s Square, as he marks the first day of Advent.
“Let us pray for these young men who died and for their families, especially their mothers,” he says, in comments that appear to omit a second Israeli fatality, 50-year-old Tadese Tashume Ben Ma’ada, who died Saturday from wounds sustained in the bombing.
The pontiff adds that he hopes “the Israeli and Palestinian authorities will more readily take to heart the search for dialogue, building mutual trust, without which there will never be a peaceful solution in the Holy Land.”
A soldier has been detained for questioning after being accused of making a prank call to an emergency dispatcher claiming he had been kidnapped, police say.
The caller to the southern Israeli emergency hotline mumbled and was heard saying “they kidnapped us,” sparking Beersheba police to launch an emergency search operation and investigation.
Police say the person who made the call was tracked to a soldiers’ rooming house in the city, and he was detained “after it became clear that he had been pulling a prank.”
The stunt comes less than a week after Palestinian gunmen abducted the body of an Israeli man killed in a traffic collision from a Jenin hospital.
In 2014, an Israeli teen kidnapped in the West Bank along with two others managed to make an emergency call and tell dispatchers he had been taken, before being killed by a Hamas terrorist, but the call was initially dismissed as a prank.
The US soccer federation has restored the Islamic Republic emblem to its postings showing Iran’s flag, after its removal drew widespread attention as well as threats from Tehran.
“We wanted to show our support for the women in Iran with our graphic for 24 hours,” the federation says.
Safiollah Fagahanpour, a legal adviser to the Iranian Football Federation, indicates that world soccer federation FIFA will be asked to suspend the US men’s soccer team for 10 games in response to the flag move, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim reports.
Fagahanpour says the display violated FIFA’s ethics rules, which mandate a minimum 10-game suspension for racist behavior.
“The action conducted in relation to the Iranian flag is unethical and against international law,” Fagahanpour is quoted saying.
There is no immediate response from FIFA.
The US plays Iran Tuesday in a high-stakes, win-or-go-home match in Qatar.
Outgoing prime minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party is gearing up for a fight with the presumed new government over its plans to pass legislation that will allow lawmakers to override Supreme Court rulings striking down laws as unconstitutional.
Yesh Atid members met this morning with Israel Democracy Institute expert Prof. Suzie Navot and other civil society figures to hear about how the override clause “causes critical harm to Israeli citizens, to their day-to-day lives and basic rights,” a statement from Yesh Atid says.
“We have no intention of staying silent while the incoming government attempts to run roughshod over the law-abiding, taxpaying and army-serving public,” Lapid says, according to the party statement. “We are not their suckers. We won’t let them normalize criminality.”
Among hundreds attending a funeral for Yuri Volkov, killed last week by a motorbike driver during a dispute in a Holon crosswalk, is far-right politician Itamar Ben Gvir, who is set to become police minister when a new government is sworn in.
Ben Gvir, who campaigned partially on a law and order platform, says “the violence, vandalism, bullying that injured you injured us all.”
Volkov was stabbed to death on Wednesday evening after a brief confrontation with a motorbike driver who carried out an illegal maneuver, endangering pedestrians crossing a road.
Ben Gvir says he attended the funeral to tell Volkov’s family that “with God’s help, when I become [national security minister] I will do everything to make this violence stop.”
He blames the violence on poor education, Israel’s “driving culture” and the police, “who need to be a very strong police force, acting against these damned [people].”
A Hadera resident has been detained on suspicion of setting a woman’s car on fire amid a dispute over a parking space, the Walla news site reports.
The incident comes amid a rash of road rage attacks that have shocked the nation. On Wednesday, Yuri Volkov was stabbed to death after a brief confrontation with a motorbike driver who carried out an illegal maneuver, endangering pedestrians crossing a road.
That incident came weeks after a man was put in intensive care when a motorcycle driver bashed him with his helmet during an argument on Tel Aviv’s Ayalon Highway.
Both attackers have been arrested.
The US soccer federation says it is displaying Iran’s national flag on social media without the emblem of the Islamic Republic to support protesters in Iran ahead of the two nations’ World Cup match Tuesday.
Iran’s government has reacted by accusing America of removing the name of God from its national flag.
The US faces Iran in a decisive World Cup match, which was already made fraught by the decades of enmity between the two countries and the nationwide protests now challenging Tehran’s theocratic government.
The US Soccer Federation says in a statement Sunday that it decided to forgo the official flag on social media accounts to show “support for the women in Iran fighting for basic human rights.”
The Twitter account of the US men’s team displayed a banner with the squad’s matches in the group stage, with the Iranian flag only bearing its green, white and red colors. The same could be seen in a post on its Facebook and Instagram accounts laying out the point totals so far in its group.
The US Soccer Federation displayed the official Iranian flag in a graphic showing Group B standings on its website.
https://twitter.com/USMNT/status/1596266750210936835
Iranian state television describes the US federation as “removing the symbol of Allah” from the Iranian flag.
Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency quotes Safiollah Fagahanpour, an adviser to the Iranian Football Federation, saying that the “measures taken regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran flag are against the law” of FIFA competitions.
“They must be held responsible,” Fagahanpour says. “Obviously they want to affect Iran’s performance against the U.S by doing this.”
An Israeli bus driver is lightly hurt after his vehicle came under a stone-throwing attack by Palestinians in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina, medics say.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service says it is taking the man, in his 40s, to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital.
The bus was empty at the time of the attack.
נהג אוטובוס נפצע קל בפניו מרסיס לאחר שנזרקה אבן לעברו בשכונת בית חנינא בירושלים@SuleimanMas1 pic.twitter.com/P3xakVLG0D
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) November 27, 2022
Tadese Tashume Ben Ma’ada, a 50-year-old immigrant from Ethiopia, is being eulogized in Jerusalem after he succumbed to injuries Saturday, four days after being critical wounded in a \bomb attack at a bus stop at the main entrance to Jerusalem.
Hundreds attended his funeral at Har Hamenuhot Cemetery, less than a mile (1.6 kilometers) from where the attack occurred.
Haile Mara says his cousin’s dream was for all remaining family members, including his brothers and sisters, to be able to move to Israel. Ben Ma’ada immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia 21 years ago.
“He was working on this until the last moment. On the morning of the attack, he sent me an email on the subject at 6:44 a.m. and when I answered him at 7:06 a.m., it was already after the attack,” Mara said. “I tried to call and he didn’t answer,”
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said he had met Ben Ma’ada the evening before the bomb attack at the inauguration of a new community center for the Ethiopian community.
“In one moment, [the bombing] ended a human story — a story about Zionism, about aliyah, about the love of the Land of Israel, about the love of Jerusalem. And in a symbolic and tragic way, this happened precisely on the day of the great holiday of the Ethiopian Jews, Sigd,” says Lion.
Ben Ma’ada leaves behind a wife and six children.
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